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As much as Barack Obama promised a new era of transparency in Washington, there are still plenty of activities reporters can't attend. In a Monday story on Obama trying to keep his liberal base happy, Washington Post reporter Peter Wallsten explained: Much of the White House's interaction with liberal groups has taken place at a weekly Tuesday meeting at a downtown Washington hotel. The "…

“I was at – forgive the expression – a Christmas party,” NPR reporter Nina Totenberg interjected on Inside Washington in the weekend’s oddest cautionary separation from a common description for a common event, seemingly embarrassed to invoke any religious terminology for Christmas. She didn’t say what she’d prefer for parties this time of the year to be named. “Winter solstice party”? Just…

 Appearing on Sunday’s Good Morning America on ABC to discuss legislation passed recently by Congress, This Week host Christiane Amanpour referred to tax cuts as "giveaways" as she predicted that President Obama would receive political credit for the agreement to prevent the Bush tax cuts from expiring in January, which anchor Dan Harris described as a "big tax cut law." After Harris asked if…

 As ABC’s World News Sunday recounted President Obama’s failed effort to provide citizenship for immigrants who entered the country illegally as children if they go to college or enter the military, the issue was framed as conservatives standing in the way of the "dream" of such immigrants, and, as anchor Dan Harris introduced a report on the measure that failed in the Senate - dubbed the Dream…

 In a report aired on Sunday’s NBC Nightly News, correspondent Mike Taibbi raised the possibility that the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that prevented U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning from being openly gay in the military may have played a role in his decision to acquire and leak classified information to WikiLeaks. Before recounting that some in Manning’s hometown of Crescent, Oklahoma,…

On Tuesday, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh accused the No Labels crowd of being a bunch of "washed-up losers." On Sunday's "Meet the Press," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough took on Limbaugh's criticism saying he has "the luxury of never actually governing, never being a president, never being a senator, never being in Congress" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Nearly 80 percent of the $858 billion “cost” of the compromise tax bill signed Friday by President Barack Obama is, per a Congressional Research Service estimate, from the $675 billion over the next ten years the government would have received if income tax rates were raised, a perspective widely adopted by network reporters and hosts who assumed just keeping rates at their current levels…

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on Friday said the newly-elected Tea Party members in the House are going to get their hearts broken when they get to the nation's capital. In her view, expressed on PBS's "The McLaughlin Group," this will happen "as they come up against all the forces in Washington, the same forces that Barack Obama came up against" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

 As all the broadcast network evening newscasts on Saturday used words like "historic" and "landmark" to describe the Senate vote in favor of repealing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on homosexuals serving in the military, the networks also provided substantially more soundbites to supporters of the measure than to those who opposed changing the policy. On ABC, the lead report filed by…

Saturday's Washington Post published a religion-year-in-review piece by Kevin Eckstrom, editor of the Religion News Service. Eckstrom thought the year was defined by vengeful "Islamophobia" and disdained that "extreme voices" were opposing Islamic extremism: Lingering questions about President Obama's Christian faith morphed into a belief among one in five Americans that he's actually a…

Chris Matthews on the syndicated program bearing his name devoted an entire segment this weekend to attacking Sarah Palin. To assist him in the attacks, the host of "The Chris Matthews Show" brought on Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post, the BBC's Katty Kay, Joe Klein of Time magazine, and NBC's Norah O'Donnell (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For general discussion and debate about politics, the economy, sports, or whatever else tickles your fancy.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich has said some astonishingly stupid things throughout his career, but a comment in Sunday's "The Bipartisanship Racket" might get on his top ten list. In the eyes of this liberal writer working for the most powerful liberal newspaper in the country, the Left in this nation doesn't have as strong a media megaphone as the Right:

Having been given the power to rule by decree for 18 months, Hugo Chávez appears to be in the midst of completing a de facto statist takeover of the country institutions and levers of power. No journalist is daring to directly call it dictatorship. You won't find any form of the word at a December 15 New York Times story by Simon Romero ("Chávez Seeks Decree Powers" -- which, by the way,…