Wall Street Journal

I guess we should acknowledge a tiny improvement when an ordinarily in-the-tank apparatchik like Jim Kuhnhenn at the Associated Press expresses even the slightest bit of skepticism about a White House claim. But let's not take it too far. Kuhnhenn is reporting in a brief "Big Story" item this morning that President Obama "is laying claim to an economic turnaround and warning Republicans not…

A Friday article in Politico described a "GOP on the Rise" while citing the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, noting that "Republicans are now leading Democrats on handling several key issues..." By contrast, on Friday's NBC Today, political director Chuck Todd minimized that development, claiming that Republicans "only fare a little bit better" in the poll than Democrats. [Listen to…

While the liberal media predictably focus on the domestic political ramifications for President Obama as regards his strange and ever-evolving policy on Syria, the real story worth reporting is how Obama may actually be strengthening Bashar Assad's hand, even making him "a national hero" who can not only survive but thrive as a result. In her September 12 front-page story "Syrian Rebels Hurt…

Two Colorado senators have been recalled, and either already are not serving their former constituents or won't be shortly. Yet according to today's Democratic Party talking points, their recalls, the first-ever in state history spurred by the ousted senators' support of gun-control measures passed earlier this year, are only "symbolic" — despite all the money that poured in from New York Mayor…

The president's call on Saturday for Congress to debate and pass a resolution authorizing airstrikes against Syria also served as a telegraphed message to the liberal media about how to spin the message in a way that puffs the president politically while turning a serious question of foreign policy and use of military resources into a domestic political grist for the 2014 midterms. Well, the…

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan had some harsh words for Barack Obama Sunday. Appearing on ABC's This Week, Noonan said of the White House's surprising announcement Saturday that it was going to ask Congress for approval to strike Syria, "I think everybody pretty much views it as the president blinked."

"Fifty years after Martin Luther King delivered his landmark 'I Have a Dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial, which will be celebrated at a public ceremony Wednesday in Washington, African-American progress in the political arena has been spotty," Peter Nicholas and Neil King Jr. of the Wall Street Journal noted in a page A4 article on Wednesday headlined "Uneven Election Success for Black…

Here's another name to add to the "name that party" file: Michael Thornsbury. The Mingo County, West Virginia circuit court judge was the subject of a federal indictment on Wednesday "after federal authorities allege he targeted his ex-lover's husband and used his position on the bench to manipulate criminal charges against the man," Kate White of the Charleston [W.V.] Gazette reported…

Of the East Coast's most prestigious papers -- The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post -- only the Journal today failed to note Jesse Jackson Junior's Democratic Party affiliation, with staff writer Devlin Barrett failing to mention that fact in his 11-paragraph story. For their part, Washington Post staffers Ann Marimow and Rachel Weiner did mention Jackson is a…

NBC News “special correspondent” Ted Koppel is once again sounding like Jimmy Carter’s former Secretary of State in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. The headline was “America's Chronic Overreaction to Terrorism: The country's capacity for self-inflicted damage must have astounded even Osama bin Laden.” “Terrorism is designed to produce overreaction,” Koppel proclaimed with his trademark…

"I think those in the American government, looking at Vladimir Putin and what he's done, are feeling resentful and they're feeling dissed. They're wondering why he's treating America so roughly." So said Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday.

Today another New York state court upheld an earlier decision in March that invalidated outgoing Mayor Mike Bloomberg's much-maligned "soda ban" which restricts many establishments in the Big Apple from selling soda cups larger than 16 ounces in capacity. As the media report on the court ruling, watch for a) the media to paint the ruling as a "blow" to an "ambitious," well-meaning effort by…

Sarah Palin, call your office. PolitiFact, you've been refuted again. In the later sections of a Wall Street Journal column on Sunday (in Monday's print edition), former Vermont Governor and unsuccessful 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean wrote in opposition (HT Twitchy) to Obamacare's Independent Payment Advisory Board, calling it "essentially a health-care rationing body."…

"I think every president in the intense media environment we have now, certainly every two-term president, gets to a point where the American people stop listening, stop leaning forward hungrily for information. I think this president got there earlier than most presidents. And I think he's in that time now." So said the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan on ABC's This Week Sunday.