Barack Obama

The government's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that consumer prices fell 0.2 percent in February. Lower prices should be good news, right? Wrong, at least according to Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press. Crutsinger's Wednesday dispatch also managed to ignore the fact that even the supposedly low inflation seen during the past 12 months has eaten up most of workers' very…

The “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC on Thursday night insisted President Barack Obama’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, is nothing but a “moderate” and personally pleaded with Republicans to consider placing him on the Court. While two networks mentioned comments made by Vice President Joe Biden back in 1992 about Court appointments, none of them made light of the…

Appearing on Wednesday's Wolf show to discuss President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin characterized Republican resistance to confirming him as not being about "principle," but "power" instead.

On today's With All Due Respect, NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg broke some news, saying she thought President Obama "got a message from Republicans via backchannels that they would probably move this [Supreme Court] nomination after the presidential election." Let's game-plan this out. If it means that Senate Republicans would move to confirm President Obama's pick of Merrick…

Merrick Garland, President Obama's pick to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Antonin Scalia, is "a very careful jurist," not an ideologue in the least, MSNBC's chief legal reporter Ari Melber insisted in a brief segment during the 4 p.m. Eastern hour on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, CNN quickly ran to label President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, as a "moderate" and a "consensus candidate." Jake Tapper contended that "this seems like a fairly-establishment, moderate pick." Pamela Brown first responded by underlining that there's "no doubt about it;" but moments later, she revealed that Judge Garland "may carry on Obama's legacy when it comes…

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was still hard at work making befuddling statements early Wednesday morning following the third installment of Super Tuesday with comments that mocked “neocons” as wanting everyone to go into battle “for Israel” as “blah, blah, blah” while fellow panelist Joy Reid attacked Rubio’s concession speech as unoriginal and mash-ups of Reagan and President Barack Obama.

These days, one of the biggest meta-debates in politics concerns apportioning blame for the staying power of the Donald Trump circus. How much of Trump’s popularity is attributable to, say, the mainstream media? To conservative talk radio? In a Sunday post, The Washington Monthly’s Martin Longman pointed the finger at Republicans and absolved President Obama. Apropos of Trump’s economically…

“Objective” journalists have a bad habit of declaring against all evidence that President Obama has been “scandal-free” since 2009. This was demonstrated again on the C-SPAN interview program Q&A with Brian Lamb. The guests were married journalists: Politico editor Susan Glasser and New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker. Lamb asked about Obama’s place in history, and he…

As CNN Newsroom host Poppy Harlow on Saturday tried to suggest Republicans like John Kasich deserve blame for not speaking out against Donald Trump when he was pushing birtherism against President Barack Obama several years ago, she was taken aback when her guest, Ohio GOP chairman Matt Borges, turned the tables by implicating Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign in dabbling in similar…

From reading most establishment press news, especially their economy-related reports, you'd think that those who are complaining about the current U.S. economy are outliers — especially the millions of Americans who are angry about it. Though they sometimes acknowledge that forward progress  since the recession hasn't been robust, the media's meme-makers have mostly told us that "overall job…

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Thursday night reminisced about the “stellar” Barack Obama from 2008 and how the Democrat gave him a “thrill up the leg.” Matthews finally conceded that such excitement couldn’t live up to expectations. He also added, “Hillary can’t match that.” 

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello, race-obsessed CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill painted "white male" Donald Trump supporters as being bothered at "a rise in expanded opportunity for black people and for brown people," suggesting that Trump's slogan is really "We're going to make America white again." Host Costello set him up: "Let me ask you this, Marc,…

In the early moments of CNN’s Super Tuesday 2 coverage, Atlantic contributing editor and CNN political commentator Peter Beinart encouraged viewers to consider “how brilliant was Hillary Clinton” to accept President Obama’s offer to become his secretary of state and “politically de facto his vice president” even though “[a] lot of people at the time didn't see” this so-called “wisdom.”