Video

Pelley: Trump’s Problem Isn’t the Media, But the U.S. Constitution!

February 17th, 2017 7:44 PM
On Friday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Scott Pelley strayed into punditry as he observed that “the common denominator of Mr. Trump’s woes is the Constitution” and not the media because they didn’t cause the departure of Mike Flynn, halt his immigration executive order, or have Andy Pudzer withdraw as the Labor Secretary nominee.

Lib Pundit Pierce: No Trump Presidency If Electoral College Works

December 13th, 2016 10:09 AM
The Hamilton electors, whatever their number, are being cheered on by Hamilton bloggers, one of whom is Esquire’s Pierce. In a Saturday post, Pierce argued that in the country the Founding Fathers envisioned, the Electoral College would vote down a Donald Trump presidency. Pierce wrote, “Let us assume for a moment that our constitutional institutions are as strong and functional as they are…

NYMag: Trump ‘Has Proven Liberals Right About the Tea Party’

December 10th, 2016 11:36 AM
After nearly eight years of competing theories, the essence of the Tea Party has been determined, says Jonathan Chait. In a Wednesday post, Chait claimed that Donald Trump’s election as president verifies liberals’ explanation of what the movement stood for. The right, wrote Chait, was wrong to argue that the Tea Party was all about “timeless principles of conservative movement thought” such as “…

Pundit Gripes That Anti-Government Themes Help GOP Win Elections

November 16th, 2016 5:54 PM
In a Tuesday post, Esquire blogger Pierce complained that Ronald Reagan’s anti-government rhetoric discouraged many from voting, thereby benefiting Republicans, but Donald Trump’s anti-government rhetoric encouraged many to vote, thereby benefiting Republicans. Pierce noted that Reagan, in his first inaugural address, declared “that government was not a solution to the problem, that government…

Yes, the Electoral College Still Works

November 16th, 2016 5:29 PM
What would the Founders think of presumptive President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral vote victory, earned in the face of a popular vote loss? Hint: It’s not what many media commentators would have you believe. We can find a small clue to the Founders’ feelings in something Benjamin Franklin said as he left the Constitutional Convention. As delegates departed from the old Pennsylvania State House…

Jeffrey Toobin: Clarence Thomas Is Both ‘Radical’ and ‘Reactionary’

October 25th, 2016 9:52 PM
When it comes to Supreme Court justices and their views of the Constitution, on the one hand there’s Clarence Thomas, and on the other there’s everyone else in the 227-year history of the Court, suggested CNN and New Yorker legal analyst Toobin in a Tuesday piece. Toobin called Thomas, who just marked a quarter-century as a SCOTUS justice, “not a conservative but, rather, a radical” who’s driven…

Liberal Pundit Advises Hillary to Keep ‘Uncle Joe’ Biden As VP

July 9th, 2016 10:52 AM
If Hillary Clinton takes Joel Dodge’s advice, one of Washington’s kings of unintentional comedy might be in the spotlight for a while longer. Dodge, a lawyer who also writes for The Week, thinks Clinton should choose current vice president Joe Biden as her running mate. Biden, contended Dodge, “is virtually risk-free and carries more upside…[He] is universally known, vetted, and unquestionably…

Rolling Stone Writer: NRA ‘Greatest Threat to Our Homeland Security’

June 19th, 2016 6:27 AM
Omar Mateen claimed at various times to be aligned with terrorist groups including ISIS, Hezbollah, and the al-Nusra Front. Tim Dickinson does not consider any of those bloodthirsty outfits “the greatest threat to our homeland security today.” That description, Dickinson argues, best fits the National Rifle Association. “The NRA's unhinged gun advocacy,” he wrote in a Wednesday article, “has…

New York Magazine Pundit: Tea Party Was Trumpian, Not Conservative

May 25th, 2016 10:55 AM
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait has contempt for both Donald Trump (“his appeal operates…at a sub-intellectual level”) and those who’ve voted for him (“the Republican Party turns out to be filled with idiots”). Still, suggested Chait in a Thursday post, Trump and his supporters have unwittingly clarified something important: the Tea Party movement is not and never was truly conservative,…

Pundit On SCOTUS Vacancy: GOP ‘Taking a S**t on the Constitution’

February 26th, 2016 11:59 AM
Scatology has typically been out of bounds in mainstream-media political commentary. (Not in all political commentary, of course. For example, actor John Cusack once called former actor Ronald Reagan “a criminal who used the Constitution as toilet paper.”) Nonetheless, Michael Tomasky went there in a Wednesday column trashing Senate Republicans for refusing to consider any Supreme Court…

Jeffrey Toobin: Scalia’s Successor Should Be the Opposite of Scalia

February 21st, 2016 4:02 PM
CNN and New Yorker pundit Jeffrey Toobin considers Antonin Scalia “a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor.” The late SCOTUS justice, asserted Toobin in the New Yorker, “lived within the sealed bubble of contemporary conservative thought” and “devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy…
Video

Bee Savages Scalia, ‘Obstructionist A**' Mitch McConnell

February 16th, 2016 12:52 AM
New TBS host Samantha Bee returned for round two of her show Monday night and after a litany of vile remarks in the inaugural edition, she used the opening segment of this one to savage late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and especially Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as she likened him to an “obstructionist ass” who’s desecrating Scalia and the Constitution by stating he wouldn’t…

Vox Writer: Hillary’s Not Concerned With ‘The Spirit of the Rules’

October 6th, 2015 9:28 PM
The antics of the former major-league baseball player Manny Ramirez were frequently described as “just Manny being Manny.” Yglesias suggests that Hillary Clinton’s ill-advised use of a private email server was just Hillary being Hillary, and that that’s a good thing. In a Tuesday article, Yglesias wrote that “from her adventures in cattle trading to chairing a policymaking committee in her…

Blogger: American Exceptionalism Mainly a ‘Strange Belief’ About Guns

October 4th, 2015 1:18 PM
Liberals and conservatives often differ over the concept of American exceptionalism, either on how to define it or whether there even is such a thing. Washington Monthly blogger Ed Kilgore recognizes a limited version of American exceptionalism, one which pretty much boils down to a mania for guns. “America is mainly exceptional [italics in original] among advanced democratic nations not in our…