It turns out MSNBC isn't the only liberal news outlet giddy about Missouri Democratic Sen. Clair McCaskill's early endorsement of Hillary Clinton for a 2016 presidential bid.

This morning, the New York Times's Jonathan Weisman treated readers to a puffy 16-paragraph story headlined, "A Pro-Clinton PAC Receives the Support of a Key Obama Backer." Apparently when one thinks Democratic power brokers, the Show Me State's second-term senior senator is supposed to spring to mind.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews and his liberal guest on Wednesday thrilled over the relationship between Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Washington Post writer Eugene Robinson even compared them to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: "I think in a way, you know, Barack and Angela are the new Ronnie and Maggie...They can be kind of a dynamic duo." (Of course, Reagan and Thatcher oversaw huge economic recoveries and the end of the Cold War. Hardly an apt comparison.) [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Highlighting Obama's speech in Germany, Matthews saw a secret plan to promote Hillary Clinton. After mentioning Thatcher, plus other famous female leaders, he wondered "whether this partnership between our president...isn't that a leading indicator?" Matthews theorized, "I think it says to Americans watching television, yes, this makes sense. It makes sense to him for Hillary to be the next person standing in that role he's in."

The overwhelming dominance that liberal statists have over the media today is one of the biggest obstacles faced by advocates of smaller government. Invariably whenever people try to make reforms to existing systems or eliminate waste, their intentions get distorted and lied about and the reformers’ motives get impugned.

Things were not always this way, however. It was not so long ago, in fact, that many large newspapers in this country were owned and operated by right-leaning individuals. Even many of the self-described “progressives” actually also believed in balanced budgets.

As early as tomorrow morning but most assuredly before the month is over, the U.S. Supreme Court will issue a ruling on the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines, for federal purposes, marriage as an institution existing between a man and a woman. A ruling on that count would have repercussions to a whole host of federal employee benefits, so it's perfectly legitimate for the Washington Post to examine what happens in such a case.

But "Federal Diary" columnist Joe Davidson went much further than that in his June 19 piece, "DOMA ruling could expand rights for gays, but with questions about full spousal benefits." Davidson made crystal clear to the reader his personal feelings on the illegitimacy of DOMA, that he would celebrate its demise, and that the Supreme Court failing to vacate the law would be an injustice (emphasis mine):

During his Monday afternoon show, MSNBC host Martin Bashir initiated a segment by reporting on the tragic shootings that took place over Father’s Day weekend in Chicago. Over the holiday weekend a total of 41 people were shot, 7 fatally. Bashir wasted no time politicizing these tragedies by using them as evidence that the “conversation is not over” on pushing new gun control legislation in Congress. He then went on to shamelessly advertise for Vice President Joe Biden’s White House event to support gun-restricting legislation as well as the No More Names bus tour which is a project paid for by Major Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns group to try to drum-up popular support for anti-gun legislation. [Link to the audio here]

It is curious that Bashir would use Chicago gun violence as an example of why there needs to be universal background checks prior to the purchase of legal firearms. Amid his own claims that the NRA was endorsing a “program of disinformation” and promulgating the “spreading of falsehood and lies” by “suggesting that there was going to be a registry for gun owners,” it seems that Bashir must not have done his homework to choose Chicago as his example for this platform.

On Tuesday's All In show, MSNBC host Chris Hayes complained about an "anti-food stamp jihad" by House Republicans, and attacked the GOP for putting on a "shameful spectacle" in trying to cut the food stamp program.

With the words "War on the Poor" and an image of House Speaker John Boehner displayed on screen behind him, Hayes railed:

Thursday night, both Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity showed and commented on a new video done by the Media Research Center that showed a disturbing trend among some college students at George Mason University. In the video, MRCTV reporter Dan Joseph posed as a liberal hater of Fox News to try to get students to sign a petition urging the Obama administration to spy on Fox News employees and their families’ phone and email records. [Listen to the audio here or watch the video after the jump]

This, of course, was done in the wake of the revelation that the Justice Department seized the phone and email records of Fox News correspondent James Rosen, and the phone records of the Associated Press.

Terry Moran, co-host of the liberal Nightline, will be leaving the show this summer, according to TV Newser. The program, which lost half its audience since being demoted to 12:35 at night, has downplayed and minimized Barack Obama recent scandals in favor of superficial, light-weight segments.

Moran has relegated much of his serious journalism to Twitter. On May 10, the reporter used the social media site to question the Obama administration's "Nixonian abuse of power" in the wake of the IRS scandal. On May 11, his program ignored the breaking story. By May 15, the show had allowed a scant 28 seconds to the topic. While Moran tweeted away on the IRS controversy and Benghazi, his show covered the latest on plastic surgery and other topics. On Monday night, Nightline featured a story on ten-year-old rapper Lil' Poopy.

To Slate’s Jeremy Stahl, the drunk-driving kid of a Democratic politician is far less scandalous than offensive tweets from the progeny of a conservative Republican.

There really isn’t much point to Stahl's June 14 piece, "Hereditary Traits: Bigoted taunts by the children of GOP honchos have everything to do with politics." In fact, it’s abjectly stupid.  But Stahl runs completely off the rails when he writes:

Today's starter topic: The city of Los Angeles just voted to completely ban "the scourge" of plastic shopping bags. What's next, a tax on toilet paper?

Who was Morning Joe protecting: the sensitive ears of its viewers, or Hillary Clinton?

During a discussion of the death of the feisty and fearless reporter Michael Hastings, Morning Joe bleeped out Joe Scarborough's reading from an email from Hastings to Philippe Reines, Hillary's personal spokesman during her Secretary of State tenure.  Hastings had accused Reines of "b---s---" answers on the State Department's handling of Benghazi.  The extended bleeping wasn't simply of the offending word, but of Hastings' entire sentence, so listeners never learned the thrust of his accusation.  View the video after the jump.

A search at Google News on "households food stamps record" done at 9 p.m. ET (not in quotes, sorted by date, with duplicates and similar items) returned three items. Two are at the Daily Caller (here and here); and the other is at Reason.com. Program statistics for March, the latest month available, show that a record 23.12 million households -- one in every five in the U.S. -- received food stamp benefits. At 47.73 million, the total number of persons receiving benefits was only 65,000 below the record set in December. In 2008, average participation was less than 29 million.

That search result shows, despite the fact that records are supposed to be news, that the establishment press is completely uninterested in communicating the fact that the food stamp program continues to grow, though very slowly, even as the economy supposedly recovers. There is one number that the press has been citing frequently, namely the number of people who might be removed from the food stamp rolls if language attempting to limit the program to people who are truly in need remains in the otherwise bloated disaster known as the farm bill. 

The media elites have never been less interested in objectivity than they are right now on “gay marriage.” They don’t wear rainbow flags on their lapels when they appear on television, but the coverage speaks for itself.

Even liberals are admitting the obvious. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) studied a sample of almost 500 news stories from March to May and admitted “statements of support dominate” the daily narrative.

For today's NB ToonsDay, we take another look at how conservative cartoonists are addressing the Obama administration's involvement in phone-record snooping.