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NPR Listeners Hear EPA Touted as 'Environmental Investment Agency'
By Tim Graham | July 7, 2011 | 7:43 AM EDT

In the Obama era, the Environmental Protection Agency and its chief Lisa Jackson have been absolutely non-controversial in the national media. Few reporters have considered its aggressive “green” tactics a job-crusher. In fact, on Wednesday night’s “Marketplace” business show on many NPR stations, that notion was mocked as a playground taunt that children might make. Reporter Adriene Hill began:

Here's my best impression of politicians talking about environmental rules: "They're job killers." "Are not." "Are too." "Are not."  You get the point.

Frank Rich, Former NYT Columnist, Takes on 'Elitist' Obama From the Left
By Clay Waters | July 7, 2011 | 6:36 AM EDT

Frank Rich, the New York Times’s puzzlingly influential former op-ed columnist and over-dramatic hater of the Bush administration and the Tea Party, has landed with a splash at New York Magazine,penning the magazine’s new cover story, “Obama’s Original Sin,” going after the president's timidity from the left in a way he never managed at the Times.

What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers.

ABC Touts Teachers Blaming Standardized Tests for Atlanta Cheating Scandal
By Brad Wilmouth | July 7, 2011 | 2:10 AM EDT

 As the broadcast network evening newscasts filed reports this week on the teacher cheating scandal in Atlanta, Georgia, ABC’s World News on its Wednesday show went furthest in seeming to sympathize with the teachers who cheated as correspondent Steve Osunami highlighted complaints about No Child Left Behind’s emphasis on standardized tests to judge teacher performance.

After recounting details of the cheating scandal, in which as many as 178 teachers and principals in Atlanta erased and changed some of the answers on student tests to improve test score statistics for their schools, Osunsami asserted that "everyone here is pointing the finger at No Child Left Behind," and undermined the complaints of parents angry about the scandal:

Sharpton Claims Herman Cain's Too Racially Obsessed
By Tim Graham | July 6, 2011 | 9:13 PM EDT

There are few things in the political world that are stranger than Al Sharpton charging that someone else is too obsessed about race. But that was Al Sharpton's take on Herman Cain on his radio show on Friday:

This is what he’s done several times. He first went on Jon Stewart, I mean not went on Jon, but I mean he got into it with Jon saying that he that they, ah, liberal media didn’t want, hated seeing a black conservative, but he doesn’t want to bring up race. Well, he had just brought it up. Now he goes on a diatribe about the President and him and who’s black and whether who’s the strong black, but then he doesn’t want to bring in race.

After Mocking Rick Perry for Calling Twitter 'Tweeter' Chris Matthews Does it Twice in One Show
By Noel Sheppard | July 6, 2011 | 6:57 PM EDT

John Lennon in the '70s sang about instant karma getting you.

On Wednesday's "Hardball," two weeks after mocking Texas governor Rick Perry for calling Twitter "Tweeter," the pathetically pompous Chris Matthews made the same mistake not once, but twice (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Fareed Zakaria Praises Obama's Mideast Foreign Policy 'Restraint'
By Matt Hadro | July 6, 2011 | 6:02 PM EDT

CNN foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria – who has recently had off-the-record conversations with President Obama on foreign issues – noted the president's "restraint" in his dealing with the "Arab Spring" and the conflict in Libya Wednesday. Zakaria previously gave a thumbs-up for Obama's Mideast speech in May and later defended the president's plan for removing American troops from Afghanistan.

The point-of-note is that this is the same analyst whom, according to the New York Times, President Obama "sounded out" while shaping his foreign policy. The two simply had "off-the-record" conversations on foreign issues, according to Zakaria, and the CNN host claimed he was not an advisor to the President.

Obama’s State Dept. Nominee: North Korea's Kim Jong-il ‘Smart, Capable,’ ‘Not a Lunatic’
By Patrick Goodenough | July 6, 2011 | 4:49 PM EDT

President Obama’s nominee to a top State Department post is one of the few American diplomats to have met North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, whom she later described as “smart, capable and supremely confident.”

Wendy Sherman traveled to Pyongyang in 2000 in her capacity as counselor to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Visiting South Korea four years later – when she was no longer in government – Sherman had positive things to say about the reclusive Stalinist leader. 

MSNBC's Religious Expert Excoriates 'Radical,' 'Theocratic' Christians Like Bachmann Who 'Hate' America
By Scott Whitlock | July 6, 2011 | 4:48 PM EDT

In a segment on the religiosity of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, MSNBC's Richard Lui on Wednesday looked to an author who has smeared conservative Christians as "radical," weird individuals who "hate" America.

The guest host for Martin Bashir interviewed Frank Schaeffer, a blogger on the liberal Huffington Post website and also a constant critic of the religious right. Schaeffer, the son of a conservative theologian, excoriated conservatives: "But, I came to understand that these people actually hate the United States as it is."

Schieffer Bemoans 'Draconian' Cuts From Both Parties to Education, Poor
By Matthew Balan | July 6, 2011 | 4:36 PM EDT

CBS's Bob Schieffer took on the role of a left-wing activist on Sunday's Face the Nation, as he pressed all four of his guests from both parties about cuts in state and local spending. Schieffer bewailed how both Republican Governors John Kasich and Scott Walker "cut deeply into education" and asked Democratic Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa if he felt good about making "draconian cuts" [audio clips available here]

The anchor brought on the governors of Ohio and Wisconsin, as well as the mayor of Los Angeles and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, for his half-hour program to discuss the impasse over the federal budget and the debt ceiling and its impact on their states. After an initial question to Governor Kasich, where Schieffer claimed how, apparently, "things are worse than ever" between the two political parties, Schieffer set up his first question to Governor Walker with his lament of the apparent cuts to education in the states of his two Republican guests:

Calm Morning Joe? Newsweek Boss Tina Brown Says GOP Are 'Suicide Bombers'
By Eric Ames | July 6, 2011 | 4:03 PM EDT

Newsweek's Tina Brown compared congressional Republicans to suicide bombers on Wednesday's Morning Joe after lamenting their refusal to agree to the tax hikes demanded by Democrats. "I think they’re the suicide bombers in all of this," said Brown. Will Tina Brown be banned indefinitely from Morning Joe? Sounds harsher than a crotch reference.

CNN Anchor Uses David Brooks to Press Jim DeMint on Debt Ceiling Standoff
By Matt Hadro | July 6, 2011 | 3:53 PM EDT

American Morning co-host Christine Romans used David Brooks' words to press Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) Wednesday on the stubbornness of conservative Republicans in the debt ceiling debate. Brooks, the faux "conservative" writer for the New York Times, wrote a scathing column Monday hitting Republicans for their refusal to accept Democrat "compromises" in the debt ceiling debate.

Romans twice referenced critics of the Republicans, first saying that critics fear the "new awakening" of the Tea Party and the 2010 elections as "dangerous for America." Later she read DeMint a quote from Brooks's piece in the Times.

Sen. Majority Whip: ‘I Don’t Disagree With Paul Ryan’‘Reduce Costs Of Medicare’
By Eric Scheiner | July 6, 2011 | 3:13 PM EDT

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin praised Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) willingness to work on entitlement reform while on the Senate floor Wednesday stating, “I don’t disagree with Paul Ryan saying we have got to look honestly at Medicare.”

White House Uses Progressive Media Director to Bully Conservatives on Twitter
By Aubrey Vaughan | July 6, 2011 | 3:10 PM EDT

Friday afternoon, the White House quietly released its annual report to Congress on White House staff salaries. Among the employees is the infamous director of progressive media and online response, Jesse Lee, who is paid $72,500 a year to provide White House sanctioned responses to any negative press it receives.

The position, which was previously part of the privately-funded DNC's rapid response team, is now a taxpayer-funded spin machine to thwart bad press against President Barack Obama. In effect, the position is a pulpit for the White House, through Lee, to ridicule critics and promote a liberal agenda. Lee frequently retweets liberal bloggers and media organizations, but also picks fights with a number of conservative bloggers.

CNN Cancels Program of Former Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer
By Matthew Sheffield | July 6, 2011 | 2:35 PM EDT

After letting it wither on the vine for a while, CNN has canceled the nightly television program hosted by disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.

The show, known as "In the Arena," had initially paired Spitzer with moderate conservative Kathleen Parker who proved no match for her much more vociferous liberal counterpart. AP reports on the lineup shuffle:

NY Times Magazine Cover Story Lauds Notorious Sex Columnist Dan Savage as an 'Old-Fashioned' Mr. 'Family Values'
By Clay Waters | July 6, 2011 | 12:57 PM EDT

A defense of infidelity, put forward by gay-rights activist and explicit sex-advice columnist Dan Savage and penned by Mark Oppenheimer, “Married, With Infidelities,” served as the cover of the latest New York Times Sunday Magazine. The subhead to the banner headline in the print edition described Savage as a “devoted husband, proud father, sex columnist.” Left off the resume: Doorknob licker and conservative presidential campaign saboteur.

Savage believes monogamy is right for many couples. But he believes that our discourse about it, and about sexuality more generally, is dishonest. Some people need more than one partner, he writes….Savage says a more flexible attitude within marriage may be just what the straight community needs. Treating monogamy, rather than honesty or joy or humor, as the main indicator of a successful marriage gives people unrealistic expectations of themselves and their partners. And that, Savage says, destroys more families than it saves.