NRA

As per his 1994 NRA questionnaire, Joe Scarborough: Opposed an assault weapons ban.  Opposed expansion of background checks.  Opposed limitations on magazine sizes.  Today, he supports all such measures.  

So how would you describe his two very different sets of opinions?  Why, as being "very consistent," of course--if you're Joe Scarborough. On today's Morning Joe, responding to the NRA's promulgation of the NRA questionnaire he submitted in 1994 as an aspiring Republican congressman, Scarborough did indeed claim that his positions today, despite the multiple flip-flops, are "very consistent."  View the video after the jump.

Normally, the people who cover the media industry try studiously to avoid mentioning the very obvious fact that America's elite journalists are overwhelmingly liberal and that one can discern this by reviewing their output. This is a logical response considering that said reporters probably do not wish to antagonize potential sources. It's hard to report on the media if no one in the media will speak to you.

In the case of the recent journalist meltdown over gun control, the bias was so overwhelming, even Politico's cautious media reporter Dylan Byers had to admit the obvious:

Proving once again that MSNBC is less of a cable news channel and more of a platform for liberal activism, the “Morning Joe” crew today lashed out at members of the U.S. Senate who decided to vote against a gun bill backed by President Obama.

Taking his cue from the fiery and petulant speech the president delivered yesterday, self-described conservative Republican Joe Scarborough lashed out at the “pathetic” vote. His co-host Mika Brzezinski was even more hateful, repeatedly denouncing the senators who voted to support the NRA’s position on the bill as “cowards.” She then ordered producers for the show to put the names and faces of these senators on wanted-style posters in attempt to anger viewers against them.

Oh irony, oh hypocrisy!  Joe Scarborough opened today's Morning Joe by singing the praises of NBC's Pete Williams for not jumping onto the story that other news outlets were reporting yesterday that an arrest had been made in the Boston Marathon bombing.  Scarborough condemned journalists "far more interested in getting it first than getting it right."

But mere minutes later, Scarborough rushed to accuse former Republican congressman Chris Cox of "lying" in his role as NRA spokesman, and said he was ashamed of him. If Scarborough had taken a moment to research the matter and get it right, he would have realized he had the wrong Chris Cox.  The NRA spokesman is not the former congressman. Scarborough grudgingly admitted his mistake about an hour later in the show.  View the video after the jump.

In his 19-paragraph page A4 story headlined "NRA-backed study urges armed staff at schools," staff writer Peter Finn waited until the 12th paragraph to mention that a father of a slain student at Sandy Hook was at the NRA's April 2 news conference in which former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) unveiled a "National School Shield Program" that detailed how school districts might arm security guards and/or teachers to thwart potential attacks by shooters.

Of course Finn made sure to quote the scathing attack of a liberal critic a few paragraphs earlier. "Today's report is nothing more than a continuation of the NRA's attempts to prey on America's fears, saturate our schools with more guns and turn them into armed fortresses," Finn quoted Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund, who added that the NRA's plan "must be soundly rejected."

The liberal media's push for gun control has long included the tactic of attempting to shame the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other gun rights activists into silence. That tactic was once again deployed by MSNBC's Thomas Roberts this morning in his interview with liberal Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), who is calling on the nation's oldest civil rights organization to cease and desist robocalls to phone numbers in the Newtown, Connecticut, area.

At no point in the softball interview, however, was it mentioned that some Newtown parents like Mark Mattioli and Bill Stevens have testified in opposition to fresh gun control laws nor that there's been a spike in applications for gun permits in Newtown following the mass shooting, perhaps because those facts cut against the notion that the entire Newtown area is anti-NRA as a result of December's tragedy.

Wealthy filmmaker Michael Moore and Rainn Wilson, an actor best known for his role in the American version of “The Office,” referenced a parody article at The Onion in tweets on Wednesday, duping a number of their followers, Twitchy reported.

“NRA Sets 1,000 Killed In School Shooting As Amount It Would Take For Them To Reconsider Much Of Anything,” Wilson tweeted, without mentioning the source of the article. He did provide a link to it, however.

Like a concerned parent on a business trip checking in on her unsupervised children, an exasperated Andrea Mitchell whined to fellow Washington reporters Susan Page and Chris Cillizza, that they had "let the assault weapons ban...die!"

Mitchell, who is currently traveling with the President in Israel, delivered a long range lecture from Jerusalem, on Wednesday's Andrea Mitchell Reports, to Page and Cillizza: "Well, while I'm away you guys let the assault weapons ban, you know, die." (video after the jump)

Bloomberg Businessweek ran a front-page attack on the NRA for its March 18-25 edition. Much of the story was spent interviewing the owners of the Mossberg gun factory from New Haven, Conn., who find the NRA’s position “ill timed and graceless.”

According to the article, not all gun makers take as strong of a position on gun control regulation as the NRA does, but those who disagree are afraid of speaking up. Businessweek claims that fear of NRA instigated consumer boycotts and the prospect of sales from those concerned about stricter gun control laws keep gun manufacturers in line.

“Who’s afraid of the NRA? Gun makers, that’s who,” the Businessweek article, written by Assistant Managing Editor and Senior Writer Paul M. Barrett, declared. The cover reads “DON’T TREAD ON THE NRA” with pictures of bullet holes tearing through it.

Ronald Reagan: RINO?  Cokie Roberts and Joe Scarborough have suggested the Gipper might be viewed that way by the modern-day Republican party, making him unelectable within GOP ranks.

After Joe Scarborough said that it was Reagan who rounded up Republican support for the assault weapon ban in 1984, Roberts exclaimed "I'm not sure Reagan could get elected within the Republican party today."  Scarborough concurred: "I don't know that he could." View the video after the jump.

At next week’s State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama is likely to continue his ongoing push for more gun control. It’s a push first  spurred on by Obama’s gun control allies in the liberal media. In the wake of the horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks quickly moved to exploit the tragedy to push for more gun control legislation while mostly ignoring solutions that respect gun owners’ Second Amendment rights.

Sarah Palin's profile might not be as high as it was a few years ago, but she apparently still serves as a convenient punching bag for the left.

On today's Morning Joe, as Joe Scarborough railed against the allegedly "stupid" arguments NRA leader Wayne LaPierre made on Fox News Sunday yesterday, Mika Brzezinski muttered "something Sarah Palin would say."  Consider that Palin had been in no way quoted, nor had her position on gun control been discussed.  This was nothing more than a gratuitious shot at Palin, obviously still a bogeyman for the MSM. H/t cobokat. View the video after the jump.

The Daily Kos gang enjoyed President Obama's lefty second inaugural address both because it affirmed their views and because they knew it would anger and annoy the right, many of whose beliefs are, one Kossack opined, "melting away." 

As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.

Despite constant hammering by the national news media, the National Rifle Association has a favorability rating of 54 percent in the latest Gallup survey, slightly higher than President Obama's rating of 53 percent.

While those figures are within the poll's margin of error, they show that the NRA's popularity is in the same range as that of the Democratic president who issued 23 executive orders to accomplish goals the gun-rights group has promised to combat in “the fight of the century.”

This from a man who loves to fish, so presumably he knows the purpose of "bait".

Liberals are reacting with predictable histrionics to a new National Rifle Association ad slamming President Obama as an "elitist hypocrite" for dismissing the NRA's suggestion of armed security in every school while he sends his children to a school with armed guards. (audio, video clips after page break)

Liberal Daily Beast writer Michael Tomasky joined the gang of other liberal journalists expressing their overwrought, melodramatic outrage this morning at the NRA's latest Web ad which calls President Obama to task for dismissing their call for armed guards in the nation's schools.

But, being Tomasky, he had to crank the amp up to 11, suggesting that the ad was darkly coded in a way that might inspire violence against the president's daughters (emphasis mine):

Have a look at the screengrab: it shows Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, she holding chin in hand, he hanging head.  Their melodramatic reactions come in response to an NRA ad decrying the hypocrisy of political and media elites who want "gun free zones" in the schools where most Americans send their children, while sending their own children to schools with armed guards.

The panel's reaction was one of collective hyperventilation.  Mike Barnicle called the ad "political pornography."  Donny Deutsch said it's "one of the grossest things I've ever seen in my life."  Scarborough asked Mika "what's wrong with these people?" Brzezinski replied that some of the people running the NRA are "sick in the head" and that she is "embarrassed for our country."  But what of the substantive point made by the ad?  View the video, including the ad, after the jump.

With Lauren Thompson

The Newtown massacre spurred another round of calls for gun control, with a bill banning “assault weapons” emerging in the senate and the president threatening to take as yet unspecified executive action.

To be sure, Vice President Biden is meeting with entertainment industry representatives to discuss the violence ubiquitous on film and in video games. Given the cozy relationship between Democrats and Hollywood, those talks should produce nothing but photo-ops.

The New York Times continues to helpfully lay out a path for Obama to order up gun control legislation in the wake of the tragedy at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Tuesday's lead story by Jennifer Steinhauer and Charlie Savage wasted no time in politicizing things: "Pro-Gun Democrats Signaling Openness to Limits; Town Starts the Mournful task of Saying Goodbye."

Demonstrating rapidly shifting attitudes toward gun control in the aftermath of a massacre in a Connecticut school, many pro-gun Congressional Democrats -- including Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader and a longstanding gun rights supporter -- signaled an openness Monday to new restrictions on guns.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has joined the list of his colleagues deciding to disgustingly politicize the tragic Colorado shooting.  On Tuesday night, O’Donnell felt the need to attack Wayne LaPierre of the NRA and Republican Senator Ron Johnson (Wis.) for their support of the Second Amendment.

O'Donnell started off his "Rewrite" segment claiming LaPierre was a "blood-drenched lobbyist" who is a "defender of mass murderers’ right to use hundred-round ammo clips."  O’Donnell appeared shocked that Sen. Johnson believes a mass-murderer like James Holmes would still seek to obtain high-powered weapons regardless of stricter gun-control laws.  [Video followed page break;  MP3 audio here.]