Nancy Pelosi

As timing would have it, my 12-year-old daughter read Orwell's "Animal Farm" for school just before I encountered an eerily similar human version of one of its characters.

Do you remember Squealer, the propagandist for the pigs who ran the farm after the animals seized control of the property? He was described as "a brilliant talker" who when arguing "had a way of skipping from side to side and whisking his tail which was somehow very persuasive." (Audio after the jump)

The indictment of Occupy Wall Street-connected Doctor Roberto Rivera on a number of charges, including "stashing large amounts of bomb-making materials at his home," apparently wasn't news anywhere until Friday afternoon at NorthJersey.com. The Associated Press's unbylined five-paragraph report (HT Legal Insurrection) appeared Saturday aftenoon.

Kibret Markos's Friday report noted the doctor's Occupy Wall Street sympathies ("Rivera also was quoted in a Bloomberg News report last year voicing his support for Occupy Wall Street protesters"). The AP, whose union was among OWS's most ardent supporters, did not. Instead, it "cleverly" misdirected by telling readers that "Prosecutors haven't said why Rivera had the items or what he planned to do with them." Evidence of those sympathies and of that involvement follow the jump.

You gotta love ol’ Ed Schultz. A recent demotion at the Lean Forward network hasn’t stopped the bombastic MSNBC host from sputtering over Republican opposition to ObamaCare, despite the fact that Schultz himself admits he doesn’t really know what’s in the bill.

Schultz was recently moved from his weeknight, primetime spot in MSNBC’s über-progressive lineup to weekends, a move sources at the network said would make space for “new talent.” The liberal host has since transformed his new weekend show into an hour-long advertisement for ObamaCare, gushing on Saturday’s The Ed Show that the law is “a great step forward to get us to universal health care some day.” [Yes, Ed, who owns a Canadian fishing lodge, is pining for Canada-style “single-payer” care.]

Allen Pizzey readily identified Pope Francis as a "conservative" on Tuesday's CBS This Morning, but failed to give an equivalent ideological label to Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who attended his installation Mass in St. Peter's Sqaure. Pizzey spotlighted the apparent "stark contrast" between the new pontiff and the two liberal politicians, whom he described as being "pro-choice and support[ing] same-sex marriage."

The correspondent also omitted that the American delegation to the Mass at the Vatican included a pro-life officeholder – New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez.

The PBS NewsHour invited Nancy Pelosi on for an interview Thursday night, and the sparks were flying. Sparks of love, that is, between anchor Judy Woodruff and the House minority leader. Woodruff conducted a 10-minute interview of mostly softballs about the salient topics of the day. But one of today’s hottest topics, the sequester, only merited one question from Woodruff - and it wasn’t a query a serious journalist would ask. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Woodruff began, “Quick question about the sequester. The White House spent a lot of time, the president did, talking about the dire consequences once the sequester kicked in.” Okay. So far, so good. Now, surely Woodruff is going to ask why the president did an about-face and is now downplaying the sequester’s effects. Or maybe she’ll ask if Mr. Obama’s fearmongering was overblown. Or maybe she’ll even ask Pelosi if the president did everything he could to reach a compromise with Republicans to avert the sequester.

Are there any boundaries today between the media and the Democratic Party?

Consider Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert who according to a tweet from House Democrats is going to be a "surprise guest" at Friday's Caucus Issues Conference:

Just how much more in bed can Democrats get with Hollywood elites?

That question seems germane given an event held at Norman Lear's Hollywood mansion Thursday where House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) briefed attendees that included Barbra Streisand and James Brolin.

As NewsBusters readers know, one of my great pleasures is pointing out the staggering stupidity of Bill Maher.

My hero came through once again on HBO’s Real Time Friday telling Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), “You really actually should be the Speaker because Democrats got a million more House votes” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The self-described "essential global news network" known as the Associated Press, more aptly characterized as the Administration's Press, has from all appearances chosen to minimize the exposure given to Friday's letter from four Senate Democrats to President Obama encouraging him to unilaterally increase the nation's debt ceiling if Congress fails to do so.

A search on Harry Reid's last name at the AP's national site at 8:30 ET this morning returned nothing relating to that letter. But there was an AP writeup about it on Sunday morning. A search on a few key words in Andrew Taylor's report found at another web site demonstrates that it's no longer available at the AP's national site. Gosh, it's almost as if AP doesn't want Americans to know that four Democratic senators are urging Obama to blatantly violate the Constitution. The first six paragraphs of Taylor's report follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Needing 214 votes (of the 427 lawmakers who voted)  to win reelection to the speakership on January 3, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) handily beat his closest opponent, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for the office, 220-192. Boehner did see a smattering of dissenting votes in his conference, but no serious challenger within his conference came close to depriving the Speaker of a majority on the first ballot.

Despite these facts, however, today's Washington Post blared on page A4 that "Boehner narrowly wins 2nd term as House speaker." "12 of most conservative Republicans staged rebellion against him," the subheadline for Paul Kane's story insisted melodramatically. The Ohio Republican "was narrowly reelected speaker... giving him a another [sic] chance to lead the chamber -- a task that has been difficult for him over the past two years," staffer Paul Kane began his 14-paragraph story.

95% of the House Republican caucus reelected John Boehner as Speaker of the House on Thursday, but the 12 dissenting Republicans attracted intense coverage in the New York Times, including a front-page story saying the vote foretold "turmoil and division" in the new Congress.

By contrast, there was only scattered coverage when 19 members of the Democratic caucus refused to support Nancy Pelosi for House Speaker in January 2011, after the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections. (The cases aren't quite parallel, as Pelosi was certain to lose her role as Speaker of the House in the newly elected Republican-majority House of 2011, while Boehner was expected to retain his position as head of the Republican-majority House in 2013.)

Two years ago when 10 percent of congressional Democrats cast protest votes rather than vote for Nancy Pelosi for House Speaker, Politico's Jonathan Allen -- who, you may recall had rejoined the paper after a brief stint working for Debbie Wasserman Schultz -- and John Bresnahan dutifully gave readers a story chock full of pro-Pelosi spin, seeking to communicate that Pelosi had little to worry about in the long run from the protest votes.

Fast forward to January 3, 2013, when five percent of House Republicans failed to vote for Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) to be speaker of the House in the 113th Congress. Covering the story this afternoon, Bresnahan and colleague Jake Sherman sought to simultaneously argue that Boehner faced an uphill struggle to hold on to power and that he never really had a credible challenge to the speakership in the first place (emphasis mine):

How I look forward to Rachel Maddow's chummy chats with Bay Area soulmate Nancy Pelosi -- especially when it turns awkward.

On her MSNBC show last night, Maddow showed clips of her "exclusive" interview with Pelosi earlier in the day. It was during their discussion of the Petraeus scandal that matters took a turn toward hilarity, an outcome always on the horizon whenever Pelosi is involved. (video clip after page break)

Though it occupies four web pages, it's hard to avoid thinking that Alex Isenstadt at Politico is hoping news consumers only look at his story's headline ("Democrats' drive to retake House falters") and not its damning yet still woefully incomplete content.

The headline would make you think that Dems will gain seats, but not enough to achieve a majority. Isenstadt bravely concludes early on that "Democrats are expected to pick up five seats at best ... (and) might even lose ground and drop one or two seats to the Republican majority. But the rest of his writeup virtually screams "double-digit losses," and fails in several respects to properly assign blame for what appears to be an impending Democratic Party debacle (bolds are mine):

NewsBusters continues to showcase the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala on Thursday, September 27.

Click here for blog posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2006. Today, the worst bias of 2007: ABC fawns over newly-installed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; Rosie O’Donnell insults the troops; and a McClatchy headline writer finds a downside to good news in Iraq. [Quotes and video below the jump.]

In an interview with Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie teed up the liberal congresswoman to rip into Mitt Romney over a hidden camera video of him at a fundraiser: "Republicans and Democrats have criticized him for it. I'm sure Democrats view it as a gift from above, but do you think with the big issues facing our country, this is something that should be a substantive part of our campaign?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Predictably, Pelosi was eager for the topic to be an issue in the presidential race: "Absolutely. This is fundamental." She slammed Romney for having "demonstrated the demeaning attitude that...[he] has toward a large segment of the American people." In an odd slip of the tongue, she referred to "Governor Obama," but Guthrie never corrected her.

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan is a Catholic – but not a good enough Catholic in the eyes of the media. Writers, bloggers, and talking heads have hammered Ryan for his supposed “dissent” from Catholic teaching.

Journalists have falsely claimed that the bishops “rebuked” Ryan and called his budget “un-Christian.” Writers who usually scorn the Church and its hierarchy fretted that the bishops found Ryan’s budget “uncompassionate.”

NBC's Late Night host Jimmy Fallon on Friday asked former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) if she's ever seen Paul Ryan with his shirt off.

This came in response to Pelosi saying of her fellow Congressman, “I don't really know him well because I've never been to the gym” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was honored in Washington during a discussion and light lunch hosted for a largely female audience at the Sewall-Belmont House & Museum. She was honored by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who “largely praised Pelosi throughout the interview” and at one point referred to her former speakership as "Sam Rayburn-esque." Rayburn was Speaker for 17 years and one of the House office buildings is named after him.

"TARP, the stimulus, health reform, Wall Street reform, student loan reform, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the new GI bill," Maddow began. "The number of major pieces of legislation that you not only saw passed in the House — but we can also include cap-and-trade, we can include the DREAM Act there —but beyond those, the ones that also became law is, and I don't just mean to flatter you, but is [the] kind of list of legislation we associate with people whom we name large buildings after in Washington."