Darrell Issa

When ultraliberal Henry Waxman ran the House Government Reform Committee, The Washington Post didn't often  suggest he was a fierce partisan or ideologue. Instead, former Washington Post managing editor Robert Kaiser praised him in a book review headlined "Moustache of Justice." (The Waxman lovers even have a mug.)

Kaiser cooed, “Henry Waxman is to Congress what Ted Williams was to baseball -- a natural....Waxman has been one of the most effective members of Congress for 35 years....This is the voice of David, whose career has featured the slaying of one Goliath after another.” This is not how the Post is treating Waxman’s "feverish" successor Darrell Issa.

In an interview with House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa on Sunday's Meet the Press, host David Gregory attempted to dismiss the growing Benghazi scandal for the Obama administration as a GOP political attack: "You've got Republicans talking about this being Watergate. One Republican raising the specter of impeachment. Conservative groups raising money off of the Benghazi story. Are you hurting your own credibility and your own find – fact-finding mission by politically overreaching?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Moments later, Gregory downplayed the Benghazi terrorist attack as just one incident among many that have "happened throughout our recent history....spanning Republican and Democratic administrations, including President Bush's administration." He then tried to pin the blame on Congress: "Why is there not more of an effort to beef up security after these attacks happen....And isn't this Congress's job to spend the money to beef up security?"

On Wednesday's All In show, MSNBC host Chris Hayes was gleeful over media coverage of the Benghazi hearings being preempted by both the story of three girls kidnapped and held prisioner for a decade in Cleveland, Ohio, as well as the verdict in the Jodi Arias murder trial. Hayes flippantly referred to the crime stories as "the next Lifetime original movie" as he teased the segment at the top of the show:

CBS used its Sunday evening and Monday morning newscasts to keep the spotlight on the question of a "possible cover-up" surrounding the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Jeff Glor led CBS Evening News with the scoop from earlier in the day on Face the Nation – that a "career U.S. diplomat is raising new questions" about the Obama administration's claim that the attack spontaneously erupted in response to an early protest in Egypt.

Monday's CBS This Morning also aired a report on this latest development on the September 11, 2012 attack. Meanwhile, ABC and NBC have yet to pick up on the veteran diplomat's allegations, despite the fact that he is set to testify publicly to Congress on the issue on Wednesday.

Proof Sunday morning that Republicans can use their power to hold House hearings to force media coverage of topics journalists have shown little interest in probing. CBS's Face the Nation led with an “exclusive” which Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Committe on Oversight and Government Reform, gave host Bob Schieffer about the upcoming testimony from Greg Hicks, the second in command in Libya at the time of the Benghazi attacks. 

“Today,” Schieffer touted, “there is new information raising questions about whether there was a cover-up by the State Department to deflect criticism that it had ignored requests for more security for its people in Libya.”

Not surprisingly, Bill Maher and guest Ben Affleck took some cheap shots at former President George W. Bush during the Overtime installment of Friday's Real Time on HBO.

Smacking them down was conservative author Ann Coulter who deliciously said, "This is getting more boring than Charlie Rose (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

On Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, moderator David Gregory led the show's panelists in dismissing the House Government Oversight Committee holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt over the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal as a mere political "distraction" created by Republicans. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

The committee's chairman, California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, was also on the panel and interrogated by Gregory: "If you got everything you wanted, what do you think it would prove?....What would you be able to prove? I mean what the White House is saying is this is a fishing expedition, it's to score political points, it's all theater. What can you prove if you get everything you want?"

Do you think trying to balance the federal budget is incendiary?

NBC's David Gregory apparently does, for on Sunday's Meet the Press, he asked Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) "whether a guy like Paul Ryan is a little too incendiary" to be vice president (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Bill Maher said Friday, "Republicans don't care about dead Mexicans."

This came moments after he admitted on HBO's Real Time he didn't know anything about the controversial White House mission known as Fast and Furious "until this week" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Remember all the cries in the past for governmental transparency by the "progressive" media? Well, when it comes to the Department of Justice lack of transparency in refusing to turn over documents related to Operation Fast and Furious, Rolling Stone writer Jillian Rayfield excuses it away by claiming that the demand is really due to a GOP 'war' on Eric Holder:

A big part of the show is demonizing Holder himself. Several Republicans have recently called for Holder to step down, among them Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Jon Cornyn (R-TX), who did so to Holder's face in a Senate Judiciary hearing just last week. In one Republican primary debate, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum also both called for Holder's resignation. Romney, for his part, has steered clear of the issue so far, but he won't be able to for long if RNC Chair Reince Priebus gets his way. Priebus says that "Fast and Furious" will be a central 2012 campaign theme, so even if the contempt proceedings go away, it doesn't look like Holder will be off the hook anytime soon.

In covering GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's appearance at the annual National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis yesterday, Associated Press aka Adminstration's Press reporter Charles Babington pretended to know nothing about President Barack Obama's opposition to basic Second Amendment rights. At least I hope he was pretending, because Obama's hostility to the right to keep and bear arms is longstanding, well-known, and did not stop when he swore an oath to "protect and defend the Constitution" on January 20, 2009.

I have excerpted Babington's first four paragraphs plus three others. I will follow that with a rundown of Obama's pre-2008 gun-hostile record, his meeting with the Brady group in May 2011, and this "little" thing called Operation Fast and Furious Babington and his establishment media colleagues have mostly deliberately ignored for well over a year (bolds are mine throughout this post; HT to a frequent emailer):

Pete Yost's Friday evening story at the Associated Press, also known to yours truly as the Administration's Press, on the latest development in the Operation Fast and Furious scandal (that's my word, certainly not Yost's) has a "this is a boring story, don't read it" headline ("Prosecutor intends to take 5th if called in probe"), followed by an opening sentence which acts as if it has nothing to do with at least 300 Mexican citizens, a slain Border patrol agent, and thousands of disappearing guns.

Yost's opening sentence: "A federal prosecutor in Arizona intends to remain silent if called for questioning in a congressional probe of a problem-plagued gun smuggling investigation." Yep, Yost wants readers who don't get past the first paragraph to believe that it's only the "investigation" that's messed up beyond all recognition, not what happened in the Fast and Furious operation. Here's more from Pete's pathetic piece (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Jonathan Alter, who spent 28 years at Newsweek, has been a columnist at Bloomberg News since early this year. Just this year, the reliably and insufferably liberal Alter, among many other things, called the Republican House's passage of Paul Ryan's budget plan in April an attempt "to throw Granny in the snow," and coldly calculated that in the wake of her shooting, Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was more valuable to Barack Obama's reelection efforts alive than dead.

In early January, Alter, appearing on an MSNBC program, took great offense at Rep. Darrell Issa's suggestion that the Obama White House is "one of the most corrupt administrations ever," claiming that "there is zero evidence" of it. The Washington Examiner's Tim Carney proceeded to identify seven such examples. Alter must have been saying "la-la I can't hear you" during Carney's chronicle, as his October 27 column was an exercise in sheer fantasy from beginning to end (bolds are mine throughout this post):

On October 9, an unbylined Associated Press story reported that Congressmen Darrell Issa "could send subpoenas to the Obama administration as soon as this week over weapons lost amid the Mexican drug war." On Wednesday, October 12, Issa did just that.

Mike Vanderboegh's Sipsey Street Irregulars blog has a succinct summary (HT Ed Driscoll) of the establishment press's coverage of Issa's actions since the subpoenas' issuance:

Tomorrow, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is meeting to consider a major postal reform plan. Postal unions across that nation have launched a national ad campaign against the reforms, and now the Oversight Committee has struck back with a video demonstrating that USPS requires reform if taxpayers are to avoid footing the bill for an eventual bailout.

Check out the video after the break, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

It would appear that there is a reason beyond alleged "journalistic integrity" why the New York Times hasn't pulled its error-riddled, only partially corrected mid-August story by Eric Lichtblau ("A Businessman in Congress Helps His District and Himself") about California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa.

Issa has identified 13 serious errors in the Times story, the cumulative effect of which, in the words of Powerline's John Hinderaker several weeks ago, show the story to be "nothing but lies and fabrications ... (which) never should have been published." The Times has corrected three. Though it appears to be dead wrong on the other ten, it hasn't given any further quarter and won't pull the story. Its Public Editor, as Clay Waters at NewsBusters noted, has found Issa's request for a retraction "troubling."

The New York Times so far has issued three corrections to reporter Eric Lichtblau’s August 15 front-page hit piece on conservative California Rep. Darrell Issa of California, but the paper won't consider a retraction because, as the Times's Washingtion bureau chief says: “The article was carefully reported, written, and edited, and we stand by the story both in its broad thrust and, except as noted, in its particular details.”

Lichtblau, who along with James Risen is notorious for printing the sensitive details of classified terrorist surveillance programs on the front page of the Times, is not known for his fairness to conservative subjects; his 2008 book “Bush’s Law” bluntly accused the administration of lying about the “war on terror” (quotation marks are Lichtblau’s).

The New York Times's Eric Lichtblau published a front-page hit piece on the House oversight committee chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, on Monday, titled "Helping His District, and Himself." The piece opened with an attempt to paint a corporate image of the entrepreneurial congressman, saying, "Here on the third floor of a gleaming office building overlooking a golf course in the rugged foothills north of San Diego, Darrell Issa, the entrepreneur, oversees the hub of a growing financial empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars," going on to attempt to forge a connection between Issa's public service and private business. The errors began in the lede, as Issa's office is not located in a ritzy building near a golf course, and continued for the rest of the article.

Issa's office has called for a "front-page retraction of the story due to the inaccuracies that fully undermine the premise of the article," describing the piece as an "error-ridden front page story." Issa's director of communications, Frederick Hill, explained that the three central examples the Times used to justify their claims are "wildly inaccurate," citing 13 inaccuracies in the article that reflect incorrect information or baseless assertions. With only one exception, the Times has yet to correct or retract any of the errors in the article.

The NBC News Investigative Unit has devoted considerable resources to uncovering "scandals" ranging from Marcus Bachmann's health clinic to Newt Gingrich's credit line at Tiffany to the Sarah Palin document dump, but continues to ignore a botched Justice Department operation that contributed to the death of a U.S. border agent.

Examining the trove of reports filed by NBC News national investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff over the last few months reveals a fixation on investigations involving Republican politicians and an aversion to probes concerning the Obama administration, even as other media outlets expose the controversial ATF practice of letting guns purchased in America slip across the U.S.-Mexico border in hopes the trail would lead federal agents to drug kingpins.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) conducted hearings on Wednesday to investigate a highly controversial ATF operation that led to the death of a U.S. border agent, but neither NBC nor ABC covered the story on their nightly newscasts.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman lambasted a Justice Department official who claimed to be cooperating with the investigation but offered not much more than severely redacted documents. "You should be ashamed of yourself," scolded Issa. "How dare you offer an opening statement of cooperation."

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius (a foreign editor and business editor of the Post in the 1990s) asked a bizarre question on the badly-named 'PostPartisan" blog: "Is Darrell Issa the new Joe McCarthy?" Clearly, the Post knows that when a liberal blurs you with McCarthy, they mean you are a life-wrecking, fact-mangling monster fueled by demons like ambition and alcohol. The headline is designed for web traffic, since the normally calm Ignatius concluded: "Issa doesn't come across as a McCarthyite." But Issa calling Team Obama "corrupt" was deeply upsetting to the Posties. Wrote Ignatius:

It was scary, frankly, to hear Issa describe the executive branch under President Obama as "one of the most corrupt administrations." What on earth was he talking about? This is an administration that has often tied itself in knots with petty ethical rules. Issa's comment bordered on demagogy.

When you see the righteous gleam in Issa's eye, recall other zealous congressional investigators who claimed to be doing the public's business but ended up pursuing vendettas. I think of Robert F. Kennedy's ruthless pursuit of labor "racketeering" when he was chief counsel of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. And, more chilling, I think of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's use of that subcommittee to probe what he imagined was Communist Party subversion in America.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Cali.) said Wednesday that CNN doesn't understand the meaning of the word "corrupt."

Having gotten much attention for accusing the Obama administration on Sunday's "State of the Union" of being the most corrupt in history, the outspoken Congressman was forced to explain what he meant on "John King USA" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Monday devoted almost an entire interview with Republican Darrell Issa to attacking a criticism the Congressman made of Barack Obama as "corrupt." Stephanopoulos attempted four times to get Issa to recant his accusation.

The GMA host demanded of Issa, who next  year will chair the powerful House Oversight committee, "And just before the election, you made a pretty serious charge on Rush Limbaugh's radio show saying that President Obama has been, quote, 'one of the most corrupt presidents of modern times.' What did you base that on? And how will you follow up on that now that you have the power to investigate?"

Stephanopoulos returned to the question over and over, excluding other topics: "So, let me just press that. You no longer stand by the statement that the President is one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times?" After Issa brought up misuse of stimulus money and other issues, the annoyed host demanded, "Do you stand by the statement or not?"

[Video after the break.]

For the second time in two weeks, a devout liberal exposed just how little Bill Maher actually knows about politics.

When the "Real Time" host arrogantly told his guests that people voted for Republicans this past Tuesday because President Obama "didn't back the public option" during the healthcare reform debate, Time's Fareed Zakaria marvelously informed the comedian just how wrong he was (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Contrasting a “contrite” President Obama with a “less conciliatory” Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, CBS reporter Nancy Cordes on Thursday night conveyed Democratic concern about likely House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's pledge to hold oversight hearings as she recalled “a barrage of damaging probes, one of which ended in impeachment hearings.”

Cantor, Cordes asserted, has called “for more investigations into the administration, with quote 'one major oversight hearing each week.' That worries Democrats, who remember what happened the last time Republicans controlled the House during a Democratic presidency.” She then challenged Darrell Issa, now the ranking minority member on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: “Democrats  have said that you're going to start a witch-hunt against the President if Republicans take control.”