Elizabeth Warren

Most liberal media members and prominent Democrats including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took great offense to Sen. Scott Brown's (D-Mass.) joke concerning rival Elizabeth Warren not posing naked when she was in law school.

Quite surprisingly, when this matter came up on ABC's The View Monday, the ladies sided with Brown (multipart video follows with transcripts and commentary):

At the top of Friday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer wondered if a joke by Republican Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown in response to a jab by Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was a "comeback or insult" and noted that "women's groups are giving him a big dressing down today."

In a later tease of the story, fellow co-host Ann Curry proclaimed: "A senate race in Massachusetts has turned ugly and personal." Lauer summed up the situation this way: "...during a debate, a potential Democratic challenger took a shot at Republican Senator Scott Brown for saying that he had to pose nude in Cosmopolitan magazine way back in 1982 to pay for school. Brown's response is now what's drawing a lot of heat."

New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera, now a regular on the paper’s op-ed page, equated congressional oversight with Anthony Weiner’s sexual peccadillos in Saturday’s “Blocking  Elizabeth Warren.”  Warren, a Harvard law professor, bankruptcy “expert,” and liberal crusader, is special advisor to the White House and a favorite among liberals and the Times for pushing the creation of a federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

It’s official: Elizabeth Warren will return to the torture chamber known as the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on July 14. Earlier this week, Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is chairman of the committee, tweeted the news. Apparently, Democrats aren’t the only ones who use Twitter to harass women.

You begin to get an idea of how poorly served the news-consuming public is by the Associated Press when you compare its "reporting" on Obama czar Elizabeth Warren's appearance tomorrow before the House Financial Services Committee to an information-packed editorial -- yes, an editorial -- in the Wall Street Journal this morning.

You can read all of the over 750 words in the unbylined AP report without learning that Ms. Warren and various state attorneys general are attempting to shake down the banking system for $20 billion. You would think from the wire service's selective content that it's only Republicans who have opposed and continue to oppose the broad, unchecked authority her brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will have over U.S. banking policy and practices. It ain't so.

Here are key paragraphs from the AP's 5:32 p.m. report (saved here at my host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes):

    Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . .the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. -- First Amendment to the Constitution

Remember the MSM brouhaha when some conservatives suggested reconsidering the automatic granting of citizenship to children born in the US to illegal immigrants? Suddenly, the sanctity of the 14th Amendment became the single most precious thing to liberals—even though no amendment of it, let alone its abolition, would have been necessary to revise the policy on birthright citizenship.

So should we expect the liberal media to take up its constitutional cudgel against Elizabeth Warren?  After all, Pres. Obama's newly appointed [not nominated] head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau went on Morning Joe today and in effect proclaimed that the right to petition government for the redress of government "scares" her.  More disturbingly, Warren suggested we need to work on "dialing back" that right.

To be sure, Warren never cited the First Amendment or the right it recognized to "petition government for a redress of grievances."  But read and listen to her words: that's exactly what she was kvetching about—and wanting to "dial back."

Bruce Ackerman argues in today's Wall Street Journal that in President Obama's shady appointment Elizabeth Warren to an advisory role last week in order to bypass the Senate confirmation process "is another milestone down the path toward an imperial presidency."

Here is the deal: The Senate should change its rules to require an up-or-down vote on all executive branch appointments within 60 days. In exchange, the president should sign legislation to require Senate approval of all senior White House appointments. By reaching this agreement, the president regains the powers to govern effectively and the Senate regains its authority to approve all major appointments-regardless of their location in the executive branch.

This grand bargain requires both sides to give up the petty privileges of the existing system. Senators will lose their power to hold up nominations to blackmail the administration into approving their pet projects. Presidents will lose their ability to appoint super-loyalists who can't convince 51 senators that they merit powerful White House positions. But the rest of us will profit greatly from the reinvigoration of the founding principle of checks-and-balances for a new century.

What do you think? Would this system remedy the problem? 

 

At the top of Tuesday's CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith proclaimed: "Angry Americans. A new report declares the recession officially over. But many of us are not feeling it. Even taking on the President himself." Later, he seemed to portray the President as a victim: "...a lot of Americans are still suffering its [the recession's] effects, and are taking it out on President Obama."

In a report that followed, correspondent Bill Plante noted how "numbers may be going in the right direction" but touted "frustrated" Obama supporters speaking out at a Monday CNBC town hall. In between clips of those voters, Plante sympathetically remarked: "On the defensive, the President responded by outlining some of his administration's accomplishments, but admitted that things aren't where they need to be." He concluded the report: "So the reality is that improving statistics aren't very convincing to voters who are worried about jobs, and that is the reality the President and his party face going into the November elections."

Introducing a brief report on the stock market reaction, co-host Maggie Rodriguez looked for a silver lining: "The average American may be skeptical about an economic recovery, but the reaction on Wall Street to the end of the recession shows that investors are optimistic." Business and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis declared: "...yesterday, stocks responded positively to the news that it is now behind us. The Dow ended higher by 145 points, putting it on track for the best September in 71 years."

The Federal pay czar announced that executives in companies that took bailout funds from the Troubled Asset Recovery Program should not receive the bonuses that were announced recently. And there are rumblings about extending government reach into the executive compensation at all publicly traded companies. That would be just fine with Harry Smith at CBS's "Early Show."

On Oct. 22, Smith interviewed Elizabeth Warren, the chairperson of the Congressional Oversight Panel - basically the government-mandated babysitter of companies that were bailed out by TARP funds.

"Guys, you can't party on like it's 2007," said Warren. "If you're going to have to take taxpayer dollars, then it means the game has to change."