John Boehner

So MSNBC's Thomas Roberts actually gave air time this morning to a conservative to defend the Defense of Marriage Act and congressional Republican efforts to defend it in court.

But alas, the openly gay anchor tag-teamed with gay activist Evan Wolfson, putting Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg on the defensive during the entire segment.

With the screen behind him labeled "The Case for Marriage Equality," Roberts set up the debate segment by noting that "a House panel has voted along party lines to defend this controversial law that bans federal recognition of same-sex marriages."

CNN's Carol Costello re-aired a biased report she did in 2009 about liberal efforts to push localism to limit the influence of conservative talk radio. During the report, Costello omitted the left-of-center source of a statistic she used, that 91% of talk radio is apparently conservative. She also tilted towards localism by playing three sound bites in favor of the proposal, versus two against it.

The CNN anchor introduced her report, which originally aired on the October 21, 2009 edition of American Morning, by noting that "House Speaker John Boehner told the National Religious Broadcasters Convention he and other Republicans are working on a bill that ensures the Fairness Doctrine will not be revived, ever. Boehner says it's important because the Fairness Doctrine silences ideas and voices."

Costello then gave only two brief indications that her report was over a year old. She stated that "The controversy over the Fairness Doctrine, or as some like to call it, localism, boiled over a few years ago as progressives fought for what they call a fighting chance to have their voices heard." Actually, the Fairness Doctrine and localism are two separate issues, something she actually acknowledged during her original introduction to the report: "It’s unlikely the Fairness Doctrine will return, but there is something else many liberal talkers are fighting for: localism." In addition to this, a graphic flashed on the screen for only seven seconds: "Original Airdate 2009" (see below).

Chris Matthews has yet to condemn Democratic Wisconsin State Representative Gordon Hintz for yelling "You're f–ing dead!" at Republican State Representative Michelle Litjens during a legislative session on Friday, but the Hardball host did find the time, on Tuesday's show, to slam Speaker of the House John Boehner for engaging in "Glenn Beck talk" about guns.

Matthews, initially teasing a guest for using the word "lethal" in a discussion about recent poll numbers on the Wisconsin budget battle, chided: "In the media world, I think we all agreed...after the horror in Arizona that we weren't gonna...use ballistic terms." The MSNBC host then segued into a clip of Boehner making a gun reference, after which he railed: "What is this Glenn Beck talk?...That's how Glenn talks. 'I'm gonna put a gun to your head' and all this!" This led Huffington Post's Howard Fineman to tag in: "Well when John Boehner back slides, he really back slides."

However, according to Newbusters' own Noel Sheppard, Matthews, Fineman and most mainstream media outlets, other than Fox News, have been largely silent about the Hintz threat.

To review, a Democrat man cursing at a Republican woman "You're f--ing dead" isn't worth mentioning in Matthews' mind, but if you dare make a political metaphor referring to weapons (something Matthews himself has done) that's objectionable.

(video, audio and transcript after the jump)

On his first day at MSNBC, new host Martin Bashir immediately adopted the network's liberal line, attacking a conservative Congressman for advocating severe spending cuts, deriding it as "the most disingenuous play on the American people."

Previewing the interview with Representative Joe Walsh of Illinois, Bashir noted that he has refused congressional health care. The anchor solemnly wondered, "Is that his idea of health care for every American?"

Imagine that Pat Robertson or Dr. James Dobson took out a full-page ad in a mainstream media publication hinting that Jesus himself is squarely behind the Republicans' efforts to curb spending and curtail the size and scope of the federal government.

The media would certainly cover the interesting theological and political claims at hand but they'd also be certain to cite apolitical and/or liberal Christian thinkers who would decry the crass and cynical exploitation of Christ for political matters upon which Scripture is silent, such as the U.S. federal budget.

Yet when it came to the liberal group Sojourners asking "What Would Jesus Cut" in an ad in today's Politico, CNN's Belief Blog failed to report the objections of concerns that conservative Christians and apolitical Christian theologians would raise

From Dan Gilgoff's Feb. 28 CNN.com Belief Blog post (emphasis mine):

Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Malia Rulon seems to have misplaced her objectivity when she prepared a February 21 front-page report on legislation passed by the House that would reduce projected spending during the current fiscal year by $61 billion. Later in this post, I will present evidence showing that Ms. Rulon's objectivity has likely been missing in action for many years.

This amount represents about 1.6% of the administration's $3.819 trillion spending estimate. If implemented, this year's $3.758 trillion in spending would still be over $1 trillion more than was spent just four years ago in fiscal 2007, as seen below:

"Indefensible Marriage Act" blares the cover page headline for the Feb. 24 Express tabloid, a free publication of the Washington Post available around the D.C. metro area.

"In a major victory for gay rights, President Obama says the U.S. will no longer defend the federal law banning same-sex marriages," notes the caption for the photo depicting a hand holding both a miniature American flag and a miniature gay rights rainbow flag. On page 13 a subheading approvingly labels the move a "landmark call" by the Obama administration.

[see cover page image below page break]

NBC's Kelly O'Donnell, on Monday's Today show, lumped the Wisconsin and federal budget fights together and depicted the Republicans, in both cases, as being on the defensive. Starting in Wisconsin O'Donnell reported that over the weekend "Protesters backing union workers vented anger" but didn't mention the Tea Party had a counter-protest. Then O'Donnell, moving to the budget struggle on Capitol Hill, passed along Democratic talking points as she reported: "Democrats claim Republicans are too stubborn and their budget cuts too severe" and advanced: "The '90s government shutdown, with empty offices and closed national parks, left the Republican majority then with real political damage. A cautionary tale today."

O'Donnell aired sound bites from Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer on the offensive, warning against a government shutdown with Schumer charging Speaker John Boehner with being "reckless." However when it came to the GOP side O'Donnell aired a clip of Senator Tom Coburn defensively admitting: "It's good for political rhetoric to talk about a government shutdown, but I don't know anybody that wants that to happen."

The House of Representatives on Saturday voted to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

According to UPI, by a party line vote of 235 to 189, the House passed a stopgap measure that would cut $61 billion from the 2011 budget:

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday got duped by a satirical website quoting from their spoof article about Sarah Palin advocating an attack on Egypt as if it was a serious commentary.

On Tuesday, proving once again that it takes a lot of rationalizations to be a liberal these days, Maddow blamed her mistake on Fox News's Glenn Beck and other prominent conservatives (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

"I know how the "tea party' people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their 'Obama Plan White Slavery' signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads."

That's how leftist Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy calmly and civilly registered his measured disagreement with conservatives in a March 2010 column.

Now that there's a tragedy to be exploited, Milloy today jumped aboard the media's bash-conservatives-for-coarsening-American-political-discussion bandwagon.

In doing so, Milloy didn't disappoint, turning up the nuttiness knob to 11 with his anti-conservative screed, comparing House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other conservative Republicans to bloodthirsty gangbangers who inspire violence without having to explicitly authorize it:

Despite virtually all economists and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve finding Friday's unemployment report disappointing, MSNBC's Ed Schultz parroted President Obama's take that the numbers released by the Labor Department were good news.

The "Ed Show" host crowed so gleefully about the much-maligned data that he even said it was evidence the 2009 stimulus package worked (video follows with transcript and commentary):

 Appearing as a guest on Friday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, Washington Post staff writer and Newsweek columnist Ezra Klein defended Obamacare and warned Republicans against attempting to repeal the law as he contended that some provisions are popular with the public. After host Keith Olbermann asked if Democrats should "relish rejoining the fight over health care reform" because it could hurt Republicans, Klein urged Democrats to fight. Klein:

They should be going to war over it. It's an incredibly important achievement for them, and if Democrats cannot defend a deficit-reducing bill that brings health care insurance to 32 million people and allows folks with pre-existing conditions to get any insurance they want, if they can't defend that, frankly, they, on some level, don't really deserve to be a party. If you can't defend the best thing you've done in a generation, then you've got some political problems that are bigger than anything the Republicans are doing to you.

The Washington Post writer eventually predicted that Republicans would be embracing and defending Obamacare by the year 2050. Klein: "In 2050 Republicans will be saying, ‘How dare you cut Obamacare?’"

 Appearing as a guest on Thursday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, Matt Taibbi - contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine - ridiculously accused Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Tea Party activists of racism in the form of using "coded language" to refer to "Mexican immigrants and non-white inner city, Democratic-leaning voters" as he responded to a soundbite of Boehner talking about having a social safety net for those unable to work, but that should perhaps exclude those who refuse to help themselves.

After host Keith Olbermann played a clip of the House Speaker contending, "But do we have a responsibility to help those who won't compete? I would have serious doubts about that," Taibbi found it "amazing" that Boehner "would say it so openly," and went on to suggest that the House Speaker was showing signs of racism, tying in Tea Party activists. Taibbi:

It's amazing that he would say it so openly, but I know when I go to cover Tea Party events, I almost inevitably end up talking to people who are on Medicare or collecting unemployment insurance or government pensions, but they're railing against government welfare. I say, "Well, do you see any contradiction there?" "No, I deserve this. I work hard. It's those other people."

And we know who they mean when they say "other people." It's Mexican immigrants and non-white, inner city, Democratic-leaning voters. So that's, it's coded language when he uses that kind of language.

In an “exclusive” interview with new House Speaker John Boehner for Thursday’s NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams told Boehner the promised vote to repeal ObamaCare has “been called a stunt,” pressed him to justify repealing it given many would not call it “the best health care delivery system in the world because they, by the millions, weren't getting it” and demanded to know “where are you getting the notion...the American people want it repealed” given polling was “very evenly split on that?”

Then he held Boehner responsible for a “birther” woman in the gallery who shouted out “except Obama” as a Congressman on the floor was reading aloud the part of the Constitution requiring the President to be a “natural born citizen”:

I'm curious as to how much responsibility you feel -- specifically, because of something that happened this morning. During the reading of the Constitution, Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey was reading a portion of the document interrupted by someone who heckled from within the chamber. It was to express doubt over the President's American citizenship.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne is calling for the media to hold the newly-sworn in Republican House majority accountable for their "expansive rhetoric" as well as "how their ideas translate into policies that affect actual human beings."

Such a charge seems laughable almost 24 months after the Obama-loving press disgracefully gushed and swooned over every word uttered by the nation's 44th President before and after he took the oath of office:

So wonders PJM's Roger Simon. After accepting the gavel from outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (be sure you check out yesterday's Captionfest!), Boehner gave a speech that has the righty blogosphere buzzing. Head below the jump for video of the speech and Simon's reaction.

MSNBC's Ed Schultz on Wednesday called Republicans bastards that want to destroy the American dream.

Apparently recognizing that he might have gone too far, the "Ed Show" host apologized moments later (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing on Wednesday's "Morning Joe," Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward dismissed the significance of the accession of Rep. John Boehner to the post of Speaker of the House of Representatives, saying that Presodent Obama's inauguration dwarfed Boehner's.

Politico's Mike Allen had reported that Capitol Hill had "the air of a Presidential Inauguration" Wednesday with a new Speaker of the House and 87 new Republican congressmen coming in. A few minutes later, Woodward tempered Allen's enthusiasm.

"I think Mike Allen's one of the best in the business, but to compare the Boehner coming to the Speakership with the Presidential Inaugural – four busloads, Mike? I mean, for Obama, for any president – c'mon, they had hundreds of busloads."

You certainly wouldn't expect the perilously liberal New York Times to be doing cartwheels on the day Republicans take over control of the House to begin the 112th Congress.

But the disdain for conservatives on display in the Gray Lady's editorial "Pomp, and Little Circumstance" was evident in the very first sentence of the very first paragraph:

Joined by a balanced panel of liberal Bloomberg news columnist Margaret Carlson and leftist radio host Bill Press, HLN's Joy Behar took to her eponymous program last night to dismiss the plan Republican congressmen have to read the entire U.S. Constitution from the House floor later this week.

"Do you think this Constitution-loving is getting out of hand? I mean, is it a nod to the Tea Party?" Behar asked Press, before unwittingly, perhaps, answering her own question: "Is it the first time a lot of congressmen will have heard about it, er, read it?"

Congressmen are of course bound by constitutionally-required oath to "support this Constitution," and it's not inconceivable that some congressmen -- like Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) -- could brush up on their constitutional knowledge.

[h/t e-mail tipster Beth Villare. Video after page break, for MP3 audio, click here]

Good Morning America's Jon Karl on Tuesday derided the incoming Republican Speaker of the House as "harshly partisan." The ABC correspondent joked that John Boehner can look "like the weeper of the House." In contrast, then-GMA co-host Diane Sawyer in 2007 lauded Speaker Nancy Pelosi's ascension, praising, "But her fellow politicians say she's galvanized steel with a smile."

While Karl dismissed Boehner as a "weeper," Sawyer, on January 19, 2007, rhapsodized over Pelosi as a sweeper, glowingly recounting how the first female Speaker picked up garbage: "We're walking along with the camera, [Pelosi] looks at the carpet. It has lint on it, little scraps of paper. She can't stand it. She gets down and cleans the carpet so we could walk."

Sawyer described this fairly mundane act as something "no Speaker of the House has ever done in the entire history of the United States of America."

[See video contrast below. Audio can be found here.]

Charles Blow made some political observations in his New York Times column Saturday that are destined to anger many of his left-leaning readers.

Just imagine how the average New York Democrat is going to respond to being told the future of his Party is being jeopardized by the fact that "Too many liberals just want to whine":

Ever the classy bunch, the ladies of "The View" spent a few minutes Monday mocking incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner for tearing up during an interview with CBS's Lesley Stahl.

The usual suspects, apparently no longer bothered by dramatic showings of disrespect towards national leaders, hit Boehner with characteristically immature and uninformed attacks.

The bigger surprise, though, was self-proclaimed "objective" reporter Barbara Walters, who claimed that Boehner "has an emotional problem," since "every time he talks about something that's not 'raise taxes,' he cries."

Introducing her interview with presumptive Speaker of the House John Boehner on Sunday's 60 Minutes, CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl proclaimed: "...which John Boehner will show up as speaker, the deal-maker he's been in the past or the more hardline conservative of late who's aligned himself with the tea party that helped bring him and his party back into power?"

Stahl noted how Boehner and President Obama "may have exchanged more words via television than in person. And most of them have been, shall we say, unfriendly." She lamented how Boehner "was the one who urged Republicans in the House to vote as a block....Against all of Mr. Obama's initiatives – health care, the stimulus, and on and on." She added that "he escalated the attacks during the campaign" and later dubbed him "Mr. Hell No."

Charles Krauthammer on Monday said that when Barack Obama spoke to the nation hours ago to announce a tax extension compromise just reached with Republicans, "It was actually a speech addressed at Daily Kos, the New York Times, and MoveOn."

In Krauthammer's view expressed on Fox's "Special Report," "This was a speech aimed at appeasing the Left which is extremely angry over this" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Liberal newspapers may claim that taxpayer-funded art galleries should take “public sensitivities” into account, but in reality, they don’t want members of Congress actually representing the insulted public by speaking out against anti-Christian exhibits.

Friday’s Washington Post led their editorial page with the headline “The censors arrive: Do Republicans really want to ride into power with a burst of small-minded intolerance?” That’s funny: Christians might find the “small-minded intolerance” coming from artists who think that modern-day Christianity is an oppressive, Jesus-betraying force – as represented by ants crawling all over Jesus on a crucifix. Here’s the key passage:

Public sensibilities must be taken into account when taxpayer funds are in play, but the use of public dollars does not give lawmakers the right to micromanage or censor displays. Nor should the occasional dust-up be justification for threatened retribution against these valuable national assets. We hope Mr. Cantor's threats prompt many additional Washingtonians to visit the exhibit and judge for themselves.