Marsha Blackburn

Craig Melvin typified MSNBC’s stance on abortion Tuesday morning. Filling in for Thomas Roberts as the anchor of MSNBC Live, Melvin conducted a rabid attack-dog interview with Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) about an abortion bill before the House of Representatives that would ban abortion after 20 weeks with a few exceptions, such as rape and incest. Minutes later, Melvin brought on hard-left abortionist Irin Carmon from Salon.com for a gooey softball interview which served as a platform for Carmon to rip into Blackburn's stance on the bill.

Melvin was ticked off that this abortion bill, proposed by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), only allows exceptions for rape and incest when those crimes are reported. He condescended to Blackburn: “Congresswoman, do you know how many cases of rape and incest go unreported in this country every year?” [Video below the break.]

During an interview with MRCTV, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, asked what has become one of the most common questions across the country: Why won't the mainstream media give the murder trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell the coverage it deserves?

“We're talking about people being murdered,” she declared. Is the lack of attention “because we’re talking about poor women in minority neighborhoods, or is it because the media is trying to protect the abortion business?”

On Thursday, Sentier Research released a study showing that household income has actually declined at a worse rate in the sluggish economic recovery than it did during the December 2007-June 2009 recession. "From June 2009 to June 2012, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 4.8 percent, to $50,964," Washington Post's Michael Fletcher noted in Friday's paper, although his article was buried by editors on page A10. The New York Times ran a story on the report on Friday on page B1 entitled "Big Income Losses Hit Those Near Retirement."

This should of course be troubling news for any incumbent president, but since that happens to a be liberal Democrat, the media are not making much of it. Indeed, the broadcast networks have completely ignored the story, as a search of our DVR recordings and of the Nexis database confirm.

For a network claiming to be non-partisan, CNN was quite partisan on Thursday when it used a Democratic talking point to fact-check a claim made by many conservatives. Anchor Brooke Baldwin focused on a Romney campaign ad claiming, as many conservatives are, that the Obama administration is infringing on religious liberty with its contraception mandate.

"One, this article is an opinion piece," Baldwin said of a headline in the ad accusing Obama of waging "war on religion," adding that "it came out actually before the President made this compromise back in February when he compromised putting birth control mandates on insurance companies and not on religious employers, right?" That was enough for her to ask if the ad was "misleading."

CNN's Christine Romans played Obama spokesperson on Monday's Starting Point and accused Republicans of creating "uncertainty" about ObamaCare in trying to repeal it. That fits what has seemingly become a CNN line to Republicans of "stop fighting this law and get in line."

"I'm wondering, should Congresspeople be spending more time helping their constituents comply with the law rather than continuing all this uncertainty about it?" Romans challenged Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). Ironically, CNN's own poll shows a majority in favor of Congress repealing the law. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Even when told that paying for birth control would violate the consciences of certain religious organizations, CNN's Soledad O'Brien wondered why the groups still shouldn't have to cover contraceptives for interested employees.

O'Brien cited statistics from the abortion-supportive Guttmacher Institute showing that even the vast majority of Catholic women use birth control. She then asked why so many shouldn't have the option to pursue such practices, regardless of what the Catholic Church teaches. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

For several years NewsBusters has been informing readers of Nobel Laureate Al Gore's profit motive as it pertains to his advancement of global warming hysteria.

This included the presentation of a video of the former Vice President disclosing in March 2008 what investments he's personally made in companies that will benefit from any legislation designed to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

This admission garnered virtually no mainstream media coverage from global warming obsessed press members when it was first uncovered last April.

So great is their devotion to this cause that when Gore was asked about his financial interests in pending cap and trade legislation at a recent hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee (video embedded right), his heated exchange with a representative from his home state went completely ignored by America's television news divisions until conservative radio host Laura Ingraham and Climate Depot's Marc Morano discussed it on Friday's "O'Reilly Factor" (video and transcript embedded below the fold followed by additional comments on the subject): 

MSNBC's David Shuster knows how to treat a lady right. Unless that lady is Rep. Marsha Blackburn. Last year we noted how he played a gotcha game with the Tennessee Republican over the death of a soldier he mistakenly thought was from her district. He subsequently apologized.

Today the MSNBC anchor put Blackburn on the spot by calling on her to defend the McCain campaign in light of inappropriate remarks made by random people attending their rallies:

DAVID SHUSTER: Congresswoman, as the tone gets nastier on both sides, I want to ask you about some things that were shouted to John McCain and Sarah Palin yesterday during their rallies. First, here's John McCain raising questions about Barack Obama yesterday in New Mexico.

Sen. JOHN McCAIN (R-Ariz.): In short, who is the real Barack Obama?

I had the honor of attending the Presidential Banquet last evening at the 2008 Conservative Political Action Conference. Speakers included Bob Novak and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, as well as former ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson (who good naturedly needled Novak in a speech introducing and praising his career in journalism).

Blackburn spoke eloquently about having the "best district" in America and how faith, family, and a can-do volunteer spirit characterize her constituency. "Not once," Blackburn emphasized, did anyone she spoke to on Wednesday in the aftermath of devastating tornados, "ask where's FEMA?"

Blackburn, NewsBusters fans may recall was the target last September of an inaccurate and unfair ambush at the hands of MSNBC's David Shuster. For an archive of NewsBusters posts on that, check here.

See also Mark Finkelstein's Sept. 26 post complete with MSNBC's David Shuster apology for ambushing Blackburn:

Cat fight on the left? On today's "Tucker," a "Media Matters" representative denied Hillary's claim that she "helped start" the organization.

Welcome back, Tucker. Really.

While Carlson was away, guest host David Shuster sullied Tucker's name-sake show with the tasteless "gotcha" game he sprang on Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), then compounded matters by leading a liberal love-in.

Tucker's been back in the saddle for a couple days, and this evening took on Wesley Clark and later a representative of Media Matters.

Speaking with Paul Waldman, Senior Fellow and Director of Special Projects of "Media Matters," Carlson displayed the graphic shown here, in which Hillary Clinton stated that she had "helped start" Media Matters. Under close questioning by Carlson, Waldman wound up contradicting Hillary's claim.

View video here.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) took to a popular conservative blog today to issue a defense of radio host Rush Limbaugh against left-wing smear attacks. As NewsBusters has reported, Blackburn herself was the target of a "gotcha" game by MSNBC's David Shuster.

In "Why let the truth get in the way of a good story," Blackburn expressed to Red State readers her support for Limbaugh and noted her resolution before the House of Representatives to commend Rush for this dedication to America's men and women in uniform:

UPDATE -- SHUSTER APOLOGIZES: At 6:44 PM EDT, MSNBC broke into the Tucker Carlson show to air a terse apology from Shuster. See "My Take" below.

View video of Shuster apology here.

Here follows the text of Shuster apology.

DAVID SHUSTER: On Monday evening while guest-hosting the 6 p.m. evening hour, I conducted an interview with Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn. The congresswoman spoke at length about a newspaper ad that criticized General Petraeus. In what I believed was an effort to examine Representative Blackburn's priorities, I then asked her to name the last soldier from her congressional district killed in Iraq.

She responded "the name of the last soldier killed in Iraq from my district, I do not know." After that response, I identified who I believed to be that fallen soldier, a Tennessean killed in Iraq last month. But according to Pentagon documents, that young man came from a town inside a neighboring congressional district, not from Representative Blackburn's, and for that, I apologize for that mistake.

Read past the jump for the rest of the story..

Does it get much lower than this?

After first extolling the "F--- Bush" headline, MSNBC's David Shuster, substituting for Tucker Carlson today, later engaged in a grotesque game of "gotcha," exploiting an Amercan soldier killed in Iraq to make his partisan point.

Chatting with Newsweek's Richard Wolffe and MSNBC analyst Craig Crawford, talk turned to the controversy surrounding the editorial in the Colorado State student newspaper headlined "Taser This: F--- Bush" [f-word spelled out in headline].

Wolffe went first, and was patently delighted by the incident. With a hearty grin, he observed . . .