Ruth Marcus

The admission by the IRS that its workers targeted conservative Tea Party groups was so scandalous even some of the liberals at MSNBC felt compelled to condemn the tax agency. On Friday's edition of Andrea Mitchell Reports substitute host Chris Cillizza exclaimed he was "stunned" by the "dumbness" of the IRS.

Cillizza's Washington Post colleague, Ruth Marcus called the revelations "outrageous." Marcus added: "The absolute worst thing that the IRS can do is make itself look political/ideological and to make it look like it's picking on some political groups and not others. That is terrible." (video after the jump)

On ABC's This Week Sunday, George Will made a comment about the need for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants that is likely to raise eyebrows on both sides of the aisle.

"As the baby boomers retire, and as the birthrate declines, we need something to replenish the workforce to sustain the welfare state" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Does David Brooks read the news?  I’m sure he does, but with the liberal media failing to report on the spike in gas prices – it’s no surprise that this New York Times Republican thinks the price of oil has gone down...instead of the "worst February on record."

On the PBS Newshour last night, Ruth Marcus filled in for Mark Shields, and said that the new jobs numbers are a positive development.  However, the expiration of the payroll tax holiday will be a drag on the economy.  Brooks chimed in saying, “well, I mean, obviously, there are drags. And I agree. Things are drags. But there are also pluses out there, the lowering of oil, of gas prices, that is obviously a plus. So there is a complex mixture of things.”

This is demonstratively wrong.  As the MRC’s own Julia Seymour of the Business and Media Institute reported last month:

Newt Gingrich had a fabulous exchange with the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus on ABC's This Week Sunday that really speaks volumes about the media's reaction to Republican Senators filibustering Chuck Hagel's confirmation as Defense Secretary.

When Marcus spouted the typical liberal commentator line "Republicans just want to make themselves look even more obstructionist with a country that’s frustrated with that," Gingrich struck back saying, "This is just such Washington nonsense" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Reporters at the Washington Post need a refresher already on the November elections. Obama beat Romney 51-47; Senate Democrats gained two seats, up to 53; House Democrats gained eight seats, but still trail 234-201. Somehow, the Post says this is a “shellacking.” That’s a word Obama used more accurately after the wave election of 2010, when the Republicans added a historic 63 seats.

In Friday’s Post, reporters David Nakamura and Rosalind Helderman discussed whether Republicans would move toward the center on immigration: “Months after GOP leaders began signaling that the party would shift positions on immigration in response to their shellacking in the November election, Republicans are still working out their stance.” The Post website carried a similar line from an AP article: 

Appearing on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports on Tuesday, liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus lashed out against passage of Michigan's right-to-work law: "Unions are reeling, and the more states that enact measures like this, the more unions will be reeling....unions aren't going to survive when people have a choice of whether to ante up the dues or to get the benefit of being free-riders." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

As NewsBusters colleague Kyle Drennan noted today, the liberal media has mobilized their legions to defend embattled U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, complaining that the criticisms leveled by Republicans are motivated by racism, sexism or both.

But there most certainly is a double standard at play as Eliana Johnson of National Review noted in an excellent November 21 post in which she detailed how left-wing journalists and members of Congress attacked Condoleezza Rice as an incompetent Bush hack. Johnson wrote that:

In an attempt to dismiss Republican criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's misleading September 14 Sunday show statements about Benghazi, on Thursday's MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus asserted: "I don't think this is really about some comments that were basically right, that she made on Sunday talk shows." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Marcus was prompted to make the declaration after Mitchell tried to paint GOP critics as a combination of sexist and racist: "There have been issues raised as to whether she was being attacked, criticized because she's a woman, because she's African-American....is there a double standard here? Have we had others who've gone on Sunday television talk shows, made mistakes, and not been punished as severely as Susan Rice?"

During Friday’s broadcasts of the PBS's NewsHour and NPR’s All Things Considered, liberals continued with their narrative about the fiscal cliff, and how it’s not all that bad.  Previously, Mark Shields and E.J. Dionne agreed with New York Times-style Republican David Brooks that they would go off the cliff.   The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne equated it with the “will of the people.”

But now, the Post’s Ruth Marcus and E.J. Dionne insist that the cliff isn’t a cliff.  It’s actually a well-defined “slope." But in the words of Joe Biden, “this is a big f***ing deal.”

On the PBS NewsHour weekly pundit roundup on Friday, they reviewed the media's assault on Mitt Romney with the usual NewsHour balance: liberal Washington Post columnist (and former reporter) Ruth Marcus gave Obama an A and Romney an F, and said Romney's remarks were "really disgraceful" and his "doubling down was just unconscionable."

And the alleged conservative, David Brooks agreed, with less passion about Romney's argument: "it was not good." He also joked that Romney's campaign is over. He knows how to please the bosses at PBS. Marcus took the first shot:

With all the trashing of Paul Ryan by Obama-loving media members in the past 24 hours, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus pulled off quite a feat on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday.

In just one sentence, she insulted Ryan as well as former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For the past two weeks Barack Obama's media minions have been working overtime trying to convince the American people the President was taken out of context during his now infamous "You Didn't Build That" speech in Roanoke, Virginia.

CNN's Donna Brazile and the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus tried making that pathetic claim on ABC's This Week Sunday only to receive a much-needed education from George Will and Breitbart.com's Dana Loesch (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell has been a key player in pushing the network's "war on women" meme, such as when she viciously tag-teamed with liberal senators to attack Susan G. Komen founder Nancy Brinker to her misleading, biased coverage of the defunding of Planned Parenthood in Texas.

So it's no surprise that Mitchell joined forces with liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus at the top of her program today to spin for Democratic activist and PR flak Hilary Rosen, who stepped in it earlier this week with her ill-advised attack on Ann Romney.

Here's something you don't see every day.

One of the Washington Post's perilously liberal columnists, Ruth Marcus, actually scolded President Obama Monday for his "unsettling" "preemptive strike" on the Supreme Court:

Remember all that talk about returning civility to political discussions following Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' (D-Ariz.) shooting in January?

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus clearly doesn't, for on ABC's This Week Sunday, she said of Texas governor Rick Perry's presidential candidacy, "He's like Monty Python's parrot - he's not dead yet" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It might not be surprising to see someone sit in the rarefied liberal air of a PBS set and dismiss the undignified palaver of talk radio and Ann Coulter, but on Friday's PBS NewsHour, this line was coming from former Bush speechwriting chief Michael Gerson, and the target was Gov. Rick Perry.

Gerson and liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus were sitting in for David Brooks and Mark Shields. (In other words, Gerson was in the "I agree with Mark" chair.) Both agreed that Perry really gaffed in suggesting Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was "treasonous" if he shoveled more dollars into the economy before the election:

As Michele Bachmann climbs in the polls, Obama-loving media members are working overtime to dig up and/or manufacture dirt on the conservative Congresswoman from Minnesota.

One of the new flavors of the day is that her religious beliefs might make her too submissive to be president, a silly concept the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus felt was necessary to share with her readers Wednesday:

“Do you think the Tea Party is losing some of its appeal?” So Harry Smith cued up a hardly independent guest on Sunday’s Face the Nation: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic Congresswoman and Chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Earlier, the fill-in host was astonished House Majority Leader Eric Cantor would want to find cuts to afford extra spending for tornado recovery efforts: “One of the things you said earlier this week is that emergency funding should be offset by cuts to the budget deficit. Do you stand by that?”

Meanwhile, another round of Sunday panels meant more pleas to raise taxes. On Fox News Sunday, a frustrated Juan Williams fretted: “Republicans -- for all this talk about oh, the deficit, the debt, we have to be serious, entitlement reform – refuse to consider raising taxes.”

Calling the uproar over the new TSA screening procedures "overblown" and "immature," Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus praised the majority of Americans polled who are okay with the body scanners at airports and scolded those who stand opposed to the searches.

"'Don't tough my junk' may be the cri-de-coeur – cri de crotch? – of the post-9/11 world, but it's an awfully childish one," the columnist writes in her Nov 24 column for the Washington Post. Marcus argues that the new procedures are simply a "marginal invasion of privacy" when compared to the devastating consequences of a terrorist attack that could happen without them.

However, Marcus admits that the new body scanners are "uncomfortably graphic," some TSA workers may "go too far" in the pat-downs, and the procedures might not be fully successful.
 

Despairing that the current income tax rates will be extended for all income levels, on Sunday’s This Week, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus declared: “I think that the conversation right now is deranged” and “crazy.” In measuring the long-term “cost” of keeping the Bush rates for those below $250,000 versus for all, she argued:

I think that the conversation right now is deranged. We have in one room the deficit commission folks saying look at this huge hole, look at the tax increases and serious spending cuts that we need to do to fill it. And then outside the room, we're having a debate about whether we should add $4 trillion to the deficit long-term or a mere 3.3. This is crazy.

Marcus issued her characterizations after New York Times columnist Paul Krugman had made his case for raising taxes:

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Krugman tries to clarify what he said.

Although he was likely taking a swipe at former governor Sarah Palin with the reference, Paul Krugman on Sunday recommended "death panels" as a means of helping to balance the federal budget.

In a Roundtable discussion on ABC's "This Week," the New York Times columnist said of what recently came out of the President's deficit commission, "Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Columnist Charles Krauthammer scoured congressional Democrats on Friday in The Washington Post for failing to pass any appropriations bills or even introduce a bill extending any of the Bush tax cuts. The title was "The Colbert Democrats." He concluded:

As if this display of unseriousness -- no budget, no appropriations bills, no tax bill -- were not enough, some genius on a House Judiciary subcommittee invites parodist Stephen Colbert to testify as an expert witness on immigration. He then pulls off a nervy mockery of the whole proceedings -- my favorite was his request to have his colonoscopy inserted in the Congressional Record -- while the chairwoman sits there clueless.

A fitting end for the 111th Congress. But not quite. Colbert will return to the scene of the crime on Oct. 30 as the leader of one of two mock rallies on the Mall. Comedian Jon Stewart leads the other. At a time of near-10 percent unemployment, a difficult and draining war abroad, and widespread disgust with government overreach and incompetence, they will light up the TV screens as the hip face of the new liberalism -- just three days before the election.

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus raced to her keyboard on Tuesday night to express her upset with the result of the Republican Senate primary in Delaware. In “Why Christine O'Donnell's victory is scary,” posted at 10:15 PM EDT on the paper’s “PostPartisan” blog for its opinion writers, she seemed more scared by Mike Castle’s defeat than by Christine O’Donnell’s win.

While Democrats may be “delighted” by the prospect of facing O’Donnell, Marcus declared: “I’m despondent.” But not, of course, because it means the Democratic candidate will beat O’Donnell. No, the Post’s deputy national editor from 1999 to 2002 (bio) is “despondent” because it ends her dream of “a more robust cadre of moderate Republicans” in the Senate and the “ripple effect” means incumbent Republicans “will be that much more watchful of protecting their right flank,” which will cause them to “be that much less likely to take a political risk in the direction of bipartisanship.” Horrors.

Indeed, Marcus feared “a bolstered Jim DeMint caucus, following the disturbingly powerful junior senator from South Carolina: Sharron Angle (Nev.), Rand Paul (Ky.), Ken Buck (Colo.) -- plus the two other incumbent-slayers of the primary season, Mike Lee in Utah and in Joe Miller in Alaska. Scary.”

The lengths liberals will go to trash Sarah Palin knows no bounds.

On Friday, the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus actually accused the former Alaska governor of being homophobic for calling reporters "limp" and "impotent."

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, Palin, while on Sean Hannity's radio program the day before, bashed "impotent, limp and gutless reporters [that] take anonymous sources and cite them as being factual references."

From this, Marcus divined the following utter nonsense:

George Will on Sunday used a Barack Obama quote to smack down a predictable attack on Sarah Palin made by the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus.

As the Roundtable discussion of ABC's "This Week" moved to the former Alaska governor's "Mama Grizzlies" video, Marcus voiced her unsurprising displeasure. 

"I think it's the same, old, vapid, platitudinous Sarah Palin," said Marcus. "There is not a shred, not a shred of substance in this ad."

When he got his turn, Will tore Marcus apart, "On the vapidness meter, that ranks nowhere near, 'We are the ones we have been waiting for,' which was Obama's way of flattering the self-esteem of his supporters" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

George Will on Sunday accused Barack Obama of being an expert at selling snake oil.

As the Roundtable segment of ABC's "This Week" began, host Jake Tapper asked Will if the President's claim Republicans "are peddling that same snake oil that they've been peddling now for years" will resonate with voters this November.

Will marvelously responded, "No, because he is an expert on snake oil."

"This is the man who said, if we pass the $767 billion stimulus bill, which it turns out costs $862 billion, a $95 million oops, we would have unemployment at 8 percent and no higher, and it went higher," continued Will.

"This is the man who last week was out saying, 'I'm going to give $2 billion, about $2 billion, to two companies to create about 1,600 jobs.' That's $1.5 million per job. That is snake oil" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary: 

The "recent unpleasantness" at the Washington Post was, to conservatives at least, entirely predictable. What decent left-leaning journalist could live among the remote, primitive tribes known as conservatives and not be driven just a little bit mad? (If the Post's editors were embarrassed, they could at least take comfort that their man hadn't "gone native.")

Predictable, but no less unfortunate. The Washington Post dearly needs someone to explain conservatism to its editors and staff. Why?

A look through the June 30 edition of the Washington Post gives a pretty good indication. No, not the puff piece on Obama Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. (Apparently a photo of the grown man in charge of a vast federal agency wearing a bike helmet is supposed convey competence. The caption reads - really - "Ray LaHood has worked to expand transportation safety, including emphasizing the rights of cyclists in federal transportation policy.)

No, a few columns should suffice. Courtland Milloy began a piece on Justice Clarence Thomas' recent opinion defending the Second Amendment on a promising note. Thomas, Milloy wrote approvingly, "roared to life" in the opinion, citing the legal disarming of blacks in the post-reconstruction south, which left them vulnerable to the KKK and other white supremacists. So far, so good.

On the front of Sunday's Washington Post, Supreme Court reporter Robert Barnes unfurled the first liberal spin line of the battle over a new Supreme Court justice: that there's no way whoever Obama nominates will be more liberal than retiring John Paul Stevens. Barnes said "almost certainly" the court will be more conservative after Obama's second nominee is confirmed.

Can anyone imagine the media buying that spin for a second after, say, Chief Justice Rehnquist passed away? Oh, Bush can't possibly make the court more conservative. "Almost certainly," the court will be more liberal now. 

Barnes completely accepted Justice Stevens laying down a marker for his half of the court, and made it the newspaper's own front-page spin:

Democrats will be pointing to this preliminary CBO score as if it is engraved on stone tablets. Republicans will proclaim their respect for the CBO and proceed to argue that its estimates should not be taken too seriously in this instance. This may come as a surprise, but I think the Republican argument is closer to correct. To crow, as did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that the package is "a triumph for the American people in terms of deficit reduction" is premature at best, delusional at worst.

That's none other than Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus -- no conservative acolyte she -- in an op-ed today entitled in the print edition, "Score one for skepticism."

As Marcus went on to explain, the central flaw in taking the CBO numbers as the gospel truth is that (emphasis mine):

It’s one thing to advocate for the repeal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" (DADT). It’s altogether another to maintain that you find the other side of the argument “incomprehensible.” But that’s what Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus did in her Feb. 24 column, “The Inevitable Backlash on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

While stating that DADT should be repealed, Marcus professed to be perplexed at why some are hesitant to repeal the military’s policy and frustrated that the top brass chose not to precipitate the change all at once.