Newsweek's Evan Thomas regretted the Fort Hood mass murderer, Major Nidal Hasan, is a Muslim because of how that reality will be abused by conservatives. On this weekend's Inside Washington, Thomas, now Editor at Large with Newsweek after stints as Assistant Managing Editor and Washington bureau chief, rued:

I cringe that he's a Muslim. I mean, because it inflames all the fears. I think he's probably just a nut case. But with that label attached to him, it will get the right wing going and it just -- I mean these things are tragic, but that makes it much worse.

NPR's Nina Totenberg soon chimed in with agreement: “It really is tragic that he was a Muslim.”

Audio: MP3 clip

Discussing the Obama White House's quest to discredit and banish the Fox News Channel, NPR's Nina Totenberg declared going “on the offensive publicly against Fox was not too bright” and she recalled how, in contrast, the Bush White House “just cut people dead, it froze them out, you know it froze whole institutions out, didn't talk about it.”

Putting it in the most-nefarious light, she charged on the weekly Inside Washington: “It was much more like the Mob.” Seemingly ruing Team Obama's miscue in not matching the Bush method, Totenberg asserted that “when you talk about it, you diminish your influence.”

The death of Edward Kennedy was undeniably a big political story, but the five days of intense media coverage also exposed how journalists see the Senator's ardent liberal agenda as an unquestionable good for America, not as controversial policies that fueled high-tax big government at the expense of the free market.

Reporters painted Kennedy as Mother Teresa. "Over five decades, Ted Kennedy carried the torch passed on by his brothers, for civil rights, for the poor, and for the sick," CBS's Harry Smith opened The Early Show on August 26, just hours after Kennedy's passing. "For nearly half a century in the Senate, Ted Kennedy spoke for the people who had no voice — the poor and the disabled, children and the elderly," anchor Katie Couric echoed on that night's CBS Evening News.

In full swoon for the late Senator Ted Kennedy, NPR's Nina Totenberg fondly recalled his “greatness” in doing “enormous things” for “millions and millions.” She predicted on the weekly Inside Washington aired Friday night:

I think he'll be remembered as a truly Shakespearean figure: tragic, flawed; who in the end achieved redemption through greatness -- both in his personal life and in his professional life, and did enormous things for millions and millions of people.

(Inside Washington, produced by Washington, DC's ABC affiliate, first airs Friday night on DC's PBS station.)

NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg criticized conservative opposition to socialized medicine on Friday’s edition of the talk-show Inside Washington, distributed to PBS stations. She suggested that Republican delays are "mischief-making," proclaimed "the misinformation on what’s in the bill is astonishing," and even suggested she was about to use a crude metaphor for the overwhelming power of insurers: "The insurance companies have – unless there’s a very aggressive regulator, they have – I was about to use an expression one shouldn’t use on television."

First, she complained that Republican leaders are obstructing progress on health care:

And the reason that the Gang of Six, so-called, in the Senate Finance Committee didn’t produce something is that the Republican leadership intervened and said ‘Don’t do this. Leave us August to do what we can do.’ You can call it mischief-making, you can call it obstructionism, you can call it constructive criticism, but that’s what happened.

From there, the longtime NPR star went on the attack against the overwhelming power of insurers. I’d guess she was going to say insurers have Americans by the family jewels:

NPR’s Nina Totenberg apparently needs to brush up on her knowledge of judicial philosophy and American jurisprudence. On the July 13 edition of “Charlie Rose,” Totenberg told Charlie Rose that Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor has “a pretty conservative record.” There are many words and phrases that could be used to accurately describe Sotamayor: intelligent, successful, to name a few. But conservative?

[Audio here]

Totenberg went on to tell Rose that Sotomayor’s record is “very much in the mainstream,” and that “you could say that she's more conservative than some members of the Supreme Court, including Justice Scalia, perhaps.” Judge Sotomayor’s decision to uphold the New Haven firefighter case, Ricci v. DeStefano, which was overruled by the High Court this May, and whose majority included all four of the “conservative” justices, clearly illustrates that Sotomayor is in no way, shape, or form a conservative.

NPR's Nina Totenberg scolded the more adversarial approach some in the White House press corps took to President Obama during Tuesday's press conference, but on Inside Washington this weekend columnist Charles Krauthammer rejected the notion the media's honeymoon is “over,” as he cracked: 

The hot sex is over, they're in the cigarette stage right now. You get a question or two that's slightly obstreperous, but the adulatory coverage is still all wall-to-wall.

That's a comedic improvement over what he offered Tuesday night on FNC when he suggested “it looked as if the stupor that the press has been in for the last six months is lifting slightly,” before he quipped: “I say that as a psychiatrist who has a lot of experience in watching these things.”

During a segment on Friday’s “American Morning,” CNN correspondent Carol Costello used two liberal talking heads to cast doubt on the “judicial activist” label used by conservatives. Costello used three sound bites from Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School, who branded the use of the term as “perfectly juvenile,” and one from NPR’s Nina Totenberg to cast aspersions on conservatives who are concerned about judges legislating from the bench.

Costello’s report, which began 20 minutes into the 6 am Eastern hour of the CNN program, began by labeling the “judicial activist” term itself an “act” by politicians: “We hear politicians say it all the time, ‘we don't need an activist judge legislating from the bench.’ But what exactly does that mean? Critics roll their eyes when they hear, ‘we don't want an activist judge on the bench,’ when, in reality, that’s exactly what they want. I’m just saying, if that’s true, why not drop the act and tell voters what you really mean?” She further explained that it was a “buzzword that’s got staying power.”

Asked “why does it matter” what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “knew or did not know” about the “enhanced interrogation” of terror suspects, Newsweek's Evan Thomas and NPR's Nina Totenberg failed to address Pelosi's hypocrisy in now condemning others for what she knew about years go, as both dismissed the relevance of her evolving memory.

On Friday's Inside Washington, Thomas insisted “it doesn't” matter, maintaining “this is all noise, this is all noise.” Totenberg declared “I don't think it matters, except that it is a diversion that is encouraged by former Bush people who don't want to have this conversation.” On the facts, Totenberg came down on Pelosi's side as she charged the CIA “did mislead” the Speaker: “I think it's entirely plausible -- and maybe even probable -- that the CIA told the technical truth in a way that did mislead Nancy Pelosi.”

Thomas, Editor at Large with Newsweek after stints as Assistant Managing Editor and Washington bureau chief, contended “Rush Limbaugh is good” for the Republican Party since he'll “take it down as low as it can go” so Republicans “make complete fools of themselves” and “then maybe,” Thomas yearned, “a moderate can come in and rescue them.”

NPR's Nina Totenberg on Friday night was unsure as to whether the tea parties have “any legs are not” since “at almost any given time any cockamamie proposition in America will have at least 25 percent of those polled supporting it.” On Inside Washington she called the anti-tax and anti-spending rallies “a good stunt,” before declaring Americans “pay relatively small taxes” and then lecturing those unappreciative protesters about how taxes provide, as if they want taxes totally eliminated, “a civilized kind of social compact where you don't have massive civil eruptions. That is what taxes are for.”

To which, Newsweek's Evan Thomas chimed in: “I'm all for paying more taxes.”

NPR's Nina Totenberg must live in a world of Obama fanatics. But she works for NPR, so that's tautological. Weeks after she relayed how “a friend of mine said, 'oh my God, we have a President again!,'” this weekend she excitedly recounted how, following President Barack Obama's trip to Europe, she “heard...all over Washington” people saying “'I'm going to go on YouTube and watch the President's speech because I heard it was so good.'” She hailed that as “just an amazing thing.”

On Inside Washington, a weekly show produced at DC's ABC affiliate and aired on it and its local all-news cable channel, Totenberg rejected the notion Obama's speeches and remarks in any way celebrated America's decline. Without specifying which speech she was talking about, but most likely Obama's address in Prague or before Turkey's parliament, Totenberg asserted:

He spoke of the modern realities and the modern difficulties that we've had in our relations with other countries. How many times have you heard people say “I'm going to go on YouTube and watch the President's speech because I heard it was so good”? And I heard that all over Washington this week. And that is just an amazing thing.

Since “I've really been getting pretty upset in the last week, just like every other American,” NPR's Nina Totenberg decided to watch President Obama on the Tonight Show “and he calmed me down. And he was presidential. I thought it was just a masterful performance.” 

The eager-to-be-impressed Totenberg made her comment on Inside Washington, a weekly show produced and aired over the weekend by Washington, DC's ABC affiliate and its all-news cable channel, News Channel 8:

When I heard he was going to do this I thought, should a President really do that? Then I actually stayed up and watched it and he calmed me down. I've really been getting pretty upset in the last week, just like every other American I think. And he calmed me down. And he was presidential. I thought it was just a masterful performance.

NPR's Nina Totenberg revealed Friday, not surprisingly, that she was enchanted by President Barack Obama's address earlier in the week to a joint session of Congress. “It made me feel pretty good. I thought it was a great speech,” she enthused before relaying a contrast with former President George W. Bush: “A friend of mine said, 'oh my God, we have a President again!'” Totenberg added that “in some ways, that's not fair to Bush,” but she insisted: “That's the way you felt. You felt this was a guy who was totally in charge.”

Totenberg quoted her friend immediately after Newsweek's Evan Thomas trumpeted on Inside Washington: “He looked like he belonged there unlike President Bush who sometimes seemed like 'what is this guy doing there?' even if you like him, 'he really doesn't belong.' He showed natural leadership and that alone made a big difference.”

Newsweek's Evan Thomas and NPR's Nina Totenberg, likely reflecting the attitude of many of their Washington press corps colleagues, declared Barack Obama's connection to unrepentant terrorist William Ayers as an out of bounds subject for the campaign. On Inside Washington, a weekly show produced and aired over the weekend by Washington, DC's ABC affiliate, but first broadcast Friday night on the local PBS station, Thomas, Editor at Large with Newsweek, charged: “If he loses the election because of that, it's a disgrace.” Totenberg alleged Sarah Palin's anti-Obama rhetoric is “pretty ugly and a little scary” and scolded the panel for even arguing over the relevance of Ayers: “Given what we are in, this is a stupid conversation.”

Thomas fretted:

If he [Obama] loses the election because of that, it's a disgrace for him. If the Republicans make that the issue at the end, it's a disgrace....They should not be trying to beat Obama based on the company he kept. It's bad company, shouldn't have done it, but it shouldn't be the controlling issue.

To commemorate the Media Research Center’s 20th anniversary this month, we’ve just published a special expanded edition of our ‘Notable Quotables’ newsletter with more than 100 of the most outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes we’ve uncovered over the past 20 years. Earlier this week, I presented quotes showing the media’s hostility towards Ronald Reagan and other conservatives, and sycophantic coverage of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Today’s installment: America the Awful. On Monday, I recounted how many journalists offered sympathetic coverage of totalitarian communist regimes. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, too many journalists opted to take a harsher approach with their own country. In a commencement address at the State University of New York at New Paltz back on May 21, 2006, New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., exposed his extreme left-wing agenda as he railed against everything he saw as wrong with America:

Video (0:52): Windows (1.64 MB), plus MP3 audio (261 kB).

The new books by liberal-media stars investigating Hillary Clinton are already drawing the annoying accusation from the Clintonistas that they’re sexist, and then their media supporters are backing them up on the charge. The liberal media attacks their own. On last weekend’s chat shows, the trend was apparent. On The Chris Matthews Show, Chris adopted a confessional I-may-be-a-pig tone with Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, this year’s (liberal) winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary:

MATTHEWS: Cynthia, the question, I think, somewhere in the middle of this--and this may be sexist, I don't deny it--but is the charge that she's calculating, that they're calculating together, a little too much planning, this two presidency following two presidencies, this 20-year plan, so-called, does this hurt?

TUCKER: I don't think it hurts with those people who would support Senator Hillary Clinton for president. They're--she's a very divisive figure. There are already a lot of Americans who would never vote for Senator Clinton, with or without a book being written, or books being written which rehash all the old assumptions about her.

Having said that, let me also point out that it is sexist to charge a woman with being ambitious.

Here's another sign that public broadcasters aren't worried about the appearance of Democratic favoritism. National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg -- legendary (or infamous) for championing Anita Hill's unsubstantiated sexual harassment charges against Clarence Thomas, and then yawning at all harassment claims against Bill Clinton -- is hiring the daughter of liberal Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards as a summer intern, and her NPR bosses "gave the green light, since the election is still 18 months away."

The Washington Post gossip column that broke the story couldn't even get word from NPR as to whether Cate Edwards will stop making campaign appearances during the internship. Here's what the "Reliable Source" column by Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger passed along:

Brent Bozell's column on Al-Jazeera English demonstrated a real affinity for the network in the liberal media elite. One CNN story by Frank Sesno noted "The reviews so far are mostly kind. The New York Times says the new network 'points to where East and West actually meet.' USA Today writes, 'in a globalized world, the broader the conversation and greater the competition for credibility, the better.' But the edition of the talk show "Inside Washington" Brent used shows not merely a tolerance, but an outraged hunger for an Arab-propaganda channel. They want it like the old MTV ads with rock stars saying "I want my MTV!" Here's a look at the transcript from the November 19 program:

Gordon Peterson, host: "Al-Jazeera English is on the air, but is not on the air here."

Sue Phillips, Al-Jazeera English (taped): "We adhere to Western broadcast standards. However, we will be very bold in our reporting. We will, of course, be impartial and accurate and objective as we can, but sometimes we will be controversial where it is necessary."

Peterson: "That's Sue Phillips, the London Bureau Chief of Al-Jazeera English, which debuted this week all over the world, but not on American cable systems. Why not, Colby?"

Oops. Back in 2004, then-ABC White House correspondent Terry Moran argued President Bush’s tax cuts were building debt, not prosperity: “Most experts say that making those tax cuts permanent would cause gigantic deficits virtually as far as the eye can see.” Early last year, CBS’s Bob Schieffer suggested it would be impossible for the federal budget deficit to be cut in half before 2009 without raising taxes: “The government has just got to find some money to finance these programs.”

Well, the tax cuts haven’t been repealed, and there have been no big new tax increases. But yesterday the White House announced that final tallies for the federal government’s fiscal year ending September 30, 2006, the budget deficit had shrunk from $413 billion two years ago to $248 billion. The federal government collected $2.407 trillion in taxes in FY2006, $122 billion more than originally forecast back in February.

In a discussion on Inside Washington about the situation in Iraq and Bob Woodward's book, Colby King, Deputy Editor of the Washington Post's editorial page and a weekly columnist, made clear his disgust with President Bush -- to the point of rejecting Bush as Commander-in-Chief and arguing Bush is more deserving of impeachment than was President Clinton. “If we had a draft today and my sons had to go in the service under this Commander-in-Chief and his military advisors, I'd be hard-pressed,” King revealed, “to say serve under them." Citing how too many are being killed in Iraq “because of dumb decisions made by these people in the Pentagon,” an exasperated King recalled how “they impeached the President...for having some relationship with an intern. What about the people who got us into this mess?"

A bit later in the program aired Friday night on Washington, DC's PBS station, NPR reporter Nina Totenberg predicted: “When the history books are written, we will not be proud of this country or this President.”