Carl Hulse

In his Wednesday report on federal disaster aid in a time of vast national debt, New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse treated liberal Democrats as the epitome of Washington wisdom and moderation: “Emphasis on Federal Austerity Changes Dynamics of Disaster Relief.”

While self-described socialist Bernie Sanders was only termed an “independent,” Hulse managed to put an ideological label on “Conservative Republicans” who are pushing to actually pay for disaster relief, through off-setting budget cuts.

Wednesday’s New York Times lead story on the debt ceiling standoff by Jennifer Steinhauer and Carl Hulse,  “Facing Obstacles, G.O.P. Delays Vote On Plan For Debt – Conservatives Restive – Boehner’s Grip on His Caucus Is Put to the Test in Standoff,” is the second consecutive Times lead overloaded with “conservative” labels, as if only one side of the debate has an ideological motivation.

Yesterday’s tally in the lead story from Hulse and Jackie Calmes was 5-0, conservative-to-liberal labels. Today’s tally was 6-0, including the label in the headline. As that headline also indicates, the Times put the focus and the fault for the impasse squarely on the shoulders of Republican House Speaker Boehner, not President Obama.

House Republican leaders were forced on Tuesday night to delay a vote scheduled on their plan to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, as conservative lawmakers expressed skepticism and Congressional budget officials said the plan did not deliver the promised savings.

President Obama’s budget blueprint may have been unanimously rejected by Congress in late May, but suddenly the president is the courageous, ambitious one on budget talks after issuing new rhetoric indicating a willingness to make cuts in social programs like Medicare.

 

In his Sunday front-page story, “House Speaker Is Pulling Back On Deficit Deal – $4 Trillion Plan Stalls Over Tax Increase,” congressional reporter Carl Hulse (pictured) continued to shade his own word choices in a pro-Democratic direction. Though the headline accurately stated that the stumbling block in negotiations are Democratic calls for a “tax increase,” Hulse reliably avoided the unpopular phrase in his report. The text box also underlined the idea of Obama the risk-taker: “An attempt at something big that some Republicans found too big.”

New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse was up to his old rhetorical tricks on Tuesday, using the Democratic euphemism “revenues," when Democrats are in fact calling for tax hikes as part of a budget deal tied to increasing the debt limit, in “Debt Divide Remains As President Steps In.”

After Democrats won a special congressional election in New York State, New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse seemed comfortable leading the early cheers for Democrats looking to win back the House of Representatives, in Tuesday’s "Political Memo," "Surprise Victory in New York Invigorates Democrats Looking to 2012."

It’s not something the Times does after Republican wins in special or off-year elections - those victories are typically downgraded as unimportant and atypical, like the Times treated the 2009 G.O.P. wins in governors’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, which turned out to be accurate harbingers of electoral success in 2010.

Senate Democrats failed to push through a proposal that would have deprived the five leading oil companies of tax breaks, New York Times reporter Carl Hulse reported Wednesday. Hulse’s headline writer, meanwhile, used the same ideologically loaded "big oil" terminology a liberal Democrat used in Hulse’s story: "Senate Refuses to End Tax Breaks for Big Oil."

The phrase "Big Oil," redolent of sophomoric liberals excoriating Republican greed, recurred deep into the story, from the mouth of a liberal Democratic senator.

New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse, whose reporting has been somewhat more balanced of late, reverted to old partisan habits in Monday’s story, "Democrats’ Plan Would Offset Deficit by Ending Big Oil’s Tax Breaks."

Hulse pushed Democratic enthusiasm over the party's latest talking points attempting to place Republicans on the defensive, this time managing to find Democratic optimism in a story about high gas prices and the deficit, without sparing a word of blame against President Obama for either problem.

Democrats are targeting "the five largest and most profitable oil companies: BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and Conoco Phillips."

In Wednesday’s “Good Feeling Gone, In Congress, Anyway,“ New York Times reporters Jennifer Steinhauer and Carl Hulse suggested it was unseemly for Republicans to not accede to President Obama on domestic issues, after the killing of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALS in Pakistan.

The article superficially appears to be an even-handed “pox on both houses“ story, but the text provided a tableaux of Democrats fuming over Republican actions or lack of same, as if Republicans had reacted to the unifying national moment of Obama’s capture with stubborn partisan obstruction. Two photo captions demonstrated Democrats seeing a "spirit of unity" dashed by the GOP:

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, complained about the “excessive regulation” of business.

Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said he hoped a “spirit of unity” would prevail, but there was little sign of it Tuesday.

Sunday’s New York Times led with the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a three-term Democrat representing Tucson, in an assassination attempt in which six others were killed, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl.

The suspect in custody is 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner. The suspect’s Myspace and Youtube pages are filled with crazed syllogisms, dominated by thoughts of mind control. Loughner also recommending a video of an American flag being burned, and is evidently an atheist.

Not exactly the profile of a Sarah Palin fan, right? But that didn’t stop the Times from imposing a “violent rhetoric” template on its front-page Sunday story by Congressional reporter Carl Hulse and Tea Party beat reporter Kate Zernike, “Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics.” The unasked for and unprofessional speculation of Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik (who used the term "vitriol" while going after conservative talk radio and TV) also featured high in the Times's recounting, while Times reporters linked to Palin's now-infamous campaign "target map" from March 2010.

The shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and others at a neighborhood meeting in Arizona on Saturday set off what is likely to be a wrenching debate over anger and violence in American politics.

Monday's New York Times front page contains a "Congressional Memo" by David Herszenhorn and Carl Hulse, "In Personal Ethics Battles, a Partywide Threat." The party is the Democrat Party, the threat possible ethics trials for prominent Democratic representatives Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters.

After summarizing the danger that the trials pose for Democrats in an election year, the Times checked in on an unreliable source, Rep. James Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, to raise a defense of Rangel and Waters, both of whom are black, as is Clyburn.

Clyburn bears responsibility for the evidently false charges of racial slurs being hurled at civil rights hero turned congressman John Lewis of Georgia during the Capitol Hill protests March 20 against Obama-care. Herszenhorn and Hulse gave Clyburn (who has a history of making dubious accusations of racism) an unimpeded platform to indirectly repeat his allegations.

Stop the presses: a fill-in for Rachel Maddow on Friday actually busted the New York Times for misquoting Rand Paul in its article about the Tea Party senatorial candidate published earlier in the day.

As most readers are aware, Paul made some rather controversial statements on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" Wednesday.

Two days later, Adam Nagourney and Carl Hulse of the Times wrote: "Asked by Ms. Maddow if a private business had the right to refuse to serve black people, Mr. Paul replied, 'Yes.'"

As the Nation's Chris Hayes amazingly pointed out Friday, that's not what Paul said (video follows with transcript and commentary, h/t Daily Paul via NB reader Russell Davis):

On the eve of the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse, who has in the past proven quite willing to pass along unsubstantiated Democratic accusations of racial epithets hurled by Tea Party protesters, on Friday passed the mike to former President Bill Clinton, who slimed the movement as potentially inspiring similar terrorist acts in "Recalling '95 Bombing, Clinton Sees Parallels."

The text box read: "Finding similarities in past and current antigovernment tones." For good measure, the Times included a photo of a mourner at the site commemorating victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Just last month, a Times photo caption linked peaceful Tea Party protesters to the 1960s domestic terrorists Weather Underground. Now the Times is going even further.

Hulse began:

With the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing approaching, former President Bill Clinton on Thursday drew parallels between the antigovernment tone that preceded that devastating attack and the political tumult of today, saying government critics must be mindful that angry words can stir violent actions.

In the lead story of Thursday's National section, New York Times congressional correspondent (and Times Watch favorite) Carl Hulse quickly put the Times's stamp of approval on Democrat attempts to discredit anti-Obama-care protesters as violent racists in “After Health Vote, Democrats Are Threatened With Violence.” He even drug Internet images from the RNC and Sarah Palin into the mix. By contrast, the Times was conspicuously quiet during the 2004 presidential campaign concerning vandalism of G.O.P. campaign offices.


Hulse detailed the Democratic message of the week -- violent conservative protesters -- with no hint of how the party is exploiting the anecdotes of violence (some of which have not been documented). Interestingly, he includes Rep. Bart Stupak on the list as having “reported receiving threatening phone calls,” though Hulse fails to say whether they transpired before or after Stupak caved in and voted in favor of the health “reform” legislation.

Democratic lawmakers have received death threats and been the victims of vandalism because of their votes in favor of the health care bill, lawmakers and law enforcement officials said Wednesday, as the Congressional debate over the issue headed toward a bitter and divisive conclusion.

Racists against Obama-care? New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse didn't take it quite that far, but he made a point to juxtapose protests against Obama-care to violent 1960s-era protests against black civil rights, as personalized in the main subject of Hulse's Monday piece, civil rights icon and Democratic Congressman John Lewis: "Mr. Lewis said he was not intimidated as he walked to the Capitol with his colleagues, including Ms. Pelosi. In 1965, Mr. Lewis was bloodied and beaten by the police as he marched for civil rights."

Hulse first laid into "venomous" conservative protesters on Sunday afternoon, in his contribution to the live blogging of the House debate at nytimes.com. From his 3:25 p.m. post "Angry, Vituperative Protests."

The mood inside the House chamber was tense as lawmakers headed toward climactic health care votes on Sunday, but the atmosphere outside the Capitol was downright venomous.

As the House engaged in initial parliamentary maneuvering, hundreds of anti-reform protesters gathered on the south side of the Capitol between the building and the House office buildings across Independence Avenue, chanting and jeering Democrats and applauding House Republicans who egged them on.

Surprise: Congressional Democrats pounce on yet another New York Times story to their liking and are swapping it among themselves "as exhibit A against Republicans."

From Michael O'Brien's Wednesday evening report from the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill (hat tip NB's Seton Motley):

Democrats are seizing on a report that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had long plotted to slow or halt Democratic priorities in Congress, planning to use it as a key piece of evidence in their case against GOP "obstructionism."

In a memo to a broad group of Democratic lawmakers, communications staff and party strategists obtained by The Hill, Democratic National Committee (DNC) Communications Director Brad Woodhouse advised using a New York Times report Wednesday on the Senate GOP leader as exhibit A against Republicans.

Congressional reporter Carl Hulse took the Democrats' side in a running controversy over federal spending involving Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky. Until Tuesday night Bunning, a Republican not running for releection, had flummoxed and angered the Democrat majority (and the media) by employing a legislative tactic to block a new spending bill that would have extended funding on a variety of fronts, including unemployment benefits.

Instead, Bunning insisted the spending first be paid for by other spending cuts and that to pass the bill as is would violate legislation passed by the Democratic majority a month ago known as pay-as-you-go (PAYGO).

Hulse, who usually sides with Democrats in such tactical battles, quickly got off-Trek in his Sunday coverage:

In the original "Star Trek" series, a popular episode centered on two planets that fought a bloodless war through computer simulation but then delivered real casualties. The partisan conflict in the Senate has been waged in a similar fashion.

While the legislative toll has been high, the struggle has been conducted in a genteel, decorous manner. Senators routinely initiate filibusters, lodge objections to votes and impose "holds" on White House nominees and then go about their business as they await make-or-break procedural votes.

Now things are threatening to get a little messier. Incensed over a decision by Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, to stand between jobless Americans and extended unemployment benefits, a group of Democrats took to the floor in a late-night session Thursday to hold Mr. Bunning's feet to the political fire.

In a story posted on nytimes.com Sunday night, reporters Carl Hulse and David Herszenhorn found that the “Senate Debate on Health Care Exacerbates Partisanship.” As usual, the Times only finds partisanship taking place on behalf of the Republican Party.

Most incredibly, the two reporters either missed or ignored the most inflammatory comments issued on the Senate floor on Sunday, when Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island comparing some Republican opponents of Obama care to Jim Crow-era lynchers, and Nazis: “History cautions us of the excesses to which these malignant, vindictive passions can ultimately lead. Tumbrils have rolled through taunting crowds, broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets. Strange fruit has hung from Southern trees. Even this great institution of government that we share has cowered before a tail-gunner waving secret lists."

From Hulse and Herszenhorn's report, with its emphasis on Republican nastiness:

Nasty charges of bribery. Senators cut off midspeech. Accusations of politics put over patriotism. Talk of double-crosses. A nonagenarian forced to the floor after midnight for multiple procedural votes.

The "nonagenarian" is of course Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Hulse and Herszenhorn returned to the sad plight of Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd later.

The Times actually quoted a portion of Whitehouse’s nasty speech chiding the GOP, but without mentioning the odious comparisons to Nazis and Jim Crow racists Whitehouse had made less than four minutes previously:

While the Washington Post ran a full news story by Philip Rucker on the conservative Capitol Hill rally on page 4 on Friday, The New York Times buried it with just six paragraphs – smack dab in in the middle of a story on A-15 headlined "House Democrats Seek Allies for Health Care Vote."

The story by Times reporters Carl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn focused mostly on how Democrats were organizing their own caucus and gaining endorsements from the AARP, the American Medical Association, and the American Cancer Society.

In paragraph eight, the Times duo finally devoted some 230 words to the conservative rally that drew thousands of Americans from across the country:

While Democrats sought to build support, Republicans engaged in an equally determined effort to block the measure, with House Republicans lining up to address thousands of conservatives gathered at the West Front of the Capitol. No House Republican is expected to vote for the measure, meaning its entire support has to come from within the 258-member Democrat caucus.

Which party was "embarrassed" by Tuesday night's election results? You may be surprised.

In "Democrats in Congress See Election as Giving New Urgency to Their Agenda," New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse managed, as he often does, to tilt the conversation in a direction favorable to Democrats. 

Thursday's story came in the aftermath of two big Republican wins in New Jersey and Virginia governors' races. Yet Hulse, echoing liberal wishful thinking, portrayed the special congressional race in upstate New York, where Douglas Hoffman, running on the Conservative ballot, came within a few points of beating the Democrat, as an "embarrassing loss."

Blaming election setbacks on a drop in voter enthusiasm, Congressional Democrats said Wednesday that losses in governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey -- and a striking House win in New York -- should give new urgency to their legislative agenda, including a sweeping health care overhaul.

As they assessed the results, Democratic lawmakers and party strategists said their judgment was that voters remained very uneasy about the economy and did not see Democrats producing on the health, energy and national security changes they promised when voters swept them to power only a year ago.

Republicans portrayed the election outcome as a repudiation of Democratic policies and predicted significant Congressional gains next year despite Tuesday's embarrassing loss in a longtime House Republican stronghold in upstate New York.

New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse ignored his own reporting yesterday when condemning Republican Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst during President Obama's speech to Congress, with Hulse insisting it was a wholly unprecedented outburst. Yet in a 2005 story Hulse admitted Democrats had "hollered" at Bush during the State of the Union when Bush brought up Social Security reform.

Hulse took another bite out of Wilson today, in a story co-written with regional reporter Robbie Brown, datelined Swansea, S.C., "Heckler's District Mostly Supports the Outburst." At least today's story provided a single sentence pointing out that President George W. Bush "drew derisive hoots from Democrats" in his 2005 State of the Union address, while insisting that Wilson's outburst was worse.

Covering President Obama's health care address to Congress, congressional reporter Carl Hulse filed a full story on the outburst by Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, "In Lawmaker's Outburst, a Rare Breach of Protocol." Yet Hulse managed to ignore his own reporting from Bush's 2005 State of the Union Address to suggest the GOP had been uniquely disrespectful to President Obama.

Wilson shouted "You lie!" after Obama made this dubious claim (one fiercely supported by the Times) about health coverage for illegal immigrants:

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false -- the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

The Times is glossing over the fact that nothing in any of the Democrat bills requires citizen verification.

After burying the story on page A18 Friday, the New York Times finally put the Nancy Pelosi-C.I.A. controversy on the front page Saturday. Yet congressional reporter Carl Hulse made excuses for House Speaker Pelosi, who accused the CIA of deliberately misleading her in 2002 about waterboarding.

Hulse glossed over the multiple contradictory accounts Pelosi has delivered of what she knew about waterboarding and when she knew it. He also insisted Pelosi was in no political danger and focused solely on the politics of the battle and the effectiveness of Republican attacks, not on the veracity of Pelosi's accounts of what the C.I.A. told her about waterboarding.

After many failed efforts, Republicans have finally found a weak spot in Nancy Pelosi's political armor as a fight over detainee interrogations engulfs Ms. Pelosi, Republicans and intelligence officials.

The furor was heightened on Friday when the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, pushed back against an assertion by Ms. Pelosi, a Democrat who is the House speaker, that she had been misled by agency representatives seven years ago about harsh treatment of terrorism suspects, a claim that struck a raw nerve at the spy headquarters.

Mr. Panetta, a former Democratic congressman from California and a longtime associate of Ms. Pelosi, issued a statement that said the agency's "contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that C.I.A. officers briefed truthfully," a rebuttal of Ms. Pelosi's claim on Thursday that intelligence officials had lied to her.

Here they go again: Today the New York Times ran yet another flaky story questioning the presidential eligibility of John McCain, born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone, where his Navy father was stationed.

Back on February 28, Congressional reporter Carl Hulse wrote a big story on the "controversy," even though Hulse himself admitted little was likely to come of it. The Senate later approved a resolution declaring McCain eligible for the presidency.

Law reporter Adam Liptak's story today, which led the paper's National Section, ran under the hopeful headline, "A Hint of New Life to a McCain Birth Issue," and detailed findings from a Democratic college professor allegedly showing McCain unable to satisfty the constitutional requirement of being a "natural-born citizen."

New York Times Congressional reporter Carl Hulse on Thursday paid tribute to Sen. Ted Kennedy, diagnosed earlier this week with an inoperable brain tumor, in "Kennedy: A Little Like Everyone, a Lot Like No One Else." But Hulse went beyond acknowledging Kennedy's influence as a legislator to push the famous Massachusetts' senator's big-government worldview: "And if some of his solutions cost the government some money, well, that is what the government is for." Doesn't he mean "that is what taxpayers are for"?

Congress is rife with types: the Serious Legislator, the Bomb Thrower, the Show Horse, the Workhorse, the Blowhard, the Orator, the Partisan, the Statesman, the Prima Donna, the Mentor, the Old-fashioned Pol and the Visionary.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy is the rare man who shows flashes of them all, making him a singular senator, one of the last towering figures on a stage where the players and the performances seem to be shrinking even as the problems expand.

Stop me if you've heard this before: McCain, theoretically, might be ineligible for the presidency due to his being born on a naval installation in what was then the Panama Canal Zone.

Oh, that's right, we have heard this. Back in February, as a matter of fact.

No matter to the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs, who recycled the story a full 64 days later in the May 2 paper.

Dobbs breathed new life into the story by citing the April 30 action by the U.S. Senate in passing a nonbinding resolution declaring McCain eligible, in its opinion, for the presidency.

On Wednesday, New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse reported a flaky story on an apparent controversy over whether John McCain's birthplace (the Panama Canal Zone, where his Navy officer father was stationed in 1936) makes the Arizona senator ineligible for the presidency. Article II of the Constitution declares that only a "natural-born citizen" can serve as president.

In "McCain's Canal Zone Birth Prompts Queries About Whether That Rules Him Out," Hulse reported the McCain campaign is researching the question due to "mounting interest" and "Internet buzz." (Interestingly, most of that "buzz" seems to have originated not among liberals, but on right-wing websites the Times would not normally acknowledge the existence of.)

In an uncommon bout of journalistic self-control, the New York Times had thus far ignored the phony controversy over Rush Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" comment on his radio show last Wednesday, remarks wrenched out of context by the far-left Media Matters.

But on Wednesday, congressional reporter Carl Hulse used an action by some liberals in Congress yesterday as an excuse to bring it into the Times news pages in his "Congressional Memo," "Limbaugh Latest Target In War of Condemnation."

"Having abandoned for now their effort to force President Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq, Democrats are not giving ground against a lesser nemesis: Rush Limbaugh.

"With the help of liberal advocacy groups, the Democrats in Congress are turning Mr. Limbaugh's insinuation that members of the military who question the Iraq war are 'phony soldiers' into the latest war of words over the war."

New York Times reporters Helene Cooper and Carl Hulse's Saturday "Washington Memo" -- "As One Syria Trip Draws Fire, Others Draw Silence" -- defended House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's controversial trip to Syria with familiar Democratic talking points.

"With a final stop in Lisbon on Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi headed home to a Washington that is still ringing with complaints from senior Bush officials that her stop in Damascus to visit with Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, bolstered the image of Syria at a time when United States policy is to isolate it.

Today, New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse hands over nearly all his news hole for the newly empowered Democrats to  whine about the GOP's supposedly corrupt years of control of Congress.

"Republican rule on Capitol Hill drew to an exhausted end just before dawn on Dec. 9 after lawmakers dispatched a pile of bills that few had read and even fewer had helped write. Democrats say the era of such chaotic and secretive legislating came to a close as well."

Hulse lets us know that a kinder, gentler group is taking over.

The New York Times continues its coverage of the world the way they think it ought to be, with the Democratic party in control of the United States Congress. This morning's piece - Issues Await if Democrats Retake House - goes through the issues facing our gallant Dems as they prepare to take back the various House chairmanships that were usurped by Speaker Newt lo these many years ago. The New York Times, of course, is in favor of that happening. So they're willing to make sure that NY Times readers are aware that the potential Democratic committee chairs are "increasingly being portrayed by Republicans as liberal extremists." They aren't liberal extremists, of course. But they're being "portrayed as liberal extremists." John Conyers has a lifetime rating of 5 (out of 100) from the American Conservative Union, Barney Frank and Charles Rangel have 4s, but they're just being "portrayed" as liberal extremists.