John McCain

Rick Santorum to John Heilemann [and by extension to MSM at large] on today's Morning Joe: "it's your responsibility to defend the president, not mine." Ouch! If Newt's deft dicing of John King and Juan Williams paid huge electoral dividends, Santorum might anticipate a much-needed bump after running roughshod over the New York mag reporter.

Heilemann had called on Santorum to explain his failure to correct a woman at a town hall meeting in Florida yesterday who said President Obama was an "avowed Muslim" and legally unqualified to be president. After noting that he has repeatedly been on the record saying that he doesn't believe PBO is a Muslim and recognizes that he is legally qualified to be president, Santorum said that he chose not to chastise an elderly and infirm lady.  Then came Santorum's grand slam, as set forth above.  Heilemann only dug himself deeper when he responded by saying that prez candidate McCain had always defended Obama on the campaign trail. Video after the jump.

After Rick Perry ended his presidential bid on Thursday, the Associated Press's Chris Tomlinson opened his dispatch about the announcement thusly: "Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race on Thursday, endorsed his old friend Newt Gingrich and returned home to Texas, where the failed White House candidate has three years left to serve as the chief executive."

Based on much of his prior reportage, Tomlinson appears have a particular animus towards the Texas Governor. But tagging GOP presidential candidates or their candidacies as "failed" is not an aberration at the AP, while the wire service's omission of such tags on wildly unsuccessful Democratic candidates pointedly betrays the presence of obvious bias.

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's Late Show with David Letterman on CBS, Arizona Senator John McCain complained about ABC's George Stephanopoulos because the ABC host asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney if states have the constitutional power to ban contraceptives.

After Mitt Romney’s comfortable win in the New Hampshire Republican primaries Tuesday, media attention shifts to the next primary, in socially conservative South Carolina, which New York Times campaign reporter Jim Rutenberg claims is “a place famous for surfacing the dark undercurrents of American politics” in his Wednesday front-page story, “In South Carolina, Challenges Await on Ideology and Faith.”

Rutenberg is mainly referring to an alleged incident during the 2000 campaign in which presidential candidate Sen. John McCain was victimized by anonymous phone calls (from either the George W. Bush campaign or Bush supporters) claiming McCain’s dark-skinned adopted daughter from Bangladesh was an illegitimate black love child. But is there hard evidence the smear even occurred? As the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell wrote in a column in January 2008: “No matter that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis couldn’t substantiate how many of these scurrilous phone calls were actually made, or by whom.”

When Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) blamed not only President Obama but also members of his own party for the payroll tax standoff, CNN's Ali Velshi interjected that perhaps the senator was being too hard on the President. McCain had insisted earlier that previous presidents would have done more to get a deal through a divided Congress.

"Is it really fair to put as much heat as you're putting on the President on this one?" Velshi complained to McCain. "I mean, a lot of eyes are pointing to House Republican leadership right now as being intransigent." [Video below the break.]

CBS's Early Show on Wednesday boosted a claim by Democrats that a recent Mitt Romney ad takes a line from a 2008 speech by then-candidate Barack Obama out of context. However, CBS noted at that time that Obama was using that line to counter a McCain campaign ad which played up the Democrat's association with left-wing terrorist Bill Ayers.

Anchor Erica Hill raised the controversy over the Romney ad towards the end of a segment with political correspondent Jan Crawford about the most recent Republican presidential debate. After playing the relevant part of the commercial, which includes a clip of Obama stating that "if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose," Hill asked, "A lot of controversy over that ad, Jan. Why?"

There’s a clear double standard on sex allegations for presidential candidates in the New York Times.

The Times put 15-year-old anonymous accusations of sexual harassment against GOP candidate Herman Cain on the front page Tuesday morning, in an off-lead story by Jim Rutenberg and Michael Shear written with help from five other reporters: “Cain Confronts Claim From 90s Of Harassment – He Denies Wrongdoing – Account of Settlement Changes – Reports Rock Campaign.”

Andrew Rosenthal may think twice before engaging in political parlay with James Taranto again. Rosenthal, the New York Times’s editorial page editor, came out on the losing end of a Twitter argument with Taranto, who puts together Opinion Journal’s Best of the Web, a Wall Street Journal project. Taranto summarized the argument in Monday's edition.

It started with an article by Slate's David Weigel shows Obama crushing GOP candidate Herman Cain among North Carolina voters, 86%-6%, barely improving on the Republican’s 2008 candidate John McCain, who got 5 percent of the black vote.

Updated [11:34 ET]: More analysis and full transcript added. Guthrie takes swipe at GOP 2012 field. 

On Friday's NBC Today, fill-in co-host Savannah Guthrie grilled Arizona Senator John McCain on his criticism of Barack Obama's foreign policy positions in the 2008 campaign and urged: "Bin Laden is gone. Anwar al Awlaki, who was the rising star in al Qaeda, is gone. Qadhafi is gone. Drone strikes have intensified greatly....Given the track record now in office, would you change your opinion, sir?" [Audio available here]

Prior to that, Guthrie pressed McCain on his early criticism of Obama's handling of Libya: "You were an early supporter of U.S. intervention in Libya, and yet, you harshly criticized the President for how he went about it. At this moment, given that Qadhafi is gone, are you willing to give the President credit, unqualified credit, for how he handled this?" [View video after the jump]

The folks at MSNBC as well as parent NBC should sit up and take notice of something Joe Scarborough said on Monday's "Morning Joe."

"There are not enough people that are either Republican in the mainstream media or talk to people on the telephone at least one a month...who actually understand what the Republican Party is" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Maybe what America's press really need is a Canadian television commentator to explain how atrocious their coverage of Barack Obama has been since the moment he tossed his named into the presidential ring in February 2007.

Although they may not be familiar with CBC's Rex Murphy, they should certainly heed the marvelous piece he wrote for the National Post Saturday entitled "The Media’s Love Affair With a Disastrous President":

The hypocrisy of Rachel Maddow knows no bounds.

On Tuesday's "Late Show," the MSNBCer scolded Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for meeting with Libya's Moammar Gaddafi in August 2009 while completely ignoring the fact that President Obama met him at the G8 summit the month before (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Sunday's Meet the Press on NBC, host David Gregory allowed Massachusetts Senator John Kerry to blame Standard and Poor's downgrade of U.S. debt on the Tea Party without challenge. However, minutes later, in an interview with Arizona Senator John McCain, Gregory was quick to accuse Republicans of "politicizing" the issue by criticizing Democrats.

After quoting a statement from House Speaker John Boehner on the downgrade – which cited the unwillingness of Democrats to curb massive government spending as a cause – Gregory fretted to McCain: "Do you not see this downgrade as something akin to war that should galvanize political leadership on both sides of the aisle, rather than politicizing it?"

Chris Matthews' infatuation with John McCain has returned. The day after the Republican senator bashed his own party, knocking "Hobbit" Tea Partiers, the Hardball anchor on Thursday lauded him as "great" and even suggested McCain as a MSNBC guest host: "...He can substitute for me some night with that kind of talk!"

The former GOP presidential nominee criticized 2010 Senate candidates Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle. Quoting from a Wall Street Journal editorial, McCain recited possible debt ceiling scenarios: "Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform entitlements and the Tea Party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor."

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Although President Obama and the Democrats have stridently insisted that increased tax revenues be part of a debt ceiling deal, CNN is content to choose sides and paint only the conservative Republicans as stubborn extremists for opposing the revenue increases. Anchor Kyra Phillips asked Thursday morning if Republicans would listen to the warning of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to the House GOP not to shut down the government over spending cuts and taxes.

The network has previously resorted to using moderate Republicans and conservatives like David Brooks to frame the Tea Party congressmen as fringe. Their latest source is McCain, who warned Republican House members that the government shutdown in 1995 helped spur President Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election. "Will they listen?" CNN said of Republicans, as if Sen. McCain was the voice of reason.

It was contentious and dramatic. On Sunday, June 19, “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace grilled funnyman Jon Stewart on his obvious liberal bias and Stewart replied, “… there is not a designed ideological agenda on my part to affect partisan change ...”

The exchange got heated when Stewart held that line, telling Wallace, “You can’t understand, because of the world you live in, that there is not a designed, ideological agenda on my part to affect partisan change, because that’s the soup you swim in.”

Well, “designed” or not, Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” mocks the right far more than it does the left, and a survey of the 16 broadcasts since the Wallace-Stewart run-in proves it.

In a report on the Arizona wildfires on Tuesday's NBC Today, correspondent Miguel Almaguer touted how "The Forest Service says this historic wildfire season is caused in part by climate change." After promoting that politically charged claim, Almaguer declared that Senator John McCain had created a "firestorm" by noting that illegal immigrants have contributed to past wildfires.

At the top of the show, co-host Ann Curry proclaimed: "Heated controversy. A debate blows up over John McCain blaming some wildfires in Arizona on illegal border-crossers." Later, she framed an interview with McCain this way: "Now to more on that controversial comment by Arizona Senator John McCain....We spoke to the Senator earlier this morning. We began by asking him if he was trying to use this current tragedy for a political purpose."

Good Morning America's reporters on Tuesday hyperbolically attacked John McCain for creating a "firestorm" and a "political calamity" by suggesting that illegal immigrants have been responsible for fires in the southwest. 

Reporter Clayton Sandell recounted the blaze in Arizona and hyperventilated, "Now, a political calamity has flared after Senator John McCain blamed at least some of the fires on illegal immigrants." He ignored mentioning the documented proof that illegals have been the cause of past fires.

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

"There’s a difference between the press and the Democratic Party and the press and the Republican Party."

So said Chris Matthews on the syndicated program bearing his name this weekend in the midst of a discussion about how the news media treat presidential candidates (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo):

 Catching up on an item from Saturday’s The Early Show, CBS correspondent Jan Crawford used the word "spectacle" to describe various media organizations "ripping through" the recently released emails from Sarah Palin’s time as governor of Alaska, noting that some media organizations were "enlisting people you don’t even know" to help examine the mountain of documents and "find something damaging" on Palin.

Crawford noted that it was an "unusual step" for the New York Times and Washington Post to ask for help from its readers to help the papers pore through the thousands of pages of correspondence, and concluded that "this e-mail release may say a lot more about the press and its views than it does about Palin."

On Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams incredulously noted how "...it's become fashionable among some to say...that so-called enhanced interrogation, what some define as torture...helped contribute to the death of bin Laden." He then touted: "Today Senator John McCain headed to the floor of the U.S. Senate to refute that."

In the clip that followed, McCain declared: "In my personal experience, the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence, but often produces bad intelligence. Because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear whether it is true or false." He then asserted: "The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee was obtained through standard non-coercive means."

CBS's Bob Schieffer made some headlines Wednesday when he said Donald Trump was a racist for wanting to see President Obama's college grades.

The "Face the Nation" host pushed this matter further Sunday when he asked Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), "Do you think [Trump's] trying to play a race card here, suggesting we ought to check Barack Obama’s college grades, that maybe he got into Harvard because he was black?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Michael Scheuer, a former counter-terrorism analyst for the CIA, scolded CNN's Christine Romans Thursday for letting her support for the current President show.

Toward the end of a lengthy interview on "American Morning" about the situation in Libya, Romans took issue with her guest saying America is "nearly bankrupt" leading Scheuer to respond, "You're just carrying the water for Mr. Obama" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

To tweak the punchline of an old joke -- what's this talk of invading, paleface?

Unleashing the bellicosity that's been kept corked since MSNBC put the kibosh on his "Psycho Talk" segments, Ed Schultz has weighed in at The Huffington Post in an op-ed titled "Why I Support President Obama's Decision to Invade Libya."

Psst, Ed -- we haven't invaded Libya, at least not yet. And I'd venture to say that most Americans don't expect we will, at least if Obama is to be believed. Remember how he said American troops would not be sent there? The president was pretty emphatic about it, as I recall. Agreed, it was all of eight days ago, distant enough that it slipped down your memory hole.

A heated debate occurred on Friday's "Inside Washington" when the subject of Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-Conn.) imminent retirement arose.

After Charles Krauthammer praised Lieberman for being "probably the last of a breed that began with Truman and Kennedy and Scoop Jackson," PBS's Mark Shields attacked the long-term senator for supporting John McCain for president in 2008 (video follows with transcript and commentary):

 On Friday’s Political Capital, during a discussion of Democratic-turned independent Senator Joe Lieberman’s retirement, Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson took a shot at him as she charged that, "Since he broke Iraq, let him go fix it," before suggesting that he be appointed ambassador to Iraq. After asserting that Lieberman "got a little bitter in his later years," she accused him of "violating every democratic principle" in running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary in 2006.

Kate O’Beirne of the National Review argued that the Democratic Party’s inability to accept the liberal Lieberman as being liberal enough for them solely because of his stance on Iraq hurts the party’s image on national defense: "And it just says so much about the modern Democratic Party. Boy, oh boy, if they don't have room for somebody like Joe Lieberman has, and then they wonder why they score so low when it comes to who do you trust on national security?"

 On Wednesday’s Countdown show, as he plugged a segment on former Democratic-turned independent Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman’s retirement, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann referred to Lieberman as a "delusional liar," and suggested that he had experienced a "departure from reality" for describing himself as a "moderate Democrat" after endorsing John McCain over Barack Obama for President. At the top of the show, the MSNBC host teased: "The end of the line for Joe Lieberman, self-described ‘moderate Democrat.’ Don’t let the delusional liar door hit you in the delusional liar butt on the delusional liar way out."

In another plug, Olbermann accused the Connecticut Senator of "lying even on the way out the door." And, after a segment with Minnesota Democratic Representative Keith Ellison in which the two discussed the Congressman’s experiences with death threats and hostile messages to his office, Olbermann almost seemed to lament that Lieberman had not gotten more grief even as he contended that public figures should be "untouched," and ended up declaring "good riddance" to Lieberman. Olbermann:

And then there are those politicians who sail through their public lives untouched, which is fortunate, which is the way it should be, unless what they are untouched by is reality. Tonight, goodbye, Joe Lieberman, and good riddance.