Budget

Over at the Associated Press, Andrew Taylor, contrary to the wire service's usual practice, referenced a pre-official Congressional Budget Office report to tout the federal government's "improved" budget deficit. The CBO estimates that the deficit, which won't become official until the Treasury Department releases its final Monthly Treasury Statement of the fiscal year in the next week or two,…

CNN's Wolf Blitzer hounded Rep. Jason Chaffetz on Wednesday's Situation Room over his hearing on Planned Parenthood's federal funding, and carried water for the abortion giant. Blitzer quibbled over a chart that was used at the hearing that showed the increase in abortions that Planned Parenthood did, and a concurrent decrease in the number of cancer screenings and other preventive services it…

On Wednesday's CNN Newsroom, anchor Carol Costello defended federal funding for Planned Parenthood in a segment which included conservative CNN commentator S.E. Cupp and liberal CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill supposedly for balance, but was so slanted to the left that Cupp quipped that "I love doing your show because I know I'll get to debate two liberals."

On Wednesday's New Day on CNN, co-anchor Alisyn Camerota repeatedly fretted over the possibility that cutting off federal funding of Planned Parenthood would make it difficult for women to get abortions. In one segment, she asserted that, in doing so, "obviously it does take away a woman's right to choose." In a later segment, she suggested that defunding Planned Parenthood would lead women to…

As Representative Daniel Webster appeared as a guest on Tuesday's New Day on CNN to discuss his intention to run for Speaker of the House of Representatives, substitute co-host John Berman pressed the Florida Republican to vow to work against a government shutdown in the face of calls by some GOPers to defund Planned Parenthood.

On Monday's New Day on CNN, anchor Chris Cuomo complained about Republicans wanting to defund Planned Parenthood as he questioned the "urgency" of doing so "before you investigate the allegations," leading guest and former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to decry the "grotesque" revelations about the abortion provider. During a discussion of House Speaker John Boehner's announced resignation…

During a live NBC special report minutes after Pope Francis concluded his address to Congress on Thursday, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd hailed the speech and hoped it would prevent a possible government shutdown over defunding Planned Parenthood: “I can’t help – and I apologize for bringing in crass politics into this, but we are six days from the government possibly shutting down and I…

Hannibal’s gone, but there’s still plenty of horrifying content on television. Cox hinted in a Monday column that some of it’s on C-SPAN, courtesy of congressional Republicans. Regarding a possible government shutdown over funding for Planned Parenthood, Cox asserted, “Forget shrinking government to the size it can be drowned in a bathtub, the politicians clamoring for another shutdown want…

In a near 180-degree reversal to his interview the previous evening with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Democratic presidential candidate and socialist Bernie Sanders found himself on Friday’s CBS This Morning being repeatedly slammed from the right by co-host Norah O’Donnell on his far-left tax plans and hope for a universal health care system. 

Either Nicholas Riccardi at the Associated Press is woefully ignorant, or he set out to deliberately mislead readers about the impact of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush's tax plan. I'll report the details; readers here can decide for themselves. Riccardi's "analysis," contained in his Sunday morning writeup covering the tax proposals of Bush, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, contained the…

Friday's report on the federal government's budget deficit through August told us that with one month remaining in the fiscal year, Uncle Sam will certainly "achieve" an all-time single-year record in tax collections accompanied by all-time record spending. The Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger apparently didn't consider either item newsworthy. Instead, he decided that the real news is this…

The Los Angeles Times apparently doesn't think "women who were born during botched abortions in the 1970s" are abortion "survivors," as a Wednesday article about two such women featured a title that put the term in scare quotes: "Abortion 'survivors' criticize Planned Parenthood on Capitol Hill." Marcus E. Howard led the item by hyping that "House Republicans on Wednesday fueled an already…

It would be easy to conclude, based on its treatment of a story about Illinois lottery winners suing to force the state to disburse their payouts, that the Associated Press really doesn't want readers and its subscribing outlets to learn about it. This "keep them in the dark" approach is consistent with a previous AP story on the state's failure to pay lottery winners. Let's start with that…

Silly me. I really thought that every state's lottery operation was walled off from the rest of its finances. They collect bets, pay out winnings and administrative costs, and turn over the profits to general fund. End of discussion. No muss, no fuss. Right? In Illinois, based on recent developments, we know that's obviously not the case — leading me to wonder how many other states potentially…