Congress

On a special edition of All In with Chris Hayes on Monday, January 13, MSNBC host Hayes and NBC's Maria Shriver devoted the hour to a discussion of poverty in America, 50 years after President Johnson announced the "War on Poverty." At one point, the two gave New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand an unchallenged forum to push for paid family medical leave, without any concerns about…

Bullying by staffers of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has denied knowledge of their actions when they were taken, is a national news obsession. Bullying by staffers of Colorado Senator Mark Udall — which the Senator has acknowledged and is defending — is barely a blip. The story, first reported in the Colorado blogosphere at Complete Colorado, is that Udall staffers "worked…

On Thursday's PoliticsNation, MSNBC host Al Sharpton accused Republicans of "demonizing" single mothers and placing "blame" on them for poverty in response to several Republicans who have recently complained about government policies that have encouraged poor women to become single mothers. Sharpton plugged the segment:

"Obama approval ratings turn around," exulted the msnbc.com landing page headline for Traci G. Lee's January 9 story, "Positive start to 2014 for Obama: poll." Lee set about spinning the results of the latest Quinnipiac Poll, which shows President Obama sitting atop a 41 percent approval rating, up from a low of 38 percent in December, but still a net negative approval rating. Lee used the…

On Tuesday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, during a discussion of Republican congressional members who have spoken of the possibility of impeaching President Obama, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank labeled such talk "tribal politics" and compared it to a "revenge killing" against the President because he won the election. After host Al Sharpton played clips of several Republican members of…

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently wrote a tell-all book that slams Congress, President Obama, and several members of the Obama administration. Over at msnbc.com, Sarah Muller highlighted some of Gates’ criticisms in a Tuesday article. However, Muller did not mention Gates’ major criticism of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In fact, Muller outright lied when she wrote…

Daily Beast political writer Patricia Murphy dutifully peddled Democratic spin on the economy and unemployment while singing the praises of Nevada Republican Senator Dean Heller who led a breakaway contingent of fellow GOPers to invoke cloture on a Democratic bill to extend unemployment benefits without any offsetting spending cuts. In her January 7 story "The Senate’s Last Compassionate…

Healthcare.gov may be riddled with security flaws, but MSNBC’s Karen Finney doesn’t want to let that tarnish the liberal dream that is ObamaCare. On Sunday’s Disrupt with Karen Finney, the host mocked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s recently revealed memo detailing the House GOP’s goals for the beginning of this year. Noting that ObamaCare website security was Cantor’s top priority, the…

The MSNBC gang's selective outrage about drug use and the liberalization of drug laws is abundantly clear in two stories on the network's website today. "Americans change their minds on pot," blares the headline for item #4 in the top-stories lightbox. "Moral outrage is down and support for legalized marijuana is up," noted the caption teasing Jane C. Timm's story. The very next item in the…

On Thursday night’s edition, the PBS NewsHour held a discussion about President Obama’s prospects for making 2014 more successful than 2013. Of course, the panelists defined success as the president enacting more of his left-of-center agenda. Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal posed a “really interesting strategic choice” that he thought the White House had to make: [Video below. MP3…

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on poverty." Today, with roughly the same number of people below the poverty level as in 1964 and with many addicted to government "benefits," robbing them of a work ethic, it is clear that the poor have mostly lost the war. In 1964, the poverty rate was about 19 percent. Census data from 2010…

Appearing as a panel member on the Monday, December 30, PoliticsNation on MSNBC to help assign the annual "Revvy" awards for the year 2013, MSNBC contributor Jimmy Williams ranted that Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz is "the biggest fraud to have ever walked in the United States Senate," and went on to bizarrely claim that Cruz "wasn't supposed to be elected," even though the Texas Republican…

On Friday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, host Al Sharpton asserted that Republicans "don't care" about the unemployed whose unemployment benefits are expiring and went on to accuse Republicans of having a "heartless ideology that says if you're out of work, you're out of luck." Sharpton began the show:

On Thursday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, during a discussion of Republican resistance to extending unemployment benefits, MSNBC political analyst Goldie Taylor charged that the  GOP "almost single-handedly blew up this economy," and that it was "as if" they "blew up" the "bridge" and then "dared people to cross to the other side of the canyon on their own." After host Al Sharpton played several…