Congress

"I’m going to torch this [bleep]ing place." That's what an angry Ed Schultz reportedly threatened at a testy August 2010 exchange with the suits at MSNBC. Schultz was reportedly fired up because, "the network was running election-night promos and he wasn’t in them. He’d been arguing on the phone with marketing, then he slammed down the phone and exploded," a witness to the outburst told the New…

On Friday's PoliticsNation, MSNBC host Al Sharpton complained that the "Tea Party-fueled madness" of the GOP threatening to shut down the government would "take away health care from millions of people." He went on to charge that Speaker John Boehner possesses "genuine political cowardice" because he is allowing the Tea Party to "run this country into the ground." Sharpton began the show:

The Big Three broadcast networks made their slanted priorities clear on their Thursday evening newscasts, as they fawned over Caroline Kennedy's Senate confirmation hearing earlier that day, but failed to cover the emotional congressional testimony of Pat Smith. Smith is the mother of Sean Smith, who died in the 2012 Islamist attack on the U.S. post in Benghazi, Libya. ABC's Martha Raddatz…

"The Republican Party is destroying America" with a "murder-suicide" pact in the U.S. Congress to "shut down" the government. You might expect such over-the-top language from anyone at MSNBC and quite a few at CNN, but, alas, that's from the pen of one Kirsten Powers, a liberal Fox News contributor who has struck us in the past as a rather rational lefty who doesn't resort to the same tired…

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News and Thursday's CBS This Morning, Nancy Cordes repeatedly played up how an unidentified Republican in the U.S. Senate attacked a House proposal to de-fund ObamaCare as "suicide". Cordes underlined that "Speaker Boehner was forced into the risky strategy by his right flank", and wondered if the plan was "just a recipe for a government shutdown". Norah O'Donnell…

At the Associated Press, aka the Admininstration's Press, reporter Jim Kuhnhenn predictably and dutifully reported that President Barack Obama "reiterated his vow not to negotiate with Republicans over raising the borrowing limit." As usual, the AP and Kuhnhenn didn't look back at how U.S. Senator Barack Obama's debt-ceiling posture in 2006 sharply differed. Today, Mark Knoller at CBS New,…

PBS anchor Judy Woodruff asked a question on Monday’s NewsHour that perfectly captured the modern liberal mentality about government spending and debt. During a taped interview with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Woodruff asked: [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Near the end of  the Tuesday, September 17, All In show, MSNBC host Chris Hayes took a moment to read and display two viewer responses to his question of what they would like to see in "actual comprehensive gun safety legislation," and included one over the top viewer who not only wanted nearly all guns banned, but desired that the National Rifle Association be "dissolved and made illegal."…

Talking to NBC's chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd on Sunday's Meet the Press, moderator David Gregory noted "Benghazi back as a political focus this week" following the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attack, prompting Todd to observe: "It is. The House Republicans have not dropped this as an issue." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Todd continued: "…

On Monday's CBS This Morning, Sharyl Attkisson pointed out the "potential conflict of interest" in the ongoing controversy over the Islamist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. Attkisson detailed how congressional Republican are scrutinizing Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy's involvement in naming staff to the Accountability Review Board, even as it was investigating his role…

In a bizarre writeup which alternates between harsh criticism and a pity party about President Barack Obama's "toughness" or lack thereof in the wake of the withdrawal of Larry Summers from consideration as the next head of the Federal Reserve, Politico's Jonathan Allen unleashed a ridiculous assertion about the history of the administration's Syrian adventure: "In another debate that never…

One thing which is almost as reliable as the sun rising in the east is the Associated Press, aka the Adminstration's Press, putting a better face on the federal government's fiscal situation than it deserves when a Democrat is in the White House. Almost as reliable is the arrival in a related report of some kind of statement about spending cuts which describes them as "deep," "steep," or some…

I guess we should acknowledge a tiny improvement when an ordinarily in-the-tank apparatchik like Jim Kuhnhenn at the Associated Press expresses even the slightest bit of skepticism about a White House claim. But let's not take it too far. Kuhnhenn is reporting in a brief "Big Story" item this morning that President Obama "is laying claim to an economic turnaround and warning Republicans not…

A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll stumbled across a very interesting finding: 44 percent of respondents said they did not think Congress should raise the debt ceiling before the U.S. reaches it in October, while only half as many (22 percent) said Congress should raise it. On Friday, Andrea Mitchell reported that finding on her eponymous MSNBC program Andrea Mitchell Reports, but she…