Congress

  Catching up on an item from last weekend, Friday’s World News on ABC, Saturday’s Good Morning America on ABC, Saturday’s CBS Evening News, and Saturday’s NBC Nightly News all highlighted California Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier’s defense of partial birth abortion as a procedure she had herself gone through as she berated New Jersey Republican Congressman Chris Smith for describing…

Adam Nagourney, now Los Angeles bureau chief for the New York Times, returned to his old political beat for Monday’s off-lead story co-written with David Herszenhorn. The theme is one of Nagourney’s favorites; Republicans overplaying their hand and risking citizen backlash: “As Republicans See A Mandate, Others See Risk – Echo Of ‘08 Democrats – Backlash Could Loom on Cuts to Budget and Union…

CNN's Candy Crowley adopted the pro-abortion lobby's talking points on Friday's Situation Room, as she asked Rep. Steve King about the House's vote to defund Planned Parenthood: "There's that term, 'penny wise and pound foolish.' Would you worry that, by cutting off those services, people...would have sicker babies, or certain people...wouldn't have HIV testing...and that would just cost us…

Earlier this afternoon, the House of Representatives voted for an amendment to a spending bill that would strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding. Much of the debate on the measure happened last night, including a speech in opposition of the move by a Democratic congresswoman, Jackie Speier (D-Calif.),  who recalled her own abortion procedure. After the vote came down today, ABCNews.com…

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough thinks the GOP's house is already on fire in his latest Politico column, where he thrashes the party's leadership for a poor showing at CPAC. He ridiculed the gathering as "a conference cursed with dull speechmaking and intraparty battles." "Like most Egyptians, the conservative movement still has no idea who will lead it through the next election," Scarborough writes…

On Thursday's CBS Early Show, senior White House correspondent Bill Plante seized on a rare instance in which the Obama administration and conservative members of Congress happened to agree on a single budget cut: "It's not very often that the Obama administration finds itself on the same side as Tea Party Republicans when it comes to spending." The spending in question was funding for the…

Opening Wednesday's 12PM ET hour on MSNBC, anchor Contessa Brewer proclaimed that President Obama was "driving Republicans in a corner" by calling their "budget bluff with his big proposal to slash spending." In reality, Obama's budget is projected to increase the national debt by $7.2 trillion over the next decade. [Audio available here] Brewer argued that the President's supposed "slash"…

"Obama budget makes deep cuts, cautious trades," blared the February 15 print edition headline for Washington Post staffer Lori Montgomery's page A1 story on President Obama's 2012 budget plan. "[The] Focus [is]on education, energy and research," a subheadline approvingly added. In the lead paragraph, Montgomery hailed Obama's spending blueprint as "full of surgical cuts and cautious trade-…

Discussing the state of the Republican Party with political analyst John Dickerson on Saturday's CBS Evening News, anchor Russ Mitchell concluded: "...it has been a tough week for House Republicans." On Friday's NBC Today, co-host Meredith Vieira made an identical observation, declaring : "It has been a rough, rough week for the Republicans, to say the very least." Mitchell explained his…

 On the February 12 World News Saturday, ABC correspondent David Kerley highlighted claims by Bob Greenstein of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy that the Democratic-controlled Senate and President Obama would block Tea Party-backed cuts from this year’s federal budget, thus protecting Republicans from their "less than responsible actions." After Kerley began his piece by…

While NBC, ABC, and CBS all pushed the scandal involving New York Republican Congressman Christopher Lee into a second day of coverage, the networks made little or no mention of Florida Democratic Congressman Tim Mahoney admitting to numerous affairs in 2008.   The scant coverage of Mahoney was particularly stunning given that he replaced Republican Mark Foley, who was caught sending…

During a report on Friday's CBS Early Show, congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes emphasized division in the new Republican Congress: "The prospect of a mutiny had sent Republican leaders scrambling to craft an even leaner budget, and make good on their promises to the Tea Party....Just this week, small groups of conservatives defeated two of their own party's measures on the House floor…

Civility was in short supply yesterday on "The Dylan Ratigan Show," as the MSNBC anchor after which the show is named used words and phrases such as "moronic" and "dog's ass" to demagogue the GOP's proposal to trim the federal budget. "How can you be serious about cutting spending when your spending proposals are truly a flea on a dog's ass?" howled Ratigan, who went on to demonize…

Say you're a journalist and you're writing a story on the retirement of an 9-term congresswoman with: