Congress

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday spun a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, emphasizing problems for the Republican Party over dour news for Barack Obama. The co-host ignored a finding that likely voters want the GOP to take control of Congress by a margin of 56 to 41. He did, however, repeat the lower number of registered voters who prefer the Republicans, 51 percent.…

On Saturday's CBS Evening News, anchor Jeff Glor decided what should be at the top of Congress's agenda as it returned from the July 4th recess: "Congress returns to Washington next week to face a big backlog of unfinished business, and topping the list is the future of unemployment benefits."In a report that followed, senior White House correspondent Bill Plante chided elected officials for…

An outraged electorate has just handed Japan's ruling party its hat in elections for half of the seats in the upper house of that country's parliament in a direct reversal of election results from a year ago. Opposition parties made major gains. The results constitute a resounding rejection of a massive value-added tax increase proposed by a guy whose immediate predecessor of the same party…

The financial regulations package recently passed by the House of Representatives would create a new diversity overseer at each of the major federal financial regulatory agencies, including the new ones created by the legislation itself. This new office, called the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion, would take over from any existing diversity or civil rights office already working at…

One reason to hope that the Big 3 networks continue to muddle through their awful evening news ratings and somehow hang around is that there's an alternative out there that would be much worse. If any of the networks ever considered outsourcing their nightly newscasts to the Associated Press, the likely result could be bad enough to make some long for the (relatively) good old days of Brian,…

On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office released its Monthly Budget Review for June. It estimated that June's deficit was "only" $69 billion, down from $94 billion last year, and that the deficit through nine months of the current fiscal year is $1.005 trillion, down from last year's $1.087 trillion. June's single-month improvement -- or more properly stated, its less disastrous result --…

New York Times political personality profiler Mark Leibovich (pictured right) upholds his reputation as treating Democrats with respect and Republicans with derision in Wednesday‘s front-page profile of Republican Darrell Issa of California, "Darrell Issa Emerges as Obama's Annoyer-in-Chief."Issa's he said-he said claim of a rude middle finger from White House chief Rahm Emanuel somehow reflects…

Last night the White House announced a recess appointment for a man who's gone on record praising Britain's one-size-fits-all single-payer National Health Service to head up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.Covering the development, Time magazine's Adam Sorensen cast the appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick (pictured at right) as a blow to "hyperbolic" Republicans who hoped to make…

Those looking for evidence that there is a move afoot in the establishment press to lower the bar for whatever economic accomplishments might be accomplished during the Obama administration will be interested in how the Associated Press's report on the government's June jobs report defined "normal" unemployment. Perhaps it's valid for reporters Jeannine Aversa and Christopher Rugaber to refer to…

At the Associated Press, Kelli Kennedy's Thursday report on fraud and abuse in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which is well done in several aspects, nonetheless significantly understated its losses.The AP dispatch deals with a now-released Government Accountability Office report on the results of investigations in nine states. Here are the first four paragraphs of…

You have to hand it to Dylan Ratigan.The MSNBC bloviator melded immigration reform, the military industrial complex, and congressional gridlock into a scatter-brained diatribe at the top of his eponymous program on Thursday.In the wake of President Barack Obama's speech on immigration reform earlier in the day, Ratigan railed against "Arizona's latest anti-immigration law" and praised Obama for "…

In covering Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings, CNN and MSNBC have repeatedly lauded the Supreme Court nominee for her "flashes of humor" and "disarming ease."In tune with the reverberations of the network morning shows' echo chamber, correspondents like CNN's Dana Bash and anchors like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Tuesday praised Kagan for her ability to inject humor into otherwise "hollow and…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews framed Sen. Jeff Sessions' criticism of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as a "brutal assault," during MSNBC's live coverage of the Senate hearing Monday afternoon."It's a brutal assault on this nomination," Matthews complained about the Alabama Republican's remarks.Matthews also seemed to cast Sessions as an unsophisticated country bumpkin challenging Kagan's prestigious…