Conservatives & Republicans

Lefty pundit Amanda Marcotte grants that so-called political theater usually dovetails with the beliefs of the politicians and activists who perform it. Among the exceptions: some Republicans’ insincere, “comically overwrought meltdowns” over the Iran nuclear deal. Those histrionics, Marcotte declared in a Wednesday Talking Points Memo column, are meant “to stir up irrational fears to be harped…

Mika Brzezinski: fired up and ready to go . . . for Donald Trump? Not exactly. It isn't that Mika's jumping on the Make America Great Again express.  It's just that she wants "intellectual honesty" from her peers when it comes to admitting that Trump has gone from amusing sideshow who's sure to eventually crash to true frontrunner who is now likely to be the Republican nominiee. You might not…

Regarding the mainstream media’s superficial coverage of religion, is the sticking point excessive evenhandedness or simple ignorance? Two lefty bloggers differed Friday on that issue. First, Paul Waldman wrote on The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog that reporters don’t like asking the presidential candidates “about the specifics of their faith and how it might influence their day-to-day…

To Steve Benen, Obamacare is a high-quality dress shirt that Republicans treat like a greasy rag. Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, wrote in a Friday post on the TRMS blog that even though “every GOP prediction about the Affordable Care Act has been discredited,” conservatives keep trying to use it to tarnish other measures they oppose, including the Iran nuclear deal. “If…

ABC, CBS, and NBC's Friday evening newscasts all barely mentioned former Texas Governor Rick Perry suspending his second bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Altogether, ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News set aside 54 seconds to Perry's announcement. By contrast, the Big Three news programs devoted 6 minutes and 11 seconds to Vice President Joe Biden's…

During a segment on MSNBC’s The Last Word late Thursday, all three liberal panelists spouted off on the ability of the Soviet Union to follow treaties (in context of the Iran deal), comparing the Iran nuclear agreement to Richard Nixon’s China visit, and lamenting the “partisan...political climate” Republicans have caused the deal to be implemented under. 

While discussing the latest 2016 polling data on Thursday’s Anderson Cooper 360, CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger opined that a number of controversial comments made by GOP candidate Donald Trump is “manna from heaven” for Hillary Clinton and frees her from the obligation of answering questions about her e-mail scandal. 

NPR's Jennifer Ludden's liberal bias was clear on Wednesday's All Things Considered, as she covered a congressional hearing on abortion from earlier in the day. The House Judiciary Committee scheduled the hearing in the wake of the Center for Medical Progress's release of hidden camera videos on the sale of organs and tissues from abortion babies. Ludden pointed out how "Planned Parenthood denies…

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…

Donald Trump has been likened to (among others) Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George Wallace, Morton Downey Jr., and Nickelback, the band. “Nickelback” is also a football term, which brings us to yet another Trump comparison: Dave Zirin believes that the Washington Redskins franchise “is becoming the sports equivalent of the Donald Trump presidential run, a dead-ender operation with nothing to…

On Wednesday night, ABC was the lone network to omit from their coverage of the Iran deal rally that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei offered a new rant hours earlier in which he promised the country will not cooperate with the U.S. on any other issue beyond the deal in addition to predicting that Israel would not exist in 25 years.

A USA Today reporter assigned to cover Scott Walker signed a recall petition against the Republican in 2011. The American Mirror first reported the story and Gannett's defense of Madeleine Behr. The site quoted Joel Christopher, vice president of news for Gannett Wisconsin Media: "We indeed are aware that Madeleine signed the Gov. Scott Walker recall election petition in 2011 because Madeleine…