Conservatives & Republicans

The Week’s Paul Waldman agrees with conservatives that the undercover Planned Parenthood videos raise a profound moral issue, but disagrees sharply with them over what that issue is. In a Friday post, Waldman asserted that “this controversy simply has nothing to do with fetal tissue” and claimed that it’s really about the right’s disgust with women’s sexual “autonomy.” “Republicans have always…

All you need to know about the Associated Press's interest in accurately reporting current developments in the investigations into 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's private email server is this: A search at its national site on "Hillary crime" (not in quotes) returns nothing. Ken Thomas's coverage of the former Secretary of State's "forceful defense" last night in "a…

How about "angry and lame?"  After playing a clip of Hillary in Iowa yesterday in which she addressed the email scandal and took a shot at Donald Trump, MSNBC's Richard Wolffe, sitting in for Steve Kornacki, called her comments "feisty and funny." Have a look and judge for yourself. There's a difference between feisty and flat-out angry. As for funny, Rodney Dangerfield can rest in peace.…

Appearing as a guest on Tuesday's PoliticsNation, MSNBC contributor Jonathan Alter -- formerly of Newsweek -- rejoiced over Republicans being uneasy over Donald Trump's presidential campaign as he asserted that GOPers "have created Trumpenstein," "their own Frankenstein monster," adding that they are getting "their just deserts as a political party." After host Al Sharpton noted that they were…

It "seems" that a bit of doubt seeped into an economy-related Associated Press report today. An hour later, it was gone. An early report by Josh Boak with a 10:22 a.m. time stamp found at a subscribing outlet's site described job growth in the past 12 months as "seemingly robust." An hour later, in an expansion of that early report primarily covering today's government release on July retail…

On her MSNBC show on Wednesday, host Andrea Mitchell brought on Heather McGhee, president of the left-wing group Demos, to “sort all this out” when came to the debate over student loan debt in the 2016 race: “...student debt 101. The presidential candidates are put to the test on what to do about the rising cost of college.”

There’s going to be a Top Gun sequel, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is coming back, and Bloom County has already returned. Still, suggests Esquire's Pierce, when it comes to things that have the 1980s written all over them, these days Donald Trump is the king of the mountain. In a Tuesday post, Pierce contended that Trump “was one of the purest products of the Age of Reagan, which was…

Interviewing former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean on Thursday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer wondered if Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal would have a lasting impact on the 2016 campaign: “You don't have to be a Republican operative to find trouble in the headlines surrounding Hillary Clinton. Any time you put the words ‘Hillary Clinton, e-mail, top secret, and FBI’ in the same…

Did Rush Limbaugh force Fox News, in the wake of the Donald Trump/Megyn Kelly dust-up, to back down and welcome Trump back on its network?  That's what New York Times reporter Nick Confessore suggested on today's Morning Joe. Asked by Mika Brzezinski who was the most powerful person in the media today, Confessore responded: "I think Fox or Rush Limbaugh [whose last name Confessore pronounced "…

On the August 10 edition of National Public Radio (NPR) Boston affiliate WBUR's Here & Now program, host Robin Young made reference to pro-life Republicans as "anti-choice." The reference, which violates NPR's own style manual, came in the midst of a discussion with Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer about Republican presidential candidates' plans to roll back various policy…

My, the news about Barvetta Singletary's domestic violence arrest involving gunfire has been kept mighty quiet. Press reports have typically opened by describing Ms. Singletary as "a White House staffer." Several paragraphs later, readers learn that she is — or perhaps "was," as she has for now "has been placed on temporary unpaid leave and is banned from White House grounds" — the "special…

On MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on Tuesday, The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty saw a big advantage for Hillary Clinton in the midst of the Republican primary campaign: “But the fact is this complete chaos on the Republican side is presenting a lot of opportunities for Hillary Clinton, not only to, again, paint them as extremists, but also to actually put some policy points on the board, which…

Two wire service dispatches covering the government's June Wholesale Sales and Inventories release either glossed over or completely ignored what others are saying about the report's impact on near-term economic growth. The final sentence of an unbylined Reuters report vaguely referred to future impact by indicating that current inventory balances, which are bloated by historical standards, "…