Conservatives & Republicans

During a live interview with Carly Fiorina on Wednesday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell fretted over the Republican presidential candidate’s attacks on Hillary Clinton: “She's had a lifetime, though, in public service. Going back to before she was first lady in Arkansas. She can argue that she's got a record on women's issues, from the Beijing Women's Conference to all of her work with the Children's…

The Associated Press and Stephen Braun did all they could to cover for the Clintons yesterday. First, the wire service attached the most boring headline imaginable to Braun's story about Bill Clinton's shell company shenanigans: "Bill Clinton company shows complexity of family finances." The message to subscribers, particularly the broadcast networks: "This is boring and time-consuming. Don't…

TBS host Conan O'Brien took a new comedic shot at Hillary Clinton in a Wednesday post on Twitter – specifically, six-figure speaking fees that the former first lady charges; and, along with her husband's speaking engagements, has netted the couple $30 million in 16 months. O'Brien wrote, "I'd love to have @HillaryClinton as a guest on the show, but I can't afford her speaking fee."

Wednesday's New Day shut out social conservatives from a panel discussion on Senator Marco Rubio's Tuesday remark that "if you do not support same-sex marriage, you're labeled a homophobe and a hater," and that "the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity – the Catechism of the Catholic Church –  is hate speech." Instead, the CNN morning show brought on a Republican…

Tuesday’s New York Times piece on how the problematic phrase “established by the state” got into and stayed in the Affordable Care Act provoked a great many blasts from lefty bloggers at the plaintiffs’ case in King v. Burwell. Two especially heated posts came from MSNBC’s Steve Benen and Esquire’s Charles Pierce. Benen, a producer for The Rachel Maddow Show and the primary writer for the show’s…

In an effort to preemptively denounce a Supreme Court ruling against ObamaCare, on Monday, the Associated Press warned of “ugly potential fallout” if health insurance subsidies in the law were struck down. The article began by fretting: “A Supreme Court ruling due in a few weeks could wipe out health insurance for millions of people covered by President Barack Obama's health care law.”

Today at Arlington Cemetery, President Obama said — not kidding — "For many of us, this Memorial Day is especially meaningful; it is the first since our war in Afghanistan came to an end." He immediately added: "Today is the first Memorial Day in 14 years that the United States is not engaged in a major ground war." At the White House's twitter account, one finds the first of those two sentences…

In the early 1990s, politicians floated the term “peace dividend” regarding a hoped-for post-Cold War reduction in the U.S. defense budget, and Pentagon spending indeed fell somewhat in the mid- and late ‘90s. Sean McElwee, a research associate at the lefty think tank Demos, argues that America now needs a post-9/11, post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq peace dividend which would allow greatly increased…

Today’s conservative legislators may not be as dumb as a box of rocks or so dumb it takes them an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes (HT: Rodney Dangerfield) but Daily Kos writer Hunter is willing to claim that they’re “the dumbest we've ever had. You have to credit the tea party Republicans for that one—they know what they want, and by golly if it can ooze its way into a suit and tie they'll…

Not the endorsement someone heading into the Republican primaries would normally want, but it's the one Rand Paul got.  On today's This Week [hosted by Jonathan Karl in the absence of Stephanopoulos], far-left Rep. Keith Ellison declared that on a variety of issues he is "proud to stand" with Rand Paul. Roll the video and watch Bill Kristol look on beningly as Ellison praises Paul.  Let's read…

Jason Horowitz at the New York Times thinks that Hillary Clinton shouldn't bother dealing with the press. In describing Hillary Clinton's campaign effort in Iowa, Horowitz wondered how, in "a carnival atmosphere," Hillary Clinton "gains politically from playing the freak" by deigning to take questions from the press, thus clearly suggesting that she would be better off if she didn't bother, and…

“The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.” That proverb sums up Vox editor-in-chief Ezra Klein’s Friday analysis of the policy and politics of Obamacare. In this metaphor, the dogs are ideologues on both sides who, heedless of evidence, have been barking (and snarling and growling) at each other about the Affordable Care Act. As Klein noted, “Social scientists have [determined that] the more…

Friday's New Day on CNN played up that the Hillary Clinton e-mails revealed by the New York Times "dispute the narrative that has been around for two years that she was trying to cover something up" about the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, as Alisyn Camerota put it. The CNN anchor also wondered, "Isn't this the opposite of what the GOP has been saying about her – that she...tried to keep it…

When it comes to taking questions from representatives of the legacy media, Hillary Clinton has been making herself rather scarce, and Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas thinks that’s just peachy. “The day when the political media was instrumental in getting a candidate's message out is over,” wrote Kos in a Thursday post. “Candidates now have myriad vehicles to communicate their…