Conservatives & Republicans

The pastor who preached the Easter sermon that Barack Obama heard this past Sunday is not another Jeremiah Wright, Time's Amy Sullivan insists in an April 29 blog "Swampland" blog post entitled "Conservatives Go After Another Obama Pastor." Sullivan was responding to the complaints of conservative talkers Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who highlighted some controversial remarks Smith made to…

NPR's Ari Shapiro leaned towards supporters of the Obama administration's new "voluntary principles" to limit junk food ads to kids on Thursday's All Things Considered. Shapiro played three sound bites from backers, versus only one from a critic who blasted the proposal: "If the federal government decided to issue voluntary guidelines about what newsmen should say to avoid inflaming the public…

On Wednesday's All Things Considered, NPR's David Folkenflik erroneously claimed that NBC's Meredith Vieira "notably failed to contradict Donald Trump or others casting doubt on where Mr. Obama was born. Vieira...acknowledged those remarks passively." In reality, the Today show challenged the billionaire about the birth certificate issue, twice asking, "Do you believe he's [Obama's] lying?" […

In a report designed to separate fact from fiction on Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, White House correspondent Savannah Guthrie decided to blur fantasy and reality as she compared President Obama's press conference announcing the release of his birth certificate to a moment from the 1995 movie, "The American President." [Audio available here] After a clip was played of Obama declaring: "We…

Gosh, after Republican Governors Scott Walker and John Kasich succeeded in championing legislation curtailing many collective bargaining rights of unionized state and municipal employees in Wisconsin and Ohio, respectively, the establishment press had the meme all set. The GOP, conservatives, and Tea Partiers are enemies of labor and the middle class, while Democrats, liberals, and progressives…

Last weekend, David Ignatius in his Washington Post column made a vital contribution to the debt and deficit debate: "Take the deficit pain now. It's a truth of economics and life that if you have bad news coming, take the hit early and get it behind you. You can't start building until the debris is out of the way." Ignatius offers various examples from history (e.g., Fed Chairman Paul Volker…

CBS's Early Show on Wednesday played up how opponents of Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan shouted down GOP representatives at recent town hall meetings, but downplayed them as "less than friendly," and marveled at their apparently "poignant" questions. The network also omitted how liberal groups targeted these meetings, and trumpeted the "nasty national shouting match" at health care town hall…

One more sign the Age of Civility is over: an MSNBC host urging Dems to be more "vicious" toward Republicans. Oh, and to engage in more "name-calling." Apparently writing off any career ambitions of succeeding to the Miss Manners slot, Cenk Uygur issued his recommendations last night in the course of disagreeing with a Dem congressman who was insufficiently coarse for Cenk's taste. View…

NPR's Renee Montagne apparently didn't take an alleged death threat seriously, as she practically chuckled during a report on Friday's Morning Edition about anti-Koch brothers protesters mistakenly calling a Des Moines, Iowa business named Koch Brothers office supplies. Substitute co-host Mary Louise Kelly, noted that "Charles and David Koch are the billionaire owners of a giant industrial…

WMAL radio host -- and friend of NewsBusters -- Chris Plante gave a shout-out on his program this morning to our parent company the Media Research Center and our publisher, Brent Bozell. The topic: the media's bias and double standards on gas price reporting.

In his "Rewrite" segment last night, MSNBC's "Last Word" host Lawrence O'Donnell pounded out a 9-minute-long sermonette against conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. O'Donnell slammed Limbaugh as biblically illiterate, reacting to a monologue from his April 25 program in which Limbaugh complained about liberals co-opting Jesus Christ for political purposes in the federal budget debate,…

Don't be fooled by The Donald. Take it from one who knows: I'm a South Jersey gal who was raised on the outskirts of Atlantic City in the looming shadow of Trump's towers. All through my childhood, casino developers and government bureaucrats joined hands, raised taxes and made dazzling promises of urban renewal. Then we wised up to the eminent-domain thievery championed by our hometown faux…

On Thursday's All Things Considered, NPR's Robert Siegel used violent imagery to underline the supposed extreme nature of Arizona's SB 1070 law targeting illegal immigration: "It has been of one year since the state legislature dropped a bomb into the national debate over immigration." Siegel led the introduction for correspondent Ted Robbins's report on the controversial law with his…

Are you a Christian who also is supportive of Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan? Then you'd best repent of your sin and be renew your mind with the social gospel. That's the pronouncement of liberal theologian Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite in an April 18 post at the Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" website. Brooks Thistlethwaite -- who previously hit Tea Party conservatives as tribalistic --…