Double Standards

2016 GOP presidential candidate and former Texas Governor Rick Perry is fighting a legal battle against an out-of-control Lone Star State county. That county's prosecutor has sued Perry, claiming that a) he committed an illegal act of "coercion" by threatening to veto legislation funding a "public integrity" office headed by Travis County's Rosemary Lehmberg, who was convicted of drunk driving in…

Veteran journalist John Harwood, according to his Twitter home page, covers "Washington and national politics for CNBC and the New York Times." Saturday morning, despite all of his experience, Harwood tweeted a question (HT Twitchy) so naive that a freshman journalism student would have been embarrassed to ask it:

For the second night in a row, MSNBC host Chris Matthews ignored the new Quinnipiac University poll showing Hillary Clinton trailing in key swing states to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as well as Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The press's favorite abortion questions usually have nothing to do with the 700,000-plus terminations of preborn babies' lives which take place each year in the U.S. (Note: The real figure is likely quite higher, because reporting is voluntary.) Especially when the person interviewed is a Republican or conservative, abortion questions focus heavily on the fewer than 1% of all abortions which are…

Arianna Huffington is no pachyderm, politically speaking, but like the elephant, she apparently never forgets--or forgives.  Three years ago, Donald Trump called Huffington "unattractive both inside and out."  Arianna has now returned the favor, relegating HuffPo's coverage of Trump to its entertainment section. On today's Morning Joe, HuffPo's Sam Stein was put in the unenviable position of…

In June, Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley unveiled a "climate change plan." The press loved it. Glowing articles appeared in many place, including the Washington Post, USA Today, The Hill and the Huffington Post, whose Kate Sheppard wrote that the former Maryland Governor had "Just Set An Extremely High Bar ... For 2016 Democratic Contenders." Well, if they're so wired into…

The National Association of Business Economics released its quarterly survey of its members' take on the state of the current and future economy today. Given that the survey only had 112 responses, it's probably not a good idea to generalize too much about its results. That didn't stop The Hill from headlining Vicki Needham's writeup by far too optimistically declaring that "Business leaders…

In Phoenix this weekend, "Black Lives Matter" disruptors crashed the "Netroots" convention, an event the Associated Press described as a gathering of "some of the party's most influential liberal activists." On ABC's This Week yesterday Bill Kristol had the temerity to mention some of the details of the chaos. Show host Martha Raddatz changed the subject faster than you can say "deeply divided…

On Friday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest held his first press briefing after the massacre of then-four, now-five Americans "at a military recruiting office and a Navy-Marine operations center a few miles apart" in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A mere three minutes into that briefing, thanks to the Associated Press's Darlene Superville, he was already on another topic: President Obama's…

Nicholas Confessore and Maggie Haberman at the New York Times studiously avoided talking about Hillary Clinton's campaign spending in their front-page print edition story Thursday ("Hillary Clinton Lags in Engaging Grass-Roots Donors"). Mrs. Clinton hauled in $48.7 million, but she spent a stunning $18.7 million. As seen in a table accompanying the Times story, that's more than triple that of…

Journalists and lefitsts (but I repeat myself) are hopping mad. They're not mad at President Obama for failing to make freeing American hostages held by Iran an issue in negotiations with that nation. Instead, they're furious at Major Garrett of CBS News for daring to ask Dear Leader a question about it, even though in the process Garrett got a clearly irritated Obama to make news by admitting,…

In an extraordinarily and inappropriately indulgent interview with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif yesterday, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell rolled her eyes as she mentioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's position that the "deal" between Iran and an alliance led by the U.S. is a "mistake of historic proportions." Immediately after doing so, she refocused her attention on Zarif, smiled…

On Monday night, the major broadcast networks were out in full force to go after Republican Governor Scott Walker (Wisc.) during 2016 presidential announcement for his stance on illegal immigration, “no foreign policy experience,” and comments about union protesters along with an urging by ABC’s David Muir to criticize fellow presidential candidate Donald Trump. Muir scored an interview with…