Foreign Policy

During a Tuesday press conference at the White House, CBS's Bill Plante channeled his colleague Bob Schieffer's 2009 "open sore" pronouncement about Guantanamo Bay as he asked President Obama about an ongoing hunger strike among many of the detainees there. Plante hinted at sympathy for the prisoners as he wondered, "Is it any surprise, really, that they would prefer death rather than – have no…

President Barack Obama will take to the podium in the White House press briefing room at 10:30 a.m. Eastern for a press conference. The occasion: today is the 100th day of his second term in office. We at NewsBusters will be watching and I'll be live-blogging the questions from reporters. Pardon my inaccuracies as I'll be transcribing on the fly. In the comments section, leave some question…

Carl Bernstein claimed that because he's Jewish, he could accuse "Jewish" neo-cons of talking George W. Bush into starting an "insane" war against Iraq.  Joe Scarborough wasn't so sure. H/t NB reader Paul J. Jewish neo-cons?  The single most salient statement from the pre-war period was that by CIA Director George Tenet, who personally told President Bush that Saddam Hussein's possession of…

With the revelation that Syrian President Bashir al-Assad has used chemical weapons on his people, folks on both sides of the aisle are wondering if Barack Obama will keep his word that this is the red line that if crossed would require American action. On Fox News's Special Report, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said Thursday, "What’s at stake here is whether anything that this…

Both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Daily News, the latter crediting wire service assistance, have reported that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the now deceased older brother accused of committing the Boston Marathon bombings, was thrown out of a service at the Islamic Society of Boston, the Cambridge mosque he attended, about three months ago. I wonder if anyone in the media will notice the terror…

Recently the Associated Press removed "illegal immigrant" from its style manual while revising its guidelines for using "Islamist," saying it shouldn't be used “as a synonym for Islamic fighters, militants, extremists or radicals, who may or may not be Islamists."  Well, it seems the AP is also a little gun shy with using the term "terrorist" or "terrorism" to describe deadly attacks by radical…

Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean clearly doesn't like President Obama's budget. Moments ago he tweeted his dismay actually saying, "If this is true I may have to become an independant [sic]":

Bill Maher has said a lot of REALLY dumb things throughout his career, but this howler uttered with a straight face on HBO's Real Time Friday might possibly be his stupidest. "Do you know who the role model for every president should be? Jimmy Carter" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

You may not be familiar with Foreign Policy magazine or its CEO and editor-at-large, but on Thursday, David Rothkopf published an op-ed at Philly.com with the following headline: Mitch McConnell's No Kim Jong Un, But He's More Dangerous to America

Coverage of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's death and life was relegated to below the fold at USA Today this morning (pictured here; the paper stopped posting front-page pics two years ago). Three items above the fold (excluding left-side teases to coverage of other stories) were considered more important that the Iron Lady's passing: "Remembering Annette Funicello"; a "Duplicate…

Your daily dose of inadvertent humor comes from an article by Annie Lowrey at the New York Times on Sunday evening ("Lew to Press for European Policy Changes"; also in today's print edition). In "covering" (from Washington?) Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's four-day European trip for meetings with EU leaders encouraging them to pursue "growth" policies -- which in Keynesians' fevered minds…

As the media predictably gush and fawn over the thought of Hillary Clinton as president, there's something extremely obvious they've been missing. Rather surprisingly, Roger Simon, the perilously liberal chief political columnist at Politico, asked the $64 million question on CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday, "How good a job did she really do as Secretary of State?" (video follows with…

CBS again paid homage to Caroline Kennedy on Tuesday's CBS This Morning as they hyped her possible nomination to be the next ambassador of Japan. During her report, Jan Crawford featured liberal historian Robert Dallek, who gushed over the apparent worldwide reputation of the presidential daughter's family: "The Kennedys, generally, have an extraordinary, continuing hold on the public's…

Warning: Please remove all flammables, fluids, and food from proximity to your computer as the following statement by Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on PBS's McLaughlin Group Friday could result in a potentially hazardous fit of laughter. "The concern within the [Obama] administration [regarding cyber warfare] is intense, and it reminds me of the way the Clinton administration was focused on al…