Judiciary

Got to be good looking'cause he's so hard to seeCome together right nowOver me—The Beatles, "Come Together" (1969) [YouTube]Bob Herbert just doesn't get it.  As Noel Sheppard has noted, in his NYT column today Herbert accuses Barack Obama of "lurching right when it suits him, and . . . zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash." The NY Times…

Here's something you don't see every day: a major American newspaper admonishing the Supreme Court for ruling against the death penalty.Yet, that's not even close to the oddest aspect of Saturday's editorial by the Washington Post, for the paper agreed with the Court's 5-4 decision to ban the death penalty for those convicted of child rape, but felt compelled to expose an error in how the…

One of the more astounding post-9/11 liberal media affectations has been the extraordinary concern press members have for how terrorists looking to kill innocent Americans are treated at detention centers. A fine example of this occurred on Thursday's "Hannity & Colmes" when the left-leaning part of Fox News's successful duo debated former White House adviser Karl Rove about the recent…

The Chicago Tribune has lurched to the left of Sen. Barack Obama, at least on gun rights, marking the latest point in its evolution from a historically moderate-to-conservative paper to a reliably left-wing broadsheet.That's how MRC Director of Media Analysis characterized the Trib's decision to issue an editorial last Friday calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment. The editorial board's…

As a deeply divided Supreme Court issued 5-4 rulings the past few weeks bouncing from liberal to conservative interpretations of the law, something was woefully missing from the coverage: journalists apologizing to the nation for regularly insinuating that the Court's December 2000 decision concerning Bush v. Gore was politically based.After all, for seven and a half years, a regular media meme…

With more fallout from the Supreme Court's latest 2nd Amendment ruling, the Chicago Sun-Times has published an op ed wagging a finger at the Supremes saying that the Heller decision will be a "tax on Chicago citizens," and that it is a tax to be "paid in blood and money." The Times scolds the Court with all sorts of dire warnings and worries that blood will flow in the city but, as with D.C.,…

Michael Smerconish is thinking of voting for Obama.  The Philly talk radio host let it be known while subbing for Dan Abrams on tonight's "Verdict" on MSNBC.  He actually did so, chatting with Ron Reagan, while criticizing Obama's flip-flops.  But the bottom line is the bottom line. SMERCONISH: I want to think big picture, and I want to do so by showing you a piece of that which was published in…

The ink was hardly dry on the June 26 ruling overturning Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban when Newsweek started the hand-wringing about how the city's political establishment would react.Rather than profiling D.C. resident Dick Heller, the victor in the lawsuit, or officials from gun rights groups on their next move in challenging other gun bans with yesterday's precedent, Newsweek sought to press…

It didn't take long for the Washington Post to weigh in on the wrong side of the Second Amendment issue, did it? The Post's Colbert I. King could not contain the disgust he feels for at least one part of the Constitution more in his response to the Supreme Court's Second Amendment ruling today. He flipped his top and went so far off the deep end that he seemed to imagine that Justice Scalia just…

It should prove interesting to see how many other reporters pick up on this.Barack Obama is scooting to the right on gun rights, notes ABC's Jake Tapper, in a June 26 blog post at his Political Punch blog.The ABC correspondent picked up on an exchange between the Illinois senator and a reporter from Pennsylvania, the land of bitter gun-clingers:Craig Layne, a reporter from WJET-TV in Erie, Penn…

In anticipation of the Supreme Court’s decision on the constitutionality of DC handgun ban on Thursday, CNN’s "Newsroom" program ran a report on both the sides of the gun case, in which the pro-gun control advocate was given twice the amount of air time as the gun rights advocate. The report, by CNN justice correspondent Kelli Arena, ran twice within 20 minutes; first, at the top of the 10 am…

By now, you have all heard of Wednesday's Supreme Court decision prohibiting the death penalty in cases of child rape. Having read several articles, the mainstream media's take on the case was mostly informational and understated. And that was to be expected. While the ruling could be considered a victory for civil libertarians, even the press understands that you can't do a victory dance when…