Liberals & Democrats

There’s been a lot of talk in the past few days about “presidential temperament,” and where that quality is concerned, Brian Beutler firmly believes that President Obama has the right stuff. In a Friday piece, Beutler lauded Obama’s "unflappable" performance at CNN’s military-themed presidential town hall Wednesday at Fort Lee in Virginia. By contrast, Beutler opined, Donald Trump "lost his…

On Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen suggested in a videoconference call, as translated into plain English by the Wall Street Journal, that "there could be benefits to allowing the central bank to buy stocks as a way to boost the economy in a downturn."

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment, the law that bans federal funding of abortion. Anyone who values life should toast Rep. Henry Hyde today: he was one of the most brilliant and courageous pro-life leaders in American history. Predictably, the pro-abortion industry—Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Feminist Majority, NOW—are all condemning him today. Less predictable, perhaps, is…

Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at NYU, is one of America’s best-known left-wing media critics. Last weekend on his PressThink site, he delved into “the precepts and maxims I have used to understand press behavior during this long and startling campaign season.” Rosen’s main point is that even though Donald Trump “is not a normal candidate and can’t be covered like one,” generally the media…

Official crime data released by the FBI earlier this week reveal that nearly 11 percent more Americans were murdered in the U.S. in 2015 than in 2014. Leon Neyfakh at Slate.com is only secondarily interested in what the just-released stats say about the direction of public safety in the nation. What's far more important to him is making sure his readers know that "the FBI’s numbers do not prove…

Amidst the media’s wall-to-wall coverage on Friday morning of Donald Trump’s late-night tweetstorm about former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, MSNBC host Tamron Hall bemoaned the idea that this is a collective degrading of political decorum because it’s a “substantive” because it concerns whether Trump can win over women voters.

On Friday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer excitedly proclaimed: “Anticipation already running high for tomorrow’s season premiere of Saturday Night Live when the show announced that Alec Baldwin will be playing Donald Trump.” Fellow co-host Savannah Guthrie chimed in: “That put the anticipation into the stratosphere.” She then wondered: “We think there will be laughs, but will it actually have an…

Sleazy and misogynistic men have roamed the halls of the Capitol Building and White House for years. However, the media tends to disproportionately target those on the political right. 

NBC’s The Good Place aired the fourth episode of its first season tonight titled, “Jason Mendoza,” demonstrating the exact image most of society has about Heaven: your spot must be earned through good works.

Wednesday evening, Seattle TV station KING 5 erroneously broke what it thought was troubling news about Arcan Cetin, who has been arrested and charged with the murder of five people at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington last Friday. The station reported that Cetin is not a U.S. citizen, but is instead "considered a permanent resident or green card holder," and that despite this status,…

After stumping for Hillary Clinton with some of his fellow cast members from the former NBC show The West Wing, actor Bradley Whitford joined the Thursday edition of MSNBC’s Hardball to assure viewers that Hillary Clinton’s “motivation for her entire professional life has been to speak out for children, for women's rights, civil rights, rights for people in all communities.”

While recapping Monday’s presidential debate and trying to fact-check Donald Trump, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow seemed not to have all her ducks in a row on Tuesday when it came to slamming Trump for supposedly lying about Bill Clinton signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) when she argued it was actually George H.W. Bush.

Despite coverage on all three networks of Congress overriding President Obama’s veto of legislation to allow 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, only Thursday’s CBS This Morning mentioned the fact that Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate Tim Kaine didn’t bother to show up for the vote. NBC and ABC both avoided the Virginia Senator’s absence.

In a narrow sense, the item discussed here really shouldn't be newsworthy, because it's based on history which has for all practical purposes long been settled. But now that it's being treated as news, let's look into the can of worms at least two media outlets have chosen to open, perhaps without fully grasping the consequences of their doing so. Leada Gore, an AL.com reporter who says she's "…