Military

Scatology has typically been out of bounds in mainstream-media political commentary. (Not in all political commentary, of course. For example, actor John Cusack once called former actor Ronald Reagan “a criminal who used the Constitution as toilet paper.”) Nonetheless, Michael Tomasky went there in a Wednesday column trashing Senate Republicans for refusing to consider any Supreme Court…

On Friday's Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, correspondent Randi Kaye filed a report recounting her discussions with mostly young evangelical Christians in South Carolina as she asserted that the group she spoke with think GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz is "against the teachings of Jesus" on the issues of "poverty, war, and how to treat strangers." Implying that Cruz is not "compassionate," she…

A famous T-shirt of the early 1990s featured Bart Simpson’s message that he was an underachiever “and proud of it, man!” Such shirts would be fitting garb for the many Republicans who squander their intellects for ideological reasons, implied NYU public-policy professor Mark Kleiman in a Wednesday Washington Monthly blog post. “I doubt that Republican office-holders or voters have, on average,…

Despite a completely gratuitous shower scene in the opening of NBC’s Chicago Med episode “Clarity,” the story includes a nice (and rare) touch for network television – a nod to a patriotic American proud of his service to his country despite his own personal struggles.

On Judge Jeanine Pirro's Saturday Fox News program, Judge Andrew Napolitano succinctly summarized the implications of the latest revelations concerning Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was the Obama administration's Secretary of State. One can't help but notice that almost no one else is making Napolitano's obviously valid points. If a Republican or conservative had done…

In trying to explain the current situation in Venezuela, the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien, in a post at the paper's Wonkblog, also inadvertently identified two reasons why authoritarian socialist tyrants like Huge Chavez and Nicolas Maduro are able to achieve and retain power. The formula is simple: When you first gain power, garner international and media goodwill by giving stuff away, like…

This afternoon, Catherine Herridge at Fox News reported that "the intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails 'too damaging' to national security to release under any circumstances." This eighth "smoking gun" — on top of the seven an Investor's Business Daily editorial identified last week — wasn't enough to move the Associated Press Bradley Klapper from the AP's default…

These people play the press and the courts like a fiddle. At 2 p.m. Friday — just in time for a slow-news weekend and the onset of what is supposed to be a serious blizzard in the Northeast — the State Department asked a federal court for an extension of time to February 29 to complete its interagency review and release of Hillary Clinton's private-server emails. But State didn't merely use the…

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's Anderson Cooper 360 and again on Thursday morning's At This Hour with Berman and Bolduan, liberal CNN political commentator Donna Brazile ranted against Sarah Palin's recent criticism of President Barack Obama as commander-in-chief, and called her a "liar" after the CNN commentator interpreted Palin's comments as blaming the President for her veteran son's…

On Wednesday's AC360, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin downplayed the latest development in Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal — the revelation that her private e-mail server "contained highly-classified intelligence from the most top secret of programs," as host Anderson Cooper reported. Toobin asserted that "it's a huge political problem," but added, "I don't think it's a big legal problem. I don…

The Dallas-Fort Worth area is, of course, part of the Bible Belt. Nonetheless, according to Christopher Hooks, another faith flourishes there: “It’s also a place that’s responsible in large part for the rise of the new civic religion built around the worship of the most lethal among us.” Hooks, an Austin-based journalist, was one of about 30,000 persons who attended last week’s world premiere of…

Wow! That was Mika Brzezinski's repeated reaction to Robert Gates' amazingly frank take on the presidential field. Appearing on today's Morning Joe, the former Defense Secretary shot down all contenders mentioned, dumped on two who have not yet entered the race, and retroactively knocked President Obama for always thinking he was the smartest guy in the room.  Here was Gates' rap on various…

In contrast to the other post-Democratic debate analyses on Sunday night, the guests assembled on the Fox News Channel (FNC) repeatedly ripped the three presidential candidates for failing to mention national security or foreign policy in the debates’s first question from NBC co-moderator Lester Holt on what three things they would do in their first 100 days in office.