Military

Hillary Clinton: bravest person in America? You betcha! But don't take my word for it. Here's John Podesta, Chair of Hillary for America, in an email sent out this morning: "If anyone else faced the constant barrage of insults and attacks that Hillary endures everyday, they would quickly and happily squirrel away in a cabin hidden somewhere in the Rockies. Not Hillary. Her default setting is…

Friday's NBC Nightly News failed to cover how the Defense Department revealed earlier in the day that they found an "email chain that Hillary Clinton did not give to the State Department, as a Reuters report put it. Mrs. Clinton exchanged the e-mails with then-General David Petraeus between January and February of 2009.  Anchor Lester Holt did air a 16-second news brief on the other "big news…

Sunday's New York Times story by Joseph Goldstein appearing on Page A1 above the fold in Monday's print edition contains absolutely appalling news. Goldstein's report — originally headlined and appearing in print as "U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Afghan Allies' Abuse of Boys", and currently carried online as "U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies" — asserts that "…

A common allegation against Ronald Reagan during his White House years was that he confused movies with the real world. According to Chauncey DeVega, the current Republican presidential candidates do somewhat the same thing, and have added video games and a bit of Comic-Con to the mix. “Wednesday night’s CNN debate showed the American people an alternate reality where Chuck Norris movies are the…

Lefty pundit Amanda Marcotte grants that so-called political theater usually dovetails with the beliefs of the politicians and activists who perform it. Among the exceptions: some Republicans’ insincere, “comically overwrought meltdowns” over the Iran nuclear deal. Those histrionics, Marcotte declared in a Wednesday Talking Points Memo column, are meant “to stir up irrational fears to be harped…

To Steve Benen, Obamacare is a high-quality dress shirt that Republicans treat like a greasy rag. Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, wrote in a Friday post on the TRMS blog that even though “every GOP prediction about the Affordable Care Act has been discredited,” conservatives keep trying to use it to tarnish other measures they oppose, including the Iran nuclear deal. “If…

"Never forget"? Sometimes one wonders if they even remember — or want to. Both the New York and National versions of the New York Times print edition contain no mention of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks 14 years ago in New York and Washington which brought down the World Trade Center buildings, seriously damaged the Pentagon, and killed almost 3,000 people in four different locations:…

On Thursday, the Associated Press published the equivalent of press release promoting a pro-Muslim billboard campaign orchestrated by the Islamic Circle of North America. The writeup's author, Rasha Madkour, failed to get any kind of skeptical comment from anyone about the nature of the campaign, and utterly failed to tell readers anything about the Islamic Circle's or its spokesperson's past (…

During an appearance on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on Tuesday night, CNN’s Paul Begala blasted Vice President Dick Cheney for blaming President Obama for the rise of ISIS. The Democratic strategist argued that Cheney’s comments were “a portrait of a political sociopath...I actually went and looked up on the Mayo Clinic website the definition of that disorder and it fits Mr. Cheney to a T,…

How bad is it getting for Hillary when the best her defenders can come up with is Harold Ford Jr.'s formulation: okay, so the words most associated with her are "liar," "dishonest" and "untrustworthy" but, hey!—she's not "unpatriotic." On today's Morning Joe, after Ford resorted on Hillary's behalf to the last refuge of scoundrels, Joe Scarborough hit him with a killer question: does Ford think…

The establishment press is all over revelations by Fox News Friday morning that the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails involves a "section of the Espionage Act is known as 18 US Code 793," and that "the focus includes a provision of the law pertaining to 'gathering, transmitting or losing defense information,'" according to "an intelligence source." ... Just kidding. The only reaction I'…

A story that the networks would have almost assuredly covered if George W. Bush was still President, the major broadcast networks failed to cover on Wednesday a front-page New York Times report that a Pentagon inspector general is investigating the possibility that intelligence assessments on the U.S. fight against ISIS may have be altered to reflect a better picture than reality allowed.

Over at the Associated Press this afternoon (later updated), Ken Dilanian, with the help of four other reporters, prepared a lengthy dispatch attempting to defend 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's email and private-server practices. Boiled down to its essence: Boiled down to its essence: "[D]iplomats routinely sent secret material on unsecured email during the past two…

On Tuesday, Hussein Sheikholeslam, a senior foreign affairs adviser to the Iranian parliament claimed that Israel “should be annihilated.” The condemnation came after the United Kingdom reopened their shuttered embassy in Tehran on Monday. British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond lauded the move by the British government, citing the current Iranian administration's “more nuanced” attitude toward…