Political Scandals

On May 27, Nicholas Confessore and Michael Luo at the New York Times filed a ridiculously incoherent, ignorant and biased report on Tea Party groups' attempts to have their organizations approved for tax-exempt status. The story's window title: "Non-Profit Applcants Chafing at IRS Tested Political Limits." The actual print edition title (Page A1, of course): "Groups Targeted by I.R.S. Tested…

In what some have described as a "bombshell" statement, ABC News Political analyst Trey Hardin said something on Monday morning any reporter with any kind of meaningful inside connections in Washington should have known, but apparently wouldn't dare say or write: "I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS…

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on CNN’s State of the Union called White House press secretary Jay Carney a “paid liar.” On Fox News’s Special Report Monday, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer took issue with Issa saying, “I’ve argued here for months that Carney is majorly underpaid, and I think that really is the problem” (video follows with…

At the end of an interview with New York Senator Chuck Schumer on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, moderator David Gregory teed up the Democrat to lecture Republicans on being too focused on the scandals plaguing the Obama administration: "Do you have a warning for Republicans who want to make the IRS and personal issues affecting the President the main theme of 2014?" [Listen to the audio or watch…

With Friday's admission by liberal activist Curtis Morrison for having bugged Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) office in April, there are some liberal media members that owe the Senator an apology. One is certainly Howard Fineman, the editorial director of the Huffington Post, who on April 10 wrote the following (emphasis added):

In an interview with Arizona Senator John McCain on Monday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie attempted to dismiss growing evidence that the IRS scandal rocking the Obama administration went as far as Washington D.C.: "Darrell Issa...says that his gut tells him this goes beyond the Cincinnati office....He released excerpts of some e-mails that might support that theory, they're not…

Is the IRS scandal just not that big a deal in New York City? Perhaps for out-of-touch journos like liberal Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and The New Yorker editor David Remnick, who downplayed the controversy on Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS. Kristof predictably spun the scandals into a "so what?" narrative for the White House: "I think it's true that the White House has often been tone-…

A classic case of MSM jujitsu.  Yesterday, Darrell Issa called Jay Carney a "paid liar."  So did Morning Joe today dig down to see if Issa was right?  Of course not.  Instead, its focus was on Issa--how he is "overreaching," "overplaying," etc. H/t NB reader Wayne T. The quintessential statement came from Mika Brzezinski, who actually said that Issa's accusation "makes us all want to walk…

The role of the White House press secretary is to disseminate information to the media, and that should be an especially important function when the president and his administration are plagued by several scandals. However, Jay Carney has only held six press conferences in the past three weeks, far fewer than usual. In addition, the press secretary only held two brief “gaggles” during…

This has to be an imaginary story, right? Most Democrats and others on the left continue to insist that voter fraud is not a problem, even in the face of examples like Minnesota U.S. Senator Al Franken, whose 312-vote "victory" margin in 2008 may have entirely consisted (and then some) of illegal votes by felons in just one county. More recently, it seems that the claim is under revision. A…

Arianna Huffington got a much-needed education about 501(c)(4)s Sunday. When she claimed during an ABC This Week discussion about the Internal Revenue Service scandal that Crossroads GPS shouldn't have qualified because "it was all about politics," former George W. Bush senior advisor Karl Rove struck back (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Former George W. Bush senior advisor Karl Rove and former Barack Obama senior advisor David Plouffe got into quite a heated debate on ABC’s This Week Sunday. When Plouffe claimed the ongoing Internal Revenue Service scandal wasn’t political, Rove pushed back twice saying “Baloney.”

Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, made a harsh statement about White House press secretary Jay Carney Sunday. Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Issa, before pointing to a picture of Carney, referred to him as the White House’s “paid liar” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Stop the presses! Stop the presses! It appears that even HBO’s Bill Maher is starting to question Barack Obama’s abilities as president, for on Friday’s Real Time, the host said, “He doesn't even know what the IRS and the Justice Department are doing” (video follows with transcript and commentary):