War on Terrorism

Several times in the past, we've heard President Barack Obama, and occasionally his press secretary, tell America that the nation's commander-in-chief learned about certain events the same way many of the rest of us did: by seeing them on TV or reading newspaper accounts. A Republican or conservative president hauling out this excuse even once would face endless outrage and ridicule, respectively…

On Thursday, nearly 48 hours after Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that there was a “legitimacy” or a “rationale” behind the January terrorist attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, NBC’s Today finally noticed the highly controversial remarks. ABC and CBS continued to ignore Kerry’s offensive comments.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, economist turned Democratic hack, displayed his usual lack of class in the face of human tragedy in a series of nytimes.com blog posts, turning the Paris massacres by radical Islamists into personal attacks on Republicans ("It took no time at all for the right-wing response to the Paris attacks to turn into a vile caricature that has me feeling nostalgic for…

Anchoring the CBS Evening News for a third-straight night in Paris following Friday’s deadly Islamic terror attacks, Scott Pelley concluded Wednesday’s broadcast with an emotional commentary looking back at how parents so often struggle to discuss tragedies over the past two decades with their children while some are also crippled by grief of losing loved ones in the events themselves.

Over two years ago, even the Secretary General at Interpol, an outfit one might expect to be unreceptive to individiuals' right to self-defense, said that one approach to the problem that terrorist groups are more frequently choosing to attack any place that people may congregate is "to say we want an armed citizenry." By contrast, Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky clearly isn't interested…

I took some flak awhile back for saying that--his liberalism notwithstanding--Chris Matthews had a patriotic streak. More evidence for that notion on this evening's Hardball, as Matthews twice derided President Obama's response to ISIS as "dainty," and kvetched that "I don't see us doing anything."  

Amidst their ongoing coverage Wednesday night of the terror attacks in Paris, the major broadcast networks failed to report on news that five Syrians had been arrested in the Central American country of Honduras with stolen Greek passports and intended to travel to the U.S.

On Wednesday's New Day, CNN kept up their skepticism of the Obama administration's talking points on ISIS. Chris Cuomo noted that "the word from the White House is...that we are having success....How does that make sense, given...we just saw what happened in Paris?" Christiane Amanpour threw cold water on John Earnest's claim that there wasn't a military solution for the terrorist group: "You…

Morning Joe on Wednesday discussed the recent remarks by President Obama on Republicans who are “afraid of orphans and widows.” When the discussion turned to David Ignatius for commentary, he gave a defense of Obama. Scarborough would press Ignatius with on using "the widows and orphans" to antagonize Republican governors. While Ignatius conceded there is always room to correct the words used, he…

Appearing on Wednesday’s NBC Today, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge repeatedly ripped President Obama’s failing foreign policy against ISIS as co-hosts Savannah Guthrie and Matt Lauer sat back without comment.

There's been a lot of arrant nonsense spoken since the Paris attacks, but Margaret Carlson's might just take the cake . . .  On today's Morning Joe, Bloomberg columnist Carlson suggested that because the US is better than Europe at assimilation, potential terrorists sneaking into our country might not carry out their plots. Said Carlson: "maybe they become Americanized, maybe the anger goes away…

On Wednesday’s Fox & Friends, co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck pressed White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest over language used by Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama following last week’s ISIS terrorist attack in Paris. 

As the police shootout and standoff early Wednesday morning in the Paris suburb of Saint Denis, France was in its contentious moments, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and guest Julien Theron couldn’t help but fret about how the standoff was helping to “literally stok[e] the fires of the far right, anti-immigrant, anti-immigration, xenophobic parties” in Europe.

In a welcome change of pace for MSNBC programming on Tuesday night, liberal primetime host Rachel Maddow was given the night off in favor of NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, who anchored the network’s 9:00 p.m. Eastern coverage of the Paris Islamic terror attacks and closed with a brief but astute commentary on how it’s doubtful that Paris will change the global ISIS strategy.