War on Terrorism

ABC's World News Tonight was the sole broadcast network evening newscast on Friday to cover the U.S. Navy's announcement that it would soon position armed guards outside its off-base reserve centers. CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News, along with Univision and Telemundo's evening news programs, ignored this change in policy. ABC's David Muir noted that "the decision follows the deadly shooting…

Questions for Mike Barnicle: does the phrase "suicide bomber" ring a bell? How about "martyrdom" in the name of Allah? On today's Morning Joe, Barnicle's argument in favor of the Iran deal was that to oppose it, one would "have to believe Iran is suicidal." The former Boston Globe columnist reasoned that if Iran dropped an atomic bomb on Tel Aviv, "Tehran would be a combination of glass and sand…

Hey, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has retired as president of Iran.  Why didn't NBC hire him and cut out the middle-man? But seriously, what did NBC think it was getting when it hired as a "contributor" someone who served as Ahmadinejad's translator and who in that role mouthed his vicious anti-Semitic rants? On Chris Hayes' MSNBC show this evening, Hooman Majd claimed the Iran deal is "a good deal for…

It can only be described as both ludicrous and insensitive. Just days after a Muslim terrorist shot up two military recruitment centers, killing five servicemen in Chattanooga, TN, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson told the media and high-ranking government officials to not mention the word “Islam” when talking about ISIS or terrorism. Johnson made these comments at a national security conference July…

Israelis wouldn't have to be marched to ovens.  The ovens would come to them, in the form of an atomic bomb. On today's Morning Joe, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said that he was "offended" by Mike Huckabee's remark that President Obama's Iran deal would "take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven." Robinson said the comment runs counter to the purpose of Israel, which…

It's a point of pride at Morning Joe that the show is unscripted. But in a notable deviation that might reflect the gravity of the moment, Joe Scarborough clearly seemed to be reading off a teleprompter today as he promulgated a damning indictment of Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information on her private email system. Scarborough's statement was interspersed with clips of Hillary…

A 7,000-word New York Times Magazine cover story by Eliza Griswold, "The Shadow of Death," is an all-too-rare look from a major media outlet at the decimation of Christianity in the place of its birth, the Middle East, at the hands of radical Islamist groups like ISIS. From the cover text: "Christians in the Middle East are being forced out of their homes, enslaved and killed. Why is no one…

I'm virtually certain that he wouldn't dream of it, but the Associated Press's Josh Lederman seriously needs to consider correcting two extremely embarrassing paragraphs he wrote in his coverage of President Obama's appearance on Jon Stewart's Daily Show earlier this week. At the 15:03 mark of the Comedy Central video following the jump, Obama treated Stewart as if he's a legitimate journalist,…

Ouch: this one's going to leave a mark.  Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton has said that "John Kerry acted like Pontius Pilate, he washed his hands" on crucial issues in the Iran deal and left it to the IAEA to negotiate secret side deals with Iran on them. Cotton made his remarks on today's Morning Joe.  It might be a mark of the regard, or lack thereof, in which Kerry is held that no one…

During a live press conference in the 12:00 p.m. ET hour on Wednesday about the Chattanooga shooting, CNN reporter Aaron Cooper asked FBI Special Agent in Charge Ed Reinhold: “There's been reports that there were some personal or privately owned weapons used in responding to the shooter....Did anybody hit anyone else? Was there any friendly fire incident?”

After five days, President Obama finally today ordered "that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds" and at other official federal locations until sunset on Saturday to honor the five victims of Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez's murder spree in Chattanooga, Tennessee last Thurday. Though the White House will never admit…

All three broadcast network evening newscasts on Monday had stories related to last week's spree shooting in Chattanooga that left four Marines and one sailor dead. But only CBS reported how the governors of seven states thus far are authorizing National Guardsmen to concealed-carry their own personal firearms while on state National Guard property.

Andrea Mitchell wondered if Chattanooga terrorist Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez's "small-town Tennessee" upbringing had anything to do with his slaughtering of four Marines. Mitchell interviewed a high school classmate of Abdulazeez on the Friday edition of her MSNBC program and asked, "Were guns a big part of activity – social or other activity?...Did he hunt? Did he shoot? I mean, was that just…

Whether or not Chattanooga shooter Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez was a jihadist, opined Esquire’s Pierce in a Friday blog post, the key to Thursday’s murders is that he had a quintessentially American trait: he was gun-crazy. “He had a grudge. The basis of that grudge, whether it was rooted in a bloody-minded version of religion or an anger at the country's policies across the seas, is beside the…