Eugene Robinson

With about a month to go before the elections, let's loosen up our lever-pulling arms by inviting NewsBusters readers to vote on the lamest excuse offered by three Morning Joe panelists today for President Obama's failure to heed the intelligence about the threat ISIS posed. 1. Columbia prof Dorian Warren: congressional intelligence committees are to blame for not raising the issues with…

Everyone knows how safe the streets of Washington, DC are [where as of 2010 violent crime was three times the national average], and how DC criminals scrupulously respect the District's very restrictive gun-control laws. So of course the last thing you would want is to permit law-abiding citizens to exercise their Constitutional rights to keep and bear arms.  Why, that would only lead to the…

Has Barack Obama lost Mika Brzezinski? Wednesday morning on Morning Joe, the MSNBC co-host wondered why the President is still refusing to visit the border while in Texas. Brzezinski argued that if Obama really does have a vision, why not go down to Texas and show the Republicans lack of effort on the issue? Of course, Brzezinski threw in the “make Republicans look bad” caveat, but she also…

Hobby Lobby's objection on religious grounds to paying for abortion-causing contraceptives for its employees reminds Eugene Robinson of segregationists who cited the Bible in support of their views.  In his great magnimity, Robinson allowed that the Hobby Lobby case "is perhaps a bit different." But if the WaPo columnist didn't think the segregation analogy were relevant, he presumably wouldn't…

On the June 25 edition of Hardball, fill-in host Steve Kornacki and his guests discussed the implications of Thad Cochran’s surprising upset of Chris McDaniel in the Mississippi GOP Senate runoff. The panel mocked the Tea Party’s outrage at Thad Cochran over his courting of Democratic voters in the primary. Kornacki laughed off Chris McDaniel’s assertion that the outcome was unbecoming of…

Sure, Mika Brzezinski is a big Fauxchohantas fan who'd love to see Senator 1/32nd take on Hillary Clinton.  But regardless of her motivation, credit Mika for courageously critiquing Hillary. In a segment on today's Morning Joe about Hillary's "dead broke" blunder, Brzezinski scolded Hillary defenders Jeremy Peters [NYT], the egregious Thomas Roberts, Eugene Robinson and Joe Scarborough. …

Q. When it comes to the release of five of the worst of the worst Gitmo detainees, what does Eugene Robinson know that the Pentagon doesn't?  A. That President Obama must be defended at all costs and in every circumstance. How else to explain his mind-boggling claim on today's Morning Joe that the impact on the war of the release of five senior Taliban officials would likely be "negligible…

Retiring West Virginia Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller recently slandered Republicans as racist, including, by implication, his colleague from Wisconsin, Sen. Ron Johnson. The Morning Joe crew on MSNBC tackled the controversy today, with host Joe Scarborough livid at Rockefeller's remarks and for the wealthy liberal politician's refusal to apologize. “That’s one of the stupidest, most…

On the Wednesday, April 30, Hardball with Chris Matthews, guest and MSNBC political analyst Howard Fineman -- formerly of Newsweek -- mocked Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's intent to visit impoverished areas as a plan to "introduce himself to the bro," and went on to complain that Ryan's budget "whacks away at" programs to help the poor.

At the top of her 1 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Monday, host Andrea Mitchell wrung her hands over "angry Tea Party protesters" who gathered in Washington over the weekend to denounce the Obama administration's politicization of the government shutdown being "whipped up" Sarah Palin and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Later on the program, she…

Imagine that Jeff Bezos asked his vice-president for sales IT how many people had purchased products from Amazon the day before, and the veep said he'd get back to him "in a few weeks."  How many nanoseconds do you think that hapless employee would last in his job? But on today's Morning Joe, there  was the Obama admin's David Simas, sporting the lofty title of Deputy Senior Advisor for…

Seems the shutdown is already frazzling folks.  Though some of it might have been for show, tempers seemed to truly flare on today's Morning Joe. An on-air spat broke out, with Joe Scarborough in one corner, and Mika Brzezinski and the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson in the other.   Fed up with what he described as a "paid advertisement for Obamacare" by Brzezinski and Robinson,…

It really has been amazing the past few weeks watching staunchly anti-war liberals in the media supporting an attack on Syria all because Barack Obama - who happened to run on an anti-war platform! - is for it. Take Donny Deutsch as an example, who on MSNBC's Morning Joe Friday proudly declared himself as being part of the 20 percent of the nation in favor of an attack whilst stating, "I’m…