Jim Rutenberg

The New York Times Magazine cover story by political correspondent Jim Rutenberg, "A Dream Undone -- Inside the 50-year campaign to roll back the Voting Rights Act," is a 10-part, 10,000-word doorstop (issued with the baleful threat "The first in a series") comparing current attempts to stop voter fraud as a return to Jim Crow, with particular focus on North Carolina. Rutenberg also relayed more…

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine includes a generally favorable story on "The Megyn Kelly Moment" by Times reporter Jim Rutenberg (once a media-beat specialist). Rutenberg acknowledged how throroughly Kelly dominates her time slot and is battling with Bill O’Reilly for the top of the cable-news mountain. Liberals are complaining about Kelly's positive press.

Two recent Q&A sessions by New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg for the paper's Sunday magazine made for a convenient encapsulation of the paper's liberal double standards, with challenging, testy questions thrown at conservative Iowa Rep. Steve King in this Sunday's edition, versus a sympathetic, almost fawning session with lefty "Doonesbury" cartoonist Gerry Trudeau last month.

Garry Trudeau, creator of the once-famous, sometimes controversial, always smugly liberal political cartoon Doonesbury, was interviewed for the New York Times Sunday magazine contrasting Ronald Reagan's "damaged brain" with Obama's, which contains "layers of complexity." The cartoonist's clear spite for the Bush family comes through, as he repeats a classless joke about the first President Bush,…

Sunday's New York Times Magazine includes an interview with former "American Idol" runner-up Clay Aiken, now running against Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers in North Carolina's 2nd district. Late in the interview, Times reporter Jim Rutenberg brings up the dangerous question: How favorably do you view Barack Obama? Clay got out the ten-foot pole -- Aiken fans might hear him singing "From A…

Jay Carney is doing a round of interviews fresh out of the White House. In The New York Times Magazine, Jim Rutenberg threw briefing-room softballs like this: “Do people in the first row like to showboat?” Carney said yes: “If you look at the difference in tenor between the on-camera briefings and the on-the-record-but-off-camera gaggles, it’s night and day.” That’s not just due to the TV…

In a bit of a surprise, New York Times reporters Jeremy Peters and Jim Rutenberg filed a longish article on a recently unearthed Obama video from 2007 showing the president in a fiery, racially charged mode and praising his anti-American pastor Jeremiah Wright, a video downplayed or ignored by most of the mainstream media: "Race at Issue for Obama As Right Revives '07 Talk." Less surprising…

The first Obama-Romney presidential debate of 2012 ran under this less-than-informative banner headline in Thursday's New York Times: "Obama and Romney, in First Debate, Spar Over Fixing the Economy." The actual headline to the story by Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg also failed to capture the sense, overwhelming even among the liberal press, that Romney had helped himself with a sharp,…

Friday's New York Times front page featured Jeff Zeleny (pictured) and Jim Rutenberg's "Political Memo" on the "daunting" struggles of the Mitt Romney campaign: "Daunting Path Greets Romney Before Debates – He's Hoping to Change Campaign Dynamic." Again the Times focused on the political damage fostered by Mitt Romney's (accurate) statement at a fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans do not…

A secretly recorded video of Mitt Romney speaking at a fundraiser about the "47 percent of the country who are dependent on government," put out last night by the liberal magazine Mother Jones, calls into question whether Romney is "at base, an empathetic and caring man." That's according to the New York Times, which rushed the Monday night breaking news onto Tuesday morning's front page in a…

How painfully predictable: The New York Times filled the news gap caused by the cancellation of Monday's events with rumors of party discord. In fact, the Times first tried to gin up controversy at the 2012 Republican National Convention long ago. Here's a May 13, 2010 report from Damien Cave on how toxic beaches in Tampa might ruin the Republican convention, then over two years away: The…

Even the weather is tilting against the GOP, Jim Rutenberg (pictured) and Michael Shear reported from the Republican National Convention in Tampa for Monday's New York Times. They cynically employed the threat of Tropical Storm Isaac, shaping it into a desperate pro-Obama weapon to use against Republican principles of limited government: "Storm Rewrites G.O.P.'s Script For Convention."

Sunday's lead New York Times story by the political team of Jeff Zeleny (pictured) and Jim Rutenberg accused Romney of playing the race card with false ads on welfare reform: "Romney Adopts Harder Message For Last Stretch – Nod To White Workers – A Tropical Storm Threat Forces Party to Delay Convention by a Day." The Times accused the Romney campaign of ads "falsely charging that Mr. Obama…

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is attracting lots of media attention Bush for claiming that even conservative hero Ronald Reagan would struggle in today's Republican Party, a Tea Party-infused "orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement." New York Times Political reporter Jim Rutenberg was intrigued: "Jeb Bush Offers Critical Views of Modern Republican Party and Its 'Orthodoxy.'" The online…