Martin Bashir

MSNBC's Martin Bashir has only been on the job for a few days, but the newly-minted anchor is already letting his liberal flag fly. On his eponymous program today, Bashir was dumbfounded as to why Congress is reluctant to hike taxes on the rich and end tax deductions for oil companies. "Why won't Congress simply do what the people want?" lamented Bashir, interviewing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-…

Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan's federal minister for minorities and that government's only Christian, was assassinated yesterday on the streets of Islamabad. Bloomberg News is reporting that the Pakistan Taliban is claiming responsibility for the shooting: As many as four men ambushed Shahbaz Bhatti, a 42-year-old Christian, yesterday as he left home without a security escort, Geo television…

MSNBC host Martin Bashir, whose new 3pm show premiered on Monday, has quickly adapted to his new home. Over three programs, he's lauded the "outstanding" coverage of left-wing anchor Ed Schultz and also featured the liberal Rachel Maddow and Dylan Ratigan. Perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising. On August 7, 2007, as co-host of ABC's Nightline, Bashir derided Ave Maria, a planned Catholic…

"President Obama has been taking a truckload of flak from the right for his measured response to the crises embroiling the Middle East," MSNBC's Martin Bashir harumphed as he opened his "Clear the Air" commentary on the March 1 program. "Measured is my word because it's certainly not one that right-wing pundits have been using," Bashir complained. Of course the term "measured" implies…

On his first day at MSNBC, new host Martin Bashir immediately adopted the network's liberal line, attacking a conservative Congressman for advocating severe spending cuts, deriding it as "the most disingenuous play on the American people." Previewing the interview with Representative Joe Walsh of Illinois, Bashir noted that he has refused congressional health care. The anchor solemnly wondered…

On ABC last Wednesday, both World News and Nightline featured a report filed by correspondent Dan Harris in which he linked the activities of some American evangelical Christian pastors with anti-gay hatred and attempts by Uganda’s parliament at passing death penalty legislation to punish homosexuals in the African nation. Each of the reports focused on the extreme views of American pastor Scott…

On Monday’s Nightline, co-host Martin Bashir conducted a one-sided, hostile profile of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s "brutal regime" and attacked his crackdown on illegal immigration as "racial profiling." The 11 minute investigation of the Maricopa County law enforcement official was almost totally negative. [Audio available here.] After the Arizona sheriff asserted that his critics don’t like him…

Youngsters' curiosity about sex used to be sated by late night, soft-core flicks on premium cable channels. Now, they simply have to tune into ABC. ABC news programs have featured 76 segments about sexual activity in the last six months. The majority of these reports were related to political sex scandals or crime cases that contained a sexual element, but 11 promoted alternative sexual…

Did you know that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was Christian?Well, in case you didn't, ABC's Martin Bashir felt it was necessary to bring up this fact at the beginning of Thursday's "Nightline." No foolin'. After an introduction teasing the topics to be addressed in this installment, Bashir curiously began (video embedded right): 

ABC's "Nightline" on Monday continued the network's trend of hyperbolically, and in this case, apocalyptically, fretting over high gas prices in America. Anchor Martin Bashir introduced a segment by wondering if $4 a gallon gas might result in some people stealing gasoline, or, as he put it, "taking some drastic measures." Speaking to a car security expert who claimed that such theft would be a…

"Bishop: 'Heaven Not Our Final Destination,'" read the teaser headline on ABCNews.com (pictured at right). "Hmm, what's this?" I thought, so I clicked on the link to find a story by ABC's Martin Bashir teasing a February 26 "Nightline" story about N.T. Wright, an Anglican bishop and theologian. [It should be noted that Bashir referred to Wright by his middle name Thomas Wright rather than N.T.…