The Federal Budget Deficit: Bush Benchmark Achieved, Ignored

A huge point has been virtually if not totally ignored since the announcement on Friday that the reported federal deficit for the fiscal year that ended a week ago was $250 billion -- The Bush Administration has done what it said it would do about the deficit three years ago, and has done it a full three years early, i.e., in half the time predicted.This continues what has been a very difficult…
Tom Blumer
 

Current Events Quiz: I Couldn't Identify Jadakiss and Chikungunya - Ca

Mark Finkelstein
 

NYT: Andrew Cuomo Invested Campaign Money in Supporter's Risky Hedge F

The TV networks have enough trouble noticing a single governor's race across the country. But for some reason, the attorney general's race in New York drew attention when Republican candidate Jeanine Pirro drew a federal investigation for wanting to have her cheating husband wire-tapped. (NBC's Today has aired five segments or mentions of Pirro in the last ten days.) Will NBC and others in…
Tim Graham
 

Bozell Column: TV Critics Cheer Serial Killer-Slash-Hero

In his column on the decline and fall of morality on television this week, Brent Bozell applies scrutiny to the TV critics, a group of people often pushing and shoving the networks to shatter every moral barrier, break through every standard of taste. Showtime has a new series titled "Dexter," featuring actor Michael C. Hall in the title role, slobbered over by the critics for his role as the…
Tim Graham
 

ABC Promotes Anti-Israel Critic Who Ranted Against 'Israeli Terror Mac

Brad Wilmouth
 

Indictments Handed Down in Air America-Related Charity Fraud at Commun

Tim Graham
 

Media Tidbits: Rather Delayed, N.Y. Times Plugs McGreevey, Nasty Foley

TVNewser notes "Dan Rather Reports will still be coming soon to Mark Cuban's HDNet. Just not as soon," Ed Bark reports. The program was to launch in October. But in an e-mail, Cuban now says: "We are moving Dan back to after the elections so there won't be as much going on." Perhaps it's because the last weeks of an election season, he looks a little like Captain Ahab, "reckless, arrogant, and…
Tim Graham
 

MSM Silent As Lawrence O'Donnell Approves Outing Gay Republicans

P.J. Gladnick
 

Scarborough: Act Redneck to Be Republican, Times Suggests Lincoln Gay

Mark Finkelstein
 

Open Thread

Open for comment this Saturday afternoon.
NB Staff
 

'Today': Due To Iraq Diversion, Afghanistan's Gone 'So Wrong

Mark Finkelstein
 

Washington Post's King Raises Impeachment, Totenberg 'Not Proud of Thi

In a discussion on Inside Washington about the situation in Iraq and Bob Woodward's book, Colby King, Deputy Editor of the Washington Post's editorial page and a weekly columnist, made clear his disgust with President Bush -- to the point of rejecting Bush as Commander-in-Chief and arguing Bush is more deserving of impeachment than was President Clinton. “If we had a draft today and my sons had…
Brent Baker
 

Somebody's Got It Wrong About What General Jones Said

Mark Finkelstein
 

Couric Makes Sure Page Scandal 'Is Not Going Away'; Nets Bury Unemploy

Friday's CBS Evening News led again with the Foley/page scandal, even though the two stories aired offered virtually no fresh information, as anchor Katie Couric justified the news judgment by declaring the issue is “still the talk of the town,” “is not going away” and “is overshadowing every other election issue for the moment” -- all self-fulfilling assessments sustained by the decisions of…
Brent Baker