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In the midst of staggering illogic surrounding our debt ceiling, ratings agency Moody's just raised the bar. On Monday, it announced that the United States could increase its creditworthiness by - wait for it - eliminating the debt ceiling altogether:

MSNBC president Phil Griffin gave an interview to Jeff Bercovici of Forbes, and said all the usual things about how MSNBC is less ideological than Fox News and Fox is a success despite not always being based in fact. But Griffin claimed no one ever knew what Tim Russert’s politics were and insisted that MSNBC is defined as "very smart progressive politics and information."  The boss of “very…

Sometimes the most radical ideas are the most sensible For instance, take the recent decision by John Garvey, president of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., to phase out co-ed dorms, returning to single-sex residence halls. Garvey presented a fairly practical case for the move: Not unlike many colleges, there is a drinking problem on campus. And as Christopher Kaczor,…

With trillion dollar budget deficits as far as the eye can see, a balanced budget amendment is sounding pretty good to an overwhelming majority of Americans. Apparently CBS's Bob Schieffer isn't amongst them, as he actually asked Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Sunday's "Face the Nation," "Why are you wasting time debating that?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

While Kossack bloggers certainly didn't neglect the debt-limit talks, they also pounced on the week's other developing mega-story, the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal, no doubt with visions of a Rupert Murdoch perp walk dancing in their heads. As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.

Greta Van Susteren on Sunday took issue with CNN's Howard Kurtz for a report he did on "Reliable Sources." In it, Kurtz falsely accused Fox News of going "out of its way to avoid a lot of reporting on its parent company's troubles" involving the British tabloid "News of the World" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Chris Matthews as usual had four guests on the weekly syndicated program bearing his name. When he asked them which of the current Republican candidates could end up being a great president, nobody chose to identify a single one (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Gloria Borger said this weekend the Tea Party has "hijacked" the GOP and in so doing prevented Barack Obama from becoming a "transformational president." In her view espoused on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show," without the Tea Party, "The John Boehners of the world [would have] cut a deal with the President of the United States" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A couple of Sunday interview show hosts again forwarded White House talking points about the necessity to include taxes, I mean “revenues,” in any debt ceiling increase deal with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour focusing on a single poll she highlighted for ammunition the public is on her side while ignoring how, by two-to-one, the public opposes raising the debt ceiling at all. CBS’s Bob Schieffer…

Time magazine's Joe Klein said this weekend that President Obama "is winning" the debt ceiling debate. Klein told his fellow panelists on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show," "He is coming across as the most reasonable guy in a crazy city...When he says things like 'Eat your peas,' that's language Americans can understand" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In an unbylined update of the latest developments in the budget-tax-spending-debt ceiling discussions in Washington this morning, the Associated Press committed several blunders in attempting to explain what's going on and how we got to where we are. First and foremost was its list identifying "contributors" to the $8.5 trillion growth in the national debt since 2001. Here's the AP's you-can'…

Cokie Roberts got quite a lesson Sunday on why compromise can be a dirty word in politics. When she asked Congressman Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) why compromise isn't a "message that you hear," the Tea Partier responded, "Why is it that compromise always means increasing taxes today and doing cuts in ten years from now?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NPR is clearly relishing the Murdoch newspapers scandal in Britain. Its Weekend Edition headline on Saturday was "News Corp. Dynasty Crumbles From the Top Down." Anchor Scott Simon interviewed Financial Times columnist Clive Crook and asked if the scandal will cause sell-offs: "How big a dent that they represent in his holdings and his influence?...Can you foresee them having to make incisions…

(Check the update at the bottom of this story. Bristol may have accidentally tipped us off as to the intentions of her mother.) You know what a true insult from comedian Don Rickles would be? It would be if you appeared on a stage with Rickles and did NOT receive an "insult" from the "Merchant of Venom." However, many media websites seem to be unaware of Rickles' stock in trade. They are…