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In quite a contrast to the immediate tagging of the Bush and Obama Supreme Court nominees as “conservative” (and that includes Sonya Sotomayor), on Monday night ABC and NBC refrained from applying any ideological description to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan while CBS snuck in one. CBS's Jan Crawford declared “her career has put her solidly on the left,” but contended “she will have…

Chris Matthews is stuck in the 1970s, it seems, and I'm not  talking about his pop culture references. Talking with CNBC's Jim Cramer on the May 6 "Hardball" about the Greek fiscal crisis, everyone's favorite MSNBCer blamed "right-wing" dictators from the Cold War era for financial troubles in Greece, Portugal, and Spain [MP3 audio available here]: I'm a political guy, you're a money…

Fox News Channel's Craig Rivera, on Sunday's Geraldo At Large, in a shipboard interview from the Gulf of Mexico, actually asked a conservationist if the oil spill there was a real world equivalent of the fictional disaster seen in the recent James Cameron blockbuster as he pressed: "Do you see what's happening in the oil industry and offshore drilling comparable or some kind of parallel to, like…

In the 7:30AM ET half hour on Monday's CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez lobbed softballs to disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer about his college friend and Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan: "She's been labeled as moderate. If you had to put a label on her, would you say that one is accurate?" A headline on screen read: "Who is Elena Kagan?"Spitzer replied: "I guess you…

President Barack Obama's second nominee to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, is drawing fire from both liberals and conservatives to such an extent that her challenge in the confirmation hearings "will be to show that while she may hail from Harvard, she has the heart of an empathetic, all-American patriot."At least that's Stuart Taylor Jr.'s take in a May 10 Newsweek "Web exclusive" that garnered…

New York Times sports columnist George Vecsey applauded the NBA's Phoenix Suns uniform protest of Arizona's strict new anti-immigration law in Saturday's "Walking Tentatively in Protester's Shoes," suggesting only that it didn't go far enough and even calling for Major League Baseball to boycott games in Arizona. The column also put in perspective the paper's long-time hypocrisy on athletes…

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund to the rescue! The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) soars and investors breathe a sign of relief. But where's this $1 trillion in bailout funds for Greece coming from? On CNBC's May 10 "Squawk Box," host Joe Kernen channeled Rick Santelli's anti-bailout populism, suggesting it was important to note that this bailout was made possible in…

Who said the cable networks were predictable? The Elena Kagan nomination has drawn surprising fire from Obama-friendly Roland Martin of CNN, and surprising praise from Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl. In a CNN.com commentary, Martin hammered Kagan's record of hiring a pile of whites at Harvard Law: Guy-Uriel Charles, founding director of the Duke Law Center on Law, Race and Politics, has heavily…

Editor's Note: The following was originally published at the Big Hollywood blog on Sunday, May 9. UPDATE: Here’s the new link to Ebert’s post. When the story broke involving five high school students sent home by school administrators for daring to wear the American flag on Cinco de Mayo, the once universally-beloved film critic Roger Ebert had a choice. He could either side with the students…

Which is more newsworthy: hearsay accounts of racial slurs unsupported by video evidence of the alleged incident, or video of a protester calling for violent revolution against the federal government, the imposition of socialism, and the annexation of the Southwestern states for Mexico?If you chose the latter, you're probably not a journalist of the self-proclaimed "mainstream" variety. The…

On Monday's GMA, ABC's George Stephanopoulos dealt with the Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination by interviewing former Obama official Greg Craig, but no one from the conservative/Republican side as a guest. The anchor did raise potential threats to Kagan's nomination, but failed to follow through when Craig omitted a key detail about the nominee's anti-military record as dean of Harvard Law…

Yesterday, in the midst of the commencement address he delivered at Hampton University, President Obama made a startling "admission" (readers will see why "admission" is in quotes shortly): And meanwhile, you're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter…

Re-post from Thursday night, May 28, 2009: NBC and ABC on Thursday night framed stories around concerns of “abortion rights” advocates who want proof Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is on their side, but both cloaked their pieces around the proposition “both sides” of the debate are equally worried. With “Where Does She Stand?” as the on-screen heading, as if there is genuine belief…