No Media Objections As Dems Raced to Swear In New Members Two Months A

There has been something of a debate over whether the Senate can properly delay seating Republican Scott Brown if he wins today’s special election, giving the Democrats time to ram through their unpopular health care bill. The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes has neatly summarized the arguments of GOP lawyers that the temporary Senator Paul Kirk’s term expires today with the election of a successor…
Rich Noyes
January 19th, 2010 3:48 PM

CBS’s Rodriguez Excuses Possible Dem Delay On Seating Scott Brown; A

Appearing on Tuesday’s CBS Early Show, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele criticized potential Democratic efforts to delay seating Republican Scott Brown as the Senator from Massachusetts as “unseemly,” but co-host Maggie Rodriguez replied: “Is that fair? Because wouldn’t your party do the exact same thing?”Rodriguez went on to argue: “Isn’t it true that when the GOP had the…
Kyle Drennen
January 19th, 2010 3:43 PM

WaPo's Quinn: Scott Brown Success Due to '80s Semi-Nude Photo Shoot

The special election in Massachusetts is sure to be a close one. Should Republican Scott Brown prevail, however, the liberal media will have a host of ways to explain away the election as an anomaly and by no means a referendum on either the president or his legislative accomplishments (or lack thereof).Perhaps one of the most absurd instances of this thinking came on last night's "O'Reilly…
Lachlan Markay
January 19th, 2010 2:35 PM

New White House Comm. Director: Fox News ‘Not A Traditional News Org

During a Monday video interview with the New York Times’ The Caucus blog, the new White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, joined his predecessor Anita Dunn in declaring that Fox News Channel is not a news organization: “I have the same view of Fox that Anita had, which is that Fox is not a traditional news organization.”Responding to a question by Times reporter Jeff Zeleny about Dunn’s…
Kyle Drennen
January 19th, 2010 12:53 PM

NY Times Columnist Charles Blow: 'Rush Is a Particularly Vile Human Be

On MSNBC's "New York Times edition" Friday afternoon, host John Harwood, who also writes about politics for the Times, called talk show host Rush Limbaugh's comments about Obama using the Haiti earthquake to appeal to black voters "pretty disgusting," about twenty minutes into the show.Harwood then put Times columnist Ross Douthat on the spot as its "man of the right" to explain Limbaugh if he…
Clay Waters
January 19th, 2010 12:44 PM

To VH1, Teen Purity Is a Short-lived Marketing Trend

Whether you have children or not, you've probably heard of Hannah Montana (or perhaps Miley Cyrus); Selena Gomez from Disney's "Wizards of Waverly Place"; or the Jonas Brothers, the boy band that elicits ear-splitting screams from their female teeny-bopper fans.They're big names in the entertainment industry, even though the oldest of the bunch is only 23. What you may not know, however, is that…
Carolyn Plocher
January 19th, 2010 12:17 PM

A Glum Stephanopoulos: Dems ‘Hoping for a Miracle’ in Mass, Party

On Tuesday’s Good Morning America, former Democratic-operative-turned-journalist George Stephanopoulos appeared glum about the prospects of Democrats in Massachusetts’ special Senate election. He intoned, "And White House and congressional Democrats are hoping for a miracle but they're expecting, right now, the Democrat, Martha Coakley to lose." In a previous segment, reporter John Berman spun, "…
Scott Whitlock
January 19th, 2010 12:12 PM

Scarborough Slams Olbermann Over Anti-Brown Tirade: 'Sad And Pathetic

Not that they were BFFs before, but Joe Scarborough has now definitively de-friended Keith Olbermann . . . As NewsBuster Noel Sheppard reported, Olbermann last night unleashed an absurdly over-the-top Special Comment at Scott Brown, calling him "an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he…
Mark Finkelstein
January 19th, 2010 10:45 AM

Election Day Open Thread

NB Staff
January 19th, 2010 10:19 AM

PBS Gives One-Sided View of Giving Billions to Fund News

Want government to fund public media? Then PBS has a place for you. If you back giving news organizations tens of billions of dollars, that's good for nearly 25 minutes of air-time. That's how the PBS weekly newsmagazine "NOW" addressed a left-wing solution to the decline of the news industry. On Jan. 15, "NOW," welcomed the founders of the left-wing media think tank Free Press - John Nichols…
Dan Gainor
January 19th, 2010 10:08 AM

Good, Bad, Pathetic: AP's Kuhnhenn Calls 'Bank Fee' a Tax, Labels As

Last week, in his "analysis" of Barack Obama's proposed "bank responsibility fee," the Associated Press's Jim Kuhnhenn got one important thing right and two others very wrong.The part he got right was describing the proposed fee as a "tax." The first thing he got wrong was identifying the proposed move as a legitimate form of "populism." The second is his claim that the idea is "straight out of '…
Tom Blumer
January 19th, 2010 8:34 AM

Even in 2010, Reporters Still Buying That Wright Mess Was Obama's Fine

Tim Graham
January 19th, 2010 8:17 AM

ABC Empathizes with White House: Coakley Loss ‘Shakespearean

ABC on Monday night again empathized with the Obama White House’s disbelief that they could lose “Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat” -- and thus ObamaCare -- if Republican Scott Brown beats Democrat Martha Coakley in Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts. George Stephanopoulos saw a “Shakespearean” tragedy just over a week after PBS’s Judy Woodruff, on ABC’s This Week, described such a scenario as…
Brent Baker
January 19th, 2010 3:15 AM

Choosing Life a 'Controversial' Decision

Palins' pro-life magazine cover sparks outrage.
Colleen Raezler
January 19th, 2010 12:00 AM