Nearly 5,000 Grassroots Complaints Flood Parade Magazine after 'Astrot

When you claim that a grassroots group isn't a grassroots group -- beware of actual grassroots activists. That's the lesson reporter Sharon Male of Parade Magazine learned when she attacked Patients United Now, the health care project of the free-market Americans for Prosperity Foundation, in the July 12 magazine. Under the headline "Are Grassroots Activists for Real?" she claimed that some "so-…
Amy Menefee Payne
July 16th, 2009 10:49 AM

QAHCAA: Senate Health Bill Acronym Doomed to Become Subject of Blogosp

Is there a Democrat senator or staffer secretly opposed to the new health care bill introduced by the Senate? One has to wonder because the new Senate health bill is named, "Quality, Affordable Health Coverage for All Americans." The acronym for this bill is the absolutely hilarious QAHCAA. Yes, say it out loud and it is pronounced exactly the way you suspect as in "This health bill is a bunch of…
P.J. Gladnick
July 16th, 2009 10:20 AM

Dear LA Times: Foreign Aid Holds Developing Nations Back

Why do you assume such aid is necessary for poor African countries?
Donald J. Boudreaux, Ph.D.
July 16th, 2009 10:11 AM

Open Thread

NB Staff
July 16th, 2009 9:53 AM

NYT Decries ‘Partisan Divide’ in Healthcare, Never Mentions Democr

Here’s another one of those wonderful examples of how the Old Media will use a headline that makes a stark claim about how rotten Republicans are for opposing a Democratic plan while at the same time conveniently ignoring the opposition to the same idea among Democrats. This time it is the “partisan divide” in the healthcare debate. The Times tsks Republicans for solidly lining up to oppose…
Warner Todd Huston
July 16th, 2009 7:10 AM

Butt-insky: Snyderman Wants To Snatch Smokes From Soldiers

You might say smoke was coming out of my ears . . . There was NBC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman this morning, arguing that the Pentagon should prohibit soldiers in combat zones from smoking.Snyderman was a guest on Morning Joe for purposes of reporting on her interview of Pres. Obama yesterday on his health care plans.  But along the way, she weighed in on the proposal that had been floated, then quickly…
Mark Finkelstein
July 16th, 2009 7:02 AM

CBS and NBC Push Obama's Health Agenda, Empathize with His Challenge

The White House's decision to offer interviews with the President to the medical doctors who are correspondents for ABC, CBS and NBC paid off Wednesday night with stories that embraced the assumption health care must be reformed; and interviews on CBS and NBC which put Obama's efforts in the best light. Ironically, ABC's Dr. Tim Johnson, a long-time advocate for government-directed universal…
Brent Baker
July 16th, 2009 2:05 AM

Pre-Marital Sex: Everybody's Doing It According to CBS' Rodriguez

'The Early Show' showed astonishment at the high divorce rates of couples who had taken part in pre-marital sex
Zoe Ortiz
July 16th, 2009 12:00 AM

Walters Warns Parents Against Bruno Despite Behar's Glowing Review

Barbara Walters calls out Sacha Baron Cohen's movie for what it is.
Zoe Ortiz
July 16th, 2009 12:00 AM

Aspiring Kommissar Ed Schultz Pushing for Show Trials if Obama Doesn't

Among those most overwrought about alleged illegality by the Bush White House in not informing Congress of a covert CIA effort to kill al Qaeda operatives is liberal radio host and MSNBC pundit Ed Schultz.The implications of such rank criminality are profound, Schultz told his radio listeners on Tuesday (click here for audio) --SCHULTZ: I was absolutely astounded today listening to Liz Cheney on…
Jack Coleman
July 15th, 2009 9:27 PM

Schultz: Make Rich Guys Like Cheney Pay For Our Health Care

Support nationalized health care!  Ain't gonna cost you nuthin.  We'll stick rich guys like Dick Cheney with the bill!That was Ed Schultz's brazen appeal to something-for-nothing class warfare, made on his MSNBC show this evening. Schultz's make-Cheney-pay plea was the subject of his "Op Ed."View video here.
Mark Finkelstein
July 15th, 2009 8:42 PM

CNN's Toobin: 'Preposterous' to Believe in 2nd Amend. Right Back at Ha

During CNN’s coverage of the Sotomayor hearings on Wednesday, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin implied that the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision to uphold the Second Amendment was revolutionary: “When I was in law school...the idea that you had a Second Amendment right to a gun was considered preposterous....But the Supreme Court [in Heller]...said that...individuals have a personal right to bear arms.”…
Matthew Balan
July 15th, 2009 7:31 PM

Matthews Commemorates 'Prophet' Jimmy Carter's 'Malaise' Speech

Leave it to Chris Matthews, a former speechwriter to Jimmy Carter, to actually commemorate the 30th anniversary of the former president's infamous "malaise" speech. On Wednesday's "Hardball," Matthews invited on his former bosses from the Carter White House, former speechwriter and now New Yorker senior editor Hendrick Hertzberg and former aide Gerald Rafshoon to mark the event and claim that…
Geoffrey Dickens
July 15th, 2009 7:07 PM

CBS Early Show Hosts Discuss Obama’s ‘Wicked Sinker’ Pitch

On Wednesday’s CBS Early Show co-host Russ Mitchell described President Obama’s lackluster first pitch at Tuesday night’s All-Star game in St. Louis: "And it appears President Obama has a wicked sinker." Mitchell referred to his colleagues in studio: "Somebody’s laughing over there, I’m not going to mention any names."At the top of the show, even Obama fan co-host Harry Smith acknowledged the…
Kyle Drennen
July 15th, 2009 5:50 PM