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A bureaucrat serving under Obama Education Secretary-designate Arne Duncan spent $70,000 on espresso machines for Chicago's school system, according to a January 7 report in the Chicago Tribune. Of course, Duncan's name was not mentioned and his ties to the incoming presidential administration were left out of the 13-paragraph story:One Chicago Public Schools manager must have really been…

If the Senate was currently controlled by Republicans, and a black Congressman, in response to Roland Burris not being seated as president-elect Barack Obama's replacement Tuesday, accused that body of racism, do you think media would have reported it?Probably every hour on the hour, right?Well, on Tuesday, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) said: "I believe sincerely that if Roland Burris had not been an…

Ann Coulter made a second appearance during the 10 am Eastern hour of Wednesday’s Today show, and hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb continued the discussion about the apparent “venom” in her books. Kotb asked if Coulter’s style was “kind of like shock jock, shake the cage, freak everyone out, wake everybody up,” and later stated that she felt the tone of the conservative’s writing was “…

"Good Morning America" hosts and reporters on Wednesday bewilderingly touted a total non-scandal, the "brewing brouhaha" over the new set of presidential dinnerware that President Bush and the first lady have ordered. Despite the fact that a private organization is paying the $485,000 bill, a salient point not revealed until late in the story, co-host Robin Roberts fretted, "So, why wait to give…

While he was anchoring live coverage of the Roland Burris Senate drama on MSNBC this morning, anchor Chris Matthews interrupted his discussion with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter to narrate pictures of Barack Obama being driven to the White House for a luncheon with all of the living U.S. presidents.Matthews celebrated the moment by proudly announcing poll numbers that showed Obama and the ex-…

NBC's Meredith Vieira stated during the Jan. 7 "Today" broadcast that she found it "obnoxious" that people took pictures of a pant-less skier caught dangling from a chairlift and posted them on the Internet.  Yet apparently it's not "obnoxious" for the top-rated morning news show to devote 36 seconds of airtime to showing those pictures, as it did this morning. Matt Lauer laughingly called Vieira…

After reports that Ann Coulter had been banned from NBC News, her return to the "Today" show set this Wednesday morning was, as expected, a fiery one with co-host Matt Lauer. The conservative author put Lauer on the defensive on her being bumped for the likes of Rachel Maddow and Perez Hilton, his colleague Brian Williams’ softball questions to Barack Obama, and Lauer’s charges that Coulter’s…

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Anything BUT Palin Derangement Syndrome please! :-)

It's not often that meteorology intersects with geopolitics - but Europe could be in store for another Cold War, literally. Accuweather.com's chief long-range and hurricane forecaster Joe Bastardi observed that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's recent cut of gas flows to Europe via Ukraine may have been done so in anticipation of a global cooling cycle on the Jan. 6 "Glenn Beck Show" radio…

It's really cold outside.How cold is it?It's so cold that people in Belgium are burning copies of the print version of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."Such was satirically presented in the Belgian newspaper De Standaard Wednesday (full-size cartoon below the fold courtesy Anthony Watts):