Michelle, My Belle: NYT's Rachel Swarns's Constant Fawning Over First

New York Times reporter Rachel Swarns, former Johannesburg bureau chief for the Times, is now working hard on the Glorify Michelle Obama beat, pumping out four flattering pieces in the last month. Her latest entry is a brief in Thursday's edition, "A White House Effort to Aid Women and Girls," celebrating an executive order from President Obama creating a White House Council on Women and Girls.…

N.Y. Times Announces New 'Conservative' Columnist, Then Underlines He

Swaps Stopped: Cities in LA Co. Were Doing Stimulus Funding Deals With

It seems that so-called stimulus package funding is being spread around so widely that some of its beneficiaries can't figure out how to spend it as intended. When it became clear to a few small cities in California's Los Angeles County that they didn't have appropriate transportation projects for their promised stimulus funding, they decided to sell the rights to that funding to other nearby…

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Pleads 'Guilty' to Barney Frank for Media Scru

The Treasury Department oversees the Internal Revenue Service. But if the Secretary of the Treasury - or any other political appointee being considered for the Treasury Department - didn't pay his income payroll taxes, it doesn't matter. That's the message from House Banking Committee Chairman Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and he blamed the fourth estate for acting like it does matter. On MSNBC's…

NYT Inadvertently Confirms IBD’s Logic in Denouncing Obama’s Embry

In a scathing editorial Monday, the folks at IBDeditorials.com ripped President Barack Obama's misguided, life-destroying, science-denying Executive Order that allows federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR). Later, Nicholas Wade at the New York Times, in two paragraphs of his March 10 report ("Rethink Stem Cells? Science Already Has"), in essence confirmed the validity of IBD's…

NYT's Blow Goes After 'Limbaugh-tomized Minions of the Far, Far Right

New York Times "visual op-ed" columnist Charles Blow remains giddy over Republican failures in his latest column, "Three Blind Mice." Blow's mice (aka "the axis of drivel") are Republican governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, RNC chairman Michael Steele, and talk show giant Rush Limbaugh (the latter of whom controls "Limbaugh-tomized minions of the far, far right"). All these insults are packed…

New York Times: 'Some Conservatives Have Implied' Obama's a Socialist

In The New York Times today appears "The President Is on the Line to Follow Up on Socialism," by Jeff Zeleny.  The article's first three paragraphs:Less than 90 minutes after Air Force One landed, the telephone rang. President Obama was on the line, wanting to add one more point to a response he gave during an interview with The New York Times.On a flight from Ohio to Washington on Friday, Mr.…

Tea Parties? What Tea Parties? Predictably, Established Media Coverage

Coverage of "tea party" protests in various cities around the country (this March 4 Pajamas Media press release, HT to FreeRepublic, cited 22 locations on February 27 and seven this weekend) has been sparse to non-existent, especially at major establishment media outlets. Most notably, based on a seach on "tea party" (not in quotes) at its ap.org home page at about 10:00 a.m., there has been no…

NY Times Says GOP Senator Bunning 'Bit of a Screwball,' May Be Mentall

New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich specializes in spunky profiles of politicians -- hostile profiles of conservatives, flattering ones of liberals. His latest, on controversial Republican Sen. Jim Bunning, "Republicans Looking for a Reliever in Kentucky," fell safely into the former category, crammed with personal attacks ("questions about his mental fitness") and colorful insults (Bunning's…

'General' David Brooks Calls Retreat After 3 Days on Political Battlef

"General" David Brooks, the very compliant house conservative of the New York Times, after just three days of bravely volunteering to lead a mighty "moderate" army against the "ideological outrages" of the Barack Obama administration, has now called a hasty retreat with a column that borders on outright apology for daring to oppose the very liberal budget. First let us take trip down memory lane…

Former NYT Reporter Calls 'Clown' Limbaugh a 'Sweaty, Swollen Man

Liberal New York Times reporter turned liberal nytimes.com blogger Timothy Egan's latest rant against conservative talk radio giant Rush Limbaugh, "Fears of a Clown," was propped up on the front page of nytimes.com on Thursday for the delight of the paper's liberal audience. Last February, Egan called Limbaugh "talk radio's leading gasbag." Today, after lamenting about the ubiquity of Limbaugh on…

Obama Names Abortion Extremist to HHS; Media Silent

Back during confirmation hearings in 2001 for former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson Dan Rather reminded Evening News viewers of Thompson's "hardline anti-abortion stand." Eight years later, there's a whitewash of President Barack Obama's HHS' nominee abortion record. As a Democratic governor in red-state Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius has vetoed several bills that would…

How Will Media Handle Journalists With Spouses on Team Obama

Reunited: NY Times Columnists Who Slimed Duke Lacrosse Team

In his column "Exposing the Truth About Exposing the Truth," New York Times sportswriter Harvey Araton defended his "good friend" Selena Roberts -- a former Times sports columnist now reporting for Sports Illustrated -- from "misogynist ravings" launched after her recent reporting on steroid use by Yankees baseball star Alex Rodriguez. Roberts has Rodriguez dead to rights on his steroid use and…