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Former Florida Republican Governor Charlie won the state's Democratic gubernatorial primary tonight. In his writeup on Crist's defeat of an overmatched challenger, the Politico's James Hohmann wrote that "Only four years ago Crist was a governor who had run for office as a rock-ribbed conservative." That wording is a bit too clever. One might argue that Hohmann is merely claiming that Crist…

With the streets of Ferguson now quiet and the body of Michael Brown laid to rest, you could count on our friends at the Daily Beast to find fresh ways to exploit the tragic episode for political ends.  Witness contributor Jacob Lupfer's prescription for how white Americans should respond to the shooting death of the Missouri teenager: oppose efforts to tighten voter ID laws:

Don Lemon at CNN isn't interested in being told what an "automatic" rifle is. He's decided what it is, and the truth doesn't matter. Even after recognizing after the fact that the person correcting him was right, he has no remorse for his demonstrated ignorance. On Wednesday, as Charles C. W. Cooke noted at National Review's The Corner blog the next day, Lemon claimed that “most people can go…

In the center of CNN.com's front page right now is a headline demanding, "Where's Officer Wilson?" "As Ferguson calmed after nights of protests over the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen, the question remains: Where's the police officer who pulled the trigger?" a caption below a file photo of Wilson added. Yes, now that things have calmed down and returned to normal, what's the harm in…

The press never let George W. Bush forget about that "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln after Saddam Hussein was overthrown and his government's military was routed in Iraq. They often pretend that Bush said it, or adopted it. He did no such thing, saying only that “Our mission continues.” So while the press has come close to making a claim Bush 43 never made an article…

You had to know this was coming. The only question was who was going to be the first to do it. On Tuesday, echoing the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," wherein the devil slyly tells listeners that "it was you and me" who "killed the Kennedys" (making everyone responsible ensures that no one is truly responsible, allowing evil to advance), James Joiner, the Special Projects Editor at…

Here's a somewhat racial angle to the Ferguson, Mo., saga that you probably won't see MSNBC pick up on. The Daily Beast's Tim Mak today reported on "Ferguson's Other Race Problem: Riots Damaged Asian-Owned Stores." "Asian-Americans own a number of the stores lining West Florissant Avenue, where more than 20 businesses have suffered damage in the wake of Michael Brown’s killing," Mak noted,…

Just to be clear, the racial makeup of a news organization should be irrelevant to its ability to cover current events. The answers to who, what, where, when, why, and how are colorblind. The practice of assigning reporters to stories based on the ethnicities or races of stories' subjects is offensive, and should be seen as insulting. But the fact is that news organizations and so-called…

Over at Hot Air on Tuesday night, Mary Katharine Ham pointed to a headline at the New York Times, present at its web home page as well as at the story itself, which equally blames Hamas and Israel for the end of their cease-fire: "Rockets From Gaza and Israeli Response Break Cease-Fire." Someone needs to tell Isabel Kershner and Jodi Rudoren that it's the "rockets from Gaza" which broke the…

Imagine that a prominent Republican activist proposed a campaign of malicious destruction against Hillary Clinton's latest book. Does anyone doubt that the press would be all over it as proof that conservatives and Republicans are disrespectful and mean-spirited? Well, Erica Payne is a prominent, aggressively self-promoting progressive. The advanced nature of her activist bona fides might…

Kudos to Ed Driscoll at PJ Media, Eddie Scarry at Mediaite, and likely others in pointing out that the Associated Press has frequently violated its own stylebook in describing Michael Brown, the 18 year-old who was fatally shot in a scuffle with police in Ferguson, Missouri, as a "teen" or "teenager." The AP's latest stylebook, in sync with the one I have from over a decade ago, states that…

Recent news about Obamacare hasn't exactly been good, but the press has been pretty effective in keeping it quiet. To name just a few items, Enrollment is shrinking, because perhaps as many as 20 percent of enrollees aren't keeping up with their premiums. Rising costs have moved insurers to beg for bailouts, which appear to be forthcoming.  Then there's this: Just last week in Massachusetts,…

Wesley Lowery was catapulted from relative obscurity to household-name status last week, at least for obsessive viewers of the MSNBC network, thanks to his arrest and brief detention by authorities in Ferguson, Missouri, last week. So perhaps it's not all too surprising that the Washington Post reporter -- whose beat usually is "Congress and national politics" -- used his Twitter account this…

Vox's Max Fisher shamelessly invoked medieval history in a Monday post about Pope Francis. Fisher highlighted the pontiff's support for action against ISIS's "unjust aggression" in Iraq, and hyped that "there is good precedent for this...between 1096 and 1272 AD, popes also endorsed the use of Western military action to destroy Middle Eastern caliphates. Those were known as the crusades; there…