The Situation Room

During a segment on Tuesday’s Situation Room program, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer characterized the ongoing post-election identity struggle in the Republican Party as being between moderates who are “more tolerant on fiscal and social issues” and “staunch” conservatives “who don’t want the party to become more moderate.” Later in the same segment, Gloria Borger, one of the network’s senior political…

CNN’s resident curmudgeon Jack Cafferty blamed Republican losses in the 2008 election, in part, on their use of the “socialist” label against Democrats during his regular commentary on Friday’s Situation Room. After reporting on a “conservative faction of the Republican National Committee” wanting to use this label against their opponents, and how they petitioned RNC Chairman Michael Steele to…

While President Obama was extoling the virtues of wind power in an Earth Day speech, his Justice Department lawyers were attempting to scuttle a lawsuit filed in federal court against Iran by former U.S. embassy hostages. The lawsuit alleges that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage-takers who interrogated the captives. Two days after the story broke on the Associated…

CNN latched onto two separate poll results on Monday that indicated that about half of Americans view the Islamic world negatively or don’t trust Muslim allies as much as other allies, and indicated that President Obama and others in authority need to be “educators” for the public about Islam. The network brought up the polls’ results on seven different occasions during their programming that day…

When he’s not gushing over the Obamas, you can make a fair bet that CNN commentator Jack Cafferty is bashing conservatives, and he returned to one of his favorite subjects of scorn during his regular “Cafferty File” segment on Thursday’s Situation Room -- Sarah Palin. He labeled three quotes from a recent speech the Alaska governor gave as “painful.” He concluded his commentary by remarking that…

CNN's Jack Cafferty gave an interview to the Media Bistro's "Media Morning Menu" podcast on Thursday and rhapsodized about the "bright" and "terrific" Barack Obama. Talking to hosts Steve Krakauer and Glynnis MacNicol, the "Situation Room" contributor cheered on the new President. He enthused, "...I'm pulling for the guy. I like him. I think he's terrific." After being asked by Krakauer if it's…

Seemingly not satisfied with bashing the likes of former President Bush or Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, CNN commentator Jack Cafferty took aim at a more international target on Wednesday’s Situation Room -- Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church. He joined PBS’s Bonnie Erbe and the Washington Post’s On Faith webpage in attacking the pontiff’s recent comment against the effectiveness of condoms…

CNN’s Zain Verjee couldn’t seem to find any health care “experts” who agreed with Pope Benedict XVI during a report on Tuesday’s Situation Room about the “political firestorm” the pontiff apparently set off during his first visit to Africa. Verjee not only cited unnamed “experts” who disagreed with the pope’s statement that the distribution of condoms on the continent “increases the problem” of…

Four days after Sanjay Gupta, in the wake of Tom Daschle's withdrawal as HHS Secretary-designate, decided to turn down the Obama administration's offer to become Surgeon General, CBS went to the CNN medical correspondent for expert analysis on the benefits of Obama's decision to allow federal funding of research on embryonic stem cells. (Monday afternoon following Obama's announcement, CNN…

CBS, CNN, FNC and the AP on Tuesday all failed to identify Ingmar Guandique, for whom an arrest warrant was issued for the 2001 murder of Chandra Levy, as an illegal alien. In a full story on the CBS Evening News, reporter Bob Orr described him simply as a “Salvadoran immigrant.” During CNN's Situation Room, Zain Verjee benignly called him “a laborer from El Salvador” and later, on Anderson…

CNN personalities Jack Cafferty and David Gergen continued the chorus of praise for President Obama on Wednesday evening for his first address to a joint session of Congress, twenty-four hours after he had given it. During his regular “Question of the Hour” segment on The Situation Room, Cafferty gushed that the Democrat “had that place in the palm of his hand for the entire time he was in that…

How often do you see someone on television deride media darlings Al Gore and Paul Krugman in virtually the same sentence?Not often, right?Well, on Monday's "Situation Room," CNN contributor Alex Castellanos deliciously did exactly that, and actually evoked some nervous laughter from studio members (video available here, partial transcript follows):

All of the broadcast and cable network anchors challenged President Barack Obama in some questions during their Tuesday afternoon Oval Office interview sessions, but CBS's Katie Couric and NBC's Brian Williams also painted Obama as a victim of Washington's culture which forced HHS Secretary nominee Tom Daschle's withdrawal. “You campaigned to change the culture in Washington, to change the…

Anchor Wolf Blitzer and Vanity Fair correspondent Maureen Orth raved about the core members of the Obama administration and their pictures taken by photographer Annie Liebovitz during a segment on CNN’s Situation Room on Monday. Their conversation sounded as if the two were suddenly back in high school browsing a new yearbook. Blitzer gushed over the photos of President Obama and his wife…