Texas

In the wake of her filibuster in the Texas state senate on Tuesday, NBC, ABC, and CBS all expressed their outrage at Texas Governor Rick Perry daring to criticize their anointed abortion "folk hero" Wendy Davis. On Friday, Today co-host Matt Lauer announced: "The battle over abortion gets very personal as Governor Rick Perry takes on a female senator whose filibuster helped block a…

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced Wednesday it would not provide additional funds to help the town of West, Texas rebuild after a fertilizer plant explosion killed 15 and injured 160. MSNBC’s Alex Wagner seemed positively gleeful over the news. The daytime host treated the development as a political defeat for Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), implying on Thursday’s Now…

Joe Scarborough seems to have an obsession with conservative and Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz. Scarborough and his Thursday Morning Joe panel bashed the freshman Texas senator for at least the fourth time in a few months, berating the Lone Star Republican for his distrust of Congressional leadership. The MSNBC host suggested Cruz has “no interest in working with any of his colleagues,” and…

The Sunday Outlook section of The Washington Post offered a list of “Spring Cleaning” items, “things to toss out.” Some were light topics: Jonathan Capehart picked summer “Flip-flops.” But former Post defense reporter Thomas Ricks suggested we toss Texas out of the USA. “I’m just sick of ‘em and all their BS,” he proclaimed. “For decades, Texans have been clamoring about leaving the Union.…

Brian Stelter, media reporter for the New York Times, foisted his peculiar news judgment on Fox News, weighing President Obama's petulant remarks after the defeat of his gun control plans as more newsworthy than a fire at a Texas fertilizer plant that has killed at least 12 people and injured up to 200. Stelter also sounded offended that Fox cut off Obama's live Rose Garden remarks, in his…

Kossacks often put a lefty spin on non-political stories, and it happened again this week with Lance Armstrong's admission of doping. One resident of Kosland declared that Armstrong wasn't merely an athlete who cheated, but someone who, in terms of mendacity, thievery, and hypocrisy, behaved like a typical Republican. As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.

The New York Times's Manny Fernandez greeted the opening of the biannual Texas legislative session in Austin in Wednesday's paper: "Texas Budget Surplus Proves as Contentious As a Previous Shortfall." After explaining how Texas has become flush with cash over the last two years, going from a budget deficit to surplus, Fernandez couldn't help working in a cut against the "far-right" Tea Party.

If Hollywood doesn’t like something, then clearly state legislators should react. At least that’s what Dave Fehling, NPR’s StateImpact Texas reporter suggested. StateImpact is a “reporting project of local public media and NPR,” and has many financial backers including George Soros (through his Open Society Foundations). “Chances may be better this time around that the Texas legislature…

There are reckless protesters in Texas chaining themselves to trees, houses, and halting precious jobs, but you won’t hear about that on ABC, CBS, or NBC broadcast news programs. Extending the Keystone pipeline, which Obama blocked earlier this year, has actually been embraced by people on both sides of the aisle. According to a news story titled “Democrats Joining the G.O.P. on Pipeline” in…

Erica Greider reviewed on Tuesday the recent conservative-bashing book by New York Times columnist and former editorial page editor Gail Collins, As Texas Goes – How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda. Greider covers the region for the Economist and knows something about Texas history, which puts Collins at a disadvantage. Greider wrote: ...Her book, 'As Texas Goes... ,' pays…

In today's 16-paragraph page A6 story, "Legal challenges tie up new voting restrictions,"* the Washington Post's Krissah Thompson reported that many "[s]tricter ID laws and other controversial voting restrictions" could be held up in the courts until after November election. At no point in her story, however, did Thompson note recent polling shows 70 percent of Americans back photo ID for…

"There's a lot of anxiety for thousands of women in Texas today about their health care," MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell alarmed viewers of her 1 p.m. Eastern program today. "They're going to lose health care coverage this week, on Wednesday, when the Texas state legislature enforces a law cutting funds to any health care center affiliated with an abortion provider, and that means Planned Parenthood…

What does the New York Times have against Texas A&M, a rare public university whose student body leans right? Manny Fernandez reported Saturday from the campus in College Station, on an illegal immigrant who lost his bid for student body president: "Vying for Campus President, Illegal Immigrant Gets a Gamut of Responses." Who was to blame? A conservative student body who made him feel…

The New York Times defended the Texas branches of Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, on the front page Thursday: "Women in Texas Losing Options For Health Care" was reported by Pam Belluck and Emily Ramshaw, a reporter for the Texas Tribune, which produces a twice-weekly local section for the Texas edition of the Times. Ramshaw was last covered in Times Watch in…