Washington Post

On Friday, January 17, President Obama unveiled the rough outlines of his plan to modify but maintain the National Security Administration's ability to collect telephony metadata from American civilians. For its part on the front page the following morning, The Washington Post exulted that "Obama moves to rein in surveillance" as he "[o]rders limits on phone data." Another front-pager sought to…

Democrat Mark Herring pulled out a squeaker of a win last fall, narrowly besting Republican Mark Obenshain to become Virginia's attorney general. In October, the Washington Post endorsed Herring, then a state senator, insisting that Herring "would hew to the former Virginia tradition of offering restrained and responsible advice" to the governor and state agencies and by refusing to "[turn] the…

Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of a day when the content of one's character, not the color of one's skin, was how Americans would evaluate each other. So when NAACP official and African-American clergyman the Rev. William Barber made statements fundamentally violative of the spirit of that dream on the Sunday preceding the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, you'd think it noteworthy for…

On Tuesday -- just one day before he hailed the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade -- President Obama's White House issued a press advisory noting that the president would meet with Pope Francis on March 27. Naturally the dutiful Obama acolytes at the Washington Post put staff write Juliet Eilperin hard at work spinning the forthcoming meeting as virtually guaranteed to be a net political coup for…

Surprise! The Washington Post on Wednesday profiled two young female pro-life activists on the front of the Style section. Not a surprise? The headline: “Antiabortion forces’ rising young stars.” Reporter Krissah Thompson wrote “Kristan Hawkins, 28, and Lila Rose, 25, are central players in the antiabortion movement’s resurgence.” In the same corner of the front page yesterday, the Post oozed…

On Friday, as I noted on Saturday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told public radio's Susan Arbetter that "extreme conservatives" – that is, people who are pro-life, understand the clear meaning of the Second Amendment, or wish to keep marriage as it has traditionally been defined – "have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are." Note well that Cuomo's remarks…

This is a "Can't Make This Up" item on two levels. The more obvious of the two is an incredibly tone-deaf statement issued by Texas Democratic guberatorial candidate Wendy Davis, whose Republican opponent is paraplegic Greg Abbott, that "I am proud of what I’ve been able to achieve through hard work and perseverance. And I guarantee you that anyone who tries to say otherwise hasn’t walked a day…

Tuesday was a big day over at the Washington Post with the announcement of the departure of one blogger and the bringing in of another. Left-wing blogger Ezra Klein who had been overseeing a supposedly ideologically neutral section of the paper’s website called “Wonkblog” will no longer be working with the Post. Supposedly, he was in a dispute with the paper’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, over some…

Gloria Steinem's almost 80, and The Washington Post never tires of boosting her as one of the greatest Americans walking the planet. On the front of the Style section on Tuesday, former Post reporter Annie Groer freelanced from the Jaipur Literary Festival in India to promote how "Steinem goes back to her activist roots." The Post thinks Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are fringy weirdos,…

The Washington Post celebrated Martin Luther King Day on Monday by publishing an op-ed on the front page of the Style section by Joshua DuBois -- President Obama's first-term adviser on faith-based initiatives -- that explicitly compared Obama to MLK. "Lessons from King for Obama's travails," read the headline inside the paper next to pictures of MLK and Obama. Somehow, the fight against Bull…

Much will be written, and should be, about President Barack Obama's whining that racism partially explains the year-long plunge in his popularity since his reelection in 2012. What's also worth noting about the ponderous and painfully long (18 web pages) January 27 writeup in The New Yorker ("Going the Distance; On and off the road with Barack Obama") is David Remnick's apparent obsessions with…

Signs it’s going to be a very tired week in the “humor” column of the Sunday Washington Post Magazine? When it starts with “Memo From: God. Re: Gay people.” Post humorist Gene Weingarten is a godless man, so the idea that he can speak for God is for him like putting on a Bullwinkle the Moose costume. But there he goes, off to mock “Duck Dynasty” and Sarah Palin:

In June 2007, actor Isaiah Washington was fired from ABC's Grey's Anatomy months after publicly apologizing for having used the term "faggot" in a heated argument back in October 2006 in reference to another cast member. Washington had apologized in January 2007 and added, "I know a mere apology will not end this, and I intend to let my future actions prove my sincerity." Seven years later,…

On Tuesday a federal appeals court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) overstepped its legal authority in 2010 when it imposed so-called net neutrality regulations on broadband companies -- cable and fiber-optic Internet providers like Comcast or Verizon FiOS. The FCC had done this despite language in federal law which forbade the regulations under a "common carrier"…