Allen West

Congressman Allen West (R-Fla.) called on the media to “stop being afraid” of President Barack Obama who is “destroying this country.” West made his remarks on Tuesday at a press conference in support of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline. “It’s about time that I asked this from the media: Stop being afraid of this president,” said Rep. West. “Stand up to him and call him out on the…

Rep. Allen West (Fla.), the only Republican member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), is considering leaving the CBC after a fellow member of the caucus practically compared Tea Party members to lynch mob members. Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) recently told a gathering in Miami that Tea Party members "would love to see us as second-class citizens" and to see blacks "hanging on a tree."…

Using a time-honored establishment press technique, an unbylined Associated Press report out of Indianapolis this evening ("Ind. lawmaker's lynching reference riles tea party;" saved here at my web host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) twisted the real news about Congressman Andre Carson's inexcusable, hateful comments at a Congressional Black Caucus-sponsored event in…

"Black lawmakers are embarking on a month-long campaign Monday to address the staggering unemployment rate among African Americans, an issue that has become a growing source of tension between members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Obama administration," Washington Post's Ylan Q. Mui noted in the open of her August 8 page A3 story, "Black caucus launches minority jobs campaign."…

There is a notable double standard that exists between what Republicans and Democrats are allowed to say. The same words can be construed as racist or sexist when coming from a Republican, but entirely admissible when coming from a Democrat. Rep. Allen West recently wrote a strongly-worded letter targeting Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz for berating him behind his back on the House floor. He…

On Thursday's NBC Today, congressional correspondent Kelly O'Donnell reported on a war of words between Republican Congressman Allen West and Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "...West, a freshman Republican who hit 'send' on a nasty e-mail to Wasserman-Schultz....Democratic congresswomen accuse West of sexual harassment." While O'Donnell quoted from West's email – in which…

 On Friday’s World News on ABC, correspondent Jonathan Karl took a moment to go beyond the budget debate between House Republicans and President Obama with the GOP unwilling to support a tax increase, and noted that House Democrats have also been just as resistant to voting for cutting the growth of Medicare spending. But the same night's CBS Evening News focused on Republican reluctance to…

CBS hounded four Republicans from the left during a town hall on the economy which aired on Tuesday's Early Show. Bob Schieffer, Erica Hill, and Rebecca Jarvis pressed Reps. Paul Ryan and Allen West, Senator Tom Coburn, and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to consider tax hikes to deal with the deficit. Schieffer also specifically accused the three members of Congress of "doing nothing" to…

Republican Congressman and retired Army veteran Allen West (R-Fla.) said he "cannot understand" America’s involvement in Libya and that U.S. military is being used as a "rent-a-force" in the region. "For every decision there are consequences and we have to sometimes analyze what could be those consequences. Just the same with operations in Libya – I cannot understand it. I don’t know what the…

Wow, talk about digging deep. Then again, Rachel Maddow's critique of Congressman Paul Ryan's proposed reform of Medicare did extend beyond the word "kill." It also included the words "killed" and "killing." Just how the GOP plan does this Maddow didn't say on her MSNBC show last night, what with inconvenient facts lying in wait to undermine her allegation of homicide. She decided…

New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer piled on the ideological labels in her Friday profile of Florida’s freshman Republican Rep. Allen West, a black conservative and Tea party activist: “Conservative Congressman’s Star Power Extends Beyond Florida District.” Steinhauer’s profile, while not overtly hostile, contained no less than eight ideological labels to describe the “conservative”…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews honored Martin Luther King Jr. Day by accusing white Republicans of being afraid of black people. During a Monday night Hardball special called "Obama's America," Matthews insultingly asked former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele if, at GOP conventions, black-Americans at those events were told not to "bunch up" because "you'll scare these people" and…

 As he hosted a special two-hour edition of Countdown on Saturday night to cover the violent attack on Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann ended up delivering a "Special Comment" in which he called for an end to the use of violent imagery by political figures of all ideologies, even apologizing for his own history, but he also at one point seemed to describe…

 On Saturday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Bob Orr filed a report on the incoming Republican congressional freshmen, and, after noting that Rep.-elect Allen West was taking a "hard line" on federal spending, and after showing a clip of the Florida Republican raising doubts about compromising "your principles," the CBS correspondent used the cliche "partisan bickering" as he warned that such…