Barack Obama

On Thursday, both NBC’s Today and ABC’s Good Morning America censored any mention of the controversy swirling around President Obama’s decision to skip the funeral of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia scheduled for Saturday. To its credit, CBS This Morning offered a full report on widely criticized move.

Some analysts have pointed out that it’d be risky for Republicans to preemptively block anyone President Obama nominates to succeed Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, but that approach wouldn’t necessarily end when Obama leaves office. Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman believes that if in 2017 a Democrat becomes president but GOPers retain sufficient power in the Senate, they’ll just…

MSNBC's Chris Hayes is usually right less often than a stopped clock, i.e., fewer than two times a day. But he might get lucky if by some miracle he's right about something else today because of the matter discussed in this post. After the Obama administration announced that President Barack Obama will not attend Saturday's funeral for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch Catholic,…

While discussing Barack Obama’s comments about Donald Trump, Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday lamented the “painful” and “insulting” attacks the President has endured. Regarding Obama’s assertion that Trump won’t be president, Mitchell worried, “He’s speaking from the perspective of someone who was so demeaned by Donald Trump back in 2008.” 

In a desperate attempt on Wednesday’s NBC Today to hype supposed divisions in the Republican Party over opposition to President Obama nominating a successor to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, correspondent Andrea Mitchell enthusiastically proclaimed: “Even as a handful of Republican senators are now breaking with their leaders and saying the Obama nominee should at least get a fair hearing…

The Tuesday edition of ABC’s World News Tonight played the role of spin doctor for the Hillary Clinton campaign as it stood out from the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News by prominently touting Clinton attacking Republicans as being racist in their opposition to President Obama and most recently his desire to place the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Further, ABC saw it fit to play up Clinton…

The “big three” networks ABC, CBS, and NBC all made sure to weigh in Tuesday night on President Barack Obama’s comments hours earlier about his desire to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia and spun them as Obama “plan[ning] to follow the Constitution” against “the Republican roadblock” in the Senate. 

Despite not even having a short list of President Obama’s nominees to replace Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, on Tuesday’s NBC Today, correspondent Andrea Mitchell assured viewers it would be a “moderate” pick and slammed Republican opposition.

Over the past few days, a great many left-wing commentators have weighed in on Antonin Scalia-related issues, especially Scalia’s judicial legacy and Republicans’ refusal to consider anyone President Obama might nominate to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Highlights have included Slate's Dahlia Lithwick remarking that "sometimes it seemed [Scalia] worked overtime to earn your hate. He…

Yesterday, New York Times editorial board member Brent Staples tweeted what was and apparently still is his best argument for why the Republican-controlled Senate should roll over and approve whoever President Obama wishes to nominate to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by Justice Antonin Scalia's death on Saturday: "In a nation built on slavery, white men propose denying the first black…

The Associated Press's choice of a headline to accompany business writer Stan Choe's Saturday morning report on the state of the economy — "MAIN STREET HOLDS UP AS WALL STREET STRUGGLES, FOR A CHANGE" — has a couple of interesting implications. Is AP celebrating the fact that Wall Street is struggling? Or does the idea that "Main Street" is holding up "for a change" mean that it hasn't been…

In separate Sunday morning interviews of Republican presidential candidates and Senators Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Marco Rubio (Fl.), ABC’s This Week host George Stephanopoulos and NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd urged them to consider whomever President Obama nominates to replace the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia since “the people elected President Obama” and he…

During the panel segment Sunday morning on ABC’s This Week, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol schooled ABC News political analyst and former Bush administration official Matthew Dowd on how Democrats have long politicized judicial nominees after Dowd lamented that “Republicans have made a mistake” in reacting to the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and urged them to consider…

Appearing as a guest on Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS, veteran singer Harry Belafonte declared that there is a "new wave of racist definitions and racist practices" in the U.S., and went on to claim that the election of a black President "awakened a right-wing energy" and "shocked a lot of racist forces in this country."  He then added: "I think a lot of the hurdles, problems that Obama has faced…