George W. Bush

President Obama's media acolytes must really be disappointed – they're comparing his administration's unilateral behavior in the war on terror to that of George W. Bush. The new interest was kicked off by a Justice Department document leaked on Monday that offered a legal analysis of when the president can order the targeted killing of an American citizen suspected of terrorism, without due…

Barack The First? Wow: who would have thought that perhaps the strongest statement yet in condemnation of President Obama's self-arrogated right to kill Americans abroad would have come from Jon Meacham?  Yet on today's Morning Joe, historian Meacham—who knows something about the use and abuse of presidential power—criticized Obama for ignoring the "rule of law" and actually described Obama as…

Imagine the apoplectic Precious Perfect Special Comment rage Keith Olbermann [remember him?] would have worked himself into had this memo come to light under W . . . Unusual candor from Mika Brzezinski and Harold Ford, Jr. on the double standard that exists for Republicans and Democrats.  Discussing on today's Morning Joe the Obama administration memo that has been uncovered authorizing the…

Last week, President Obama blamed Republicans for the poor state of the economy. On CNN's State of the Union Sunday, former Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao scoffed at this saying, "I don't know how he can say that when he had control of both the houses in the legislative branch. He had control over the White House."

Remember the media’s love affair with George W. Bush during his first term? Me neither. But PBS’s Tavis Smiley and Rolling Stone journalist and author Michael Hastings recall such a scenario. According to Hastings, the media loved President Bush from 2001 to 2005, just as they love President Obama now: “...if you look back at the first four years of the Bush administration, the media – same…

"Chris Matthews has it exactly wrong!" NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Sean Hannity on the January 22 "Media Mash" segment, reacting to the Hardball host's effusive praise on Monday for what he insisted was a Lincolnesque inaugural address by the president. "The Gettysburg Address was an attempt at healing the nation's wounds" from the Civil War while "Obama's speech... was a left-wing…

When GOP President George W. Bush celebrated his second inauguration in January of 2005, reporters in the political press hammered away at the cost of the event -- about $140 million -- by stating that the money could have been put to better use in the Iraq war and as aid for those caught in the earthquake and tsunami that struck southern Asia a month earlier. Eight years later, the people…

Native and long-time Washingtonians see presidential inaugurations every four years, and, for them, they're pretty run-of-the-mill, regardless of one's party affiliation. This is especially true when they're the second go-around for a given president. Washington proper is heavily liberal Democrat, and the outlying suburbs are so too, to a lesser degree, but still, enthusiasm for a presidential…

Detecting media bias is often an exercise in contrasting two analogous events to see how the media worked to write the narrative in the public's imagination. We at NewsBusters have already looked at how the media love the party atmosphere of the Obama inaugurals but groused at the expense of Bush's second inaugural, for example.  So it's instructive to see how Washington Post veteran…

A tale of three presidential inaugurations during wartime and strife. The New York Times found it bad form for Republicans to spend $40 million on President Bush's second inauguration in January 2005, during a time of war. A January 11, 2005 editorial on Bush's second inauguration, "Victor's Spoils," sniffed: At the rate President Bush's supporters are giving money, his second inauguration…

It's been almost exactly four years since George W. Bush left the White House, yet liberal media members still can't resist taking a poke at him when the opportunity presents itself. On Thursday's Hardball, MSNBC's Chris Matthews accused the former President of "speaking English as a second language" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

In a 14-paragraph Style section front-pager today headlined "Ceremony is a civic ritual for all of us," the Washington Post's Sally Quinn waxed philosophical about how we as Americans need the pomp and circumstance of the quadrennial presidential inaugural ceremonies to unite us as Americans and swell our hearts with civic pride, regardless of who is president.  "[T]his is America's chance to…

Today's Washington Post editorial clings to the liberal anti-gun rights view that only the government should have access to "military weapons," by which of course they mean semiautomatic "assault rifles" like the AR-15. Of course, government corruption and incompetence has long been an avenue by which criminals have obtained weapons, the Fast & Furious gunrunning scandal being an…

Appearing on the January 10 Martin Bashir program to discuss concerns being expressed by many in Washington -- predominantly on the Left -- that President Obama's second-term Cabinet will be less diverse in terms of race and gender than his first term, MSNBC contributor Goldie Taylor took the opportunity to attack minority and women appointees of the George W. Bush Cabinet as self-hating…