Tabloid rumors are now making the rounds that a supposed friend of vice presidential daughter Ashley Biden is shopping a video alleged to show her using cocaine. But while any gossip (no matter how dubious) regarding the first and second families gone wild is always sure to make the news, this imbroglio is certain to […]

Even as President Obama prepared to meet with the CEO's of the nation's largest banks and financial institutions, his detractors' hysteria about his plans to rescue the economy reached a fever pitch. In Washington, GOP leaders decried Obama's "banana republic" budget, only to unveil warmed-over tax cuts certain enrich the wealthiest Americans while accelerating the […]

During President Obama's press conference Tuesday, NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd demonstrated once again why he ought to return to his previous role as a political analyst. Even as Americans are losing their jobs, homes and retirement savings, Todd asked the President "why haven't you asked for something specific that the public should be […]

If Politico has emerged as the ESPN of politics, covering the game but not the content of government, the Associated Press in recent weeks has delivered another media innovation. Time and again, the AP has delivered opinion pieces to its readers using the headline, "Analysis." But if a rose by any other name would smell […]

The right-wing blogosphere is predictably abuzz in the wake of President Obama's shockingly insensitive off-the-cuff joke comparing his bowling to the Special Olympics. Following as it did Joe Biden's request at a rally last year that a wheelchair bound man "stand up," Obama's unfortunate appearance with Jay Leno isn't going to help matters for the […]

This has been a busy week for journalistic conflicts of interest. Over the weekend, former MSNBC host Tucker Carlson blasted Jon Stewart as a "partisan hack," a charge made without noting either his own 2004 bludgeoning at Stewart's hands or his ceaseless advocacy on behalf of Scooter Libby, a man whose legal defense fund was […]

Around the blogosphere, readers were shocked - shocked! - to learn that Fox News had deceptively edited a six-month old video to create the false impression that Vice President Joe Biden believes "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." But while Fox is guilty of ham-handed splicing, it's worth noting that the network is a […]

One day after Dick Cheney claimed President Obama is making the nation less safe, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs joked that CNN invited the former vice president only because "Rush Limbaugh was busy" and Cheney was "the next most popular member of the Republican cabal" available. But when CBS' Chip Reid protested the "sarcastic" […]

Among the least compelling story lines in the continuing internecine Republican conflict is the war of words between Meghan McCain and Laura Ingraham. After Ingraham dissed as "plus-sized" the presidential candidate's daughter turned blogger, McCain responded by telling her to "kiss my fat ass." When McCain asked on ABC's The View, "What kind of message […]

Jon Stewart's demolition Thursday of CNBC's Jim Cramer may pale in importance to Edward R. Murrow's historic 1954 take-down of Joe McCarthy, but those who most likely would have backed the red-baiting Wisconsin Senator are just as unhappy about it. Former MSNBC conservative commentator Tucker Carlson is at the top of that list. Carlson, perhaps […]