Government Agencies
Juan Williams, Fresh From Lib Journos' Private Meeting With President
November 24th, 2013 10:11 PM
On Thurday, Fox News "analyst" Juan Williams and several other liberal journalists met privately and off the record with President Obama.
On Fox News Sunday, Williams went into what apparently are the administration's internal (and perhaps becoming external) talking points about the policy trainwrecks HealthCare.gov and Obamacare in general have become. They are that the Affordable Care Act's…

As Obamacare Flails and HealthCare.gov Fails, New Yorker Mag Writer We
November 22nd, 2013 10:20 AM
HealthCare.gov is so insecure that IT experts say they wouldn't use it themselves. The supposedly firm November 30 deadline for the web site's repair and recovery really isn't. Back-end problems abound. Earlier this week, Henry Chao told a congressional committee that "the back-office systems, the accounting systems, the payment systems, they still need be built." That is, they apparently haven…
AP's Hananel Grudgingly But Cryptically Notes House Investigation of A
November 20th, 2013 12:39 PM
In a mild surprise, the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, hasn't totally ignored John Crudele's Monday evening blockbuster story at the New York Post about how fabricated Census Bureau information fed a pretty clearly cooked September 2012 Employment Situation report. But the wire service's Sam Hananel ruined the surprise by spending five terse paragraphs making sure that…

Politico's Stephanie Simon Twice Claims Arne Duncan Apologized for 'Wh
November 19th, 2013 9:52 AM
I don't want to go overboard here, but most of the print establishment press deserves a bit of grudging credit in the Arne Duncan "white suburban moms" controvery.
Most of them aren't characterizing the gutless attempt by Barack Obama's education secretary to back away from his spiteful, condescending, bigoted comment Friday as an apology — because it wasn't. In a Monday post at the…

Gillibrand on 'This Week': 'We All Knew' That 'Keep Your Plan' Wasn't
November 18th, 2013 10:19 AM
Well, that settles it. Sunday on ABC's "This Week" (video here) New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand admitted that "We all knew" that Obamacare's core guarantee — "If you like your plan-doctor-provider, you can keep your plan-doctor-provider" — was false. That's "we" as in "all of us Democrats."
There's no wiggle room in what Gillibrand said, as will be demonstrated after the jump.…

Awww: Politico's Thrush Is Bored by 'ACA Debacle
November 17th, 2013 10:27 PM
It's hard to tell whether a Sunday morning tweet (HT Twitchy) by the Politico's Glenn Thrush is an attempt to deflect attention from the historic Obamacare trainwreck or a sign of a serious midlife crisis.
Poor Glenn is bored. He "can't watch/listen to another word" about the Affordable Care Act. Apparently, writing a roughly 7000-word Politico Magazzzz ... zzz ... zzz ... excuse me, Magazine…

Politico's Purdum: Obama Had to Lie to Pass ACA Because Public Couldn
November 17th, 2013 8:52 PM
In a pathetic analyis piece at the Politico on Friday morning, Politico's Todd S. Purdum engaged in egregious excuse-making driven by a de facto admission that the Affordable Care Act would never have passed if the public had been told the truth about what was in it.
This is the same Todd S. Purdum who recently, as Mark Finkelstein at NewsBusters reported earlier this month, accused…

Press Virtually Mum As Arne Duncan Blames Common Core Opposition on 'W
November 17th, 2013 4:56 PM
Will yet another example of rhetorical intemperance by an Obama administration official get a free pass? So far it mostly has.
A Washington Post item by Valerie Strauss at its "Answer Sheet" blog quotes a dispatch from Libbly Nelson at the Politico, but does not link to it. I couldn't find a related original story by Nelson at her Politico archive or in a Politico search on Education…

Not Establishment Press News: Obamacare Causes Bowie State, Md.’s Ol
November 16th, 2013 11:56 AM
The student health care plan offered by Bowie State University, Maryland's oldest historically black college, is an example of one of those "substandard" plans President Obama, the Affordable Care Act's architects, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have been determined to extinguish.
Well, they've gotten their way. Rather than continue a plan whose costs would have gone from $54 to $900 per…

Politico's Josh Gerstein Thinks Bill Clinton Is the One Who Has 'Expla
November 12th, 2013 6:18 PM
Apparently appalled that President Obama clearly needs outside help to come to the realization that something must be done to fix the mess resulting from his "keep your plan" guarantee, Josh Gerstein at the Politico opened a Monday afternoon report by claiming that "President Bill Clinton — the man President Barack Obama once dubbed his 'Secretary of Explaining Stuff' — once again has some…
AP: Agencies 'Found' Billions to Get Through Sequestration, But 'Secon
November 11th, 2013 8:23 PM
Even though government operational outlays didn't really go down at all in fiscal 2013 compared to fiscal 2012, several government agencies ended up raiding slush funds (my term) to get through sequestration, the tiny reductions in previously increased projected spending which took effect during the second half of the fiscal year.
This evening at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's…
NYT Prints Op-Ed 'Daring to Complain About Obamacare'; Leftist Wrath E
November 11th, 2013 5:03 PM
UPDATE: James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal "wonder(s) if the Times intended the article's publication as a joke at ObamaCare critics' expense." Seems like it takes too many direct shots at uncompassionate liberals for that to be the case, but readers can decide for themselves.
The guess here is that the folks at the New York Times who screen op-ed submissions for adherence to leftist…
Press Virtually Silent as Appeals Court Blocks Obamacare's Contracepti
November 11th, 2013 2:54 PM
The press has been obsessed with the fate of Obamacare's contraception mandate ever since religious, corporate, and other litigants began challenging it in the courts.
So what explains the fact that a search on "Korte" at the Associated Press's national site and at the New York Times return nothing and nothing relevant, respectively? Or that there are only nine stories at Google Newsin a…

After Updating, White House Website Still Says 'You Can Keep Your Plan
November 10th, 2013 10:19 AM
Saturday afternoon, Politico's Jason Millman, in an item incredibly headlined "Updated White House website keeps disputed Obamacare language," reported that "The Obama administration has updated a White House website that says its health care law allows people to keep their plans if they like them — but the website still maintains the language that Obamacare opponents have aggressively attacked…