Iraq

You say "Jeb Bush," Thomas Roberts says "the Kouachi brothers."  It's got to be one of the strangest political Rorschach test results of all time. On today's Morning Joe, Roberts claimed that Jeb Bush would have a "big onus" around his neck if he runs for president "because if we hear 'Bush' we're automatically going to go to people bringing up the Kouachi brothers and their photos of Abu Ghraib…

Ayman Mohyeldin has suggested that Chris Kyle, the real "American Sniper," was a "racist" whose military missions were nothing less than "killing sprees."  With opinions like that, you might imagine Mohyeldin to be some unhinged bloviator from the bowels of the anti-American far left. Or, an NBC foreign correspondent [who formerly worked for Al Jazeera] who regularly reports on events in the…

In an article for Salon, Penn State professor Sophia McClennen claims the box-office blockbuster has “no nuance, no context and no subtlety” and that its director, Clint Eastwood, “represents a dark, disturbing feature of the GOP mind-set.”

This week, as President Obama gives his State of the Union address, NBC's Brian Williams touts the "generosity" of his plan for "free college for millions," even as NBC morning host Matt Lauer slaps Republicans for their "pettiness" and "disrespect" for applauding Obama's statement that he cannot run for President again. Also, Bryant Gumbel growls about the "pigs" in the National Rifle…

Those awkward silences from your audience, Bill Maher? That's them saying they aren't amused. You might want to pay more attention to what they're telling you. First time it happened on Maher's HBO show last night came when he was speaking with The Atlantic's James Fallows about his cover story in the January-February issue, "Why Do the Best Soldiers in the World Keep Losing? The Tragic…

In a nasty screed against American Sniper on Wednesday, Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi claimed the Oscar-nominated film was "almost too dumb to criticize" but proceeded to do so anyway, declaring: "Even by the low low standards of this business, it still manages to sink to a new depth or two."

While NBC News was up to its usual business in praising and defending President Obama both before and after his State of the Union speech, chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel emerged as a rare voice that instead took to the liberal network’s airwaves to condemn the President’s rhetoric on foreign policy as both unrealistic and, in many cases, simply not true.  After being asked by anchor…

Your truly noted yesterday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) how Michael Moore tweeted, in part, that "We were taught snipers were cowards." Earlier today, Geoffrey Dickens at NewsBusters observed that Seth Rogen, whose "The Interview" movie was at least partially salvaged financially by freedom-of-speech supporters on the left and right who watched it online and in person in select areas, tweeted…

The popularity of "American Sniper," the story of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, has "shocked" Hollywood. Estimates are that by the time the four-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend ends, the Clint Eastwood-directed film will gross over $100 million and smash records in several R-rated film categories. That such a movie has been so well received, causing long waiting lines in both red and blue America…

Ann Jones has doubts about allegations that America is “crazy,” but adds, “Some people who question me say that the U.S. is ‘paranoid,’ ‘backward,’ ‘behind the times,’ ‘vain,’ ‘greedy,’ ‘self-absorbed,’ or simply ‘dumb.’  Others, more charitably, imply that Americans are merely ‘ill-informed,’ ‘misguided,’ ‘misled,’ or ‘asleep,’ and could still recover sanity.  But wherever I travel, the…

The nation's establishment press is virtually ignoring the existence of horrifying and officially approved Islamic State videos showing the executions of accused homosexuals and adulterers.  A search this morning at Google News on "Islamic State gay" (with "Islamic State" in quotes, showing duplicates) for items appearing since January 14 returned 83 results. Roughly 30 of them are directly…

"We Blame George W. Bush" is a recurring category in James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today" column at the Wall Street Journal.  The meme mocks the penchant of progressives to blame the former president for everything under the sun.   The phenomenon was illustrated in an ugly way on last night's Rachel Maddow Show. Dem Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut blamed the existence of the Charlie Hebdo…

The ability of tiny numbers of far-left fringe group demonstrators to get undue press attention virtually any time they want continues to be intensely annoying. In mid-2007, Barack Obama made closing the prison at Guantanmo Bay a core promise of his 2008 campaign. That was 7-1/2 years ago. Obama has been in office six years. Gitmo is still open. So naturally, the aggrieved professional…

Nic Robertson refreshingly pointed out on Thursday's CNN Tonight that the recent terrorist attack in Paris was part of a wider "world war all in the name of Islam." While many leftists pointed the finger at the American presence in the Middle East or the Abu Ghraib controversy, Robertson put the shootings in the wider context of recent Islamist massacres across the globe.