IRS Targets Tea Party

By Friday, as the Obama promoters within the network news divisions started spreading the president's word that three growing scandals are just a blip, they might point to Gallup's daily job-approval ratings for Obama, which remained at 49 percent approve, 45 percent disapprove. This result might also reflect that Gallup found that a slim majority of Americans are either "very" or "somewhat"…

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer had some harsh criticism for acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee Friday. Appearing on Fox News’s Special Report, Krauthammer said, “You've got to be a knave or a fool to say that and you have to be an idiot to believe it.”

The PBS NewsHour led off its Thursday evening telecast with a story about the three scandals that currently envelop the Obama administration: the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, the Justice Department’s subpoena of AP phone records, and the Benghazi attack. Rather than following the package with analysis from a journalist, as PBS often does with stories like this, the taxpayer-subsidized…

In the latest instance of liberal journalists thinking alike, Charlie Rose asked practically the same question on Friday's CBS This Morning that ABC's George Stephanopoulos did on Good Morning America. Rose wondered if congressional Republicans "may overplay their hand and somehow squander what they think is opportunity" on the three scandals currently surrounding the Obama White House. The…

“Obama’s presidency was declared dead by the press on Tuesday.” So writes Elspeth Reeve of the Atlantic Wire, providing as evidence a quote from a Politico piece by Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen: “The town is turning on President Obama — and this is very bad news for this White House.” Reeve imputes a level of pessimism to the quote that doesn’t inhere in it. But then she turns around and…

On Thursday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC contributor Joy Reid claimed that Republicans are going after Obama administration scandals because "the only thing that really unites conservatives and Republicans at this point is hatred of Barack Obama. So they're going to play it for all it's worth." Host Lawrence O'Donnell had begun the discussion by reading from a National…

"This administration has a record on transparency that outdoes any previous administration's." So astonishingly said White House press secretary Jay Carney on CNN Thursday without the slightest pushback from host Piers Morgan (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Wednesday night, the journalists at Nightline allowed a mere 31 seconds to the exploding scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservatives. This was after anchor Terry Moran introduced stories on O.J. Simpson's latest trial, one on determining your "Klout score" and the new reality TV show Ice Cold Cold. On Thursday night, the program focused on pop singer Demi Lovato's…

For a brief period on the morning of May 17, MSNBC was actually acting like a real news network. Starting at 9:00 a.m. Eastern on Friday, MSNBC carried live coverage of a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the Obama IRS scandal, but apparently actual news coverage can only last so long before the network breaks out in hives from objective journalism. Following an hour of live coverage…

Jay Leno continued his humorous attack on the White House Thursday. At the beginning of a series of opening monologue jokes about the various scandals plaguing President Obama, the NBC Tonight Show host said, “If Republicans really want to do away with ObamaCare, they should endorse it as a conservative non-profit - let the IRS take it down” (video follows with transcript and absolutely no…

Blame the victim! Twenty-three liberal news operations have taken that strategy about the IRS attack on conservative nonprofits. Fifteen of the 63 members of the left-wing Media Consortium have thrown their support behind the IRS’s investigation. The 15 organizations either wrote or re-posted stories defending the IRS actions. Another eight liberal outlets, including MSNBC, ran similar…

NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell and Fox News host Sean Hannity kicked off the "Media Mash" segment of the May 16 Hannity with a deliciously ironic clip of Hardball host Chris Matthews lamenting on his Tuesday program that President Obama is surrounded by adoring yes-men who can't bear to tell him bad news, and that that culture of groupthink leaves the president prone to embarrassing…

   The reporters at Good Morning America on Friday continued White House damage control efforts on the growing scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups. Former Democratic operative turned journalist George Stephanopoulos insisted that Barack Obama is "trying to turn the corner after a tough week fending off controversy." Talking to Jon Karl, he wondered, "…

Call it Luke Russert's version of "bitter clingers" on steroids . . . In Russert's world, there are apparently two kinds of Republican congressmen.  The "smart" ones—to be found on the Ways & Means Committee—and the others, whom he calls the "God, guns and guts people," presumably in reference to this book. Russert made his statement on today's Morning Joe, responding to Joe…