Regulation

The business press has gotten really excited about the possibility — some of them are even treating it as a probability — that the first-quarter's recently reported annualized economic contraction of 0.7 percent will go positive if it gets revised for so-called "residual seasonality." "Residual seasonality" is "the manifestation of seasonal patterns in data that have already been seasonally…

On Wednesday night, the major broadcast networks ignored a series of new regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the agency claims will better explain regulations in the Clean Water Act, but are seen by many as a power grab by the Obama administration to further control America’s waterways. While the story received zero mention on ABC, CBS, or NBC (but full stories…

This has to be the month's top entry in the "Just when you think you've seen it all" category — and it will be more than a little interesting to see how the nation's press handles it. As the Associated Press reported a week ago, the City Council in Los Angeles, by a vote of 14-1, ordered the drafting of a law mandating a citywide minimum wage of $15 per hour by 2020, noting that "the support of…

On Wednesday’s NBC Today, co-host Tamron Hall stumbled upon conservative economic philosophy as she defended a hot dog vendor’s right to charge customers whatever he wanted, even if it was overpriced: “But why can’t he set his own prices? I mean, if a restaurant sells their hot dog, steak, or whatever for the price they want, why is his price regulated?”

It was the best of coverage - it was the worst of coverage.

Friday's CBS This Morning surprisingly covered a proposed bill in Florida that would allow college students with concealed firearms permits to carry their weapons onto campus. Michelle Miller spotlighted a Florida State University graduate student who backs the bill. However, Miller also featured two opponents of such "campus carry" legislation during her report.

On Friday, Jim Kuhnhenn at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, seemed to enjoy President Barack Obama's rant against Republicans and others grossly dissatisfied with the economy's performance on his watch. He described Obama as "taunting Republicans" in his speech at the Democratic Party's winter meeting in Washington. The wire service itself seems less enamored of Kuhnhenn's…

In an interview with BuzzFeed on Tuesday, President Obama attacked office supply chain Staples over accusations that the company was cutting back on worker hours to avoid the ObamaCare health insurance coverage mandate for their employees: "...when I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting…

On successive front pages Saturday and Sunday, the New York Times hit from the left presidential prospects from each party: liberal Democrat Hillary Clinton and Bobby Jindal, the conservative Republican governor of Louisiana.

On Thursday's All In With Chris Hayes, MSNBC's Irin Carmon bewailed the apparent inevitability that the Republican-led Congress would reintroduce a proposed ban on abortions after the twentieth week of pregnancy: "I think even if this bill were to come back and it would have a broader rape exception, it would still be an attack on all of the women who need abortions after twenty weeks."

Elias Isquith contends that “after eight years of George W. Bush,” America “was in such rotten shape that Obama had little time to do more than stave off the next crisis,” but that by this past Tuesday night, favorable economic developments gave Obama “an opportunity to boast of changing the ‘trajectory’ of the country like few presidents before him and none since Ronald Reagan.”

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who died on Thursday, is predictably being lionized today by USA Today's Aamer Madhani "as (a) giant in political rhetoric," and by others elsewhere in similarly glowing terms. Madhani goes on to characterize the three-term Empire State chief executive's 1984 Democratic Convention speech in San Francisco as "what is widely considered one of the finest pieces…

In addition to its slanted coverage of the news regarding Cuba, NBC Nightly News on Thursday offered up a biased segment against the growing transportation company Uber by using two incidents involving its drivers to conclude that Uber’s currently experiencing “a rough ride” over “increasing concerns” regarding safety. NBC News correspondent Janet Shamulian only interviewed two individuals…

The Esquire blogger argues that anti-Obamacare lawsuits and an effort to weaken Dodd-Frank derivatives regulation are examples of how “the slow, steady and inexorable campaign to render this president a non-person in the long sweep of history continues apace.”