James Taranto

While trying to win elections, the Democratic strategy is often perceived as combining several minorities -- including African-Americans, feminists, global warming alarmists and members of labor unions -- to pull together a winning total over Republicans, who usually try to draw more than 50 percent of the general population, a strategy that has often been hammered by liberals and members of…

James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal took on the strange conflict that is PolitiFact picked a “Lie of the Year” they’ve repeatedly defended as “Half True.” Barack Obama repeatedly claimed that if you liked your health plan, you could keep it once he passed his badly named "Affordable Care Act." He called it "PolitiFact's Forked Tongue." PolitiFact has only drawn a yellow Hi-Liter through…

It's amusing to see how the left reacts when things don't work out as predicted. Earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted how USA Today's Kelly Kennedy described a major malfunction in Obamacare which will cause hundreds of thousands of children to go without health insurance next year as a "glitch." On the "climate change" front, those darned "glitches" abound. In an item today…

At The Huffington Post, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich railed against how angry and divided America is and blamed it on a yawning gap of economic inequality. James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal added, “Somehow he neglects to notice that his own political allies try to incite resentment of ‘millionaires and billionaires,’ ‘corporate jet owners’ and similar targets." Like many…

On Wednesday, James Taranto at The Wall Street Journal exposed that the New York Times editorial page shamelessly changed its position on the filibuster in 2013 from nearly the exact opposite of its position during a Republican Senate majority in 2005. “It's now clearer than ever that the Times's guiding principle is nothing other than the tactical interests of the Democratic Party,” wrote…

In a study finding that should be completely obvious to anyone who spends an hour with the media, the liberal-leaning Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has found media coverage “was tilted massively against those who favor traditional marriage.” Pew’s study of more than 1,000 stories from March 18 to May 12 found what anyone could find. Washington Post media blogger…

“Liberal media bias is an old complaint,” the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto noted in his “Best of the Web Today” column this past Monday on responses to the Obama scandals, before warning: “The Obama presidency has given it a new and dangerous form. Never has the prevailing bias of the media been so closely aligned with the ideological aims and political interests of the party in power…

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal cracked on New York Times columnist Frank Bruni for his Sunday Review column urging the new pope to "dwell less in the bedroom, more in the soup kitchen." (Last week Bruni guest-hosted the Charlie Rose show and pushed similar talking points.) Taranto had fun with Bruni in his "Best of the Web" column Monday:

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal had fun with liberal journalists calling for a female pope in his Best of the Web Today column on Tuesday. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote a piece for the Sunday paper insisting: "It is time to elect a nun as the next pontiff." Dionne acknowledged that "this hope of mine is the longest of long shots," but Taranto added "if he were Catholic…

The self-described "essential global news network" known as the Associated Press, more aptly characterized as the Administration's Press, has from all appearances chosen to minimize the exposure given to Friday's letter from four Senate Democrats to President Obama encouraging him to unilaterally increase the nation's debt ceiling if Congress fails to do so. A search on Harry Reid's last name…

In a story the New York Times appears not to have touched, Hunter Walker at Observer.com's Politicker ("about" page is here) reported on Tuesday that Thomas Lopez-Pierre, a black Harlem activist, "circulated an email" Monday night "in an attempt to plan a 'private meeting' to 'discuss the potential damage to the political empowerment of the Black and Hispanic community if Mark Levine, a White/…

The leftist bias of the New York Times beautifully encapsulated in seven words used about a week before two presidential elections. Headline over Saturday’s editorial on the third quarter GDP creeping up to 2.0 percent under Democrat Barack Obama: “Slow but Steady Improvement.” Headline twenty years ago (October 29, 1992) when Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush was in the White House and the…

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto on Thursday offered a plausible explanation for why President Barack Obama, during Tuesday night’s debate, felt confident he could count on moderator Candy Crowley of CNN to back him up on how he had uttered the phrase “acts of terror” the day after the Benghazi attack. On her CNN State of the Union show back on September 30, Crowley interviewed David…

James Taranto at The Wall Street Journal smelled a conflict-of-interest problem when "The Washington Post Co. said Monday that it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Celtic Healthcare, a provider of skilled home health-care and hospice services in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions.” The Post has offset losses in its core journalism businesses with profits from its Kaplan…