Kevin Drum

Bing West was a Marine infantry officer in the Vietnam war and a frequent embedded reporter in Iraq, yet Drum likens him to a tantrum-throwing kid and lectures him, “It's time to grow up, Bing.” (West is 75 years old.) After West commented, “The lesson of Iraq is that after American troops achieved stability, Mr. Obama quit, leading to a larger war and more American deaths,” Drum vented, “Jesus…

There are plenty of problems with the government's "no-fly list," and especially the plans by some congressmen and senators to abuse it. That said, it appears, almost three years later, to have gotten one name right. In late 2012 and early 2013, leftists like Chris Hayes at MSNBC, Glenn Greenwald and Kevin Drum at Mother Jones were upset that Saadiq Long, a U.S. Air Force veteran who was living…

President Obama deserves high marks for his ISIS policy only if you’re grading on a curve and the other students are Republicans who “can't be bothered to take any of this seriously,” suggested Kevin Drum in a Thursday post. Drum charged that GOPers “blather about Obama being weak, but when you ask them for their plans you just get nonsense…Obama's ISIS strategy has [not] been golden. But…

Even though Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum describes Charles Krauthammer as a “hardcore conservative,” he suggested in a Friday post that Krauthammer is too enlightened to be on the same page as most right-wingers regarding Obama White House scandals. When Krauthammer argued recently against the effort to impeach IRS commissioner John Koskinen, he commented that on matters including the IRS/Tea…

For nearly three decades, Ben Carson was the head of pediatric neurosurgery at one of the world’s best hospitals. To MSNBC panelist Barnicle, however, Carson is a “political nut-boy” who reminds him of a patient at a certain type of hospital. In a Monday Daily Beast column, Barnicle opined that Carson is “out there on the fringe talking nonsense in a soft, nonthreatening manner that is quite…

Regarding the mainstream media’s superficial coverage of religion, is the sticking point excessive evenhandedness or simple ignorance? Two lefty bloggers differed Friday on that issue. First, Paul Waldman wrote on The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog that reporters don’t like asking the presidential candidates “about the specifics of their faith and how it might influence their day-to-day…

On Friday, Washington Monthly's Ed Kilgore and Kevin Drum of Mother Jones contended that the conservative war on political correctness is a tempest in a teapot, and that being politically correct is pretty much synonymous with not being a bigoted jerk.

Imagine an Abortion Pride Day parade in which women march while pushing empty strollers and baby carriages. That’s not far off from what Mother Jones pundit Drum recommended in a Wednesday post. Drum suggested that women who’ve had an abortion and believe they made the right choice ought to say so publicly, and that they should view out gays and lesbians as role models in that regard: “As long…

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones claims that Obama’s executive action was meant to “gain Latino support for Democrats and provoke an insane counterreaction from Republicans” and concludes that Obama “succeeded brilliantly on both counts.” Meanwhile, Ed Kilgore of the Washington Monthly notes that “the Republican Party was actually competitive among Latino voters a decade ago,” but adds, “Now that it’s…

Drum, of Mother Jones, suggests that Obama doesn’t have much competition for the “most liberal” title, given that the only other post-LBJ Democratic presidents have been the “relatively conservative” Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. He claims that Obama definitely isn’t “some kind of wild-eyed lefty.”

One blogger argued that media outlets which took the story seriously should “spend the next three-plus years publishing articles [or] airing pieces” telling the public that it was “a cynical and spiteful lie from the beginning.”

The Mother Jones blogger contends that Obama’s immigration action “is politically pretty brilliant. It unifies Democrats; wrecks the Republican agenda in Congress; cements the loyalty of Hispanics; and presents the American public with a year of Republican candidates spitting xenophobic fury during primary season. If you're President Obama, what's not to like?”

The Mother Jones pundit writes that Attkisson used to be “a pretty good, hard-nosed investigative reporter,” but adds that as she developed ties to conservative activists, “her reporting became…detached from reality....Her descent seems to be complete.”

Kevin Drum and other pundits take the press to task for misleading Iowa voters by, in Drum's words, pushing a “charade” that Republican Senate contender Joni Ernst is a “pragmatic centrist.”