Harry Reid

CNN viewers familiar with State of the Union host Candy Crowley certainly weren't surprised when she came armed to her Sunday interview with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) with Democrat talking points. Fortunately, the Texas Senator was prepared and marvelously smacked her down when she twice claimed that Democrats feel blackmailed by Republicans proposing separate bills to fund parts of the…

Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan and the Daily Beast’s Eleanor Clift got into quite a heated debate about the government shutdown on PBS’s McLaughlin Group Friday. At one point, Buchanan said Obama “wants to maximize the pain in order to maximize his political gain…It is a sinister and sadistic tactic” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CBS This Morning has a long established history of conducting softball interviews of liberal/Democratic guests, while unleashing on conservative/liberal ones. But on Friday, the morning newscast surprisingly hounded Rep. Nancy Pelosi on the ongoing government shutdown. Obama supporter Gayle King repeatedly pressed Pelosi about "people [who] are just saying...work it out....both sides have to be…

While the media are busy painting Republicans -- particularly Tea Party-friendly conservatives in the House -- as the legislators who are ultimately responsible for the government shutdown, they are failing to note that "[t]he Democrats and the president have offered nothing" as a counteroffer on the continuing resolution to fund the government, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted on the…

On Thursday, MSNBC's Chuck Todd, in the introduction to his "Daily Rundown" program, characterized both the response to the Obama administration's barricading of the World War II Memorial and Harry Reid's response to a question about helping children with cancer by funding the National Institutes for Health ("Why would we want to do that?") as "manufactured outrage." World War II ended in 1945,…

Nancy Cordes stood out on Wednesday's CBS Evening News for pointing out Senator Harry Reid's eyebrow-raising "why would I want to do that" answer to a question about approving funding for cancer research for children. Meanwhile, on NBC Nightly News, John Yang hyped how "200 patients a week...including about 30 children" had been turned away from "last-resort medical treatment" due to the…

It's only three days into the federal government shutdown, and Senate majority leader Harry Reid is already showing signs of stress. That was especially apparent on Wednesday, when he was asked by Cable News Network reporter Dana Bash if the Senate would vote to pass a resolution if it was already approved by the House to restore funding for the National Institutes of Health, which among other…

Politico's Dylan Byers is determined to tell us that we didn't see and hear what we really saw and heard, and that Matt Drudge is a filthy liar (Update, 8:20 a.m., Oct. 3: as well as Real Clear Politics —"Reid To CNN's Dana Bash: 'Why Would We Want To' Help One Kid With Cancer?") for relaying what CNN's Dana Bash saw and heard — and reported. Today, after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid…

Republicans seem to "prefer [reopening] war memorials to" resuming cancer treatments for "living children." That's the grotesque, hyperpartisan spin that MSNBC's Martin Bashir weaved on his October 2 program, reacting to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus's offer to have the RNC pay for five security guards to man the World War II Memorial which the National Park Service, in…

Corrected from earlier | "After three years of last-minute deals, delayed decisions, and acrimonious finger pointing, the process for one of Congress's most basic functions—spending money—finally buckled and broke down Monday night," the Wall Street Journal's Damian Paletta sighed in the opening paragraph of his October 1 story, "Breakdown Is New Norm in Spending Fights." "Since passage of…

Alex Rogers and Zeke Miller of Time magazine dutifully hacked out a 16-paragraph item on President Obama's complaint this afternoon that Republicans were the cause of the government shutdown. It was your typical, garden variety bias-by-stenography. Only at the very end of their article did Rogers and Miller mention that the Democratic National Committee is having a fundraising field day off…

During his Monday briefing with reporters in the White House, press secretary Jay Carney was asked several times how president Barack Obama would respond to a partial government shutdown. The most interesting query came from Cable News Network's senior White House correspondent Jim Costa, who asked if the Democrats have been using heightened rhetoric to attack Republicans and “trying to taunt”…

Soon after completing his 21-hour filibuster on the Senate floor calling for Congress to defund ObamaCare, Sen. Ted Cruz told Rush Limbaugh on the Wednesday edition of the conservative icon's radio talk show that he had “all but begged” reporters to devote half of what they wrote about his marathon speech to the substance of ObamaCare. The Texas Republican said that instead of stating that…

Though many of us have known a fundamental truth about Obamacare for several years, the fact that Harry Reid admitted to the truth is important. How important? So important that despite plenty of bloggers and other new media outlets taking note of it, the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post (the latest stories here and here are from before Reid made his admission on Friday…