John F. Kennedy

Bill Maher proved once again Friday that there is no floor to his indecency. As he mocked this week’s opening of the Bush Library in Dallas, Texas, during his opening monologue on HBO’s Real Time, the host actually said, “The last person in that state to get near a schoolbook was Lee Harvey Oswald” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Gee, why would anyone get the impression -- GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, for example -- that Harvard Law School is fertile wetlands for left-wing politics? In Cruz's case, his suspicions are well-founded -- the man graduated from the school in the mid-1990s. For those of us who aren't Harvard alum, its faculty members often supply evidence to bolster that perception. (audio clip after page break)

I always look forward to Mike Papantonio's appearances on radio, since he invariably says something that leaves me shaking my head in bemusement and pity. Papantonio, an attorney and co-host of the "Ring of Fire" radio show, was guest hosting on Ed Schultz's radio program Friday and talking about the legal challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the Supreme Court. (audio clips…

With this week's inauguration, several media stories recounted past inaugural addresses. One oration prominently featured and applauded was the speech given by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. On CNN's Web site, it was listed as one of "The six best inaugural addresses."  U.S. News & World Report's site included it as one of "The 5 Best Inaugural Addresses," noting that it set "the…

You know Obama supporters are getting desperate about their candidate’s electoral prospects when they start to play the anti-Mormon card. In an October 23 opinion piece in the Washington Post, Barbara Reynolds launched a broadside against Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, arguing that he has become the “face of Mormonism” in America and complaining “I find it strange that the media are not opening…

With the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis approaching and new documents surfacing about just how close to World War III the United States and the Soviet Union came in 1962, it’s interesting to look at how the incident is regarded in the media and, especially, how it’s taught as history. The Cuban Missile Crisis is commonly portrayed as a firm display of President John F. Kennedy’s…

Dr. Thomas Sowell's "'Trickle Down Theory' and 'Tax Cuts for the Rich'" has just been published by the Hoover Institution. Having read this short paper, the conclusion you must reach is that the term "trickle down theory" is simply a tool of charlatans and political hustlers. Sowell states that "no such theory has been found in even the most voluminous and learned histories of economic…

Despite having failed to stop let alone reverse the rising of the seas, Barack Obama has made Newsweek’s newest ten best presidents list, which gives readers a top ten of the chief executives since 1900. Newsweek, whose list unsurprisingly is dominated by liberal Democrats, gave this justification for selecting Obama in a caption in a photo slide: Picking a sitting president in a tally of…

Appearing as a panel member on the weekend's syndicated Chris Matthews Show, Huffington Post editoral director Howard Fineman - formerly of Newsweek - praised former President Eisenhower's decision to advise then-President Johnson to "carry out Jack Kennedy's agenda" in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. Fineman ended up referring to Eisenhower's advice as "amazing statesmanship and…

The media mythology of Kennedy's Camelot lives on in the news pages of Wednesday's New York Times, in a puzzling tribute by reporter Ralph Blumenthal to a French village museum devoted to Pierre Salinger, the Kennedy press secretary who later served for years as chief foreign correspondent for ABC News: "Medieval French Village Echoes With the Voice Of Kennedy’s Camelot." If the French loved…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews doesn't just hate Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's money. During an interview with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Hardball Thursday, the host disparaged George Washington as an elite "with a couple of hundred slaves" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

During live coverage of Super Tuesday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews harkened back to a famous historical phone call from then-Senator John F. Kennedy to Coretta King, after her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested, as he suggested that President Barack Obama's recent phone call to Georgetown Law School student Sandra Fluke would be similarly remembered as important to this year's…

John F. Kennedy may be a hallowed name within Democrat circles, but CNN's Soledad O'Brien seemed to argue Wednesday that he is revered among Catholics too, so much so that they won't vote for a candidate who attacks him. After Tuesday night's Michigan GOP primary, O'Brien tried to get Rick Santorum's press secretary to admit that the candidate lost Catholic voters in the state because he…

In the wake of new sexual revelations concerning John F. Kennedy and a nineteen-year-old White House intern, you would think media members would shy away from putting the former president on a pedestal concerning his religious beliefs. Yet there was ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer Monday telling George Stephanopoulos of his previous day's interview with Republican presidential candidate…