Shutdown: Media SHOULD Play the Blame Game
Media like to dismiss the partisan “blame game,” but in cases like this placing blame is something that journalism ought to do.
Harry Reid, the New Joe McCarthy
Senator Harry Reid started a whole lot of trouble on the campaign trail when he told some Huffington Post reporters that he’d heard that Mitt Romney paid no taxes. As in zero. For an entire decade. Now there are reasons to be skeptical of Reid’s account. As Dana Milbank pointed out, Reid’s record does not […]
WaPo Misleads on Dem’s ‘Super Committee’ Picks
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has named his picks to the “super committee” charged with making deficit reduction recommendations. Reid named Washington Sen. Patty Murray and center-right Max Baucus, who the Post‘s Rosalind Helderman today (8/10/11) calls a “natural choice,” given that he chairs the Finance Committee. The New York Times is a little more […]
Senate Dems Getting Wise to Media’s ‘Balance’ Bias?
There’s an interesting piece by Alexander Bolton in the Hill (8/3/11) that suggests Senate Democrats are frustrated by the Beltway media’s tendency to cover political standoffs between the parties as situations where everyone’s to blame. Bolton writes: This frustration boiled over during a Wednesday press conference on the partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration […]
GOP: Sauce for the Goose Is Terrible for the Gander
We’ve noted the corporate media’s double standard on Nazi analogies: When conservatives are compared to the Third Reich, however obscurely, it’s an outrageous slur, but when leaders of the right charge progressives with Hitler-like tendencies, it’s unremarkable political rhetoric. Political Animal‘s Steve Benen (12/8/09) rounds up some similar examples of criticisms that are outrageous when […]
The 60-Vote Myth
You see it all the time: You need 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. Not exactly. Under Senate rules—which can be changed by a majority vote—you need the consent of 3/5ths of the Senate to close debate on an issue; that’s 60 votes. To pass a bill, you need a majority of […]
