Free Republic

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) went after the Obama administration hard on Sunday, charging that the IRS targeting was “directly ordered from Washington” and deeming White House Press Secretary Jay Carney a “paid liar.” Responding to the criticism on Monday, Joe Scarborough didn’t approve of Issa’s approach. It’s simply making him look bad, he argued. “Darrell Issa hurts himself and his cause more than Jay Carney or the White House when he calls him a paid liar,” Scarborough asserted. There’s a lot working against Carney right now, so he and Mika Brzezinski agreed that Issa should just let the issue breathe....

Seriously? Huh. When something’s happening in the world in the late afternoon hours on the east coast, I always turn to Chris Matthews to find out (a) how its Republicans’ fault and (b) how racism is motivating it. Oh, and (c) how Obama’s handling it really, really well. As embarrassing as Phil Griffin’s admission here is, it has the shining virtue of being true. Candor is sufficiently rare in politics and media that I kinda want to pat him on the back for admitting it, even though it’s insane that he persists in letting his network operate this way. At...

Richard Grenell, a political consultant and media commentator reported today via Twitter that NBC’s Mark Murray, senior political editor for NBC News wife, Sasha is an Obama appointee but never publicly disclosed it. Grenell asked Murray yesterday if he was married to an Obama appointee and why it was not disclosed. Murray told him that he hasn’t publicly disclosed that his wife is an Obama appointee because he told NBC officials and they didn’t care. Murray also told Grenell that his first wife worked for Ray Lahood so disclosing her as an Obama appointee wasn’t necessary. Murray’s wife, Sasha Johnson...

A Florida judge ruled Tuesday that George Zimmerman’s defense team cannot mention Trayvon Martin’s suspension from school, prior marijuana use, text messages or past fighting during opening statements at next month’s trial.

NBC-owned television stations in cities across the nation just teamed up with a nonprofit “journalism” group funded by a billionaire husband and wife team who not only spent millions campaigning for President Obama but also topped donor lists to groups like ACORN and MoveOn.org. The nonprofit, ProPublica, will contribute to the news operations of all NBC owned-and-operated stations, including those in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, the network announced Monday. The NBC affiliates will get early access to investigative reports from ProPublica, which describes itself as an “independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public...

Comcast’s upcoming shareholders meeting in Philadelphia may see a bit of a disruption. A Tea Party group has sent out 60,000 invitations in an effort to plan a protest at the meeting, specifically expressing dissatisfaction with the conglomerate’s forward-leaning cable network MSNBC, according to The Hollywood Reporter. As the report notes, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts is scheduled to meet with investors on May 15 at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts Perelman Theater. The protestors plan to accuse him “of engaging in liberal propaganda instead of news at MSNBC.” Currently, the effort appears to be in “Stage 1″ —...

"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough reamed into Senate Republicans and four Democrats who voted against the passage of a bill expanding background checks. Particularly targeting Republicans, Scarborough said that the party was "moving toward extinction." "You do not ignore 90 percent of the American people on an issue of public safety," Scarborough said, citing poll numbers that consistently showed nine in 10 respondents supporting the measure. "Mark it down — this is going to be a turning point in the history of the Republican Party as well," he added. "And let those out there chattering, let them chatter away all...

Hardball's Chris Matthews on Thursday again smeared pro-Second Amendment Senators, this time comparing them to "Jim Crow" racists. While talking about GOP politicians who threatened to filibuster the current gun control bill, Matthews spewed, "But you remember when they fought in the early '60s about, about Jim Crow and getting rid of all those racial things down south where it says white only at the gas station, men's room and everything?" Talking to journalist Chuck Todd, Matthews continued, "And that was the old states of the confederacy were against any of those changes. But now is there that large a...

“Just get buzz…” That’s what a former MSNBC anchor recently told me is the primary objective of network President Phil Griffin. Create some noise, get some free press—good or bad—doesn’t matter. It’s all about drawing people to a place they otherwise wouldn’t visit. In the words of James Earl Jones, “Oh…people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come. “ When it came to getting buzz, no one did it better for MSNBC than Keith Olbermann. Sure, half the country held him in the same contempt normally reserved for a Bernie Madoff or Casey Anthony. But he got his name...

Politico’s Mike Allen reported this morning that MSNBC has hired the Democratic National Committee’s director of video production to become a producer for one of the cable network’s weekend political talk shows. DNC video production director Anne Thompson was reportedly given a farewell party at the DNC, replete with ice cream and refreshments, as she sets out to become segment producer on Up with Steve Kornacki, MSNBC’s new weekend show. As Politico reported, Thompson was behind dozens of the DNC’s 2012 election videos and ads, notably including the parodic song, “Mitt Romney & Paul Ryan:

The gay son of Rep. Matt Salmon, Arizona Republican, told KPNX-TV in Phoenix on Sunday that both MSNBC’s “The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell” and CNN’s “Piers Morgan Live” canceled interviews with him because he refused to attack his father on the air. Matt R. Salmon, the son, said MSNBC canceled his appearance because “they had intended to be critical of him and … I was unwilling to do so.” He also said CNN “seemed very gung ho about” an interview at first, but when he said he was supportive of his father, “they seemed to lose interest.”

The Communist Party USA and the Democratic Socialists of America don’t see what the big deal is when it comes to MSNBC Host’s Melissa Harris-Perry’s latest 30-second spot advocating for society to move beyond its “private idea” of kids belonging to parents and families and to the notion that they belong to “whole communities.”

MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry: "We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we've always have kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of 'these are our children.' So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids BELONG to whole communities. Once it's everybody's responsibility, and not just the household's, then we start making better investments." BELONG? BELONG???? BELONG...

"Yesterday we reported on the case of United Loan and Firearm versus Comcast. The owner of that shop, Ray Reynolds, says that Comcast is censoring his TV ads that run on Comcast Cable. The cable giant is demanding that he truncate “United Loan and Firearm” to remove the reference to guns, and that he remove any imagery of guns from his ad. If he does not comply, his ad will not run." =================================== You have all likely heard the above story by now and like many others, I generally write this stuff off as untrue. Well, I decided to check...

Yesterday we reported on the case of United Loan and Firearm versus Comcast. The owner of that shop, Ray Reynolds, says that Comcast is censoring his TV ads that run on Comcast Cable. The cable giant is demanding that he truncate “United Loan and Firearm” to remove the reference to guns, and that he remove any imagery of guns from his ad. If he does not comply, his ad will not run. Comcast’s new policy extends beyond Georgia. Bob Viden, owner of Bob’s Little Sport Shop in Glassboro, New Jersey, told the Conservative Commando radio show on Wednesday that Comcast...

NBC "Today" news anchor Jenna Wolfe announced on the morning show on Wednesday that she is having a baby girl with partner and NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk, acknowledging her gay partnership publicly for the first time. "This is big for me, I'm actually pregnant," Wolfe, who is the anchor for "Weekend Today," said. "I'm quite pregnant, actually." Wolfe said the baby is due on August 27 and that she will keep a diary-style blog about her pregnancy. "It's ... about documenting my fears, funnies and follies that come with doing this for the first time," Wolfe wrote in her...

Comcast is slowly but surely erasing guns from all its advertising, and shop owners in Georgia are the latest to be told their ads will be pulled if they don’t take out all reference to weapons. Ray Reynolds owns United Loan and Firearms, a pawn shop in Augusta. He told the Augusta Chronicle on Monday he was notified last week that his ads would be pulled from the local Comcast cable station unless he took out all references to guns — including in his shop name.

Comcast Cable, "the nation's largest cable provider," has decided it will not accept firearm and ammunition advertisers in the future. This decision comes after Comcast has been running ads for some gun and hunting groups for decades. Comcast chose this new position after purchasing NBCUniversal, which has a long-standing ban against firearm, ammunition and firework advertisements. This move brings Comcast in line with its competitors, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications. Cox already had a ban similar to the one Comcast has now instituted and Time Warner Cable announced in January that it was banning "ads showing semi-automatic weapons and...

Not a new problem but I'm looking for a solution, other than the obvious one. Comcast puts a pop up ad for their soft ware on every web page I open, "XFinity Constant Guard". It covers about 75% of the page. There is no way to simply exit out of it, all I can do is grab it in the upper left corner and drag it out of sight to the far right side of the page. I went to Comcast in person yesterday and the woman there said, "I should go into my programs and remove it". The rub...

We know that Sarah Palin can drive people “bat crap crazy” just like Ted Cruz said, but when some Comcast customers were treated to an all-Palin channel lineup in place of their regularly scheduled programming, well, this happened.