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Chuck Todd told Matt Lauer on Wednesday that the White House was “caught flat-footed” on the backlash against the prisoner swap for Sergeant Bergdahl. “I’ve had a few aides describe it to me as ‘we didn’t know that they were going to Swift Boat Bergdahl’,” Todd said, “And Matt, of course, that’s a reference to that political fight back in 2004 over John Kerry’s military service which became so controversial in that campaign. So there’s some fighting words there.”

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — White House aides are accusing soldiers who served with Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl are “swift boating” him following his release over the weekend after five years in captivity. NBC News’ Chuck Todd reported Monday that the White House did not expect this sort of vitriolic backlash exchanging five high-level Taliban members held at Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl, who left his Army post in 2009 in Afghanistan and was subsequently taken captive. “They did not expect this backlash on Bergdahl himself,” Todd reported on NBC’s “Today.” I’ve had a few aides describe it to me as we didn’t...

The Taliban prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl might do some good, but fear and anger are getting in the way of a realistic appraisal.Richard Hofstadter opened his 1968 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," with this line: "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds." He continues, "Behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind." One wonders...

Starting August 1, the left-wing Ohio newspaper, The Toledo Blade, intends to lay off about 130 of its unionized employees due to a permanent shutdown of its Toledo production center that handles printing and inserting. ... In 2013, The Blade lost $8.5 million and has been losing millions for years. As of now there are no plans that will affect the advertising and news-gathering departments. In 2012, The Toledo Blade urged it readers to re-elect President Obama, arguing in part that "He has dealt effectively with economic recession at home

SunNews' Brian Lilley follows up with Josh Tickell, filmmaker. The ultimate highlight is at 03:49 as it is revealed directly from the horses mouth: "The truth is that about 30% of the films in Hollywood are funded through the Middle East"video link via VladTepesBlog

According to the AP, a CIA agent’s name was leaked by the White House . The AP calls it an “embarrassing flub” even though it was a crime when an aide in the Bush administration leaked the name of part-time agent Valerie Plame. What’s given little attention in the story is the fact that the Washington Post reporter who wrote the story sent his copy to the White House to be checked for “accuracy.” ... First of all, any reporter worth his salt would not depend on the subject he’s reporting on to verify accuracy. That’s just crazy. He’d make...

It’s been two days since MSNBC host Toure Neblett made a shockingly racist and anti-Semitic comment to a person claiming to be a descendent of Holocaust survivors. “The power of Whiteness” is what Neblett callously told a poster Friday evening on Twitter (screen name @hope_and_chains) who responded to Neblett’s praise for an article on so-called “white privilege” by saying, “My family survived a concentration camp, came to the US w/ nothing, LEGALLY, and made it work. #SORRYFORBEINGWHITETHOUGHYOUGUYS” Neblett, who has maintained Twitter silence since Friday night, has been blasted on Twitter since then, most notably by @redsteeze who Tweeted Holocaust...

Bias: President Obama repeatedly claims to know nothing about scandals, blames others for problems and has failed to achieve most of his stated goals. If he were a Republican, what do you think the press would call him? When a reporter asked in a two-part question whether Obama had been "caught by surprise" by the mushrooming scandal at the VA, Obama ignored it. It was a good question. The White House had earlier claimed that Obama only learned about attempts at VA hospitals to falsify records and hide chronic delays after reading about it in the newspaper, despite mounting evidence...

The Republican who will lead an investigation of the 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic quarters in Benghazi was known for courtroom theatrics in his time as a prosecutor, portending dramatic hearings on an issue that already has strained partisan civility in Washington. Republicans hope to gain political traction before congressional elections in November by accusing the White House of muddying the facts to protect President Barack Obama after the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans were killed in the attacks by Islamic militants. Democrats have not said whether they will take any seats on the Republican-majority...

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough tore into the leadership at the New York Times on Friday morning for what he characterized as a misleading self-defense over the reasons for the firing of former Executive Editor Jill Abramson. He observed that the Times admitted that the pay discrepancy issue was a factor even after they denied it at first. The appearance of a cover-up on this issue led Scarborough’s co-hosts to predict a backlash against the paper and even a wave of cancelled subscriptions from female subscribers. Reading from the latest piece in the New Yorker, Scarborough noted that the Times...

CNN has discovered multiple instances of plagiarism by Marie-Louise Gumuchian, a former CNN news editor. She wrote frequently about international news, writing and reporting about Africa, Europe, and the Middle East from our London bureau. An unpublished story flagged last week during our editing process led to an internal investigation that uncovered other examples in about 50 published stories, and our investigation is ongoing. We've terminated Gumuchian's employment with CNN, and have removed the instances of plagiarism found in her pieces. In some cases, we've chosen to delete an entire article. Trust, integrity and simply giving credit where it's due...

Liberals often say they’re big on tolerance, but apparently tolerance must flow only one way – toward liberals and their favored identity groups. So says MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart. Appearing as a guest on Monday’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Capehart rebuffed the idea ... [T]olerance, no, is not – it should not be a two-way street. It's a one-way street. ... That’s the perfect encapsulation of liberalism – they will make you to understand that you are wrong and they are right. You will tolerate whoever they like, but as for you – tough luck. If you don’t...

The estimated cost of the initial segment of California's bullet train, Golden State Governor Jerry Brown's pet project, has (excuse the pun) just shot up from $6.19 billion to $7.13 billion. If this is the only overrun encountered in this opening phase, which would be atypical, and if the California High Speed Rail Authority has similar experiences on the remainder of the project, assuming it's ever completed, its cost will rise from a currently estimated $68 billion to about $78 billion. Obviously a big cost overrun is news. But normally, evidence of an attempted government coverup of such an overrun...

This administration enjoys an advantage afforded no other: a partisan media that has its back, minute-by-minute. When Jay Carney was grilled at length by Jonathan Karl of ABC News over an email outlining administration talking points in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack, it was not, by the reckoning of many observers, the White House press secretary's finest hour. Carney was alternately defensive and dismissive, arguably fueling a bonfire he was trying to tamp down. But Carney needn't have worried. He had plenty of backup. He had The New Republic's Brian Beutler dismissing Benghazi as "nonsense." He had Slate's...

As the 2014 midterm elections ramp up, liberal media have are pinning the death of a Florida woman on Republicans.Literally."Democrats Need to Start Blaming the GOP for the Death of Charlene Dill" is the title of a recent piece by Brian Beutler at the New Republic, and others are agreeing with him.

Michael Isikoff, the left-wing journalist most famous for getting scooped on The Story of the Decade by Matt Drudge, is exiting NBC News ... It was during his time with Newsweek that Isikoff became yet-another icon of a mainstream media more interested in protecting power than holding power accountable. In 1998, Isikoff had uncovered the affair between then-President Bill Clinton and a young intern named Monica Lewinski. Newsweek, however, refused to publish the story. So Drudge did -- not the story but the news that Newsweek was refusing to explode its own bombshell... -- and an era in New Media...

Democratic members of Congress and the Obama administration have extensive ties to Comcast and Time-Warner, the two cable giants currently awaiting approval from the Federal Communications Commission on a $45 billion merger. One that has gone mostly overlooked: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D., Nev.) chief of staff, David Krone, is Comcast’s former senior vice president for corporate affairs. Krone moved from Comcast to Reid’s office in 2011 under ethically questionable circumstances,

Comcast, which employs more than 100 lobbyists, spent almost $19 million last year on lobbying activities. Its president and CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is a golf buddy of President Obama’s, and a Democratic donor who has contributed thousands of dollars not only to the president’s campaigns, but also to the Democratic Party of Pennsylvania, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the DNC Services Corporation, and to Steny Hoyer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bob Casey. Roberts’ executive vice president, David Cohen, is a former aide to Democratic bigwig Ed Rendell. Cohen skirts lobbying regulations through loopholes, has raised more than $2 million for...

This afternoon, in an unbylined item headlined "US BUSINESS HIRING FINALLY TOPS RECESSION LOSSES," the Associated Press showed that it deserves the nickname "Administration's Press." The story embarrassingly described the job market's return to its previous January 2008 employment peak as a "pivotal moment." Get real. Given over six additional years of growth in the adult population, that's hardly the case. To his credit, the AP's Christopher Rugaber, in a separate later submission, tamped down the enthusiasm, noting that "the economy is still millions of jobs short of where it should be by now." That's for sure. But whoever wrote...

Well, now we know why the Washington Post did not want to invest in Ezra Klein’s “explanatory journalism” nonsense. Turns out it is just a left-wing propaganda tool trying to spin instead of explain. Let us turn our attention to Matthew Yglesias, the Executive Editor of Ezra Klein’s new site. As my friend Pejman Yousefzadeh has well documented, Yglesias is just not that bright. He thinks Joe Lieberman is a dumb Jewish politician; was shocked to discover Senators represent the states as opposed to populations; was unaware of a black conservative tradition; couldn’t understand why Miami didn’t expand westward (hint:...