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Former New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson is joining Harvard University as a visiting lecturer this coming school year, the university announced Thursday. Abramson will teach undergraduate courses on narrative nonfiction in the fall and spring semesters, the school said. Abramson, a 1976 Harvard graduate, said in a statement that she is excited to be returning to her alma mater. "Narrative non-fiction journalism is more important than ever," she said. "Its traditions and how it is changing in the digital transition are fascinating areas of study."

Editors at MSNBC.com trimmed down Republican congressional nominee Dave Brat's June 11 phone interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd in order to paint him as dodging questions from the Daily Rundown host. But a review of the full interview [listen to the mp3 audio here] shows that Brat had already and seemingly quite gladly answered a few policy questions on such hot issues as the minimum wage, immigration reform, and his stance on Wall Street's influence on the business wing of the GOP. "Brat dodges Chuck Todd's questions," blared a teaser headline. "Brat: I just wanted to talk about the victory,"...

Last week, George Will wrote a column about how progressive politics have fomented "rape culture" on college campuses. The column was not well received by some, or even, as a great many of the histrionic responses would indicate, well understood. I received the following press release yesterday, headlined: "87,000 Call on The Washington Post to Address Sexism, Fire George Will." A group called UltraViolet was touting the success of an online petition they'd whipped up over the controversy. From the release:

On Monday, the House Oversight Committee investigating the IRS targeting scandal released new e-mails that showed Lois Lerner sent a database of tax exempt organizations to the FBI right before the 2010 midterm elections. So what was the reaction of anchors and reporters at the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC ) networks to the release of federally protected confidential taxpayer information? A big fat yawn. So far no one at the Big Three evening or morning shows have reported on this most recent development in the IRS-Tea Party targeting scandal. -SNIP- According to a release from House Oversight Committee Chairman...

... what will the new narrative from the MSM be? Before the first GOP primaries this year, we heard from the MSM the long-held narrative: A.) "There is a huge war within the GOP. The GOP needs to do something with these "extremists" (Tea Party)!" Then when Boehner and some others won their primaries, the MSM narrative quickly shifted (as in goal-posts): B.) "The GOP has absorbed the Tea Party!" Now with Eric Cantor losing to David Brat (and that was a huge loss), the MSM won't go back on their narrative, even though they logically would have to admit...

Trailer Talk: Eco-Terrorism 'Night Moves' Downplays Own Subject Matter by Christian Toto 31 Mar 2014 Both The Company You Keep and The East, films which portrayed eco-terrorists in a favorable light, tanked at the box office. So is it any wonder the trailer for the new film Night Moves downplays the eco-nature of its protagonists? The thriller casts Dakota Fanning, Jesse Eisenberg and Peter Scarsgaard as three environmental radicals who decide to take action against their corporate targets. Trailers are famous for giving away too much of their stories. In the case of Night Moves, the trailer only touches on...

Yesterday, a man and a woman shot two police officers in a Las Vegas restaurant after saying, “this is a revolution.” Then they draped their bodies in a Gadsden flag. According to reports now coming in, the couple (who later killed themselves) appear to have been white supremacists and told neighbors they had gone to join the protests in support of anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy. It was one more incident of right-wing terrorism that, while not exactly an epidemic, has become enough of a trend to raise some troubling questions. What I’m about to say will raise some hackles, but...

<p>The White House allowed the parents of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to take part in a series of secure video conferences with State Department and intelligence officials and senior military commanders, according to a published report.</p>

Building on a long week of anti-coal attacks by the media and the Environmental Protection Agency, ABC’s June 5 “World News” revived another attack on the coal industry. ABC hyped a 2013 investigation that it conducted in partnership with the Soros-funded Center for Public Integrity (CPI). It alleged that the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions had essentially been bought off by coal companies to ignore cases of black lung disease in miners. ABC’s David Muir declared a “victory a long time in the making,” Johns Hopkins’ Dr. Paul Wheeler for allegedly “working for the coal company.” (video after break) On October 30, 2013, ABCNews.com...

Instead of being angered at the muzzling of Bergdahl’s platoon, some of Obama’s more radical lapdogs have opted to attack the brave men who were first-hand witnesses to Bergdahl’s betrayal. While some in the press and the Obama administration have attacked these soldiers directly by opining that they were “long on psychopaths and short on leadership,” or by accusing them of “swift-boating,” for example; others have opted for the more politically safe path of attacking those who have empowered these men to tell their stories. Although the members of Bergdahl’s platoon are clearly the most qualified to tell the tale,...

Afghan presidential frontrunner escapes bomb attack KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two blasts struck the convoy of Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah as it left a campaign event at a wedding hall in the capital Kabul on Friday, killing at least six people but leaving the candidate himself unharmed, the Interior Ministry said. Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told CBS News' Mukhtar Ahmad that 22 more people were wounded in the attack, which saw a suicide bomber detonate his explosives followed by a roadside bomb blast. In a televised statement shortly after the attack, Abdullah, the presidential front runner and former Foreign...

It sickens me that the Obama administration has been justifying ransoming terrorist leaders for a probable deserter by reciting the creed that America never leaves a man behind. The Obama administration frequently leaves men (and even children) to suffer and die, with minimal apparent effort on their behalf. A partial list:

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...

TOPICS: -- Jay Carney Resigns -- President Obama -- Eric Shinseki Resigns -- Illegal Aliens -- NBC's Richard Engel -- Tea Party Candidates -- CIA Chief Outed by White House -- Donald Sterling

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...

The NRA’s strong statement reprimanding a few people for carrying long guns into restaurants was bound to get media attention. Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action and much of the media quickly jumped in and described various restaurants as “asking customers to leave their guns at home.” But their assertions couldn’t be more misleading. The headline at USA Today saying “No Guns Inside” or at MSNBC and Huffington Post saying “No-Gun Policies” are simply wrong. A big deal has been made of Starbucks, Jack in the Box, Chipotle, Wendy's, Applebee's, Chili’s and Sonic’s supposed bans on guns, with Bloomberg’s groups declaring “victory.”...

For all of the talk about "hope" and "change" — and both were powerful slogans for Obama in 2008 — the core of Obama's appeal to many independents and even some Republicans was the idea that he would restore competence back to the White House after President George W. Bush's eight years, years defined by mistaken intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and a mishandling of the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. Obama openly embraced the idea that he was the anti-Bush on nothing much more than his commitment to putting the best people in...

Flashback: A reminder about Bowe Bergdahl’s desertion problem By Michelle Malkin • May 31, 2014 08:51 PM While many people jumped aboard the Bowe Bergdahl bandwagon, I was not one of them. His release today in exchange for five Taliban commanders who had been in custody at Gitmo underscores troubling questions that have persisted since his alleged abduction. Longtime readers will recall questions raised here about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance. Here’s a flashback from my July 20, 2009 blog post:

One great big GOP/Fox News rebuke. That’s the early word on Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi explanation in her new book, “Hard Choices,” out on June 10. She’s “defiant,” not “defensive.” She blames her Ben-ghazi critics for exploiting the “tragedy over and over as a political tool” against her that has nothing to do with justice for the four Americans who died there. Since that’s an accurate summation of Republicans’ cynical agenda on Benghazi — and since an awful lot of Americans can see that clearly — I’d say those who think Ben-ghazi will sink Clinton in 2016, well, they better think...