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On CNN's "State of the Union" on September 30, Candy Crowley insisted David Axelrod, President Barack Obama's chief strategist, was wrong when Axelrod tried to claim President Barack Obama called the Benghazi attack "an act of terror" on the day after. "First, they said it was not planned, it was part of this tape," Crowley said when Axelrod tried to spin her. This was Crowley the journalist, unlike the pro-Obama advocate who moderated Tuesday's debate between Obama and Mitt Romney and interjected herself into an argument between Obama and Romney on the exact same issue -- and took Obama's side....

On Monday, I wrote that it would be wrong to prejudge CNN host Candy Crowley before she turned in her performance as a debate moderator. Just the week prior, ABC reporter Martha Raddatz was preemptively criticized for inviting President Barack Obama to attend her wedding in the 1990s, but she ended up being a straight moderator who advanced the vice presidential debate admirably. I wanted to extend the benefit of the doubt to Crowley, to not preemptively criticize her before she was worthy of criticism. Well, the verdict is in and criticism is entirely warranted. My singular take away moment...

LONDON -- Western intelligence has begun to detect tension within the Iranian regime over the country’s nuclear program, officials told NBC News on Friday. Even so, the European Union on Friday provisionally approved substantial new economic sanctions against Tehran. The new sanctions will have to be formally approved on Monday at an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Luxembourg before coming into effect.

In the end, Carter lost to Reagan because he dithered too much, because he was just too feckless, because our enemies were running amok, and Carter was trying to make a deal with them instead of acting the way most of us thought a real American leader should act. Then, as now, the media were overwhelmingly behind the Democratic incumbent, but the real world overwhelmed them. Then, it was American hostages in Iran. Now, it is American dead in Libya. Then, it was a mob of Iranian “students” shrieking “death to America” in Tehran and taking over the American embassy...

(The following is the third of three excerpts from The Right Frequency: The Story of the Talk Radio Giants Who Shook Up the Political and Media Establishment, by Fred Lucas; History Publishing Company. The adapted excerpt looks at the Fairness Doctrine.) The Democratic National Committee, with the approval of President Lyndon B. Johnson engaged in an effort that eventually led to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Fairness Doctrine. What would have been a major scandal had it been discovered, was revealed years later in former CBS News president Fred Friendly’s book “The Good Guys, the Bad Guys and...

Especially over the last two weeks.Whenever we watch Juan duel with Brit Hume,Krauthammer and the rest,regardless of how severe&damaging Obama's actions have been for the United States;"It's No Big Deal",according to Juan.And quite often Juan has to add George Bush to the mix{"Well This All Started Under The Bush Administration"}.And every week Juan has to Walk/Talk back the weekly "Obama Screw-Up".Between Jaun,Colmes & Beckel(well at least we get great laughs from Beckel&his Swear Jar), You got to admit,the lefties on Fox News have been making total fools of themselves explaining away the "Latest Obama Scandal".Maybe Fox Should Take This Poll:What...

CNN's Jim Acosta on Tuesday's Situation Room asked what many will think was a truly offensive question. "If you were to somehow beat the first African-American president, what would you say to the black community to assure them that you would be their president also?" (video follows with transcript and commentary): Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/09/25/cnns-acosta-romney-if-you-somehow-win-how-would-you-convince-blacks-y#ixzz27XGbKuhs

This just in from the Gallup organization: Americans' distrust of the media has just hit a  new record, with six in 10 Americans saying they have "little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly." Forty percent say they have a "great deal" or a "fair amount" of trust, and I assume this is the same crowd who approve of the job Congress is doing. Where do they find these people? Gallup says the 20-point difference between positive and negative views of the media is "by far" the highest Gallup has seen since it...

Republicans are getting depressed under an avalanche of polling suggesting that an Obama victory is in the offing. They, in fact, suggest no such thing! Here’s why: 1. All of the polling out there uses some variant of the 2008 election turnout as its model for weighting respondents and this overstates the Democratic vote by a huge margin. In English, this means that when you do a poll you ask people if they are likely to vote. But any telephone survey always has too few blacks, Latinos, and young people and too many elderly in its sample. That’s because some...

Comedy has always been a place for taboo subjects, but many are asking if Saturday Night Live went too far with a sketch aired Thursday night in which Gov. Mitt Romney is repeatedly portrayed as a racist. The sketch, which aired during a "SNL Weekend Update Thursday" special on NBC last night, was based on the recent "leaked video" of Gov. Romney stating he will not try to win over the 47% of voters who loyally support President Obama. However, SNL took the premise further, by portraying Romney as secretly racist. At one point in the sketch, Jason Sudekis (who...

Since Obama's campaign has degenerated to nothing but lie, after lie, after lie why don't we just begin to make up stories just to demonstrate how craven this man is? If we float just as phony, made-up stories as the Obama campaign, no one will believe anything attributed to him. This man has no morals, none whatsoever. This man is a street thug in a $1,000 suit. Nothing more. Shame on those Americans who voted for him the first time. But I cannot think of a word to describe those who will do so a second time.

Former steel worker Joe Soptic has resurfaced in a new pro-Obama Super-PAC ad, blaming Romney for his wife’s death from cancer. “I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he’s done to anyone,” Soptic says in the ad. “And furthermore I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned.” But Soptic is actually a familiar face on the anti-Bain beat, and accused Romney of this before. Soptic was featured in an Obama ad in May, who explained that although he wasn’t “rich” he was able to put his daughter through college. In January, Soptic complained to Democracy Now, a liberal non-profit...

No description at YouTube, so my write up:CNN's Brianna Kielar spoke with Joe Soptic, a former steelworker featured in a new pro-Obama super PAC ad who was laid off in 2001 when Bain Capital closed the company he had worked at for a reported 30 years. Without directly accusing Soptic and Priorities USA of being despicable liars, CNN lets its reporting call them out as despicable liars. Soptic told CNN his wife had her own health insurance at her own job when he was laid off. Soptic said his wife quit her job a year or two later due to...

Please, spare me the objection that this comes from The One’s Super PAC, not his formal campaign, and therefore it’s technically not an “Obama ad.” That excuse never flew for Romney when his own Super PAC was carpet-bombing Gingrich and Santorum in the primaries. The wall of separation between a campaign and its PAC is all but invisible to the naked eye. If you think it’s easy for the White House to get Harry Reid to smear Romney over his tax returns, imagine how easy it must be for them to get former White House spokesman and current Priorities USA...

(snip) The point of calling Romney a murderer is to keep him on the defensive; the more ridiculous the charge is, the more media/online oxygen it sucks up and the less air there is for Mitt’s own attacks on O to breathe. .... Question: Knowing what we know now about the timeline of all this, what’s left of the accusation in the original smear ad? What is it, precisely, that Bain is being faulted for doing or not doing? They shouldn’t have closed down the plant because … it was unfair to expect the workers who were laid off to...

A new attack ad by a Super PAC backing President Obama appears to blame Mitt Romney for a woman's death from cancer after his company, Bain Capital, shut down the steel mill where the woman's husband worked. The ad makes it seem like Joe Soptic's wife, Ilyona, lost her battle with cancer shortly after he lost his job at GST Steel in Missouri, where he had worked for almost 30 years. "When Mitt Romney closed the plant I lost my healthcare, and my family lost their healthcare," Soptic says in the ad put out by Priorities USA Action, the main...

...played a role in the death of Ilyona Soptic at age 55. The ad features Joe Soptic, 62, of Missouri, who lost his job when GST Steel of Kansas City—owned by Bain and other investors for eight years—was closed. As melancholy music plays, Mr. Soptic says that when the plant closed, he and his family lost their health-care coverage and "a short time after that, my wife became ill." Her illness was diagnosed five years later. "I don't think Mitt Romney understands what he's done to people's lives by closing the plant," Mr. Soptic says in the ad. The steel...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama tried Monday to distance himself from an advertisement run by a supportive outside group suggesting there was a link between the death of a laid-off steelworker's wife and Republican Mitt Romney's former company. But Obama said he intends to keep raising sharp contrasts between himself and the GOP challenger. "I don't think that Governor Romney was somehow responsible for the death," he said.

Via Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed, who reminds us that O's attempt to disclaim responsibility for the ad under ye olde "I don't control my Super PAC" dodge is perhaps undermined by the fact that his own campaign used the story of the steelworker's wife too. Remember? Joe Soptic did a conference call with Stephanie Cutter and everything. The whole Hopenchange operation owns this smear, and regretlessly so. In fact, even Obama's gesture towards civility here in exculpating Romney for Soptic’s wife’s death is a feint: Bill Burton, who runs the Super PAC, ludicrously said that he too doesn’t think Romney...

The makers of a new Romney attack ad, as well as the steelworker featured in the television spot, are standing by the highly-scrutinized ad, saying the ad does not suggest that Romney is responsible for a woman's death from cancer. Joe Soptic, the former steelworker featured in a Priorities USA Action ad, told the Wall Street Journal that he thinks the ad is fair. In ad, the former GST Steel employee recounts how he lost his job and his health benefits after Bain Capital -- the private equity firm founded by Romney -- purchased and shut down the Kansas City...