Free Republic

The Heritage Foundation's Ryan Anderson (with whom I happen to disagree on same-sex marriage) appeared on Ed Schultz's MSNBC program (cough) last night to discuss Indiana's religious freedom law, and the resulting conversation culminated with the host instructing producers to silence Anderson's microphone. End of Discussion: Schultz advances one false or misleading narrative after another, then loses his composure when Anderson (or "Mr. Ryan," as Schultz calls him at one point) replies with rapid-fire factual corrections. Schultz interrupts Anderson's first answer almost immediately to contest the statement that Indiana's law is effectively the same as other RFRAs, including the federal...

Ryan T Anderson from the Heritage Foundation successfully defended the Indiana law on Ed Schultz's MSNBC program. Schultz throws a hissy fit and first cuts Anderson's mic, then brings him back, gets schooled again, and apologizes to his viewers, saying he "can't have a civil conversation."

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse for MSNBC, along came the quarterly ratings reports. In both daytime and prime time, MSNBC endured its lowest quarterly demo numbers in a decade, and its total viewership since the final quarter of 2007. Prime-time viewership was down 45 percent in the demo from the first quarter of 2014, while daytime viewership was down 39 percent in the demo. On Tuesday, while Fox News and CNN were boasting their own quarterly numbers -- Fox News remained dominant, CNN made major strides in the demo -- MSNBC chose to focus on the...

CONNECTICUT TO BOYCOTT INDIANA OVER RFRA, FORGETS IT HAS ITS OWN By Emily Zanotti on 3.30.15 Presient Obama isn't the only person who has selective memory when it comes to voting for and passing a Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This morning, the governor of Connecticut, Dan Malloy, announced that he would be the first governor in the union to sign an executive order limiting state-sponsored travel to Indiana because of Indiana's ostensibly "discriminatory practices."

Mike Pence is a bigot, according to one of his fellow governors. “When you see a bigot you have to call him on it,” Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Story Continued Below Malloy, the incoming chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, on Monday signed an executive order banning state-funded travel to Indiana in response to a "religious freedom" law signed last week by Pence. Critics say the law, known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, would allow businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians; Pence insists it’s meant only to protect religious communities from government encroachment...

As he returns to run the NBC News Group, Andy Lack faces one of the same puzzles he tried to solve a decade and a half ago: how to make MSNBC work. While he was gone, MSNBC changed from traditional news to a political network with a liberal lens. Now that it is mired in a ratings slump, Lack's mandate as chairman will be figuring out if MSNBC needs a complete overhaul or a sharpening of its mission. The current picture is seriously ugly. Through early March, Chris Hayes' viewership at 8 p.m. on weekdays was down 23 percent from...

As he returns to run the NBC News Group, Andy Lack faces one of the same puzzles he tried to solve a decade and a half ago: how to make MSNBC work. While he was gone, MSNBC changed from traditional news to a political network with a liberal lens. Now that it is mired in a ratings slump, Lack’s mandate as chairman will be figuring out if MSNBC needs a complete overhaul or a sharpening of its mission. The current picture is seriously ugly. Through early March, Chris Hayes’ viewership at 8 p.m. on weekdays was down 23 percent from...

As I continue to read on twitter that former dude from MSNBC that couldn't beat O'Reilly at 8, some NBA star I never heard of and that CBS anaylist that I used to like until yesterday talk about how the NFL and NCAA should move from Indianapolis, I realize maybe it is time to move the Super Bowl out of San Francisco and the whole California state. There is no reason why millions of freedom loving Christians, conservatives, republicans or libertarians should have to watch this horrible city host one of the biggest events of the year. The city that...

Two days ago I ordered online a used copy of Milton & Rose Friedman's classic "Free to Choose," hoping a liberal loved one would be willing to read it. That doesn't look like it's going to happen, so now I'm tempted to send the book to Barney Frank—since it's apparent that, like many liberals, he doesn't understand the most basic notions of how free markets work. On Steve Kornacki's MSNBC show today, Frank described business creators as being "given privileges." Barney then added this mind-boggler: "there's only a limited amount of space, there's only a limited amount of businesses. Your...

Freshly announced presidential candidate Ted Cruz has made news with his claim that he became a fan of country music after rock-and-roll music disappointed him with its response to the Sept. 11 attacks. The MSNBC afternoon program “Now with Alex Wagner” used Cruz’s music comments as the jumping-off point for a discussion among guest host Ari Melber, Joan Walsh, Michael Steele and Jamilah Lemieux. “Nothing says ‘Let’s go kill some Muslims’ like country music,” said Lemieux in kicking off the festivities. The comment came off as something packaged, premeditated. While Walsh and Steele giggled, Melber remained stone-faced, vouching for the...

Upon Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) announcement that he’s running for the presidency, Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski said that though she didn’t agree with a single thing Cruz believed, at least the GOP’s new crop of candidates was a vast improvement over the “clown car” of 2012. Here occasional guest Donny Deutsch disagreed: “He’s Sarah Palin,” Deutsch argued Monday morning. “He’s theater. That’s what Sarah Palin was. We love the show, okay. But when it comes time for the grown-up voting…” “Please don’t make me explain why he’s not Sarah Palin,” Brzezinski said. “I would get killed.” “I’m not saying...

On Melissa Harris-Perry's show this weekend, the host resoundingly approved when a guy who said that his mission in life is to "get white people to talk about whiteness" suggested that baristas at Starbucks should write “White supremacy has been the organizing principle of America since it was founded” on customers' coffee cups. - See more at:

It would be hard to imagine a news event better tailored to MSNBC’s Venn diagram of “lean forward” liberals and “place for politics” political junkies. Yet when Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ presumptive 2016 presidential nominee, held a news conference about her private email use last week — a media frenzy that functioned, albeit inadvertently, as the informal launch to her highly anticipated campaign — less than 13 percent of the total cable news audience was tuned to the network. The low turnout wasn’t a fluke: Year-to-date, MSNBC’s daytime viewership is down 21 percent overall and 41 percent in the coveted...

In case you missed it over the long holiday weekend, in an attempt to prove "white privilege" is a thing, notorious race-baiter, former boarding school student, privileged first-class flyer and MSNBC host Toure said surviving the holocaust is a result of "the power of whiteness."

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...

Al Sharpton is losing the creator and executive producer of his MSNBC show. After a 12-year tenure with MSNBC, PoliticsNation executive producer Matt Saal is leaving for an executive producing gig at Bloomberg TV later this month.

One America News, which launched patriotically on July 4, 2013, is something of an anomaly in the cable news universe. First of all, it's based in San Diego, California. The channel's news coverage is intended to be straight down the middle, even though its talk shows are pretty staunchly conservative. The network does not cover sports or pop culture news. Like Lahren, many of its news anchors and reporters are young. And for now, it airs no commercials. The network may want to emulate Fox's success, but it's taking a very different path to get there. Robert and Charles Herring,...

Media Matters, which describes itself on its web site as a, "progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media," has taken aim at MSNBC's Chris Matthews for what it says is a trend of "sexist displays." Media Matters has started a "take action" campaign, urging readers to contact MSNBC and express their disapproval of Matthews current attacks on Sen. Hillary Clinton and past comments. Karl Frisch, Media Matters spokesperson, tells TVNewser, "We encourage people to take action for a variety of reasons — being able to point to a clear...

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell deferred to State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on the Friday edition of her program, and let the Obama administration flack attack the 47 Republican senators who signed an open letter to Iran's leaders. Mitchell led into the segment by playing President Obama's condescending "I'm embarrassed for them" and "it's close to unprecedented" shots at the senators, and gave Psaki a platform to promote the administration's talking points on the issue. [video below] The journalist first pointed out that Secretary of State John Kerry's upcoming trip to Switzerland for "another round of nuclear talks with Iran negotiations –...

Wisconsin and Minnesota have long made fascinating bookends. As longtime readers may recall, the two neighboring states have similar sizes, similar populations, similar demographics, and even similar climates. But they don’t necessarily have similar politics, at least not lately. In the 2010 elections, the Badger State elected Scott Walker (R) governor and gave control of the legislature to Republicans, while the Gopher State made Mark Dayton (D) governor and, in 2012, elected a Democratic legislature*. The former got to work targeting collective bargaining and approving tax cuts, while the latter raised taxes on the wealthy and boosted in-state investments. Nearly...