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The Obama White House is addicted to the “unprecedented.” Perhaps it was a sign when President Barack Obama sat down in January to record his first weekly address and announced: “We begin this year and this administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action." What has followed is declaration after declaration of “unprecedented” milestones. Some of them are legitimate firsts, like the president’s online town hall at the White House in May. But others the president wins merely on a technicality, and several clearly already have precedents. The White House’s announcement of its unprecedented —...

Democratic pundit Bob Beckel has been under contract with Fox News for six years. And in the midst of the White House war against the cable network, some of his liberal friends think that’s six years too many. They invited him to lunch the other day for an intervention: Why is Beckel — a true-blue Democrat who worked for Robert F. Kennedy and ran Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign — giving comfort to the enemy? Beckel’s response: “I talk to more persuadable voters in a month than anybody on MSNBC and CNN talks to in a year.” In the eyes...

The Palin-hatin' media just keeps pouring it on Sarah Palin. The latest example is Politico's distortion of a report that a pro-family group wants to bring her to Iowa. The Iowa Family Policy Center has asked Team Sarah, which has no formal ties to the former governor, to help it raise $100,000 to stage an event on November 21 for which the organization hopes to book Palin to be the speaker. Team Sarah's Bill Collier says that IFPC has already raised $59,000 for the event, and his group is trying to raise another $41,000. The headline for the Politico piece...

Note to Politico: If you base a story on an outdated Daily Kos poll you could end up with egg on your face. This is pretty much what has happened in the past three days. On Saturday your humble correspondent cited a Politico story of the day before by Josh Kraushaar in which he reported on Doug Hoffman continuing to lag behind in third place in the NY 23rd CD race: The latest poll in the New York special election shows a close race, with Democrat Bill Owens leading Republican Dede Scozzafava 35 to 30 percent, with Conservative party candidate...

This is a Politico congressional race story that should have been labeled "WARNING: Read this story with a huge grain of salt." Why? First of all because the poll of the New York 23rd Congressional District was mostly taken before the big events of this past week were well known there. And even more importantly, the source of the poll was the Daily Kos which endorsed the very liberal Republican in the race, Dede Scozzafava. However, before we go into how absurd this poll was, let us watch Josh Kraushaar of Politico get all breathless about this highly questionable story:...

Many top Republicans are growing worried that the party’s chances for reversing its electoral routs of 2006 and 2008 are being wounded by the flamboyant rhetoric and angry tone of conservative activists and media personalities, according to interviews with GOP officials and operatives. Congressional leaders talk in private of being boxed in by commentators such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh — figures who are wildly popular with the conservative base but wildly controversial among other parts of the electorate, and who have proven records of making life miserable for senators and House members critical of their views or...

~ EXCERPT ~ On Tuesday, Matt Drudge ran a headline about the weakening U.S. dollar on his website, Drudgereport.com. In and of itself, that would be unremarkable, except that it was the 18th time Drudge had posted a link to a story about the weak dollar this month. And October was only 20 days old. Clearly, Matt Drudge has developed a fascination with the declining U.S. dollar. “He’s fixated on it,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. “There’s no question that Drudge can alter what people are paying attention to.” Market watchers...

Leftist Democratic Party front group Media Matters put a hit out on Rush Limbaugh this afternoon. Politico and Paul Krugman at the New York Times pimped the Media Matters character assassination of Rush to the political world. They take his comments out of the context of illustrating liberal hypocrisy to paint him as a violent person.This is a perfect example of how the Democratic party and the media work hand in glove to attack conservatives and try delegitimize them in the public arena.First Politico, then Krugman, then Rush and at the end a response from Revkin.Glenn Thrush Pimping for Media...

If there was any question which side of the ideological blogosphere a lot of the inside-the-beltway media establishment go to regularly, Politico may have just cleared that up. In an Oct. 11 Politico story headlined "Think Progress makes its mark," which was the top story on its Web site that evening, Daniel Libit paid reverence to the left-wing Center for American Progress' Think Progress blog. "Can a liberal blog launched in the midst of the Bush era - a blog that once obsessed over Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove and the outing of Valerie Plame - still make its...

Michael Falcone, from Politico.com, wrote a piece on Governor Palin, Republican base still wild about Sarah Palin: Despite a torrent of criticism from the media, Democrats and even some in her own party, Sarah Palin remains the hottest brand name in politics. Her recent resignation was perplexing. It’s raised doubts about her viability as a potential presidential candidate. Still, she remains extremely popular with the GOP grass roots, and most Republican Party leaders would jump at the chance to have her headline one of their events. That’s the picture that emerges from interviews with dozens of GOP state and local...

Even Power isn't THAT Strong an Aphrodisiac OMG. Janet Napolitano has made the list of D.C.'s Most Eligible Singles. To help out the romance seekers, POLITICO has highlighted 20 of Washington's most eligible singles. They're cute and connected, charming and compelling. To be sure, many won't be single for long so it's best to work on your pickup lines now. Golly, that's how I've always thought of Janet...cute, charming and compelling. And I'm sure that Politico is right she "won't be single for long"...I'm sure she's just looking for the right man to come along...er, well, whatever. Here's her write...

palin was attacked by the white house and politico fails to show her response. Email Ben Smith, and DEMAND her response to be posted. bsmith@politico.com

I thought I’d accidently browsed over to the Daily Kos in reading the Politico’s BEN Smith’s & NIA-MALIKA Henderson’s hit piece, “Glenn Beck up, left down and Van Jones defiant.” This article was a direct frontal assault lashing out against the conservative grassroots, Fox News, talk radio, the Drudge Report’s Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck .(see story) Smith and Henderson left no stone unturned attempting to fault all of Conservatism for Van Jones’ self inflicted troubles. Jones a black nationalist, anarchist, and self avowed communist remade himself into a Green Jobs/Economic rights activist and presidential advisor, found it...

In yesterday's More czars on conservative hit list, the Politico's Lisa Lerer states "conservatives have accused (Mark) Lloyd, appointed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as the agency’s Chief Diversity officer in late July, of secretly wanting to reinstate the controversial Fairness Doctrine." This is not at all accurate. We at the Media Research Center broke the news of Lloyd’s FCC gig (created just for him just the way the “green jobs czar” slot was for the recently dispatched conspiracy-addled Truther-Communist Van Jones). And we specifically stated that he had "no need for the mis-named 'Fairness' Doctrine." From that essay:

President Obama now realizes he probably will have to pass health reform with Democratic votes alone, White House officials say. The admission is a monumental shift in Washington’s top fight of the year, with the energy now shifting to differences among Democrats, rather than efforts to lure a critical mass of Republicans. The aides call it more a prediction than a strategy shift, and blame the GOP. "We were forced into this by Republicans," one official said. The administration is pointing to increasingly partisan comments by the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Charles Grassley of Iowa, who said...

For the second day a patriot has taken over Politico' home page with ads slamming the press. Go here to see: http://www.politico.com

A Freeper bought out all the ads on the home page. See the ad at the top of the page and the "clueless" ad. http://www.politico.com Thread continues here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2313960/posts

A Freeper bought out all the ads on the home page. See the ad at the top of the page and the "clueless" ad. http://www.politico.com

A Politico Poll is showing Governor Palin with a nice comfortable lead over Governor Romney, Speaker Gingrich & Governor Huckabee. As of 1:55 AM Eastern Standard Time 19,381 votes have been cast.

Reporters from roughly 30 television networks, newspapers, magazines, and web sites celebrated the Fourth of July with Barack Obama at the White House last weekend. Why didn't you know that? Because they were sworn to secrecy. We reported yesterday that Politico's Mike Allen was spotted milling about as a guest at the White House's "backyard bash" by the pool reporter, who was allowed into the event for 40 minutes and kept in a pen before being ushered out. When Allen quoted from the pool report in his Playbook column the next day, he deleted a reference to his own name...

By ROGER SIMON | 7/7/09 4:58 AM EDT Sarah Palin violated several commandments and is now getting roasted by political mandarins and media elites. Photo: AP Sarah Palin is a sinner. She has violated several commandments and thoroughly deserves the savage beating that she is now getting from political mandarins and media elites. If it were not for one simple fact, I would say she was through in politics. And that fact is that if the Republicans were picking a nominee today, they would pick Sarah Palin. No? Don’t believe me? Who would beat her? Tim Pawlenty? Bobby Jindal? Haley...

I don’t know what Mike Allen thought he was getting himself into here, but after this he’d be well advised not to go throwing stones at anyone else for coming off badly in interviews. The clip’s long but the first 3:45 is intro and can be safely skipped if you watched the MSNBC vid this morning. Enjoy. CLICK ON ABOVE LINK AND LISTEN TO THE AUDIO ( start at the 3:45 mark) FOR THE CONFRONTATION ( Mike Allen was SCHOOLED here ).

The cap of an entertaining, wide-ranging press conference that included a spirited defense of the public health care option: A carefully-framed, detailed question from Obama on his smoking habit. "You just think it's neat to ask me about my smoking," he told the reporter, before conceding that he has "fallen off the wagon sometimes." "Am I a daily, a constant smoker? No," he said. "I don't do it in front of my kids. i don't do it in front of my family." Obama said he was "95% cured" and compared himself to a recovering alcoholic. "Once you've gone down this...

Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, wrote an incredibly bizarre article for Politico. He accurately declares that the biggest problem for the Obama administration's health care plan probably wouldn't be Republicans but the assessment by the Congressional Budget Office warning of a trillion dollar cost of the proposal. Zelizer's solution? Just ignore the CBO. Zelizer starts off firmly planted in the realm of reality: The most potent threat to the Obama administration’s fledgling health may come not from the insurance industry or skeptical doctors but from the Congressional Budget Office. Okay, good beginning,...

Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and “Iran experts” have dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud. They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the “Iran experts” over Friday’s results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking. Although Iran’s elections are not free by Western standards, the Islamic Republic...

Unfortunately, some conservative women know what it's like to be a black Republican. First of all, Playboy thought this would be great to alert the blogs about this insightful piece of commentary... Subject line: So Right It’s WrongHello — I just wanted to pass on the link to “So Right It’s Wrong,” an article on the top 10 conservative women we hate to love. It just went live on our site this morning. http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-forum-the-top-10-women-conservatism/index.htmlBest Regards, Aranya Tomseth Editor | Online Community Manager Playboy.com Of course, after the unexpected condemnations came in, Playboy scrubbed the page from the Internet, or at...

Politico blogger Anne Schroeder Mullins forgot that she, too, is a woman yesterday when she decided to promote a vulgar, hate-filled rant about rape fantasies with conservative women by a guy named Guy Cimbalo. Playboy published the piece but scrubbed its Web site of the evidence a few hours later after harsh criticism across the political spectrum but especially from conservative bloggers. Now Politico has pulled a Playboy by letting Mullins replace her original post with a quasi-apology: The Playboy article linked to on this blog listed 10 conservative women "they love to hate" adding their reasons why. The blog...

::snip:: The flood of books devoted to the 2008 campaign and President Barack Obama begins in earnest this week with the release of “Renegade, The Making of a President,” by former Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe..... ...His wife is now Obama’s secretary of state, but Obama had some tough words for the actions of former President Bill Clinton during the campaign. “We had to figure out how to deal with a former president who was just lying, engaging in bald-faced lies,” Obama explained to Wolffe. When the then-candidate was asked if Clinton got in his head, he replied: “Yes, but I...

We may have hit a new low in the category of tasteless, ignorant comments made by one pundit about another . . . Politico has an article today about Charles Krauthammer rightly depicting him as an eminently articulate and influential conservative critic of Pres. Obama. Then comes this [emphasis added]: “There’s something tragic about him too,” Klein said, referring to Krauthammer’s confinement to a wheelchair, the result of a diving accident during his first year of medical school. “His work would have a lot more nuance if he were able to see the situations he’s writing about.”

Now that Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. has been named the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, some on the far-left are gunning for Alabama's junior senator. The battle is happening as President Barack Obama is on the verge of naming an appointee to the Supreme Court to fill void of Justice David Souter.Some of the left-wing points that suggest Sessions has racist tendencies were incorporated into a May 6 Politico story by John Bresnahan and Manu Raju. "By elevating Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to their top spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republicans have selected their chief inquisitor for...

The New York Post today published, and I linked, a slap at Obama's promises of bipartisanship attributed to Gov. Sarah Palin. The only problem: Palin didn't write the article. Conservative writer Meghan Clyne did. " The byline was a mistake. I mixed up an e-mail from Meghan Stapleton, who works for Palin, with Meghan Clyne. That's why it was corrected," emails Post Sunday editor Steve Lynch. It's the sort of thing that happens, but seems to happen more to Palin.

Bobby Jindal has a wunderkind resume: a Rhodes Scholar appointed assistant secretary of Health and Human Services at age 29, elected to the U.S. House at 33 and governor of Louisiana at 36. Increasingly, though, he’s being likened to Kenneth, the dweeby page on “30 Rock.” The politically devastating comparisons started popping right up after Jindal delivered the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s address a joint session of Congress. And they’ve spread like wildfire on the Internet. “Close your eyes and think of Kenneth from ‘30 Rock.’ I can barely count the number of e-mails making that observation,” Andrew...

Ok folks, question time: Which is the REAL party of hate? Ten seconds... Ding! Time's up! Read the excerpted comments below (screen names withheld to protect the idiots) and you decide. "Black man said it to the White man The White Man snitched it to the the Boss man The Boss man slapped down the Black man..." "How pathetic. How many conservative politicians are gonna apologize to this guy? Rush is a bigot, a racist, a drug addict, a liar and a college drop out. Why in the world would you care what he thinks about you? Why would you...

Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe made an unusual request for his speech today at the National Press Club: he wanted it off the record. Politico editor-in-chief John Harris said that after hearing of Plouffe’s request, and decision not to reverse course, he backed out from moderating the lunch-time event. Harris said that as a news organization, he doesn't want Politico "being in the the business of sponsoring, or co-sponsoring, an off the record talk with a newsworthy person.” “We made it clear, as best we can, we’re not part of this part of the program,” Harris said. “We took...

Tom Daschle, under fire for not paying taxes, made nearly $5.3 million in the last two years, records released Friday show. Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader who President Obama has tapped to overhaul the nation’s health care system, was paid $220,000 to give speeches to outfits that have a vested interest in the work he would do once confirmed as secretary of health and human services. Among the companies and groups paying thousands of dollars a pop to book Daschle were some that stand to gain or lose the most depending on the results of Obama’s efforts to enact...

Even without the election of Barack Obama and Democratic gains in Congress, conservatives were going to have to reassess much of their philosophy on the key issues of taxing and spending. The financial crisis has already led to a vast expansion of spending, and even if John McCain had won, there was going to be a lot more to come. The aging of the baby boom generation alone means there will be increasing demands for Social Security, Medicare and other programs for the elderly in coming years. (The first baby boomer turns 65 in 2011.) Moreover, Americans’ zeal for tax...

MSNBC host Chris Matthews suggested Friday that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) may not have the reading or writing ability needed to complete the book she is reportedly shopping. The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that Palin is seeking an $11 million advance for her memoir and has hired high-powered Washington attorney Robert Barnett to broker the deal. Teasing a segment on the book during his show “Hardball,” Matthews said: “If she can read, if she can write, she’ll make some money.” Matthews repeated his suggestion that Palin could not write the book later in the show. “The question is...

President Obama made a surprise visit to the White House press corps Thursday night, but got agitated when he was faced with a substantive question. Asked how he could reconcile a strict ban on lobbyists in his administration with a Deputy Defense Secretary nominee who lobbied for Raytheon, Obama interrupted with a knowing smile on his face. "Ahh, see," he said, "I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can't end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I'm going to get grilled every time I come down here." Pressed further by the Politico...

John McCain looked every bit the seething, uncomfortable vanquished rival in that first, awkward post-election press conference on those enormous chairs. It sounds like he's kind of still that way. The defeated Republican presidential nominee won't be doing any press or TV interviews for "at least several more weeks," his people tell Politico. And he's clearly still angry at former running mate Sarah Palin, for going ROGUE:

Kennedy hires insider to soothe critics By BEN SMITH & GLENN THRUSH | 12/15/08 7:19 PM EST Caroline Kennedy’s trial balloon candidacy for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat was springing a few leaks over the past few days — so she’s made her ambitions more explicit and hired one of New York’s top political consultants to gain some altitude. After a week of coy courtship and low-key feelers, Kennedy began working the phones in earnest Monday — and signed up major Democratic fixer Josh Isay, who has deep connections to New York powerhouses Sen. Charles Schumer, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and...

Mon Dec 15, 2008 5:34am EST ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani newspapers gave prominent coverage on Monday to a British media report that a retired general gunned down in Islamabad last month planned to blow the whistle on fellow generals' dealings with the Taliban. Jang, Pakistan's biggest selling Urdu-language newspaper, ran a story on its front page headlined: "Gen. Alavi was against pacts with Taliban, Musharraf had sacked him." The reports in Jang and other Pakistani dailies were based on a story published in Britain's Sunday Times, and written by Carey Schofield. Major-General Amir Faisal Alavi, a brother-in-law of Nobel prize-winning...

Politico, the upstart news source from Washington, and Reuters, the venerable wire service, have joined forces to offer articles to newspapers and sell advertising on the papers’ Web sites, the latest step in the rising competition among electronic news media to fill the void left by the shrinking print business. ~snip~ Politico’s informed political coverage, sometimes spiced with attitude from its writers, complements Reuters’ sober style and Washington coverage that often reads as if written for an overseas audience. And as other news organizations shrink or abandon their Washington bureaus, Politico is expanding from a staff of about 85 people...

December 10, 2008 Categories: Transition Blagojevich questions censored on Transition site President-elect Barack Obama's Transition today launched "Open for Questions," a Digg-style feature allowing citizens to submit questions, and to vote on one another's questions, bringing favored inquiries to the top of the list. It was suggested when it launched that the tool would bring uncomfortable questions to the fore, but the results so far are the opposite: Obama's supporters appear to be using -- and abusing -- a tool allowing them to "flag" questions as "inappropriate" to remove all questions mentioning Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich from the main pages...

FOX NEWS has had Politico pundits on all day. Shep on fox reports just announced that they will have a joint effort with Politico. Please email Fox report and tell them that "The Politico" is openly biased against McCain and highly critical of Sarah Palin and not fair and balanced. They belong on MSNBC and not FOX news. Here is the email. foxreport@foxnews.com

When Politico editors John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei tackled the subject of media bias Tuesday, they knew they were venturing into controversial territory. Still, they hadn't predicted the most intense reader response Politico has ever received, with hundreds of e-mails pouring into their inboxes within hours of the story hitting the web. Some of the messages were downright hostile. "Keep up the crappy work and your rationalization for it," one reader wrote. "John," another commenter wrote to Harris, "I bet you['re] glad that the Wellstone Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 passed as it assures...

Politico political editor Charles Mahtesian was e-mailing the other day with a Republican lobbyist who signed off with a plea that sounded more like a taunt: “Keep it balanced.” A reader e-mailed us with the same sentiment in different language. “Are you f***ing joking! Your bias has stooped to an all-time low. Wait, it will probably get worse as election day nears.” Those asterisks, by the way, are hers, not ours. And get a load of this one, from someone in Rochester, N.Y., who did not like our analysis of the final presidential debate. “You guys are awfully tough on...

No one in America has catalogued Barack Obama's connections to far left radicals like Stanley Kurtz of the National Review. Today, Kurtz looks at an article written by Obama sycophant Ben Smith of Politico who incredibly, has taken the word of former New Party co-founder Joel Rogers that the radical, Maoist "fusion" party "didn't have any members:" As for Obama's membership? [in the New Party] "We didn’t really have members," said Rogers. They also didn't have a ballot line in Chicago. So he said the line in the party newsletter appeared to refer to the fact that the party had...

When Politico revealed the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 outfitting Sarah Palin and her family after she was picked as John McCain's running mate, one would assume it would be worthy of a brief, snarky story buried on the New York Times's "Caucus" page, filled mostly with anonymous Republicans griping about campaign spending priorities. But Patrick Healy and Michael Luo's "$150,000 Wardrobe for Palin May Alter Tailor-Made Image" made the front page Thursday morning. (The other major papers had more self-control.) The Times played up what they saw as the hypocritical disconnect between Palin's "Joe-six-pack" appeal and the posh wardrobe...

Those lunatics at Politico are way off the reservation and will probably be sent to "reeducation" camps after the election for reporting this heresy. Unless, of course, they are right, and McCain wins.

...Forty-nine percent of respondents said that Obama won the debate, compared to 46 who believed his opponent, Sen. John McCain, came out on top. The three-point gap separating the two candidates was equal to the poll’s margin of error. Five percent said they were unsure which candidate had the better evening. Perhaps the best news for McCain is the rating he received from independent voters. Among respondents not identified with either major political party, McCain was judged tonight’s winner, 51-42 percent.... The candidates were evenly matched among white voters, with McCain posting a narrow 49-46 percent advantage. African-Americans picked Obama...