A narrative growing around former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is that he avoids right-of-center news outlets. A few weeks ago, the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis stood by a piece the Romney camp disputed that took issue with the fact that only left-wing news outlets received any attention on one particular conference call. And in recent months both Brett Baier and Chris Wallace of Fox News have made an issue over the Governor’s apparent reluctance to show up for a grilling on their respective shows (though Romney did eventually make an appearance with both).

Today, the Daily Caller repeats a familiar refrain:

Romney last week granted one-on-one interviews in Iowa to both MSNBC and the Huffington Post, among the best-known sources of news for liberals in the country. In recent weeks, he also gave interviews to The Washington Post, The New York Times and Politico.

It’s a peculiar strategy for someone who has had trouble convincing conservatives throughout this race he’s one of them.

The Romney campaign runs a tight ship when it comes to media access. Unlike other candidates who can be more open at campaign stops, Romney will only answer questions from reporters during organized media availabilities. …

Romney’s campaign has refused multiple times over the last year to provide the former Massachusetts governor for an interview with The Daily Caller.

There is, I think, an important difference between a candidate and an elected official. If you’re president of the United States or the local dog catcher, you have an obligation to meet with the press, even the hostile press. You are, after all, representing all of the people once you take office. A candidate, though, is a different story. Their job is to win as many votes as possible and, yes, to manipulate the media to their own advantage. In fact, how well a Republican candidate does or doesn’t manage the media frequently means the difference between a loss or a win. Democrats, of course, almost always have the media wind at their backs.

(more…)

The level of cruelty with which the leftist media attacks conservative women never seems to hit bottom. Again and again, we’re told by leftists that the sexual revolution liberated women to be women. Burn your bras! Sleep around! What they forgot to tell women, though, was that there would be a price for straying off the Liberal Plantation and daring to think for yourself.  For if you do, Missy, we will use the power of our platform and words to publicly and sexually humiliate you.

Case in point, Fishbowl DC’s Peter Ogburn, who rips into the Daily Caller’s Michelle Fields for the unpardonable sin of being an attractive young woman who dresses like one.

To understand how vicious and sexist Ogburn’s attack is, first I want you to read what he wrote, and then below the fold, you can watch the “Skinemax” video he references:

ALL of the videos with the women feature shots above the waist. Some even go out of their way to show off cleavage. Because when I think Keynesian economics, I think Titty City. Pretty weird, I know.

What’s weirder? The latest video is hosted by Michelle Fields, from the Daily Caller. It’s no secret that Michelle knows that she is gorgeous and has great hair, but this is super weird. The camera work seems to be largely inspired by the early works of the Al Qaeda hostage tapes. A nervous and awkward Fields, who clearly has NO IDEA what she is talking about, rattles on about “How the New Deal Was a Failure.” We get it, Michelle. You think you’re hot. But, if you want to be taken seriously, maybe just be good at reporting and stop showing off your legs and cleavage. Do you remember that time Diane Sawyer showed off a bunch of cleavage while reading the news? No? Because it didn’t happen! See Michelle’s low budget Skinemax video below.

Here it comes.

Hide the kids!

NSFW!

(more…)

When it comes to left-wingers disguising themselves as objective journalists, Politico is the worst. When the publication first came online, we all liked them. The coverage was fair and the editors and staff seemed to understand that the online world is different from legacy media. On these here Internets, we’re trying to do media differently. But what Politico was doing can only be described as a hustle, a con, a ruse — but one that was undeniably successful, at least in the short term.

In order to gain online traction and influence, Politico pretended to be objective — at least, until they had gained influence, in no small part through their conning of the right. We gave them links and praise and spread the word until…

In 2008, Politico struck.

In 2008, no one did more to undermine Republicans and aid Obama more than Politico. Bias doesn’t even begin to cover it.

With a vengeance, Politico protected Obama. Private citizens weren’t safe; they joined the infamous Journolist (even as they wrote untrue stories protecting Journolist); they created nonsense-narratives about tanning beds; and they spun Obama’s ties to domestic terrorists into a single meeting with “’60s radicals.”

And as we’ve seen during the 2012 campaign season, Politico is now a full-blown character assassination machine joined at the hip with the left in the taking down our candidates one by one. Sexual harassment allegations from 15 years ago and racist Texas rocks from 25 years ago get infinitely more play than Obama’s current scandals (Fast and Furious, Solyndra) and the President’s long list of failures.  Politico’s attacked Sarah Palin’s family, Journolisted away inconvenient whistleblowers, and arrogantly refused to correct provably incorrect stories.

And now Politico’s climbed naked into bed to nuzzle the ear of MSNBC.

(more…)

Big Journalism’s Mary Chastain has done a fine job of chronicling the media’s response to (and refusal to report on) Fast and Furious. Fed up with the media attention, Eric Holder today lashed out at the Daily Caller for daring to ask him about the scandal, replete with finger-pointing.

Embattled Attorney General Eric Holder today demanded The Daily Caller stop publishing articles about the growing calls in Congress for his resignation because of the failed Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking program.

As Holder’s aide was escorting the attorney general offstage following his remarks Tuesday afternoon at the White House, a Daily Caller reporter introduced himself and shook Holder’s hand. The reporter asked him for a response to the growing chorus of federal legislators demanding his resignation.

Holder stepped towards the exit, then turned around, stepped back toward the reporter, and sternly said, “You guys need to — you need to stop this. It’s not an organic thing that’s just happening. You guys are behind it.”

Audio and full story here.

The press is behind it? The Daily Caller reporter? Holder behaves as if this reporter walked guns across the border himself, only to return to the office and pen salacious stories about Holder’s knowledge and sanction of it.

This is similar to the way in which VP Joe Biden recently lashed out at Jason Mattera.

(more…)

There’s so much going on these days. The Occupy movement, a man arrested for attempting to assassinate our president, the never-ending drama behind the GOP primary, and–as always–we have to fight the corrupt mainstream media.

There are so many dragons to slay with only so many hours in a day, and no one knows better than a political blogger that it’s impossible to go to bed feeling as though you’ve covered everything that deserved covering.

—–

But we need conservative leadership on this one; your voice, your passion, your reasoned arguments and your moral authority:

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) announced Thursday that his panel would be considering legislation to prohibit lawmakers from investing based on private information.The chairman announced the Dec. 6 hearing one day after ranking member Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), sent a letter to Bachus, calling on the committee to consider such legislation and eventually pass it. The announcement also comes after Bachus has come under scrutiny for allegations that he profited on investments made based on private information.

“Existing law clearly prohibits insider trading by members of Congress.  However, the American public deserves for there to be no question or equivocation concerning members of Congress or any citizen being exempted from laws prohibiting insider trading,” Bachus said in a statement.Frank told Bachus in his letter that he had “neglected” similar legislation when he was chairman of the committee, but that recent attention to the matter meant the bill should be considered and passed.

The panel will consider a bill, introduced by Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and Tim Walz (D-Minn.), which would prohibit members and White House employees from investing based on private information, or from passing that information along to others for investment purposes.

As you know already, it is currently legal for members of Congress to enrich themselves with insider information to which the rest of us aren’t privy. When corporate executives do this they go to jail, and should. Insider trading breeds corruption and can create conflicts of interest whereby as those charged with the public trust manipulate markets and, yes, legislation to enrich their own personal portfolios.

(more…)

Matthew Boyle at Daily Caller:

“Iran-Contra didn’t rack of that kind of body count. Watergate didn’t rack up that kind of body count. Sarah Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s mother, or whatever stupid story they were chasing around Wasilla for months, that didn’t rack up a body count. There were hundreds of dead Mexicans from a gun running program run by the United States.”

(more…)

I’ve written before of ESPN’s enforcement of policy concerning political speech. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to know that the selective condemnation extends to radio commentary as well. Don’t everyone gasp at once.

We remember how Rush Limbaugh had to resign from ESPN over a remark about Donovan McNabb that progressives insisted was racist.

Compare this to Mike Tyson’s recent appearance on ESPN’s Las Vegas affiliate. The show’s (called “Gridlock”) hosts, Mitch Moss, Seat Williams, and Pauly Howard laughed hysterically at Tyson’s remarks on air and on Twitter.

Some quotes from the nine minutes of frat boy #fail humor (shield thine eyes ye with sensitive constitutions!):

“You want her to be with somebody like Rodman, jigging up in there [inaudible] push her guts up in the back of her head, right?”

Just imagine Palin with a big ol’ black stallion, rippin’ just rippin. Everybody gotta get that out of their system …”

“She met the wombshifter.”

“I wonder what Palin would [inaudible] a poor black man on the street needs some assistance … I know she’d give Obama some love … I’m sorry! I’m not sorry!”

Mitch Moss says that Tyson never actually said “rape” (should we ask Whoopi? What’s rape rape?) so it’s cool.

Last Friday, the Daily Caller ran a piece on Mike Tyson’s recent heinous ESPN remarks on Sarah Palin, and the story sparked a massive row amongst conservatives.

The gist of Tyson’s remarks was tantamount to advocating rape. Were this about any other woman, the media would be all over it.

Correction: were this a conservative saying the same about a progressive female, the “equal rights” fellows-in-ideology would selectively invoke their chivalry and take a stand against the remarks. As it is, progressive males (and females) routinely sanction such language against conservative women. We could go over the reasons why, but feigning interest in the psyche of the male progressive is above my pay grade.

I think it’s absolutely newsworthy that a progressive male — a wife-beating convicted rapist — worshipped by Hollywood and prevalent in pop culture, advocated for rape against Sarah Palin on ESPN radio. As I write this, Tyson’s name is trending on Twitter because he is taking part in Charlie Sheen’s roast. He has cameos in big Hollywood films. His remarks were accepted by society. I don’t think this should have been reported as a dry news story, but rather in an editorial with the headline: CONVICTED RAPIST HASN’T CHANGED: TYSON ADVOCATES FOR PALIN RAPE?–a slam dunk editorial excoriating an individual and the society that idolizes women-violators and shuns conservatives who believe women should be treated better.

What almost everyone has missed is that Tyson’s remarks weren’t made on some obscure radio show. They were made on ESPN. My teenage male cousin heard this. ESPN’s jocks laughed and encouraged a nine-minute-plus diatribe by Tyson, wherein he made obscene remarks about rape and Sarah Palin. They laughed and supported it.

No one has called out ESPN or their Las Vegas affiliate on which the show aired because everyone is too busy arguing over a bad editorial call. This story was driven in the wrong direction by reaction and the focus removed from the actual victim, a woman who progressives routinely target with hatred and violence. It does Palin a disservice to use a verbal attack made on her by a rapist as a way to drive traffic, or to settle personal or political scores.

(more…)

Browsing Gateway Pundit today, I ran across Michele Bachmann’s response to the hit piece that accused the Minnesota Congresswoman of suffering from “stress-related” chronic migraine headaches that “incapacitate” her and which she combats with “heavy pill use.”

I fully expected blogger Jonathan Strong to end the piece with: “Don’t trust anything that bleeds for a week each month and doesn’t die.”

Bachmann responded to this asinine “story” with her trademark professionalism, asserting that:

Like nearly 30 million other Americans, I experience migraines that are easily controlled with medication. . . Let me be abundantly clear – my ability to function effectively has never been impeded by migraines and will not affect my ability to serve as Commander in Chief.

Case closed, right?  Should be, but the narrative has been launched. This is, of course, part of Bachmann’s opponents’ efforts to paint Bachmann as some sort of crazy radical. The left has gone after her personal faith and social beliefs, as if they are relevant regarding the fiscal mess we’re in and what she might do to solve it, and now they are employing an old “women are nuts” narrative to tear her down.  That approximately 75% of migraines occur in women is no irrelevant fact here. I’ll be expecting feminists to come to Bachmann’s defense any minute now . . . oh wait, this is America; they are probably too busy silk screening a batch of “Michele Bachmann is an Addict (and a <insert expletive here>)” t-shirts.

As I see it, female politicians are generally tougher than nails. To excel in what is perhaps the quintessential male profession is impressive. I admire Hilary Clinton and Gabrielle Giffords in this regard as much as I admire Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. Attacks like these attempt to tap into that old theme of women as prone to unpredictable bouts of anxiety and other debilitating mental imbalances: “You may like her, dude, but she’s a chick. She may just freak out one day.”

As someone who has close family members who deal with migraines on a continual basis, I can attest that they can be quite intense, and they can also be treated with a wide variety of medications, none of which create any sort of diminished capacity for thinking. And guess what?  In my personal case, these people are all successful professionals regardless. As far as I’m concerned, living with any chronic medical condition, and thriving in spite of it, is huge test of character.

The fact that Michele Bachmann has migraines only adds to her appeal. I am thinking, “Hold on.  She did everything she did and has migraines to boot?” That’s someone I want in my foxhole.

(more…)

Four months ago, AOL gave to Arianna Huffington $315 million and the keys to its news operations as part of their purchase of her progressive internet behemoth. At the time I contended that the most significant news property to be controlled by the Huffington Post’s progressive machine was the least known, Patch.com, a network of 500+ hyper-local websites covering 800 communities which combines national/regional information with local community news editors filing stories and updating community-specific within the communities they serve. The Patch network is concentrated mostly in the larger states.

Ms. Huffington agreed with my assessment, the day after the sale’s announcement she told Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent, that PATCH.com is indeed a major part of her 2012 Election plans.

“We are going to dramatically accelerate this in 2012,” said Huffington, who discussed the idea on a conference call yesterday with Patch.com employees. “We will have thousands and thousands of people covering the election. Covering the Republicans. Covering the Democrats. Just being transparent about it.”

Aye, there’s the rub! Is it possible for Ms Huffington to cover both parties and fairly? Her track record says no.  The danger may not be in the way stories are reported but which stories are reported.  The Huffington Post knows who their major constituency is, and bows down to them all the time as in the case of booting Andrew Breitbart off their front page of featured columnists because of pressure from self-avowed communist Van Jones and his Color of Change organization.

(more…)

You must not read any further before you click here.

According to America Online, Andrew Breitbart will no longer be published on the AOL/Huffington Post front page due to a policy (no one knew about) that AOL/HuffPo spokesman Mario Ruiz dropped completely out of nowhere on March 24. Among other things, Breitbart called 9/11 truther Van Jones a “commie punk” during an interview with the Daily Caller and now, according to Ruiz, AOL suddenly has a policy prohibiting front page placement on the Huffington Post whenever one of their contributors engages in what they consider to be ad hominem … even if it’s not on the Huffington Post.

Fine. I totally disagree with the policy, but we live in a free country and AOL can choose to run their business however they like. There could be a problem, though, if what the publicly traded AOL is really up to here is a form of ideological blacklisting. Will only Breitbart be held to this standard? Will only conservatives? Or will every HuffPo contributor who engages in ad hominem be forced to sit in the back of the blog? Which brings me to …

All together now: How do you solve a problem like Bill Maher?

First, let’s back up just a bit.

Since AOL dropped this “Back of the Blog” policy on Breitbart, we and many others have had no problem gathering together glaring examples of AOL/HuffPo front page authors, not only participating in the worst kind of ad hominem elsewhere, but also — incredibly! — on the front page of the Huffington Post. Which means that only two possibilities exist for what’s going on here. Either 9/11 truther Van Jones has convinced AOL to single out individuals he doesn’t like for “Back of the Blog” discrimination, or he convinced AOL to start a brand new rule.

Which brings us back to Mr. Maher …

(more…)

It’s taken a long time, but Huffington Post/AOL founder Arianna Huffington and Huffington Post/AOL editor Roy Sekoff have finally acknowledged that I am not a racist–despite the popular left wing website’s campaign to frame me as one.

From a letter crafted by Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff to the Daily Caller:

…I want to make it as clear as possible that neither I nor Arianna believe that Andrew Breitbart is a racist.  If we did believe that, we never would have allowed him to blog on HuffPost — let alone featured him on our front page.

I am grateful for Huffington and Sekoff’s true courage to go against many of their partisan bloggers and ideological editors, many of whom threatened to quit if I wasn’t ousted from its “progressive” waters.

For the last six months the Huffington Post, recently purchased by AOL for $315 million, has been running a vengeful propaganda campaign led by a far left wing anti-free speech organization called “Color of Change,” created by former Obama White House “green czar” Van Jones – whose resignation was sealed, to a great degree, by facts revealed in reporting at one of my websites. (more…)

There’s been quite the kerfuffle of late over AOL/Huffington Post’s decision to permanently yank Andrew Breitbart from the cushy high exposure of its front page.  Liberals voiced immediate discontent in HuffPo’s decision to include Breitbart as a contributor in the first place.  Even after Color of Change, the online (un)civil rights organization founded by Van Jones and James Rucker, launched an online letter writing campaign in protest, HuffPo stood by its decision, citing its desire to broaden the site’s political viewpoints and encourage civil debate, something it says was accomplished in Breitbart’s first two pieces.

Strangely, it wasn’t anything Breitbart wrote in either of those first two posts that got him the heave-ho – it was comments he’d made in a phone interview to another site, The Daily Caller, for which HuffPo saw fit to admonish as an ad-hominem attack that violated its editorial policy.

I think we all fully recognize that HuffPo is its own entity, it can do as it pleases.  As a libertarian minded individual, I embrace self-regulation.  But there are instances where certain actions defy all logic, and in my view, this is one of them.  The concept of an ex post facto “no ad hominem attacks” rule is not only ludicrous, it leaves the door wide open to show just how arbitrary and desperate this decision really was.  We’ll all be pouring through HuffPo’s list of bloggers and pointing out instances where they’ve committed the atrocity of ad-hominem attacks on other websites, radio or television.  In fact, my colleague Alex Marlow has thoroughly busted Van Jones for this violation already.

All this left me wondering what else is driving such arbitrary decision making over at HuffPo.  Hearkening back to the anti-Glenn Beck campaign  that Color of Change and its partner CREDO have been running, my attention was diverted to Color of Change’s other co-founder, James Rucker.

(more…)

Early yesterday morning, the Daily Caller published an interview with Andrew Breitbart where the Big Journalism publisher had some choice words on Color of Change founder, former Green Jobs Czar, and HuffPo blogger Van Jones.

“Van Jones is a cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak. And a commie. And an eco-fraudster,” Breitbart said. A few kind words were volunteered for Jones: praise for being “spectacularly well-dressed.”

Mario Ruiz, The Huffington Post’s senior vice president for media relations, told TheDC that Breitbart will not be censored in response to the campaign.

Later in the day, HuffPo caved to Color of Change pressure to blacklist Breitbart.  Color of Change is famous for leading an advertising boycott against Glenn Beck’s show and took credit for Breitbart’s ouster from ABC News’s election night coverage.  HuffPo SVP Mario Ruiz issued the following statement; pay attention to their specific reasoning, emphasis mine:

The Huffington Post is committed to fostering a lively and often provocative debate about the issues of the day and encourages a wide range of voices from all perspectives to participate. Andrew Brietbart’s ad hominem attack on Van Jones in The Daily Caller — right down to calling him a “commie punk” and “a cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak” — violates the tenets of debate and civil discourse we have strived for since the day we launched. As a result, we will no longer feature his posts on the front page.

He is welcome to continue publishing his work on HuffPost provided it adheres to our editorial guidelines, as the two posts he published on HuffPost did — guidelines that include a strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks. Our decision today recognizes that placing posts on the front page is an editorial call that elevates some posts over others, and is an indication of how seriously we take these judgment calls.

So Breitbart is no longer allowed to publish on the front page of HuffPo because he made an ad hominem attack?  By this logic, the same standard will be applied to all AOL/HuffPo writers going forward.  If Breitbart is being thrown under the bus for making ad hominem remarks off the site, then that means… no other AOL/HuffPo bloggers can make them either.

We’ve never seen the Huffington Post make an effort like this to suppress the speech of any of their other (mostly left-wing) personalities.  The hypocrisy is laughably obvious, and it was left-of-center bloggers Mickey Kaus of the Daily Caller, Alex Pareene of Salon, and Dave Weigel of Slate who were quickest to point it out.  Pareene sums it up this way: (more…)

One of my favorite arguments from the left revolves around women in business and the notion that if socio-progged women don’t get their way then all women are doomed. When Democratic women weren’t doing well in primaries leftist pundits from broadsheet to broadcast wrung their hands and woefully remarked that the entire business was a setback for all women. Doomed, they were. Except that a record number of Republican women were running – and winning – primaries all over the country, but pay that no mind.

The same tactic is upon us yet again, and once columnist, Amy Siskind for the Daily Caller, in particular had the vapors over the Paycheck Trial Lawyers Act Paycheck Fairness Act. It’s a benign-sounding little piece of legislation, the title of which prompts people who hear it to say “Yes, paycheck fairness? I’m for fairness!”

The truth is that there’s nothing fair about it.

For the better part of a decade I’ve been watching self-described champion for women consistently lower the bar for standards, instead of rising to meet it – in the name of women’s rights. I’ve watched as they convinced themselves that the only true way to achieve equality is to tear down the opposition. Even if feminists tear down the bogeyman patriarchy and dominate men in all areas of life, they still won’t be happy because deep down they’ll know it’s a false victory. Achievement obtained by lowering your opponent to your standard as opposing to rising and surpassing their standard of output isn’t achievement. It’s mediocrity. Personally, I believe women are better than that, but SHHH. Don’t do anything to upset the victimhood apple cart because then young women may want to think for themselves and the entire racket of feminism ran by women who butter their bread by playing Chicken Little to the subsequent generation would be penniless.

I apply all of the above to the so-called Paycheck Fairness Act. Why?

(more…)

Before we begin, let us pause for a moment to thank our Almighty for the small pleasures of life, such as almost a full week passing without having to suffer through yet another high cry and desperate whine from JournoList founder and Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, as he dishonestly complains about his online cabal of left-wing “journalists” being taken out of context by the Daily Caller’s damning and ongoing drip-drip-drip of an expose’.

JournoList founder Ezra Klein

Yes, thank you Ezra, for finally realizing that you were embarrassing yourself with these complaints as those of us watching this story wondered why you didn’t just go ahead and prove the Daily Caller a liar with a fully contextual response of your own, using that unique WaPo perch combined with the magic of the Internet and your very own personal copy of the full JournoList archives.

While I never took seriously my challenge to Mr. Klein to go right on ahead and clear up all his contextual concerns, he might want to consider doing so now. On June 29th, weeks before the Daily Caller announced the glorious fact that they were in possession of all or part of the JournoList archives, Klein wrote the following:

What if I told you I ran a secret e-mail list that connected progressive writers with staffers for Democratic politicians so that those staffers could tell the progressives what, exactly, their bosses wanted them writing about that day?

Sadly, I don’t run such a list.

You have to love that last sentence. The use of the word ”sadly” is soooo sly. Especially when it appears, that at times, that’s exactly the type of list Klein was running. (more…)

My friend and thriller-writing colleague, the great Andrew Klavan, writes in City Journal:

Take the e-mails that the Daily Caller obtained from the now-defunct lefty Web service Journolist. Never mind the personal or psychological implications of a radio producer who lovingly imagines Rush Limbaugh’s death or a law professor who doesn’t know that the FCC has no power to deprive Fox News of a license or a reporter who wants to smear Fred Barnes and other right-wing commentators as racist in order to distract the public from the hateful radicalism of Jeremiah Wright, then Obama’s pastor. The point is not these people’s animus or ignorance or wickedness. The point is that what they desired was not victory in open debate but silence—the silence of censorship, intimidation, or the grave.

When has Rush Limbaugh ever wished a liberal’s mouth closed forever? Really, who can deny that Rush would happily argue a point with absolutely anyone anywhere? When has Fox News ever done anything to its rival cable stations but trounce them in a free competition for ratings? When has Fred Barnes ever tried to bully or intimidate someone into shutting up?

(more…)