A Jeopardy answer and question: Answer: You’re not a good liberal if you ask hard questions about this late Senator. Question: Who is Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion? Roger Mudd as far as I know has never claimed to be a liberal, but if people ever thought of him that way – after all, he [...]

One of the riddles of news coverage of Iowa politics, at least for me, is why the Iowa Republican Party is not reported for what it is: Not a political party, but a driven assembly that wants to force feed its perspective on Christian beliefs down the throats of the rest of us. More than [...]

A friend and contributor to Nieman Watchdog, Martin Lobel, sent this emaiI with the suggestion that people pass it along. Looks worth passing along to me. Here’s Marty: “I don’t know whether you’re as upset with the Supreme Court’s legislating in Citizens United v. FEC as I am, but there is a simple solution that [...]

Item: The New York Times reported Friday afternoon that “two more Democratic senators” said they would vote against a second term for Fed Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. From there, the Times said this made it unclear “whether there were the 60 votes necessary to confirm Mr. Bernanke.” Excuse me? Sixty votes are not necessary to [...]

Hey! Where is everyone? The Iowa caucuses are only a few weeks away — Jan. 23. Remember the 2008 caucuses when U.S. Sen. Barrack Obama (D-Ill) began his road to the White House? So where are all the pollsters, network TV news types and print pundits this time around? Doesn’t anyone care who gets elected [...]

As I was the lone passenger on an airport shuttle bus from Santa Fe to Albuquerque the day after Senator Edward Kennedy died, the loquacious bus driver naturally started talking to me. He had been listening to talk radio and the host was having trouble finding anyone to say a good word about Kennedy. When [...]

On message and with a streak of steel, Barack Obama’s senior advisor Valerie Jarrett made it clear that the president is fighting back challenges to his agenda. It “takes a certain temperament, perseverance and stubbornness” to make changes in Washington, Jarrett said. She addressed poll numbers, town hall disruptions and what it will take to [...]

Will she or won’t she? Will Sarah Palin, that is, accept the Iowa GOP’s invitation to be the featured speaker at this year’s Ronald Reagan Dinner? The invitation was issued by Iowa Republican bigwigs immediately after Palin seemingly signaled an interest in a presidential run in 2012 by announcing her intent to retire as Alaska’s [...]

In good time for consideration of President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the May 25 issue of The New Yorker magazine offers a detailed report on John Roberts, the Chief Justice appointed by George W. Bush. The article is written by staff writer Jeffrey Toobin, author of “The Nine: Inside the [...]

“Each country has its own quirks,” President Obama noted at his London news conference last week. He was trying to show a tolerance for the differences between foreign cultures and our own. But as the news media around the world report events here in the United States, other people have learned that one particular American [...]