Politiks As Usual: In The News 3/9/14

Most Corrupt Town in America in Danger of Being ‘Wiped Off the Map’

Is Ben Carson 2016's Sleeper Candidate?

I Was On Death Row, And I Was Innocent

Former 17 Year Marijuana Addict Urges Other States To Say No To Recreational Pot

No, Atheism and Conservatism Are Not Compatible 
 
Santorum: GOP Should Follow Pope's Example to Gain Followers
 
Obamacare Surcharge Appearing on Restaurant Bills Across the Country
 
George Will: Obama Donor Investigating IRS Scandal ‘Kind Of A Sham’ 
 
NBC Warns: Midterm Election 'Holds the Fate of the Rest of the Obama Presidency'
 
Ed Schultz Goes from Supporting Keystone to Comparing It to 'Vietnam' 

Chick-Fil-A Targeted By Black Mob

Iraqi Bill Would Allow 9-Year Old Girls to Marry, Husbands to Demand Sex

Can a Jew Get Down With Hot Jesus From 'Son of God?'

Koch Industries Responds To Harry Reid Attacks

Gay Groups Oppose Black Mayor Nominated to Head Virginia Democrat Party; Will MSNBC Cover Spat?

Newsbusters.org:

To its credit, the Washington Post this morning is reporting an intramural spat roiling inside the Democratic Party in the Old Dominion. Turns out gay rights groups are livid that Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-Va.) has nominated Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones to chair the state's Democratic Party. Jones, who happens to be African-American and is a Baptist pastor, "has not endorsed same-sex marriage," the Post's Laura Vozzella noted, even though he has a strong record on other issues of import to the gay-rights movement.

"Activists are working to thwart Jones's election at the party's central committee meeting March 15 -- setting up a highly unusual battle for a sitting governor, whose choice for party chairman is rarely challenged," Vozzella noted in the fourth paragraph of her March 7 front-page story. While the Post deserves kudos for noting the rancorous division within the Democratic ranks, it remains to be seen if MSNBC -- which revels in portraying Republicans as bearing antipathy towards African-Americans -- will dare to cover the story at all.

Democratic racial politics aside, this is also a matter of a new litmus test which is emerging throughout the country in Democratic Party politics, with would-be party leaders being pushed to stifle their moral and religious objections to same-sex marriage, even though they may be wholeheartedly in support of other items in the LGBT agenda. As Vozzella noted, Jones "issued a proclamation to mark the [Richmond's] Transgender Day of Remembrance."

We don't expect that MSNBC, much less any other liberal media outlet, will pay significant attention to this spat, although, quite frankly, they should. There are a few reasons the political press should care:

• This episode is evidence that the Democratic Party, just as much if not more so than the GOP, has pretty heated disagreements within itself when coalition constituencies come into conflict
• This matter is evidence of how the approval of the gay rights agenda within the Democratic Party poses an existential threat to the political futures of loyal Democrats who dare to transgress the emerging litmus test over "marriage equality"
• This episode shows the internal divisions within the Democratic Party of Virginia which Gov. McAuliffe will have to bridge during his tenure, particularly if he wants to prove a reliable surrogate for the Democratic presidential nominee in the crucial swing state in 2016
• The liberal media love to hype "victim" narratives and many of them are scripted with gays or blacks as the victim of conservatism. Here is a case which doesn't neatly fall into that pattern

Political journalists always insist that they do have a bias, but that it's a bias for conflict or controversy. particularly if it involves an underlying debate roiling in the arena of public opinion.

A bias for conflict demands significant media attention to the Jones nomination controversy, but the liberal newsroom's rooting interest for the fortunes of the Democratic Party demands adherence to a overarching midterm election narrative which exclusively focuses on real and imagined Republican divides. Expect partisan and ideological loyalties to win over the journalistic thirst for a good story.

RELATED: Yes, Gay Activists Failed in Sochi. Here’s Why.

MSNBC’s Most Embarrassing Mockery of Mitt Romney’s Russia Warnings

Mediaite.com:

The smug self-assuredness that often suffices for expertise on cable news was perhaps never more smug than when former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney warned the American public that Russia was rapidly positioning itself as America’s “number one geopolitical foe.” Among the worst offenders were the hosts and guests who provide MSNBC with content on a daily basis. 

In early 2012, President Barack Obama was caught on an open microphone telling Russia’s then-President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more “flexibility” after the presidential election in his dealings with Russia. Romney reacted strongly to that comment. Appearing on CNN, the GOP nominee said that the United States should regard Russia as a geopolitical adversary and should work to limit Russia’s flexibility rather than to secure it. His observation was soundly criticized by the president’s defenders who, at the time, were still attempting to rehabilitate Obama’s floundering “Reset” with Russia. 

There were few who defended Romney’s comments. Even snake-bit Republicans, chastened by the swift backlash in the media, hedged when asked to back up Romney’s assessment of the challenges posed by Moscow. But MSNBC’s wagons circled particularly quickly in defense of the president. Volley after volley of snark was lobbed in the GOP nominee’s direction.

“I don’t know what decade this guy’s living in,” MSNBC host Chris Matthews said with a sigh on March 28, 2012. “Is he trying to play Ronald Reagan here, or what?”

“This is Mitt Romney’s severely conservative problem,” University of Georgia professor Cynthia Tucker opined on-the-air. “It made Romney look dumb. He’s not a dumb man, but he said something that was clearly dumb.”

Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein agreed that Romney’s statement was evidence of an “antiquated worldview.” He fretted further about how Romney, should he become president, would enter the office having severely complicated America’s bilateral relations with Moscow given his carelessly provocative statement. 

“I personally am worried about what it says to the Russian people,” Matthews added to a chorus of sagely nods.

MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell got in on the self-satisfied ridicule, too. 

 Promoting Maddow’s latest book about the “unmooring of American military power,” O’Donnell asked the flagship MSNBC host if Romney was merely reflecting on what he might have read in that book. 

“He read about Reagan’s private, outside-the-CIA cabal of team-B zealots who were telling him that Russia had all the stuff they didn’t have so he could justify a giant defense budget,” Maddow submitted scornfully. 

“It is amazing that Mitt Romney can flip like that just as soon as he hears something to exploit in foreign policy,” O’Donnell remarked.

Maddow took her observations about Romney’s position on Russia one ill-advised step further on her MSNBC.com blog:

I can appreciate why the Romney campaign would try to make Obama’s “hot mic” story interesting, but the problem is the former governor just doesn’t have any real policy chops in this area. He’s out of his depth, and struggles when the subject takes center stage.
It’s not just that Romney is uninformed; it’s that he hasn’t figured out how to fake it.

Appearing on Andrea Mitchell Reports in April of that year, Romney surrogate and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour was confronted by the MSNBC anchor. Calling Romney’s comments “a throwback to the Cold War,” Mitchell insisted that “we work with Russia all the time.” “Hardly an ally but certainly not an adversary,” she declared.

But the worst offender was one who should have, and likely did, know better, former Secretary of State Colin Powell. The former Army general greatly entertained his MSNBC hosts with some of the most snide commentary about Romney’s observation. 

“Come on, Mitt. Think,” Powell said of Romney’s remark in May to the chuckles of host Joe Scarborough. “That isn’t the case.” 

He went on to suggest that Romney’s assessment of the threat posed by Russia was so dubious that it was possible he was being disingenuous or he was coached to make that statement.

RELATED:  Mitt Romney Was Right About Russia

The Vetting of Hillary Clinton Already Labeled ‘Sexist’ in the Liberal Media

Of course, none of these fools can recall the sexist stuff Sarah Palin went through:

It was bound to happen sooner rather than later. MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski issued on Monday what might be the most full-throated attack on Hillary Clinton’s opponents yet over what she considered their appeals to misogyny and sexism.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) recently embarked on a campaign designed to make Democrats think twice about labeling Republican opposition to late-term abortions and contraception coverage mandates as offensives in the “War on Women.” Paul noted that the party attacking the GOP also lionizes a man who engaged in sexual activity with a subordinate in the workplace. The mere mention of this incontrovertible fact has worked Clinton’s supporters up into a fury. 

“Any Republican who is dredging this up is a misogynistic sexist hypocrite,” Brzezinski declared, “because if Bill Clinton can win again with all of these problems, and Hillary Clinton, they can bring down because of this, and they think they can each go after it, they are clueless, and they are complete sexists because it’s not even her affair.”

No one said it was, but the new rules being applied to the vetting of a potential presidential candidate and his/her spouse is instructive. One imagines Ann Romney would have appreciated Brzezinski coming to her defense when she was mocked for riding a horse as a therapeutic regimen to alleviate symptoms associated with her multiple sclerosis. That segment is nowhere to be found, but Brzezinski and her co-host did enjoy a good laugh at Mrs. Romney’s expense on occasion, once while repeatedly alluding to her husband’s phallus.
But back to Republicans and their overt sexism.

Brzezinski is not the first to attempt to brand the final years of the Clinton presidency off-limits. In a staggering CNN segment last week, anchor Michaela Pereira dismissed the talk of Clinton’s reaction to the Lewinsky affair as both old news and suspiciously prejudiced.

“Some would argue, it takes two to tango,” she said when discussing Paul’s charge that Bill Clinton used his power to take advantage of an intern in the workplace. “There is a reason we do not have ‘take your spouse to work day’ in America,’” Newsday columnist Ellis Henican agreed.

The Clinton presidency is not the only part of Hillary Clinton’s past deemed unsuitable for public discourse. In January, news broke that Clinton’s 2008 campaign maintained an “enemies list” of former allies who had betrayed her and backed Obama for the nomination. Even the mere mention of this story was deemed sexist. 

“There’s a gender element here,” said University of Texas professor Victoria DeFrancesco Soto. “If a guy has a list of people he’s not too keen on, no big deal, but if a woman does, then that is a big deal and it becomes juicy.”

To discuss Clinton like she was any other politician, and not just a female politician, is now defined as sexist. DeFrancesco Soto’s critique would be poignant if she could point to an instance where a male politician maintaining an “enemies list” was dismissed as commonplace. But exacting political retribution against ideological opponents has never been shrugged off as just something boys are wont to do. 

RELATED:  Mika Begs ‘Misogynistic Sexist’ Republicans to Keep Going After Hillary Over Lewinsky Affair

Soap Opera Actress Punches Liberal Billionaire, Ex-Boyfriend George Soros in Face

Of course if one of the Koch brothers was going through the Jerry Springer-style drama going on here, it'd be getting a whole lotta more attention from your liberal media:

That’s not an exaggerated headline at all: according to Manhattan court records, an angry Brazilian soap opera actress named Adriana Ferreyr literally punched her ex-boyfriend George Soros in the head during a deposition, and hit at least three other people.

As stated in testimony from Soros’s lawyers, the punch-fest took place last week during a private deposition for a multi-million dollar lawsuit Ferreyr filed against Soros in 2011. Ferreyr, 30, is demanding that Soros, 83, give her the $1.9 million condo in the Upper East Side he promised her while they were dating. (Soros eventually gave the condo to his new wife, which, oooosh.)

Here is the timeline of Actual Events that Allegedly Actually Happened, On Penalty of Perjury, according to the New York Daily News:

1) In the middle of Soros’s two-hour long deposition to Ferreyr’s lawyer, Ferreyr herself storms into the room with a videographer. “I am filming and calling CNN,” she “insisted in a loud voice”, according to records.

2) Ferreyr’s lawyer tells her she’s not allowed to film the deposition. Ferreyr punches her own lawyer in the arm (Punch count: 1) and storms out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

3) Soros goes to the restroom (so old), but runs into Ferreyr in the hallway. “Asshole! You piece of shit!” Ferreyr screams at him.

4) Soros’s attorney Martin Singer then states that Ferreyr spent another 20 minutes yelling at her own lawyer, then tried once again to film the deposition with her cellphone/possibly computer. 

5) And everything went to hell during the lunch break, according to Singer, when Ferreyr punched everyone in the face:

“Suddenly and without warning … [Ferreyr] lunged at Mr. Soros — who is 83 years old — and struck his head with her hands, knocking off the headphones he was wearing to amplify the audio in the room.”

(Punch count: 2)

“Ms. Ferreyr pulled back her arm to strike Mr. Soros in the face. I was able to grab both of (her) arms to move her away….I let go of her arms. Ms. Ferreyr immediately swung at my face, knocking off my glasses.”

(Punch count: 3)
BONUS ROUND: Ferreyr then slapped one of Soros’s aides in the face and kicked him in the shins.

Soros’s lawyers have asked the presiding judge to prevent Ferreyr from editing any footage she took during the confrontation.

RELATED:  George Soros, 82, Gets Engaged To His Much Younger Girlfriend

MSNBC Host Alex Wagner Lies and Says ‘Casualties’ Resulted from New Jersey Bridge Closure

They'll literally say anything to defame Chris Christie's character. Meanwhile, thanks in part to Hillary Clinton's negligence, people in Benghazi died:

MSNBC host Alex Wagner became frustrated on Wednesday when Business Insider’s Josh Barro insisted that some of the actions of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie which have been construed as “intimidation” are closer to standard transactional politics. Wagner insisted that the closure of two local outbound lanes of the George Washington Bridge in 2013 was anything but standard politics because it resulted in “casualties.”


Barro began by saying that a number of the behavioral improprieties that Christie has been accused of, with the exception of the bridge closure, are really standard political behavior. He specifically cited the claims of Olympian Carl Lewis who says Christie sought to pressure him out of running for the New Jersey state Senate as a Democrat. 

“These seem like the sorts of political things a governor ought to be doing, trying to get strong candidates out of races,” Barro posited.

“Closing the bridges, there were casualties to that decision,” Wagner protested. 

It was unclear whether Wagner was using the term “casualties” to apply to waking wounded or the word’s more modern context which includes both wounded and fatalities. However, she would be hard-pressed to prove either accusation. 

On January 8, shortly after emails surfaced implicating Christie’s staff in the closure of the bridge for allegedly political purposes, hundreds of reports surfaced linking those closures to the death of a 91-year-old woman who passed away before an ambulance that was caught in bridge-related traffic could reach her. 

Some suggested that this was a preventable death that was brought about by the state of New Jersey’s negligence. A follow up report in the following day’s New York Times debunked this assumption. Quoting the late nonagenarian’s daughter, the Times reported that the deceased’s family believes that she passed away in her home and was only later pronounced dead at the hospital.

“The traffic didn’t make any difference,” the husband of the 91-year-old’s daughter told the Times. 

“I honestly believe it was just her time,” the woman’s daughter added. 

RELATED:  Jake Tapper: Christie Got More Scrutiny for BridgeGate Than Hillary Clinton Did for Benghazi

Vladimir Putin: Gays Are Welcome at Olympics as Long as They ‘Leave Kids Alone’

Of course, Putin's law against "the propaganda" of homosexuality amongst minors has always been pretty clear to everyone besides Godless liberals, gays and their advocates in the far-Left press, who have always had an amazing ability to twist the words of conservatives in order to fit their own agenda:

The Sochi Winter Olympics are just weeks away, and concerns about anti-gay laws in Russia are still at the forefront of people’s minds. President Vladimir Putin, naturally, wants to avoid much controversy when Russia is in the international spotlight, and Friday he spoke at a question-and-answer session, where one Olympic volunteer asked Putin about Russia’s anti-gay laws and how it would affect gay people attending the Olympic Games. Putin reportedly responded, “One can feel calm and at ease. Just leave kids alone, please.”

Putin insisted there is no explicit ban on acts of homosexual sex, there’s just a ban on gay “propaganda.”

“We have no ban on the nontraditional forms of sexual intercourse among people… We have the ban on the propaganda of homosexuality and pedophilia. I want to stress this: propaganda among minors. These are two absolutely different things: a ban on certain relations or the propaganda of such relations.”

Putin was also asked why Russia’s Olympic uniforms are rainbow-colored. His answer: “I didn’t design the uniform.”

When NBC is in Sochi to cover the Olympics, Bob Costas has said they won’t shy away from talking about the discriminatory laws, while President Obama, instead of going himself, is sending a delegation that includes openly gay athletes like Billie Jean King and Brian Boitano.

RELATED: 7 Lies Liberals Tell Young Americans

Liberal Media Calls Bottom-Rated 'Girls' A 'Hit Show,' Lena Dunham 'Queen of Comedy'

Breitbart.com:

About one-third of one-percent of the American population watched the latest season premiere of HBO's "Girls" -- 1.1 million to be exact. Despite the fact that by any measure (including HBO ratings) "Girls" is a low-rated flop, just because the elite media likes it, they will never will never stop selling the show as a "hit" or its star and creator Lena Dunham as the "Queen of Comedy."

The anti-science New York Post:

Making headlines for frequently appearing nude on the hit HBO show she that created, writes and stars in, Dunham dons designer gowns in her New York habitat — posing before the Flatiron Building with co-star Adam Driver, with a pigeon on her head, on a messy bed, and in a bathtub for photographer Annie Leibovitz.

The anti-science Vogue:

Lena Dunham: The New Queen of Comedy's First Vogue Cover

With our media it is never about facts and only about agenda. 

RELATED: 'Girls' producers in uproar over question involving Lena Dunham nude scenes

Will Lawrence O’Donnell Have to Answer for Anti-Christie Ad Like Fox & Friends Did for Anti-Obama Ad?

Mediaite.com:

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell proudly announced on Wednesday night that he “wrote” a hard-hitting, campaign-style political advertisement attacking Chris Christie. The ad, which he broadcast on his program, The Last Word, uses the New Jersey governor’s own words against him — a common practice in campaign ads. “Don’t let Christie embarrass and humiliate America,” the ad’s narrator urges the audience.


What’s more, O’Donnell closed his program with instructions for his audience on how to produce similar anti-Christie ads on their own. He even provided them with some helpful clips which could facilitate the creation of those ads. 

Harmless, right? Not so much. 

In May of 2012, Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends found themselves in hot water when the program produced and aired their own campaign-style ad targeting President Barack Obama. The 4-minute commercial was roundly criticized by media observers and prompted Fox News Channel’s Executive Vice President of Programming, Bill Shine, to issue a statement insisting that the ad was “was created by an associate producer and was not authorized at the senior executive level of the network.”

The ad prompted commentary and news reports from outlets like CBS News, ABC News, The Hollywood Reporter, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Salon, and Mediaite asking whether Fox had crossed a line when they aired what many legitimately considered a pro-Republican attack ad. 

Conservative media critics like HotAir’s Ed Morrissey and The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik came out strongly against the move by Fox. Zurawik said the video package “resembled propaganda films from 1930s Europe more than it did responsible TV politics of today.”

Even the White House got involved. “White House spokesman Jay Carney had a stern conversation with Michael Clemente, a top executive at Fox News, about the video,” The Huffington Post reported.

“Carney said that ‘Fox and Friends’ had gone much too far.”

Following a firestorm of controversy, Fox announced that the associate producer responsible for the ad was leaving for CNN. 

Forgetting the lessons of that incident, O’Donnell fell into a similar trap. But without the tempo of a political campaign to inspire a backlash against the host’s decision to, by his own admission, write and air an anti-Christie ad, will this move result in any consequences for MSNBC and O’Donnell? 

RELATED:  Inevitable: MSNBC shows now producing their own anti-Christie ads

The Media’s Chris Christie Hysteria

NationalReview.com:

What a bizarre spectacle. Assuming he did not lie during his marathon news conference last week, the feeding frenzy surrounding New Jersey governor Chris Christie will be remembered as one of those incredibly odd moments of elite journalistic hysteria that are difficult to explain to people who weren’t there or didn’t get it. 

I’m not referring to the scandal itself; that’s easy enough to understand. What Christie’s team did was outrageous and deserves as much foofaraw and brouhaha as the New Jersey media can muster. 

What’s harder to grok is the hysteria at the national level. 

For starters, there have been countless greater outrages at the state level that have received far less national coverage. (Indeed, there have been national scandals under President Obama that have received less intense national coverage.) Since 1961, four Illinois governors have ended up in jail, and with the exception of Rod Blagojevich, few have received comparable media attention. 

Meet the Press dedicated 33 minutes to the New Jersey scandal, including a grilling of Reince Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee, as if Christie were Nixon during Watergate (a comparison ostensibly serious people have made). 

Many conservatives see liberal media bias in all this. But that diagnosis misses the fact that this was the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, giving producers ample opportunity to advance a liberal agenda. Moreover, Christie is actually quite popular in establishment media circles — the sort of politician Sunday-show liberals insist America needs more of. He’s also quite unpopular in many quarters of the Right. 

If there is a secret left-wing cabal interested solely in advancing the liberal cause through the media, the Christie auto-da-fé was a missed opportunity. 

A more plausible partial explanation is partisan bias, which can be hard to distinguish from liberal bias in many outlets since it tends to favor Democrats. The key difference is that partisan bias focuses more on the political interests of specific politicians or a party generally. 

Feeding-frenzy defenders insist the closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge is special because innocent constituents were deliberately inconvenienced for partisan purposes. That’s surely what makes this scandalous, but it hardly makes it unique. The Obama administration employed similar tactics during the sequester and the government shutdown. Closing the open-air World War II Memorial, furloughing air-traffic controllers, and other efforts were deliberate attempts to maximize the pain of innocents for political benefit. The tactic worked, but that’s not a justification for it, is it? 

The allegation that the Obama administration used the IRS to target political opponents is far more explosive (similar tactics were at the core of the Nixon impeachment effort). And, unlike Christie’s claims of what he knew and when, similar White House denials haven’t held up. 

And in the same week the media succumbed to St. Vitus’s dance over Christie’s alleged “cover-up,” it was revealed that the Department of Justice had appointed an Obama donor from the civil-rights division, instead of the public-integrity division, to investigate the IRS scandal. The department now says it would be unlawful to remove her from the assignment because of her political views. That’s untrue. No hysteria there. 

Christie is widely seen as a threat to whomever the Democratic nominee will be. Unlike some recent GOP nominees, who struggled to be merely lifelike, Christie has an authenticity and charisma most national Republicans lack. As ABC’s Jonathan Karl put it on This Week, Christie is “the most intriguing and colorful person” in American politics. 

That probably explains the overkill as much as anything. Christie is new, exciting, and interesting in ways Obama once was. The difference is that when Obama was new and exciting, the media were biased in every regard and heroically skeptical of any Obama wrongdoing. “We thought he was going to be . . . the next messiah,” Barbara Walters recently said. The cult of personality has diminished but the partisan skepticism remains. 

Christie, like most Republicans, never benefited from such skepticism, and never will.

RELATED:How Chris Christie Lost His Way

Politiks As Usual: In The News 1/12/14

Senate Support For Iran Sanctions Bill Reaches Veto-Proof Majority

Ten Reasons To Reject Socialism

Vatican: Media Uses ‘Manipulation’ of Pope’s Statements to Fit Agenda
 
Unemployment Rate Drops as Workers Leave Labor Force
 
Being A Democrat Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry
 
‘Year of Action’: Obama Vows More Executive Orders
 
'Girls' Star Lena Dunham: People Who Don't Like Seeing Me Naked Need Psych Help
 
Where's the Media Outrage? Virginia Democrat Compares Republicans to Violent Rapists
 
Blogger’s Incarceration Raises First Amendment Questions

Priebus Battles Gregory: At Least Christie Fires People, Obama ‘Doubles Down’ on Them

Pimp Sirgiorgiro Clardy Sues Nike For $100 Million After He Used Air Jordans To Stomp John 

Obama's Internal Devaluation Increases Income Inequality

OJ Simpson Appeal To Nevada Court Due In April

There's Already 17 Times More Coverage on Chris Christie Scandal Than in Last Six Months of IRS Scandal

NewsBusters.org:

In less than 24 hours, the big three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they've allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama's Internal Revenue Service controversy. Since the story broke on Wednesday that aides to the New Jersey governor punished a local mayor's lack of endorsement with a massive traffic jam, ABC, CBS and NBC have responded with 34 minutes and 28 seconds of coverage. Since July 1, these same networks managed a scant two minutes and eight seconds for the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups.

In contrast, journalists such as Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos pounced on the developing Christie story. The GMA host opened the program on Thursday by announcing, "Chris Christie in crisis. Calls at this hour for the feds to step in, investigate the explosive e-mails."

Stephanopoulos later wondered, "One of the big questions right now, how much has it hampered his White House prospects?" Guest Matt Dowd insisted that, on a scale from one to ten, the controversy was already at a "four or five."

On the CBS Evening News, anchor Scott Pelley sounded a similar alarm: "Tonight, a potential presidential candidate caught up in scandal. E-mails show massive New Jersey traffic jams were engineered by aides to Governor Chris Christie as political payback."

  NBC Nightly News host Brian Williams immediately spun the story as a political pitfall for the possible presidential contender: "In a jam. A big problem for a man with big ambitions. Tonight, how a traffic nightmare on the world's busiest bridge has spilled into a full blown scandal with the power to damage Chris Christie's political future."

RELATED: Don Lemon Grills DNC Head: Why Is Christie Suspicious if He Denies Involvement but Not Obama?

Obama Pollster: Reporters Should Stop Covering Polls in 2014

DailyCaller.com:

After a year of seeing President Obama’s approval ratings plummet, the president’s pollster is offering a strikingly candid and pessimistic New Year’s resolution.

Reporters should go the next “year without reporting any public polling data,” Joel Benenson, president and CEO of Benenson Strategy Group, said.

His comments were made to reporter Mike Allen, who published them in his daily “Politico Playbook” morning newsletter on Tuesday.

Benenson explained that he thinks the polling often reported by news organizations lacks the proper context.

Asked his New Year’s resolution: “Here’s one — with a variation, if mine is too extreme: Go one year without reporting any public polling data.”

“Rationale: Most public polling continues to be reported on strictly from a topline, horserace-type perspective that does nothing, or at best very little, to illuminate the news of the day.”

Benenson offered an alternative if “this is too strict.”

“Go one year without reporting any public polling data that doesn’t provide in an in-depth analysis of the underlying dynamics that are truly shaping the data,” he said.

RELATED: ‘Can’t find’ a good one: Robert Gibbs says this is the ‘worst year’ of Obama’s presidency

House Intel Chairman Mike Rogers on New York Times Benghazi Report: 'That Story Is Just Not Accurate'

Newsbusters.org:

The New York Times on Sunday published a highly controversial report claiming the September 2012 attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, did not involve al Qaeda, and was as the Administration originally stated a spontaneous demonstration in response to an American-made anti-Islamic video.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) completely refuted the article saying, "[T]hat story is just not accurate"

It sure is interesting that Wallace would go there with Rogers, as people all over the Internet have been making the same accusation that the Times is trying to rewrite history to give cover to Hillary Clinton's involvement in this matter.

Conservative talk show host Monica Crowley tweeted about this Sunday:

Monica Crowley @MonicaCrowley Follow

So just as I predicted & right on schedule, the leftist press is moving its protection racket from Obama to Rodham. cc @NYTimes #Benghazi

1:19 PM - 29 Dec 2013

RELATED: Editor Wants to Make it Very, Very Clear NY Times ‘Has Not Chosen’ Hillary Clinton