Amid all the protests in Wisconsin over Governor Scott Walker calling for cuts in both benefits and bargaining rights for state employees, MSNBCs Rachel Maddow weighed in by declaring “Despite what you may have heard about Wisconsin’s finances, the state is on track to have a budget surplus this year,” she said. “I am not kidding.” According to Politifact, the...

“There is something about too much prosperity that ruins the fiber of the people.”      – Diplomat Dwight Morrow In 1933, the president awoke to the news that the United States banking system had collapsed. Unemployment had reached 25 percent. Hourly wages nose-dived 60 percent. Distraught dairy farmers blockaded highways in order to dump hundreds of gallons of milk in...

In their annual roundup of factually incorrect stories of 2010, Politifact.com, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning project set-up by the St. Petersburg Times, offered this example from Fox News’ Glenn Beck. “On his Nov. 22 radio show,” Politifact reports, “Beck told the story of Wilmington, a town of 13,000 people in Southwest Ohio that lost about 8,600 jobs when DHL Express, its largest employer,  » Read...

“An organization has obtained secret documents. They are newsworthy, but they could be damaging as well, to national interests and individuals. “Do you publish?” That was the opening to a Wall Street Journal article (Nov. 29) discussing the question placed before several major news organizations, including the Journal, last week when WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to publishing via the Internet and a...

When should secrets be exposed?  When should they be kept secret and who decides? Those are the ethical questions involved in the recent disclosure of 251,287 confidential U.S. embassy cables – daily reports – intended for senior officials at the State Department by the self-styled, whistle-blowing authority, WikiLeaks. In the case of the break in at the Watergate office complex...

Monday morning I posted a commentary (They Shoot Mules, Don’t They?) about MSNBCs Keith Olbermann. I talked about how loud and offensive Olbermann can be, particularly when he engages in counterattacks against Fox News and Bill O’Reilly. Not long after I posted that piece on Huffington Post, (Sunday evening) I received an e-mail from an editor at the site which read,  » Read more about: Apologies  »...

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is irritating, pompous and oafish. Whatever points he attempts to contribute to any political issue get lost in his snarky, Lord-High-Executioner act against anything that comes from Fox News. Sadly, this is what passes for political discourse today: two clearly partisan “commentary” shows having at each other in the cable equivalent of the Roman Coliseum. Hiring Olbermann,...

Last month, Gawker.com posted a story about how Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell allegedly spent a randy Halloween night several years ago with a man she had just met. The site’s owner acknowledged that it paid the anonymous source $4,000 for his first-person account. Several other major news sites picked up the story. Deadspin.com paid about $12,000 for voicemails and photos of quarterback...

MSNBC opinionate Keith Olbermann was suspended last week for having violated the political donation provision in the company’s standards by contributing donations totaling $7,200 to three Democratic politicians he had supported on his show. Olbermann returned to his regular Tuesday night slot withoutapologizing to the network. He did, however, offer a written apology to his fans for “having precipitated such anxiety and...

Of course, Comedy Central’s Rally to Restore Sanity had plenty of comedy. That’s the cable channel’s stock-in-trade. But it offered something more, something that’s been missing from all the political posturing, bullying and noise. It offered an image of thousands coming together around a call for civility and reasonable debate. At the end of three hours of music and arch political humor...