There was a cyberspace firestorm yesterday after an unnamed White House official took a swipe at progressive blogs (the White House later on the record tried to defuse the anger). Was it justified or not? Here’s a blunt take on the issue by Booman.

You watch the discussion and vote live BELOW: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Osama bin Laden has all but vanished from the radar of the American media/public. Even president Barack Obama seems no longer interested in bin Laden, while the world had thought that the “war against terror” was all about capturing bin Laden! The present chase to capture al Qaeda looks like fighting with the severed tail of a lizard. Meanwhile Osama, dead or alive, manages to come back into spotlight....

Article I, Section 9, of the U.S. Constitution states in part: “…No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State.” The best precipitating motive behind the inclusion of this...

Health care reform, nuclear war, global climate change, hunger and poverty…. and the huge mistake Pres. Obama made in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. Yes, really. This is what Ross Douthat wants to write about in his New York Times column:

Despite a thumbs down from much new and old media punditry, a new Gallup poll suggests that President Barack Obama’s surprising Nobel Peace Prize win may have boosted his approval rating: Barack Obama appears to have gotten a slight bounce in support after he was announced as the Nobel Peace Prize winner on Friday. His 56% job approval rating for the last two Gallup Daily tracking updates is up from a...

Charlie Rangel is a charming, engaging fellow. The kind of man you would enjoy having a beer. Most of the journalists who deal with him in Congress like him because he is forthright even when spinning a topic in his favor. A Korean war hero, Rangel’s Harlem voters have elected him to 20 terms, vaunting him to a position of power and by seniority his Democratic comrades have selected him as chairman of...

CNN’s controversial anchor Lou Dobbs, the CNN anchor many progressives love to hate, may be pondering a jump to Fox Business News, the New York Times reports: The anchor Lou Dobbs appears to be exploring an exit from CNN, his longtime employer. Certainly, Fox continues to aggressively bolster its on-air talent, most recently with the hiring of John Stossel, the libertarian investigative journalist from...

WASHINGTON — It is a sign of our weird political moment that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama will probably hurt him among some of his fellow citizens. His opponents are describing the award as premature. The deeper problem is that the Nobel will underscore the extent to which Obama is a cosmopolitan figure, much loved in European capitals because he is the change they have...

So what do the Swedes – the custodians of every other Nobel Prize – think of the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award the Peace Prize to President Barack Obama? This editorial from Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter says in part: “That the Norwegians got carried away with euphoria over Obama’s election is understandable, but that doesn’t make their decision any more justifiable....

In Washington, Revolving Doors are Bad for Your Health by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship On Tuesday, October 13, the Senate Finance Committee finally is scheduled to vote on its version of health care insurance reform. And therein lies yet another story in the endless saga of money and politics. The majority of Americans favor a non-profit alternative – like Medicare – that would give the private...

The latest — and biggest — political news is that the Democrats now seem poised to lose governor’s races in two key states, losses that will mean the old conventional political wisdom will be tossed out and the new narrative will be how the Democrats have seriously lost independent voter support and how the GOP’s hopes of regaining power soon are no longer perceived as unrealistic. The...

UPDATE BELOW: So, in the 36 hours or so since the world found out that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, we have been reading, hearing, talking, and writing about the seemingly near-universal feeling of disbelief, leading to various degrees of displeasure for many, that he was nominated for the award only two weeks after he was inaugurated, and won it after only nine months in office.

Americans aren’t alone in thinking that President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was nothing more than a West-European rejection of the polices of President Bush. For Italy’s Corriere della Sera, columnist Franco Venturini gives vent to his fear that this Nobel may have ben erroneously awarded: “If not an indictment of his predecessor, what is this Nobel for Barack Obama, which has no relation...

Yesterday’s White House presser was consumed with questions about the Nobel Committee’s decision to award the Peace Prize to Pres. Obama. Absolutely nothing unexpected or untoward about that, of course. But one reporter’s line of questioning was, shall we say, a bit over the top? Bizarre might be a better word. If you’ve watched these briefings before, you will not be surprised that the...

Nobel Peace Prize now officially a joke after Obama selection by Jon Wells The Nobel Peace Prize was already flirting with irrelevance after recent selections like Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, and Jimmy Carter, but after the award was yesterday announced as going to President Barack Obama, in office for only nine months and for only 12 days when the nomination period expired, the award can officially be said to...

We have seen reactions from just about everywhere in the world on the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to president Obama. How about from Norway where its Parliament appoints the Nobel Committee that selects the Laureate for the Peace Prize? Yesterday, the Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen presented a Norwegian view. In “A Bold Peace Prize,” translated at Watching America (watchingamewrica.com), the...

US president Barack Obama’s predicament (on hearing about Nobel Peace Prize) seems similar to that of a dashing man who comes face-to-face with a fawning socialite in public who gushes: “Darling I love you from the bottom of my heart.” The media is having a field day revelling in this hot/sexy topic that has landed in their lap. This element of surprise (after the award’s announcement)...

Shock and surprise – but not necessarily dismay – have spread across the world after the announcement that Barack Obama is to be awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The first French translation we’ve posted on the subject is from France’s Rue 89. For the Rue 89, Pierre Haski writes in part: “We salute the intention, the bold words and perhaps mostly the man himself and his journey...

President Barack Obama being awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is akin to me winning a Pulitizer Prize in journalism. Neither one of us accomplished enough to earn it. The world’s most prestigious award is diminished to the level of an Academy Award nominee finishing fifth. Hey, Obama talks the talk but has failed so far to walk the walk. The Saturday Night Live spoof that he has accomplished nothing...

While I strongly disagree with most of Charles Krauthammer’s ideology and politics, I must admit that the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist is a brilliant journalist and probably the most influential commentator in our country. That’s perhaps why I am disappointed at his latest column that appeared this morning in the Washington Post. As I have pointed out in a previous post, president Obama is faced...

So long as we’re questioning awards, what do we think of NBC News donating the furniture from Tim Russert’s Washington office to be reassembled for a Newseum exhibit? TVSquad plays it right down the middle: The fact that Russert was on the Newseum’s board of directors might have something to do with this honor, but you can’t argue with the fact that for Meet the Press alone, Russert...

Cory Doctorow’s headline, Olympic Committee claims that photographing exterior of venues violates copyrights: I hope that the IOC is aware that it’s about to show up in one of the most media-savvy towns in the world, and that trying to stop private citizens from posting “unauthorized” photos will be nothing short of a fool’s errand. This sort of hostility towards Olympic fans is...

Intellectual Conservatism Isn’t Dead: It’s On the Margin by Rick Moran This is the 4th in a series of 5 articles on the state of intellectual conservatism. Here’s Part I. Part II. And Part III. There is a terrific exchange of views on the health of conservatism over at Slate between conservative writer Reihan Salam and Sam Tannenhaus (author of Death of Conservatism). Salam is author (with...

After months of a new and old media narrative about President Barack Obama’s proposed health care reform being on the ropes — a political hot potato Obama tossed Congress to resolve — is the tide finally turning? Within the past 24 hours a new report came out suggesting one of the proposed plans would help reduce the deficit — removing a key political talk radio culture talking/attack...