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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has up to this point opted not to make his tax returns public. Not surprisingly, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift smells a rat and expressed her conspiratorial opinion during the predictions segment of PBS's McLaughlin Group Friday (video follows with transcript): ELEANOR CLIFT, NEWSWEEK: Romney’s refusal so far to release his income tax returns will be linked to probable investments in the Cayman Islands and the likelihood that he paid a very small percentage of his income in taxes.

Eleanor Clift on this weekend's "McLaughlin Group" made a truly absurd comment about the disparate ways Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan handled Libya during their respective presidencies that left Monica Crowley in stitches. After Clift mocked Reagan by saying, "You don’t need leadership that goes into a Muslim country all alone," Monica laughed loudly before replying, "American presidential leadership, Eleanor, never goes out of style" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Eleanor Clint doesn't exactly say that President Barack Obama is completely clueless about politics but she comes pretty close to it in her latest Newsweek column. The lack of a basic ability to control the political agenda in Washington is a prospect that makes a committed liberal like Clift somewhat less than happy:Obama’s storied political career took him from the relative obscurity of the Illinois State Legislature to the presidency in such a short time that he didn’t get much of a feel for the nitty-gritty politicking that consumes so much of today’s partisan bickering. He didn’t have the benefit...

The Justice Department has dropped its case against former House Majority Leader, Tom Delay, and Newsweek's Eleanor Clift is in mourning. She just can't accept the fact that there was no substance to the charges against DeLay and ascribes the dropping of the case to the Obama Justice Department trying to score points with Republicans in the interest of bipartisanship. Clift also manages to smear the late former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens in her angst over the dropped charges: The Justice Department’s decision to let former House majority leader Tom DeLay off the hook and end the six-year-long investigation that...

We all probably knew the sentiment of the American left for just not getting the entire Tea Party movement concept, but this statement ought to cement that notion. On the July 18 broadcast of "The McLaughlin Group," host John McLaughlin asked his panelists what the long-term implications of national debt could be for the United States. "Is America in danger of the current debt crisis becoming a sovereign debt crisis as Mort [Zuckerman] mentioned, like the one that is now hitting Greece, yes or no?" McLaughlin asked. MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan warned it was more "imminent" than many people...

In 1992, the feminists in the media rejoiced at what they called “The Year of the Woman,” when ten Democratic women (and one Republican) were running for the Senate in the aftermath of Anita Hill’s unproven sexual-harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas. Just two years before, seven Republican women (and two Democrats) ran. But the media yawned. In 1992, the evening newscasts aired 29 stories exclusively devoted to women Senate candidates. In 1990, there was one...on election night. In 1992, the morning shows interviewed women Senate candidates on 26 occasions. In 1990, there were zero interviews. This was all about the...

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, on this weekend's syndicated The McLaughlin Group, slighted conservative pro-life women everywhere when she applied California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina's "so yesterday" description of Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer's hairstyle to women who hold anti-abortion views in the Republican Party. Clift, in a segment about the primary victories of both Fiorina and GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman began actually crediting Sarah Palin as "Saint Sarah" for the wins as she claimed that the former Alaskan Governor is "emboldening conservative women" and "reshaping the religious right" but then went on to question if pro-life women candidates could win...

Pure genius, I tell you. With an estimated half a million illegal immigrants residing in Arizona according to the Pew Hispanic Center, questions are being raised about what this means for the United States and its national identity. But according to Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift, it's a "happy" thing with lots of upside. On the May 2 airing of "The McLaughlin Group," show moderator John McLaughlin raised the issue about the country's identity, particularly when it comes to English as the United States' primary language. "The bedrock is national identity," McLaughlin said. "If the national identity suffers by reason...

Vice President Joe Biden, well-known for his verbal gaffes, may have finally outdone himself, divulging potentially classified information meant to save the life of a sitting vice president.

This just in from Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, a frequent purveyor of political anecdotes. She bring us an enlightening one here regarding the (quote) undisclosed location (unquote) we heard lots about in the days after Sept. 11. Here's Eleanor: Ever wonder about that secure, undisclosed location where Dick Cheney secreted himself after the 9/11 attacks? Joe Biden reveals the bunker-like room is at the Naval Observatory in Washington, where Cheney lived for eight years and which is now home to Biden. The veep related the story to his head-table dinner mates when he filled in for President Obama at the Gridiron...

It's a response that might incite laughter, as it did from conservative pundit Monica Crowley and MSNBC paleocon talker Pat Buchanan. According to Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, the current problems facing the country and President Barack Obama are due to capitalism. Clift, appearing on the syndicated April 26 "The McLaughlin Group" gave Obama high marks for his first hundred days and said Republicans were misguided for attacking the growth of the size of government. "I give him a B+ because there's a lot of outcomes that haven't come in yet," Clift said. "But look, this isn't about the failure of government...

Is this a sign of the times? Liberal columnist Eleanor Clift has joined her ideological colleagues, Mika Brzezinski and Paul Krugman, in criticizing President Barack Obama recently. What set Clift off was Obama's evasiveness in revealing whether he approved or knew in advance the AIG bonuses provided by his stimulus bill. Clift takes aim at both Obama and Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, in her latest Newsweek column: Who would have thought 55 days into this administration we would be asking the question, what did he know and when did he know it? Word that a provision in the stimulus bill...

Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a voice crying in the wilderness that the mainstream media and middle class America weren't quite ready for and megachurch pastor Rick Warren is an ignorant evangelical rube who isn't totally without hope, given his awareness of AIDS and other favored liberal causes. That's essentially what Eleanor Clift preached to her choir in her December 19 "Capitol Letter" column, "Choosing a Church: Obama's next big decision -- and its implications." Wrote Sister Eleanor (emphasis mine): Black religious leaders did not stand up for Wright even as they understood and sympathized with the prophetic theology he was...

Sarah Palin strode onto the stage, cheeky from the start. "Can I call you Joe?" The normally voluble Joe Biden seemed restrained by comparison as Palin made her play for the working-class, Joe Sixpack voters that have been his bread and butter as a politician. She's short on facts, but she has command of phrases ("We're mavericks!") and she strings them together with good effect. Biden looked on with a mixture of awe and horror as she did her every-woman show, winking at the camera, celebrating hockey moms and giving a shout-out to her brother's third-grade class. She succeeded in...

The "bitter" answer, captured on audiotape, came in response to a question about whether Obama could win white rural voters because he is black. He basically said these voters have other grievances more salient than race, which is why they don't vote their economic interests and are vulnerable to wedge issues having to do with God, gays and guns. Clinton surely knows what Obama was trying to say, but seeing her path to the nomination narrowing, she manipulated his words for political gain. Fair enough. She hurts him, but she hurts herself more. Pollster Doug Schoen, who has advised her...

Some 50 delegates were reportedly poised to unite behind Barack Obama if he had won by even 1 point in Texas. He lost the popular vote by 100,000 ballots, and now we learn that 100,000 Republicans voted for Hillary Clinton, probably not because of some change in party allegiance but because they thought she would be the easier candidate to beat. This kind of strategic voting often backfires (think Ralph Nader). The Texas crossovers are winners. By helping to prolong the Democratic race, they can claim credit for weakening the eventual nominee, whoever it turns out to be. Obama has...

One of the criticisms of the media's coverage of Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy - both from his opponents on the right and on the left, has been that he's been given a free pass on a lot of issue. The latest in particular had been the recently uncovered of Obama's former church minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had made several incendiary remarks about race and the government. Eleanor Clift, known for her defense of Bill and Hillary Clinton on the syndicated show, "The McLaughlin Group," came to the defense of Obama in a March 17 appearance at The National Press...

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on Friday morning complained, as many liberals have this week, that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has drained all the independence out of his office, that he's acting too much like the president's "personal lawyer." In 1993, when Janet Reno announced the mass dismissal of all 93 U.S. Attorneys, no one demanded her resignation for her lack of independence from the White House. In fact, it could be because someone else was coordinating with the White House on how to run the Justice Department, the felonious one-man Webster Hubbell. At that time, the Wall Street Journal editorial page...

RUSH: Eleanor Clift (this would be Newsweek but it's the MSNBC website) has a column called, "Dem[ocrat]s and the Johnson Crisis -- Tim Johnson's health crisis is a reminder of the fragility of the Democratic majority. What the party should do now," and let me just read you some excerpts of this. "Just as Wellstone’s untimely death cost the Democrats a key Senate seat, Johnson’s illness should inject a sense of urgency into the Democrats’ agenda. No one would have put the robust-looking Johnson on an endangered list. Democrats have plenty of octogenarians and septuagenarians to worry about making it...

Tim Johnson's health crisis is a reminder of the fragility of the Democratic majority. What the party should do now. Dec. 14, 2006 - The possibility that the Senate might yet remain in Republican hands is a godsend for President Bush. With his Iraq policy in shambles and the Joint Chiefs of Staff resisting a last call to arms, Bush must have been wondering whether the higher power he consulted before taking the country to war had abandoned him.

by Mark Finkelstein April 2, 2006 In a week in which immigration has unquestionably been the big story, how did Newsweek choose to frame the issue? The national security implications of a porous border, perhaps? The impact on our economy of millions of illegals, some of whom work, some of whom are a drain on social services? Come on. We're talking the magazine whose most visible reporter is Eleanor Clift. Newsweek chose to focus on . . . the plight of illegal immigrants, with its cover blaring "Illegals Under Fire". Consider that editors examine every word on the cover of...

The reporting on the life and death of my friend, Gene McCarthy, has been woefully inadequate to the truth of the man, especially in his last three decades. Gene was an intelligent and honest man, who had the courage of his convictions. That included the courage to change his convictions when the facts required. The news media brought on a number of classic tax-and-spend liberals like Eleanor Clift to talk about Gene as if he was one of them. Of course, he was that, as a professor first elected as a Senator. But in his final maturity he was much...

Excerpted from article: "A group that supports the U.S. military is demanding an apology from Newsweek magazine's Eleanor Clift, who recently characterized America's armed forces as a "mercenary Army." Her comments -- made this past weekend on the syndicated TV program "The McLaughlin Group" -- were "unfounded and grossly inappropriate," said the Freedom Alliance. In an Aug. 30 letter to Clift, Freedom Alliance President Tom Kilgannon asked her to retract her comment and apologize to the armed forces and their families. Clift made the comment during a discussion about military recruiting efforts: "But I think what we're coming to grips...

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift argued on the McLaughlin Group over the weekend that Iraq is now "worse than Vietman because Vietnam was a tiny country with no strategic importance and we could declare victory and leave. Iraq is at the nexus of terrorism and oil and it's a war that we don't know how to win and can't afford to lose."Predicting President Bush's "stay the course" rhetoric, she even compared President Bush's situation to Lyndon Johnson's plight during Vietnam: "The phraseology is going to be very reminiscent of the Vietnam era and the credibility gap that Lyndon Johnson experience because what...

May 20 - A Jewish friend after making her first trip to Israel said, “This would be a great place if they could figure out how to separate government and religion.” I was reminded of her sentiments this week as the U.S. Senate began debate on two of President Bush’s judicial nominees, Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, hostages in the ongoing culture war between born-again religionists and the more-or-less secular society the Founding Fathers envisioned. When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist accuses Democrats who oppose Owen and Brown of wanting to “kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees,” he...

CLEVELAND (AP) — Thomas J. Brazaitis, a columnist for The Plain Dealer and former chief of the newspaper's Washington, D.C., bureau, died Wednesday at age 64. He was diagnosed six years ago with kidney cancer. Brazaitis died at his home in Washington, said Stephen Koff, who succeeded Brazaitis as bureau chief. Brazaitis wrote a column for more than 20 years, was bureau chief in Washington for 19 years and became the paper's senior Washington editor in 1998. He retired in 2003 as his health declined but continued to write his Sunday column, which was distributed by the Newhouse News Service,...

Not since Margaret Sanger’s crusade to legalize birth control in the 1920s has family planning come under such assault. Pharmacists around the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth-control pills, exercising their right to “refuse and refer” under the industry’s code of ethics. These self-styled refuseniks are so ardent they generally don’t offer a referral, and in small-town America there is often only one pharmacy in town anyway. On Capitol Hill, conservative Republicans inserted a provision in the budget to extend conscience clauses throughout the health-care industry. Democrats cried foul, and GOP leaders pulled the measure for now. But...

Apparently Senator John Edwards had a close brush with the truth some months back, though like the proverbial ''broken clock'' that shows the correct time twice each day, he didn’t linger for long on the cusps of reality. According to Edwards, we live in a split society, which he described as the ''two Americas.'' Edwards attempted to portray this nation as being divided between the ''haves'' and the ''have nots,'' by which he delineated between those who are financially well-off, as opposed to others who struggle to make ends meet. However, another far more insidious divide exists across the nation,...

Cheney Outshines Edwards; North Korea Outshines Iraq Written by Isaiah Sterrett Thursday, October 07, 2004 This is what happens when you choose your running-mate solely on the basis of his superior use of hairspray. Several days ago I was taking advantage of Al Gore’s best and most well-known invention, the world-renowned ''Internet,'' when I came across a column he’d written for The New York Times. (Someday, when I serve as vice president under an impeached, disbarred miscreant and then run a miserable presidential campaign which I lose to a virtually unknown politician from a dusty state, I look forward to...

Nation's Longest Running Column Changing Guard; Jack Anderson Retires; Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift Share Byline WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 23, 2004--"Washington Merry-Go-Round" by Jack Anderson and Douglas Cohn, the nation's longest running newspaper column, is changing bylines. The column, founded by Drew Pearson in 1932, was carried on by Jack Anderson, who joined Pearson in 1947, and by Douglas Cohn, who joined Anderson in 1999. Anderson, 81, who is suffering from Parkinson's disease, has retired from the column, and is being replaced by Eleanor Clift, who has served as "Washington Merry-Go-Round's" political correspondent for several years. Cohn and Clift, who...

Media Reality Check. "Liberal Media's Reagan-Bashing Record: While Reporters Now Praise Reagan's Humor & Optimism, They Disdained His Conservative Policies" Below is the text of a two-page Media Reality Check distributed by fax today, put together by the MRC's Rich Noyes,based on quotes gathered from the MRC archive by Jessica Anderson.This is only a small portion of the Reagan-bashing quotes we've gathered, so we will be distributing more in the future, but these are the best short ones which enabled us to squeeze as many as possible into a fax. We didn't want to go negative on the media before...

<p>Jan. 9 - The litany against Howard Dean is reminiscent of the bill of particulars against Al Gore. The specifics vary, but the pattern is the same: Gore claimed he invented the Internet, he said the male character in "Love Story" was modeled after him, and he took credit for uncovering Love Canal.</p>

I'd like to show you guys something that I came across on the National Organization for Women (NOW) website. The title of the discussion is: NOW Reframing Abortion Rights Briefing on "Breaking the Abortion Deadlock, From Choice to Consent" Here are a few excerpts from the discussion. I'll place a link to the full article at the end. Eileen McDonagh: Most likely, there is no constitutional right to abortion funding, even if you are suffering from a medically abnormal pregnancy that threatens to kill you. Currently, Congress and states do provide legislative funding for abortions when a women's life is...

It’s not just the CIA scandal. The latest data on jobs, poverty and the uninsured are all combining to paint a picture of a Bush administration in disarray Oct. 3 — The zeitgeist is shifting. Liberal books are moving up the best-seller list. Rush Limbaugh is getting disparaged for racial insensitivity and allegedly buying illegal drugs. And the controversy over administration officials leaking the identity of an undercover CIA operative has put conservatives in the indefensible position of condoning treason. THE SPY STORY engulfing the White House is the catalyst for the Bush meltdown. But we wouldn’t be obsessing over...

In the minds of the national media elite, Alabama is a strange place that erupts in the news only when some backward action happens. Perhaps it's an abortion clinic bombing, a remembrance of past segregation and racist violence, or some rerun of the strange ways those Bible-thumpin' Christians act. Enlightened journalists no doubt still chortle at the memory of the 1960s singer-satirist Tom Lehrer worrying about when "Alabama gets the bomb." The state's Chief Justice, Roy Moore, brought the national media circus to town by plopping a granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the middle of the state's top...

Uday and Qusay killed to keep them silent on lack of WMD? Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift suggested on the McLaughlin Group over the weekend that the in killing Uday and Qusay Hussein, “two intelligence assets who could potentially lead us to the weapons of mass destruction,” the Bush administration “surrendered a major opportunity to uncover” those weapons “unless,” she added nefariously, “they don’t believe those weapons are there.” Later, she equated President Bush’s State of the Union line about Iraq “seeking” uranium in Africa with the tape erasure in the Nixon White House: “The 16 words are taking on the aura...

Rick Santorum stirred up a hornet’s nest with his remarks on homosexuality. But the GOP—and the White House—still love him. Whenever a politician talks about men on dogs, it’s a mistake. Whatever the context, it’s trouble. But Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum didn’t seem to notice, not even when the reporter said she didn’t come to interview him about bestiality. “It’s sort of freaking me out,” she said. THERE’S A FINE LINE between stupidity and bigotry, and Santorum managed both in a flight of prejudice in which he equated homosexual sex with incest, polygamy, bigamy and adultery. He was commenting on...

Reagan Redux Bush wants to starve social programs to pay for massive tax cuts. At least the Gipper was candid about it.April 11 — This is the first war where the rich have been called upon to do less. The rest of America will pay the surcharge for Iraq when services are cut and benefits reduced to make room for the next wave of Bush tax cuts.A HANDFUL OF stalwart Senate moderates dubbed “Daschle Republicans” by The Wall Street Journal will help Democrats hold the tax cuts to half of what President Bush wants, but half is still more than...

  March 28 —  Watching the official military briefings is like living in a parallel universe. It’s the same news but with a different spin.         TO HEAR THE generals, the war is on schedule. There are no surprises. A film clip shows coalition forces handing candy to Iraqi children. Change the channel to get the perspective of reporters on the ground and the images are quite different. Fighting vehicles stuck in the mud; angry Iraqis thrusting their fists at the invaders; humanitarian aid stalled because of guerilla fighting.         Nearly every prediction about...

March 21 — Only hours after President Bush sent his calling card into the heart of Baghdad, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (or his body double) appeared on television as if to taunt Bush that he missed. So began the latest chapter in the Bush family enterprise to track down and kill the man who has been their nemesis for more than a decade.< snip >Daschle is again in the crossfire for criticizing Bush’s failure to resolve the impasse over Iraq with diplomacy. The White House slapped down Daschle and implied he was unpatriotic. “France has a better chance of getting...

    A Lurch Left for the Democrats   The White House loves the thought of liberal Nancy Pelosi as House majority leader. But at least she has a point of view       NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE       Nov. 8 —  President Bush manipulated the prospect of war with Iraq to the point of urging the American people to vote Republican so he would have “allies” in Washington, a loaded term in the current context.   [ ... ]The White House is salivating at the prospect of Pelosi as leader. Republicans see her as the perfect...

<p>When Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in 1979, [Jimmy] Carter couldn't believe the Soviet foreign minister would sit across from him in the Oval Office and lie about his country's intentions. Carter declined to intervene militarily while various news commentators ridiculed him for his naiveté in trusting the Russians. He pulled American athletes out of the Olympic games scheduled the following year in Moscow, and he angered farmers by barring American grain sales to the Soviet Union. But he didn't do anything that didn't come under the broad heading of diplomacy. A decade later, the Soviets left Afghanistan, their army decimated and defeated, and the cold war ended without a missile being fired.</p>

President Bush wasn’t the only one whose approval ratings soared after 9-11. Voters frightened by the prospect of more terrorist attacks turned to government with a renewed faith in its ability to respond. Congress was a major beneficiary.AS LAWMAKERS RETURN home for the August recess, they’ll be reminding voters of their accomplishments. With the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate facing re-election, does this Congress deserve high marks?In the number of bills passed and signed into law, they compiled an impressive record: a major tax cut, an education bill that allied Bush with liberal icon Ted...

June 21 —  Where is Louis Freeh? Happily gone from government, the former FBI director is making a bundle of money as a senior vice chairman of the MBNA credit card corporation and enjoying life as a suburban father with his wife and six sons.NEVER FOND of the media, Freeh has refused to get drawn into the ongoing controversy over the FBI’s performance in the period before September 11. As a private citizen, he is free to turn down requests from reporters for interviews. The surprising part is that he has also managed to avoid being hauled before Congress. Two...

The Roman Catholic Church, my church, is being lied about, subjected to the obscene rantings of modern-day common scolds, and made a victim of some of the most overt examples of just plain bigotry I have seen in my long life. During colonial times in New England, certain shrewish women notorious for their constant and unremitting harping about everybody and everything were accused of being "common scolds." Those harpies found guilty of the offense were sometimes tied to a chair attached to long poles and dunked like doughnuts in the nearest body of water until they were choking and...

The Catholic Church is under fire in the American press unlike any time I can ever remember. To be sure, much of it is self-inflicted; what is being reported as "news" is, sadly, news that demands coverage. That is something Catholics must accept. But Catholics do not have to accept what follows, the what-this-story-means analysis. Many in the press are using recent Church scandals as fodder for attacks on Catholicism in general, Pope John Paul II in particular, and that is also scandalous. Newsweek's Eleanor Clift has penned a piece on the magazine's Web site that demonstrates just how impossibly...

Conservative Judge Charles Pickering’s nomination was defeated but while the GOP lost this battle, they may have won the PR warMarch 15 — Conservatives have had limited success moving the country to the right through legislation. School vouchers are stalled; abortion remains legal; and Bush’s faith-based legislation has been trimmed back to little more than a tax break for filers who don’t otherwise itemize their returns. The future of these issues lies with the courts, and stacking the courts with likeminded social conservatives is the best hope to achieve the goals of the conservative movement.THAT’S WHY the GOP’s right wing...