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Foster Friess, a major donor to the super PAC backing Rick Santorum, has apologized for a joke about contraception that prompted outrage from women's groups. "Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives," Friess said on MSNBC on Thursday, adding: "The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly." The implication was that women held the aspirin between their legs, which left them unable to open them.

Rick Santorum backer Foster Friess raised more than a few eyebrows yesterday when he told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that, back in his day, “they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptions. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.” Now — as Santorum tries to distance himself from Friess’ comment — the businessman has taken to his blog in order to explain that had been joking, as well as to apologize to anyone who may have been offended: After listening to the segment tonight, I can understand how I confused people with the way I worded the joke...

For anyone who doubts the legacy media are the handmaidens or the Democratic Party and its propaganda arm, Media Matters, has only to follow the story of the aspirin joke. In some convoluted logic, a joke told by a campaign contributor has become the responsibility of Rick Santorum. In typical fashion the multiple voices of the three legacy networks and major papers including the New York Times and the Washington Post are parroting in unison the identical message. It is shoddy journalism to the extreme. The joke, poorly told by Foster Friess, is most decidedly not anti contraception. Quite to...

On Friday's CBS This Morning, Rick Santorum pushed back against Charlie Rose's interrogation about supporter Foster Friess's recent "bad off-color joke" on contraception, all but name-dropping former Obama pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright as an example of the media's double standard on playing "gotcha" politics with Republicans, but not Democrats. Rose initially countered, "This is not gotcha; what this is, is trying to understand exactly what Rick Santorum stands for, and what he might say or do as president." But the GOP presidential candidate wasn't having any of it: "You don't do this with President Obama...he sat in a church for...

ABC News and George Stephanopoulos have a credibility problem with conservatives and Middle America. And it seems to be getting worse. It’s not just that ABC News hired Bill Clinton’s White House spokesman and counselor George Stephanopoulos as a journalist; it’s that the pack mentality at ABC News doesn’t see it as a problem. “The planning meetings [at ABC News] have little political diversity. Everyone is left of center and at ease with their liberal ideals. The other viewpoint is rarely raised and never fully represented,” a current ABC News producer told me last week. ,,,,, But the bias at...

RUSH: I want to move on to this Dick Morris business and the attack on the Catholic Church last week by Obama. I want to ask you, if you remember back in January there was a presidential debate, a Republican debate in Manchester. Do you remember -- 'cause this is a setup for what's coming -- do you remember, we were all perplexed here. George Stephanopoulos kept hounding Romney on contraception. It had not come up, nobody had said anything about it, and we were all confused, as was Romney, what the deal was. Well, it is Dick Morris' theorem...

It is certainly no surprise for gun owners to see the New York Times run a story belittling the United States Constitution. After all, the Times has worked for decades to devalue our founding document. "[I]ts influence is waning," opines the Times. It is "terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights." The paper faults the Constitution for being difficult to amend and reflective of the times in which it was written. While the Times does not go so far as to claim the U.S. Constitution has been bad for America, it does lament that it is of "little...

“The gunwalking story has never been mentioned on either NBC Nightly News or the Today show,” Geoffrey Dickens reports in a Feb. 8 Media Research Center “Reality Check” piece. Perhaps that’s not quite fair. After all, MSNBC’s “Politics Nation” with Al Sharpton gave Rep. Elijah Cummings unchallenged time to make his case that the congressional Fast and Furious investigation is an “election-year witch hunt” against Eric Holder by Republicans, gunwalking was George Bush’s fault, and the real problem is we need more gun control. So leave it to “Today” to send “national investigative correspondent” Jeff Rossen to Phoenix of all...

I think late January and February have been the busiest time for Operation Fast & Furious. The media still doesn’t give it proper coverage, especially this news: On February 4th, Mexico arrests a key figure in Fast & Furious. Not only is he a key person in Fast & Furious, but he was also a top lieutenant to El Chapo. I first found out about it on Borderland Beat, a great website keeping us up to date about the drug war in Mexico. The Los Angeles Times reported it on February 7th and my colleague AWR Hawkins published commenrary on...

The U.S. economy produced another solid month of job gains in January, offering a hopeful sign for hiring in the year ahead. Employers added a net 243,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported Friday. That’s higher than December, when employers added a net 200,000 jobs, and it marked the seventh straight month in which at least 100,000 jobs were created. That hasn't happened since 2005. The nation’s unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent in January from 8.5 percent in the prior month. The unemployment rate has fallen for the past five months and is now at its lowest level...

Things haven't gotten much better for Newt Gingrich ..... The former House speaker abruptly canceled a meeting with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval ... Not even Gingrich's campaign advisers know why the campaign scheduler called it off, irking them and those in Sandoval's office who had helped set up the event. ..... Other signs of disarray appeared Wednesday. Gingrich's schedule called for a 1 p.m. rally in Reno, but volunteers put out word that the event would be at noon — and that supporters should show up at 11:30. .....

The New York Times Company reported its Q4 earnings today, and they lost $39.7 million in 2011, or 27 cents a share, after making $107.7 million in 2010. Q4 profit is down 12.2% y/y thanks to the continuing decline of print advertising and a 67.4% decline in the About Group's operating profit, which also saw a 25.7% decrease in quarterly ad revenues y/y. The NYT also missed analysts' estimates — quarterly net income of 39 cents a share was lower than expectations of 42 cents a share. The fourth quarter income also reflects a $4.5 million payout to departed CEO...

Where was the public outcry for justice when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry bled to death at the hands of a drug cartel in cahoots with the U.S. government? It happened in the Peck Canyon corridor northwest of Nogales, Arizona -- nowhere. The general public didn't hear about it... --snip-- Last November, Dennis Wagner of The Arizona Republic wrote a chronological exposé of the Fast and Furious scandal. But he put a fancy spin on his article which illustrates perfectly how a Big Lie can emerge from a kernel of truth told with bad intent. *The once-obscure case in Phoenix...

A few weeks ago, we warned against an increasingly prevalent narrative in news: That war Veterans are violent, unstable, and dangerous. I explained why that simply isn’t the case, and how those aspersions can hurt Vets and deepen the divide between us and civilians. Thursday, the national media moved a step closer to establishing this unfortunate characterization as conventional wisdom in the newsroom. USA Today, a national newspaper second to only the Wall Street Journal in distribution, published a story with a headline brimming with violent imagery:

Politico's Jonathan Martin provides expert analysis of the Florida primary for MSNBC this morning and hurls an offensive epithet to describe counties in the panhandle of the state.

WASHINGTON — Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday are expected to publish a report on the disputed gun trafficking investigation called Operation Fast and Furious, concluding that agents in Arizona — not Obama administration officials — were responsible for the tactics used in the inquiry and for providing misleading information relayed to Congress. In an 89-page report, titled “Fatally Flawed: Five Years of Gun-walking in Arizona,” the Democratic staff portrays Fast and Furious as the fourth investigation, dating back to 2006, in which Arizona-based agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives employed...

ORLANDO, Fla.--It's total newt-iny on the Gingrich campaign press bus. For each caucus or primary during the 2012 presidential campaign, Gingrich's campaign has organized transportation for the reporters assigned to cover him--as is customary for nearly every presidential candidate. [snip] That working relationship pretty much stopped working this weekend, two days before the Florida primary. The trouble began when Daniel Malloy, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, started to do some simple math, [another snip] Sitting in the back of the bus that day, the penny pinching press got to thinking: [yet another snip] One by one, the reporters...

By daring to stand up for herself in recent exchange with President Obama, the media quickly labeled Arizona Governor Jan Brewer a villain. On Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams was aghast: "Who have you ever seen talking to the president like this?....The governor of Arizona with her finger in the face of the President of the United States. You don't see that often or maybe ever." In the report that followed, White House correspondent Kristen Welker piled on with nasty sound bites attacking Brewer. A clip of left-wing MSNBC host Martin Bashir echoing Williams: "Is that really how...

<p>When CNN convenes its GOP debate tonight, the moderators should tell the audience to shut up.</p> <p>Newt Gingrich said Tuesday that he wouldn’t “allow” moderators to ask live audiences to remain silent during debates. He won the South Carolina primary on his appeal to two insufferably partisan debate audiences last week, but he stumbled this week in a debate before a silent crowd.</p>

The surging Newt Gingrich has mastered debates — and disguise. The debate part is clear: The former Speaker of the House comes to play and owns the stage with an uncanny capacity to connect with the grievances of conservative voters. The disguise part is clear, too. Gingrich has used his debate skills — and his instinct to hit the raw nerves of conservatives — to camouflage considerable weaknesses as a candidate. The three wives, and cheating on and leaving the first two while they were ill; inconsistency on the most consequential conservative causes of the past decade; episodic bouts of...

Newt Gingrich insists his fans will not be silenced. Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker, on Tuesday morning threatened not participate in any future debates with audiences that have been instructed to be silent. That was the case on Monday, when Brian Williams of NBC News asked the audience of about 500 people who assembled for a debate in Tampa to hold their applause until the commercial breaks. In an interview with the morning show “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Gingrich said NBC’s rules amounted to stifling free speech. In what has become a standard line of attack for his anti-establishment...

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Resentment lurks near the surface of the conservative political consciousness. Many voters believe (not always without cause) that elite, hipster liberals in academia and the coastal Big Media are sneering at them, their lives, and their beliefs. They see themselves presented as unsophisticated, bigoted, and quite possibly stupid. So Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was tapping into a powerful psychological current when he attacked the news media Thursday at the start of a CNN debate, responding to an ABC News interview with his ex-wife Marianne, in which she said he had demanded an "open marriage" so he...

Newt Gingrich instantly brought the crowd to its feet last night at the last debate before Saturday's all important primary in South Carolina. What was the multitude cheering? Not his stance on tax policy, or on abortion, but rather his acid assault on the “elite media.” Gingrich expressed outrage that moderator John King of CNN would lead off the evening by asking about potentially damaging charges made by the Speaker’s second wife in an interview with ABC News's "Nightline." The audience howled its approval as Gingrich tore into the “destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media…” As...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is Howard Fineman last night on PMSNBC's The Last Word. Fineman now left Newsweek, as you know, and he's over at the Huffing and Puffington Post and they're having a discussion about Newt's debate performance last night. This was Howard Fineman's review. FINEMAN: Newt Gingrich, with this crowd and with these people here who want a fighter -- who like cockfighting, who like the hardscrabble, who like the confrontational approach -- that's what Newt Gingrich gives them. It may be shortsighted of them going down the road, but these people here in this state want to...

The first question at Thursday night's debate in South Carolina went to Newt Gingrich, giving him an opportunity to denounce a "vicious" news media that is "protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans."

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin came to Newt Gingrich's defense Thursday night as allegations about his second marriage threatened his surge in South Carolina's primary. Hours before the airing of a controversial ABC News interview with Gingrich's ex-wife, Palin appeared on Thursday's radio edition of the "Sean Hannity Show." She noted that Marianne Gingrich's claim that Newt wanted an "open marriage" will do anything but damage his 2012 hopes. "I call them dumbarses," said Palin in the interview, referring to the media Read more on Newsmax.com: Palin Defends Gingrich on Marriage Charges

Allies of embattled GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich are coming to his defense against his ex-wife's new and salacious charges, labeling Marianne as "unstable" and "unhinged." What's more is that they are slapping at ABC, which is set to run an interview Thursday with Marianne Gingrich in which she claims the former speaker wanted an open marriage so he could date his current wife, Callista. Gingrich's supporters claim the network is trying to get the Republican out of the race just as he's peaking in the polls. What was once a quiet campaign to distance Marianne from Gingrich has kicked...

Charleston, South Carolina (CNN) - In what appears to be a last ditch attempt to halt Newt Gingrich's late momentum in South Carolina, a fake CNN Breaking News alert was emailed to state Republican activists early Thursday morning claiming that the former House Speaker pressured his ex-wife to have an abortion. CNN did not send out the email alert. It's not clear how many people received the fake email, though at least two members of the South Carolina GOP Executive Committee, who did not want to be named, were among those who found the missive in their inboxes this morning....

NBC Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd is no fan of comedian Stephen Colbert's efforts to take part in Saturday's SC GOP presidential primary and how the media is covering the Charleston native's "exploratory campaign." "But what he's doing now, with the campaign -- is that fair to the process?" Todd continued. "Yes, the process is a mess. But he's doing it in a way that it feels as if he's trying to influence it with his own agenda that may be anti-Republican. And is that fair to the Republican Party?" Todd said Colbert and his Comedy Central satirical news...

-snip- VAN SUSTEREN: -snip- But I'm curious, in all seriousness, is there any appropriate time in your mind that you be asked that question, you know, about your ex-wife? GINGRICH: Look... VAN SUSTEREN: She's going on television. She's making some accusation. Is it a fair question? And if so, when should it be asked of you? GINGRICH: Sure, look -- look, if voters ask it or if you get asked it in a normal press conference, you just answer it because you're running for president and you owe people a candid answer. You don't particularly want to get in fights...

Late-night comedians historically have relished the opportunity to poke fun at politicians. Sometimes they savage them. In the Obama era, they haven't been so enthusiastic about any of it. A recent study of political jokes on three late-night shows (Letterman, Leno and Jimmy Fallon) by the Center for Media and Public Affairs found that Barack Obama's joke count is "substantially lower than any other president." Some of the Obama jokes are actually bipartisan slams. Jimmy Fallon joked, "Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are more mature than President Obama and John Boehner." This is the classic comedian's pose, and the safe...

That was the bombshell!!! The interview was even cut short. Marianne was even under investigation by FBI. She was used by the liberal media.

The year-and-a-half-old ABC “scoop”, in which Newt Gingrich’s ex boasts her one interview could end her one time hubby’s political career, is more about the contemporary media than it is about a presidential candidate. The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz said a mouthful when he posited that Marianne Gingrich does not say anything in the new interview that she hasn’t said in the past.The Esquire already ran with the same story in September 2010, if anyone cares. Notice how quickly the story of another election-year smear has morphed over to WHEN ABC will air it.

You’ve got to admire Sarah Palin’s cunning — even if your eardrums can’t take her squeal. If Newt Gingrich wins Saturday in South Carolina, she can claim total credit. She just endorsed him — sort of. If he even gets close — and he’s closer to Mitt Romney in two new polls — she can point to her last-minute vote of confidence. “If I had to vote in South Carolina,” she told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday, “in order to keep things going, I would vote for Newt.” If things don’t go well, hey, she’s got lots of wiggle...

Exclusive... Developing... CIVIL WAR AT ABCNEWS; NETWORK HOLDS BOMBSHELL CAMPAIGN INTERVIEW

At the now-controversial meeting of evangelicals at a Texas ranch, influential evangelical leader James Dobson made a strong pitch for Rick Santorum's wife — and noted that Callista Gingrich was her husband's "mistress for eight years," questioning whether that's what people want in a first lady, three sources told POLITICO. The moment left several attendees at the confab at the Pressler ranch stunned, according to the sources. It came on Saturday, before the group of about 150 conservatives voted on a candidate they wanted to back. On the third round of balloting, the vote went to Santorum, but Gingrich backers...

In his January 12th article on the 2010 ATF Operation White Gun, Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Serrano did little more than tell readers that 3 virtual nobodies had been arrested in an expensive sting which somehow allowed an unknown number of guns to disappear across the Mexican border. In fact there are probably more questions raised in the story than answered. (1) But it is not his skill or work ethic as an investigative reporter which have endeared him to the left. Rather it is the fact that, true to form, he managed to make the ATF, its Department...

EDITORIAL What They Don’t Want to Talk About January 14, 2012 Ever since Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry started criticizing Mitt Romney’s actions at Bain Capital — and talking about the thousands of people laid off as a result of Bain’s investments — party leaders have essentially told them to shut up. That response is a pretty good indication of how deeply party elders fear the issue of economic inequality in the campaign to come. “What the hell are you doing, Newt?” Rudolph Giuliani asked Thursday on Fox News. “This is what Saul Alinsky taught Barack Obama, and what you’re...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I don't know that you've seen any of this in the Drive-By Media. I don't know on television if you've seen it. Have you seen it, Snerdley? Have you seen any reports on the unemployment news? Well, it's amazing here. "The number of Americans applying for first-time jobless benefits rose last week, the Labor Department reported on Thursday, reversing a recent decline and suggesting the labor market remained brittle. ... Initial claims for unemployment benefits rose to 399,000 in the first week of 2012, the highest in six weeks, from an upwardly revised 375,000 a week earlier....

On the one-year anniversary of the shooting rampage at a Tucson, Ariz., supermarket, nothing was more appropriate than to grieve the six people Jared Loughner is charged with murdering and marvel at the recovery of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. In just 12 months she went from death’s door to belting out the Pledge of Allegiance at a vigil held on Sunday at the University of Arizona. Reports suggest the tone there was suitably inclusive and sombre. That having been done, it is also appropriate to recall the astonishing finger-pointing ritual many commentators performed in the wake of the shooting. Some accused...

CONCORD, N.H. – Jesse Benton, national campaign chairman for the Ron Paul campaign, released the following statement today in regards to the media incident in Manchester, NH this morning: “Dr. Paul has been committed to meeting one on one with New Hampshire voters, and has aggressively campaigned at town halls, house parties, and meet and greets since early last spring. “This morning, he attempted to hold an event at Moe Joe’s Diner in Manchester, to speak with patrons and supporters in the last push before the New Hampshire primary. Unfortunately, Dr. Paul and his family were forced to leave early...

Those who are professional media enemies of the Republicans are having a fine time catching the elephants lying. The only problem to me is that they do not always follow the same rules when a supposedly oppressed group proves that it, like all others, is a contradictory bundle of human realities. Yet Rachel Maddow, for one, is remarkable when it comes to proving in high quality intellectual detail how often the elephants do and say irrational things for the sake of pure ideology. Her proof that President Ronald Reagan did things contrary to what he supposedly believed is perfectly executed...

By now you’ve probably heard about the “Alice in Wonderland”-themed Halloween party that Obama threw back in 2009 and which the White House tried to cover up (a charge they’re already furiously denying). Here at PJM Belladonna Rogers and J. Christian Adams have already blogged about it, so there’s no need for me to go into the details any further. But the question everyone’s asking is: Where are the photos? Well, unfortunately, it seems that the Obamas successfully banned discouraged photographers from inside the party itself. But all is not lost: There were a few photos taken inside of Johnny...

In their reports on tonight's two D.C. fundraising events by Barack Obama, the news media is burying the outrageous access-selling of the presidency for $45,000 by Obama to a select group of just 25 donors that brought in $1.125 million for his reelection campaign and Democratic party coffers.The exclusive "roundtable discussion" fundraiser was closed to the press. The only report on what was said at the event is based on what Obama himself related at a later man-of-the-people fundraiser of 700 donors that cost $100 per person which was open to the press.The AP report on Obama's fundraising buried the...

For much of the last week the news has been filled with discussion of the vicious remarks made by liberal commentators Alan Colmes and Eugene Robinson concerning the Santorum family's farewell to their dead child. How did liberals get to the point of attacking the most private of family matters for purposes of political gain? They got there by way of Sarah Palin and her son Trig. Liberals used the developmentally disabled Trig as a means of getting at the governor repeatedly and in the most nasty terms. Bizarrely, this occurred long after the 2008 campaign had closed and at...

New Hampshire primary: Where's the tea party? By KENNETH P. VOGEL | 1/9/12 4:32 AM EST Updated: 1/9/12 3:11 PM EST New Hampshire might seem like ground zero for a tea party offensive.But ahead of the Republican primary Tuesday, there’s no sign that the populist conservative movement is poised to shape the presidential results in the “Live Free or Die” state — or anywhere else, for that matter.Instead, activists in the Granite State have divided their loyalties — and even seem resigned to seeing their sworn enemy Mitt Romney win his second straight victory.The situation in New Hampshire and across...

(CALGARY, Alberta) - There were sombre ceremonies across Tucson, Arizona on Sunday, January 8, 2012, in remembrance of Jared Loughner’s shooting spree a year earlier where he seriously wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords, killed six and wounded 12 more. I suggest that the Untied States, is the only country in world, where remembrances could be held virtually every single day of the year for egregious killings of citizens by other citizens—all indirectly supported by the National Rifle Association. The day before the Tucson ceremonies, on January 7, there was a funeral in Brownsville, Texas, for a fifteen-year-old eighth grader who was...

In researching Wednesday’s newspaper column on the liberals who attacked Rick Santorum for giving his son who died in infancy a decent burial, I ran across some items that show how you can spot the difference between some liberals and most conservatives. The conservatives are the ones with the heart. In a profile in the New York Times on May 22, 2005, Michael Sokolove wrote: The childbirth in 1996 was a source of terrible heartbreak — the couple were told by doctors early in the pregnancy that the baby Karen was carrying had a fatal defect and would survive only...

"I don't have lobbyists running my campaign. I don't have lobbyists tied to my..." [then a reporter takes Romney to task].

NBC's Andrea Mitchell on New Year's Day made it clear to Nightly News viewers that her Obama-loving network will continue using the race card to assist the current White House resident's reelection. In a brief segment about the upcoming Iowa caucuses, Mitchell said "the rap" on the Hawkeye state is that "it doesn't represent the rest of the country - too white, too evangelical, too rural" Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/01/02/andrea-mitchell-iowa-too-white-too-evangelical-too-rural#ixzz1iMDxZzyc