The Obama campaign recently released a new ad highlighting the way venture capital firm Bain Capital, under Mitt Romney's leadership, handled the takeover of a steel mill that later went bankrupt. Bain Capital walked away with millions in profit and consulting fees while hundreds of GST Steel workers lost their jobs and many more lost a percentage of their pensions. The U.S. government ultimately had to intervene to cover the mill's pension payments.

Fox News is defending Romney by pointing to the Obama administration's handling of the auto industry's rescue and the dealerships that were closed under the managed bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler -- which resulted in significant job losses.

Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade highlighted the losses when he claimed that "there's no way the president should have been cutting dealerships and making these demands. He knew nothing about the car business -- that was way over the line." Kilmeade added: "He's talking about costing jobs, he went in and fired a bunch of people."

Fox News contributor Byron York similarly argued that Romney and his supporters should bring up the dealerships closed during the auto rescue and the "tens of thousands" of jobs lost as a result. Senior Fox political analyst Brit Hume advised Romney to "talk about the dealerships, the auto dealerships that were closed down when the government took control of a couple of the auto companies," adding, "an awful lot of people lost their jobs."

But to compare Bain's treatment of GST Steel to the Obama administration's handling of the auto crisis is not only "fairly silly," it ignores important facts. 

Read the full entry ...

Fox News and Fox Business star in the coal industry's newest ad attacking the Obama administration. Relying heavily on footage from Fox, the ad promotes the Fox narrative that EPA is waging a "war on coal" and forcing coal plants to close. Like Fox, the ad fails to mention that the EPA is simply following its legal obligations under the Clean Air Act to set limits on pollution and that many of the coal plant closures are actually due to competition with cheap natural gas plants.

The ad also mirrors Fox's recent attempt to blur the lines between potential technology that would capture and bury carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants (so-called "clean coal") and the same old coal that continues to emit more carbon dioxide than any other fuel, not to mention mercury and other toxic pollutants. The ad purports to show "Candidate Obama vs. President Obama on Clean Coal" but it really shows candidate Obama on "clean coal" vs. President Obama on dirty coal. Fox Business' Lou Dobbs helped fuel the misinformation by obscuring this distinction in a segment on Obama's coal policies.

Fox & Friends later piled on saying that Obama wants you to "buy into the fact that he's buying into clean coal." But the Obama administration has supported "clean coal" technology -- the stimulus bill allocated $3.4 billion for carbon capture and sequestration research and development.

While Dobbs and the ad tout how "affordable" coal is in order to argue against EPA regulations, a study by centrist economists concluded that coal may be "underregulated" since the price we pay for coal-fired power doesn't account for the costs imposed on society by air pollution.

Not content to shame food stamps recipients and bully them into silence, Fox News is now targeting efforts to raise awareness of poverty and food insecurity.

The latest front in the Fox News war on anti-poverty measures takes aim at chef Mario Batali as he highlights the difficulties of living on food stamps -- problems that are routinely dismissed on Fox while the network pushes for drastic cuts to nutritional aid and other anti-poverty measures. Batali, who sits on the board at the New York City food pantry, is trying to live on a $31 food budget for a week in order to illustrate the struggles families face trying to survive on a food stamp budget, even as the right looks to cut funding for the program:

For one week, the acclaimed chef Mario Batali is challenging Americans to "walk in someone else's shoes" by eating only what they would be able to buy with food stamps.

Batali, the star of ABC's "The Chew," partnered with the New York City Food Bank to raise awareness about potential cuts to the food stamp program, which helps feed 46 million Americans.

Discussing Batali's role in the food stamp challenge, Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld asked, "Does this make you want to slap him around?" 

Gutfeld's dismissive mocking of Batali's efforts comes amid an exhaustive campaign by Fox to demonize those who receive food stamps while simultaneously minimizing their struggles. Fox's Charles Payne once castigated the poor for not being sufficiently ashamed of their poverty. Fox host Stuart Varney dismissed "the image we have of poor people as starving and living in squalor," opining, "many of them have things -- what they lack is the richness of spirit."  

The campaign of dismissive scorn reached its Marie Antoinette moment when Fox's Sean Hannity urged folks struggling with food insecurity to make large pots of beans and rice "for relatively negligible amounts of money." 

Which raises a question: When will Hannity, Varney, and Gutfeld take the food stamp challenge and show how much food they can buy with the richness of spirit and the appropriate helping of shame?

The Daily Caller's Matthew Boyle is claiming that the Department of Homeland Security has hired "at least four senior staffers and advisers" with "no law enforcement experience into senior law enforcement positions." Boyle went so far as to call them "mini-czars" in a tweet. But the individuals Boyle targeted either do not hold senior positions at DHS or are not involved in law enforcement. By contrast, former President George W. Bush appointed people who lacked relevant experience to head agencies that are currently within DHS. 

Boyle attacked the experience of four current or former DHS staffers: Jordan Grossman, Vladimir Skoric, Chris Stelmarski, and Nate Snyder. 

Skoric, who began his civil service career in 2008 during the Bush administration, is a special assistant to the deputy under secretary for cybersecurity. In 2011, Skoric was listed as being compensated at a "GS-11" rate, which translates to a mid-level civil service position.  

Stelmarski, who came to DHS in 2010, describes his position as "digital strategy." In 2011, he was compensated at the "GS-9" rate, an even lower level than Skoric. 

Snyder, who started at DHS in 2009 as a deputy White House liaison, is a special advisor for community partnership and strategic engagement. In 2011, Snyder was compensated at a GS-14 level, higher than Skoric or Stelmaski, but not at the level of the Senior Executive Service, which constitutes the top-level federal civil servants. 

And Grossman, who has since left DHS to attend Harvard Law School, was a special advisor and deputy to the deputy chief of staff. 

In contrast to the individuals that Boyle identified, Bush really did appoint people without relevant experience to top positions at DHS. 

Read the full entry ...

In his newest video, conservative videographer James O'Keefe claims that during his organization's latest inept voter fraud sting in North Carolina, "we found ballots being offered out in the name of the dead." Unfortunately for O'Keefe, the person whose ballot his operative sought is actually alive, as is indicated by the raw video his organization posted online.

From the video (at 4:43):

O'KEEFE: We found ballots being offered out in the name of the dead. One man, Michael Bolton, had died April 23, but apparently the Board of Elections didn't get the memo, and his ballot was offered to us on May 8.

In the ensuing video clip, an O'Keefe operative at a polling place tells a poll worker, "The name is Michael G. Bolton." There is then a jump cut, and in the next clip the poll worker is telling the operative to sign or make an mark in the pollbook to affirm his identity. The operative then says he would feel more comfortable if he could show his photo ID, and leaves.

Something very important happens during that jump cut. As the raw video reveals, the poll worker says, "You must be a junior? ... Michael G. Bolton, Jr.?" to which O'Keefe's operative responds: "That would be correct."

Yes, as multiple obituaries for Bolton note, he was survived by, among others, his son Michael Gordon Bolton, Jr. Public records searches using the Nexis database confirm that Bolton Jr. was registered to vote at the same address given to the poll worker by the O'Keefe operative.

This isn't the only error of this sort O'Keefe made. As ThinkProgress noted, the "non-citizen" voter supposedly exposed by the video is actually a naturalized citizen.

And, as we've noted time and time again, the O'Keefe operative being offered a ballot does not show actual voter fraud being committed nor does it prove the existence of a widespread conspiracy to steal an election.

Read the full entry ...

On January 5, 2011, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, a group called State Legislators for Legal Immigration held a press event announcing their intention to change meaning of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, which has granted citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" ever since it was ratified in 1868. The group wants to force a reinterpretation of the amendment to prevent children of undocumented immigrants from obtaining citizenship, thus removing (in SLLI's view) an incentive for people to cross the border illegally.

Their primary weapon in this crusade is a model bill that says children must have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen (or resident alien) in order to be eligible for state citizenship. The bill, which runs contrary to over 100 years of legal precedent, was designed so that legislators could take it back to their states, work to get it passed, and then get sued with the hope that the case makes it all the way to a Supreme Court which would then overturn that precedent.

The strategy, the legal reasoning, and the model legislation were devised by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), the legal arm of the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Specifically, they are the brainchildren of Kris Kobach, counsel for IRLI and the Kansas secretary of state.

IRLI is not the only conservative organization pushing model legislation on this issue. A similar model bill approved by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in 2008 provides for state legislatures to call on Congress to "enact legislation clarifying the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution as denying citizenship status to children of illegal aliens."

Read the full entry ...

Geraldo Rivera called himself "the conscience of Fox and the rest of the cable news world" when asked Tuesday about his objections to the use of the terms "illegals" and "aliens" in reference to undocumented immigrants.

He also added that he has made his opposition to such phrases "very, very clear" to Fox employees "from top to bottom," but stopped short of any further direct criticism of the network.

"If I'm going to be the conscience of Fox and the rest of the cable news world, then it is a role that I enthusiastically embrace," he told Media Matters during an appearance at a WABC Radio job fair in New York City.

His comments came in response to a question about a May 4 online column Rivera wrote for Fox News Latino, in which he denounced the use of certain terms to describe immigrants, especially "aliens" and "illegals."

In the column, Rivera took news outlets, including Fox, to task for using such terms, writing:

Like the words 'Jew' or 'slob' or 'slut', the phrase 'illegal alien' has the elegance of being harsh, but defensible, if accurate. Although it can be used as a cutting reference, it can still be uttered in polite company without fear of raising many eyebrows, especially among those who feel similarly negative about the individual being described.   

Asked Tuesday if he had raised the issue with Fox executives, Rivera said, "I've talked to all my colleagues, everyone knows my feelings, from top to bottom. I think the combination of those two pejoratives, 'illegal' and 'aliens,' is really a way to demean people, to separate people. I've made my feelings very, very clear to my colleagues at Fox."

Rivera's complaints have as yet fallen on deaf ears. The "illegals" slur is regularly used on Fox's "straight news" and opinion programming and websites. The week before Rivera published his column, his Fox colleagues Bill O'Reilly, Tucker Carlson, and Mike Huckabee all defended such rhetoric in separate segments criticizing what O'Reilly termed the "crazy" opposition to the term by the "far left."

In fact, the same day Rivera published his column, The O'Reilly Factor guest host Laura Ingraham re-aired the segment in which O'Reilly was "taking on that far left campaign that wants to ban the word "illegal" when it comes to -- I'm saying it, wait - illegal aliens." Earlier in that same broadcast, Ingraham hosted Rivera to discuss a woman who brought her child into a tanning salon with her and a lethal hazing case at a Florida college.

Rivera credited Fox for letting him make his views clear on the air, even if the network would not ban the use of such phrases.

"And the great thing though, in fairness to Fox, they let me say and they let me publish that and, you know, I say it on the air as well."

Fox News is questioning a $5.9 million grant awarded to a University of Chicago health initiative from the Department of Health and Human Services, alleging that the White House is the reason the Chicago initiative received the grant. Fox anchor Bill Hemmer described the program as "run by President Obama's longtime friend and frequent golf buddy, Eric Whitaker" adding:

HEMMER: This initiative is connected to the University of Chicago medical center. Michelle Obama has a connection there; Valerie Jarrett has a connection there; David Axelrod has a history as well.

Fox contributor Alfonse D'Amato took it even further, saying, "They'd have you believe that out of the thousands of applicants ... that they won this on the merits. That's a lot of nonsense." He continued: "It really cries out to be investigated. If you really believe that they won this grant without the White House," then "you'd have to believe in the tooth fairy." He later stated that this "cries out to be investigated and really, Congressman [Daryl] Issa investigations subcommittee, they should really have a hearing on this." 

Read the full entry ...

Conservative media are once again hyping the amount of oil in the U.S. by including oil shale, ignoring that oil companies have found no profitable way to develop that resource.

The most recent flood of misinformation came after testimony by the Government Accountability Office's Anu Mittal about "oil shale," a sedimentary rock that when heated at high temperatures can produce liquid fuels (except gasoline) with a larger carbon footprint than conventional liquid fuels. While some conservative outlets claimed it was major news, the testimony -- which was based on an October 2010 GAO report -- contained no positive developments for oil shale, which has long been known to exist in large amounts in the U.S. but is not commercially viable. Earlier this year, energy expert Robert Rapier wrote, "It is not at all clear that even at $100 oil the shale in the Green River formation will be commercialized to produce oil." Even an editor at the right-wing blog The American Thinker acknowledged that "any large scale operations" for oil shale development would be "prohibitively expensive at this time." And just recently, Chevron gave up its oil shale lease in Colorado.

Mittal noted in her testimony that no technology to develop oil shale "has been shown to be economically or environmentally viable at a commercial scale." But Fox News' nightly news show and CNSNews.com, a project of the conservative Media Research Center, failed to mention that oil shale is not currently commercially viable. Breitbart.com and Investor's Business Daily incorrectly suggested that oil shale is not being developed because of Obama administration policies, rather than economic considerations. And Powerline suggested that oil shale is in fact viable because of the "advance of extraction technology," seemingly confusing oil shale with tight oil from shale rock, which can be extracted via horizontal drilling and hydrofracking.

It's interesting to see that the same people who dismiss the enormous potential of solar and wind power and attack investment in renewable energy are hyping the potential of oil shale. A December 2011 Congressional Research Service report, which classified oil shale as a "sub-economic" resource, stated that "despite government programs in the 1970s and early 1980s to stimulate development of the resource, production of oil shale is not yet commercially viable."

During a Fox & Friends discussion of airport pat downs by the Transportation Security Agency, Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham falsely claimed that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued an "edict" "brand[ing]" returning military veterans as "potential threats to the United States." The argument that Napolitano put forth an assessment demonizing veterans was debunked years ago ... by Fox News.

Furthermore, the TSA actually has a program developed in conjunction with the Department of Defense to "assist the military severely injured and their families traveling throughout our airport security checkpoints."

The genesis of Ingraham's claim is a since-withdrawn 2009 Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment on the possibility of right-wing extremism. The assessment warned of a possible resurgence among extremist groups that "will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat."

The assessment further stated: "The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today." The DHS cited a 2008 FBI report -- authored during the Bush administration -- as evidence that "some returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups."

On April 15, 2009, Catherine Herridge -- Fox News' national correspondent for homeland security, Justice Department, and intelligence issues -- and Fox News host Shepard Smith debunked the attacks from the right-wing media that the assessment showed that Napolitano was targeting conservatives, veterans, and other groups.

Read the full entry ...

Media Research Center director of media analysis Tim Graham wrote on his Twitter feed today: "If black Christian voters still vote for Obama now, they're not really Christians. Just like Robin Roberts for being such a lamb on ABC":

Graham was apparently referring to President Obama's interview with ABC News correspondent Robin Roberts, during which he announced his support for marriage equality, saying, "I think same sex couples should be able to get married."

As Graham's tweet shows, conservatives have been speculating about how African-American voters would take the news. Here's how Limbaugh highlighted the issue recently: "African-Americans on the Democrats' side, I hate to tell you what this came down to is the color of your skin versus the color of their money. Where Obama's concerned, guess what he chose."

This morning on Fox News, contributor Deneen Borelli took up the theme, repeatedly claiming that Obama has "thrown the black community really under the bus in order to get money from the gay community and to get their votes":

Recent polling, however, shows that black voters have not changed their views of Obama as a result of his statement on same-sex marriage.

Read the full entry ...

On Fox & Friends this morning, Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano suggested that it would be heroic if an American were to shoot down a surveillance drone above U.S. skies, saying that "[t]he first American patriot that shoots down one of these drones that comes too close to his children in his backyard will be an American hero." Watch:

NAPOLITANO: When the president bombed Libya, the Congress looked the other way. Now the president wants to dispatch plastic drones to spy on Americans. It would be reprehensible for the Congress to look the other way. And I want to give a shoutout to Charles Krauthammer. He's 100 percent correct. The first American patriot that shoots down one of these drones that comes too close to his children in his backyard will be an American hero.

Napolitano was responding in part to news that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has taken steps to explain rules regarding the increased domestic use of surveillance drones, a controversial issue that has drawn widespread criticism and concern. Napolitano was echoing his Fox News colleague Charles Krauthammer's comments opposing domestic drone use. Krauthammer said on the May 14 edition of Special Report: "I would say you ban it under all circumstances, and I would predict -- I'm not encouraging, but I'm predicting -- the first guy who uses a Second Amendment weapon to bring a drone down that's been hovering over his house is going to be a folk hero in this country. ... I'm not encouraging, I'm simply making a prediction."

There are serious and widespread privacy concerns regarding the use of drones for domestic surveillance. In a letter to the FAA, GOP Rep. Joe Barton and Democratic Rep. Ed Markey each expressed concerns about the need for strict privacy standards and transparency in the FAA rules. The American Civil Liberties Union has likewise expressed similar concerns. But while there are serious concerns over the use of drones domestically, Napolitano's suggestion that an "American patriot" should fire at one being used by law enforcement could lead to serious and potentially dangerous consequences.

Bill O'Reilly interviewed Romney campaign national finance committee co-chair Frank VanderSloot yesterday and whitewashed VanderSloot's record on LGBT issues. Discussing criticism of VanderSloot's record that appeared on KeepingGOPHonest.com, O'Reilly suggested the Obama campaign engaged in "political terrorism" and "slimed" VanderSloot. But O'Reilly failed to press or even mention the substance of VanderSloot's record on LGBT issues.

VanderSloot told O'Reilly that KeepingGOPHonest.com had "said that I hated gay people and that I was anti-gay." O'Reilly then interjected: "You're anti-gay. So anybody who was buying your product who was gay said I'm not going to buy my products from this guy." VanderSloot responded: "We have a lot of people we work with, who we deal with in the business world that are gay." And O'Reilly responded: "So they basically slimed you. They smeared you." And that is as close as O'Reilly got to confronting VanderSloot with the substance of VanderSloot's anti-LGBT record.

According to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, VanderSloot and his company, Melaleuca Inc., launched a billboard campaign in Idaho that attacked Idaho Public Television for airing a documentary called "It's Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues In Schools." Idaho Public Television said the documentary "chronicle[d] how some public and private schools in several states are dealing with gay issues in the classroom, specifically name-calling and harassment." But VanderSloot's billboards attacked the documentary, asking "Should public television promote the homosexual lifestyle to your children?"

Via Buzzfeed, here is an image of one of the VanderSloot-funded billboards (one that was defaced with the word "YES!" to alter its meaning):

[Buzzfeed, 5/15/12]

Read the full entry ...

During the past week, progressive organizations involved in a shareholder effort to force more transparency in health insurer WellPoint's political contributions have responded to The Wall Street Journal's recent editorial demonizing shareholder activism as "intimidation."

In the editorial, the Journal singled out Change to Win (CtW), a coalition of some of the nation's leading labor unions, and its WellPoint shareholder outreach and organizing efforts, claiming CtW was campaigning "to intimidate companies from exercising their free-speech rights." Last week, CtW's investment group responded to the Journal's attacks, writing that "the Journal is sending a chilling message: renounce principles of good corporate governance or face baseless and misleading attacks from the supposed voice of business."

Read the full entry ...

Rush Limbaugh was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians yesterday, but the whole affair seemed strangely cloaked in secrecy.

The AM talker was ushered into an invite-only ceremony that took place behind closed doors inside the State Capitol's House chambers, "which were locked and guarded by armed members of the Missouri Highway Patrol while the ceremony took place," according to the Kansas City Star.  Democratic lawmakers were banned from the induction.  

A bust of Limbaugh, a Cape Girardeau native, was unveiled at the Hall of Fame ceremony. But for the first time in memory the chamber galleries were closed to the public. And the Republican Speaker of the Missouri House, Steve Tilley, who selected Limbaugh for the honor, gave the media just twenty minutes notice before the event took place. 

The hush-hush nature of the event, which more closely resembled a clandestine political event than a feel-good acknowledgement, likely stemmed from the extraordinary controversy the selection sparked. Owing to Limbaugh's growing toxicity outside the narrow confines of right-wing talk radio, the backlash to the Missouri announcement was swift and fierce, coming as it did directly on the heels of Limbaugh's searing Sandra Fluke controversy.

The local chapter of the National Organization of Women sent hundreds of rolls of toilet paper to Tilley's office as part of its "Flush Rush" campaign. The state's Democratic governor and U.S. senator both denounced the choice of Limbaugh, and more than 35,000 people signed a petition condemning the decision to add Limbaugh's bust to a collection that includes Missourians Harry Truman and Mark Twain.  

Despite the protests, the induction took place on Monday. In secret. It turns out using government employees (i.e. law enforcement) to keep the public at bay while the taxpayers' (Republican) representatives honored a talk show host wasn't the only bout of irony that hovered over the Limbaugh event.

There was this one, too [emphasis added]:

Democrats oppose honoring Limbaugh, citing, in particular, his recent comments calling a female law student a "slut" after she testified in favor of health insurance for contraception.

Rep. Stacey Newman, D-Richmond Heights, said Tilley asked her and a few other Democrats "to be on our good behavior" at the upcoming induction.

Missouri Republicans were under siege for their decision to honor misogynist Rush Limbaugh in the wake of his three-day sexist rant against a law school student. So in hopes of avoiding a public spectacle, the Republican leader had urged Democrats to behave themselves during the Limbaugh ceremony. (A ceremony from which Democrats were eventually banned.)

Because Limbaugh always extends the "good behavior" courtesy to his adversaries, right??

Give us a break.

Like when he compared teenager Chelsea Clinton a dog, likened Hillary Clinton to "Nurse Ratched," ridiculed the current president as "Imam Obama" and called him "uppity," claimed Michelle Obama is not a "decent" American, denounced all the "lard-ass women" in politics, and mocked underprivileged children as "Wanton little waifs and serfs dependent on the state."

You mean that kind of good behavior?

Rush Limbaugh's entire radio career revolves around his willingness to be an unrelenting jackass. But when Republican politicians foolishly decided to honor his nasty name-calling, it's Limbaugh's opponents who are supposed to mind their manners so the talker doesn't feel uncomfortable, or worse, isn't publicly confronted with his own hate rhetoric?

That's called dishing it out but not being able to take it. And that's how bullies like Limbaugh prefer it.

A May 15 New York Times article reported that Rebekah Brooks, a former executive in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., will be prosecuted on various charges stemming from the phone hacking scandal surrounding News Corp. Brooks was the former CEO of News Corp.'s British newspaper division, News International. From The New York Times:

Once among the most powerful figures in the British media, with close contacts stretching from her boss, Rupert Murdoch, to her friend, David Cameron, Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Mr. Murdoch's British newspaper empire, was told by prosecutors on Tuesday that she, her husband and four others will face charges of conspiring to pervert the course of justice in the hacking scandal that has burrowed into public life here.

It was the first time the charges have been formulated since police reopened inquiries into the affair in January 2011 and intensified their questioning six months later. The development brought the scandal to a watershed between criminal investigations, which have resulted in around 50 people being arrested and then set free on bail, and the prospect of trial before robed judges.

The six were accused variously of concealing documents, computers and archive material from officers investigating the scandal last July.

Previously:

PHONE HACKS: A Guide To The News Corp. Scandal

Murdoch Admits Phone Hacking "Cover-Up"

British Panel: Murdoch Unfit To Lead Media Empire

As host of NBC's Meet the Press, David Gregory talks with the most influential people in politics and the media. It was on Meet the Press, for instance, that Vice President Joe Biden made news with his statement supporting gay marriage.

His guests expect a fair hearing. But today, Gregory is scheduled to address the National Federation of Independent Business' Small Business Summit.

As Think Progress notes, the NFIB is not merely an industry group -- it's an organization with a clear record of partisan activism. In the 2010 election cycle, NFIB's political action committee spent more than a million dollars to support Republican candidates, and none on Democrats.

The NFIB is also the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act.

Gregory's willingness to associate himself with a group like this raises questions about his allegiances.

The NFIB states that it "pushes back against [the] Big Labor agenda." The next time a union leader appears on Meet the Press, will he be getting a fair shake?

The appearance of a conflict of interest should be a concern for both Gregory and NBC.

In a May 14 op-ed for The Hill, Fox News correspondent Juan Williams decried politicization of the investigation of the ATF's botched Operation Fast and Furious and labeled House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa's inquiry into Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice (DOJ) a "monstrous witch hunt."

Williams' comments are in stark contrast to his network's coverage of the issue, which over the past year has promoted Issa's investigation at every turn while also giving airtime to those who would peddle conspiracy theories about the failed operation.

In his op-ed, Williams describes Issa as a modern day Captain Ahab, hell-bent on finding fault in Holder for Fast and Furious no matter how thin the evidence is suggesting that he had any involvement in the operation. According to Williams, the ultimate goal of Issa's inquiry is to "defame Holder and hurt the president." Warning about the potential consequences of Issa's contempt proceeding endgame, he concluded:

While Williams may be disturbed by the direction in which Issa's investigation is going, the truth is that his employer, Fox News, has served as a clearinghouse for politicized statements about Fast and Furious for over a year. In the last month alone, Issa and two of his lieutenants (Reps. Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz) have appeared on Fox News at least nine times to promote their investigation into Fast and Furious.

Read the full entry ...

Frank VanderSloot is an Idaho businessman and a prominent Mitt Romney donor. According to Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, he's also a member of Barack Obama's purported "enemies list."

In a May 10 column, The Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel complained about the scrutiny VanderSloot has come under since the Obama campaign questioned VanderSloot's background. On May 11, Fox jumped on the story, airing five separate segments that denounced attacks on a "private citizen."

But a crucial detail was missing from Strassel's column and the half-hour of airtime that Fox devoted to the story: VanderSloot is a national co-chair for Romney's finance committee. So VanderSloot is not merely a "private citizen," but actually a high-ranking member of Romney's campaign.

Fox's Neil Cavuto even let VanderSloot carry out his responsibilities as national finance co-chair on the air. Toward the end of an interview with Cavuto, VanderSloot said that he plans to "stand up and get more involved in this campaign, and we hope that other people will join us in that. Everybody should get out their checkbooks":

During this segment, Fox did display a hard-to-read screenshot of an Obama campaign website that identified VanderSloot as "the national finance co-chairman of the Romney campaign" -- for about 10 seconds:

Full video of the Fox segments below the jump.

Read the full entry ...