American Glob

The Associated Press is taking the seat vacated by Helen Thomas and FOX News is getting the AP’s old seat.

The White House Correspondents’ Association on Sunday announced that Fox News will get a coveted front-row seat in the White House briefing room.

The Associated Press will take Helen Thomas’ old seat, while Fox News will now occupy AP’s former seat. NPR and Bloomberg also applied for the position.

“It was a very difficult decision,” the White House Correspondents’ Association said in a statement. “The board received requests from Bloomberg and NPR in addition to Fox for relocation to the front row and felt all three made compelling cases. But the board ultimately was persuaded by Fox’s length of service and commitment to the White House television pool.”

Congratulations to Major Garret, he is one of the best in the business!

I wonder how David Axelrod and the rest of Obama’s inner circle feels about FOX moving to the front row. After all, FOX isn’t a real news organization, remember?

The heckler actually sings his heckle and doesn’t reserve his “fascist pig” accusation for Orszag alone. He includes White House adviser Larry Summers as well. Video courtesy of CNBC.

I’m not sure why this guy is calling Orszag a fascist pig but it’s noteworthy that Peter Orszag is leaving the White House today to join the Council on Foreign Relations.

Come to think of it, that’s probably the very reason for the outburst.

Note to the heckler: You need to listen to a little less of the Alex Jones Show, dude.

Turns out, pretty much everything you’ve heard about liberal bias in the media is true. The Daily Caller has proof that shows liberal “journalists” conspired to use the government to shut down FOX News.

God forbid there’s ONE news network in America that appeals to conservatives…

The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.

“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.

“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”

Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. “Do you really want the political parties/white house picking which media operations are news operations and which are a less respectable hybrid of news and political advocacy?”

But Zasloff stuck to his position. “I think that they are doing that anyway; they leak to whom they want to for political purposes,” he wrote. “If this means that some White House reporters don’t get a press pass for the press secretary’s daily briefing and that this means that they actually have to, you know, do some reporting and analysis instead of repeating press releases, then I’ll take that risk.”

Scherer seemed alarmed. “So we would have press briefings in which only media organizations that are deemed by the briefer to be acceptable are invited to attend?”

John Judis, a senior editor at the New Republic, came down on Zasloff’s side, the side of censorship. “Pre-Fox,” he wrote, “I’d say Scherer’s questions made sense as a question of principle. Now it is only tactical.”

I want to know if the Obama Administration was in on this.

Remember the fall of 2009 when the White House attacked FOX News, saying it wasn’t a real news organization? Where did that idea come from?

Could this Journolist scandal be worse than Watergate? Yes it can.

See the video below from fall 2009 where former Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn, a big fan of Chairman Mao, accuses FOX News of being an arm of the Republican Party.

Projection much, Anita?

Too bad you won’t be there even though, you know, you’re paying for it…

On Monday, the dignitaries hosted by President and Mrs. Obama will bring their regards from Broadway, not 10 Downing Street, while sharing talents that collectively have won them 11 Tony Awards.

The public is invited to watch — eventually — on “A Broadway Celebration,” which will be taped for broadcast Oct. 20 as an installment in the PBS series, “In Performance at the White House.”

The Tony-winning performers are actor-singers Nathan Lane (two Tonys), Audra McDonald (four Tonys), Idina Menzel, Tonya Pinkins and Karen Olivo (one each, for “Wicked,” “Jelly’s Last Jam” and “West Side Story,” respectively), and pianist Marvin Hamlisch, a Tony winner for his score to “A Chorus Line.” Working behind the scenes is Jerry Mitchell, Tony-winning choreographer (for the 2004 revival of “La Cage aux Folles”), who will guide 20 Washington, D.C., dance students in a segment from “Hairspray,” another show he choreographed.

Here’s my favorite part:

Presumably, critics who slammed the president and first lady last year for wasting taxpayer money when they flew to New York for dinner and a Broadway show (August Wilson’s drama “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”) won’t complain about Broadway coming to them.

Wrong.

Last week, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden set off a firestorm when he claimed that he was under direct orders from President Obama to use NASA to improve relations with the Muslim world.

Today, White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs responded to this situation by accusing Bolden of lying saying that Bolden “misspoke.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden must have misspoken when he told Al Jazeera last month that one of his top priorities is to reach out to Muslim countries.

“That was not his task and that’s not the task of NASA,” Gibbs said.

Bolden, though, said last month in the interview that it was President Obama who gave him that task. He made a similar claim in February.

One can overlook Ms. Kagan’s lack of judicial experience. Some can overlook her campus activism at Harvard University.

No one can overlook this.

In 1995 and 1996, future Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was involved in a bizarre controversy in which the Clinton White House was accused of siding with an eco-terrorist group locked in a standoff with federal agents deep in the woods of Oregon. The incident led to an investigation by House Republicans, who concluded that a staffer on the White House Council on Environmental Quality tipped off the environmental radicals to impending action by U.S. Forest Service law enforcement agents — a leak that Forest Service officials believed endangered the lives of their agents on the ground.

Kagan, at the time an associate White House counsel, had no role in leaking the feds’ plans to the radicals, but House Committee on Natural Resources investigators concluded she shirked her responsibility by not searching for the source of the leak or pushing for punishment of the leaker.

“Nothing was ever done by Elena Kagan to learn the details about the leaks, or to identify the leaker and ensure that proper punishment occurred,” the committee’s 1999 report concluded. In fact, investigators found evidence suggesting that Kagan, in internal White House discussions, defended the alleged leaker.

Read it all.

Supreme Court Justices should care about one thing and one thing only; The United States Constitution.

Elena Kagan’s priorities clearly lay elsewhere.

Perhaps a career at Greenpeace or the Earth Liberation Front might suit her better.

Merry Bizzaro Christmas! The White House Christmas Tree has ornaments featuring mass murderer Mao Zedong, a drag queen and Obama’s head pasted onto Mount Rushmore.

Nothing to see here people, move along…

“Why let a holiday season come between the White House and making some political statements? The White House pegged controversial designer Simon Doonan to oversee the Christmas decorations for the White House. Mr. Doonan, who is creative director of Barney’s New York has often caused a stir with his design choices. Like his naughty yuletide window display of Margaret Thatcher as a dowdy dominatrix and Dan Quayle as a ventriloquist’s dummy. For this year’s White House, he didn’t disappoint.”

Last month, the liberal website Talking Points Memo, joined the White House press pool.

Today, we learn the liberal website The Huffington Post is joining the White House press pool.

When will the White House press pool include Hot Air, Patterico and Red State?

I look forward to an official White House report from Hot Air’s Allahpundit that starts with the words “obligitory” or “heartache.”

Seriously though, how would HuffPo and TPM react if the shoe was on the other foot?

Indulge me as I state the obvious… Democrats won’t be in control forever and elephants never forget.

After Michaele and Tareq Salahi crashed a party at the White House last week, the most obvious question was “how did this happen?” How did two wannabe reality TV stars waltz into one of the most secure locations in the country and even make contact with President Obama and Vice President Biden?

Obama himself immediately called for a probe. On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported:

“WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama asked for a full review of how a Virginia couple vying for a spot in the cast of a reality-TV show was able to crash Tuesday’s state dinner for the prime minister of India, a White House official said Friday.”

“Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan issued a rare apology, saying the service took full responsibility for the episode and was “deeply concerned and embarrassed.”

“White House aides added a new wrinkle Friday, saying the couple was photographed with Mr. Obama on the receiving line. They also had their pictures taken with Vice President Joe Biden.”

“The Secret Service has not ruled out pursuing criminal charges against the couple…”

Two US Senators agree with the Secret Service:

“WASHINGTON — Two senators said Sunday that authorities should pursue criminal charges against the Virginia couple who crashed last week’s state dinner at the White House.”

“You’ve got to send a strong deterrent that people just don’t do this kind of thing,” Democrat Evan Bayh of Indiana said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona agreed, saying, “If it’s a federal crime to lie to a federal agent, and these people didn’t tell the truth about their invitation, then they should be in some way brought to justice here, again, as an example to others not to do it.”

What’s curious is that Politico and other news outlets are now reporting that Michaele and Tareq Salahi have met President Obama before. They even have a photo of Obama posing with them on a prior occasion.

“While Washington has been abuzz over Thanksgiving weekend about Michaele and Tareq Salahi crashing the White House state dinner, it turns out that may not be the first time that the couple has met Barack Obama.”

“A photo on a website for international polo fans, shows Obama with the Salahis at an America’s Polo Cup event (the authenticity of the photo, dated December 2008, has not yet been verified, and one web post about it says it was taken in 2005).”

So which is it? Are these people a couple of pranksters who made a stupid decision, exposing dangerous holes in the Secret Service protection of the president, or do they know someone who helped them get into the party?

And if they knew someone who helped them get in, why would Obama demand a probe of how they got in, particularly if HE knew them.

None of it adds up.

There’s got to be more to this story.

In the meantime, these boneheads are trying to sell the details to the highest bidder.

The vast majority of the people in the Obama Administration who are trying to fix it have never had a private sector job. If you needed surgery, would you want the operation to be done by someone who specializes in writing academic medical textbooks?

“A friend sends along the following chart from a J.P. Morgan research report. It examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy. It includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security—432 cabinet members in all.”