nbc

Everyone thought the Rev. Wright situation would really hurt Obama. Well it didn't. Instead Hillary's lying has hurt her:

As expected, one of the two major Democratic candidates saw a downturn in the latest NBC/WSJ poll, but it's not the candidate that you think. Hillary Clinton is sporting the lowest personal ratings of the campaign. Moreover, her 37 percent positive rating is the lowest the NBC/WSJ poll has recorded since March 2001, two months after she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York.

We have been through almost eight years of a President who constantly feeds us lies. I don't think the American people want four more of that. Perhaps it's time Hillary bow out and try to save any face she might have, but I doubt that will happen. Instead she will stay in, destroying the party, because everything is about her.

They took action right away on this one:

NBC News said Tuesday it has reprimanded the employee responsible for mistakenly flashing a picture of Osama bin Laden on MSNBC as Chris Matthews talked about Barack Obama.

"This mistake was inexcusable," MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said.

It happened during the opening of "Hardball" Monday evening. Matthews was previewing a story on the controversy over Obama's use of another politician's words, and a picture of bin Laden briefly flashed on the screen beside him with the headline "Words About Words."

Unlike FOX, where the employee would have been promoted or awarded in some way.

We all agreed that Shuster needed to be suspended for his comment, but that doesn't appear to be enough for Hillary - she wants more:

"Nothing justifies the kind of debasing language that David Shuster used and no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient," Clinton wrote to NBC News President Steve Capus, who apparently had already called Clinton to personally apologize.

Like I said, Shuster's comments were inappropriate and he deserved to be suspended, but damn it sure sounds like Hillary wants him fired now. This will give the Republicans some good ammo to use if Hillary becomes the nominee. I can hear it now; "wow I am glad a world leader didn't say that, we would be in world war 3".

Also - why hasn't Clinton demanded such action when O'Reilly insults our homeless veterans? Don't they deserve as much attention as Chelsea?

This is all now becoming an attention game. Hillary is preparing for a bad month, so she wants to get as much traction from this as possible.

As an undecided Democratic voter, this hasn't pushed me to vote for Obama. What it has done is push me further from punching the ballot for Clinton.

They are presenting him as some regular pundit. Pretty bad when CNN suspended him as a pundit because of his ties to the Clinton campaign. Does Tim Russert not have any common sense - or is NBC trying to push the elections a little more?

Bob Franken has written an article blasting the NV judge who said Dennis Kucinich could appear in the NBC debate:

The Nevada judge who ruled that NBC must include Dennis Kucinich in the Tuesday night debate not only needs to go back to law school, he needs a refresher course in high school civics.

Happily, the state Supreme Court stepped in and overturned him. But it shouldn’t have been necessary.

Whether you like the media or not, particularly the aforementioned MSM, one of our fundamental principles is that government does not dictate how it covers the news.

Yes that is true Bob, but listen to the reason the judge made the order:

That's right, we have self proclaimed lawyers on the right, and they are not happy with a judge's decision yesterday to allow Dennis Kucinich in tonight's MSNBC debate:

However, the judgement is absurd on its face. In the first place, the state courts wouldn't have jurisdiction for a national broadcast. Constitutionally, this case belonged in federal court, which has jurisdiction on any interstate commerce complaints. Kucinich filed his tort in state court hoping to find a sympathetic, activist judge who didn't know much about the law, and apparently succeeded.

More offensively, the courts don't have any business telling NBC or any other network that they have to include certain individuals in a debate. It may be a poor decision to exclude certain candidates, but the broadcast is the property of the network and it's their decision to make. The court apparently has no respect for private property in that sense.

Dave Kurtz has a very interesting post up at TPM asking exactly what Senator Craig did wrong.

We've had lots of back and forth discussion here internally about what conduct by Sen. Craig in that Minneapolis airport restroom was actually illegal. We've posted the arrest report, so take a look and reach your own conclusions.

Leering stares, foot tapping, a lingering presence. Are any of those, even taken together, what most reasonable people would call criminal? Is it because they happened in a bathroom? God knows they happen every night in bars and other public spaces, among gays and straights.

Please take a moment and read the entire post. I have been trying to wrap my brain around this very question.

The charges do seem very far fetched, and I highly doubt they would have stuck if Senator Craig would have decided to fight them. The problem is he knew what he was planning on doing and in turn pleaded to the charges. I got a funny feeling this decision was made by him in hopes of saving public embarrassment, a plan that did not pan out how he wanted.

So a man soliciting sex from another man in a restroom is worthy of a sting operation. Does the same apply if a man solicits sex from a woman, or vice a versa? It appears that this case really exposes the hypocrisy of our legal system and those charged with enforcing it.