Um, well, duh. Via The Atlantic Wire:

You’re Not Really Following @BarackObama on Twitter

The 29,503,030 people who follow Barack Obama’s Twitter account might see his picture, see his name, see that little blue verified account badge and think they’re following the President — but it’s not him. All of the president’s named social media accounts, in fact, have been handed over to a non-partisan, not-for-profit group that isn’t overly concerned if you didn’t notice the transition. As the first sitting President with a Twitter account, the murky handover raises questions that didn’t exist ten years ago — can a politician legally hand over his valuable online identity to an outside group? is it ethical? — and makes clear federal regulators are unprepared to answer them.

But we noted this “murky handover” almost a month ago. Try to keep up, will ya?

Via CNN’s Jack Tapper:

Journalism 101: Don’t give up a source. But Jana Winter, an investigative journalist for Fox News, is facing hard time for refusing to do just that.

A friend of Winter’s told CNN, “She does not want to go to jail but is prepared to. She will not ever give up her sources and this whole ordeal has been very stressful.”

In July 2012, anonymous law enforcement sources told Winter that before he went on a shooting spree, Aurora movie theater shooter James Holmes gave his psychiatrist a notebook detailing how he planned to “kill people.”

This was a huge scoop, and clearly of public interest. It raised key questions: did the system fail the victims of the Aurora shooting? What exactly happened? Winter’s scoop helped provide a check on those in power who do not always like to talk about ways in which the system – and they – failed.

In fact, last Thursday, court documents revealed that more than a month before the attack, the same psychiatrist had told campus police that Holmes was homicidal. Yet instead of a focus on how the system failed, we’re talking about whether Winter should go to jail for reporting on Holmes’s journal, which was found in a mail room after the attack.

Holmes’s lawyers say whoever leaked the information to Winter violated a gag order, and they want her to say who it was. This has nothing to do with whether or not Holmes should go to jail, or be sentenced to death, or whether he is insane, or anything having to do with the sick and evil mind that wreaked havoc on the 12 people killed in the shooting.

A Colorado judge has said that he could rule this Wednesday whether Winter has to reveal her source, or go to jail.

The rest from Tapper here.

And here’s a good piece in New York Magazine on the double-standard on display because it’s Fox News and not, say, he New York Times that hasn’t covered the story as of the writing of this post:

It’s not often that the journalistic establishment rallies around Fox News, and there are many good reasons for that, but it’s also what makes the case of Jana Winter so fascinating. The FoxNews.com reporter  — yes, a real reporter, not a talking head — is facing pressure to reveal the source that told her about Aurora killer James Holmes’s scary journals, an ongoing media saga that’s just now getting any attention at all. For Fox, always with a chip on its shoulder, the support so far is not enough. And they’re right, in a way.

The leak to Winter is thought to violate a gag order in the case, and on Wednesday, a judge will decide whether she must testify “and potentially go to jail for refusing to reveal her source,” according to Fox, which has dedicated a live-coverage page to the Free Press Fight of Winter’s cause. Other outlets have been noticeably quiet, including the New York Times, which hasn’t touched the story.

“If @janawinter, who may go to jail to protect sources, worked for @nytimes instead of @FoxNews the case would be huge,” tweeted CNN’s Jim Spellman last night. “If she worked for mainstream newspapers or CNN, I think the case would have been covered,” Judith Miller, who served 85 days in jail for not revealing a source when she worked for the Times, told BuzzFeed. “There’s a certain reluctance because it’s Fox News.” (Miller is now a Fox News contributor.)

The rest here.

Via GOP.com:

Despite requests from Members of Congress to explain why celebrities can evade the travel restrictions to Cuba, the Obama Administration has remained silent on this the. American celebrities traveling to Cuba as tourists glamorizes the Castro regime, one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. Why won’t the Obama Administration respond to questions regarding what kind of licensees Beyonce and Jay-Z used to travel to Cuba?

Video of the briefing here.

The latest is the power couple and Obamaphiles were on a “cultural trip” with Treasury approval. If so, the White House should tell us exactly what was to be gained by the trip and why Beyonce and Jay-Z were chosen for such an important cultural mission.

Maybe the point of the mission was to show the Cubans just how funny we dress here in America?

And former Crossfire host Bill Press thinks it’s a grand idea, as long as the show is the “real” Crossfire — the one he hosted — and not the “kiddie” version from  2002 with Tucker Carlson, Bob Novak, Paul Begala and James Carville.

And as Press told Politico, he knows just the right host:

Although Press says he’s not convinced CNN will actually bring back the show — “I think it’s hard to go back in television” — he says he’ll be waiting for a phone call from CNN head Jeff Zucker.

“I’m tanned, rested and ready.”

Here’s hoping CNN chooses anyone but Press. (Or Olbermann, of course)

According to Capehart, the president wasn’t out of line when he called attorney general Kamala Harris “by far, the best looking attorney general” because Obama and Harris are friends:

What’s also true is that Obama and Harris are longtime friends. She was a featured speaker at the Democratic Convention in Charlotte. And Harris was a guest at the state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron. (Full disclosure: We were at the same table that night.)

And. . .

If I thought for one moment that’s what was going on, you better believe I’d hammer him for it. But that’s not the case here. Far from it. So lighten up, people.

Yeah, lighten up, people! Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine, however, hasn’t lightened up and goes as far as calling the president’s statement “disgraceful.”

For those who don’t see the problem here, the degree to which women are judged by their appearance remains an important hurdle to gender equality in the workforce. Women have a hard time being judged purely on their merits. Discussing their appearance in the context of evaluating their job performance makes it worse.

It’s not a compliment. And for a president who has become a cultural model for many of his supporters in so many other ways, the example he’s setting here is disgraceful.

Capehart has become quite the defender of Obama of late. Here he is writing about the president and his attempt to enact tougher gun laws:

On guns, Obama is doing all he can. Are you?

Doing all he can? Even Bush 41 banned the import of certain guns through an executive order, something the president chose not to do. In fact, not one of the president’s 23 proposals to reduce gun violence were an actual “executive order.” 

But here is what I think is Capehart’s funniest line defending the president:

And that doesn’t even include Obama’s forceful speech from the East Room last Thursday.

Really? A “forceful speech” is what gun-control advocates are banking on? Good luck with that.

First read Dan’s piece on the AP’s ridiculous new guidelines which eliminate “illegal immigrant” from its reporting, and then read this AP wire story from April 3 to see how well they’re implementing the new policy.

Up first, the use of “illegal immigrant” as a noun:

Plenty of Arizona Republicans fear their state will go the way of its neighbors unless the GOP softens its immigration stance. That includes McCain, who in 2005 joined with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to sponsor legislation that included a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally.

Maybe somebody can explain the difference between “illegal immigrant” and “immigrants in the country illegally” because I don’t understand it.

But the AP isn’t done. Here’s another way they refer to an “illegal immigrant” just a paragraph later:

A staunch supporter of strict border enforcement in 2008 and 2010, McCain has swung back after last year’s election to supporting an overhaul of the immigration system that includes citizenship for those in the U.S. without authorization.

What exactly is the difference between an “unauthorized immigrant” and an “illegal immigrant?” It’s all very confusing.

And it looks like using fewer words is approved as long as the words in question are a verb:

In an attempt to tamp down illegal immigration in California, his administration fortified the border with Mexico in the late 1990s.

Dear AP: define “illegal immigration” for me. Many thanks!

Here’s an excerpt from the latest analysis of the ratings for cable news, via TV Newser:

Best of luck to MSNBC and their  Ed Schultz replacement, Chris Hayes. With a little luck, Hayes might be able to compete against repeats of The O’Reilly Factor.

At issue is President Obama’s continued parroting of the claim that 40 percent of all guns sold/purchased in America are done so without a background check. From the president’s “remarks on guns safety” on March 28:

Why wouldn’t we want to make it more difficult for a dangerous person to get his or her hand on a gun?  Why wouldn’t we want to close the loophole that allows as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases to take place without a background check?  Why wouldn’t we do that?

The 40 percent figure, however, is misleading, as Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post explains:

When we first looked at this issue, we noted that congressional foes of gun control had made it difficult for the federal government to conduct research on guns. But, as shown by the Washington Post survey of Maryland gun buyers, there is nothing stopping private pollsters from producing a more up-to-date survey.

In the meantime, we have documented that (a) the survey numbers are about two decades old, so they include purchases that predate any background checks; (b) the survey sample is rather small; and (c) the results are significantly different when adjusted for “purchases” or “sales” — the phrasing used by the president.

Two months ago, we were willing to cut the White House some slack, given the paucity of recent data. But the president’s failure to acknowledge the significant questions about these old data, or his slippery phrasing, leaves us little choice but to downgrade this claim to Three Pinocchios.

A few months after defending the continued use of “illegal immigrant,” the Associated Press has surrendered to activist lobbying and dropped the term from its style book. Instead, it suggests “living in or entering a country illegally” or “without legal permission.” They still bar the use of “undocumented,” but give them time.

The rationale for the change is that they are “ridding the Stylebook of labels,” proscribing the use of, for example, “schizophrenic” and suggesting in its stead “diagnosed with schizophrenia.” So, I guess that means they’ll bar “thief” in favor of “person engaged in thievery”.

As David Frum notes, AP refers to “illegal campaign donors” (here, for instance) — will they stop that too?

In fact, why not ban nominalized adjectives altogether? If using “illegals” as a noun is barred (AP hasn’t allowed that for a while), shouldn’t they also prohibit “the rich,” “the poor,” “the disabled,” “the blind,” “the good,” “the bad,” “the ugly”? After all, no person is “poor,” they are just experiencing a lack of money.

This whole exercise is doubleplusungood.

With all the buzz about Sunday’s controversial Easter sermon delivered by the Reverend Luis Leon, I gave a listen to Leon’s Easter sermon from 2012 — that, like this year, was attended by the First Family — but what I didn’t hear was anything approaching the political nature of his sermon from a few days ago. Why would that be?

Here’s the passage at issue from Leon’s sermon two days ago:

“You can’t go back, you can’t live in the past,” he added. “It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling people back…for Blacks to be back in the back of the bus, for women to be back in the kitchen, for gays to be in the closet and for immigrants to be on their side of the border.”

What Pastor Leon said about blacks and women on Sunday was simply stupid; but his comments about gays and immigrants applied to President Obama in 2012 as much as they apply to the conservatives he attacked in 2013, no?

Remember, at the time of the 2012 sermon, President Obama had yet to “evolve” on gay rights and immigration reform — one of his 2008 campaign promises — was going nowhere. 

If those issues are important to Leon today, he should have spoken truth-to-power in 2012. More importantly, as 2012 was an election year, Leon had an opportunity to use his Easter pulpit to focus on those issues, yet he took a pass. Or maybe Luis “evolved” on these issues, too?

But don’t think the good pastor avoided all controversy in 2012: He does start his sermon bashing the New York Yankees, in the true spirit of Easter.

Via The Right Scoop:

Kirsten Powers slams Media Matters: They are not a legitimate organization or media watchdog group

Video here.

In the ratings:

From 10-11 p.m. ET, “All-Star Celebrity Apprentice“ (1.4/4 in 18-49, 4.6 million viewers overall) ranked #1 in the time period among ABC, CBS and NBC in all key demos (adults, men and women 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54). In its one-hour format, “Apprentice” is currently within 0.2 of a point of last week’s two-hour 1.6 in 18-49 and is running within one tenth of a point of last week’s 1.5 in these preliminary fast-affiliate ratings.In the 10:30 p.m. ET lead-in to local news, “All-Star Celebrity Apprentice” delivered a 31 percent margin of victory among ABC, CBS and NBC in the key news demo of adults 25-54 (with a 2.1 rating vs. a 1.6 for CBS’s encore dramas), breaking a tie with CBS during the prior half-hour (2.0 each). “Apprentice” was #1 among ABC, CBS and NBC from 10:30-11 p.m. in all key demos (adults, men and women 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54)From 7-9 p.m. ET, an encore telecast of “The Voice” (1.1/3 in 18-49, 4.3 million viewers overall) ranked #2 among ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox in adults 18-49, total viewers and other key categories. The “Voice” encore from 7-9 p.m.grew from its first half-hour to its fourth by 129% (to a 1.6 from a 0.7). The half-hour track is: 0.7, 0.9, 1.3, 1.6. In total viewers, the rebroadcast increased its overall audience by 67 percent or 2.2 million persons (5.4 million vs. 3.2 million).

So remember MSNBC: When you speak ill of Donald Trump, you’re speaking ill of NBC’s marquee property. Tread gingerly! 

Like the White House press crops isn’t pranked every day. Via Brett Baier:

Happy April Fools’ Day! The White House pulled a prank on the media this year and we couldn’t help but laugh! The White House announced a special video message from the President would be released on their website this morning.  We all waited with anticipation and imagine our surprise when we saw 9-year old Robby Novak, also known as the kid president,  goofing off in the White House briefing room! Check it out for yourself and if you have any April Fools’ Day stories to share with us you can do so here on the blog, via Facebook or Twitter @bretbaier or @specialreport!

Video here:

I can’t say this is out of the ordinary, as they changed WFB’s obituary numerous times without acknowledging it, but at what point do they realize that web versions of their pieces aren’t rough drafts?

The NY Daily News reports:

Readers had plenty of beef with the New York Times after an obituary of rocket scientist Yvonne Brill came off sounding sexist, some of them said.

The backlash forced The Times to change the obit online Saturday and scrub a reference to Brill’s cooking ability in the lead paragraph. It was replaced with her professional accomplishment as a “brilliant rocket scientist.”

The obit initially began: “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children.”

Her son, Matthew Brill, called her “the world’s best mom.”

Brill died Wednesday at the age of 88 in Princeton, N.J., after suffering complications from breast cancer.

The Canada native rose the ranks as a scientist in the 1940s during a time when women in the field were few.

During her storied career, she patented a propulsion system that would later be used for communications satellites. She was also honored by NASA, inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and presented with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama in 2011.

Those accomplishments weren’t lost on Times readers and bloggers, who slammed the opening of Brill’s obit.

The rest here.

And at the time of the writing of this post, the NYT has yet to acknowledge the multiple versions of Brill’s obituary.

The National Press Club has framed front pages of various newspapers on display, including one from the Midland, Texas, paper with the headline “Local Rancher Elected President,” reporting on George W. Bush’s victory over Al Gore. It’s funny because it’s correct but somehow incomplete.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution does the same thing on a much smaller scale regarding immigration, but it’s not funny. As I’ve written here and here, a perennial source for quotes is local immigration lawyer Charles Kuck, but his leadership of a local group that lobbies for permissive immigration laws is never disclosed. It’s clear at this point that this is not an omission but a conscious choice by the editors to hide his role as a lobbyist for a noble cause they consider beyond normal journalistic rules of disclosure.

The paper did it again earlier this month, in “Legal path to U.S. clogged” (behind the paywall). It quoted Rosemary Jenks, accurately describing her as “the director of government affairs for NumbersUSA, which supports lower immigration levels.” But then it describes Kuck this way: “who teaches immigration law at the University of Georgia,” and later, “an Atlanta-area immigration attorney and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.” All that is true enough, but incomplete — Kuck is vice chairman of the lobbying group GALEO, the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials. Not someone who happens to get their direct mail, not even an adjunct, which is his role at UGA’s law school, but one of the people actually directing the activities of an immigration lobbying group — and that affiliation doesn’t have to be disclosed? “In the tank” doesn’t begin to describe it.

And sad to say, NRO is one of the creditors.

Just another liberal institution making its way in the world — as long as they use somebody else’s money.

“It is to the long and illustrious tradition of the Caudillos that Comandante Hugo Chávez Frías truly belongs.” So begins an important account of the legacy of the recently deceased Venezuelan leader.

In majestic prose appearing in the Spanish newspaper El País earlier this month, Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa attempts to explain the subconscious roots of Hugo Chávez’s enormous appeal. This requires a lyrical and artistic understanding. Echoing Karl Popper’s Open Society, Vargas Llosa continues:

“In all this we see the fear of freedom — the fear that comes to man as a legacy from his primitive past, from the world before democracy and before the individual, when man was a material and gave over his free will and his initiative to a demigod, who made all the important decisions about his life.”

He knows whereof he speaks. The author traced the same psychological threads in his book The Festival of the Goat, profiling Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo. Just what might we expect from such a figure?

“At the crossroads between superman and buffoon, the Caudillo makes and unmakes at his discretion, inspired by God or by an ideology that almost always mixes both socialism and fascism — the two forms of collective super-statism.”

And how will we recognize the Caudillismo when we see it? One clue is its style.

“The Caudillo communicates directly with his people, through demagoguery, rhetoric, and vast spectacles and scenes of magical-religious importance.”

 Vargas Llosa’s remarkable article, still available only in Spanish, is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand both Hugo Chávez and the seismic changes wrought in Latin America by this historic figure. The author also has a message for the wider world: “Although more visible in Latin America, this line of the Caudillos continues to loom everywhere, in France and in the other mature democracies.”

It’s a timely observation. After attending Chávez’s funeral, France’s minister for overseas territories told a French radio station that the world needed “more dictators” like him. There have also been calls by left-wing French political parties to name a Parisian street after the late leader.

“Neither Chávez nor any other Caudillo can appear without a climate of prior skepticism and disgust such as existed in Venezuela in February 1992,” adds Vargas Llosa.

In these days of European strife, where clear-minded reform and leadership are urgently demanded, Vargas Llosa’s poetic insight has relevance and resonance reaching far beyond the confines of the Latin American situation he describes.

Oh my. First the story of the SEAL not having insurance fell apart, and now the rest of Phil Bronstein’s story is in question? CNN’s Peter Bergen writes:

In February, Esquire magazine published a lengthy profile of “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden.” The story did not identify the killer by his real name, referring to him only as ”the Shooter.”

The Shooter told Esquire that the night bin Laden was killed he had encountered al Qaeda’s leader face-to-face in the top-floor bedroom of the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden had been hiding for more than five years.

The Shooter explained that when he found bin Laden in his bedroom the al Qaeda leader was standing up and had a gun “within reach” and it was only then that the Shooter fired the two shots into bin Laden’s forehead that killed him. That account was in conflict with the account from another raid participant in a wildly successful book “No Easy Day.”

Now, another member of the secretive SEAL Team 6, which executed the bin Laden raid, tells CNN the story of the Shooter as presented in Esquire is false. According to this serving SEAL Team 6 operator, the story is “complete B-S.”

SEAL Team 6 operators are now in “serious lockdown” when it comes to “talking to anybody” about the bin Laden raid and say they have been frustrated to see what they consider to be the inaccurate story in Esquire receive considerable play without a response. Phil Bronstein, who wrote the 15,000-word piece about the Shooter for Esquire, was booked on CNN, Fox and many other TV networks after his story came out.

The rest from Bergen here.

And from the archives in February when the milblog site “Blackfive” called the Bronstein piece “fiction.” 

But don’t feel bad for Phil Bronstein. If his career as an investigative reporter doesn’t pan out, he can always go to plan B: Komodo dragon whisperer.

Here’s a screenshot from a search of “Amanda Knox” on Google news. 

That’s quite a lot of coverage for a non-story. Here’s ABC News on what would happen if Knox were to be found guilty at retrial:

Her lawyer said the new trial will probably start again next year. He said Knox will not come back for new trial.

The new trial does not mean that Knox would be back in an Italian prison any time soon. She would not be required to return to Italy for the trial and if she is convicted again, that ruling would be appealed up to the Supreme Court. More legal proceedings will be necessary to extradite Knox to Italy. Experts do not believe such an effort would be successful.

Move along MSM, move along.

Here’s syndicated columnists Cynthia Tucker, via CNN, on conservative Dr. Ben Carson’s “mistaken” philosophy:

Like giddy teenagers, Republican activists have fallen for another charming, personable and accomplished black conservative. Dr. Ben Carson is the newest object of their crush, which was born of a desperate need to attract more black men and women as high-profile standard-bearers.

(Giddy conservative teenagers love neurosurgeons? There’s hope. . .)

You can’t blame Republican loyalists for swooning over the doc, a renowned surgeon who rose from poverty to head pediatric neurosurgery at Baltimore’s famed Johns Hopkins Hospital. If wooing voters of color were simply a matter of finding an attractive black face with an inspiring personal story and an impressive resume, Carson would be hard to beat.

But black voters tend to be more discerning than that. They have shown an unerring instinct for rejecting condescension and dismissing tokenism. There are many black Americans who admire Carson for his professional accomplishments (I’m one of them), but that admiration is unlikely to translate into votes.

(Newsflash: We like Dr. Carson because of his views. His skin color enters into it only with MSM “analysis.” We conservatives like to say we judge a man by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. Try it sometime . . .)

One of the reasons is that Carson doesn’t seem to know black Americans’ political values very well. In his most recent book — a political tract called “America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great” — he writes: “Many African-Americans voted for Obama simply because he was a black man and not because they resonated philosophically with his policies.” In fact,black voters have been increasingly allied with the Democratic Party since the 1960s when Lyndon Johnson pushed through significant civil rights legislation. Al Gore received about 95% of the black vote in 2000, John Kerry about 93% in 2004.

(And how has this blind faith toward Dems worked out for blacks in America?)

Moreover, Carson seems to have adopted the view, popular among so many ultra-conservatives, that the Democratic Party appeals to voters who shun the work ethic.

(Evil conservatives want people to work. Dems don’t?)

I could go on, but you can read the rest here . . . if you really want to.