Via MSNBC:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., became the latest politician to join the “offensive monkey joke” club on Monday when he tweeted his thoughts on Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s willingness to be the first Iranian sent into space.

“So Ahmadinejad wants to be the first Iranian in space–wasn’t he just there last week?” said McCain in a tweet that also linked to a story about Iran’s claim to have launched a monkey into space last week.

The not-so-funny zinger drew criticism from McCain’s twitter followers, who called the joke “disgusting,” “despicable,” and “racist,” among other things. McCain fired back in a tweet, telling everyone to “lighten up” and learn how to “take a joke.” But even colleagues from McCain’s own party found the 76-year-old senator’s “get off my lawn” humor a little too over the top.

“Maybe you should wisen up & not make racist jokes,” said Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., on twitter.

Just to recap, 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was shot and killed last week about a mile from the president’s home in Chicago and police have yet to name a suspect, but rather than travel to his hometown to talk about guns, President Obama is headed to . . . Minneapolis?

President Obama arrived Monday in Minneapolis, where he’s launching his outside-the-Beltway effort to ban assault-style weapons and institute universal background checks for gun buyers.

Air Force One arrived about noon at the Air Reserve Station of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. He will then visit the Minneapolis Police Department’s Special Operations Center at 4115 Dupont Av. N., where he’ll appeal to Americans and law enforcement officials for stricter gun laws in the wake of several mass shootings in recent weeks, among them the killing of 20 children at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

How cowardly. Forbes actually named Minneapolis the “Safest City in America” in 2009, yet this is where the president chooses to launch his anti-gun plan?

So, why Minneapolis? 

The White House said Obama chose Minneapolis because the city “has taken important steps to reduce gun violence and foster a conversation in the community about what further action is needed.”

“I feel, and I certainly think you know, we’ve been asked by the people of Minneapolis to make this a safer city,” Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said. “We’ve taken a lot of steps to do that. I don’t believe the taxpayers of Minneapolis would like their dollars to be sent to companies that are fighting with us on that.”

The city of Minneapolis has spent $800,000 on guns and ammunition in the last few years, and Rybak said that gives the city power to get tough with gun manufacturers who don’t meet the city’s standards of safety. Rybak said the idea came from a recent summit with Midwest leaders, mayors and law enforcement officers about ways to reduce gun violence.

“We are going to redouble our efforts locally, because we were doing it before the president came and we will continue to do it after the president leaves,” said Minneapolis city councilman, and mayoral candidate, Don Samuels.

Wow. So the big plan to reduce gun violence is for the nation’s mayors to threaten gun and ammunition manufacturers to make as-yet-to-be-decided changes to their products?

For the record, the president’s hometown — the one he’s avoiding while talking about guns – had one person killed and eight wounded over the weekend.

You know how the media are always wringing their hands over the use of unnamed sources? It’s the “root of evil in journalism“, but necessary nonetheless, thus requiring detailed ethical guidelines.

Well, Saturday’s WaPo had the ultimate example, in a story on a ChiCom cyberattack on the newspaper:

The cyberattack targeted The Post’s main information technology server and several other computers, said people familiar with the incident who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe details the company did not release publicly.

Okay, so here was have a story in the Washington Post, written by two Washington Post reporters, about an event that happened to the Washington Post, quoting people working for the Washington Post, and not naming them because the Washington Post didn’t want to release the details. After this, how can they ever again turn down a bureaucrat or politician demanding anonymity?

The blackout during last night’s Super Bowl prompted this tweet from America’s science laureate, Bill Maher:

Thats just f*****g embarassing for America. But our infrastructure is crumbling so it kinda fits. Yoga in the dark anyone?

Keep in mind that only the Superdome had an electrical issue and the rest of New Orleans was fine, coupled with the news that they still have no clear idea what even happened yet to cause the localized problem, so, sure, blame a lack of government spending on infrastructure.

Maher conveniently leaves out the $336 million in enhancements to the Superdome since Hurricane Katrina in his crumbling infrastructure analysis.

An epic correction from the “paper of record” on their article detailing the president’s newly discovered skeet shooting hobby.

Correction: February 2, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the type of weapon that President Obama fired in a photo released Saturday by the White House. It was a shotgun, not a rifle.

Here’s the now infamous picture that’s gone viral. One question: if POTUS is shooting skeet, why’s he aiming so low? 

Be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m hunting a strawman!

If the Times’s author, let alone the editors, don’t know the difference between a shotgun and a rifle, how can they possibly understand assault weapon vs. assault rifle, or blunderbuss vs. assault rifle for that matter? They don’t know what it is, but they want it banned. 

Good luck with that.

CNN:

The New York Times says that Chinese hackers have carried out sustained attacks on its computer systems, breaking in and stealing the passwords of high-profile reporters and other staff members.

According to The Times, one of the biggest and most respected U.S. newspapers, the cyberassaults took place over the past four months, beginning during an investigation by the newspaper into the wealth reportedly accumulated by relatives of the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao.

The reports on Wen’s family members, alleging they had amassed financial holdings worth billions of dollars through business transactions, infuriated Chinese authorities, who responded byblocking access to The Times’s website in mainland China.

The Times said in an extensive article dated Wednesday that it had worked with computer security experts to monitor, study and then eject the attackers. It said that by following their movements, it aimed to “erect better defenses to block them” in the future.

The newspaper said that the security experts it used to counter the attacks had accumulated “digital evidence that Chinese hackers, using methods that some consultants have associated with the Chinese military in the past, breached The Times’s network.”

The Atlantic’s Janice Cane was not happy that Malkin’ s Twitchy Team called her magazine out for misrepresenting the Gabby Giffords handwritten letter that went viral today:

The Atlantic’s Janice Cane was not happy that Malkin’ s Twitchy Team called her magazine out for misrepresenting the Gabby Giffords handwritten letter that went viral today:

The Atlantic’s Janice Cane was not happy that Malkin’ s Twitchy Team called her magazine out for misrepresenting the Gabby Giffords handwritten letter that went viral today:

Tuesday saw Piers Morgan in third place (in the key 25-54 demo and in total audience) behind Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow. At what point does CNN recognize his daily segments on guns aren’t drawing viewers?

I really don’t have a problem with Morgan talking about guns every night — it’s his show. But, it’s just that he’s so lazy about it. Every night it’s the same argument of why the AR-15 and similar weapons should be banned while he ignores all of the other aspects to gun violence in America. A real debate would address issues that nobody wants to talk about and be actual journalism.

Instead we get distractions like Morgan calling a Second Amendment supporter a “heckler” yesterday — a description that was quickly corrected by CNN’s own Anderson Cooper and others.

What happened in Newtown, Conn., was a tragedy but isn’t it time for Morgan to move on? Like take his show on the road to Chicago where there’s a Newtown every month? Ah, but the problem with going to Chicago is that guns are already basically banned in the city. Decades of Morgan’s preferred progressive policies have failed to fix the problem.

One thing that must be addressed is the prosecution of criminals who commit crimes but are not properly incarcerated. One of the more recent Chicago gun victims was a known gang member with 29 previous arrests “including multiple felonies for drug dealing and weapons violations.” The question Piers Morgan should be asking is why was this thug even on the street? If carrying a “banned” gun has no real punishment, what’s the point?

And just last night, 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was shot and killed within walking distance of President Obama’s Chicago home. Last week Hadiya was in D.C. watching President Obama’s inauguration, but now she’s gone:

A week after attending presidential inauguration festivities in the nation’s capital and with dreams of a summer trip to Paris swirling in her 15-year-old imagination, Hadiya Pendleton was shot and killed Tuesday afternoon in the South Side’s Kenwood neighborhood.

Police say Hadiya was shot in the back at a neighborhood park about 2:30 p.m. in the 4500 block of South Oakenwald. A teen boy was shot in the leg and taken to Comer’s Children’s Hospital in serious condition.

“As usual, the bad guy aims, but he never hits the other bad guy . . . He hits the one that hurts the most to lose,” said Chicago Police Officer Damon Stewart, 36, Hadiya’s godfather. “I changed her diapers, I played with her growing up. My heart is broken.”

The shooting happened about three blocks from King College Prep, where Hadiya attended high school, played on the volleyball team and was a majorette with the band. The park where she was killed is a little less than a mile from President Barack Obama’s Kenwood home.

A murder that happened in broad daylight, involving gang violence and a mile from President Obama’s house. If that doesn’t get Morgan’s attention, I’m not sure what will. 

And here’s his classy letter to his readers posted on Red State about his moving on. Well worth a read and best of luck to Erick at Fox.

CNN’s Erin Burnett had the temerity to question whether or not President Obama actually shoots skeet.

If there are truthers and birthers, should there now be a new term for those who are doubting President Obama’s claim that he goes skeet shooting “all the time”? And should that term be “skeeters”? If so, count CNN’s rising young star Erin Burnett among the gadflies.

During a segment on Monday night, Burnett took over two minutes to dissect the president’s shooting claim — and she found it wanting.

“Obama the skeet shooter,” she began. “Yeah, I’m not making this up. I mean, if someone is, it isn’t me.”

She then played the clip of CNN’s Jessica Yellin confronting Press Secretary Jay Carney on the comments, repeatedly asking if a picture of the activity existed and why no one had ever heard of him doing it before.

Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher was so upset with Burnett’s allegations that he demanded an apology:

Yellin at least has the defense that it’s her job to “just ask questions” (although repeated requests for photographic evidence wouldn’t fly if the subject were, say, the state of the President’s marriage), but Burnett clearly speculated, without any evidence, that President Obama lied. Such speculation is to be expected from a deranged partisan, but not from a journalist. She owes him an apology.

Christopher’s thinly veiled reasoning for question the president? As always, racism:

Here’s an exit question for the likes of Burnett, Yellin, and Bolling: Why aren’t any of them, or anyone at all, asking for photographic evidence that Vice President Joe Biden, who also recently came out as a skeet-shooter, has skeet-shooted? Curious, indeed.

I can’t wait to see if the president shoots as well as he bowls.

Here’s the headline from CNN.com:

A pitch like this?

Notice how Obama missed the plate: too far to the left.

Details here.

Jenifer Herring, host of NBC6 Miami’s “Inside Couture” offers “10 Tips to Know Before Dating a Female Journalist.”

No. 7 is my favorite — and means I’ll never date a female journalist:

7. We hate your spelling errors. Make sure you switch the Autocorrect setting to ”ON” for your text messages because we will rip you a new one if you have a grammar or punctuation error. It is a huge pet peeve considering you graduated high school. This is expected of you.

The majority of us are perfectionists which is why so many copy editors across the world are women. You think we’re hard on you? We’re ten times harder on ourselves. If we do something wrong, you can guarantee we will kick ourselves for it for days (even weeks or months), so please don’t harp on us. We do a good enough job on our own.

In case you missed it over the weekend, Sarah Palin has left Fox News as a political contributor in a move that sources to New York Times describe as amicable, while sources to The Daily Beast say the split was over a pay-cut.

Whatever caused Palin to leave, Media Matters sees it as pretty big news:

Palin, Fox And The End Of An Era

Wasn’t it fitting that Sarah Palin’s exit from Fox News was made official the same week President Obama celebrated his second inauguration? Didn’t it just seem apt that the once-future star of Fox News and the Tea Party movement lost her national media platform just days after the president she tried to demonize for four years basked in the glow of his easy re-election victory?

Palin’s breakup with Fox was expected, but it’s still significant. A “milestone,” is how former Bush speechwriter David Frum put it.

The move represents the end of a brief, ill-conceived era within the conservative media movement, and specifically at Fox, where in the wake of Obama’s first White House win Palin, along with preposterous cohort Glenn Beck, was irresponsibly tapped to become a high-priced pundit who trafficked in hate. 

At Fox, Palin represented a particularly angry and juvenile wing of the conservative movement. It’s the part that appears deeply obsessed with Obama as a person; an unhealthy obsession that seemed to surpass any interest in his policies. With lazy name-calling as her weapon of choice, Palin served as Fox News’ point person for misguided snark and sophomoric put-downs. Palin also epitomized the uber-aggressive anti-intellectual push that coincided with Obama’s swearing in four years ago.

The rest of Eric Boehler’s drivel here.

Howard Kurtz from CNN piles on in a piece titled, “Sarah Palin’s fall from media stardom.” He ends with this:

Palin still has a passionate following and can still make news with a single Facebook posting. But for Fox News, at least, her market value had clearly plunged, and a divorce was inevitable.

Kurtz’s statement is only true, however, if Palin actually wanted to continue as a TV pundit. I got the feeling watching her last year that she didn’t.

Palin did give an interview to Breitbart News on what’s next for her that you can read here.

Personally, I think it’s a good move for her. I’m not sure Fox does anything to help her and if she does decide to make a national run in ‘16, she’ll need to focus on getting candidates elected in ‘14 — something she seems committed to according to the Breitbart piece.

As a sister to the “Gore Effect” (defined as unseasonably cold temperatures that accompany a visit by Al Gore when he speaks on global warming), might I propose the “Piers Morgan Effect?” The more Morgan spews anti-gun tirades via his Twitter feed or on his poorly rated television show, the more guns and ammunition are purchased. At least, there are attempts at purchases. Anyone who has recently tried to buy any sort of firearm, ammunition, magazine, or related product has probably found that at best their purchase is back-ordered. Most times these items are unavailable altogether. Other times, they’re available at wildly inflated prices. 30 round magazines that would normally retail from $15-30 are now fetching $100. Thousand dollar AR-15′s are going to for two or three times as much.

For example, here’s the ammo shelf at my local Cabela’s. No bullets for me:

In an interview for The New Republic, President Obama blamed Rush Limbaugh and Fox News for Republicans balking on new gun control laws. Greta van Susteren disagrees:

Fox News host Greta van Susteren isn’t taking lightly criticism from President Obama that her news network – along with conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh – is failing America by questioning his policies.

In an interview with the left-leaning magazine, The New Republic, Mr. Obama faulted Rush Limbaugh Fox News for punishing Republican members of Congress for “working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest.”

Ms. van Susteren blasted back: “Apparently, President Obama wants his usual media pass and Fox challenges his policies – which happens to be the media’s job,” she wrote.

Moreover, she wrote, some Democrats actually take heat from party leadership for appearing on Fox News.

Here’s the thing: Dems reportedly don’t have the votes to pass Diane Feinstein’s gun-control bill. Does President Obama think Senators Baucus, Begich, Pryor, Tester, Udall, Landrieu,

Seven died and five were wounded over the weekend in Chicago. The shooting death of Ronnie Chambers stood out:

Earlier Saturday, a man was fatally shot and another was wounded while sitting in a vehicle on the West Side. It happened around 2:15 a.m. Saturday in the 1100 block of South Mozart Street in Lawndale. Ronnie Chambers, 34, was shot in the head and died at the scene, according to police and the medical examiner’s office.

Chambers, a convicted felon and reputed Gangster Disciple gang member, was the fourth sibling in his family to die a violent death, according to the police. His other siblings also died from gunshot wounds, a police source said.

Chambers had 29 arrests and four convictions, including multiple felonies for drug dealing and weapons violations, according to another source.

Until the president and other Dems admit that the justice system’s catch-and-release policy isn’t working to control crime, there will never be a reduction in gun violence in our urban areas. I don’t care how much it costs, but somebody with 29 arrests and multiple felonies should not be on the street.