Remember the days when George W. Bush was hammered in the media for his vast expansions of executive power and tactics in the War on Terrorâ„¢? Well, some in the liberal blogosphere have noticed a disturbing lack of consistency in calling out Barack Obama for using the same tactics, or even going beyond Bush-era policies. Several former Bush administration officials have noted the hypocrisy, and a POLITICO piece today chronicles several policy areas where Bush would have never gotten a pass like Obama has.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been trying to revive his flagging campaign with the promise of $2.50-a-gallon gasoline, while other Republicans have tried to attack President Obama over rising gas prices. The President has handled these attacks pretty well, but it’s nice to see him getting an assist from the folks over at Fox News, who echoed President Obama’s responses to gas price politics…three years before he gave them. Countdown’s Keith Olbermann has the video, including Bill O’Reilly’s eerily similar remarks to President Obama’s, but in defense of President George W. Bush.

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough went off on a fun little tangent Friday morning when he, like President Obama, praised former president George W. Bush on his post-9/11 2001 World Series baseball pitch.

With gas prices increasing at a perilous rate, Bernie Goldberg took a look on tonight’s Factor at the way the media has been reporting the story, and found the stoic disposition of many broadcasts to clash starkly with the emotional accounts from when the same news came to America during the Bush administration. As he told Bill O’Reilly tonight, he concludes that the difference in passion in reporting was attributed to the fact that “too many journalists today are acting like stenographers and not reporters.”

Has the mainstream media been giving Barack Obama a pass when it comes to rising gas prices? Economic reporter Stuart Varney, sitting in for Neil Cavuto on Monday, noticed that major U.S. newspapers carried but a single story about soaring prices at the pump… dated March 8, 2011 and running under the headline “U.S. Economy is Better Prepared for Rising Gas Costs.”

Recently, the most attention has been paid to a politician’s finger since that brief period in the 90s when Sen. Bob Dole copied Carson Daly’s black nail polish look (Bring it back, Bob! It worked!). The reason? The infamous picture of Jan Brewer either horribly disrespecting the President or pointing out that he has some ear wax buildup. Since that photo surfaced, some commentators have accused the moment of everything from racism to intentional self promotion. But, did you know that a very similar moment occurred a few years back between Brian Williams and George W. Bush?

A lot has already been said about Bret Baier‘s recent interview with GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and it’s somewhat contentious tone, but Stephen Colbert had something new to add during last night’s episode of The Colbert Report. Baier’s “testy” interview style was in stark contrast to the chummy chat he shared with then outgoing President George W. Bush back in 2008, revealing perhaps that Baier’s confrontational questions is not consistent applied to all of his subjects.

The New York Times‘ Thomas Friedman told The McLaughlin Group host John McLaughlin that he gives President Barack Obama high marks… for following through on a certain previous president’s foreign policy plans.

There are probably fewer things scarier in life than an ultra-serious bald man with glasses popping up on a futuristic video conference screen and telling you that you’ve been exposed to a fatal poison and you’re all going to die. But that’s what happened in October 2001, when Dick Cheney showed up on the secure line, sharing the bad news. Condoleezza Rice recounted the incident Tuesday on Nightline to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

In a wide-ranging interview with GQ‘s Mark Anthony Green, in which he hits on everything from skinny jeans to his friendship with Herman Cain, FOX News’ Sean Hannity dropped a few interesting bombshells, saying if he were President, he’d like Rick Perry as his Secretary of Defense (” I think he’d be pretty tough”), and [...]

Yesterday, President Obama announced that the war in Iraq was finally, officially, coming to an end by the end of the year. America’s troops would leave the nation to their own devices, with only contractors and civil workers left behind. On last night’s “Rewrite” segment, Lawrence O’Donnell took the opportunity to see where the President was when we first launched the war– at a speech, as a state senator, criticizing President Bush for his “dumb war.”

Today on The Five, Eric Bolling (taking a page from one of Drudge’s more inspired headlines) asked Greg Gutfeld if he was surprised that a Nobel Peace Prize-winning president had killed so many people with Predator drones. A debate over President Obama and President Bush’s dictator-toppling tactics and the reactions to them followed.

To the untrained eye it might seem that Norah O’Donnell of CBS should be buying a beer for White House Press Secretary Jay Carney right now to make up for her hardcore follow-up questioning at this afternoon’s press briefing on how the United States would be reacting to the attempted assassination attempt of Adel A. Al-Jubeir, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States. Mediaite’s own White House reporter Tommy Christopher assures me this kind of questioning is routine at White House briefings.

According to a new Gallup Poll, the majority of Americans feel that Barack Obama has been “about the same” or “worse” than George W. Bush as president. 65 percent of those polled feel that Obama is doing “about the same” or “worse” than Bush; or, if you’d rather, 65 percent feel that Obama is doing “about the same” or “better” than W.

On Friday night’s Real Time, host Bill Maher punctuated his dissection of Thursday night’s Fox News/Google Republican Presidential Debate with a nasty sexist slam of moderator Megyn Kelly. Recapping one of Kelly’s questions, Maher referred to her simply as “this blonde twink.” Former Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman called Maher out over the remark, prompting him to resort to the familiar, idiotic defense that it’d be sexist for him not to insult Kelly.

Ari Fleischer, former White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush, has joined CNN as a political contributor, the network announced this morning. Fleischer served as the primary spokesman on Bush’s presidential campaign and through the rough early years of Bush’s presidency, covering 2000 recount, 9/11 and the U.S.’s entry into Iraq and Afghanistan, [...]

During his “worst Persons” segment Tuesday night, Countdown host Keith Olbermann addressed Paul Krugman‘s brief, controversial 9/11 column with the kind of full-throated agreement that would make Dizzy Gillespie envious. Olbermann concluded the segment by saying that, “between 2002 and 2009, the leading terrorist groups in this country were the Republican Party, and the presidential administration of George W. Bush.”

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman observed 9/11 this weekend with a provocative blog post entitled “Years of Shame.” In it he calls out “Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror,” of that day and suggests that the memory of 9/11 has been primarily used as a “wedge issue” for political gain. Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly hosted a heated debate on this column between former Bush administration official Brad Blakeman and Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin.

On Monday’s Morning Joe, panelist Tavis Smiley caused a minor uproar when he pointed out that a key difference between Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush is that “one of those guys lied to the American people.” Host Joe Scarborough, guest Jon Meacham, and even Mika Brzezinski pushed back on the idea that Bush “lied,” laying the blame for bad WMD intel at the feet of CIA Director George Tenet, and Smiley eventually got lost in the semantic weeds.

In a heartfelt tribute to the victims of Flight 93, Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton visited the field in Shanksville, PA, where passengers on that flight managed to get the plane to land, evading its ultimate destination. Both Presidents gave their perspectives in solemn addresses, President Bush reminded the audience that the event was a reminder for our nation to “serve the cause of freedom,” while President Clinton concluded that the heroes of that flight reminded us that “humanity is what matters most.”

The rumored tension between Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry and the the last man to hold both titles simultaneously, President George W. Bush, has made for plenty of headlines– a tension around with many in the Bush camp have been implicated. Hosting The O’Reilly Factor tonight, Laura Ingraham got to speak to one of those in the Bush camp, Karl Rove, and drilled him on the relationship between two of his former candidates. Rove was not too happy to be addressing the rumors.

Speaker John Boehner‘s public refusal to allow President Obama to address a joint session of Congress Wednesday has touched off a media maelstrom that the White House has decried publicly (while privately fueling it), and the mainstream media has cast Boehner’s actions as a sign of Obama administration dysfunction. That narrative is aided by an emerging myth, that then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill once “Boehnered” Ronald Reagan, so Boehner’s insult to the presidency was no big deal.

Republican frontrunner Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has been under a glaring media spotlight since entering the GOP field, and while it hasn’t been completely ignored, Perry’s life insurance scheme to open a futures market on dead Texas teachers deserves more attention than it’s getting. Even the liberals who have noted the ghoulish plan have failed to connect it to his new vision of the Civil Rights movement. Perry’s plan perfectly illustrates the need for what he calls “over-regulation,” but what the rest of us call “regulation.”

Journalist Peter Schnall offered a revealing interview with Turnstyle about the effort that went into convincing former President George W. Bush to discuss his memories of 9/11 with National Geographic for the channel’s upcoming documentary special. As it turns out, Bush’s people were quite open to the interview and, after what turned out to be months of negotiations, agreed that he would sit down with Schnall for an incredible four hours, without having interview questions presented to him in advance.

“He answered all the questions,” Schnall shared. “We sat down for two hours each day. He had no notes, he never got up. It was a very interesting journey.”

On a day that has seen a lot of painful (and painfully dull) rehashing of political angst against former Vice President Dick Cheney, pegged to his upcoming autobiography, Ed Schultz’s Cheney panel managed to squeeze out an entertaining wrinkle or two. On Thursday night’s The Ed Show, Ring of Fire host Mike Papantonio struggled to keep Cheney’s villainy on par with Dubya’s, while Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead was suitably disturbed by the idea of Cheney as Bush’s binky.