your moment of Glenn Glenn Beck received a very special present this St. Patrick's Day from one of his major chalkboard villains, SEIU president Andy Stern: an SEIU smock and a letter written in "little girl's writing." (more...)

I kid! Glenn Beck is not actually running President Obama's anything schedule, nevertheless, he apparently wields a great deal of influence on the decision making of the Obama administration. At least when it comes to making decisions about the media. This from this morning's Playbook: (more...)

Technically speaking President Obama did not tell his staff to stop reading the blogosphere, nor Politico for that matter, but it's not hard to draw a connection between the president's warning to staff not to get "absorbed in the Washington finger-pointing and intrigue" and the former two, who tend to feed on that very intrigue and finger-pointing. (more...)

President George W. Bush has done an exceptional job of staying out of the media (and President Obama's) spotlight since leaving office just over a year ago (wow...I just did a double-take...only a year!). We might begin to see and hear more from him come this November, however, which is when his book is set to be released. November 8, to be exact, which is one week after the midterms -- it will be interesting to see what the national political mood is by that point and whether Bush will be out stumping for anyone under the guise of a book tour. (more...)

Acknowledging the omen of last Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts, President Obama and his team are repositioning themselves publicly in order to showcase the president's "feisty side," White House senior adviser David Axelrod told Politico. He was quick to note, though, that there will be "no reinventing” despite Washington's desire for "a shakeup or human sacrifice.” Call it what you will, but isn't a new public strategy a form of reinvention? (more...)

Happy Anniversary Mr. President. Oy. In the words of Jake Tapper, "one of the bluest states in the nation just gave President Obama the WORST anniversary gift he could think of." Or at least one of them. The day after recriminations and analysis have already started as everyone from the White House on down tries to figure out how this happened and what to do next. And not surprisingly, plenty of people are weighing in. (more...)

President Obama and the media is getting The New Yorker treatment this week. Obama is about to celebrate his first year as President. And boy has it been a year. That intensity that has surrounded his first year, while partly the result of events that followed Obama to the Oval Office, is also the result of media coverage that only increased after his inauguration. (more...)

video Politico, which believe it or not has only been in existence for three years now, has made its fair share of critics in D.C. many of whom feel the site is the progenitor of the type of journalism now plaguing the administration, which tends to take the minutae and blow it up into a trend piece. What Politico hasn't been accused of thus far is being a mouthpiece for the angry, retributive, gun-slinging former Vice Presidents. Until last night, that is. (more...)

The newest book about 2008's soon-to-be-legendary presidential campaign hits shelves today. WaPo reporter Anne Kornblut's Notes from the Cracked Ceiling: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and What It Will Take for a Woman to Win hits bookshelves today and some early excerpts (courtesy of Mike Allen) not only looks like the makings for a good read but suggest that the battle of the political sexes -- so prevalent during much of the campaign -- may be about to return as a major talking point. And well it should. (more...)

poll Last week, Mediaite asked you who was the top online editor of 2009. As we'd mentioned at the time, some sites didn't quite fit into the bloggy rubric. Which is why in this round, we're recognizing sites which are too vast and ambitious in scope to describe in terms of the work of just one editor. You know the drill, loyal, smart, and attractive readers: below is a list of our nominees for the top site of 2009, including The Business Insider, Ars Technica, Politico, and Talking Points Memo. Vote for your favorite, or leave any deserving candidates you think we left out in the comments: (more...)

As everyone knows by now Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigeran businessman who attempted to blow up Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, was already on a U.S. government watch list, thanks in part to the fact his father reported him to the U.S. Government. What is less clear is how someone on a watch list, who was denied a visa by the British, managed to get on a States-bound plane without being subjected to increased security (or any?). This explanation from a senior administration official, via Politico, may go some ways to answering that question: There's a lot of bureaucracy involved.

'There are over 400,000 individuals in the Terrorist Screening Data Base (TSDB), the main identities database within the U.S. Government for international terrorism. The TSDB is a subset of the 550,000 individuals contained in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), which is the Intelligence Community's central repository of information on known and suspected international terrorists. Less than 4,000 of the names in the TSDB are on the 'No Fly' list and another 14,000 names are on the 'Selectee' list, which calls for mandatory secondary screening. There are established criteria for both the no fly and selectee lists. After the suspect's father spoke to the US Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria the US government took action and shared the information with relevant agencies across the government which resulted in a TIDE record being created for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in November 2009. It was decided that there was insufficient information at that time based on existing watch list criteria to include him in the terrorist watch list, the no fly list or the mandatory secondary screening list, thus he was not 'watch-listed' as of 25 December 2009.'

Emphasis mine, because that is the sort of disclosure that is alternately going to result in accusations of too much political correctness at play, and/or the evils of government bureaucracy, or both (ahem, Glenn Beck). Press Secretary Robert Gibbs appeared to acknowledge the bureaucracy part at least on This Week yesterday noting that "these procedures are several years old” and Thursday's incident had "precipitated both a watch listing review and a detection capabilities review" neither of which sound like the sort of thing that bear results anytime soon. So in the meantime probably be prepared for excess random security restrictions and extra, extra long lineups, and at least a few false alarms. Pic via.

This is one of those stories you have to read twice because it's almost too ridiculous to believe. Apparently, whilst vacationing with her family in Hawaii this week Sarah Palin, having no other head accessories at her disposal, opted to wear what is now a year-old John McCain campaign visor to the beach. Except in order to remain "incognito" she blacked out McCain's name with marker (she blacked out his name with a marker...because there were no other hats in Hawaii?). TMZ, which is probably kicking itself these days for dropping the whole TMZDC idea, snapped the pictures. So yes, even for Sarah Palin this is a bit strange (also, one imagines, both messy and smelly.) Politico's Playbook caught up with the former governor and this is what she had to say for herself:

Declaring that she 'was honored and proud to run with him,' the former Alaska governor pushed back hard last night against a report that she had disrespected Sen. McCain by blacking out his name on a sun visor she wore on the beach....Palin tells us she was just trying to 'be incognito' and shield her children and husband, Todd, from paparazzi: 'I am so sorry if people took this silly incident the wrong way. I adore John McCain, support him 100 percent and will do everything I can to support his reelection. As everyone knows, I was honored and proud to run with him. And Todd and I were with him in D.C. just a week ago. So much for trying to be incognito.'

Someone send the woman a hat, or something.

President Obama sometimes doesn't have a lot of luck when it comes to timing. First there was Kanye West, followed by Joe Wilson, and now Sarah Palin going Rogue all over the President's Asia trip. Once again a major Obama initiative has been seemingly trumped by spectacle (unless, of course, you are a Time reader). Moreover on top of getting submerged under a bunch of Sarah Palin madness the White House apparently feels that the coverage they did get Stateside was 'asinine.' From today's Playbook: (more...)

Amidst all the chatter about the upcoming Week of Palin, you may have noted that President Obama is part way through an important trip to Asia. The President, and the press corp. traveling with him, landed in China Sunday and are scheduled to depart Tuesday. Yesterday the President addressed a group of students about the importance of a free and unfettered Internet; the Chinese place strict rules on how much information is available online, and many sites we take for granted here are banned there, for example, Twitter, something the President has apparently never used: (more...)

The smartest thing I read last night on Twitter was by Dan Kennedy. He wrote this:

Does anyone really believe the nonsense that any election is a referendum on Obama? Here's the referendum on Obama: 11/6/2012.

It's an easy headline, I know, and so tempting on this, the one-year anniversary of Obama's history-making hope-bringing win in the 2008 presidential election. He stood there in Grant Park before thousands of screaming fans and the nation, and promised to bring CHANGE, and he didn't. Booooo on Obama, clearly the REPUBLICANS are the answer! Sorry guys, it's just not that simple. (more...)

The other day Murray Chass, the former NYT sports reporter, penned a much picked-up piece about how the considerably small number of newspapers who had sent reporters to cover the World Series was a "startling barometer of how critical the health of the newspaper industry is in this country." Yes, the newspaper industry, as we are all far too familiar, is in critical health. And maybe people are less interested in baseball, for whatever reason ($10 hot chocolate at Yankee Stadium may have something to do with that). Or maybe the country has just discovered a new national pastime. Namely, politics. (more...)

The GOP has had a bumpy ride as it's tried to expand into social media. Exhibit A: RNC Chairman Michael Steele's much-ridiculed GOP.com blog, formerly titled "What Up?" Exhibit B: User-submitted racist photos staying on the GOP.com Facebook page for more than a week. Can the new Blackberry app "WhipCast," courtesy of the Office of the Republican Whip, help reverse the curse? (more...)

Meme alert! Get ready for the President's golf game to take the cablers by storm. Let's take a look at the signs. Barack Obama's fondness for golf is not a secret -- anyone who follows a White House correspondent on Twitter knows that their weekends are often spent waiting for the president to finish his 18 holes. This past weekend, however, Obama's favorite pastime got some extra, significantly placed, mentions. The first from CBS's Mark Knoller who noted that Obama has racked as many golf games in his first nine months than George W. Bush did in almost three years: (more...)

Anita Dunn, the White House communications director who is leading the Obama administration charge against Fox has revealed that the decision to become "more aggressive in both protecting our position and in delineating our differences with those who were attacking us" was a "fundamental" one that was made in August. Short version: right around the time the health care bill was being dangerously derailed by the town hall-ers and Van Jones was being done in by Glenn Beck. Point being, this wasn't necessarily a case of the White House losing its temper, as has been suspected, and acting rashly (and arguably, stupidly). (more...)

Looks like the Obama administration is serious about dealing with Fox News. Politico reported yesterday that during President Obama's visit to the UN two weeks ago senior adviser David Axelrod met privately with Fox News head Roger Ailes...for coffee, according to Michael Scherer at Swampland. (more...)

Lately, Gawker has been working overtime lecturing other media outlets about their ethics, even casting a jaundiced eye in our direction. They also ran 2 pieces attacking, alternately, Politico's Mike Allen and the White House press corps for attending an off-the-record 4th of July event at the White House.

As it turns out, Gawker's outrage is really a fireworks display in a teacup, and their standing to question other reporters' integrity wouldn't fill a teaspoon.

(more...)

Politico's chief political correspondent Mike Allen penned a nice report yesterday about how 26,000 videocassettes, including "hundreds of hours of raw tape of Clinton’s presidential campaign, along with footage from early in his career" had been donated Wednesday to the University of Arkansas by the Allbritton family. The same Albritton family which owns Albritton Communications...which owns Politico. Maybe we're just being sensitive. Or maybe we're not. You decide. From the piece: (more...)