After a string of qualified “successes” in the game of legislative chicken, congressional Republicans may have finally met their Dead Man’s Curve. With time running out on the payroll tax cut extension that will affect 160 million Americans, Republicans in the House rejected a bipartisan Senate compromise to extend the payroll tax cut for two months in transparently cynical fashion. Now, the conservative Wall Street Journal is calling their strategy a “fiasco,” and questioning the GOP’s chances at taking back the Senate in 2012.

In a clear sign the U.K. hacking scandal has indeed landed on this side of the Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal reports Friday the Justice Department “is preparing subpoenas as part of preliminary investigations into News Corp. relating to alleged foreign bribery and alleged hacking of voicemail of Sept. 11 victims, according to a government official.” The WSJ‘s source says subpoenas “would broadly seek relevant information from the company,” which owns the Journal.

One of the more fascinating secondary narratives that has arisen from the phone hacking and corruption scandal that has enmeshed News Corp. is the way in which the many media properties under Rupert Murdoch‘s purview have covered this story. Perhaps because the story is still very much in a fluid state, the critiques of the reporting have been both up and down. But the recent defense penned by the Wall Street Journal editorial board is the most full-throated defense yet, and takes the unique approach of actually attacking News Corp. critics.

On Wednesday morning’s edition of Fox & Friends, the crew was discussing the current budget fight when co-anchor Brian Kilmeade made a stunning observation. “How unbelievable is this,” Kilmeade exclaimed. “If the President wrote a budget, we wouldn’t need a continuing resolution.”

A few seconds later, Kilmeade repeated the charge, asking “Where is the executive branch writing a budget?”

Good point, except that the President did write a budget.

If you’ve been feeling like this country’s heading down a dangerous path (and, we don’t mean a socialist one), you’re not alone. Peggy Noonan feels the same way — and writes about it in today’s Wall Street Journal column, “America Is at Risk of Boiling Over.”

We’ve been hearing about the American press’ survival crisis for quite a while now. Amid assertions that “journalism is dying,” various publications have refocused their mission or resorted to paywalls. Today in the Wall Street Journal, Columbia University’s President Lee Bollinger makes the case for a different kind of solution: government involvement.

There is such a thing as looking too hard for the upside to things, and BP has apparently discovered it. Benoit Faucon at The Wall Street Journal somehow got a look at an excerpt from Planet BP, an online publication exclusively for BP employees, in which a “BP reporter” put one of the most outrageous [...]

Last night Bill O’Reilly addressed the rumors that surround the sexuality of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan with Washington Post columnist (and certified Beltway insider) Sally Quinn, who blamed the White House for initially insisting that Kagan is not gay. O’Reilly responded “Americans have a right to know if their Supreme Court Justice has an orientation that may or may not dictate which way she votes on a vital issue.”

Hmm. Notice something missing? A close look reveals most major media outlets have neglected to mention that today is the 7th anniversary of the Iraq War. Not a single major op-ed to be found. Nor a trending Twitter hashtag. It’s almost as though where the media is concerned the Iraq War didn’t happen.

The question, koan-like in its infinitude and all-meaningfulness, of whether Rupert Murdoch‘s self-importance outstrips his actual importance at last seems capable of an answer. Today, one of Murdoch’s papers, The Australian, carries a story on a briefing Murdoch gave to announce the unexpectedly rosy results his media conglomerate Newscorps, enjoyed last quarter. The answer appears to be yes.

In case you haven’t heard, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is in the process of creating a New York City edition of the Wall Street Journal, a project he planned to go “all in” on not a mere two months ago. Now, it looks like “all in” means “turn to your biggest competitors for help.”

It appears the mainstream media is slowly catching up to the Glenn Beck phenomenon. This past September Time put him on the cover, last month Barbara Walters included him in her most fascinating people of 2009, today the Wall St. Journal’s online op-ed editor James Taranto has pubbed a longish interview with him. Seems like Beck may not merely be a (fascinating) side show much longer.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting a late, fourth quarter surge in advertising revenue that helped save an otherwise dismal 2009 for magazines and newspapers. A big reason behind the late surge in ad spending? A very cautious approach throughout the year that left advertisers’ end-of-year budgets far from empty. Advertisers spent their full amount in the last month or so, in hopes of getting the same budget for 2010.

In today’s Media Equation column for the NY Times, David Carr takes another hard look at the Wall Street Journal two years after its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch and finds that, yes, there does appear to be a bias seeping into its coverage. Or, as Carr puts it (in a much more nuanced way), “there are growing indications that Mr. Murdoch, a lifelong conservative, doesn’t just want to cover politics, he wants to play them as well.”

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is planning to introduce a New York city edition of the Wall Street Journal, and is reportedly going “all in” to do it. John Koblin reports for the NY Observer that he is “ready to roll out a budget of $15 Million,” in an effort to compete directly with the NY Times.

The secret is out now. As Keith Olbermann points out, it only took Sarah Palin a year and six weeks to name 3 news sources that she reads, and at the top of her very short list sits Newsmax.com. While much has been made of the current White House’s attitude toward Fox News, it makes you wonder what a Newsmax-guided Palin Presidency would be like.

In a blistering Journal op-ed today, What’s The Matter With Kansas? author and liberal political commentator Thomas Frank came down on the side of the White House in the seemingly never-ending Fox News/Obama battle. He dismissed Fox as indulging in “persecution fantasy.”

Rupert Murdoch stated that the Wall Street Journal will begin to charge users to access the WSJ iPhone and BlackBerry content apps ($2/month for non-subscribers, $1 for subscribers.) He also told Goldman Sachs Communicopia attendees that the News Corp., NBCU, Walt Disney joint venture Hulu was looking into charging subscriptions to view TV content online.

9/11 is a date that has come to represent a lot of complicated ideas. Memories of the attack come with a real sense of unity and global support that immediately followed. Suddenly it became a political football, used to exemplify a lack of patriotism (or a pre-existing bias). But judging by the coverage in today’s Newspapers, we seem to have moved on, or have at least started the process…

In hopes to win new readers and advertisers and start a new regional market by offering more local news, both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are planning San Francisco Bay Area editions. The NY Times reports that the new strategy could be the first glimpse at a new strategy by national newspapers to capitalize on the contraction of regional papers

Many of the news outlets which reported that Disney was buying Marvel noted that the deal was worth $4 billion, tacked on a few Disney-Marvel mashup jokes,(“Spider Mickey,” etc.) and left it at that. Fortunately, Nikki Finke‘s Deadline Hollywood Daily has been on the scene, netting exclusive after exclusive and combining superb, deep-digging reporting with insightful commentary.

As the debate over health care reform continues to dominate the news, there is the inevitable criticism of media bias from both sides of the aisle. Aside from their editorial pages, the Wall Street Journal is well known for its unique focus on reporting facts, keeping its reputation as an unbiased source of news untarnished. But since its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. two years ago, has the WSJ succumbed to the alleged bias that has afflicted other News Corp. properties Fox News and the NY Post?

Peggy Noonan has entered the Twitter fray. @peggynoonannyc went live yesterday. Granted there’s not much there yet but you never now how journos will take to this thing. Jake Tapper referred to her arrival thusly: “a thousand tweets of light? @Peggynoonannyc now on twitter.”

Rupert Murdoch has developed his own journalism bailout plan: Hush money! The Guardian is reporting that Murdoch’s News Paper Groups have been settling cases out of court — to the tune of $1.6 million — that would have revealed his journos to be using “criminal methods” to get stories.

What sort of criminal methods?