MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski totally shuts down co-host Joe Scarborough’s speculation about the missing Malaysia airplane: “If you want to go to a network that has theories about Pakistan just blared across for hours and hours and hours, you’ve got many choices out there.”
What if you could get science to back your rather unscientific views by buying up a place on a college campus? That’s what the Koch brothers are doing at Boston’s Suffolk University, writes MIT’s Frank Ackerman.
Lin-Fan Wang takes on the danger of giving science and religion equal weight in the fight over the birth control mandate. Wang, a doctor who practices family medicine in the Bronx, writes: “The news coverage of the birth control benefit has been riddled with inaccurate statements, in particular, the allegations that the law requires coverage of abortifacients (medicine that causes abortion) or that the science is unclear on whether the FDA-approved contraceptives are abortifacients.”
This email comes from reader SM on North Carolina Senate candidate and state House Speaker Thom Tillis (R) and the recent discovery of inconsistency in his college credentials:
Although I’m not a native North Carolinian, I moved to NC 10 years ago following law school. My impression, FWIW…
So I have a confession. When I first saw a few weeks ago that the NRA was opposing President Obama’s nominee for surgeon general, I didn’t take it all that seriously. After all, the job has so little if anything to do with guns. I dismissed it as little more than a fundraising pitch for the organization.
By now, it’s clear the NRA has at least damaged if not destroyed the President’s chances of getting his nominee confirmed by the Senate. But as TPM’s Sahil Kapur points out, the nation’s largest gun lobby isn’t going satisfied with merely a win on this one. After more than a year of fighting tooth-and-nail at both the federal and state levels, it wants a win so massive that no one will doubt its prowess, no matter the issue.
In Colorado, which has been ground zero in the gun control debate, a middle school sent students on a field trip to a firing range this week.
CNN: Hey, everybody else’s coverage of the missing Malaysian airplane has been awful, too!
CNN’s coverage of the missing Malaysian airplane this week has been obviously embarrassing, what with its speculation of black holes and “the supernatural” and all that. But it’s really nothing compared to what’s been going on at its sister network HLN.
On last night’s episode of “Dr. Drew On Call” — yes, I know — the hosts brought on a woman who describes herself as a psychic to discuss where the missing plane might be. What came next is about as low as it gets in the news business.
Conservative news sites were quick to pounce when a local news anchor claimed earlier this week that White House reporters submit their questions to press secretary Jay Carney in advance. They’ve been slower to correct the record now that the anchor has retracted her story (multiple times.)
Not to pile on with the Princeton Mom — who advised young women to focus less on their careers and more on getting married — but Shannon Kelley has an excellent point about her at TPM Cafe: “She didn’t follow her own advice, and is perfectly happy.”