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Sunday shows: What you missed

Sun, 30 Jun 2013 17:43:00 +0000

Today on the Sunday Shows: recapping the biggest news week ever. Have the gays successfully destroyed America by this point? Will John Boehner commit political suicide on immigration reform? What about the gays, again? And how about that Wendy Davis. Also, too, Julian Assange and Nancy Pelosi. And maybe, if there's time, a quickie segment about the gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. All this and more on ABC's This Week, NBC's "Meet the Press," and CBS' "Face the Nation. "

First, on "This Week": "TRAITOR OR HERO?" This is, what, a month into the Snowden saga, and these are still the first words to appear on a news show? "TRAITOR OR HERO?" You're on a troll, Stephanopoulos.

And here is Julian Assange, from his safe room in London, tie knot loosened. An ABC News correspondent gives us some background: "Who is Julian Assange?" Is he destroying the world? Or is he just a dude in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

What can you tell us about Edward Snowden, Assange? For example: where is the little shit hiding? "I wish I could answer your question in more detail." Red eyes and a cough, he sounds like he has a nasty cold, the poor guy. Now he is making Edward Snowden's story all about himself. The two face very similar investigations, he says, both from the same court in Alexandria, Virginia, where you've got a low chance of receiving "justice."

Sunday shows: What you missed

Sun, 23 Jun 2013 16:46:00 +0000

This week, on a Breaking News! edition of the Sunday shows: Where is Edward Snowden right now? (He's on a plane to Moscow.) Where will Edward Snowden be going next, then? He's fast, Edward Snowden. And the most important question of all: should Glenn Greenwald go to jail for having Edward Snowden as a source, and also for having an annoying tone sometimes? ABC's "This Week," NBC's "Meet the Press," and CBS' "Face the Nation" will solve these questions, and more.

First up, "This Week": Fast Eddie Snowden is hot on the move. How does he keep "bedeviling" US officials like this? It's a "cat-and-mouse game," and the U.S. "lost this round," says the breaking news correspondent.

Host George Stephanopoulos is now talking to Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA. Mister General, Stephanopoulos asks, how did you let this guy out of Hawaii in the first place? Alexander is mentioning 9/11 and how Edward Snowden is making us vulnerable. "We are now putting in place systems" to track those with high-level security clearances. For example: "We've changed our passwords." Good luck, hackers.

Schieffer on Snowden: This kid is a jerk because Dr. King and 9/11

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:08:00 +0000

Kids today! That is basically CBS "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer's "take" on Edward Snowden, the notorious leaker of American government surveillance secrets who is currently in hiding somewhere overseas. Bob Schieffer delivered his verdict in a brief comment yesterday that CBS immediately blasted out to everyone. In the patois of the shameless traffic-baiting Web: "Bob Schieffer Destroys Edward Snowden in 90 Seconds."

Sunday shows solve Syria and government surveillance!

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 18:30:00 +0000

Today on the Sunday Shows: War in Syria. The U.S. arming "the rebels." The Surveillance State. A world of terror, danger, chaos and impending doom. And so ABC's "This Week," NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBS' "Face the Nation" will seek to answer the metaquestion: Are you proud of us, Daddy?

First, and solely because it starts a half-hour earlier than the other shows, we'll check out "This Week," where Jonathan Karl is substituting for George Stephanopoulos. "Is the U.S. going to get involved in another war in the Middle East?" Always, Jonathan Karl, always. Let's see what Marco Rubio has to say.

Rubio, a war-friendly Republican, says that President Obama blew it by waiting so long to get involved in Syria. (Assuming this really is the broad change in strategy it's been billed as.) Now who are we giving arms to? Al-Qaida "elements." What would President Rubio have done? Karl asks. Well, Rubio never would have allowed it to get to this point, of course. If Rubio were president, Syria would be a sunny democratic Utopia already, because he would have managed it so perfectly, you just have no idea how perfectly President Rubio would have done things.

Sunday Shows meet Glenn Greenwald!

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 18:30:00 +0000

Welcome to your recap of this week's "Sunday shows," where the hot topic is how the government has access to everyone's phone and Facebook and video sex chats all the time, EVERYONE FREAK OUT, NOW. We'll be watching ABC's "This Week," NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBS' "Face the Nation," and yes, in that priority order.

"This Week" promises to be a grand old time, as some producer has let civil liberties reporter and commentator Glenn"zilla" Greenwald on national television again to scorch the earth. Greenwald, of course, has been the lead reporter behind a number of top-secret leak reports this week.

"You are really on a roll," George Stephanopoulos congratulates Greenwald, of "the Guardian newspaper." (Full disclosure: I am a contributor to the Guardian U.S.) What are the key findings of your stories this week? Greenwald, talking super-fast to get it all in, has two. From the transcript:

Three scandals, Beltway style

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:40:00 +0000

Dan Pfeiffer, a Senior Adviser to the president for strategy and communications, did all the Sunday shows last week, in an effort to address the troika of scandals that Washington is currently fixated on. It was probably the best thing the White House could've done, on a morning when those shows were inevitably going to be full of gleeful piling on. It was also just adding fuel to the fire. The political press is in scandal coverage mode and as long as Congress plays along nothing can shut the machine off until each scandal runs its course.

Let's recap the scandals, in case you have been too busy having message board debates about Star Trek or deciphering new Kanye lyrics to pay attention:

1. Benghazi. Republicans insist the White House did something evil and incomprehensible involving talking points following the September 11, 2012 attack on the American consulate in the Lybian city. Recently, the White House released an email chain showing the process of drafting and revising the talking points.
2. The IRS. The IRS reportedly targeted conservative nonprofits for extra scrutiny of their tax-exempt status.
3. The Associated Press. The Justice Department sought access to, and received, a massive trove of phone data of AP journalists, as part of its investigation into a leak.

Sunday shows dissect the Boston attacks

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:27:00 +0000

Today’s Sunday shows, like everyone else, tried to pick apart the details of how and why the terrorist attacks occurred in Boston this week. On CBS’s “Face the Nation” Bob Schieffer interviewed Rep. Mike McCaul (R.-Texas), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

“My theory is [Tamerlan Tsarnaev] was radicalized by 2009, 2010,” McCaul said. “Reports show the Russian Intelligence Service reach out to our law enforcement to interview this individual, which they did. He was on the radar, then he got off the radar. Then he travels overseas. I would assume the Russians would have some intelligence on this individual.”

Although he lacks direct evidence McCaul appeared to suggest that Tamerlan, who reportedly had a bomb strapped to his chest when he was shot, had ties to international terrorist networks. “I think another important point [is] the tools of trade craft used here,” McCaul said. “This pressure cooker device is very similar to what the Taliban in Pakistan use. The idea that they could make pipe bombs and then there are reports they had suicide vests, all point to the fact that this was…”

The Cuban Missile Crisis: An all-too-real October surprise

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:43:00 +0000

It seemed at first more a testimony to his own advanced age that 75-year-old Bob Schieffer invoked the Cuban Missile Crisis before the final presidential debate got underway in Boca Raton, Fla., Monday night. Yet, as a pair of PBS documentaries tonight reminds us, nothing could be more central to a contemporary foreign policy discussion than the frightening brink of total nuclear annihilation reached during that tense October, 50 years ago this week.

Just about the whole vocabulary of current international dealings were used in that conflict half a century ago. Blockades, showing strength, drawing a red line — all part of Monday’s debate — were at the center of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And the war porn that got us all into it – annotated aerial spy plane photos of construction sites and alleged warmaking plans — along with show-and-tell demonstrations at the U.N., were part of the process of invading Iraq a decade ago.