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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.

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.

What spying apologists don’t tell you about “thwarted plots”

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:10:00 +0000

Listen to defenders of the U.S. government’s recently revealed data collection practices, and you’re likely to hear claims about terrorist plots these sweeping activities have purportedly stopped.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., explained on ABC’s "This Week" Sunday that in one of the signature uses of the dragnet collection of every American’s phone records, the NSA managed to track one of our own informants, David Headley, as he helped Islamic terrorists plan attacks. She did not mention that it did nothing to prevent the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, which killed 166 -- and in which Headley had a role in planning.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called the effort to track Headley – which did manage to thwart Headley’s 2009 plans to attack a Danish newspaper – a success, in an interview with Andrea Mitchell. Such is the value of these programs, it appears, that top proponents of the program celebrate the tracking of a DEA informant gone bad as their main talking point.

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:

Watching the Sunday shows so you don’t have to

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 17:28:00 +0000

Welcome to this week's Funday Shows recap, a look at all the hot chatter on NBC's Meet the Press, CBS's Face the Nation, and ABC's This Week. The topics under discussion this week include: Is Eric Holder the worst human being in history? Has he killed off any remaining semblance of Freedom of the Press in this country? Why aren't we bombing Syria yet? Are IRS employees dancing too much, and are we not going out of our way to humiliate them enough?

"SUNDAY SHOWDOWN!" George Stephanopoulos greets us, to open This Week. It's a political consultant versus another political consultant! Whose talking points will win? "Let's get right to it" with David Plouffe versus Karl Rove, before you even have time to run to the bathroom. Arianna Huffington, Gwen Ifill and the WSJ editorial page's Paul Gigot watch from the other side of the table.

Stephanopoulos shows poll numbers that indicate the public doesn't especially care about any of The Scandals, today's hot lead. Forty-four percent find the IRS targeting scandal the most important, however. And Karl Rove says if you look "inside the numbers," the public is still very unhappy with the economy. And the IRS collects taxes from the economy, so there you go: biggest scandal ever, searingly pertinent to all.

Sunday show roundup: disaster aid, drone debates

Sun, 26 May 2013 19:48:00 +0000

Following President Obama's Thursday speech, which promised in platitudes a new, more focused phase of the War on Terror, had talking heads yapping Sunday. The Sunday shows also touched upon disaster relief aid in the wake of this week's deadly tornado in Oklahoma.

Lethal drones:

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a typically unbearable politician, once again stepped admirably up to bat in critiquing U.S. lethal drone strike policy. (Although again, Paul's concerns extended only to Americans' rights and not foreign civilian casualties). He told ABC's "This Week" that while the president's comments could mark a step in the right direction, more needs to be clarified regarding due process, legal standards and justifications. "A lot of what's very important to myself and others is what the law says, and how you should approach this,” Paul said.

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.

Pelosi: Fiscal cliff deal must include tax hikes for rich

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 16:30:00 +0000

Nancy Pelosi, who this week announced she would stay on as Democratic House leader, told ABC's "This Week" that a fiscal cliff deal will have to include tax hikes for the rich.

“Just to close loopholes is far too little money,” Pelosi said in the interview. “If it’s going to bring in revenue, the president has been very clear that the higher income people have to pay their fair share.”

Sunday show round up

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:49:00 +0000

With just one day to go before the final presidential debate, which will focus on foreign policy, the Sunday shows were awash with Obama and Romney surrogates trotting out party lines on foreign policy topics du jour -- predominantly the Libya embassy attacks and Iran.

Iran

Fox News Sunday saw Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tow a hawkish line on Iran, calling the crippling program of sanctions currently in place a "miserable failure." "Time for talking is over he said," echoing Bibi Netanyahu's call for the U.S. to draw "red lines" over Iran's nuclear ambitions. "We should be demanding transparency and access to their nuclear program," Graham said.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) defended the sanctions program against Graham's attacks, "There's unrest in the streets of Tehran and the leaders in Iran are feeling it," he said.

David Axelrod echoed Durbin's point during his appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," "They're [Tehran is] feeling the heat. And that's what the sanctions were meant to do. So if they're sensible, they're looking at that and saying it's time to set aside our nuclear ambitions and save our economy."