TVSquad

The other networks aren't employing former administration members who are under subpoena. Wrong forum my foot. If Rove were at CNN or MSNBC and it was a panel for them, I'd expect the same thing to happen. Rove can think that he's still under the protection of executive privilege. But if that's his position, he still has to show up to Congress to state as much. To ignore an order from the highest lawmaking body in the US government is, well, just like Rove. It's way beyond a "difference of opinion" to do that.

Just imagine if the situation were reversed, and someone like Carville were openly ignoring a Congressional subpoena (though I'd like to think Carville has a little more respect for Congress, I'll use him as an example). FOX (& Friends) would be popping blood vessels complaining about it. Wallace would probably have one of those timers counting how long Carville has been defying Congress.

But no, we live in this reality, where it's apparently considered "liberal" to expect current and former employees of the executive branch to obey legal orders from Congress. Is it 1/20/09 yet?

As for bias, studies have shown that regular Fox News viewers are less knowledgeable about the actual facts of the news than viewers of The Daily Show. How sad that is, especially considering one is on for up to 2 hours in a week versus nearly 24 hours each day. TDS manages to be both entertaining AND informative, despite whatever Jon & Co. have stated about that not being intentional. If we're going to consider any potential illegalities here, let's investigate Fox's use of "fair and balanced" too. False advertising taken to this extreme seems wrong, but I digress.

Jason,

If you're going to point to that Pew Research poll, let's not stop at only the single point you're trying to make. In that same poll, it showed a very high knowledge lever for viewers of O'Reilly and listeners of Limbaugh. These were far higher than viewers of your darling CNN and participants "online news discussion blogs". Since TV Comrade isn't even up to the level of the aforementioned news blogs, the average level of political knowledge here is probably far lower.

You're a typical participant here, aren't you? Yeah, liberal, rabid, never tires of saying how much they hate Fox News. Absolutely typical which when gauged by the very same poll you refer to makes you one of those very idiots.

Thank you for the chuckle!

Franklin,

Well, first off, I probably am not a "typical" TV Squadder. For one, I've made around 2 posts per month in the last 2 years since I first registered. I'm not big into commenting just for the hell of it. And you clearly don't know me. I consider myself liberal, and there's nothing wrong with that. Rabid, no. Passionate, yes. Idiot? I think not. If you looked at the data in the Pew study (instead of making it up) you would see that a greater percentage of both Democrats and Independents were in the "High Knowledge" category than Republicans (37 & 38% vs. 36% within their political groups). So how does that make me an idiot?

But do I watch CNN? Almost never. Can't stand Wolf Blitzer and the constant bragging about being the "Best Political News Team in Television", though it's got decent newsroom coverage on the rare occasions I do watch. I get my news from around a half-dozen sources (NYT, AP, Wash Post, Chi Tribune, McClatchy all come to mind), which are aggregated in my desktop RSS reader. And I am getting tired of having to point out the problems Fox News has, but most people don't seem to get it. So I will continue to fight the fight.

Maybe if you had bothered to read my comment a little closer, you wouldn't have walked right into this other mistake. Guess that makes you a typical Fox News viewer, right? The knowledge levels for FNC viewers were only slightly better than those for the morning news shows but below those online news discussion blogs, in addition to all the other sources considered in the study. O'Reilly and Limbaugh audiences have higher numbers, but I wasn't singling them out in my previous comment.

Was that what you were expecting? I was, in fact, referring to viewers of FNC as a whole. It may above bottom in terms of high-knowledge viewers, but FNC also had the highest percentage of low-knowledge viewers among all sources.

Here's that poll by the way, in case anyone wants to see all the numbers:
http://people-press.org/report/319/public-knowledge-of-current-affairs-little-changed-by-news-and-information-revolutions

Nice try, but the facts don't backup your opinions here. Thanks for proving my point!

How does it make you an idiot? Let me count the ways. You're liberal and proud which, if you're beyond the age of 25, makes you a fool. You said I was making up information from the poll when I pulled it directly and anyone who can read can understand that, so you're at least partially illiterate. You assume I'm both a Republican and a Fox News viewer, yet I am neither, which makes you a presumptive ass. You get at least some of your news from the New York Times, so you are purposefully misinforming yourself with that socialist blather.

Great way to try and juggle facts to support your verbal defecation, but you still lose. It's okay that you don't understand though, since you have so many things going against you.

Apparently you're the illiterate one here. You finished your previous post with this: "Absolutely typical which when gauged by the very same poll you refer to makes you one of those very idiots."

Yet, based on the data from the poll, my Daily Show/Colbert viewing makes me part of the most-informed group cited in the survey. So yeah, you made some vague and unsubstantiated connection to the poll to claim that it makes me an idiot. Something's being made up there if that's your assumption.

You can attack my being liberal as being some horrible thing all you want. Doesn't scare me. Being liberal isn't scary, nor is being conservative (or anything in between). It's the sneaky kind of "debating" coming through in your posting that is the problem here. You conveniently tried to twist my statements about FNC viewers' knowledge and counter that with the data on the Limbaugh/O'Reilly audiences since it makes your argument seem stronger. But they're separate statistics, and that should be obvious to anybody with even basic comprehension skills. Anyone could see through that falsehood. Assuming you're aware of your error.

You may not be a Fox News viewer or a Republican, but you sure are acting like it anyway. Between the distortions and the desperate ad hominem attacks in every sentence of that last post, I can't tell much (if any) difference.

Have you ever seriously read the Times? Not the editorial pages (I rarely read those), but the actual news pages? There's nothing "socialist" going on there. Compare a non-AP news story between the NYT, FoxNews.com, CNN.com and others, and they'll generally be similar in terms of the facts being conveyed. And yes, I do occasionally go to FoxNews.com too. So what?

And what's with the whole TV Comrade thing? If you can't stand the things you read here, then don't come. That's the great thing about America; you can make choices for yourself.

That's what I do. I don't blindly ally myself to one person or one party, or to a certain point of view. I educate myself (a supposedly lifelong process) and reassess when necessary. You ought to try it sometime.

Also, I don't prematurely declare victory purely based on my own opinion. If you really think that last response was a finishing blow, you're far more of a presumptive ass than you could ever believe me to be.

Your sputtering here reminds me of an individual I recently encountered elsewhere on these internets. Let's just say he was "toocrazy", and he collapsed in his own digital vitriol, just like you're doing here. Present some facts rather than assumptions or unsubstantiated opinions in the future and we can have an actual discussion. But no, it's easier to just attack, attack, attack. It's ok though. I'm not angry at all.

I feel sorry for you.

Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.