[
Update, Thursday, September 16, 10:25 am Eastern: O'Brien apparently pulled his Tweet, as the link "doesn't exist," according to Twitter. A screen cap of the Tweet in question can be seen below.]
Former CNN anchor Miles O'Brien (no relation to current CNN special correspondent
Soledad O'Brien) slammed Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell as a "
Tea Party nutbag" in a
Tweet on Wednesday evening. O'Brien continued that he "forget [sic]
her ignorant nonsense," referring to her defense of the creationist viewpoint during a 1996 appearance on his former network.
O'Brien, who was
let go by CNN in 2008 after they closed their science unit, linked to
an article on the left-wing website Talking Points Memo after his attack on O'Donnell. The article, by Eric Kleefeld, highlighted
an item by Dan Amira of New York magazine,
who "dug up" the Republican's March 1996 appearance with O'Brien and
Dr. Michael McKinney of the University of Tennessee-Chattanoga. During
the panel discussion, O'Donnell defended the creationism. Kleefeld
labeled it as just another part of the social conservative's "
religious right work," citing her apparent "
long career in anti-sex and anti-masturbation activism."
The
former anchor's Tweet is not surprising, gives his record of liberal
bias when he was at CNN, particularly on the issue of climate change.
On February 9, 2006, O'Brien accused scientists skeptical of the theory of manmade global warming as being "
bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry." Over two months later, he
suggested raising gasoline taxes to "help pay for these alternative fuels." During 2007, the then-CNN anchor
insisted to former Republican Congressman J. C. Watts that the "
scientific debate is over" on the climate change issue. O'Brien also
dismissed critics of Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" later that year.
Less than a year before his dismissal from CNN, he
compared manmade global warming skeptics to Flat Earthers. More recently, O'Brien, working a special correspondent for PBS's NewsHour program,
helped promote Dubuque, Iowa as a "city of a future"
during a June 17, 2010 report, for its transformation from a former
industrial center into a "green" capital, with the help of money from
the Obama administration's "stimulus" package.
Outside of the global warming issue, the journalist conducted other left-leaning advocacy. He helped CNN
promote the controversial "Death of a President" movie
depicting the assassination of former President George W. Bush during
an October 27, 2006 segment with director Gabriel Range. He labeled four
American contractors who were kidnaped in Iraq "
mercenaries"
less than a month later. In April 2008, he
tried to spin the 40% approval rating the Democratically-controlled Congress had at the time: "Democrats are marking 100 days of their congressional reign now, and
they're riding pretty high."
-Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here. 
