Free Republic

... He said: "We would love to finish what we started some years ago and I think pretty well all our astronauts would love us to finish and would love to go into space. "I think millions of people in the world would one day love the chance to go to space and this is the start of a long programme."

It was a year of goodbyes -- some noble, some less so -- as journalism's old guard departed from the spotlight. And it was a year when some of media's biggest institutions started thinking, in earnest, about reinvention. Dan Rather took his colorful metaphors and erratic temperament from CBS in March, his reputation marred by a flawed report about President Bush and the National Guard. Peter Jennings, suave and substantive, died tragically of lung cancer in August. Ted Koppel, who brought wit and heft to late-night news, left ABC's ''Nightline" in November, headed for less grueling work at HBO. Aaron...

Check out the logo in the background in this photo, which is currently up on Drudge in regard to the news that CNN anchor Aaron Brown has been fired.Note the background logo: "America Strikes Back." Coincidence? I don't think so! Nice work, Drudge!

<p>Headline on Drudge's front page. The link to story wouldn't work for me.</p>

Aaron Brown is out at CNN, and Anderson Cooper will take over Brown’s 10 p.m. time slot, effective Monday. The shakeup comes as a result of some prime time scheduling moves that CNN made official Wednesday. Cooper will take his 7 p.m. showcase, Anderson Cooper 360°, to the 10-midnight spot, formerly occupied by Brown’s NewsNight. Cooper’s old spot will be filled by an additional hour of The Situation Room, hosted by Wolf Blitzer. In a memo to staffers, CNN president Jon Klein said the veteran anchor “will be leaving CNN and is very much looking forward to some well-deserved time...

Compassion & Choices - which advocates a "peaceful and humane death" for braindamaged patients, such as the late Terri Schiavo - can't give praise where it believes it is due. The organization is trying to honor CNN "NewsNight" anchor Aaron Brown at its May 19 star- studded benefit for his coverage of the Schiavo story. But according to actress and right-to-die activist Ally Sheedy, the '80s-era "Brat Pack" member, CNN barred Brown from showing up at the event for fear it would taint the network's objectivity. "It doesn't make any sense to me!" the 42-year-old Sheedy told Lowdown yesterday. "We...

In 41 years as a pundit, Robert D. Novak has rarely shied from controversy. As a syndicated columnist and fixture on cable-news shoutfests, Mr. Novak has opined from the right about some of the biggest stories of his time. He has been a stout cold warrior, a critic of Israeli policies and a passionate defender of military veterans who criticized Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record. But now Mr. Novak, 73, finds himself a central figure in perhaps the gravest confrontation between the government and the press in a generation, and he has been uncharacteristically circumspect. With a federal judge...

The U.S. is engaged in a bloody war in Iraq for the purpose of eliminating the remnants of a terrorist regime, foreign terrorists, and bringing democracy to Iraq and the region. It is a big gamble that has put radical Islam on the defensive around the world. But shocking evidence demonstrates that controversial former U.S. Marine and former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who now writes for the anti-American Arab "news" organization Al Jazeera, was involved in a controversial effort to stop the war by enlisting prominent personalities in a "peace" campaign.

CNN has tapped its conservative commentator Tucker Carlson to substitute for Aaron Brown on its primetime (10:00 p.m. ET) program NewsNight next week, Daily Variety reported today (Thursday). CNN's move comes as Carlson is being wooed by MSNBC to replace Deborah Norville in her 9:00 p.m. slot. It also comes as Carlson's verbal slugfest with Comedy Central's Jon Stewart on CNN's Crossfire, the show Carlson currently co-hosts on CNN, was making many critics' lists as one of the most memorable moments in TV during 2004.

THE SCROLL BAR ON THE BOTTOM OF CNN'S AARON BROWN SHOW SHOWS "SWAPPING SPOOKS" !!!!

Aaron Brown's snide shot of the day. Upon pointing out a photo in Stars and Stripes of some soldiers in Iraq who had earned Purple Hearts, during his Wednesday night "Morning Papers" segment on CNN's NewsNight, Brown sarcastically remarked: "Some day, one of them will run for President and someone will say they didn't earn the Purple Heart. Welcome to America." Brown began his November 10 look at the Thursday newspapers, a segment in which he holds up big veloxes of front pages: "Okay, time to do morning papers. I've been on an airplane today. I have no voice left....

Hey, I received a strange email today and I am having trouble tracking it to it's source. It is virulent in it's hatred of GWB. I sent out 2 emails yesterday that could have caused the response. One to my friend, who is a Kerry bootlicker and one to Aaron Brown at CNN, who is also a Kerry bootlicker. The return email seems to have been put together rather hastily. My IP tracker says it's from Houston, but this information also came up. Need some help.Here is the text of the email: >Why would you want to vote for a...

[CUT] Brown set up his first October 11 NewsNight segment with a promise of fairness: "For those of you who believe that most media is hopelessly liberal, this will be the proof. You won't hear or believe that if the story in question were about an anti-Bush film, let's say 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' we would say exactly the same thing, do the segment exactly the same way, ask the same questions. We would. But we're not naive enough to believe that you would believe. So this segment is really for everyone else, for those who worry about fairness in media, who...

ODDEST JOHN EDWARDS NEWS NUGGET [07/07 01:01 PM] CNN's Aaron Brown began his newscast by revealing that he once went on a date with John Edwards' wife http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0407/06/asb.00.html

An "anonymous" CIA officer who was demoted from the position of leading the tracking of Osama bin Laden, lashed out in a new book, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism, at both the administrations of Presidents Clinton and Bush. But in jumping on the book's criticism of going to war in Iraq, the networks on Wednesday night concentrated their stories on his attacks on the policies pursued by President Bush. Only NBC's Andrea Mitchell gave a sentence to his criticism of how the Clinton administration didn't take seriously the hunt for Osama bin Laden and...

APPLYING THE ABD [Nick Schulz ] Aaron Brown says he consistently applies the eponymous doctrine. To bolster his case, he says “October 30, 2003, Newsnight and CNN aired a Saddam torture tape that sounds very much like the tape you describe.” This is where the Swiss cheese comes in. It should be noted that Brown doesn’t address the primary charge: a bipartisan group of U.S. senators released a Department of Defense tape showing ritual torture and mutilation by the Hussein regime two weeks ago--a newsworthy event--and the mainstream media ignored it. As one reader wrote to me regarding Brown: “Does...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Earlier this month, National Review Online obtained a four-minute video of Saddam-era torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Many of us here who discussed the matter are ourselves unable to watch the whole video. Some could not get beyond the furious, ecstatic chanting of torturers as they raised swords, celebrating their own dementia in the depths of a man-made hell. What to do with the video was a matter of debate here. On principle this is newsworthy — and weighing heavily on our deliberations was the fact that a group of United States senators held a...

It's time to put up or shut up. Last week I wrote a column saying that CBS should have thought twice before showing the photos from Abu Ghraib prison. The response from readers and even some journalists was like I'd proposed banning the printing press. Numerous e-mailers said I'm no different than a Holocaust-denier who'd ban photos from Auschwitz. Well, now we have the horrible news that Nick Berg, an American contractor, was beheaded by an al-Qaida affiliated group explicitly in response to the release of the Abu Ghraib photos. I say in response to the release of the photos...

This week on the syndicated Jeopardy quiz show: media figures, including Tim Russert, Tucker Carlson, Bob Woodward, Aaron Brown and Keith Olbermann. Plus, Peggy Noonan and Al Franken. Monday's Washington Post provided a day-by-day listing of the line-up for the shows hosted by Alex Trebek, which were taped, on a Saturday in early April, at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. "Winners," the Post noted, "get $50,000 for a charity of their choice; losers get $20,000, regardless of how poorly they play." The lineup: - Monday: Tucker Carlson of CNN's Crossfire, Peggy Noonan, the former...

In her own words, or merely re-airing Democratic attacks? Thursday night's NewsNight with Aaron Brown on CNN included a five minute segment that Brown promised would reveal "in her own words...what Dr. Rice said in some of the more contentious moments" of her appearance before the 9/11 Commission that morning. But the MRC's Ken Shepherd discovered that Rice's actual comments amounted to just 2 minutes and 28 seconds of the segment, less than half of the segment. Nearly all of the remainder highlighted the lengthy and adversarial questions to Rice from the most blatantly partisan Democrats on the panel, former...