Free Republic

Somebody over at the Nation magazine has thin skin.Worthless pseudointellectual pseudojournalist Eric Alterman didn't like my blog post calling him out for his lie that ACORN has ceased to exist. In fact, as I pointed out, ACORN's two largest affiliates (ACORN Housing and Project Vote) continue to operate and ACORN's state chapters are continuing to do business under new names. In an amusingly titled blog post ("Four Reasons I Suck") the Nation poseur writes Let me be clear. I do think this Matthew Vadum fellow is an idiot, though the above is all I know about him, so for all...

US Politicians Duped By The Brotherhood In the United States, one individual maintained a pretense of "moderation" which would later embarrass the left and the right. According to the testimony of Dr. Michael Waller to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Abdurahman Alamoudi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. A man born in Eritrea in 1951, he arrived in the US in 1979 and became a naturalized US citizen on May 23, 1996. From 1985 onwards he became involved in many Muslim groups. In 1990 he founded the Washington DC-based American Muslim Council (AMC), which Waller states "has...

How Cool Is Franken? by Eric Alterman Not only does Al Franken’s hard-fought victory give Democrats a magical 60 seats, it gives the Senate its first genuinely funny ex-comedian. Eric Alterman shares memories of his friend and former neighbor. Senator Franken? As long as it has taken, it’s still pretty hard to believe my friend and former neighbor is due to be sworn in early next week. He’ll be “Senator Franken” to the press and the lobbyists, and “my distinguished colleague” to the rest of that esteemed body. But as for the rest of us, I think we can safely...

From a non-Jew, it would smack of anti-semitism. From Eric Alterman? You be the judge. The author of the Altercations column at Media Matters has a running complaint: Rick Klein, editor of The Note at ABC News, pays too much respect to the writings of other Jewish pundits. Jennifer Rubin, one of the chief bloggers at Commentary's "Contentions" blog, was Alterman's first target, in his August 1 column [emphasis added throughout]: "I realize I may be the only person in the world to care about this, and I only care a tiny bit, but what does Commentary's Jennifer Rubin have...

What do neocons and their media mouthpieces fear most about Obama's stance on Israel? Probably, it is his honesty. During the past few months a small group of neoconservative Jews, many of whom hold key positions in the world of official Jewish institutions, have been working to undermine the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama with a series of carefully planted character assassinations and deliberately misleading innuendo. I noticed this trend when Debra Feuer, a counsel for the American Jewish Committee, sent a confidential memo to her counterparts at other organizations criticizing Obama's views on the Middle East, Iran and Syria...

On the front lines of the culture wars, where explosive salvos are fired routinely, accuracy is a requirement. Arguments cannot be won with major misstatements of fact. This is lost on Eric Alterman. In his new book “Why We’re Liberals,” he takes up the controversy generated by Hollywood, but only to malign and mischaracterize. Alterman decries "the hysterical language conservatives routinely employ when pontificating about Hollywood." His first example of a hysterical conservative is... me. Horror of horrors. I’m attacked because I’ve ridiculed "political dilettantes" and "leftist celebrities" whose qualifications as political advisers "include starring in Hello Dolly and The...

Eric Alterman’s new book on Why We're Liberals isn’t just plagued with errors, it makes wild charges, like attacking conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, suggesting she was anti-Semitic for cheering on the movie The Passion of the Christ. In a chapter about how conservatives mock the elites, when they themselves are rich and pampered, Alterman wrote about conservatives: "In Ingraham’s case, as in many others, one detects a strain of anti-Semitism in her insistent elite-bashing." From pages 173-74: In observing the members of the conservative elite denouncing "elitists, it can be difficult to tell your players without the proverbial scorecard. For...

It's just a coincidence that the essay "Does the News Matter to Anyone Anymore?" by the impresario of The Wire, David Simon, appeared in the Washington Post the same day news broke of the top editor of the Los Angeles Times having been forced out over a refusal to make further budget cuts. Virtually every major magazine...has eloquently bemoaned the state of contemporary newspapering. And the departure of James O'Shea from the LA Times marks the fourth time in less than three years that either the top editor or the publisher has "quit" rather than make budget cuts demanded by...

On the Republican side the news this week was all about Fred Thompson... As the only candidate who is acceptable to conservatives, acceptable to moderates, admired by the media and potentially saleable to independents - he knows how to act - he is also the only candidate on the Republican side who can win... I was of two minds about the whole Rudy thing until last Sunday when I was on a Creative Coalition panel with Ed Rollins, who ran Ronald Reagan's campaigns among about a zillion others, and he reminded me that while it's actually possible that the Republicans...

That Al Gore's 2000 presidential candidacy was treated unconscionably by most members of the mainstream media is not really arguable by sentient beings. The very idea that a candidate like George W. Bush — extremist, incompetent, unprepared for office, addicted to cronyism and incapable of admitting even the simplest human error — could have been held by so many reporters to be a better choice for President than the two-time Vice President, Senator, Representative and environment and nuclear weapons expert, to say nothing of his central role in the Clinton Administration's successful two-term presidency, would be laughable were its consequences...

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (CNN ) – Columnist and author Eric Alterman was arrested Sunday night inside the debate spin room and charged with criminal trespass after police say he refused repeated orders to leave.

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A top U.S. Democratic congressman met a leader of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's most powerful rival, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, U.S. officials and the Islamist group said Saturday. Visiting House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer met with the head of the Muslim Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Saad el-Katatni, twice on Thursday -- once at the parliament building and then at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, said Brotherhood spokesman Hamdi Hassan. U.S. Embassy spokesman John Berry would confirm only that Hoyer, who represents Maryland, met with el-Katatni at U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone's home at a...

How out there on the left wing is Eric Alterman? MSNBC, the network of Keith Olbermann, he who has accused Pres. Bush of fascism and called for his impeachment - fired him, presumably for being too extreme.But not to worry, Alterman's column, 'Altercation,' was promptly picked up by David Brock's Media Matters. For my sins I recently subscribed to the column's email list. Reading through this evening's edition, one thing emerges: Eric Alterman is one angry guy. In the course of one mere column, Alterman vents his bile in these diverse directions: "This notion of a leftist alliance with Islamic...

NEW YORK Eric Alterman, perhaps the first writer to get a blog on a mainstream national news site, has been dismissed after 10 years by MSNBC.com. "P.S., I’m Fired," he heads an email to others in the media. His blog, Altercation, however, will be picked up by the liberal site Media Matters. He will also become a senior fellow there. Alterman has also been a longtime columnist at The Nation magazine. He teaches at City University of New York. "I was hired before the 1996 launch by both the website and the cable station, and while the latter association ended...

The following is a response I received from Eric Alterman of MSNBC.com regarding a thread that got pulled recently which bashed the president. Maybe some of you will want to respond to Mr. Alterman. I asked: Why not ask me or all my friends and family and all the members of Free Republic.com for our opinions? His reply: because my guess is you're all idiots, but thanks

At a recent conference on the Clinton Administration at Hofstra University, ex-press secretary Jake Siewart made a point that had previously eluded me: It was during the early days of Clinton's presidency that the democratization of instant information made the insider press corps obsolete. To retain their importance and self-regard, these journalists had to invent a new function for themselves, and they did: interpreting, not reporting, the news. But instead of doing the hard work of researching the historical, economic, sociological and political contexts of a given story and then finding a way to explain these in lay terms, they...

After chugging down a rancid carton of Air America Brand milk, well past its sell-by date, MSNBC's Eric Alterman concludes we're the network's real problem. Hope he didn't give them all of his lunch money. MSNBC NewsYes, it's a right-wing conspiracy to silence the "progressive" alternative, led by yours truly, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. It couldn't have anything to do with $875,000 in shady taxpayer grant transfers from a Bronx-based community nonprofit, to the liberal network and resulting city investigation, right? Or that we proved (after producing a signed, notarized document) Al Franken knew about...

John Kerry had a complaint: ...that voters can't hear Democrats above the roar of the GOP spin machine. The right, he groused, is far more effective than the left at making itself heard. To peddle their ideas, Republicans and conservatives have assembled an elaborate communication network, one that relies on the likes of "Cato and Heritage and Grover Norquist"... to make sure its messages get plenty of attention.... ...[The] complaint makes it clear that the paranoid style in American politics is alive and well. Thirty years ago, it was Richard Nixon who fumed at the media and compiled an enemies...

By Siva: Siva Vaidhyanathan We are all too familiar with the frontal assaults that the Bush administration has launched against science, truth, and rationality. Bush has stacked advisory boards with ideologues, screened scientific appointees for political affiliations, declared academic expertise in areas such as environmental damage and global warming to be tantamount to a "conflict of interest," pushed lies on federal Web sites claiming that there is a link between abortions and cancer, here, spread more lies about the ways people can spread HIV, and had his henchmen threaten scientists who protest these acts with retribution. Meanwhile, federal policy continues...

read a stunning recent commentary by author and pundit Eric Alterman on the British Muslim Council's decision to boycott the ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The reason given for the boycott was that the commemoration of Nazi death camp victims did not include the Palestinian victims of Israeli "genocide." [snip]On his blog at MSNBC.com, Alterman sneered at critics of the boycott. "I'm a Jew, but I don't expect Arabs to pay tribute to my people's suffering while Jews, in the form of Israel and its supporters -- and in this I include myself -- are...