Free Republic

Dan Calabrese notices a scolding tone coming from the Associated Press in reporting its latest polling. It headlines the report by noting that “a grouchy public [is] sticking with Obama,” having seen a 54% job approval rating in its survey — but some bad numbers on the issues. Does the AP report those falling levels of support as a consequence of Barack Obama doing a poor job? No, as emphases from Dan and myself show: The public grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, including war and the economy, continuing the slippage that has...

The proposed resolution of disapproval against Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina added to the already-toxic atmosphere of partisanship in the House. Democrats said Wilson's behavior during Obama's speech to Congress last week was an egregious display of disrespect for the president that could not be ignored. Republicans accused the majority party of hypocrisy and wasting the taxpayers' time. "That's a very serious breach of decorum, and if it goes unaddressed then we will probably see other, worse breaches in the future," Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said before floor debate began. But Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, a member...

AP Misleads Readers on Abortion, Health Care, and Obama Washington, DC -- The Associated Press is coming under criticism from pro-life advocates who say its recent wrap-up article on the health care debate is misleading. AP writer Charles Babington wrote a "fact check" story attempting to make the case that abortion is not included in the health care bills and that President Barack Obama doesn't want it to be included. But, Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, says that's not the case. http://www.LifeNews.com/nat5311.html

Supporters of ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya protest outside the site of talks to resolve the leadership crisis in Honduras in San Jose, Saturday, July 18, 2009. Zelaya, who was forced into exile in a June 28 military coup, gave negotiators meeting in Costa Rica until midnight to restore him to office, threatening to return to Honduras in secret and attempt to retake power on his own if no agreement is reached. He indicated he would reject any power-sharing agreement, a proposal to be discussed at the talks.

The Associated Press is proposing that publishers attach descriptive tags to news articles online in hopes of taming the free-for-all of news and information on the Web and generating more traffic for established media brands. Tags identifying the author, publisher and other information — as well as any usage restrictions publishers hope to place on copyright-protected materials — would be packaged with each news article in a way that search engines can more easily identify. By doing so, the AP hopes to make it easier for readers to find articles from more established news providers amid the ever-expanding pool of...

WASHINGTON – On both economic and national-security fronts, President Barack Obama is giving ground and crossing swords with political allies. Caught in the worst economic downturn in generations, Obama has had to temper his stance on trade and lower his expectations for trimming charitable tax breaks for the wealthy and for taxing greenhouse-gas polluters. He's not the first president to be pulled toward the political center after being elected. But the recession and two wars abroad put him in a particularly tough spot — with smaller margins for error. With the deficit mushrooming, lawmakers in both parties are worrying more...

Have you noticed when reading your local papers, that every article that is national news comes through the Associated Press? That means that whoever controls the Associated Press newsroom controls what the whole nation sees. This is power like the Soviet PRAVDA and TASS had. No wonder so many people don't know what is going on. I have been looking in my local newspaper for stories about the reasons behind the banking crisis which was due to the absurd subprime mortgages. I haven't seen anything explaining how the subprime mortages caused this problem. It has been several months since the...

It didn't take long for Barack Obama — for all his youth and inexperience — to get acclimated to his new role as the calming leader of a country in crisis. "I feel surprisingly comfortable in the job," the nation's 44th president said a mere two weeks after taking the helm. "The challenges are big," a sober Obama added, underscoring the foreign and domestic problems he inherited Jan. 20. "But one thing I'm absolutely convinced about is you want to be president when you've got big problems. If things are going too smoothly, then this is just another nice home...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Millions of people jobless. Billions of dollars in bailouts. Trillions of dollars in U.S. debt. And yet, for the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is on the right track. In a sign that Barack Obama has inspired hopes for a brighter future in the first 100 days of his presidency, an Associated Press-GfK poll shows that 48 percent of Americans believe the United States is headed in the right direction — compared with 44 percent who disagree. The "right direction" number is up 8 points since February and a remarkable 31...

For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public's mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future. Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington. Nobody knows how long...

Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that Web sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not. A.P. executives said they were concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds. They said they did not...

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out o of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all. Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study...

DENVER -- William Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical whose past made him a lightning rod in the 2008 presidential campaign, said Thursday that fired Colorado professor Ward Churchill became the victim of a "witch hunt" after comparing Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi. "There's no doubt in my mind he was persecuted because of his politics," Ayers said before appearing with Churchill at a student rally on academic freedom at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Ayers, Churchill and writer-activist Derrick Jensen were to speak later at an event titled "Forbidden Education and the Rise of Neo-McCarthyism."

A federal judge on Thursday threw out a lawsuit questioning President Barack Obama's citizenship, lambasting the case as a waste of the court's time and suggesting the plaintiff's attorney may have to compensate the president's lawyer. In an argument popular on the Internet and taken seriously practically nowhere else, Obama's critics argue he is ineligible to be president because he is not a "natural-born citizen" as the Constitution requires. In response last summer, Obama's campaign posted his Hawaiian birth certificate on its Web site. But the lawsuit argues it is a fake and that Obama was actually born in his...

STUTTGART, Germany (AP) - German police raided 224 apartments and houses across the country Wednesday, confiscating 45,000 music CDs in a crackdown on the far-right music scene. Stuttgart prosecutors, who led the operation, said 204 people aged 21-45 are being investigated for allegedly distributing the music, which includes xenophobic and anti-Semitic lyrics. There were no immediate arrests. The production and sale of right-wing music that promotes an extremist agenda or racial hatred is against the law in Germany.

Get ready for the geek-in-chief. President-elect Barack Obama used to collect comic books, can't part with his BlackBerry, and once flashed Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" sign. That and other evidence has convinced some of Obama's nerdier fans that he'll be the first American president to show distinct signs of geekiness. And that's got them as excited as a Tribble around a Klingon. Obama is good at "repressing his inner geek, but you can tell it's there," especially when he goes into nuanced explanations of technical_matters, said Benjamin Nugent, author of the book "American Nerd:...

...Obama reported raising $104 million in more than five weeks immediately before and after Election Day. It was his second biggest fundraising period and a fitting coda to a successful presidential bid that shattered fundraising records. ...Obama exceeded the combined finances of the two major parties' nominees four years ago. George W. Bush and John Kerry pulled in a total of $653 million in the 2004 primary and general election campaigns, including federal public financing money. Obama's prowess at attracting money, one of the many characteristics that defined his campaign, could well spell the end of a 30-year experiment in...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President George W. Bush expressed remorse that the global financial crisis has cost jobs and harmed retirement accounts and said he'll back more government intervention if needed to ease the recession. "I'm sorry it's happening, of course," Bush said in a wide-ranging interview with ABC's "World News," which was airing Monday. "Obviously I don't like the idea of people losing jobs, or being worried about their 401(k)s. On the other hand, the American people got to know that we will safeguard the system. I mean, we're in. And if we need to be in more, we will."...

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin spent part of the weekend going through her clothing to determine what belongs to the Republican Party after it spent $150,000-plus on a wardrobe for the vice presidential nominee, according to Palin's father. Palin and John McCain's campaign faced a storm of criticism over the tens of thousands of dollars spent at such high-end stores as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus to dress the nominee. Republican National Committee lawyers are still trying to determine exactly what clothing was bought for Palin, what was returned and what has become of the rest. Palin's father, Chuck Heath,...

A leftist activist has stolen and splashed Sarah Palin’s private e-mails all over the internet. News outlets have picked them up and continued the exposure. Palin’s husband and children have had their private e-mail addresses put in print. Intimate family photos are even now being photo shopped to insult and poke fun at the candidate on leftist sites. The Associated Press, refusing to cooperate with secret service investigators, will not release the e-mails it possesses. It does not matter that the e-mails were clearly private correspondence and apparently contained nothing illegal or irregular. A weasel-worded excuse found in AP wire...

Hey, at least he got the shot, right? Isn't that all that matters? I mean come on, he's a photo-journalist for goodness sake. He can't inject himself into the story. That would be a breach of journalistic ethics. A real credit to his profession, this guy. Photos, but no video.

Hard to believe that all of the discourse (public and private) on how the AP handled the way its material was being used by the Drudge Retort boils down to this for now?a non-response response........[snip] ""In response to questions about the use of Associated Press content on the Drudge Retort web site, the AP was able to provide additional information to the operator of the site, Rogers Cadenhead, on Thursday. That information was aimed at enabling Mr. Cadenhead to bring the contributed content on his site into conformance with the policy he earlier set for his contributors. Both parties consider...

An unbylined Associated Press report yesterday, at least as carried at MSNBC, acknowledges improvement, and then explains why it's not going to get much future coverage from the wire service as long as things stay that way: BAGHDAD - Signs are emerging that Iraq has reached a turning point. Violence is down, armed extremists are in disarray, government confidence is rising and sectarian communities are gearing up for a battle at the polls rather than slaughter in the streets. Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential...

Bloggers, like me, are voicing their views and commentary on the news (and falsehoods, etc) of the day as is our right under the constitution.  When a corporation tries to tell me I cannot comment, criticize (and more often correct) their lousy product I lose all interest in being reasonable.  There are lines you do not cross because they cannot be uncrossed. The-news-source-that-shall-not-be-named, which went after bloggers for excerpting and linking their biased and error prone ‘news’ articles, crossed that line - in full hypocrisy it seems: 1. The AP is essentially arguing that anyone who excerpts 33 to 79...

Face it, blogs exist so we don't have to read the news for comprehension The Associated Press took a grandiose Facebook-style faceplant last week when it attempted to impose strict guidelines on the blogosphere. Now, just like Facebook’s initial unapologetic enthusiasm for its privacy-violating Beacon program followed by Facebook’s effusive apology for its privacy-violating Beacon program, the AP is bowing to the will of the angry Internet masses and backing off. Sort of. As part of the big mea culpa, the AP's Jim Kennedy pledged to meet this week with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association (which is,...

This is our Boston tea Party. The Associated Press wants to levy a $12.50 and up license fee (aka extortion fee) on any blogger who quotes more than 4 words from one of their propaganda pieces. This is an outrageous attempt to control the blogosphere and free speech itself. To hell with their license fee and to hell with the AP. Any AP article that gets posted to FR will be jettisoned into the harbor posthaste. Please do not post any AP material to FR excerpted or not.

As we wait with bated breath for the Associated Press to come down from the mountain with its own rules for "fair use for bloggers," Patrick Nielsen Hayden gives us a sense of what the AP considers fair use (found via Boing Boing). Apparently, for quite some time, the AP has had up a page that lists out prices for quoting AP text. I will quote the list prices, and hope I don't get a DMCA takedown: 5-25 words: $ 12.50 26-50 words: $ 17.50 51-100 words: $ 25.00 101-250 words: $ 50.00 251 words and up: $ 100.00 Oh,...

BAGHDAD, (AP) -- The U.S. military released Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein on Wednesday after holding him for more than two years without filing formal charges. Hussein, 36, was handed over to AP colleagues at a checkpoint in Baghdad. He was taken to the site aboard a prisoner bus and left U.S. custody wearing a traditional Iraqi robe. He was smiling and appeared in good health. "I want to thank all the people working in AP. ... I have spent two years in prison even though I was innocent. I thank everybody," Hussein said after being freed. AP President Tom...

BAGHDAD, (AP) -- The U.S. military says it will release Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein after more than two years in custody. The statement said Hussein will be freed Wednesday now that Iraqi judicial committees have granted him amnesty for all allegations. Hussein has been in custody since April 12, 2006 when he was detained by U.S. Marines for alleged links to insurgents.

Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zell, two media figures who led major newspaper acquisitions in recent months, are among four new members joining the board of directors of The Associated Press, it was announced Monday at the news cooperative's annual meeting. In other results, four incumbent directors were re-elected to three-year terms. They are William Dean Singleton, who is vice chairman and chief executive officer of MediaNews Group and chairman of the AP board; Jon K. Rust, publisher of the Southeast Missourian and co-president of Rust Communications; Michael E. Reed, chief executive officer of GateHouse Media Inc., and Victor F. Ganzi,...

Kill the short headline in BC-White House-Plagiarism,... A presidential aide resigned, not Bush.

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Associated Press, reporters groups and advocates for press freedoms urged the Supreme Court on Friday to reject Bush administration arguments that people held by the military in Iraq have no access to American courts. The government's view, if ratified by the court in a case that will be argued in March, would make it harder for journalists and others who are detained in the heat of battle, particularly in urban areas, to seek their freedom, the organizations said in a legal filing. The AP has been fighting the detention of photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been...

Does the news ever leave you wanting more? Do you read about world events online and wish you could click on a Tell Me More button? Do you watch newscasts, read blogs and download news podcasts, only to end up frustrated by a question that's left ringing in your head? Here's your chance to get some answers from the people who really know the news: journalists at the world's largest newsgathering organization. Introducing "Ask AP," a Q&A column where The Associated Press answers your questions about the news — anything from "What's a subprime mortgage?" to "What ever happened to...

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who had a hand in The Associated Press’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize for photography before being jailed without charges by the United States military, finally had a day in court last week. But his story, which highlights the unprecedented role that Iraqis are playing in news coverage of the war, is really just beginning. snip A spokesman for the military said that Mr. Hussein had been detained as “an imperative security threat” and that he has persistently been “treated fairly, humanely and in accordance with all applicable law.” In a lengthy e-mail message, the spokesman said...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani is picking up the endorsement of one-time GOP rival Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and Bush Cabinet member. "Rudy Giuliani has shown that he is a true leader," Thompson said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press. "He is America's mayor, and during a period of time of great stress for this country he showed tremendous leadership." The former New York mayor is to accept the endorsement in Charleston, S.C., later Friday. Thompson is the first former 2008 Republican presidential candidate to endorse in the race. He dropped out in...

Wednesday evening, Atlanta — It all started about 24 hours ago, when I found a plain cardboard box on my doorstep. I was surprised to see my name on the label, as I wasn’t expecting anything this week. My surprise increased exponentially when I opened the package to find a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows within. With no disrespect meant to J. K. Rowling’s innumerable devotees, I’m not a particularly big Harry Potter fan. But I’d read two or three of the early books, and being as susceptible as the next guy to the hype for the...

NEW YORK, (AP) -- The Associated Press will freeze its basic rates for newspaper and broadcast members for a second year in a row in 2008 and is proposing changes that would allow them to customize the news services they receive, the CEO of the news cooperative said Monday. Tom Curley said the AP is "keenly aware of the challenges facing members," referring to the sluggish advertising and circulation trends at newspapers as readers turn in greater numbers to the Internet. With that in mind, Curley said the news cooperative's board has agreed to continue a freeze of basic assessments...

The U.S. military's indefinite detention of an Associated Press photographer in Iraq, without charges, is an outrage and should be seen as such by the journalistic community, AP editors said Friday. "We are angry, and we hope you are, too," AP International Editor John Daniszewski told a gathering of the Associated Press Managing Editors. In interviews, the leaders of APME and the American Society of Newspaper Editors shared frustration with the case of Bilal Hussein and said they would urge the Pentagon to release the photographer, who has been held by the military since April, or to provide the AP...

At first everyone thought they were just blowing smoke, but the debunking of a Reuters photograph by a group of Web sites has launched a fiery online war in which bloggers have taken on the mainstream media. Bloggers, or writers on web logs, were the first to reveal that a Reuters photograph depicting plumes of black smoke rising over Beirut was doctored to enhance smoke above the city. The Web site www.LittleGreenFootballs.com is credited with first revealing the scandal, which has been dubbed Reutersgate, but the affair has spread far wider than the Reuters News Agency and into several of...

After two wars, thousands of deaths and many billions of dollars, the United States is still vulnerable to terrorists. That painful reality has ignited a political frenzy over who's to blame and who's best qualified to protect Americans. The one thing that Republicans and Democrats agree on is this: Five years after the Sept. 11 disaster, terrorists want to strike again and the country is not safe. To hear both sides talk, the wonder is that America hasn't been hit yet. "We've taken a lot of measures to protect the American people," President Bush said Thursday. "But obviously we're still...

First gradually, now quickly, the war in Iraq and a congressional corruption scandal are shaping the midterm elections, with Democrats working to harness both as campaign issues for the fall. That leaves Republicans on the defensive, not defeated. In Ohio, they succeeded Monday in talking scandal-scarred Rep. Bob Ney off the fall ballot. In the process, they likely improved their chances of retaining his seat, previously considered one of the two or three most likely to fall to the Democrats. No matter the outcome of the primary between Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and anti-war challenger Ned Lamont on Tuesday, the...

WASHINGTON - Tennessee's Senate race has caught the attention of national political parties because some observers think the contest could determine who controls the U.S. Senate. Democrats need to pick up six seats to win control of the Senate, and under many scenarios, the Tennessee race would be a crucial part of the electoral math. The seat is open because Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is stepping down to keep a term-limit pledge and weigh a presidential run. The likely Democratic nominee, Rep. Harold Ford, is a Memphis Democrat hoping to move from the House to the Senate. He...

The Associated Press trumpets the latest AP/Ipsos poll, with the headline: "Most Americans Plan to Vote for Democrats:" Republicans are in jeopardy of losing their grip on Congress in November. With less than four months to the midterm elections, the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that Americans by an almost 3-to-1 margin hold the GOP-controlled Congress in low regard and profess a desire to see Democrats wrest control after a dozen years of Republican rule. This is a howler, of course: the poll respondents wanted Democrats to win by 51% to 40%, not "almost 3-to-1." In any event, the AP...

Behold this breathtaking "news" from the DNC's Associated Press: Poll: Americans want Democrats in powerBy DONNA CASSATA, Associated Press Writer Fri Jul 14WASHINGTON - Republicans are in jeopardy of losing their grip on Congress in November. With less than four months to the midterm elections, the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that Americans by an almost 3-to-1 margin hold the GOP-controlled Congress in low regard and profess a desire to see Democrats wrest control after a dozen years of Republican rule.Further complicating the GOP outlook to turn things around is a solid percentage of liberals, moderates and even conservatives who...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The United States has few options and limited leverage as old animosities in the Middle East overtake hopes for peace and democracy. One problem is there aren't many people the U.S. can talk to. The United States has no diplomatic relations with the armed groups now fighting a two-front battle with Israel, no relations with one of their backers, Iran, and only limited dialogue with the other principal backer, Syria. Another problem is that the people the United States can talk to aren't able or willing to do as much as President Bush would like. The U.S.-allied...

NEW DELHI - Hindu priests who look after the memorial of Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi conducted a purification ceremony at the shrine after a visit from President Bush. But it wasn't the president who offended them, it was the sniffer-dogs who scoured the area ahead of his visit. After the dog visit, the memorial was cleansed with water brought from the Ganges river, which Hindus consider holy, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported Sunday. Bush visited the memorial on Thursday during his three day visit to India. The site, where pacifist icon Gandhi was cremated, is considered sacred and all...

We should all be grateful, once again, to Wretchard at Belmont Club, this time for hammering away at the amazing ability of an AP photographer in Baghdad to take pictures of Iraqi terrorists executing election officials. Wretchard keeps asking--and AP keeps kinda denying but increasingly kinda admitting culpability--how come the photographer was there at the precise moment the killings took place, and managed to take the pictures even though everyone else except the terrorists was running rapidly away from the scene. Lots of good work has also been done by Roger Simon, Power Line, Instapundit and others. It's a big...

<p>WASHINGTON - The Pentagon (news - web sites) on Friday released payroll records from President Bush (news - web sites)'s 1972 service in the Alabama National Guard, saying its earlier contention the records were destroyed was an "inadvertent oversight."</p> <p>The records cover July through September of 1972, when Bush was working as a campaign volunteer in Alabama. The future president had been transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama unit so he could stay in Alabama.</p>