Free Republic

As it happens, this is not my first such experience with the Journal. Five years ago, the paper ran a misleading column by Dorothy Rabinowitz attacking Ann Coulter for her comments on McCarthy, the main point of contention being the above-noted case of Annie Lee Moss. Ann's comments were very much on target, while those of Rabinowitz were, to put it mildly, misguided. On that occasion I wrote a letter to the Journal pointing out the facts about the case. That missive never appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

Today, the Washington Post editorial board urged Cindy McCain to release her tax returns, repeating a call made four years earlier to Teresa Heinz Kerry. But the timing seemed coincidental, given that Media Matters just wrote a letter to Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt last Friday. In that letter, the organization brought up the Heinz Kerry editorial from 2004, and asked why a similar request was not made to McCain. Hiatt tells Politico that the letter wasn't the reason for publishing Wednesday's editorial. "The editorial actually had been drafted before the [group's effort] began, or at least before I...

Consider This by 3-wood Here's something that should drive the MSM up a wall. Consumer-level inflation's tame in April, U.S. says "WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) ~ Growth in consumer prices came in below expectations for April even as food prices rose at the sharpest rate in 18 years, a government report showed Wednesday. The consumer price index rose a moderate 0.2% last month, the Labor Department said. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, the core consumer price index increased 0.1%. Inflation was just a bit weaker than expected, but financial markets welcomed the April CPI figures. Consumer prices are up 3.9% in...

Open Season on the Clinton Scandals? by Nancy Morgan FLASH: The Mainstream Media Discovers--GASP!--the Underbelly of the Clintons Eight Years LaterThe day following the crucial Indiana and NC primaries that seemed to end Hillary's presidential aspirations, a strange thing happened. The media started releasing bits and pieces of Hillary's seldom reported, nefarious doings. Doings that have been in the public arena for years but never followed up by the media. The Washington Times headline Once-Secret Memos Question Clinton's Honesty appeared Wednesday. The article outlined the decades old information that federal prosecutors had assembled hundreds of pages of evidence suggesting she...

BOULDER — How liberal is the University of Colorado at Boulder? The campus hot-dog stand sells tofu wieners. A recent pro-marijuana rally drew a crowd of 10,000, roughly a third the size of the student body. And according to one professor's analysis of voter registration, the 800-strong faculty includes just 32 Republicans. Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson surveys this landscape with unease. A college that champions diversity, he believes, must think beyond courses in gay literature, Chicano studies and feminist theory. "We should also talk about intellectual diversity," he says. So over the next year, Mr. Peterson plans to raise $9...

OK Freepers, Iron Man is now out, and is getting great reviews in the press. BUT- Iron Man has always been a political beast. And the reviews mention things like "social commentary" and infer that "Tony Stark changes his opinion on being an arms dealer". Those things tend to be red flags for a FReeper FRiendly Movie. SO- Can anyone who's actually seen Iron Man give a good spoiler-free review, including any political hack work done in the flick?

Time magazine’s managing editor, Richard Stengel defended the magazine’s manipulation of the classic Iwo Jima flag-raising photo into propaganda for Al Gore’s climate change campaign as “necessary for conveying the message that we must take action against global warming. A full account of facts would be too complicated and confusing for our readers.” “Trying to give balanced coverage plays into the hands of those who would spread doubt about the need for government to take charge in this crisis,” Stengel went on. “There is no time for debate. We don’t need for voters to understand the science. We just need...

Deep within our subconscious, all of us harbor biases that we consciously abhor. And the worst part is: we act on them "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson once told an audience, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” Jackson’s remark illustrates a basic fact of our social existence, one that even a committed black civil-rights leader cannot escape: ideas that we may not endorse—for example, that a black stranger might harm us but a...

The nation's economy continued its sluggish growth in the first quarter...at an annual rate of 0.6%...Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast growth would slow to a 0.5% gain in the most recent quarter.

FORT WAYNE, INDIANA - Throughout her life, Linda Eggert, a 51-year-old stay-at-home mother, has been a staunch Republican. But on May 6, when the marathon Democratic primary comes to Indiana, Eggert will cast her ballot for Hillary Clinton. more stories like this * Obama making plans to attract voters and money for November * Obama, Clinton spend time in low-priority states * Poll: Obama, Clinton running tight race in Indiana poll * Pelosi: Clinton, Obama sharing the ticket not a good idea * Harvard Survey: Young voters favor Obama * "Everybody is kind of rethinking their politics because of everything...

When Fox News Channel was launched promising news that was “fair and balanced,” mainstream outlets were insulted by the insinuation that their news wasn’t. They shouldn’t have been. In fact, “fair and balanced” news is a bad idea that was never in our past and will not be in our future. Before the printing press was invented, news was spread by word-of-mouth, so everyone had the opportunity to influence the top stories. Even governments had to compete, sometimes by hiring singing, colorfully-garbed minstrels to break through the clutter. A pretty good system, really — a multitude of voices competing in...

This was not a good debate for Obama, period. But it wasn't a great debate for Clinton either. Of course, that may not matter to Team Clinton. In a twp-way debate, it's not about which candidate narrowly wins -- but which candidate gets pummeled in the post-debate reviews. And Obama will get pummeled because well he did get pummeled, a little bit by Clinton and a little bit by the moderators. In the first 40 minutes of the debate, most of the questioning was on Obama's negatives (except for a lone Bosnia-sniper question to Clinton) and that's what helped create...

“Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.” Perhaps the above Ronald Reagan quote is a good example of why the Mainstream Media is so gloomy about the economy. If you’re employed by the MSM, job cuts and downsizing is not only a fact of life, there’s no end in sight for the members of the Media Pampered Class. It’s easy to see why the MSM talking heads are so obsessed with bad economic news: if arrogance and conservative-bashing are no longer enough to ensure one’s continued employment in the MSM, then the economy...

It’s nothing new that the American news media, complete with starry-eyed ideologues, want to be a part of the possible history a Barack Obama presidency would be. They see it as a national historical vindication, an erasure of racism past, and it would be a damn good story. Thus, the media has been correctly accused of being in the tank for the Obama campaign, lobbing him softball questions, and overlooking questionable comments made by the candidate, his wife, his acquaintances, and his staff. However, the latest tactic implemented by ABC News is nothing less than shameless, and this with an...

Yet despite the absence of any objective knowledge about what had happened, pro- and anti-war news organizations, talk radio shows, columnists, pundits and blogists leapt into the void -- invincibly ignorant of what had happened -- and immediately began making powerful arguments in support of their pre-existing positions. In the middle of a vital presidential election season, millions of American voters got misinformed on perhaps the central issue of the election that is critical to our national safety (whether misinformed for or against the war, we don't know yet). Hair-trigger-released propaganda untempered by even the existence of any objective facts...

<p>PITTSBURGH — A federal judge declared a mistrial Tuesday in the fraud case against celebrity pathologist Cyril Wecht, who was accused of using his staff at the county coroner's office to do work for his lucrative private practice.</p> <p>Federal prosecutors said they were ready to retry Wecht, who gained fame by inquiring into the deaths of well-known figures including Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey and Vincent Foster. A new trial date was set for May 27.</p>

Members of the military are prohibited from engaging in political activity, but ABC News convinced a few soldiers in Iraq to go before the cameras to discuss their choices for president. It is well known that the troops generally support Republicans because of their pro-military credentials, which is the reason Al Gore tried to have ballots from overseas military bases disqualified during the 2000 recount. However, Martha Raddatz could not find a single soldier who supported Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam War veteran for Commander in Chief. Most of those Raddatz interviewed backed Sen. Barack Obama with one favoring Sen....

ABC's Martha Raddatz asked American soldiers in Iraq what issues are most important to them when looking at the presidential candidates. Though the military is not supposed to engage in partisan political activity, these soldiers spoke out about their personal endorsements, and their opinions are likely to matter. In 2004, 73 percent of the U.S. military voted for a presidential candidate, and officials believe it may be even higher this time around. PFC Jeremy Slate said he supported Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., because of his stated intention to pull out of Iraq right away. "That would be nice," Slate said,...

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has stopped telling a story of a pregnant woman's medical tragedy after an Ohio hospital challenged its accuracy last weekend. But recent accounts of the episode have omitted key details that suggest there was more truth in the essence of Clinton's tale than her critics, and even her presidential campaign, have acknowledged. Since early March, the New York senator has often told campaign audiences a heartbreaking story of a young Ohio woman who began having problems with her pregnancy. She said the woman was twice turned away by a local hospital because she...

I'm sure you've all heard of the recent scandal in New York where the Governor (Eliot Spitzer, Democrat) was caught up in a call girl ring, but there was another scandal before that in which the Governor's political rival, State Senate majority leader Joe Bruno (Republican) found out that Governor Spitzer was using the State Police to spy on him: "I've been in government 31 years and I've never experienced anything like this," said Bruno. "I was stunned to learn Governor Spitzer is using the fine men and women of the New York State Police to conduct surveillance on me,"...

Top 20 Countdown host Lance Smith joins the cast of Stop-Loss, on top of the famous Riot Hyatt hotel overlooking Sunset Boulevard for a special edition of Top 20. The movie features Iraq war hero Sgt. Brandon King, who is played by Ryan Phillippe, as he makes his long awaited return home only to find out the Army has ordered him back to duty in Iraq, which devastates not only him but his family and friends.

CNN: Republicans Become Dems in PA, But Not Due to Rush’s ‘Dark Strategy’ By Matthew Balan | March 28, 2008 - 19:14 ET CNN’s Carol Costello highlighted Pennsylvania Republicans who became registered Democrats on Friday’s "The Situation Room," and brushed aside the possibility that Rush Limbaugh’s "Operation Chaos" strategy to meddle in the Democratic primaries might be a partial explanation for the change. Costello, featuring two former Republicans who are now voting for the Democrats, said of the couple, "[I]f you think either Conrad is switching because they buy into Rush Limbaugh's dark strategy to weaken the Democratic party...."Peggy and Charles Conrad, the...

As NewsBusters reported, ABC's "World News" aired a disturbing global warming hit piece on Sunday that disrespectfully attacked an esteemed scientist and emeritus professor, referring to his work as "fraudulent nonsense" that is "going to cost lives, and cause us lost species, and cost major economic damage around the world."

Economy Nearly Sputtered Out at End of 2007, Probably Faring Worse Now WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy nearly sputtered out at the end of the year and is probably faring even worse now amid continuing housing, credit and financial crises. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that gross domestic product increased at a feeble 0.6 percent annual rate in the October-to-December quarter. The reading -- unchanged from a previous estimate a month ago -- provided stark evidence of just how much the economy has weakened. In the prior quarter, the economy clocked in at a sizzling 4.9 percent growth rate. The...

Academia’s Big Tent by: Malcolm A. Kline, March 24, 2008 You can get a pretty good idea of where academics are coming from politically and where they expect their junior colleagues to fall on the political spectrum by what they tell each other, particularly when they put it down on paper. “The numerous ways of teaching suggest that there are varying philosophical or personal visions put forth about college teaching,” Michael W. Galbraith writes in College Teaching: Developing Perspective Through Dialogue.... “Once you discover what beliefs, values, and attitudes you hold, you will have the basis for a focused and...

Washington Post's Curious Iran Reporting March 22, 2008 National Review Online Michael Rubin William Branigin and Robin Wright have a rather factually flawed Washington Post article on President Bush’s speech on Iran that suggests either extreme sloppiness or that integrity has gone out the window in the news section. (It wouldn’t be the first time with Robin Wright, who earlier turned a deeply-partisan Iran lobby group’s press release into a news story). In today's article, Branigin and Wright assert: In an October 2005 speech to a conference on a "World without Zionism," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by a...

Analysis of two recent scandals says they do to print edition iPod friendly Share this site A common complaint of conservative media critics is that the mainstream media downplay the party affiliation of a Democrat who is involved in a scandal, while playing up the party identification of a Republican in a scandal. So I decided to see how the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post had treated two recent scandals, one involving New York Democratic Gov. Elliot Spitzer and the other involving Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley. Spitzer, of course, resigned March 12 after a federal investigation...

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Members of the radical group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) are busy preparing to host a new “war crimes” conference next month in Washington. The event, billed as Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan, takes its title from the IVAW’s namesake and mentor, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). However, information has now come to light that profoundly undermines the VVAW’s original atrocity claims.

She tried to make a joke of it. At the debate in Cleveland last week, Hillary Clinton brought up a "Saturday Night Live" skit about journalists fawning over Barack Obama at a mock debate. "Maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow," said Clinton. Humor is often a substitute for anger, and if Clinton wasn't all that funny, maybe it is because she is sore at the press for seeming to go easier on her opponent. She has a point, but the truth about the media and the campaign cannot be caricatured simply as the deification...

There is a shake-up at the Duluth News Tribune. The Duluth newspaper is downsizing, and will do it by cutting staff as much as 10 to 15 percent. Union members of the newspaper staff got a memo today, alerting them of the company's intention. The memo says the company needs to cut workers because of falling revenue, and to offset the problem, the company will first offer voluntary buy-outs. Then, if necessary, they'll resort to layoffs. According to the President of the Lake Superior Newspaper Guild, the memo was sent to 140 of its members at the Tribune, warning them...

AP Chief Cites Loss Of U.S. Press Freedoms Curley Honored For Pushing Openness In Government POSTED: 5:10 pm EST March 6, 2008 UPDATED: 5:12 pm EST March 6, 2008 The shadow of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is eclipsing press freedom and other constitutional safeguards in the United States, Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley says. Curley, CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer and NBC Universal vice president Paula Madison will be honored next week for their roles in promoting open government and free speech rights. "What has become clear in the aftermath of 9/11 is how much expediency...

The Washington Post reports that their new poll shows John McCain trailing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — a result that contradicts Rasmussen’s polling this week. Instead of showing a five-point lead for McCain, the WaPo survey has Obama up by 12. How can that be? It helps to have a huge oversample of Democrats and a lot of unregistered voters (via Jim Geraghty): Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) leads McCain, who captured the delegates needed to claim the Republican nomination Tuesday night, by 12 percentage points among all adults in the poll; Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) holds a six-point...

In an odd twist, many on the right are actually aiding and abetting a very public suicide. They're doing this by canceling their newspaper subscriptions, tuning out network news, and turning in droves to alternate sources for their news. The monopoly the old media had for the last forty years is slowly eroding and the powers that be seem unwilling or unable to adjust to the new reality of, well, competition

WASHINGTON (AP) — John McCain's last-man-standing strategy prevailed. Now, onto the general election and the hurdles that come with it. "It's an uphill battle. We have a tough fight ahead," the likely GOP nominee said recently of the next chapter of his presidential quest — and truer words may never have been spoken. Once McCain gets the 1,191 delegates needed to officially clinch the nomination, the party and its new standard-bearer then must convince a public craving change to keep a Republican in the White House in the midst of a drawn-out Iraq war and a sluggish economy. That's a...

Former CBS anchorman, Dan Rather, heaped praise on the New York Times for its “creative handling of charges of sexual impropriety” against Republican presidential contender Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.). “Right wingers would have Americans believe that the media should be confined to a narrow version of truth bounded by evidence,” Rather complained. “I was glad to see that the Times was unconstrained by such fetters. When a newsman knows the truth he must go all out to get the message out. This inner compass helps keep us on course when all the landmarks of so-called facts would lead us astray.”...

Newsday publisher Tim Knight Thursday announced that the newspaper will be cutting about 120 jobs throughout the company, citing declining sales and the "soft advertising revenue environment." The reduction in Newsday's workforce -- about 5 percent -- comes as many news organizations nationwide have been cutting jobs to survive an already tough and competitive marketplace made more difficult by a slowing economy. Two weeks ago, several other news organizations owned by Newsday's parent company Tribune Co. -- Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Hartford Courant and the Chicago Tribune Media Group -- announced staff reductions affecting about 300 employees....

"...If anyone is still puzzled about the facts, in fact I have never been a Muslim. We had to send CNN to look at the school that I attended in Indonesia where kids were wearing short pants and listening to ipods to indicate that this was not a madrassa but was a secular school in Indonesia..." ~ Barack Obama, 24 February 2008 In a recent episode of Saturday Night Live that featured a parody of a Clinton Obama debate, a faux Campbell Brown chirped "Like nearly everyone in the news media, the three of us are totally in the tank...

CBS and the New York Times have a new poll out that looks at the Democratic primary race and at the general election. In the former, it uses a rather small sample, but in the latter the sample gets weighted -- as usual -- in favor of Democratic voters. Barack Obama has taken a lead in the national numbers for the primary, not exactly breaking news: A new CBS News/New York Times poll finds Barack Obama with a 16-point lead over rival Hillary Clinton among Democratic primary voters nationwide. Obama, coming off 11 straight primary and caucus victories, had the...

The Albuquerque Tribune will publish its final edition on Saturday, Feb. 23. The decision to close the newspaper follows a seven-month effort by The E. W. Scripps Company to sell The Tribune. Scripps notified The Tribune's 38 editorial employees today of the decision to discontinue publication. Tribune employees will receive severance packages, including outplacement services and a limited health care subsidy. "The loss of The Albuquerque Tribune is profoundly sad for the community, its dedicated staff and all of those great journalists who have contributed over the years to the newspaper's outstanding reputation for editorial independence and excellence," said Rich...

Michael Graham, blogging at The Natural Truth, brings us this disgusting but not surprising story about how CNN coached its anchors to treat the subject of fidel castro in an early morning email today. I can now confirm independently that not only did such an email go out, here it is in its entirety: From: Flexner, Allison Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 7:46 AM To: *CNN Superdesk (TBS) Cc: Neill, Morgan; Darlington, Shasta Subject: Castro guidance Some points on Castro – for adding to our anchor reads/reporting: * Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter...

3. The piece is actually more biased then the New York Times, I am thoroughly disappointed in BusinessWeek for even printing it. Check out the breakdown of quotes in this article: 2 quotes from Democratic Consultants 0 quotes from Republican Consultants 1 Example of a CEO who likes Obama and corresponds with him 0 Examples of CEOs who disagree with Obama or even think Clinton is better 1 Quote from the head of a Chamber of Commerce about Obama’s character 0 Quotes from anyone about the damaging effects of Obama’s liberal policies in Illinois If this breakdown surprises you, you...

In an uncommon act of journalistic contrition, the BBC has apologized for equating former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh as "great national leaders." The BBC took the unusual step after Don Mell, The Associated Press's former photographer in Beirut, lambasted the parallel, drawn by BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawkesley in a BBC World report last Thursday, as "an outrage" and "beyond belief." American journalist Mell was held up at gunpoint by Mughniyeh's men as his colleague Terry Anderson, AP's chief Middle East correspondent, was kidnapped in Beirut in March 1985. Hawkesley's report on what he...

WILMINGTON -- Wilmington's Star News is laying off more than a dozen employees, and the cuts will be felt in their newsroom. Fifteen jobs were cut in Wilmington, and 100 jobs were elminated at the paper's parent company, The New York Times. Star News executive editor, Tim Griggs says six of the fifteen jobs are coming from the newsroom, while other positions are being trimmed from the production advertising and marketing departments. Griggs had said the Star News is thriving, but the industry as a whole is suffering with dropped circulation and ad sales primarly due to competition from the...

BAGHDAD — Two CBS News journalists were missing in the predominantly Shiite southern city of Basra, the network said Monday. CBS said all efforts were under way to find the journalists, who were not identified by the network. It requested "that others do not speculate on the identities of those involved" until more information was available. Iraqi police said the journalists were taken away Sunday after masked gunmen entered the Sultan Palace Hotel in central Basra. The police spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. "CBS News has been in touch with the...

Call it Today's homage to John Lennon: imagine there're no conservatives. The NBC show so much enjoyed the conservative-free citizens panel it hosted back in November that it brought it back this morning. As I wrote about at the time, two timid Republicans were pitted against two partisan Dems. In November, one of the "Republicans," Susie O'Neil, claimed that the country is in decline due to the war "and because corporations are totally influencing our Members of Congress and the Senate." Call Susie a Michael Moore Republican. The other Republican on the panel back then, Sarah Hungerford, said she was...

Afternoon Paper To Cease Daily Publication In April MADISON, Wis. -- The Capital Times, Madison's 90-year-old newspaper will stop printing a daily newspaper, reduce staff and focus on Internet operations, according to an article posted online Thursday. In an announcement on captimes.com, newspaper publisher Clayton Frink said the paper will end its six-day a week publication and instead offer readers a tabloid-style insert in the Wisconsin State Journal twice weekly. Frink said Cap Times will print a news and opinion section on Wednesdays and an arts, entertainment and culture section on Thursdays. The article also said that staff cuts will...

Judy Mackie votes for Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney inside a Mormon church during Super Tuesday on Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008, in Sandy, Utah. While she shares the same Mormon faith with Romney, Mackie said it was his business sense that got her vote and religion had nothing to do with it. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

John McCain is largely a creation of the media, David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union, tells Newsmax. “McCain has gotten a free ride from the media,” says Keene, who has endorsed Mitt Romney for president. “Indeed, he’s gotten better treatment than any GOP candidate I can remember.” While tagging other candidates “flip-floppers,” Keene says “admiring reporters” ignore McCain’s flaws and the fact that he has “changed or obfuscated his position on more issues this cycle than any other candidate. And that’s saying something.” ... Keene says McCain routinely rewrites his own record, and his version is accepted by...