Free Republic

Posted at 9:30 AM, Pacific This is really amazing: The editor of the Los Angeles Times branding Fox News as pseudo-journalism while asserting that the paper he leads is a repository of real journalism. Put aside the quackery of Scheer or the irrelevance of the editorial voice (see the post below), the robust line-up of news pages columnists every single one of whom is left or way left of center, the Times' photographer in the Church of the Nativity, the bizarre non-coverage of Gray Davis' money machine, the asleep at the wheel coverage of the electricity crisis or the decade-ago...

The cries of Iraqi prisoners fall on deaf ears as far as Rush Limbaugh is concerned. But can he truly be faulted for that? After all, the political pundit's hearing is permanently impaired as a result of long-term OxyContin abuse. And how could a painkiller addict understand abuse to begin with? The man hasn't felt pain in years. Nevertheless, Limbaugh condoned the horrific treatment of Iraqi prisoners on his Thursday radio show, referring to it as a "brilliant maneuver" on behalf of the U.S. military. As most Daily Press readers already know, CBS recently released photographs of Iraqi prisoners being...

The media industry has been infested by the rise of pseudo-journalists who go against journalism's long tradition to serve the public with accurate information, Los Angeles Times Editor John S. Carroll told a packed room in the Gerlinger Lounge on Thursday. Carroll delivered the annual Ruhl Lecture, titled "The Wolf in Reporter's Clothing: The Rise of Pseudo-Journalism in America." The lecture was sponsored by the School of Journalism and Communication. "All over the country there are offices that look like newsrooms and there are people in those offices that look for all the world just like journalists, but they are...

Electronic Arts announced the release date for its much anticipated followed up to The Sims, despite a recent move by the Bush Administration and Christian groups to block the game from store shelves...

<p>Muslims in the United States experienced more than 1,000 incidents of alleged harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment in 2003, a jump of 70 percent over the previous year, according to a report to be released today by a major Islamic advocacy group.</p>

Dr. Dittohead I thought my therapist was brilliant -- until I discovered her love for Rush Limbaugh. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Margot Mifflin April 8, 2004 I was sitting in therapy describing an in-law I like, and quickly heading for a "but." "He's a loving, caring, selfless man -- but his politics are all about hatred," I said. "He's not educated, and more significant, he's ignorant -- he actually listens to Rush Limbaugh." I waited for a "Whoo boy!" or a sympathetic smile, but my shrink just stared at me, expressionless....

The political divisions in this country being what they are, it's not enough that liberals and conservatives have different radio networks, different Web sites and different networks of friends. In order to eliminate all possibility of trans-partisan conversation, I really think it's time we stopped flying together. It's time to set up two different airlines: Liberal Air, with direct flights between Madison, Berkeley, Ann Arbor and the New School for Social Research; and Right Wing Express, which will have planes with no oxygen masks in case of emergencies because anybody who can't handle a little asphyxiation doesn't deserve to live....

EDITORIAL: Too stupid to teach? UNLV professor says Republican Party now a haven of slope-browed troglodytes Back in 2002, a survey by the American Enterprise Institute found America's colleges and universities to be a virtually monochrome refuge of the political left. More than 80 percent of most schools' employees were found to be registered Democrats, despite the almost even split between registered Republicans and Democrats among the public at large. The AEI report found one consequence of this lack of diversity was that conservative thinkers tend to be isolated and intimidated on American campuses, with the predictable result that they...

There he goes again!Matt Drudge and the GOP smear machine are back in the Democrats' pants. - - - - - - - - - - - -By Joe ConasonFeb. 13, 2004  |  Is American politics suddenly returning to the bad old days, when Washington journalism became frenzied with sheet sniffing and keyhole peeping? That seems to be the default program of the right-wing media machine whenever Republican poll numbers sink into the red zone. Late Thursday morning -- with George W. Bush's credibility damaged on several fronts as reporters demanded answers to questions about his National Guard service that...

Hating homosexuals becomes 'new racism' Editorial Volume 95, Number 6 Tuesday, January 20, 2004 Throughout almost a majority of the previous century, a good many conservative politicians enjoyed all too much treading on the wrong side of the race line. Looking back we see the racist habits of too many conservatives; indeed, it was conservatives who never wanted yesterday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, to be a recognized national holiday. It was, too, a conservative Ronald Reagan who supported for five years the apartheid regime in South Africa, and it was current Vice President Dick Cheney, at the time a...

Is the Rev. Al Sharpton working with Republicans to torpedo Democrat chances of locking up the black vote in this year's presidential election? That's just one of the questions raised by the Village Voice this week, in a bombshell report that details the curious relationship between GOP strategist Roger Stone and the civil rights leader-turned presidential hopeful. Describing Stone as "a longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative," the Voice said he is "financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton." The paper says it has documented "an extraordinary array of connections" and calls Stone's role in the Sharpton...

<p>Is Fox News Channel "fair and balanced," as its motto claims?</p> <p>Or is that slogan a clever marketing line designed to hide Fox News political tilt to the right?</p> <p>And with its success — by far, it's the No. 1-rated cable news channel — have journalists failed to challenge Fox News on its boast?</p>

Talk radio: It's time for more than right-wing hot air Why should we settle for just RIGHT-WING HOT AIR? 02/01/04GARRETT EPPS I t was a match worthy of World Wrestling Entertainment. In this corner, one mild-mannered, wordy academic; in the other, Kevin Mannix's minister of information, the pistol-packing Godzilla of Portland talk radio, Lars Larson. It was the fall of 2001. I was a visiting professor at Duke University. A Portland radio show wanted someone to explain the new policy of trying foreign terrorists in front of military commissions. I boned up on the topic and called in at the...

Bottom Lines From Sen. Lott? • Sen. Trent Lott, whose impolitic remarks at Strom Thurmond's 100th-birthday celebration cost him his leadership role, may still be suffering from foot-in-mouth disease. In the Washingtonian's February issue, National Editor Kim Eisler -- whom Lott rejected last year as a possible co-author of his memoirs -- quotes the Mississippi Republican as referring to former Carter administration official and journalist Hodding Carter III as "Hodding the Turd" and calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) "butt ugly." (Lott was referring, Eisler reports, to the way Clinton looked in 1974, but he "allowed as how she looks...

Why Can’t Bubba Vote Democrat? by Allen Snyder OpEdNews.Com ‘Bubba’, you may recall, is the generic name for the guy Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean appealed to; the blue-collar white guy with the pick-up, Confederate Flag (if he’s a Southerner – the North has its Bubbas, too), gun rack, spit cup, NASCAR ball cap, ‘I Pledge to One Nation Under God’ bumper sticker, and big chip on his shoulder. It’s false that people who like NASCAR, Confederate flags, and guns are Bubbas and, being a professional critical thinker, I see the gross overgeneralization involved in saying so. Instead, we’ll say...

<p>WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Rush Limbaugh asked a court Wednesday to hear his claim that investigators violated his privacy by seizing his medical records and asked that the records not be released.</p> <p>The conservative radio host cannot be treated for his medical conditions because the state seized his charts and files last month and intimidated his doctors, the court petition said.</p>

One month to the day after the Republican club at Wells College (an all-women’s college located in Aurora, NY) published a study revealing a grossly disproportionate number of left-wing professors on its faculty, the student government denied recognition to the club as an official campus organization. On November 7th, the Wells Republicans issued a press release describing the study they had conducted of the political party registrations of the members of the social sciences and humanities faculties at the college. The study revealed that members of parties of the Left (Democrats, Greens, Working Families) outnumbered Republicans by a ratio...

Democrats from Bill Clinton to Howard Dean have complained that conservative talk radio hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly have grown too powerful. Now an effort has begun to drive one of them off the air, according to the manager of a station that carries Hannity's show in New Mexico. Bob Clark, station manager of KRSN in Los Alamos, described to Hannity on Tuesday a series of threatening phone calls to his station and its advertisers that were part of a bid to get Clark to drop the top-rated talker's broadcast. Clark said it began with a call...

Nov. 28, 2003, 3:14PM Houston activist's court date draws attention By EDWARD HEGSTROM Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle Well-known immigrant-rights activist Maria Jimenez goes to court Monday, accused of assaulting the executive director of the Harris County Republican Party. Jimenez, the head of the mayor's office of immigrant affairs, seems to be taking the matter in stride. When a police officer informed her of the misdemeanor assault charge during a protest at Harris County Republican Party headquarters Oct. 27, she responded: "Great! We couldn't have planned it better than this." Jimenez is accused of shoving a box of protest letters into...

Send in the Election Clowns Don't worry, they're here BY TIM FLECK tim.fleck@houstonpress.com What a difference a couple of years make. In the Houston Press Best of Houston issue in 2001, Houston's District H councilman Gabe Vasquez received Best Politician honors. Last week, he missed the runoff in the race for city controller after earlier deciding not to seek re-election to his City Council seat. Come January, Vasquez will be busted back to private citizenship. In an informal Insider poll of the biggest blunders of the 2003 local election, media members and politicos named Vasquez's ballot switcheroo as No. 1....