Free Republic

As a lesbian in a long-term relationship, Margaret Leber objects to the idea of amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. But Ms. Leber, a software engineer and a registered Republican in Jeffersonville, Pa., is also a member of the Pink Pistols, an organization of gay and lesbian gun owners, and marriage is not the only issue on her mind. "Right now, I am leaning toward Bush," Ms. Leber said. "All the Democrats just rolled into Congress to vote for this gun-control bill. Somebody with my values and beliefs can't be a single-issue voter." President Bush's support for the gay-marriage...

The New York Times’ “conservative beat” is nothing more than a ruse for attacking the very foundations of conservatism, as well as the Bush Administration. [Bill] Keller surely knows that his own newsroom often is perceived as liberal and that a more intense effort to report on conservatives might rid his staff of any misconception that conservatives are all, well, strange or alien. In any case, good journalism should attempt to get beyond convenient but distorting labels. -- Terry Eastland, The Weekly Standard, 3/3/04 It’s an election year. There’s a conservative Republican president up for re-election (thank God!). And the...

What does a conservative beat mean for The New York Times? FOR MORE THAN A MONTH, one of our national papers of record, the New York Times, has been examining "conservative forces in religion, politics, law, business and the media." No, that isn't made up. The quoted material comes from Times national editor Jim Roberts, announcing last month that David D. Kirkpatrick, the former media correspondent, would patrol the new beat. As with any press release, it deserves a question or two, beginning with why the Times thinks it can cover all of those conservative forces with only one reporter....

For more than a month, one of our national papers of record, The New York Times, has been examining "conservative forces in religion, politics, law, business and the media." No, that isn't made up. The quoted material comes from Times national editor Jim Roberts, announcing last month that David D. Kirkpatrick, the former media correspondent, would patrol the new beat. As with any press release, it deserves a question or two, beginning with why The Times thinks it can cover all of those conservative forces with only one reporter. The task would seem to require a legion of correspondents, but...

The long rise of America's conservative movement has finally caught the attention of the New York Times. The worried Old Gray Lady is assigning a full-time correspondent to spend the next year on discovering what mischief the right is up to. The move is a turnabout for the Times, which has always looked down its nose at conservatives and preferred to pretend they don't exist. After all, they don't exist in the rarefied little world of the Times' movers and shakers. According to the New York Observer's "Off the Record" feature, David Kirkpatrick, who had been covering the book industry,...