Free Republic

..."It's a great day for freedom of speech in Washington and great day for freedom of speech in America," said Carlson, one of two hosts at the center of the legal dispute...The court's 9-0 ruling was a sharp rebuke of several local governments — including Seattle — that brought the original case. In a concurrence opinion, Justices Jim Johnson and Richard Sanders called it an "abusive" attempt by the municipalities to silence political opponents. Two years ago, Carlson and fellow KVI-AM host Kirby Wilbur waged an extensive on-air campaign to promote a citizen initiative to overturn a 9.5-cent-a-gallon gas-tax increase...

Newsrooms tend to follow a conventional story line on social issues. As the late commentator and editor Michael Kelly wrote, "most journalists learn to see the world through a set of standard templates into which they plug each day's events." The most obvious templates concern race — whites are oppressing blacks, gender — men are oppressing women, and class — the privileged are oppressing the poor. Since all three of these templates were in play during the Duke race case, how surprising is it that this triple high tide resulted in some of the worst journalism of the decade? Howard...

On March 12, 2007, Dan Rather gave a speech at the South by Southwest interactive conference in which he said the American media had ?lost its guts in recent years.? Rather accused the mainstream media of being afraid to challenge authority and not providing critical reporting of the White House and the Pentagon, for fear of being seen as unpatriotic or unsupportive of America?s fighting troops in Iraq. According to Rather, ?We?ve brought it on ourselves, partly because we?ve lost the sense that the patriotic journalist will be on his or her feet asking the tough questions. My role as...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. economy may be in recession, based on Midwest manufacturing data, a report said on Thursday. According to Kingsbury International, a partner of NAPM Chicago which puts out The National Association of Purchasing Management-Chicago business barometer, "the U.S. economy could be in a recession at this time." "In four of the last five recessions, the slowing of the Chicago business barometer signaled a recession either one or two years later," the report said. Copyright 2006 Reuters

The former American president, Jimmy Carter, has said that the United States should begin talks with Iran without preconditions. Mr Carter believes prerequisites could present the Iranian Government with too great an impediment to overcome. His comments are significant, given that he was the president when US relations with Iran hit an all-time low. He witnessed the Iranian revolution and the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979. He struggled for 444 days to release the US Embassy staff held hostage. A failed rescue attempt led by the US military brought about the resignation of his secretary of...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT I want to apologize to those of you in this audience. I missed something crucial yesterday. I have an -- it's not an excuse. I have a reason. The reason I missed it is that I don't read the New York Times and nobody on my staff reads the New York Times. And so nobody saw it. But it was a big story. Huge story. I'm going to take you back to late Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning. You're watching TV and you see New Mexico out there, and when it comes to Ohio, only Fox and NBC...

October 12, 2004 -- CONSERVATIVES are up in arms about the memo written by the chief pol itics producer at ABC News, which leaked out on Friday. They shouldn't be. Mark Halperin's memo is very useful: It reveals as no other document ever has the existence of a deeply ingrained double standard in the way political news is reported in the United States. Simply put, Republicans and conservatives are subject to exacting scrutiny of their actions, while Democrats and liberals are treated with far greater leniency. You can see this in the memo, when Halperin informs his colleagues, "The current...