Free Republic

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama won applause from legal adversaries of the recording industry. Stanford law professor Larry Lessig, the doyen of the "free culture" movement, endorsed the Illinois senator, as did Google CEO Eric Schmidt and even the Pirate Party. That was then. As president-elect, one of Obama's first tech-related decisions has been to select the Recording Industry Association of America's favorite lawyer to be the third in command at the Justice Department. And Obama's pick as deputy attorney general, the second most senior position, is the lawyer who oversaw the defense of the Copyright Term Extension Act--the...

In December 2007, we alerted readers to a new Campus-Watch.org feature called Setting The Record Straight. The section (which can be accessed by passing one's mouse over the "About Campus Watch" category in the left-hand tab and clicking on "Setting The Record Straight") is designed to correct false accusations made against Campus Watch. As we explained at the time: Campus Watch readers are no doubt familiar with the numerous smears, false allegations, and hysterical accusations leveled against us by our opponents. Frequent charges of "McCarthyism," "censorship," "silencing professors," and "threats to academic freedom" are hurled at Campus Watch by those...

Lots of people love this movie of course. But I’m convinced it’s for the wrong reasons. Because to me “It’s a Wonderful Life” is anything but a cheery holiday tale. Sitting in that dark public high school classroom, I shuddered as the projector whirred and George Bailey’s life unspooled.

An article in yesterday’s New York Times by Public Editor Clark Hoyt, “Separating the Terror and the Terrorists,” is a nauseating example of the paper’s moral relativism applied to the war on terrorism. Hoyt tries to rationalize The Times’ reluctance to apply the “terrorist” label to people who take hostages, blow up bystanders and shoot 5-year-old girls in their beds. Hoyt admits “The Times is sparing in its use of ‘terrorist’” when reporting on Palestinian atrocities. In an effort to be even-handed, the paper has decided to call the murder of Jews inside the 1948 boundaries of Israel “terrorist,” but...

Conventional wisdom holds that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald ordered the FBI to arrest Rod Blagojevich before sunrise Tuesday in order to stop a crime from being committed. That would have been the sale of the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. But the opposite is true: Members of Fitzgerald’s team are livid the scheme didn’t advance, at least for a little longer, according to some people close to Fitzgerald’s office. Why? Because had the plot unfolded, they might have had an opportunity most feds can only dream of: A chance to catch the sale of a Senate seat on...

[In 2004 and 2005,] Sources said Thomas also logged frequent visits to Rezko from Gov. Blagojevich and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Blagojevich and Obama were among the many politicians for whom Rezko raised campaign cash…. Sources said the government had him wear a hidden wire to record conversations with a Chicago alderman–but that he did not record Blagojevich or Obama.” RezkoTrialWatch: FBI mole "logged frequent visits to Rezko" by Obama (renamed) February 10, 2008 In an exclusive interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, FBI “mole” John Thomas, “who’s expected to be a key prosecution witness against indicted developer and political...

Up the Academy by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 31, 2008 In-house audits that Academia inflicts upon itself invariably give the Ivory Tower a clean bill of health but a recent study at least attempts to scratch beneath the surface. “Our analysis of 38 private colleges and 6,807 student respondents indicates that, consistent with a number of previous studies, faculty members are predominantly liberal and Democratic,” Mack D. Mariani and Gordon J. Hewitt write in the October 2008 issue of P. S.: Political Science and Politics, a monthly journal. “We find little evidence, however, that faculty ideology is associated with changes...

Palintology by: Lance Nation, October 24, 2008 What can this correspondent write about Gregory Charles Royal’s recent press conference at the National Press Club (NPC)? Honestly, I thought the Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin article in the DC Examiner summed it up perfectly. Entitled A presser on how not to do a presser and dubbed “A Royal Disaster,” the Dufour and Gavin piece marvelously captured the only true usefulness of this event: “Seasoned Washingtonians are well-versed in the art of the press conference. But have you ever thought about what it is you shouldn’t do at a presser? In case...

Time's Joe Klein is giddy. Convinced Sen. Barack Obama is barreling down the straightaway towards the electoral finish line with Sen. McCain choking on his dust, Mr. Anonymous is cheering the promise of big government and wealth redistribution, seeing an Obama victory as a mandate for LBJ-like big government activism.

I have a BA in journalism, and over time have kept in touch with a number of people who are still working in that profession. So when one of them emailed me the following about the atmosphere in today's newsrooms, I wasn't surprised at all. This person does offer some hints at the end on how to push for more fairness in your local coverage: .... It's unbelievable here. I've been through a few election cycles and have gotten pretty used to the open sneering every time a Republican candidate appears on the television, but this year is unlike anything...

One of the fallacies this election season is that if Barack Obama is paying an electoral price for his skin tone, it must be because of racists. On the contrary, the evidence is that Mr. Obama is facing what scholars have dubbed "racism without racists." The racism is difficult to measure, but a careful survey completed last month by Stanford University, with The Associated Press and Yahoo, suggested that Mr. Obama's support would be about 6 percentage points higher if he were white. That's significant but surmountable. Most of the lost votes aren't those of dyed-in-the-wool racists. Such racists account...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Paul Krugman, the Princeton University scholar and New York Times columnist, won the Nobel economic prize Monday for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect trade patterns and the location of economic activity. Krugman has been a harsh critic of the Bush administration and the Republican Party in The New York Times, where he writes a regular column and has a blog called "Conscience of a Liberal." He has come out forcefully against John McCain during the economic meltdown, saying the Republican candidate is "more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago" and...

NEW YORK (AFP) - LIFE magazine, the legendary but now defunct US magazine known for its prize-winning photos, is getting a new lease on life -- as a website. Time Inc., which owns the LIFE photo collection, and the Getty Images photo service announced on Tuesday the launch of a new website, LIFE.com, which will feature photos from the LIFE archives and Getty Images. > "Only three percent of the LIFE archive has been seen by the public," said LIFE.com editor Bill Shapiro. "This site will put everything on display. You'll be able to look at the biggest events of...

NBC news reporter Luke Russert said he made a "dumb" misstatement on the Today Show Wednesday when he suggested that smart people supported Barack Obama for president. Almost immediately, Russert took a hazing in the Web world.

(NEW YORK) They scold us for “being unfair,” remind us to “ask all the candidates the same questions,” and occasionally, they boo us. From Canton to Colorado, some of the tens of thousands of people attending Sarah Palin’s rallies regularly take it upon themselves to give the media a piece of their minds. So I thought it only fair to turn the microphone around, and give a handful of rally attendees a chance to air their grievances about the way in which the media has covered the Republican vice presidential nominee. Watch the video below:

ABC's Kate Snow from New York: There's a battle going on right now over how the networks will be allowed to cover Sarah Palin's big day of visits in NY with world leaders. Palin is scheduled to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai shortly, followed by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and then with McCain advisor, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The networks had arranged for a "pool" camera- one camera to cover the meetings, whose video would be pooled or shared with all networks. Such arrangements are standard when dealing with intimate high-level meetings between leaders and candidates. But...

The nine people convicted in the Newsday circulation scandal were each sentenced Friday to 5 years' probation and up to $125,000 in fines, escaping potential restitution totaling $5.9 million and up to 20 years in prison. Those sentenced - in what federal prosecutors said was the end of their investigation - included Louis Sito, a former top Newsday executive who ran the newspaper's day-to-day business operations, and Robert Brennan, former vice president of circulation. Sito also served as vice president of Hispanic media at Tribune Co., which owned Newsday and the Spanish language Hoy, also implicated in the scandal. The...

Now there's a headline sure to make Rush Limbaugh's face a little redder. The claim comes to us from George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs, which has studied network newscasts for 20 years running. After analyzing the nightly ebb and flow of our current race, the center's researchers see a pattern (Via the Los Angeles Times): ...that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign. You read it right: tougher on the Democrat. Just how does one measure "tougher," you ask? During the...

Ithaca, N.Y. — The Best Of Everything? By REBECCA JAMES   The Commons is a popular gathering place in downtown Ithaca, N.Y. (Photo by Gloria Wright)     ITHACA, N.Y. — When your town has made more than 25 lists that call it one of the best cities in America, you might be surprised that one magazine would call it one of the "Twelve Great Places You've Never Heard Of."But along with that 2006 designation from Mother Earth News, Ithaca seems to make the grade no matter what's being ranked. It's one of the "lesbian friendliest cities," has the "best...

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia announced Monday that it has charged former CBS 3 anchor Larry Mendte with a felony count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization. The government's case against Mendte, 51, is set out in an "Information" – the formal charging document. The Information charges Mendte with one count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization and thereby obtaining information in furtherance of a tortious act. The Information says Mendte accessed the private e-mail accounts of former co-anchor Alycia Lane hundreds of times from from his Chestnut Hill home, his vacation home, KYW and...