Free Republic

10-11 Tonight’s episode was the best of the season. A fake nuclear strike to get info. A rouse kidnapping of Fayed. Jack rides under the truck. Jack takes on all the terrorists and kills Fayed. Congratulations to Fury and all the writers. “Say hello to your brother.” Great line. Reminds me of Eastwood lines. For the criticism, it was a little cartoonish that Jack goes in the warehouse , kills everyone, and never gets hit by a bullet. Ever notice that most of the terrorists are bad shots? 9-10 Cochran and Katz really screwed this up along with the producers....

According to WorldNet Daily, James Cromwell, who plays Jack Bauer's father on "24", told the London Telegraph that he can't stand living in America anymore. Cromwell told the London Telegraph: "I can't handle living in the United States of America when I know the last two elections were rigged, and that we were denied our right to vote, where we live in a country where 32 percent of the people vote and even those people's votes don't count, and the people who should really have a stake, kids, don't have any say at all, “ people of color, very little...

According to a new book by ABC News reporters: In October 2001, the fires were still burning at Ground Zero when New York City was faced with the threat of a nuclear bomb planted inside the city, a threat so dire that no city official, including the mayor, was informed of it by the secret team assigned to prevent the device from going off. Some details of the still-classified incident have crept out over time, but until now it never has been reported that a handful of senior New York City Police Department bomb technicians, including at least one grandfather,...

FNC "will present the first of two episodes of The 1/2 Hour News Hour on Sunday, February 18th from 10-10:30PM/ET with an encore presentation on Sunday, February 25th from 10-10:30PM/ET." More: "Developed by 24 Executive Producer Joel Surnow, the 30-minute show is a satirical reflection of news issues and current events. The scripted episodes feature segments with comedians Kurt Long and Jenn Robertson. FNC ordered two episodes of the show in late 2006. The second episode will be presented on Sunday, March 4th from 10-10:30PM/ET."

The grossly graphic torture scenes in Fox's highly rated series "24" are encouraging abuses in Iraq, a brigadier general and three top military and FBI interrogators claim. The four flew to Los Angeles in November to meet with the staff of the show. They said it is hurting efforts to train recruits in effective interrogation techniques and is damaging the image of the U.S. around the world, according The New Yorker. "I'd like them to stop," Army Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, told the magazine. Finnegan and others told the show's creative...

I have called Jack Bauer a thug, someone who would be in jail if he weren't out saving the country every week. And yet the fact that Jack seems to be remarkably untroubled by the methods he uses to battle the terrorists has always been one of his more attractive attributes. We want the kind of certitude exhibited by Jack. We long for it. We crave it. A black and white world where we don't have to wrestle with our consciences about what to do with real terrorists and where the choices made by our government to protect us would...

For Senior Jonathan Goldstein, Monday nights from 9-10 p.m. are off limits for everything except FOX’s hit drama, “24.” “My friends know not to call me during that hour,” he said. “It’s not that I’m anti-social about it, I’ll watch it with other people. I just want to be fully focused on what’s happening.” As most people familiar with the show already know, Goldstein is hardly alone. Since its debut in 2001, “24” has become one of the most popular and compelling shows on television. Its debut this season garnered 33 million viewers and the DVD sales of its past...

When the ABCNews.com column assignment arrived mid-morning --"Is the TV show "24" going too far by depicting a nuclear attack in Los Angeles in its opening episode?"-- the drama went out of tonight's two-hour program. Or so I thought. As zero hour approached, I found myself assuming that the program really wouldn't actually depict a nuclear detonation near Los Angeles. I noted as the show unfolded that the script had the doomsday scenario putting the casualties of such an event at somewhere north of a hundred thousand, a remarkably low estimate, and that no mention was made of the catastrophic...

Iranian news agency reports 'a radiant unidentified flying object in Western Iran' A UFO omitting a "yellow ray" has been seen across Western Iran, the Fars News Agency claimed in a report recently. "Witnesses told FNA (Fars News Agency) that the object has been observed for more than an hour," the report said, adding: "In a similar incident last Monday, an Unidentified Flying Object was witnessed in the same area and at the same time." According to eye witnesses, "the UFO has been as big as a ball, with a yellow ray and a bright reddish color in the center....

Naval Academy Midshipman Roarke Baldwin had gone to an Annapolis mall to catch the latest James Bond flick when he found himself in what could have been a scene from an action movie with rapid gunfire, fleeing bystanders and screaming parents herding their children to safety. Instantly, Baldwin made a decision: He ran toward the gunfire, past the fleeing bystanders and, most significantly, to the aid of a man shopping with his family. As it turned out, the man -- more Jack Bauer than Bond -- was a federal agent, who, like the hero of the TV show "24," took...

"The overwhelming impression you get is fear and hatred for Muslims," said Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. She said Thursday she was distressed by this season's premiere. "After watching that show, I was afraid to go to the grocery store because I wasn't sure the person next to me would be able to differentiate between fiction and reality."

24 Here is where we stand: The federal government finally brought Jack Bauer back from China, where he spent two brutal years having makeup artists apply fake scars to his back. It goes without saying that the government brought him back for the sole purpose of getting him killed by terrorists, who are setting off bombs in various cities, including (surprise!) Los Angeles. Jack escaped by ripping out a terrorist's throat with his teeth (meaning, Jack's teeth) (at least we assume those were Jack's teeth) and immediately -- without even stopping to floss -- Jack set out to inform the...

The night after the four-hour, two-night season premiere of Fox's 24 ended with a “suitcase nuke” being set off by Middle Eastern terrorists in a Southern California warehouse, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann saw a nefarious plot to aid President Bush: “Is 24 just entertainment or is it propaganda designed to keep people thinking about domestic terrorism to keep us scared?” He demanded Tuesday night: “Gripping drama or thinly veiled propaganda?” Leading into reciting a posting on NewsBusters by Noel Sheppard (Mark Finkelstein's post with video of Olbermann quoting from NewsBusters), Olbermann recounted how 24 “featured a mall attack, a would-be suicide...

Forget about off-Broadway. Never mind underground movie festivals or the Independent Film Channel. The most subversive show in the U.S. hides in plain sight: 24 on Fox. Other TV programs and films are so terrified of CAIR (Council on American- Islamic Relations) that their villains generally sound like South African Boers. Or look like former members of the U.S.S.R from one of the countries whose last syllable is “stan.” Not 24, a show that takes place within a stated one (or in the powerhouse opening episodes) two-hour segment. In general, its wrongos are radical Muslims. Not Presbyterians. Not Animists. Not...

Two weeks ago, in this column, I suggested that Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, would have difficulty wooing conservatives because of his "anti-torture positions." Commentator Andrew Sullivan immediately pounced on my phraseology: "Good to see plain English being used on the right. Pity the use of torture is now a plus for some in the Republican primaries. But, hey, that's what American conservatism now stands for." Sullivan is perhaps the leading proponent of a blanket ban on torture of terrorist detainees. In an article he wrote for The New Republic back in December 2005, he elucidates his position. "Torture is the...

The plot of the hit Fox drama “24” may make for exciting television, but Muslim groups fear their representation as terrorists does more than entertain - it vilifies an entire religious group. “I think that TV has quite an effect on how people think,” said Nadeem Mazen, past president of the MIT Muslim Association. “So much of what we hear on Muslims is hearsay - an expert opinion by people with a personal agenda and not necessarily motivated by truth. And then a show like this comes along that perpetuates the ‘them’ factor.” The plot of the sixth season of...

KIEFER SUTHERLAND only has himself to blame for the delay of his 24 action figure - he set fire to the prototype during a drunken night out. The action man's new figure has been developed by McFarlane Toys and will hit stores later this year (07), but the mini-JACK BAUER should have hit shelves much earlier. Sutherland explains, "They tried to come out with one a couple of years ago and they had sent me the doll for my approval... We took the doll out for a night to have some fun and we'd had some drinks. We sat it...

(2007-01-15) — President George Bush, under pressure from the Iraq Study Group to open negotiations with Iran, today named a lead negotiator whom he said is already on the way to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Jack Bauer, a freelance intelligence contractor and former agent with the Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTU), has been dispatched to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s office for a “diplomatic listening session” aimed at determining the best way to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and shipment of arms to terrorists in Iraq. “For some reason, people like to talk to Jack Bauer,” said Mr. Bush. “He’s a straight-shooter, good...

Cal Thomas had the line of the night on this evening's Fox News Watch. Here's how the conservative commentator explained Americans' dissatisfaction with progress in Iraq: "Part of the problem here is we have Desert Storm with the 100-hour war. Everybody came home. There were victory marches, General Schwarzkopf leading. The press was full of stories: 'we finally got the Vietnam monkey off our back.' Now we're used to the very quick action. It's not going to happen, except thank goodness Jack Bauer is coming back to make it happen on '24' - that's what we're waiting for."Well said,...

WA Post: In Review of TV's '24', A Shot at Dick Cheney! Posted by Warner Todd Huston on January 13, 2007 - 02:16. What is it about the Washington Post where they can't even do reviews of TV shows without attacking some Republican or another?This time it is the TV series 24 that gets used as a platform to attack the Bush administration, namely in the target of choice, Vice President Dick Cheney.In a review that is mostly a light hearted take on the adventures (and implausibilities therein) of Jack Bauer and the constant threat to national security -- that...