Free Republic

Andrew Breitbart, the founder of popular conservative blogs Big Government, Big Hollywood, and many others was arguably the boldest speaker at the CPAC convention last week, and it was hard to miss the fact that he is cocked and ready for a fight . In fact, his own words, " F*** you - war." Breitbart released an explosive trailer for the upcoming project he is working on:

TAPPER: The president, when he spoke to students earlier today acknowledged that the numbers and the budget were so big, they were difficult to talk about. And to break them down, it would be along the lines of a family that makes $29,000 a year spending $38,000 a year, so taking on new debt — $9,000 in new debt, with a $153,000 credit card bill that they were not able to pay down. That would be a way for — like the average American to afford – to understand it. Does that seem responsible? CARNEY: I appreciate the analogy... TAPPER:...

MALAYSIA has deported a young Saudi journalist wanted in his home country over a Twitter post about the Prophet Mohammed, defying pleas from human rights group who said he faced execution. Hamza Kashgari, who was detained in Malaysia after fleeing Saudi Arabia, has now left the country, national police spokesman Ramli Yoosuf said. "He was deported to Saudi Arabia," Ramli told AFP. A government offical said Kashgari was escorted back to his home country by Saudi officials. "He has been deported. He was picked up by Saudi officials at the airport," said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

We can pinpoint the moment that foretold the arrival of combat journalism. At 11:59 p.m. on September 8, 2004, a pseudonymous blogger on FreeRepublic.com accused 60 Minutes of publicizing forged documents to cast suspicion on President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard in the early 1970s. **snip**Whether the victim was George Bush, Joseph Lieberman, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Charles and David Koch, the Chamber of Commerce, Fox News Channel, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, or Mitt Romney, the technique was the same. The left blogosphere would manufacture a smear or distortion or line of attack. Larger blogs and liberal...

Photo ops, as they are called in political jargon, seal an image and a chunk of voters. Hence, basketball, softball, Little League, football, and soccer teams hosted at the White House by what should be an overwhelmed President BarackObama. Lots of sports fans vote. Kissing babies is a big win for the mothers. Lots of baby holding photo ops for Mitt Romney in Florida—and a huge chunk of voting support from married women—helped “thump” Newt Gingrich in the Florida primary. Sometimes, these photo ops prove embarrassing, and cost elections; i.e., Michael Dukakis driving a tank was supposed to shore up...

(Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush said on Friday that the U.S. economy was on solid footing despite a weak employment report, and gave no hint of what his administration may have in store to bolster growth. His comments came hours after a government report showed U.S. job growth in December was the weakest in more than four years, while the unemployment rate climbed to 5 percent. The White House noted the employment report showed continued job growth, and said the unemployment rate was still low by historic standards.

(Reuters) - The United States created jobs at the fastest pace in nine months in January and the unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to a near three-year low, giving a boost to President Barack Obama. The jobless rate fell to 8.3 percent - the lowest since February 2009 - from 8.5 percent in December. "More pistons in the economic engine have begun to fire, pointing to accelerating economic growth. One of the happiest persons reading this job report is President Obama," said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University Channel Islands.

The Obama administration's willingness to defend insurance coverage for family planning services against attacks from conservatives and religious groups is good news for women and for the health of the nation. The administration's rule leaves the decision in the hands of patients, where it belongs, while respecting the rights of religions. It holds true to the original and wise idea that access to preventive medicine is a good idea for the nation's physical and financial well-being.

Anne Sinclair, former anchor of France’s most popular TV show and the wife of shamed former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been chosen to run the French version of American news website Huffington Post. The French-language edition of news and opinion website The Huffington Post will be run by Anne Sinclair, who is married to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former International Monetary Fund director and Socialist politician. Strauss-Kahn stood down from his post last year following sex crime allegations. He was also shamed out of running for the Socialist slot in the 2012 French presidential primary election. New York-born Sinclair, an esteemed...

Picture Emerges of Teen Suicide Pilot CHARLES BISHOP: To some, he was a smart, humorous student, which makes his suicide flight all the more incomprehensible. By CURTIS KRUEGER, KATHERINE GAZELLA and ED QUIOCO © St. Petersburg Times published January 8, 2002 ----------- Charles Bishop was a teacher's dream. He read Shakespeare in class, pulled together a middle school literary magazine and enjoyed a good game of flag football. Friends and family members who knew him best described Charles as a patriot. The teen who flew an airplane into the Bank of America building, carrying a note sympathizing with Osama bin...

"Sixty-three years ago this week something happened in Three Rivers, 80 miles south of here, that put the town on Page 1 of the Jan. 13, 1949, New York Times: “GI of Mexican Origin, Denied Rights in Texas, to Be Buried in Arlington.” And, said Walter Winchell, renowned radio newsman of the day: “The state of Texas, which looms so large on the map, certainly looks small tonight.” The story became a blot on Three Rivers and was a catalyst for the American GI Forum and the spread of civil rights and pride among Mexican Americans here and elsewhere. However,...

So, tired of high taxes? Want to see big federal budget cuts? Congratulations. You're getting your wish. And you just cost 2,160 people in Kansas their jobs. [snip] Welcome to "living within our means," which means you don't necessarily have any means to live with. You can argue that cutting the defense budget has to be done, but those are some nice, well-paying jobs that are being lost. Jobs that the local Wal-Mart probably won't match. I suppose the real lesson, though, is that we can't have our cake and eat it too. You can't shrink government without cutting jobs....

It's time once again to relish the worst mainstream journalism of the past 12 months. For the 24th year in a row I'm a judge for the Media Research Center awards, and this year the 98 finalists taught me a lot. I thought President Barack Obama's popularity was evaporating, but ABC's Christiane Amanpour called him "full of sunny optimism, very Reaganesque," and Lara Spencer on the same network asked, "Is President Obama a baby whisperer? ... Watch as the First Lady tries to quiet down the fussy little friend. ... She then hands the bawling baby to the big man and, presto, the tot...

The number of jobs eliminated in the newspaper industry rose by nearly 30% in 2011 from the prior year, according to the blog that has been tracking the human toll on the industry for the last five years. Meanwhile, a separate analysis confirms what most of us already suspected: The proportion of cutbacks was higher in newsrooms than it was for the industry as a whole ... First, let’s take a look at the surprising surge of job cuts in 2011, a year that many newspaper people had hoped would be a time of relative stability after five years of...

"Must not say Osama instead of Obama..."

Janet Robinson, who will step down as chief executive of the New York Times Co on December 31, will receive an exit package in excess of $15 million, according to people familiar with the situation. In addition to a $4.5 million consulting fee, the Times Co will pay Robinson $10.9 million in pension benefits that she accrued over 28 years of service, they said. According to a regulatory filing, Times Co's policy previously stipulated that Robinson, 61, would not be eligible for full pension benefits until she was 63 and had been with the company for 30 years. But people...

Media Matters for America has had a bad year, with declining traffic and regular knocks from more notable media outlets. This week alone, MMfA was slammed by Politico and the Simon Wiesenthal Center for antisemitism, so they are eager to deflect by trumping up an attack on Big Journalism. From Politico (emphasis added): The Center for American Progress, the party’s key hub of ideas and strategy, and Media Matters, a central messaging organization, have emerged as vocal critics of their party’s staunchly pro-Israel congressional leadership and have been at odds, at times, with Barack Obama’s White House, which has acted...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — News reporters and editors from around the country were urged to allow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to define themselves rather than to exclusively look to sources outside the church for definitions of what it means to be a Mormon or to explain LDS doctrine or history. "Define us by who we are and by our central beliefs rather than who we are not or by obscure or irrelevant beliefs," Michael R. Otterson, managing director of public affairs for the LDS Church, said during a Thursday morning session of a conference called,...

For those of us that spend hours online, writing, blogging and reporting this judges decision is a serious additional threat to our freedom of expression. Citizen journalism, blogging, micro-blogging, it doesn’t matter what you call it. It is a form of journalism that isn’t controllable by the elite establishment. Expect more attacks as we continue to tear down the corrupt infrastructure known as the lame stream media. Here is the a wire service report about the decision: A federal judge in Portland, Ore., has ruled that a Montana blogger was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon...

So if the Republican party has shifted so far to the right, and the Democrats have shifted to adjust, doesn’t that mean the populace has as well? Those changes are not at all reflective of what the population believes

Today’s opening snark courtesy of Journolister Dave Weigel from his Slate perch: Big Government breaks the news that Bill Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama; well, this was broken by Ben Smith in 2007, but still. I call it a “snark” because the word “lie” feels a little harsh during this holiday season. However, it’s just a fact that Big Government didn’t position the piece as “breaking news” and as far as I can tell it wasn’t even a featured story. But you have to admire a guy like Weigel who poses as an objective journalist and yet sees...

"Job Cuts Rock CNN" is the Title URL on Drudgereport. Note Lack of Explanation in the actual URL site.

The Society of Professional Journalism’s code of ethics is apparently unknown to, and easily dismissed by, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. On “Andrea Mitchell Reports” Monday, the anchor introduced Politico’s Jonathan Martin after playing a clip of former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain suggesting some reporters at an event in Texas check the Society of Professional Journalism’s “code of ethics.” “Jonathan Martin is the senior reporter for Politico and broke the original story,” she said. “I assume you read the journalistic code of ethics, whatever that is.” Martin replied by saying he had his copy “well-thumbed.”

Attempting to turn reports of sexual harassment allegations back on the media, the campaign for Republican presidential contender Herman Cain is targeting journalists by passing out a code of ethics offering guidelines on how to report stories. On Sunday, Cain campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon emailed passages from the Society of Professional Journalist Code of Ethics that highlighted limiting the use of anonymous sources and evaluating their truthfulness and motives before allowing their use. The code also offered a few reminders like removing arrogance from reporting, showing good taste, being accountable, not pandering to lurid curiosity, treating subjects of stories as...

Journalism: Is the New York Times a news organization or a front for left-wing activists? Reporter Natasha Lennard was filmed leading an Occupy Wall Street panel, offering radicals tips on keeping their identities secret. Openly. In a video that appeared on BigGovernment.com, Lennard, a Times freelance reporter who was arrested with 700 other leftists for shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge this month, revealed herself to be within the actual leadership of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement. Along with four other "comrades," she addressed a roomful of people at a bookstore in Manhattan, officiously advising the fractious movement on how...

I remember when it was socially acceptable to like and even admire Dick Cheney, whose memoir In My Time was greeted last month with unanimous catcalls from members of the mainstream press. For more than two decades, Washington’s mainstreamers considered Cheney a rare clubbable Republican—genial, brainy (he studied for a Ph.D. in political science), and safe. You could invite him to a dinner party and know he wouldn’t start spouting Bible verses and frighten the caterers. “Cheney is smart, he is tough, and he is totally trustworthy,” wrote the Washington Post’s David Broder, who served as unofficial spokesman for the...

COOPER EGGED THEM ON was the title on the Drudge Report this morning. Cooper framed an attack on Herman Cain and setup the others to join in on a Psychological Lynching of Herman Cain. Cooper set it up framing that Herman's 999 plan would not work and then had each of the Candidates fire on Herman Cain. Despite the withering attach Herman stood fast.

WASHINGTON -- It's enough to make a grown American history teacher cry. Texas Gov. Rick Perry is the latest high-profile Republican candidate to display a flimsy grasp of U.S. history in remarks he made in a presidential debate this week when he suggested Americans fought the Revolutionary War against the British in the 1500s. His remarks have not only prompted a gleeful meme on Twitter as so-called tweeps use the hashtag perryhistory to ridicule the governor's take on history, but they've also renewed accusations that the conservative movement is peppered with .... well .... nitwits. "Putting it bluntly: Rick Perry...

What a change The Washington Post wrought by bringing in Patrick Pexton as the ombudsman. The last ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, was a stickler about the Post’s overuse of anonymous sources. But in a Sunday column on Rick Perry and the Post's “N-head” painted-rock “investigative” hullaballoo, Pexton just circled his wagon and made excuses for the newspaper. “If the seven sources The Post relied on for this article are truthful, then Perry is lying or is badly misinformed about when the rock was painted,” insisted Pexton. But what if the seven anonymous sources are lying or badly misinformed? What if some...

TAPPER: Thank you, Mr. President. Just to follow up on Jackie’s question, one of the reasons why so many of the people at the Occupy Wall Street protests are so angry is because, as you say, so many people on Wall Street did not follow the rules. But your administration hasn’t really been very aggressive in prosecuting. In fact, I don’t think any Wall Street executives have gone to jail despite the rampant corruption and malfeasance that did take place. So I was wondering if you’d comment on that. And then, just as a separate question, as you’re watching the...

There really is no such thing as an individual health insurance mandate. Let's stop suggesting otherwise, and start referring to the individual health insurance incentive. I'm not an attorney, so I cannot help the federal judges struggling to figure out whether the individual insurance mandate in President Obama's healthcare law violates the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. But as a taxpayer (and formerly a professor of public policy), it's hard for me to understand what all the fuss is about. The bottom line: There really is no such thing as an individual health insurance mandate. No one gets...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., called on House Democrats Tuesday at a closed Democratic Caucus meeting to approve a resolution critical of Texas Gov. Rick Perry for not having removed a racially offensive slur from a rock at his family’s hunting camp. The racially charged name of the site, "N – head," was first reported in a Washington Post story Sunday. The Perry presidential campaign disputed the account and said the rock with the offensive word at the entrance of the leased hunting area in Throckmorton County, Texas, had been painted over at Perry’s instruction in the...

....The Miami Herald on Sunday reported that network employees and staff members from Rubio’s office claimed Lee offered to soften or kill the story if the senator gave the network an interview. Univision spokeswoman Monica Talan was not immediately available to comment Tuesday. According to the Herald, Univision’s assistant general counsel called the reported deal absurd and stated that Lee would not step down. In their letter, the three lawmakers state: “This attempt at extorting a respected Republican elected official like Senator Rubio, who is also a proud American of Hispanic descent, is offensive and unacceptable. The lack of journalistic...

Although Chris Christie admitted that the fat jokes by comedians were all right, as long as they were funny, he scolded columnists who questioned his weight. "The people who pretend to be serious commentators who wrote it are among the most ignorant people I've heard in my life." he said, adding that "At least the comedians don't pretend to be serious."

Two Republican presidential candidates, Rick Perry and John Huntsman, are boycotting a proposed Univision debate due to what they say were unethical journalistic practices in the way the Spanish-language media giant handled Sen. Marco Rubio, a vice-presidential shortlister. Other campaigns might soon join Perry and Huntsman, sources say. They made their announcement at the behest of three Florida Hispanic Republican lawmakers who noted that the senator’s office and Univision insiders said Univision publicized an embarrassing story about Rubio’s brother in law because he wouldn’t sit down for an interview on the show Al Punto, which has espoused a liberal line...

By most accounts, President Obama gave a fiery speech at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual awards dinner in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, telling blacks to "quit crying and complaining" and support him in the fight for jobs, according to the Associated Press. But was the AP transcription of Obama's remarks racist? That's the subject currently being debated after the issue was raised on Chris Hayes' MSNBC show on Sunday. On MSNBC, the African-American author Karen Hunter complained the news service transcribed Obama's speech without cleaning it up as other outlets did--specifically including the "dropped g's." Via the AP version:...

It sounds quaint. But giving Washington less control over our affairs, and the states more control, is a bad idea. Here's why: People move. Anybody who has relocated from one state to another knows there's a huge hassle factor associated with simply adapting to a different set of rules. There's also the dubious proposition that states manage their business better than the federal government. It's true that nearly all states are required to balance their budgets, which creates a degree of spending discipline. But that's hardly the same thing as responsible government. It's worth keeping in mind that the national...

It's A.P. sorry.

President Obama's $447 billion American Jobs Act is getting mostly solid marks from business experts and economists, who worry that a divided Congress may be unable to pass anything meaningful in time. Cecilia Rouse, economics professor at Princeton and former member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said the president is proposing a "sensible" package of strategies. "They are a critical form of assistance for so many families as well as one of the fastest and most effective ways of helping to increase economic activity during a downturn," she said. Rouse said the proposed employment tax cuts, for both...

Is the media industry in turmoil? Clearly it is, with publishers fighting declines in circulation and advertising revenue, combined with competition from digital-native entities such as blog networks and the “democracy of distribution” that comes from social-media tools like Twitter and Facebook. Journalism itself is even said to be in jeopardy, or at least the journalism we are used to. So what’s to be done? Some are recommending journalists be licensed by some kind of official body, so we can get “real” journalism from professionals — but these kinds of solutions would create even worse problems than the ones they...

Want to know why President Obama is going to have such a hard time persuading Republicans to support his jobs proposals this week? Don’t ask a pundit, or a politician, or a pollster. Ask a psychologist. It has become common for Republicans to deride the very concept of stimulus as absurd, to mock Keynesian economics as an ivory-tower fantasy, and to oppose temporary tax cuts as a recession-fighting measure. But during the Bush administration? All that was orthodox conservative policy. Some say the explanation for all this is obvious: Republicans want the economy to fail because that is how they...

Thank you, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, for emerging from your secure, undisclosed locations to remind us how we got into this mess: It didn’t happen by accident. What matters is that as they return to the public eye, they highlight their record of wrongheaded policy choices that helped bring the nation to a sour, penurious state. Obama is tackling enormous problems that took many years to create. His presidential style is important insofar as it boosts or lessens his effectiveness, but its importance pales beside the generally righteous substance of what he’s trying to accomplish. It was the...

(CNN) -- When President Barack Obama was a community organizer in Chicago and the powers that be were ignoring the voice of the people, he and others would lead the regular folks to the streets to show their dissatisfaction with the status quo. Now that House Speaker John Boehner has tried to trump the president in his request to speak before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, citing "security" concerns, Obama should ignore them and make his major jobs bill announcement before real Americans who, unlike Congress, don't have regular jobs, don't earn a taxpayer-funded six-figure check, didn't take...

Wednesday night the GOP candidates will be trying to out-conservative each other in a mad dash to please their party’s ascendant fringe. They will be dishing the rhetorical red meat, taking no prisoners and brooking no compromise. At some point, months from now one of them will emerge as the nominee and will (presumably) try to tack back toward the center to try to appeal to swing voters. If Rick Perry or Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann is bound to share the presidential spotlight anyway, better they do it when they're consciously trying to seem like partisan hacks rather than...

In a convoy of black SUVs, the vacationing President Obama went out of his way Sunday to stop by the house of a friend on Martha's Vineyard. The Obama reception seems the freshest example of a higher profile that Roberts, head of the nation's largest cable/media company, has assumed since Comcast closed its deal for NBC Universal Inc. earlier this year. Obama and close aide Valerie Jarrett were hosted by Roberts at [his] multimillion-dollar North Shore mansion. Neither the White House nor Comcast would say how many people attended the reception. Comcast, a company with legislative and regulatory issues teed...

OAK BLUFFS - Even as an earthquake shook major cities in the Northeast today, President Barack Obama finally looked like a man on vacation, going for a bike ride and to the beach with his family before hitting the links for a game of golf with friends. As he did last year, the president joined First Lady Michelle Obama, and daughters Sasha and Malia for a bike ride in the 5,100-acre wilderness known as the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest. Their ride over, the first family was retrieved by a phalanx of ominous-looking vehicles and whisked off to a private...

Jim Walker, a veteran local television anchor with more than 25 years of experience on air, was cut loose at the beginning of August after just a year at WBBH, the NBC affiliate for Fort Myers. And just like his former colleague Craig Wolf, who was fired from the station in March, Walker is not going quietly. Walker took to his Facebook page to express his distaste with the station’s decision, noting that he would not disclose the details of his confidential separation agreement. According to The Fort Myers News-Press, Walker wrote that the broadcasts he helms — 6 p.m.,...

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

ABC News’ Jake Tapper does a gorgeous job of getting Press Secretary Jay Carney to admit that the President, despite his renewed protestations of “laser-like focus” on jobs, really isn’t doing all that much. As usual. [video] Wouldn’t it have been nice to see this level of interest by reporters way back in 2007 and 2008?

On Monday, August 1, the New Yorker ran a piece by Nicholas Schmidle, a young freelance journalist, which proffered a breathtakingly detailed account of the Bin Laden Take-down in May of 2011. [...] The article was in fact so detailed that it left the unmistakable impression that Mr. Schmidle had interviewed at least a few of the SEALs involved in the raid. During an NPR interview, Steve Inskeep explains that indeed Schmidle had spent time with the SEALs who were on the mission to get Bin Laden. NPR subsequently issued a correction for reasons noted below. All of this makes...