Free Republic

As you can see on this CHART there have been no USC/Dornsife polls since 9/21, two days ago. What happened? I thought these were supposed to be DAILY polls.

A little, that is. Shadi Hamid writes in the LA Times about why Islam isn't like other faiths -- as I've long been explaining here. He explains the reason the Quran is different from the Bible in very articulate terms: Contrary to what many think, there is no Christian equivalent to Koranic "inerrancy," even among far-right evangelicals. Muslims believe the Koran is not only God's word, but God's actual speech -- in other words, every single letter and word in the Koran comes directly from God. This seemingly semantic difference has profound implications. If the Koran is God's speech, and...

The latest L.A. Times political tracking poll shows Donald Trump now leading Hillary Clinton in the presidential race by three points. Trump now has 45.3 percent support while Hillary Clinton has 42.3 percent.

Trump ...................45.4 Clinton..................41.3

LA Times/Dornsife poll now Trump +2 - not updated on RCP average yet. Also Reuters is +3 Clinton today not +4. Combined this brings Trump to +.5% in the average of the last 5 polls on RCP.

Americans viewing the recent failed coup attempt in Turkey as some exotic foreign news story -- the latest, violent yet hardly unusual political development to occur in a region constantly beset by turmoil -- should pause to consider that the prospect of similar instability would not be unfathomable in this country if Donald Trump were to win the presidency.

In bold, stark lettering, an article by the LA Times featured the following ground-breaking headline splashed across its Wednesday edition: “After Texas Stopped Funding Planned Parenthood, Low-Income Women Had More Babies.” The article is based on a recent study conducted by the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which seeks to link a recent 1.9 percent increase in Texas births paid for by Medicaid to the fact that the state cut off funding to the nation's largest abortion provider last year. In other words, more babies are...

Despite the media's concerted effort to declare emphatically that Barack Obama is a devout, practicing Christian, many still believe that behind closed doors Obama is actually a Muslim, or at least more sympathetic to Muslims than Christians. To the great disappointment of those who'd like to blame all Obama conspiracy theories on the "bitter clingers," claims that "Obama is a Muslim" are perhaps most persistent among a surprising group: Muslims in the Middle East. A 2015 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll asked Americans if they knew what Obama's religion was. "Is he Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, something else, or not...

... Some of [Obamacare's] approaches have turned out to be ineffective, poorly targeted, or not ambitious enough to address deeply rooted problems. - Healthcare experts Timothy Jost and Harold Pollack These are inevitable occurrences with any major legislation, though they don't have much to do with the real issue conservatives have with the ACA. In the view of John E. McDonough of Harvard's School of Public Health, it's that Obamacare raises taxes on the wealthy while giving them "bupkis" in direct benefits. A lot can be done to correct the real flaws in the ACA, and Timothy S. Jost, emeritus...

Rupert Murdoch, co-chairman of Wall Street Journal publisher News Corp, on Friday said he had "strong word" that the Tribune Publishing Co's newspaper group will be bought by a Wall Street firm, while the Los Angeles Times will be split off and purchased by local investors including philanthropist Eli Broad.Murdoch, who is also co-chairman of 21st Century Fox, the entertainment and broadcast group, made his comments on Twitter.In September Tribune's board said the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune were "a cornerstone of our company's portfolio and a key component to our success in the future."Murdoch did not say...

Matthew Keys, former deputy social media editor for the Reuters news agency, was convicted Wednesday for his role in a conspiracy to hack Los Angeles Times and Tribune Co. servers. Keys, 28, who also was a web producer for KTXL Fox 40 in Sacramento, a Tribune-owned television station, provided members of the hacker group Anonymous with login information for Tribune servers in 2010. Though Keys faces up to 25 years in prison at his sentencing, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Lauren Horwood said prosecutors are "likely" to seek less than five years.

Your article would post as follows: Obama, Ayers, and PLO supporters toast Edward Said’s successor, but the press doesn’t think it’s quite as newsworthy as Sarah Palin’s wardrobe. Let’s try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor … who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches...

Austin Beutner, the publisher and chief executive of The Los Angeles Times, is being dismissed Tuesday, with no replacement immediately named, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. Mr. Beutner, a politically connected former investment banker who went on to become a deputy mayor of Los Angeles, was to be informed Tuesday morning but the news had leaked in advance of the meeting, said one person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive matter. News of the impending departure was first reported by the website Capital New York. The news came after internal dissent between...

Most of us have heard it by now. If you have the audacity to point out in a conversation or speech that "All lives matter," you're a hateful, violent raging racist out to undermine the (white guy George Soros-funded) "Black Lives Matter" movement. Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley have toth made the "mistake" of contending that "All lives matter" during the past few months. Each has felt it necessary to either apologize or otherwise back away from their statement. A Thursday Rasmussen poll the vast majority of the establishment press has ignored and will likely to continue...

https://twitter.com/latimes/status/631115411300446209/ That old saying about sticks and stones breaking bones but words never harming us has effectively been turned on its head in Post-America. Stated differently, tweets like the above are the natural outgrowth of a culture in which hypothetical threats like global warming or The Great Books are treated as existential, while actual threats to life and limb like say a nuclearized Iran or armed protestors are either ignored or whitewashed if they do not serve a political narrative.

Ted Rall, a noxious left-wing political cartoonist who has advocated violence against conservatives and on more than one occasion revealed himself as a racist, finally went too far, even for the same LA Times that champions those who threaten Jews with curb-stomping. According to the Times, in a May 11 article, Rall outright lied about a 2001 experience he had with the LAPD. Ted Rall — a freelance cartoonist whose work appears regularly in The Times — described an incident in which he was stopped for jaywalking on Melrose Avenue in 2001. Rall said he was thrown up against a...

Hackers are threatening to expose information on over 30 million users of AshleyMadison.com, a website for cheating spouses famous for its tagline “Life is short. Have an Affair.” A group of hackers called The Impact Team reportedly has posted some data already and is demanding that parent company Avid Life Media shut down AshleyMadison and a sister site, EstablishedMen.com, according to Krebs On Security, a blog run by former Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs. The Toronto-based Avid Life Media said Monday it closed the breach in its computer system and was working with law enforcement. How the hackers got in,...

hough other companies and organizations are cutting ties with Donald Trump following his inflammatory comments about Mexican immigrants, the golf world is continuing to do business with the Republican presidential candidate. NBC, Univision and Macy's have cut ties with the real estate mogul following his comments, but the PGA of America, the LPGA, the USGA and the PGA Tour will go forward with their previously scheduled plans to host tournaments on his courses.

One of the more bizarre spectacles of U.S. government in the modern age is the sight of political leaders complaining that a public program is actually working. In many states that expanded Medicaid and even some that rejected expansion under the Affordable Care Act, enrollment has significantly exceeded projections. To some political leaders, for some reason, this is supposed to be a bad thing. Some Republican governors are in effect calling it "an 'I told you so' moment". In Michigan, for instance, first-year enrollment was projected at 323,000, but enrollment topped out at 605,000. Illinois expected 199,000, and has ended...

There was a time when libraries had microfilm of old newspapers. I cannot find anything like that today. I am specifically looking for articles published in 1983 and 1984 by the Los Angeles Times.