Free Republic

Maybe Ronnie Earle has the goods on Tom DeLay and maybe not. I'm perfectly content to let a jury consider the evidence and decide. But if a jury does convict DeLay, I'm proposing a new nickname for the man who was, until Wednesday, one of the most powerful figures in national politics. Forget "The Hammer." He will be "Scarface." As in Al Capone. The connection? Capone was a monumental tough guy who ran gambling, prostitution, protection, bootlegging and other rackets in Chicago — only to be brought down on lower level charges that he cheated on his income taxes. DeLay...

Posted by Brent Baker on September 27, 2005 - 16:38. Nearly three times as many of those polled in a new Gallup survey said they believe the media are “too liberal” than “too conservative.” Gallup's Tuesday press release for the poll, which is earning publicity for how it found that “trust and confidence in the news media is up” from last year, reported: “When asked about the news media's political slant, Americans are much more likely to say they are too liberal (46%) than they are to say they are about right (37%) or too conservative (16%). Those views are...

With the all-but-corporate death of the UPI, the AP is the main American source for news in the United States. Associated Press articles are mindlessly quoted by newspapers across the nation. Many local radio and TV stations rip and read either directly from the AP, or indirectly from local newspapers which use the AP. Therefore, it’s reprehensible that the AP, three weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit, has not found out that there WAS an Evacuation Plan for New Orleans and southern Louisiana which was not followed. The Plan is on the Internet and available to anyone who can push a...

Reuters Says Bush Photo Not 'Malicious,' Reports Wide Interest In it By E&P Staff Published: September 15, 2005 4:30 PM ET NEW YORK With confirmation today that an accidental photo of President Bush at the United Nations on Wednesday, writing a note to Secretary of State Condeezza Rice about a “bathroom break,” was indeed real, newspapers around the U.S. and abroad are now planning to run it widely. But many, it seems, will treat it as something more than a joke. A source at the Washington Post tells E&P that the paper is considering it for prominent play tomorrow morning,...

U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14, 2005. World leaders are exploring ways to revitalize the United Nations at a summit on Wednesday but their blueprint falls short of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's vision of freedom from want, persecution and war. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

A Tampa Tribune investigation has found previous ethical lapses in the work of Brad Smith, a former Tampa Tribune reporter who fabricated parts of a story in April.

Brinkley, a professor at New Orleans' own Tulane University who accompanied Penn on his voyage through the under-water city, was among the first to denounce the report. "There was never a leak," he said in the Daily News. On Larry King Live, Penn concurred: "The boat never sank." According to Brinkley, the boat did take on water--because it was "overloaded" with storm survivors. According to Penn, his "entourage" consisted of "a couple of friends." (The actor's camp denied the existence of the "personal photographer.

HURRICANE Katrina was a horrific natural disaster. To America's Angry Left it was yet another occasion to score political points against President George W. Bush. In the same spirit of opportunism that animated looters who stole television sets, Bush's political foes frantically sought to blame the devastation on him. A measure of the anti-Bush Left's derangement is that it blames him for bad weather. "Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes," The New York Times editorialised on Thursday. "But since this administration won't acknowledge that...

As the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, an obvious question should be asked: Why has al-Qaida - the name given to the loosely affiliated terrorist network inspired by Osama bin Laden - not launched even one follow-up attack within the United States? Even more surprising is the fact that no Islamic terrorist organization of any kind has carried out such an attack on American soil since then. Since 9/11, major terrorist attacks have taken place in Bali, Madrid and London, while Operation Iraqi Freedom has transformed Iraq into the world center for terrorist bombings, with dozens of such...

The new satellite feature does a strange vanishing act when it comes to Israel Google Earth (www.earth.google.com) is an interesting new feature that lets you hover at satellite distance from the globe, tilt it any which way you want like Archimedes with his lever, and zoom in on any part of it that catches your curiosity. It’s the Space Age at its best, dizzyingly postmodern, making you an astral navigator. The trouble is that when you zoom in on a country called Israel, it seems Google still hasn’t caught up with the fact that a Jewish state exists. That is,...

Open letter to Drudge By Albert Eisele Dear Matt: Just wanted to say thanks for my 15 minutes of fame. Leading off the Drudge Report two days running with my story about Helen Thomas saying she’d kill herself if Vice President Cheney runs for president meant that your 8 million-plus daily readers now know my name. My relatives in Iowa and Minnesota were impressed, even if my wife wasn’t. But I have to tell you: If this is fame, who needs it? A lot of your readers — the count was over 400 the last time I checked — reacted...

It has been common knowledge for quite some time that the Democrats have a completely condescending attitude towards the general public. Therefore we thank the DUmmies for actually spelling out this attitude in this THREAD titled, “Democrats must understand that American people are dumb and ignorant.” This is the condescending attitude that almost all professional Democrat politicians have. They think that the American public is just too STUPID to understand the “enlightened” socialistic programs that the Democrats propose and thus ignorantly vote for the Republicans as a result. As a result the Democrats HATE the electorate. This is why...

This graphic is starting to show up on stories from Reuters.com.Yeah. Right.

Guardian stands by journalist linked to extreme Islamic party by Gordon MacMillan Brand Republic 18 Jul 2005 Guardian standing by reporter LONDON - A Guardian journalist, Dilpazier Aslam, has been linked to a radical Islamic organisation, which is known to promote anti-Semitic hatred and praises suicide bombers as martyrs, and the paper is refusing to sack him. His links to extreme Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir were revealed by bloggers, including Scott Burgess and Harry's Place, last week after Aslam wrote a July 13 article about the suicide bombers in the Guardian, which also ran in both the LA Times and...

[snip] Gangel: What do you think of Karl Rove? Wilson: Oh, I think he's — I'm really very saddened by all of this. Gangel: What does your wife think of Karl Rove? Wilson: She doesn't think very much of him either. I can assure you of that. [snip] Gangel: Your critics have said that this is partisan on your part, that you are part of a Democratic attempt to discredit Iraq policy. Wilson: That's simply not true. Gangel: You are a Democrat? Wilson: I exercise my rights as a citizen of this country to participate in the selection of my...

This is a belated Fourth of July column (superseded by the state shutdown). The headline isn't a prelude to a column justifying why the Islamists hate Westerners so much that they're pouring into Iraq to kill our soldiers (along with innocent fellow Arabs, including Egyptian diplomats). Or defending the sleeper cells planted to blow up Madrid, London and who knows where next. Rather, it's about why most Americans, particularly soldiers, hate the media. I decided to become a journalist when I was a soldier. I was in the U.S. Navy in the early and mid-1980s — "the glory years," as...

Hollywood's box office has hit the skids, and the entertainment media are in overdrive trying to explain why. The most obvious explanation for box office malaise is consistently overlooked: Hollywood's ruling liberal elites keep going out of their way to offend half their audience. Constant gibes about Republicans, Christians, conservatives and the military litter today's movies and award show presentations like so many pieces of trash on theater floors. Did we really need to hear another anti-Bush diatribe from Chris Rock at the Oscars this year? Did the industry have to go out of its way to snub "The Passion...

Tom Cruise's high-profile trashing of psychiatry should come as no shocker to anyone familiar with his religion. Scientology's position regarding most of psychiatry is comparable to official Catholic teachings about abortion. Scientology says that all psychological ills are a result of a particular kind of psycho-spiritual wound, and that medications and other tools of modern psychiatry, notably electroshock therapy, are useless and harmful. What kind of religion sets up a psychological theory as sacred doctrine? A thoroughly modern one. The Church of Scientology — no relation to Christian Science — is barely 50 years old. Founded in America, it stands...

Lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth on this lastest thing on the AP wire in which Jennifer Loven writes "President Bush on Wednesday left open the possibility that the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be shut down following mounting criticism from former President Carter and others." But let's consider the source: From Sept. of 2004... Jennifer Loven, Democratic Operative Jennifer Loven, the AP reporter who wrote the absurd "President Bush Twists Kerry's Words on Iraq" story dissected below, has a history of writing hit pieces on behalf of the Democratic National Committee. Such as this July...

In 1981, rising young reporter Janet Cooke of the Washington Post made up an 8-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy and won a Pulitzer. When her falsification was discovered, she went into exile for more than a decade, but her journalism career remained dead. •More recently, USA Today star reporter Jack Kelley was forced to resign after editors learned he had fabricated multiple stories. The newspaper's top editor also resigned. •New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned when it was discovered that he had been making up parts of stories, including one about the Rio Grande Valley family of an early...