Free Republic

WASHINGTON — “I wish that we had come back with better news from Copenhagen,” President Barack Obama said a few weeks ago after an unsuccessful trip across the ocean to try to snag the 2016 Summer Olympics for Chicago. It wasn’t the kind of happy spin that politicians typically come up with after a failure. Call it a breath of fresh air or a turnoff. Either way, the man in the Oval Office is making a habit of confessing, apologizing, revealing and regretting. Don’t mistake it: Team Obama doesn’t miss many chances to try to put its actions in a...

Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News, met with the White House adviser David Axelrod last month. And it is a testament to Fox’s influence that that the meeting is newsworthy at all. Politico broke the news Tuesday afternoon, prompting speculation about the nature of the conversation. A Fox press representative confirmed that the two men met over a cup of coffee last month during Mr. Obama’s visit to the United Nations. The representative called it a “cordial conversation.” Details of the conversation have not dribbled out yet. “I’ve known Roger for a long time,” Mr. Axelrod told Time magazine...

Beck is completely right here. He is a bit upset that the MSM spends their time digging at his past rather then reporting on the issues he has been so right about. Van Jones? Yup, hit the nail on the head. Acorn? Yup, hit the nail on the head. (h/t Hot Air) [VIDEO AT SITE] But what does our MSM do? They fact check.....FACT CHECK....a Saturday Night Live skit. [VIDEO AT SITE] Un-freakin-believable. Did they fact check the Palin skits? Nope. Have they fact checked ANY snl skits? But when they attack their messiah they suddenly decide to fact check...

I have to give John Stewart mad props...as a white pimp would say...for not hiding from this story as other liberals are and actually took ACORN to task, and even more for calling out the MSM on their non-reporting. I agree with this guy maybe 1% of the time, and this is that 1%: [VIDEO AT SITE] (Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net

AP) A North Carolina congressman who supports an overhaul of the health care system had his life threatened, as increasingly raucous protests are greeting pro-reform lawmakers at town hall meetings across the country. Democratic Rep. Brad Miller received the death threat in a phone call Monday, one of hundreds the congressman's office has fielded demanding town-hall meetings on the health care proposal, said his spokeswoman, LuAnn Canipe. She said the callers were "trying to instigate town halls so they can show up and disrupt." Democratic lawmakers expected protests and demonstrations as they headed back to their states and districts over...

NEW YORK (Aug. 3) -- He's become a publicity nightmare for CNN, embarrassed his boss and hosted a show that seemed to contradict the network's "no bias" brand. And on top of all that, his ratings are slipping. How does Lou Dobbs keep his job? It's not a simple answer. CNN insists it is standing behind Dobbs, despite calls for his head from critics of his reporting on "birthers" — those who believe President Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States despite convincing evidence to the contrary. The "birthers" believe Obama was born in Kenya, and thus not eligible...

Have you seen this poster? Apparently, it's beginning to appear in odd places in Los Angeles, but nobody seems to know who's responsible for it. Radio host Tammy Bruce posted some pictures of this odd creation at her blog Saturday morning (h/t Pamela Geller) leading me to investigate further. At this point, all I could find on the subject was an April 25 article from Bedlam Magazine: A poster of Barack Obama in Heath Ledger-style Joker make-up with the legend 'Socialism' beneath it has been popping up recently on surfaces around L.A. It does not appear to be in the...

David Axelrod's son is following his father's career path -- that is, the one he had before becoming a political strategist. Ethan Axelrod is joining the Huffington Post, the liberal Web site that has been largely supportive of President Obama. His dad, now a White House senior adviser, was a Chicago Tribune reporter until he quit in 1984 to help run a Senate campaign (and still has a soft spot for newspapers, though his old one is in bankruptcy). "I've been interested in journalism for a while," the 22-year-old Axelrod said Tuesday. "I heard through my father that they were...

Katie Couric offered some comic relief on this morning's Early Show, preaching the importance of objectivity in reporting. As evidence of her impartiality, the CBS Evening News anchor cited the fact that, as did Cronkite, she has gotten "grief from both sides of the aisle." Now I suppose some of the more radical elements of the Red Army Faction might have found something to quibble with in Couric's coverage over the years. But how can the woman who has come to epitomize MSM liberal bias suggest with a straight face that criticism has come in comparable degree from the left...

WARNING: Viewing the accompanying video could cause a dangerous rise in blood-sugar levels. When Clarence Thomas was approaching his confirmation hearings, we all remember the touching, sentimental segments the networks ran on his challenging childhood. Or not. On today's GMA ABC's Claire Shipman took a sentimental stroll down memory lane with Juan Sotomayor, Sonia's likable younger brother. At one point, viewing a display about his sister in their old high school in the Bronx, Juan gets choked up. And there's Claire, shown not once but twice reaching out a comforting arm to console the Sotomayor sibling. View video here.

On the last Friday in March, President Barack Obama summoned leaders of the banking industry to the White House, where they gathered around a mahogany table in the sumptuous State Dining Room. On this day there was not a piece of fruit or can of soda in sight. At each place was a glass of water. No ice. No refills. The president's message was as hard and crusty as a slab of day-old bread. He urged the businessmen to view corporate excess through the eyes of Americans who are belt-tightening their way through the recession. Obama mentioned the carpet stains...

After the fanfare surrounding first lady Michelle Obama's new wax figure at Madame Tussauds in downtown Washington Tuesday, we noticed something peculiar: No Republican first ladies have had the honor of being immortalized in wax at the museum. Besides Mrs. Obama, the Tussauds inventory here includes a figure of Hillary Rodham Clinton and, not one, but two gloved and ladylike Jackie Kennedys. But nary a Nancy Reagan, Betty Ford or Barbara or Laura Bush. "There have not been enough guest requests" for, say, a Mrs. Reagan or Mrs. Ford, museum marketing director Rosemary Del Prado said Tuesday. The museum solicits...

"Once the tool of Southern segregationists, unending debate has become as acceptable as it is undemocratic."

In the March 9, 2009 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 2), "Radical Islam is A Fact of Life. How To Live With it" Fareed Zakaria makes the case for why the West needs to adopt a more sophisticated strategy toward Radical Islam. Plus: Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman discuss the country's future in their first foreign media interview since winning in the recent election. Lastly: A review of the latest comic book inspired movie, "Watchmen."

Please Freep this poll on Media Bias. It was originally set up at Political Ref but registration was required, but that has been taken care of by using PollDaddy.com.

Vicki Iseman, who sued The New York Times over a story suggesting that she had had a romantic relationship with John McCain, is now accusing the paper of lying about whether it apologized or retracted the story in the course of settlement discussions. In a memo to Times staff Thursday, Washington Bureau Chief Dean Baquet insisted that, while the paper has settled Iseman’s lawsuit, it “did not apologize” for the story or “retract one word” of it. But in an interview with POLITICO Friday, Iseman said Baquet’s memo was “calculated” to the point of being false. “They are absolutely not...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama has gone coatless in the Oval Office. His meetings sometimes run late. He opened a session with corporate CEOs with good-natured grousing about his kids' snow days. And he gave GOP congressmen the green light to take a "whack" at him on Fox News. Obama is launching his presidency with a laid-back style that is setting a cool-casual tone for the rest of the White House as well. After his meeting with military commanders at the Pentagon ran late, the president apologized and admitted, "We kind of lost track of time." Those are words that...

Is it possible history is repeating itself? As House Republicans defy President Obama over his stimulus package, the party seems to be reverting to form after decades of overreaching ambition and outsized growth; think of the GOP, perhaps, as the Citigroup of politics. Many Republicans seem resigned—even content—to go back to being the party of Barry Goldwater. In other words: We don't care if we're marginalized. In our hearts we know we're right. Never mind that the party suffered terrible defeats in 2008 and 2006, and some thoughtful Republicans (mainly on the Senate side, like Lindsay Graham, as well as...

CBS) Vice President Joe Biden said that the Obama administration and Congress are "off and running" in getting an economic stimulus package completed and approved with bipartisan support, saying that the goal is to "get money out of the door as rapidly as possible" to speed job growth. However, Biden said he did not want to mislead Americans about the severity of the economic landscape the U.S. is facing: "It is worse, quite frankly, than everyone thought it was, and it's getting worse every day," he said on CBS' Face The Nation Sunday morning - his 53rd appearance on the...

The January 8 edition of The New York Times contained a provocative op-ed article by Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi entitled "What You Don't Know About Gaza.". It presumes to inform its readers of "a few essential points that seem to be missing" from the public knowledge of the recent conflicts in Gaza. Several observers have already noted that Professor Khalidi has played with the facts, even to the point of offering outright falsehoods. The media watchdog group, CAMERA, has two beautiful articles refuting the good professor. However, missing from his "few essential points" are some other facts which...

There was a time, now disparaged by liberals, when it was considered un-American to advocate the overthrow of the United States. Indeed, even congress thought so and launched investigations to reveal by "outing" prominent people who harbored such thoughts and philosophies. Of course, in today's age of political correctness, and worse, those investigators are defiled and the guilty are revered. Many of those discovered to be un-American resided in Hollywood but others were in government and in classified research. Our arch enemy at the time, the Soviet Union, advanced there own research programs with the help of these "un-Americans."

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President-elect Barack Obama has replaced US President George W. Bush as the most admired man in America, according to a poll published Friday in the USA Today newspaper. One-third of the 1,008 respondents surveyed named Obama as their first or second choice, with Bush falling to a distant second after seven years as the country's most-admired man. Thirty-two percent of respondents chose Obama against five percent for Bush. It was the first time a president-elect topped the poll since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. The poll was conducted over telephone between December 12 and 14. The newspaper reported...

Monday 12/22, 2:41am CT -- This entry was formerly entitled, "Elect Schwarzenegger President? Obama Says Yes We Can! Dear L.A. Times..." Now, the plot thickens -- the story of the story. As it turns out, this article was featured in Drudge Report as well as Free Republic and then... poof! The lead disappeared! Funny how that can happen. Was it because of the implications this has, at such a sensitive time -- what with cases before the Supreme Court showing Obama to be a fictitious candidate, not a natural born Citizen at all? And with Congress yet to certify the...

Rahm Emanuel, a congressman from Chicago and a friend of Obama's, told me that he, Obama, David Wilhelm, who was Blagojevich's campaign co-chair, and another Blagojevich aide were the top strategists of Blagojevich's victory. He and Obama "participated in a small group that met weekly when Rod was running for governor," Emanuel said. "We basically laid out the general election, Barack and I and these two." A spokesman for Blagojevich confirmed Emanuel's account, although David Wilhelm, who now works for Obama, said that Emanuel had overstated Obama's role. -- from Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama, by Ryan Lizza, the...

With a new president who takes office in January 2009 and the thoughts of possible changes in firearms laws, local firearms dealers have noticed an increase in the sales of weapons usually large caliber and military assault-styled weapons. Fears of a change in the law were evident across the country after the election of Barack Obama who, according to reports, will not attempt to make drastic changes in gun laws. Warren Duncan of Volunteer Ordinance Works said a rumor mill and the "great conspiracy theory" which had fed the increase in sales has been generated at gun shows and relates...

Shepard Smith has long been an embarrassment for those of us who look to Fox News for reliability and intelligence. He always has been very unsophisticated and shows no sign that he does any homework to keep himself minimally informed. Study after study, including from liberal sources like the Washington Post and the Pew Foundation, have demonstrated the Obama bias of the MSM. He screams “preposterous” at his guest who points this out. Aggressiveness like his combined with a lack of intelligence is a witch’s brew. For Shepard to know nothing about the MSM Obama bias is truly bewildering. What...

All of the MSM/Liberal University poll heavily oversample Democratic voters on the premise Democrats are so enthused over Obama they will turnout in record numbers, whereas Republicans are so discouraged and/or disgusted with Bush/McCain they will not vote in similar proportions. This is a critical assumption. If it is not correct, the polls will significantly overstate Mr. Obama's expected vote totals.Early voting data released by the Texas Secretary of State for the 15 counties with the largest population shows the MSM polling assumption is dead WRONG. In fact, the opposite of what should have happened under the MSM scenario took...

We know that the MSM is actively working as the PR department for the Obama campaign and to elect DemoRats across the country at every level so the issue isn't will they do something to try to damage McCain rather what will they do. They tried it against Bush and they are more desperate them ever. Let's break it down by Print: NT Times, Newsweek, Time, and then all other print media. Broadcast: one lump other than NBC and it's child MSNBC and then the interent: take your pick. Personally I think each type of media will try something and...

The London Times story of Barack Obama's Aunt Zeituni - like that of his penniless brother and the Kenyan grade school he promised to help - is interesting not only as a reflection on the candidate's belief that "spreading the wealth around" is a centralized government mandate to be imposed on Joe the Plumber rather than a personal act by, say, a wealthy memoirist whose books repackage colorful relatives to highly lucrative effect. But, aside from all that, this detail is lovely: The Times could not determine their immigration status and an official at Boston City Hall said that Ms...

Sources inside Governor Palin's campaign say it's just taking a little while to pull together years of medical records for the Governor. Aides suggest that the Governor is not trying to hide anything and they repeat her words to NBC’s Brian Williams the other night-- that she is "healthy” and “happy”. Asked this morning if they plan to release any medical records today, Governor Palin’s spokeswoman Maria Comella said no. “The statement I gave you yesterday still applies,” she told ABC News. That statement was: "At the point where we have info to release regarding her records we'll let everyone...

And now, for what will presumably be its last trick before tumbling into a three-and-a-half-year election hangover, Saturday Night Live is rumored to have booked Barack Obama for an appearance on its Nov. 1 episode. The cameo replaces the candidate's original guest spot on last month's season premiere, which Obama was said to have backed out of in anticipation of Hurricane Ike. But one blogger's recently posed conspiracy theory is way more fun, suggesting that Lorne Michaels and Obama campaign overlord David Axelrod instead colluded at the time for a November surprise. But like Alec Baldwin, whom Michaels is said...

Kevin Roderick • Bio • Email This is a breaking situation this afternoon. Editors met over the weekend to get the word and to refine their lists. Newsroom staffers are being told today individually and in department meetings that as many as 75 editorial positions are being cut through voluntary departures and layoffs. Some staffers were approached last week about volunteering, "enticed" with the threat that this will be the absolute final time that editorial employees will receive two weeks severance pay for each year of service when they leave. When new publisher Eddy Hartenstein took over in August, right after the last round...

ABC News' Teddy Davis, Matt Jaffe, and Imtiyaz Delawala Report: On the eve of Thursday's vice-presidential debate in St. Louis, the McCain campaign is voicing confidence in moderator Gwen Ifill's professionalism while simultaneously sowing doubts about her ability to be fair after learning that she is working on a book about a new generation of black leaders called, "Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." The book, which is being published by RandomHouse, is set to be released on Jan. 20, 2009, the same day that the next president is sworn into office. "Does this help that she...

John McCain: Sarah Palin's the best, forget the critics BY KENNETH R. BAZINET DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU Sunday, September 28th 2008, 7:07 PM Not everyone is a critic of Sarah Palin. Victoria Sahadi, 7, dressed up as the Alaska governor/Republican vice presidential nominee, looks ready to debate Joe Biden Sunday in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Egan-Chin/News Not everyone is a critic of Sarah Palin. Victoria Sahadi, 7, dressed up as the Alaska governor/Republican vice presidential nominee, looks ready to debate Joe Biden Sunday in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. WASHINGTON - John McCain had a message Sunday for critics of his veep pick...

WASILLA, Alaska - Though Sarah Palin depicts herself as a pit bull fighting good-old-boy politics, in her years as mayor she and her friends received special benefits more typical of small-town politics as usual, an Associated Press investigation shows. When Palin needed to sell her house during her last year as Wasilla mayor, she got the city to sign off on a special zoning exception — and did so without keeping a promise to remove a potential fire hazard. She gladly accepted gifts from merchants: A free "awesome facial" she raved about in a thank-you note to a spa. The...

John McCain’s campaign has made a sport of criticizing the media in recent weeks. Now they may be trying a related tactic: surmising the political affiliations of journalists. In an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday morning, Mr. McCain immediately changed the tenor of the conversation with co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski when he called Ms. Brzezinski a “supporter of Senator Obama.” Mr. McCain appeared on MSNBC and other morning TV shows to comment on the economy. Ms. Brzezinski had brought up Mr. Obama’s campaign ad highlighting Mr. McCain’s statement that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.” Mr....

CNN) — In what could be an ominous sign for Barack Obama just days before he is formally named the Democratic presidential nominee, a new CNN poll of polls out Tuesday shows the Illinois senator's lead over John McCain has been cut in half in recent days. According to CNN's average of several recent national surveys, Obama's lead is now a slim 3 points over the Arizona senator, 46-43 percent — half of his advantage in a CNN poll of polls one week ago, and down from a high of 8 points in mid-July. Election Center: Check out CNN's electoral...

Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party's presumptive nominee June 4. In overall political stories from June 4 to Friday, Obama dominated by 142 to 96. Obama has been featured in 35 stories on Page 1; McCain has been featured in 13... When Obama traveled to the Middle East and Europe, the coverage dwarfed that of McCain -- six Page 1 stories from July 19 to July 27, plus an earlier front-page story announcing the trip. McCain managed one Page 1 story...

(LAKE FOREST, CA.) - There was one rule evangelical pastor Rick Warren wanted to make clear about his questions to both candidates during his forum on Saturday night, and he said it more than once. "Don't give me your stump speech on these." "Now, I don't want to hear your stump speech." Barack Obama rarely had the opportunity to delve into his stump speech, perhaps because Warren tended to change the subject as it seemed Obama was making that turn towards his stump. But John McCain, who has been deemed a “maverick" for years, played the part well and seemed...

Peter replied, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about!" --Famous denial, Luke 22:60Media Circulates False Story that Edwards Denied Love Child Allegations in DecemberNational Enquirer's December Allegations NEVER Denied No Edwards' Denials After November 29: A MSM Urban LegendUPDATE to follow at end of story. UPDATE #1: pending Perhaps history's three most famous denials were issued by the apostle Peter on the night that Jesus was arrested. Thus, Peter issued three more denials in one night than John Edwards has made after November 29, 2007; i.e., none. One recurring theme turning up for Mainstream Media apologists in the last...

As you may have heard, the National Enquirer claims to have ambushed former presidential candidate John Edwards in the Beverly Hilton the other night, where he was allegedly ronday-voo'ing with his alleged mistress and their alleged love child. Alleged alleged alleged alleged alleged! The newspaper reports that its team confronted Edwards about it, and he ran away and hid in a men's room until security forced the reporters away. The paper says it had a photographer present; I want to see pictures. Still, the Enquirer, as sleazy as its tactics strike many people, has a better reputation on stories like...

The end of the Internet is near — and in less than three years, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.The reason? More than 85% of the available addresses have already been allocated and the OECD predicts we will have run out completely by early 2011. These aren’t the normal web addresses you type into your browser’s window, and which were recently freed up by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the body responsible for allocating domain names, to allow thousands of new internet domains ending in, for instance, .newyork, .london or .xxx. Beneath those names lie...

Like Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton before her, Michelle Obama is becoming the would-be first lady conservatives love to hate. The conservative National Review recently showed a stern-faced Michelle Obama on its cover, under the headline, "Mrs. Grievance." The Tennessee Republican Party questioned her patriotism. Michelle Obama has become a favorite target for critics, drawing many to compare her arrival on the national stage to Hillary Clinton's after she infuriated conservatives when she said, "I could have stayed home and baked cookies." It's likely to get worse. "It's going to be very ugly stuff," Democratic strategist Tad Devine said. "They're...

Two frightening killers were on the loose, and the Sacramento Bee’s readers wanted to protect themselves. They wanted more than descriptions of the attackers’ clothing at the time of the murders. They wanted to know the criminals’ race. The Bee, they accused editors, had allowed outdated policies to endanger public safety. Challenged by readers and by bloggers who don’t adhere to journalistic conventions, many editors have been thinking about loosening their rules for identifying race in crime stories. In general, news outlets have avoided racial and ethnic identifiers unless they were important to the case, or, perhaps, if victims’ descriptions...

Presidential hopeful Gov. Mitt Romney yesterday demanded the resignation of his own judicial nominee after she sprang a violent convicted killer over the summer, as new details emerged showing that the judge ignored warnings when she freed the ex-con, now accused of killing a Washington couple. “There was a systematic failure in this case starting with the judge,” Romney’s spokesman, Eric Ferhnstrom, said of Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman. “Her decision represented an inexplicable lapse in judgment and was inexcusable. Unless there are facts unknown to us, (former Bay State) Gov. Romney believes Judge Tuttman should resign.” However, a former...

WASHINGTON -President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party's leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy . These Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war. Last week, at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, along with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, refused...

More than any other news show on cable, MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" is us. This has less to do with the host than the format, which is all about ranking things and listing things, prioritizing information in the way we've become acclimated to consume it: as somebody's -- anybody's -- best-of. Olbermann, the host of "Countdown" since its inception in 2003, tonight moderates a Democratic presidential debate in Chicago sponsored by the AFL-CIO amid a year of improved ratings for "Countdown" that has seen one of its competition (no, not Bill O'Reilly, but CNN's Paula Zahn) drummed out of...

At first glance, "Waitress" and "Knocked Up" seem to have little in common, aside from proving to be chug-along successes this summer. The former, a Southern-fried, sweet-natured chick flick, stars Keri Russell as a gutsy young woman who yearns to break free of her stultifying life by baking pies; the latter, a ribald, testosterone-fueled sex comedy from Judd Apatow, offers a decidedly ruder take on love, relationships and commitment. But at their hearts, both deal -- or, rather, choose not to deal -- with a subject that dare not speak its name: abortion. Both films are predicated on unplanned pregnancies...

President Bush has been having an uphill climb in the polls -- or a downhill slide, depending on your point of view. And according to CBS News director of surveys, Kathleen Frankovic, that picture probably won't be changing any time soon: Presidents can rebound. There can be a “rallying point.” In his 1973 book Wars, Presidents and Public Opinion, John Mueller studied presidential approval ratings. Simply stated, he found three key factors. First is length of time in office; approval usually goes down the longer a president serves, as whatever he does alienates someone. Second is the economy, which can...