Free Republic

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings. A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino...

In perhaps the most biased, incorrect, misleading and blatantly disgusting piece of journalism this campaign season, the Global Edition of the New York Times - The International Herald Tribune has published an article entitled...

It wasnt so long ago that John McCain was The New York Times' favorite Republican. Now, the editorial board is apparently so fed up that they can't wait until next day's paper and is blogging about him in the middle of the day: [T]here was something surreal, and offensive, about today’s soundbite from the campaign of Senator John McCain. The presumptive Republican nominee has embarked on a bare-knuckled barrage of negative advertising aimed at belittling Mr. Obama. The most recent ad compares the presumptive Democratic nominee for president to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton — suggesting to voters that he’s...

As far back as December 21, 1924, the wise and knowing New York Times was getting claims and analyses wrong with regard to evil and violent actors around the world. Look upward, and take in once again the title of this post. It is a real headline from a 12/21/24 Times article, in which a Times reporter explains that Hitler, released on parole from the Landsberg fortress where he had been sent for trying to overthrow the German government (in what has come to be known as the "Beer Hall Putsch"), had been "moderated" by prison to such a degree...

BELLEVILLE, Mich. — Senator John McCain has spent the week trying to tell people that he feels their economic pain. So it was more than a little unhelpful when one of his top economic advisers was quoted Thursday as saying that the United States was only in a “mental recession” and that it had become a “nation of whiners.” The adviser, former Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas, sought to clarify his remarks Thursday by saying he had been referring only to some of the nation’s leaders. But it was too late to keep from complicating things for Mr. McCain,...

Like most working journalists, whenever I type seven letters — Fox News — a series of alarms begins to whoop in my head: Danger. Warning. Much mayhem ahead.

SOURCES: BUSH ANGER AT COMING NEW YORK TIMES STORY DETAILING HUNT FOR BIN LADEN... The newspaper is planning to expose a 'highly classified Pentagon order' authorizing Special Operations forces to hunt al-Qaida leader in mountains of Pakistan... DEVELOPING....

WASHINGTON — The Army and Air Force discharged a disproportionate number of women in 2007 under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibits openly gay people from serving in the military, according to Pentagon statistics gathered by an advocacy group. While women make up 14 percent of Army personnel, 46 percent of those discharged under the policy last year were women. And while 20 percent of Air Force personnel are women, 49 percent of its discharges under the policy last year were women.

In an astonishing stroke of irony, the New York Times has outed the name of the CIA operative who interrogated 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, over the objections of CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and a lawyer representing the operative. Agency officials and legal counsel told the Times that publishing the agent's name would "invade his privacy and put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency." In an Editor's Note linked from the story on KSM's interrogation, the Times defended its decision by stating that "other government employees" had been "named publicly in...

BRUSSELS — On the street, Malika El Aroud is anonymous in an Islamic black veil covering all but her eyes. In her living room, Ms. El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian, wears the ordinary look of middle age: a plain black T-shirt and pants and curly brown hair. The only adornment is a pair of powder-blue slippers monogrammed in gold with the letters SEXY. But it is on the Internet where Ms. El Aroud has distinguished herself. Writing in French under the name “Oum Obeyda,” she has transformed herself into one of the most prominent Internet jihadists in Europe. She calls...

Have you been in an airport recently and maybe seen a gaggle of America's heroes returning from Iraq? And you've probably thought, "Ah, what a marvelous sight. Remind me to straighten up the old 'Support Our Troops' fridge magnet, which seems to have slipped down below the reminder to reschedule my acupuncturist. Maybe I should go over and thank them for their service." No, no, no, under no account approach them. Instead, try to avoid making eye contact and back away slowly toward the sign for the parking garage. You're in the presence of mentally damaged violent killers who could...

...The purpose of Sunday's instantly notorious feature "alerting" the American people that our Iraq and Afghanistan vets are all potential murderers when they move in next door was to mark those defenders of freedom as "unclean" - as the new lepers who can't be trusted amid uninfected Americans.... The hard left's hatred of our military has deteriorated from a political stance into a pathology: The only good soldier is a dead soldier who can be wielded as a statistic (out of context again). Or a deserter who complains bitterly that he didn't join the Army to fight . . ....

Today, the NY Times has the first part of a special series - War Torn:Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles. It appears that the troops are coming home and becoming murderers. Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: "Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife." Pierre, S.D.: "Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress." Colorado Springs: "Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring." Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the...

In a long report published on Sunday the New York Times appears to be trying to promulgate the idea that our returning military vets cannot successfully reintegrate back into their communities and into "normal lives" after returning from the stress of active duty overseas. The Times seems to be saying that our veterans have become murderers and are so mentally wracked that coming home is difficult for them. Their entire report is written as if the rate of murders committed by returning veterans is shockingly high. But, a look at real statistics proves that vets are less likely to become...

Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army. This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.” Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian...

Crazed Veterans Spark Nationwide Crime Wave That's the theme of a front page article in today's New York Times: "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles." The article reports on what must have been a major effort by the Times to comb through news reports from across the country, identifying and tabulating instances where servicemen who returned from Iraq or Afghanistan were charged with some form of homicide. The Times summarizes the results of its research: Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier...

Imagine if the New York Times gave half-price ad space to the National Right to Life Committee or the National Rifle Association. It would never happen, of course, but if it did, you can envision the left-wing clamor. Liberal groups would be demanding that the Times extend to them the same discounts. So conservatives were understandably outraged over the revelation that the New York Times gave a full page of ad space in the front section to the liberal activist group Moveon.org for a mere $66,575. That's less than one half of the Times' listed rate for a full-page ad....

The New York Times is still obsessing over Blackwater – well at least it gives Halliburton a break. Today the Times reports: The American security contractor Blackwater USA has been involved in a far higher rate of shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq than other security firms providing similar services to the State Department, according to Bush administration officials and industry officials. The Times doesn't have any precise figures for Blackwater, but explains: In 2005, DynCorp reported 32 shootings during about 3,200 convoy missions, and in 2006 that company reported 10 episodes during about 1,500 convoy missions. While comparable...

The New York Times dramatically slashed its normal rates for a full-page advertisement for MoveOn.org's ad questioning the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. -SNIP- According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692." A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate. A Post reporter who called the Times advertising department yesterday without identifying himself was...

Former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee segued neatly from Congress back to an acting career in 2002, when he joined the cast of NBC’s long-running crime series “Law & Order.” Now that Mr. Thompson seems poised to re-enter politics as a Republican presidential candidate, his career will take another twist. In May, he asked NBC to release him from further “Law & Order” commitments; more recently, NBC said it was ready to stop showing reruns of the episodes he appears in because of federal equal time regulations for presidential candidates. “If Fred Thompson formally announces his intention to run...

Today, Michigan Republican Pete Hoesktra sent a scathing letter to NYT executive editor Bill Keller, detailing what Hoekstra called the Times' "...recklessness in repeatedly disclosing highly classified intelligence programs to enemies who seek to attack our nation," and the Times' coverage of the Foreign Intelligence Act amendments. Hoekstra said of the Times' editorial titled, "The Fear of Fear Itself," "The only real basis for "fear" here is the scare tactics being perpetuated by the Times, which has knowingly and willfully misrepresented the new law to scare the American people." READ THE WHOLE LETTER HERE Mr. Bill Keller Executive Editor The...

It had to happen. President Bush’s bungling of the war in Iraq has been the talk of the summer. On Capitol Hill, some of the more reliable Republicans are writing proposals to force Mr. Bush to change course. A showdown vote is looming in the Senate. Enter, stage right, the fear of terrorism. Yesterday, the director of national intelligence released a report with the politically helpful title of “The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland,” and Fran Townsend, the president’s homeland security adviser, held a news conference to trumpet its findings. The message, as always: Be very afraid. And don’t...

The White House denied that the report was timed to the Senate debate. But the administration controls the timing of such releases and the truth is that fear of terrorism is the only shard remaining of Mr. Bush’s justification for invading Iraq. This administration has never hesitated to play on fear for political gain, starting with the first homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, and his Popsicle-coded threat charts. It is a breathtakingly cynical ploy, but in the past it has worked to cow Democrats into silence, if not always submission, and herd Republicans back onto the party line. That must...

A 36-YEAR-OLD dentally challenged cellphone salesman wins a nationally televised talent contest in Britain, and suddenly, all sorts of questions are raised about the role of classical music in our world. That is because the winner, Paul Potts, from Wales, triumphed with a rendition of “Nessun dorma,” the tenor aria from Puccini’s “Turandot,” at a contest with the trappings and audience — seemingly — of the mass entertainment world. By the standards of music critics who ply their trade in opera houses and concert halls, it wasn’t a particularly earth-shaking performance. “Mr. Potts is the sort of bog-standard tenor to...

BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents. “In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.” But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When...

The tragedy of our runaway gun culture can only deepen now that it’s clear the new Democratic Congress operates in fear of the gun lobby’s well-practiced demagoguery and rich campaign treasury. A collective silence descended on the Capitol after the pro forma expressions of outrage over the Virginia Tech gun massacre. Truly responsible lawmakers would put political survival on hold and shut two of the most lethal loopholes in gun control created by the Republican-controlled Congress, with the Bush administration’s eager blessing. The first barred state and local police forces from getting access to information on illegal gun sales regularly...

"First Time magazine drops the President from the '100 Most Influential' list, and now this: The big front-page photo in Tuesday's New York Times was of Queen Elizabeth (who did make Time's list of important movers and shakers) with President Bush walking past a row of photographers at the White House after her official welcome. But the photo cropped off the top third of Bush's head, and the caption whimsically referred to him only as the Queen's "American escort," as if he was a security guard or State Department flunkie. Under the headline "Focus Group" (a play on all the...

...the military has paid more than $32 million to Iraqi and Afghan civilians for noncombat-related killings, injuries and property damage, an Army spokeswoman said. That figure does not include condolence payments made at a unit commander's discretion.snipRecently, the Army disclosed roughly 500 claims to the American Civil Liberties Union in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. They are the first to be made public.

WASHINGTON - The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran. The focus of American concern is known as an "explosively formed penetrator," a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb being used by Shiite groups in attacks on American troops in Iraq. Attacks using the device have doubled in the past year, and have prompted increasing concern among military officers. In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less...

Almost a year ago, hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers and their families slipped out from the shadows of American life and walked boldly in daylight through Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, New York and other cities. “We Are America,” their banners cried. The crowds, determined but peaceful, swelled into an immense sea. The nation was momentarily stunned. A lot has happened since then. The country has summoned great energy to confront the immigration problem, but most of it has been misplaced, crudely and unevenly applied. It seeks not to solve the conundrum of a broken immigration system, but to subdue,...

Here’s a little foreign policy test. I am going to describe two countries — “Country A” and “Country B” — and you tell me which one is America’s ally and which one is not. Let’s start: Country A actively helped the U.S. defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan and replace it with a pro-U.S. elected alliance of moderate Muslims. Country A regularly holds sort-of-free elections. Country A’s women vote, hold office, are the majority of its university students and are fully integrated into the work force. On 9/11, residents of Country A were among the very few in the Muslim world...

Half-serious warning: those with heart conditions are advised to have their medications handy when reading this. With Democrats in congressional power, are leftists feeling suddenly empowered to express formerly taboo views? First came a column in the Los Angeles Times arguing we have overreacted to 9-11. Now comes Washington Post columnist William Arkin to express contempt for our troops and question how much we really owe them after all. Excerpts from The Troops Also Need to Support the American People: "I've been mulling over an NBC Nightly News report from Iraq last Friday in which a number of soldiers expressed...

States with the greatest number of guns in the home also have the highest rates of homicide, a new study finds. The study, in the February issue of Social Science and Medicine, looked at gun ownership in all 50 states and then compared the results with the number of people killed over a three-year period. The research, the authors said, “suggests that household firearms are a direct and an indirect source of firearms used to kill Americans both in their homes and on the streets.” The researchers, led by Matthew Miller of the Harvard School of Public Health, drew on...

On Tuesday, January 16th, 2007, the American people awoke to startling and disturbing news: for the first time ever, the majority of women in the country were living without a husband. All the TV networks, radio news broadcasts, pundits, talk show hosts and leading newspapers reported on the devastating milestone, and saw it as yet another indication of the ongoing collapse of the traditional family. Some commentators hailed this development as an encouraging sign of newfound freedom, while others decried it as a reflection of decadence and dysfunction. With all the debate and pontification about the new minority status of...

New York Times Gets Another Story Very Wrong - This Time it’s about Marriage Accused of “journalistic malpractice” for skewing stats to incorrectly show most women not marrying By Peter Smith NEW YORK, January 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The New York Times has once again published another 'hit piece' on the institution of marriage, alleging that for “the first time more American women are living without a husband than with one”. However, US census data for 2005 shows that the January 16th front-page story in the New York Times is just another disturbing showcase of the Times’ tolerance for...

BOSTON -- The New York Times Co. will cut about 125 positions through buyouts and other steps at The Boston Globe and the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, and outsourcing some finance and advertising work, a Globe spokesman said Thursday. About 70 of the positions will be eliminated through buyouts that will be offered to employees of the two newspapers starting late this month, Globe spokesman Al Larkin said. The buyouts will be offered to exempt and Newspaper Guild-covered employees with at least 10 years of service. Seventeen positions in the newsroom and two opinion page positions are expected to...

Re: NY-Times article: China Pursues Major Role in Particle Physics December 06, 2006 That Lovable Old Coot, Mao Zedong Yesterday's New York Times gave noted Chinese parliamentarian Mao Zedong a warm tonguebath of affection, in the Science Section, of all places. The lead story, "China Pursues Major Role in Particle Physics," made Mao sound like a lovable old coot full of folk wisdom: "Mao Zedong dreamed of splitting an electron. This was no idle diversion. According to natural dialectics, which formed the philosophical underpinnings of Marxism, the entire universe, from top to bottom, was seething with tension and change. As...

As the Vietnam War worsened and Democrats suffered midterm election defeats, then-President Lyndon Johnson questioned advisers in 1966 about troop escalation and military supply shortages, according to taped telephone recordings released Friday. Johnson, in one conversation with former President Dwight Eisenhower, said he was doing his best to win the war. "I'm trying to win it just as fast as I can in every way that I know how," he told Eisenhower, who offered his support. Johnson added, "I need all the help I can get." Johnson railed against "commies" that he said ran the New York Times and against...

This is exquisitely rich. Today The New York Times is accusing the Bush administration of an illegal leak of secret information, which may endanger American lives. Wow. No sense of irony over there at The Times. They can leak the NSA secret wiretapping program, they can leak the Treasury Department's secret program of following terrorist money, they can leak secret memos on the progress of the war, but none of that, evidently, seems to Times editors to endanger Americans. But this latest so-called leak by the Bushies does. And worse, the so-called leak is — get this — an Iraqi...

NYT SETS PHOTO ESSAY FOR PAGE ONE MONDAY: Burials of soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery nearly every day over the last week... Developing...

WASHINGTON — Corporate America is already thinking beyond Election Day, increasing its share of last-minute donations to Democratic candidates and quietly devising strategies for how to work with Democrats if they win control of Congress. The shift in political giving, during the first 18 days of October, has not been this pronounced in the final stages of a campaign since 1994, when Republicans swept control of the House for the first time in four decades.

The United States of America vs. Bill Keller How hard is it to be executive editor of the New York Times today? The White House calls him a traitor. He gets roasted every day on talk shows and blogs. The newsroom is losing faith. The paper is shrinking. And the worst part is that fighting back means overcoming his own nature. By Joe Hagan Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, sat on a couch in the Oval Office of the White House, three feet from President George W. Bush, and listened. For a meeting without historical...

The New York Times and Fidel Castro By Jonathan Kay Carlos Eire is the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History at Yale University. Eire’s memoir of his childhood in Cuba, Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, won the 2003 National Book Award for nonfiction. So it was not unusual that The New York Times op-ed page should come calling when Castro was hospitalized several weeks ago. What was unusual was that the Times evidently had very specific ideas about what this illustrious writer should tell readers.

If ever a law was designed as a get-out-of-jail-free card for the trigger-happy gun owner, it’s one that comes to us via the gun lobby and the State of Florida. The law, passed in the last year in 15 states and being considered in eight others, allows the extraordinary use of deadly force when a person simply doesn’t want to back away from a confrontation. There are legitimate kill-or-be-killed situations, but those are defensible in court already. There seems little reason to legally enshrine the right to maim or kill in response to a perceived threat. These laws do just...

Lethal and Wet Of the hundreds of types of explosives, most are solid and only about a dozen are liquid. But some of those liquid explosives can be readily bought, and others can be put together from hundreds of different kinds of chemicals that are not hard to obtain. A memo issued by federal security officials about the new plot highlighted a type of liquid explosive based on peroxide. The most common peroxide explosive is triacetone triperoxide or TATP, which is made from two liquids: acetone, the primary ingredient of most nail polish removers, and hydrogen peroxide, commonly used as...

For more than a month after the killings, Sgt. Lemuel Lemus stuck to his story. “Proper escalation of force was used,” he told an investigator, describing how members of his unit shot and killed three Iraqi prisoners who had lashed out at their captors and tried to escape after a raid northwest of Baghdad on May 9. Then, on June 15, Sergeant Lemus offered a new and much darker account. In a lengthy sworn statement, he said he had witnessed a deliberate plot by his fellow soldiers to kill the three handcuffed Iraqis and a cover-up in which one soldier...

It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power. Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to...

" Protest Warriors " March against Anti-American National Security Leakers and Anti-Troop Liberal Media outlets .(and to Show Support for Our Troops!)

CNSNews.com) - Amid the uproar over the New York Times publishing reports about a secret -- but legal -- anti-terrorism program intended to track the global movement of terrorist funds, the newspaper's editorial board on Wednesday defended the newpaper's decision to publish the story. In a nutshell, the editorial argued: -- that the New York Times is accustomed to being criticized for doing its job. (As the editorial put it, "Over the last year, The New York Times has twice published reports about secret antiterrorism programs being run by the Bush administration. Both times, critics have claimed that the paper...