Free Republic

Liberals Worry as Election Approaches By MICHAEL POWELL In the den of his home in New Hope, Pa., a liberal Democrat sits tap-tapping at his computer. Jon Downs, 53, works the electoral vote maps on Yahoo like a spiritualist shaking his Ouija board. He calibrates and recalibrates: Give Senator John McCain Ohio, Missouri, even Florida. But Virginia and Pennsylvania, those go to Senator Barack Obama. And Vermont, Democrats can count on Vermont, right? Right. Almost always, Mr. Downs ends with Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, ahead, which should please this confirmed liberal and profound Obama fan. But just as...

The Terrence McNally play, “Corpus Christi,” is currently being performed in Greenwich Village. The play depicts Jesus as an ordinary person who has sex with his apostles. In 1998, Catholic League president Bill Donohue led 2000 demonstrators in a protest against the play when it opened at the midtown Manhattan Theater. Because the play is not at a prominent location this time, the league has ignored it. However, Donohue is not ignoring what the New York Times has said about the play this past week: “If only the New York Times thought of Catholics as if we were all gay,...

Drudge: NY Times Prepares To Front Expose on Palin's Baby...Developing...

The New York Times launches its long-awaited smear of John McCain today, and the most impressive aspect of the smear is just how baseless it is. They basically emulate Page Six at the Post, but add in a rehash of a well-known scandal from twenty years ago to pad it out and make it look more impressive. In the end, they present absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing -- only innuendo denied by all of the principals: Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers....

NOW THAT HE'S SECURED NOMINATION: NYT DOWNLOADS ON MCCAIN

A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be interviewed for a documentary called “Crossroads.”The film, with Ben Stein, the actor, economist and freelance columnist, as its host, is described on Rampant’s Web site as an examination of the intersection of science and religion. Dr. Dawkins was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford Universityin England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.But now, Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed...

President Bush often insists he has to be the decider — ignoring Congress and the public when it comes to the tough matters on war, terrorism and torture, even deciding whether an ordinary man in Florida should be allowed to let his wife die with dignity. Apparently that burden does not apply to the functioning of one of the most vital government agencies, the Justice Department. Americans have been waiting months for Mr. Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who long ago proved that he was incompetent and more recently has proved that he can’t tell the truth. Mr....

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...

"Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." - George Wallace, from his 1963 inaugural speech as Governor of Alabama. "No amnesty today, no amnesty tomorrow, no amnesty ever." - New York Times editorial, June 9th, 2007, describing opponents of the proposed immigration law.If you oppose the proposed immigration law that, "pathway to citizenship" aside, would immediately give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, you're not merely wrong. In the eyes of the New York Times, you're a knuckle-dragging nativist, no better than hard-core segregationists of the Jim Crow era. That is the message of A Failure of Leadership, the Times'...

NYT: Already Sniping New 'Conservative' French President Posted by Warner Todd Huston on May 6, 2007 - 17:41. The New York Times didn't even wait for the French election results to become general knowledge before they began their sniping of the new "Conservative" French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. In what is supposed to represent an analysis of his election, the Times spends more time in naked name calling than substance. Let's review some of the harsh words, slights and names the Greylady hurls at the new president elect. * Arrogant, brutal, an authoritarian demagogue... * ...one of the most polarizing figures...

For the first time since before Watergate, the New York Times endorsed no Republicans for election to Congress this year. It's a sign of a few things: The polarized country, the end of a meaningful moderate wing of the GOP, and the Times's own move left. A look back at the Times archives through 1972 finds that the paper's powerful editorial page endorsed at least one Republican for the House or Senate every year. Some of these were well-known local moderates like Hamilton Fish and Bill Green. Others include a young Connecticut candidate named John Rowland in 1986. The page,...

The Times' executive editor accuses the Bush White House of stirring up a "partisan hatefest" against the paper over its revelation of an anti-terrorist program that monitored international banking transactions. Deep inside New York magazine's front-page profile of Times Executive Editor Bill Keller (ludicrously called a "true centrist" by writer Joe Hagan) is this gem about his reaction to White House criticism of the paper's exposure of its tracking of international banking transactions for terror clues: "They pissed me off....I think the administration is genuinely distressed that we ran the story over their objections. I think they were embarrassed by...