Free Republic

WASHINGTON — The burst of job growth in January gives President Obama a fresh — but tricky — opportunity to revise the grim economic narrative of his presidency while offering Mitt Romney a choice: embrace a new optimism or campaign against a sinking economy even as it shows signs of turning around. The Labor Department reported on Friday that the unemployment rate had fallen all the way back to the level of President Obama’s first full month in office, to 8.3 percent, from a high of 10 percent in late 2009. Yet unemployment also remains higher than it has been...

“First base, second base, third base, home run,” Al Vernacchio ticked off the classic baseball terms for sex acts. His goal was to prompt the students in Sexuality and Society — an elective for seniors at the private Friends’ Central School on Philadelphia’s affluent Main Line — to examine the assumptions buried in the venerable metaphor. “Give me some more,” urged the fast-talking 47-year-old, who teaches 9th- and 12th-grade English as well as human sexuality. Arrayed before Vernacchio was a circle of small desks occupied by 22 teenagers, six male and the rest female — a blur of sweatshirts and...

Hours after being evicted by the police, protesters returned to Zuccotti Park on Tuesday, without tents and sleeping bags Emergency-service trucks rumbled up Broadway to positions on two sides of Zuccotti Park. Powerful klieg lights blinked on, illuminating about 220 protesters in tents and sleeping bags. The one-square-block plaza was as bright as day. But it was only 1 a.m. Voices of the police, booming from loudspeakers, echoed through the financial district. Officers swept through the park, picking their way around tents and over sleeping bags, handing out leaflets. Dozens of protesters linked arms and shouted “This is our...

Although scholars of the history of the NY Times Op-Ed pages may be able to find a more vile Op-Ed, I dare them. From Paul Kane, a suggestion that the United States sell-out Taiwan to China in exchange for forgiveness of $1.14 trillion in debt, To Save Our Economy, Ditch Taiwan. http://legalinsurrection.com/2011/11/sell-out-taiwan-for-debt-foregiveness-possibly-the-most-vile-ny-times-op-ed-ever/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6uNWzzt-n3s

One of the questions surrounding the sex-abuse case against Jerry Sandusky is why a former district attorney chose not to prosecute the then-Penn State assistant coach in 1998 after reports surfaced that he had inappropriate interactions with a boy. In 2005, divers searched the Susquehanna River in Lewisburg, Pa., for Ray Gricar, who was a Centre County prosecutor. The answer is unknowable because of an unsolved mystery: What happened to Ray Gricar, the Centre County, Pa., district attorney?

It has been 47 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and 46 years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act. And yet the political leaders of this nation of liberty cannot seem to muster the courage and principle to sweep away one remaining example of institutionalized, government-sanctioned discrimination: The 1996 law that denies the right of marriage to same-sex couples. The law, the Defense of Marriage Act, was passed in the heat of election-year fear and bigotry against men who want to marry other men, and women who want to marry other women. It was a...

President Obama’s re-election campaign has been hammering Mitt Romney from many angles in recent weeks. And now Democrats are beginning a new push against him, this time using the issue of reproductive rights in a bid to raise doubts about Mr. Romney among women. The Democratic National Committee has scheduled a conference call for Thursday with Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the party chairwoman, who, according to the committee’s press release, will “slam G.O.P. presidential candidate Mitt Romney for voicing support for such efforts which could endanger women’s lives.” The Democratic offensive is built around Mr. Romney’s statements on...

BELMONT, Mass. — In ticking off his credentials on the campaign trail — management consultant, businessman, governor — Mitt Romney omits what may have been his most distinctive post: Mormon lay leader, offering pastoral guidance on all manner of human affairs from marriage to divorce, abortion, adoption, addiction, unemployment and even business disputes. Bryce Clark was a recipient of Mr. Romney’s spiritual advice. Late one summer night in 1993, distraught over his descent into alcoholism and drug use, Mr. Clark, then a 19-year-old college student, decided to confess that he had strayed from his Mormon faith. So he drove through...

The Republican establishment is no longer terrified of the Tea Party, The New York Times' Matt Bai reports. It's now figured out how to absorb them like a slow-moving but powerful star that's swelling into a red giant. [snip] Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol tells Bai that the Republican presidential nominee merely has to be conservative enough. Kristol told me just after Perry entered the race, a development that essentially ended [the more radical Michele] Bachmann’s brief ascent. Establishment Republicans may prefer Romney to Perry, but their assumption is that either man can be counted on to steer the party...

The latest Fox poll offered Republican voters a menu of 11 candidates and found...not only were voters scattered across the conservative landscape, but 1/4 of the Tea Party adherents sampled were still “not impressed” with anyone. It’s hard to impress a movement that only knows what it is against. Now, barring some wild twist of fate, there are two men standing: Mitt Romney, the methodical, thrill-free, ideologically elastic technocrat from Massachusetts, who has made himself the default nominee; and the last hope of the hard core, the Not Mitt: Rick Perry. snip ...whatever you think of his deviations from Tea...

The paper's Jerusalem bureau paid barely minimal attention to the recent killing of an Israeli man and his one-year-old son by stone-throwing Palessinians who attacked their car -- with one huge stone smashing through the windshield and hitting the driver. ... Like most Western reporters, Kershner assumes that a logical peace treaty must divide Jerusalem, with Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem remaining in Israel and Arab neighborhoods becoming part of Palestine. But neither she nor her colleagues have ever checked with Arab residents of Jerusalem about what their real preference might be. Had they done so, they would have found...

The New York Times have just pissed its neuroscientific pants in public and is now running round the streets announcing the fact in an op-ed that could as easily been titled 'Smell my wee!' The piece is written by Martin Lindström, famous for writing the 'neuromarketing' best-seller Buyology, but infamous for not making any of his data or studies public. In fact, despite constantly mentioning the astounding conclusions from numerous brain imaging studies he was run, not one has appeared in the scientific literature. But even without knowing about the reliability data or the quality of the analysis, it's easy...

Rose Marie Belforti is a 57-year-old cheese maker, the elected town clerk in this sprawling Finger Lakes farming community and a self-described Bible-believing Christian. She believes that God has condemned homosexuality as a sin, so she does not want to sign same-sex marriage licenses; instead, she has arranged for a deputy to issue all marriage licenses by appointment. But when a lesbian couple who own a farm near here showed up at the town hall last month, the women said they were unwilling to wait. Now Ms. Belforti is at the heart of an emerging test case, as national advocacy...

THE end is near — or so it seems to a segment of Christians aligned with the religious right. The global economic meltdown, numerous natural disasters and the threat of radical Islam have fueled a conviction among some evangelicals that these are the last days. While such beliefs might be dismissed as the rantings of a small but vocal minority, apocalyptic fears helped drive the antigovernment movements of the 1930s and ’40s and could help define the 2012 presidential campaign as well. Christian apocalypticism has a long and varied history. Its most prevalent modern incarnation took shape a century ago,...

Princeton Professor Paul Krugman's ugly New York Times blog on the post 9/11 environment stopped short of accusing Pres. Bush of masterminding the attacks, but it did accuse Bush and his associates of cashing in on the tragedy, of being "fake heroes." If nothing else, the timing was hateful – the very week when the former President was called on to emerge from relative obscurity to lend gravity to the memorial ceremonies. Krugman's hate cannot hold a candle to retired MIT professor, and radical anti-American, Noam Chomsky's article in Al Jazeera. Chomsky goes a step further to condemn the US...

MORE than a dozen American states are considering outlawing aspects of Shariah law. Some of these efforts would curtail Muslims from settling disputes over dietary laws and marriage through religious arbitration, while others would go even further in stigmatizing Islamic life: a bill recently passed by the Tennessee General Assembly equates Shariah with a set of rules that promote “the destruction of the national existence of the United States.” Supporters of these bills contend that such measures are needed to protect the country against homegrown terrorism and safeguard its Judeo-Christian values. The Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has said that...

Does Bill Keller, Editor of the New York Times have any idea why his editorial “Asking Candidates Tougher Questions about Faith,” contains the very essence of bigotry? He writes “We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans.” He then proceeds to specifically, and quite intolerantly, single out Roman Catholicism and Mormonism. Regarding Mormons, Keller glibly asserts that he didn’t care if Mitt Romney “wore Mormon undergarments beneath his Gap skinny jeans.” Continuing with his laundry list of Mormon beliefs that he doesn’t care about, he...

The news outlets CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and Newsweek have come under fire by Philadelphia’s incoming Archbishop, for a lack of “trustworthiness” where matters of religious faith are concerned. According to Archbishop Charles Chaput, the media do not “provide trustworthy information about religious faith. ” His comments were made Wednesday during an address on religious freedom before some 10,000 pilgrims at the Catholic World Youth Day in Madrid, Spain. Archbishop Chaput told the group of young faith-goers, “in the United States, our battles over abortion, family life, same-sex ‘marriage,’ and other sensitive issues have led to ferocious public...

Of all the places to hear fulminations against President Obama, one of the least expected is the corner of 71st Avenue and Queens Boulevard, in the heart of a Congressional district that propelled Democrats like Geraldine A. Ferraro, Charles E. Schumer andAnthony D. Weiner to Washington. But it was there that Dale Weiss, a 64-year-old Democrat, approached the Republican running for Congress in a special election and, without provocation, blasted the president for failing to tame runaway federal spending. “We need to cut Medicaid,” she declared, “but he won’t do that.” She shook her head in disgust. “He is a...

In the middle of all the debt default drama and stock market turbulence, the leading Republican presidential candidates have begun to fill in the shadowy outlines of their positions on major economic issues. And what a picture it is, a philosophy oriented around shrinking the role of the federal government in every imaginable way, by slashing spending, cutting taxes and halting or rescinding regulations. Their mantra is repeal and retrenchment, devoid of new initiatives or a positive agenda. Some of these views are to the right even of the Tea Party; they amount to the most radically conservative positions of...

CULLMAN, Ala. — On a sofa in the hallway of his office here, Mitchell Williams, the pastor of First United Methodist Church, announced that he was going to break the law. He is not the only church leader making such a declaration these days. Since June, when Gov. Robert Bentley, a Republican, signed an immigration enforcement law called the toughest in the country by critics and supporters alike, the opposition has been vocal and unceasing. Thousands of protesters have marched. Anxious farmers and contractors have personally confronted their lawmakers. The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups have...

Tea Party’s War on America By JOE NOCERA You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took. Like ideologues everywhere, they scorned compromise....

It's Fourth of July weekend - how about cheating on your spouse? For those not thinking about it, a piece to be published in the New York Times Magazine this Sunday marvelously titled "Married, With Infidelities" is recommending it:

That loud crash you just heard off in the distance was the New York Times finally hitting the bottom of the barrel with an embarrassing but expected thump. Having long ago turned its back on objective journalism to become the mouthpiece for liberal ideology, the Democrat party, and corrupt unions, it was still somewhat of a surprise to see the compromised editors of the paper do something which might cause Anthony Weiner to recoil from its unseemly request. On Friday, June 10th, the State of Alaska released more than 24,000 of former Governor Sarah Palin’s emails. A Democrat recently...

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned from Washington on Wednesday to a nearly unanimous assessment among Israelis that despite his forceful defense of Israel’s security interests, hopes were dashed that his visit might advance Palestinian peace negotiations. One of the widely articulated goals of his trip, where he met with President Obama and addressed Congress, was to find a way to lure the Palestinians back to direct negotiations, thereby preempting their plan to approach the United Nations in September for recognition of statehood within the pre-1967 lines. Instead, the Palestinians now say, Mr. Netanyahu’s speeches convinced them...

In what appears to be a shocking journalistic fail, a Boston Globe reporter acquired Barack H. Obama Sr.'s immigration records in 2009 under a FOIA request. (Boston Globe)- The INS documents, released to this reporter through a Freedom Of Information Act request in 2009 in the course of research on a biography of the elder Obama to be released in July, reveal Harvard’s crucial role in the tumultuous course of the president’s father’s life. The documents were made public Wednesday by the weekly newspaper, The Arizona Independent. The records were very uncomplimentary to Obama Sr. He is described as a...

Investigations have concluded that President Obama was, in fact, born in Hawaii in 1961, as he has always said.

In the weeks since Governor Walker introduced his reforms to balance the budget and protect middle-class taxpayers the New York Times has repeatedly used its editorial pages to opine on the reforms. All told there have been at least seven editorials, op-eds or columns in the paper about the Wisconsin reforms. Below is the Op-Ed that Governor Walker wrote that the New York Times chose not to run: -SNIP-

The New York Times just can’t seem to get much of anything right lately. No wonder they’re facing economic and reputation woes. Their article today falsely reporting on my record as governor is full of spin, and I shall call them out on it. Regardless of the recent political posturing, ACES (Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share) is a success for all stakeholders who want more domestic energy supplies for our great country. The Alaskan people (who collectively own the natural resources, via our state constitution), the resource producers who bid on the right to develop our oil and gas, and...

Majority in Poll Back Employees in Public Sector Unions By MICHAEL COOPER and MEGAN THEE-BRENANAs labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. ...But the nationwide poll found that embattled public employee unions have the support of most Americans — and most independents — as they fight the efforts of newly elected Republican governors in...

In 2009 and 2010 the New York Times covered protests against the Obama administration’s stimulus spending bill and health care plan as the barely legal revolt of an unwashed and uncivil band of reactionaries determined not only to halt what the paper considered progress but also to thwart democracy. But anyone looking at the Times’ front page article on Saturday describing protests against the effort by Wisconsin’s newly elected governor and legislature to balance the state’s books got a very different view of a protest movement. According to the Times, the activities of the Wisconsin public sector unions — whose...

MADISON, Wis. — In a capital city overrun for much of the past week by union supporters, state employees and students — all objecting to the Republican governor's plan to cut collective bargaining rights and benefits for public workers — a new element was introduced Saturday: opposition to the opposition. And so, a significantly bolstered force of law officers kept a somewhat nervous eye on dueling protests. On one side of the Capitol square, swarms of union supporters chanted, as they have for days: "Kill the bill! Kill the bill!" On another corner, a cluster of demonstrators, many of whom...

Since the tragedy in Tucson, the New York Times has started an all-out campaign for gun control, with a relentless number of pieces -- news, editorials, and op-eds. In its advocacy, even the news stories are heavily biased by selectively quoting only academics who support pro-gun control positions. These seemingly unbiased sources are then contrasted with opposing views from clearly biased people on the other side, such as an NRA spokesman or a right-wing politician. The implied conclusion: scientific evidence favors gun control, but self-interest stands in the way. Take two recent news stories by Michael Luo (here and here)....

I agree completely with Pete that Krauthammer’s column is a great blow to Krugman. It’s made all the more forceful by the fact that Krauthammer is not only a brilliant columnist but also a psychiatrist by training. I also agree that this may be a tipping point in Krugman’s disgraceful career as a columnist. For one thing, he is intellectually lazy and seems to operate on the principle that a Krugman assertion is, ipso facto, an established fact. He rarely buttresses his assertions with evidence. His one bit of evidence that ”eliminationist rhetoric” in American political life is overwhelmingly on...

Could Michael Kinsley possibly be any more predictable? His review of George Bush's "Decision Points," appearing in today's Sunday New York Times, is precisely the smug piece of sneering partisanship you would expect to find in this paper and from this quintessential liberal MSM elitist. As the headline indicates, Kinsley flatly accuses W of "stealing" the 2000 election. Kinsley offers no proof, but surely most of the people who will read this review require none. They take it as a matter of deep partisan faith. Speaking of faith, the former Crossfire man is mocking of Bush's. Consider this excerpt: "[H]e...

“Almost daily” viewers of Fox News, the authors said, were 31 points more likely to mistakenly believe that “most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit;” were 30 points more likely to believe that “most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring;” and were 14 points more likely to believe that “the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts.” They were also 13 points more likely to mistakenly believe “the auto bailout only occurred under Obama;” 12 points more likely to believe that “when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed...

The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. The New York Times and a number of publications in Europe were given access to the material several weeks ago and agreed to begin publication of articles based on the cables Sunday online. The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.

Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, is among the more natural populist politicians of our time, frequently critiquing elites in the press, the Democratic Party, and the Republican establishment. It is one of the reasons — along with her working-class background and the sense of authenticity that she can often convey — that she is so popular with some voters. One potential problem for Ms. Palin, however, is that plenty of well-to-do and well-educated voters — those whom we might think of as belonging to the elite — will be participating in the Republican primaries. Three recent surveys of Republican...

Complete title: With Angle Up 4, NYT on Harry Reid: ‘Some Republicans Fear Losing Such a Powerful Ally in Washington’ In a classic example of liberal media bias, the front page of the print edition of today’s New York Times carries an above-the-fold story about the Nevada U.S. Senate race--headlined, “In Nevada, It’s Hold Nose and Cast Vote.” At one point, the story says: “Some Republicans fear losing such a powerfully ally in Washington—no matter that his name is Reid—at a time when Nevada is in precarious economic shape.”But the story does not quote a single Republican from Nevada or elsewhere, or site a single...

In monitoring New York Times coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I've served up numerous examples of how its correspondents spin, distort, bend and ignore the truth so as to paint Israel in a bad light. But there are no polite adjectives for the idiotic lengths to which Times correspondent Isabel Kershner goes to take a poke at Israel in her Oct. 18 article about resumption of mediation efforts to negotiate release of Sgt. Gilad Shalit from his lengthy Hamas captivity in Gaza ("Israel Renews Bid to Free Soldier Held by Hamas" page A4).  This bit of poisonous anti-Israel propaganda...

In a review of Avner Cohen's "The Worst Kept Secret," Ethan Bronner, the Times' Jerusalem bureau chief, joins a growing tide of pressures on Israel -- from the Arab League, the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, and even the Obama administration -- to come clean and open its nuclear program to global scrutiny. Israel's half-century-old policy of nuclear ambiguity -- "don't ask, don't tell" whether it has a nuclear arsenal -- has served it well as its ultimate deterrent.  Today, it keeps Iranian leaders, in their vow to destroy the Jewish state, guessing whether an all-out missile attack on Israel from...

Talk about one-time gains. Price increases at the New York Times and Boston Globe in mid-2009 helped New York Times Co. show healthy growth in circulation revenue for several quarters. Until now.

THERE’S always a revolution of some sort going on in America, be it political, cultural, or technological. Chairman Mao, who loved revolution, would have been envious of America. Now that summer has ended, the United States is gripped by revolutionary political fever as the November mid-term election approaches. The only thing on Washington’s mind right now is domestic politics. Eighty per cent of voters are angry at government and frightened by the nation’s sagging economy and nearly 10% jobless rate. High unemployment is always very bad news for the party in power. President Barack Obama’s ratings have plummeted. Democrats are...

...But for voters of all stripes, Tuesday’s primaries should illuminate the growling face of a new fringe in American politics — and provide the incentive for level-headed voters to become enthusiastic about the midterm election. Republican leaders have to decide if they want the tiny fraction of furious voters who have showed up at the primary polls to steer them into the swamp for years ahead. They have a chance to repudiate the worst of the Tea Party crowd and show that they can govern without appealing to the basest political instincts. So far, they have preferred to greedily capitalize...

While speaking at a conference in London, chairman and publisher of The New York Times Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. made a major statement about the future of his publication: "We will stop printing The New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD."

New York Times writer Adam Nagourney asked an interesting question Sunday: "Does It Matter if Obama Loses the Pundits?" The question was precipitated by the President's abysmal performance in his Tuesday Gulf Coast oil spill address and, in particular, how media members on both sides of the aisle gave him pretty poor grades. Finding this obviously inconvenient, Nagourney set out to defend Obama from his critics by surprisingly making the case that nobody cares what pundits say anymore. There was a time when the after-action takes of big commentators were sought out by Americans trying to assess the latest news...

Sheila Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, began her week with a bit of honest heresy, the kind that only she, among all the bank regulators, seems willing to utter in the wake of the financial crisis. Deep in a speech she delivered Monday before the Housing Association of Nonprofit Developers — a speech that got surprisingly little attention — Ms. Bair listed her three main recommendations to “put the mortgage industry on a sounder footing.” The first two were the usual suspects: better consumer education and protection, and a reformed securitization market. Her third proposal, however,...

Alvin Greene filed for our sins. Greene, an unemployed 32-year-old, is currently the most famous Democratic candidate in South Carolina. He just won the nomination to run against Senator Jim DeMint in November, overcoming major obstacles such as not having campaign staff, campaign funds, a campaign Web site, cellphone or personal computer. And then there’s the felony charge pending for allegedly showing a University of South Carolina student a pornographic picture. I’m sorry we have to keep coming back to South Carolina. There are 50 states, and I’m sure every single one has some really peculiar political phenomena that we...

Attorney in alleged victim's lawsuit seeks to document charges against former local priest New London - A woman who says the late Catholic priest Rev. Thomas Shea sexually abused her when she was a girl is trying to force the Diocese of Norwich to release 661 pages of documents - including a 2005 letter about Shea that current Bishop Michael Cote sent to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI. Diocesan attorneys are fighting an attempt by New London attorney Robert Reardon to force the release of the documents. Reardon has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the...

LOS ANGELES — The overwhelming majority of Americans think that the country’s immigration policies need to be seriously overhauled. And despite protests against Arizona’s stringent new immigration enforcement law, a slim majority of Americans support it, even though they say it may lead to racial profiling. With the signing of the Arizona on April 23 and reports of renewed efforts in Washington to rethink immigration, there has been an uptick in the number of Americans who describe illegal immigration as a serious problem. But the poll — conducted April 28 through May 2 with 1,079 adults, and with a margin...