Free Republic

... ranked as the program's seventh lowest rated performance in its six-and-a-half year run...

Wisconsin and Minnesota have long made fascinating bookends. As longtime readers may recall, the two neighboring states have similar sizes, similar populations, similar demographics, and even similar climates. But they don’t necessarily have similar politics, at least not lately. In the 2010 elections, the Badger State elected Scott Walker (R) governor and gave control of the legislature to Republicans, while the Gopher State made Mark Dayton (D) governor and, in 2012, elected a Democratic legislature*. The former got to work targeting collective bargaining and approving tax cuts, while the latter raised taxes on the wealthy and boosted in-state investments. Nearly...

Canaries are not very formidable birds, but they have their uses. For instance, coal miners learned over a century ago that when canaries gag and drop dead at the bottom of the cage, it's a sign that maybe there's something wrong with the air in the mine. MSNBC is not a very formidable network, but its wheezing is similarly instructive. MSNBC's slogan is "Lean Forward," which has a robust sound to it. But it turns out the phrase is a more apt descriptor of how the Peacock Network's mini-me is poised to teeter off its perch and plunge beak-first into...

Dear Rachel, I'd like to set the record straight about my recent headline-making trip to Israel and clarify that Bryan Fischer's remarks do not represent David Lane, and most importantly do not represent the pastors to whom he ministers or the many Christians like myself who follow Jesus Christ. Let me also clarify, I am neither a Republican National Committee member nor a registered Republican. As I have already written, I went on the “much ado about nothing” Israel trip and met people from all backgrounds, races, religions and non-religions, ages, and economic and educational backgrounds. Many who went had...

Can we believe anything we hear or read or even see anymore? Is anything real? Has the truth become as outdated as video cassettes and beepers? We have been on a slippery slope for decades, and the new normal seems to be that anyone can make things up or fake something and there are virtually no consequences. When Bill Clinton wagged his finger at the American people, saying, “I want you to listen to me; I gonna say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, I never told anybody to lie, not a single...

The blood wasn’t yet dry in the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo before progressives started with the moral equivalences between Islamofascists and people in the United State who dare defy their orthodoxy of the left. This is how the modern left works – no act, no matter how barbaric, is as bad as opposing their political desire. In many ways, in most ways actually, the American progressive left is radical Islam, only with a slightly smaller body count. Freedom of speech, the “spark” that lit off the attack on the French satirical newspaper, is under assault from the progressive left...

The self-righteous indignation of liberals was on full display last night, as the Grand Jury announced their decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson over the death of Michael Brown. Strangely absent was a sense of concern over the violence, destruction, and social devolution that erupted in St Louis. Instead, as expected, there was a profoundly misplaced anger over the decision of a Grand Jury that was presented with facts, eyewitness accounts, and forensic evidence. 1 – Ezra KleinEzra Klein is an idiot. But, don’t take my word for it. (I mean heck, John Ransom and I explain it every...

A busy week in news was a good one for Fox News Channel, which logged its second highest-rated frame of the year, but a weak one for MSNBC, which found itself deep in third place. FNC, with several shows hitting 2014 highs, won in adults 25-54 and total viewers on both a primetime and total-day basis for Monday through Friday of last week. Tune-in was above average across the news board due to coverage of the protests in Ferguson and the murder of James Foley. Looking at the Nielsen numbers, Fox News averaged 443,000 adults 25-54 in primetime to finish...

It must be exhausting for Barrack Obama. I sometimes feel worn down just reading about all the events going on in the world – I can’t even imagine how tiresome it must be, trying to avoid leadership on all those issues. Lucky for our Vacationer in Chief, he’s found a way… Apparently a healthy mix of golf and swimming is exactly what is needed to distract yourself from the chaos in the Middle East. And, to be fair, this genocidal chaos in Iraq is not completely the fault of a Nobel Laureate who plays the American President on TV. The...

Before you read and critique this article, you need to “check your privilege” - the left’s latest phrase to silence free speech from conservatives, a silly sounding but totalitarian new phrase. The reasoning behind the phrase goes like this: if someone is conservative, they must have turned out conservative because they were given advantages in society, likely related to their birth, and they now want to protect those alleged advantages. Since white males tend to be more conservative than other demographics, it follows that white males must be privileged. Their conservative views are motivated by an innate, self-protective selfishness. As...

Chris Matthews mocked Republicans on Friday's Hardball over their hawkish stance towards Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist group that recently kidnapped hundreds of girls. Matthews made a thinly-veiled racial attack on the GOP during a panel discussion on the terrorist organization: " By the way, when did the Republican Party take this keen interest in Africa? I may have missed that one."

MSNBC, the Houston Chronicle and other mainstream media outlets are saying that Republican intervention in the union vote at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee helped to tip scales, like somehow the GOP committed a crime. And in doing so, they provided the GOP with an important campaign focus group: The liberals are deathly afraid that Americans will discover that, yes, the Republicans aren’t afraid of helping to create jobs in the private sector. “It was as ferocious an anti-union campaign as anything Americans have seen in a while,” says the MSNBC Rachel Maddow blog. “Indeed, the Republican effort, bolstered...

That the media of old is dead comes as a surprise to no one. All pretense of objectivity is gone. When a media orgy breaks out over a progressive activist blogger with no journalistic background leaving the once-credible Washington Post to start a “news organization” that seeks resumes of like-minded progressives who “share our passion for fixing the news,” we can say without reservation that the media shark has been jumped. Oddly enough, I agree with the idea of “fixing the news,” though I suspect I disagree with progressives on how to do that. I’d re-impose standards and require objectivity....

In case you missed it earlier this week, a tweet sent out on the official MSNBC Twitter page accused the "right wing" of hating biracial families. After backlash, the tweet was quickly deleted. MSNBC tried to backtrack, saying this "isn't who they are," but they aren't fooling anyone. This is exactly who they are. Remember this? When Melissa Harris-Perry and her show panel mocked Mitt Romney's African-American grandson Kieran? When panelist and actress Pia Glenn sang "one of these things is not the same" about baby Kieran? Harris-Perry eventually issued an apology. Melissa Harris-Perry's MSNBC Panel Mocks Mitt Romney's Black...

MSNBC's furor over Mike Huckabee's remarks on women and the Democrats boiled over on "Now with Alex Wagner" on Thursday afternoon. Radical feminist "comedians" Sarah Silverman and Lizz Winstead were promoted once again for their "V to Shining V" crusade for "Lady Parts Justice" -- that is, untrammeled abortion, the full Gosnell. (See previous promotional segment here.) “It’s so bizarre,” Silverman said about Huckabee's remarks, smelling careerism and  insincerity. “When a politician is speaking on behalf of those people who are pulling their strings, for their purse and for their, um, the betterment of their career, it’s gross. I’m just...

Today marks the 41st annual “March for Life” in which thousands of pro-lifers ascend on Washington D.C. to mark the Roe v. Wade decision and show their solidarity in opposition to abortion, many of them faithful Catholics. Not surprisingly, Pope Francis sent out an official tweet showing his support for the “March for Life” in which he said, “I join the March for Life in Washington with my prayers, may God help us respect all life, especially the most vulnerable.” Unfortunately for one MSNBC host, the fact the Pope would show support for one of the Catholic Church’s most sacred values, the...

"Obama approval ratings turn around," exulted the msnbc.com landing page headline for Traci G. Lee's January 9 story, "Positive start to 2014 for Obama: poll." Lee set about spinning the results of the latest Quinnipiac Poll, which shows President Obama sitting atop a 41 percent approval rating, up from a low of 38 percent in December, but still a net negative approval rating. Lee used the slight uptick in approval as a springboard to forecast that the president's economically liberal spending agenda could change his and his party's fortunes (emphasis mine): Obama is likely to use his upcoming State of...

Hosting a daily talk radio show means I have to follow the news regularly. It’s my job. Luckily it’s also what I love doing and have been doing since high school. But lately it has seemed more like work because, to find news, you have to sift through a lot of garbage and uninformed opinions. I’ve been called a lot in my life. Most is accurate if not suitable for print. But nothing elicits a faster response from me than to be called “journalist.” I am not a journalist, I am a columnist. It’s an important distinction that used to...

On Friday, MSNBC host Thomas Roberts talked with Len Everett of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence about the joint release of a new line of Duck Commander shotguns and rifles from gunmaker Mossberg and the Robertson family of "Duck Dynasty" fame. Amazingly, the conversation hints that because of the rifles' high-capacity magazines, they could be used for more than just ducks -- perhaps even shooting people. During the conversation, Everett explains that the gun industry's consumer base is predominantly "conservative, middle-aged, white males," which host Roberts says is the exact audience that watches Duck Dynasty. Then, they jump to discussing the...

Hello fellow 2013 survivors, I've got a lot of irons in the fire, but this one struck me with a sense of urgency and so I banged it out - (don't read anything into that expression).   I'd heard about this latest flap over a gaggle of progressives having a chuckle about Mitt Romney with a black grandson on his knee and I couldn't help but see a bit of absurdity beyond the rather innocuous incident itself. MSNBC has, without thinking (surprise, surprise)-locked themselves into a box and now that it's too late to get out, are discovering they don't...