Free Republic

We noted here the mysteriously under-covered story of the three would-be terrorists who were arrested in Italy after vowing to launch an attack on America that would dwarf September 11. A reader sent us a link to this article, which has more: The mainstream U.S. media outlets have failed to report a major terrorist plot against the U.S. - because it would tend to support President Bush's use of NSA domestic surveillance, according to media watchdog groups. News of a planned attack masterminded by three Algerians operating out of Italy was widely reported outside the U.S., but went virtually unreported...

Senator Schumer told Judge Alito that he cannot decline to say what he thinks about issues that may come before the Supreme Court, as John Roberts did, because unlike Roberts, Alito has a long record as an appeals court judge. But Roberts was only following the Ginsburg rule, and Ginsburg too had a long track record as an appeals court judge. Indeed, when Roberts' supporters invoked the Ginsburg rule, his opponents argued Roberts needed to say more than Ginsburg because he lacked a long track record that could provide insight into his judicial thinking. The unwillingness of nominees to discuss...

Scott Hennen of WDAY's Hot Talk writes: I have an idea. I'm fed up with Democrats and Republicans not supporting the President and our troops with the war effort in Iraq. So what better way to stop it than a grassroots Talkradio/Blogosphere led effort to gather signatures and call on Congress to STOP THE MADNESS? I floated the idea by email to Sean Hannity to lead the talk radio effort...he mentioned it on-air and said "great idea and we can deliver them to the desks of every member of Congress." I'd love it if Power Line would lead the effort...

John Hinderaker over at Powerline has copies of a letter to Ronnie Earle, and one of two motions to quash the two new indictments of Tom Delay. http://www.powerlineblog.com/ "Earlier today, Tom DeLay's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, moved for dismissal of the second indictment which was procured by prosecutor Ronnie Earle. Here is DeGuerin's letter to Earle that accompanied the motion: "The judge who will hear DeLay's motions is a MoveOn.org supporter. But Ronnie Earle will have to come up with some answers if he wants to keep his prosecution of Tom DeLay alive."

Which, on the whole, is just as well. As of today, the New York Times has put its bizarro lineup of political columnists--Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Bob Herbert, Nick Kristof, Tom Friedman et al.--behind a $50 a year barrier called "Times Select." To which all we can say, in George Strait's immortal words, is: Goodbye, farewell, so long, vaya con Dios, Good luck, wish you well, take it slow. Easy come girl, easy go. It's not just that we won't be reading Krugman and the rest of the Times' menagerie any more. Neither will anyone else. So, while...

How would you defend liberal talk host Al Franken's lies if your company's future was at stake? After weeks of ignoring our Air America Radio scandal coverage, they're increasingly reactive to news developments. While the company refuses to respond to Michelle Malkin and myself directly, they're talking to others who publish follow-ups and news summaries. Their key tactic: outright issue deflection. Not only that, but there are serious questions today about Air America's new public relations push on the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club repayment issue, where $875,000 in taxpayer funds were apparently diverted to the liberal talk radio...

Less than a day after the New York Times botched its Air America scandal coverage with an inaccurate Al Franken quote, along comes the AP, to do it correctly. Wow, there's a way to kick your weekend off on the right foot! Apparently, AP felt the need to wait until almost 17 days since the Radio Equalizer's first piece, but hey, better late than never. Also, releasing the story on a Friday evening, going into a summer weekend does not exactly ensure a lot of coverage.

Did we really think amateur hour could last forever? Predictably, leftists have now begun to mount a more organized campaign to fight our Air America coverage. Elements of it have been leaked to the Radio Equalizer. In the earlier days of Air America's controversy over its apparent acquisition of $875,000 in taxpayer funds intended for the Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club, nasty potshots and slurs from liberal bloggers were common.

IBM is partnering with a Texas utility to deliver broadband over power line (BPL) technology in the Houston area, joining the small but growing number of companies rolling out high-speed Internet service using standard home and business wiring. CenterPoint Energy and IBM are collaborating their efforts at a Houston technology center run by the power provider. At the technology center, CenterPoint has started a pilot program designed to demonstrate the capabilities of BPL in the home. BPL technology is touted as a way not only to provide broadband access to areas lacking DSL or cable connections, but also to improve...

June 12, 2005 Major E. Reports Our correspondent in Iraq, Major E., wrote this essay in response to a column he saw in his home-town newspaper which argued that Iraq is a lost cause. We've edited it slightly for length; click to enlarge the photos: The number one question I have been getting from friends and family back home is whether we are winning here in Iraq. In fact, what inspired me to write today was reading an op-ed published by the local congressperson in the Contra Costa Times, a paper I actually delivered for three years many moons ago.......

China: The Rest of the Story Last night, we did a post on an article in yesterday's Washington Times by Bill Gertz. The Gertz article talked about a "classified intelligence report that concludes that over the last ten years, America's intelligence agencies failed to detect China's aggressive arms buildup." This morning, we got the following email from a recently retired CIA intelligence analyst named Owen Johnson. It is intensely interesting, so I'm reproducing it in full despite its length: I have two comments regarding your post: History Seems to be Continuing. First, your comment: "government's main "experts" on a country...

WHEN THE HARVARD-YALE FOOTBALL GAME was played in Cambridge last fall, Yale students pulled off one of the great college pranks of all time. During the game a fake Harvard pep squad wearing red and white face paint distributed 1,800 pieces of construction paper on seats covering the Harvard side of the stadium. When turned over in unison by the occupants of the seats, they were purportedly to spell out "Go Harvard." Instead, they spelled out "We suck." (See the Harvard Sucks website for the back story and multimedia presentations.)The Columbia Business School MBA recognition ceremony took place at Madison...

http://www.doubleagent.com/video.php?v=470&ct=37&lps=0&sc=I picture this everytime the Mods zot a troll

Journalism professor Chris Hanson begins his piece in the Washington Post by taking Newsweek to task for its handling of the Koran-gate story. However, he quickly shifts his criticism to conservative blogs, and then implies that Drudge (which he calls a blog of sorts) is the real cause of Newsweek's error. Hanson's attempt to portray bloggers' handling of the Dan Rather and Eason Jordan stories as particularly noteworthy instances of the rumor-mongering that got Newsweek into trouble is preposterous. In the case of Rather, bloggers carefully examined every facet of the document-authenticity issue -- the document format, style, and substance...

THE UNITED NATIONS has been in the news of late. As usual, most of the news is negative: evidence suggesting that one or more members of the Security Council were bribed by Saddam; an inability to deal effectively with various crises in Africa; the embarrassing presence of nations such as Iran, Syria, Libya, Zimbabwe, and Saddam's Iraq on U.N. commissions on human rights, proliferation and weapons of mass destruction; the oil for food scandal. In the midst of these controversies, the United Nations is proceeding with plans to upgrade its Manhattan headquarters. The organization's headquarters at Turtle Bay were completed...

By the time you read this, Teresa Schiavo may be dead of starvation as required by Florida Judge George Greer. Thousands of people have produced millions of words on this subject. I should write nothing, unless I have more to offer than the MSM (mainstream media). I do. Personal experience colors what I say. On 1 January 1994, my mother was taken to Mission Memorial Hospital in Asheville with serious injuries from an auto accident. She’d suffered both a heart attack and a stroke after the accident. She was in a coma, but still alive. Seven years before, her life...

Thanks to Lucianne for sending her readers over to check out Rocket Man's reporting on "the GOP talking points memo" with the notation that "ABC picks up where CBS left off." The American Spectator's Washington Prowler has picked up the scent and interviewed Republican Senate staffers: "Dirty Democrat pool." The Prowler reports: "Republican leadership staffers now believe the document was generated out of the Democratic opposition research office set up recently by Sen. Harry Reid, and distributed to some Democratic Senate staffers claiming it was a GOP document, in the hope -- or more likely expectation -- that it would...

During one especially hectic week in mid-February, the Internet took three scalps in what appeared to be unrelated events. Liberal bloggers forced Talon News White House correspondent James D. Guckert, a k a “Jeff Gannon,” to resign after it was revealed that he was writing under a false name for a Republican activist group (GOPUSA), that he was not really a journalist at all, and that he had posed nude on the Internet in an effort to solicit sex for money. Conservative bloggers, meanwhile, created a firestorm after Eason Jordan, the chief news executive for CNN, made controversial remarks during...

For those of us in the information business, this is truly an earth-shaking time. Who would have imagined that the downfall of one of the world's most powerful news executives would be precipitated by an ordinary citizen blogging his eyewitness report at Davos in the wee hours of the morning on Jan. 27? It's simply stunning. The courage of Rony Abovitz cannot be overstated. This ordinary American citizen raised his voice at an international forum of media and political heavyweights--also attended by Europe's most influential America-haters--and demanded that Eason Jordan back up his poisonous assertion about the American military targeting...

What do a bank vice president, a gay black minister and a 17-year-old Mounds View high school senior have in common? They blog about politics — advocating their political beliefs, critiquing opposing views and commenting about the day's news or each other. It seems that anyone with a computer and an opinion can start a blog. There's the Minnesota Democrats Exposed blog, dedicated to exposing the "tactics" of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, and the Dump Bachmann blog, written by a lesbian Republican who is documenting every perceived anti-gay comment by Stillwater Sen. Michele Bachmann to provide ammunition for any moderate Republican...