Free Republic

Those who watched the Republican presidential "debate" in Iowa Wednesday now understand why The Des Moines Register is such a lousy newspaper. "That was not just the worst debate of 2007, that was the worst debate in Western history, and that includes the ancient Greeks," said columnist Charles Krauthammer. "There is no record in any major European record of a debate this transcendingly and crushingly dull." Mr. Krauthammer arguably wasn't engaging in hyperbole. Imagine a boxing match in which the boxers aren't allowed to lay a glove on each other, and you have an idea of what this "debate" was...

Cannot be posted due to copyright issues: http://www.thenorthwestern.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071212/OSH/71212184/1987

In an obvious effort to diminish Huck, Fred gets off a line he wants Iowans to chew on in the weeks ahead: Citing a face-off with America's enemies, Thompson asks: "Who do you want sitting on our side representing you? "That ought to be who you elect president." Then, in an attempt to put his foot down on debate silliness, he refused to play along on the raise-your-hand-if line of questioning on global warming. "I’m not doing handshows today," Thompson said to applause. Not offered a full minute to respond, Thompson said, "Well, then I'm not going to answer it."...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - It's crunch time in the presidential race. Nine Republican and six Democratic candidates will meet this week in their final debates before the lead off Iowa caucuses, and lively exchanges are expected. The back-to-back debates -- Republicans on Wednesday, Democrats on Thursday -- come as both races in Iowa are toss-ups with just three weeks left before the voting begins. On the GOP side, Mike Huckabee, has vaulted to the front, overtaking longtime leader Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. Among Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton is locked in a three way race in Iowa with...

Sunny days! The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia. Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” Say what? At a recent all-ages home screening, a hush fell over the room. “What did they do to us?” asked one Gen-X mother of two, finally. The...

The June 9 “Now with David Brancaccio” could well have been titled PBS’s “Tin-Foil Conspiracy Theatre” as the newsmagazine looked at death of the electric car from the Michael Moore-like lens of a left-wing filmmaker. Rather than entertaining the notion that a lack of market demand doomed the vehicles, “Now” instead pushed filmmaker Chris Paine’s arguments that the “clean” car’s demise was the result of a sinister plot by GM and Big Oil. That film, “Who Killed the Electric Car,” is scheduled for a June 28 release in New York and Los Angeles. Looking into the demise of the electric...

     In a talk with the editor of the liberal Texas Monthly magazine who hosts a monthly interview show on Texas PBS stations, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite uncorked some more liberal opinions. In praising the CBS-boosting, Joseph McCarthy-trashing movie Good Night and Good Luck, Cronkite liked how it reminded Americans that "one nut could endanger the democracy," was "locking up our democracy in a very dangerous way," and persecuting people who were "simply good Americans." When pressed to compare Vietnam and Iraq, Cronkite declared that the comparison was "almost exact."      On Thursday, the Poynter Institute's Romenesko Web site...

The Hartford Courant and CT Public Television have initiated a full frontal attack on sprawl--a take no prisoners ultra-biased brainwashed effort to create their dream of urban high rises connected by mass transit throughout the state. No other opinions are wanted or needed.

The producers of "Sesame Street" have decided that Cookie Monster is gay. Hold the phone. I'm kidding. But try to hold onto your reaction for a moment because what they've really done to Cookie Monster is worse - they've taken away his reason for being. Since my copy of "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius is in storage, let me explain by paraphrasing Hannibal Lecter's famous dialogue with Clarice Starling in "Silence of the Lambs." Imagine Lecter isn't a superhuman cannibalistic serial killer and that, instead of being a doe-eyed feminist naif in the FBI, Ms. Starling is a doe-eyed feminist naif...

WPT to Air Postcards From Buster Episode Withdrawn by PBS Feb. 9, 2005 For More Information: Michael Bridgeman, (608) 265-3855 James Steinbach, (608) 263-1232 Wisconsin Public Television (WPT) will air the "Sugartime" episode of Postcards From Buster at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 27. "We've reviewed the program and believe it is consistent with Wisconsin Public Television's mission to educate diverse audiences of children and adults," said James Steinbach, director of programming and production. The episode was withdrawn from distribution by PBS after some objected to content believed to be inappropriate for children. The series producers have made the episode available...

Conclusion The show's over. What did we learn from it? A. Underlying Evidence for Evolution?The producers promised to provide us with "underlying evidence behind claims of fact and proposed theories." We saw lots of data, but how much of it was evidence for Darwin's theory? We saw lots of data from the fossil record. We saw fossils of some of the first animals (from the Cambrian explosion). We saw fossils of early land animals, dinosaurs, early mammals, whales, ape-like creatures, and humans. Clearly, the composition of the Earth's biosphere has changed over time. Some things that used to inhabit the...

WQPT won't run `Buster' episode featuring lesbians By Jenny Lee, jlee@qconline.com Moline's public television station has decided not to air an episode of a children's show that implies two families have lesbian moms. New York's WNET, Boston's WGBH and a few other public television stations aired an episode Wednesday of "Postcards from Buster" that showed an animated bunny, Buster Baxter, visiting Vermont, learning about dairy farming and meeting two families with lesbian mothers at dinner, according to Jean Hopkins, vice president of communications of WGBH. The Boston station produces the show. Rick Best, general manager of Moline's WQPT Channel 24,...

NOW with Bill Moyershttp://www.pbs.org/now/politics/fairness.html            The website took Sinclair Broadcast Group to task for offering to air STOLEN HONOR.  Moyers didn’t challenge the truth of the story, just that the story was being offered by a Bush supporter. As if that makes the story false. Neither did Moyers honestly report on how the DNC and high ranking memembers of the democratic party threatened Sinclair with retaliation. Moyers didn’t mention that Sinclair was told that it better hope the democrats don’t get elected.The liberal media continues to accuse conservative news outlets of bias and lying which is truly the pot calling...

A voice-mail message left last week at the Virginia office of Laptoplobbyist.com, a conservative Internet site, went like this: "Hi, my name is Rachel, and my telephone number is... I wanted to tell you that you're evil, horrible people. You're awful people. You represent horrible ideas. God hates you and he wants to kill your children. You should all burn in hell. Bye." Rachel is Rachel Buchman, 25, a regular reader of Laptoplobbyist's e-mail newsletter - and a reporter with public radio station WHYY-FM (90.9) for about three years. And she left her office number at WHYY in the message...

NEGATIVE NUMBERS AT CHANNEL 9 (Seattle PPS) (This may be boring if you don't live in Seattle but, if you live in the area, it's pretty funny)Seattle's fiscally challenged public-television station has a new investor: an offshore bank.BY NINA SHAPIROIn February, Jim Green, a financial wheeler-dealer in Vancouver's video industry, completed a deal that put $3 million into the bank account of KCTS-TV. The desperately needed money is funding a significant share of the shows in the pipeline at Seattle's public-television station. Never entirely explained to the staff or announced to the public, the investment has been the subject...

<p>Four employees laid off from Wisconsin Public Television´s Green Bay facility are appealing to get their jobs back, saying they were victims of age discrimination and that they were given improper notice.</p> <p>A hearing appealing the decision to layoff the four technicians has taken place since Wednesday in Madison before the six-person University of Wisconsin-Extension Academic Staff Hearings Committee.</p>

We reported last week that Maryland Public Television fired "Wall Street Week" host Louis Rukeyser. Here are more juicy details. MPT said it canned the longtime broadcaster because he used the show to discuss a contract dispute and his new program, the Associated Press reported today. "We were surprised and saddened that he chose to use the show as a medium to air contract disputes and promote his new show," MPT President Robert J. Shuman said Sunday night. "The purpose of the show is anything but that. The qualities of this show aren't attached to one single person." Rukeyser said...