Free Republic

After watching debacle after debacle these last few days, I can't help but think that if Russert was still alive none of this crap would still be happening. Tim was a Democrat, but a fairly down the middle Democrat. He would absolute come down hard on this garbage the media is doing now. A real shame his guiding hand is not there right now as it has become the wild west in reporting. Very sad indeed.

The recent death of Tony Snow brought sadness to millions of Americans who admired the man's public service and optimism about his country. But not everybody felt the need to honor him. Just hours after he died from cancer, the Associated Press released an obituary that has shocked some people and badly damaged the AP's image, at least in the conservative community. AP reporter Douglass Daniel began the article by listing some of Tony's accomplishments, but then suddenly veered into ideological territory, writing: "With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster's good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook -- if not always a...

Leaving their hotel room in Italy ahead of his wife and son to go back to Washington, D.C., so he could tape that Sunday's Meet the Press, Tim Russert was grabbed by his wife. "I said to him, 'I want to give you a hug; maybe I'll never see you again,' " says journalist Maureen Orth, speaking publicly about her husband for the first time since his June 13 passing – the day after he left Italy. "I don't know why I said that to him. I just had a feeling." Russert was under extra stress at the time of...

<p>MSNBC blowhard Keith Olbermann couldn't even control his temper at a memorial reception for beloved Tim Russert.</p> <p>Network sources told Page Six Olbermann was furious last week when MSNBC didn't get him a first-class ticket to Washington, DC, for a private service honoring the "Meet the Press" anchor's passing.</p>

Keith Olbermann had a temper tantrum at a memorial reception for the late Tim Russert.

Tim Russert was an American. I'm not using the term in its patriotic sense, although he certainly was not just a patriot but an unabashed one at that. No, Tim Russert was an American in that very particular fashion that makes Americans the most distinctive breed of humans on the planet. He was an American in precisely the cultural sense that causes European elites -- and all too frequently our own -- to grind their teeth and look down their noses with such haughty disdain at the one population on earth composed of the entire world's rejects, refugees and descendants...

WHEN the NBC News host Tim Russert died on June 13, NBC tried to hold back the news from going public for more than an hour to notify his family vacationing in Italy and presumably to prepare for what became six hours of coverage on its cable news outlet, MSNBC. And King Canute, ancient legend has it, tried to hold back the tide. Mr. Russert collapsed from a heart attack in NBC’s Washington newsroom around 1:40 p.m.; he was treated there and then taken to a hospital, arriving at 2:23 and being pronounced dead shortly thereafter, according to press accounts....

Tom Brokaw will replace Tim Russert as moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press” through the November presidential election, the network announced today. Brokaw, 68, filled in for the first post-Russert week. “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams was the host today, and revealed Russert's interim successor during the broadcast. NBC News President Steve Capus said: "A lot has been said in recent days about what 'Meet the Press' means to NBC News and to the nation. To have someone of Tom's stature step up and dedicate himself to ensuring its ongoing success is not only a testament to his loyalty...

Keith Olbermann is threatening to leave MSNBC if he doesn’t land the late Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press” job on NBC, according to a source. But he’s not the only MSNBC cable news anchor jockeying for Russert’s job — Chris Matthews is also said to have his eye on the plum position. Matthews was heard discussing what seemed to be his strategy for landing Russert’s job when he attended Wednesday’s memorial for Russert in Washington, D.C., the New York Post’s Page Six column reported, saying Matthews “huddled with an unidentified ‘agent type’ and seemed to be plotting.” An observer told...

Tim Russert has been dead a week but that hasn't stopped the nakedly ambitous potato heads at MSNBC from lusting after his Meet The Press job. Word is out and reported by Page Six at the New York Post that both hysterically hyper Chris Matthews and that bumbling bufoon Keith Olbermann are both jockeying for position in the MTP sweepstakes: TIM Russert's body wasn't even cold in the ground before MSNBC anchors Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann started jockeying for his job, sources claim. .....

TIM Russert's body wasn't even cold in the ground before MSNBC anchors Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann started jockeying for his job, sources claim. Matthews was heard loudly discussing what seemed to be his strategy for landing Russert's "Meet the Press" show at Wednesday's memorial reception for the NBC Washington bureau chief at the Kennedy Center in DC. After Brian Williams, Carl Bernstein, David Gergen, Barbara Walters and NBC brass eulogized their friend, Matthews huddled with an unidentified "agent type" and seemed to be plotting... Meanwhile, Matthews' MSNBC cable cohort Olbermann, who was also at the memorial, is "threatening to...

MSNBC/NBC News announce that Brian Williams will take over Meet The Press on a trial run starting this Sunday.

NBC anchor Brian Williams will be the first to fill in for Tim Russert as the host for "Meet the Press" this Sunday, the network said today. Russert died suddenly last week of cardiac arrest. After Williams, several different NBC news personalities are expected to rotate as the host of the Sunday morning interview show until a permanent replacement is named - sometime later this year or early next.

The shocking death of Tim Russert last Friday has left an entire nation wondering what happened.  He was a model patient, doing everything his doctors asked.  All major media have run articles trying to explain the nuances and difficulties in treating coronary artery disease.  These articles find little fault in Russert’s care, trying to create the idea that his heart attack was just too hard to predict and that all that could have been done for him was done.  I beg to differ.  His death represents the failure of standard medical care to produce a positive result – an occurrence...

One of the names being mentioned as a replacement for Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" is Chris Matthews. Matthews is one of the biggest horse's patooties on television, if not the biggest, a man so enamored of of his own grating voice that he can barely stop talking long enough to let a guest get a word in. Much like Charley Rose, only worse, Matthews is master of the run-on question. He goes on and on, and just when the guest detects that Matthews is about to take a breath and tries to jump in with an answer, Matthews...

RUSH: Tim Russert passed away before the program ended, but the news on Friday didn't happen until afterwards.  I actually got the news at about a quarter of three Friday afternoon in an e-mail that said "Not For Reporting" because it hadn't been confirmed.  A very, very, very sad thing.  I knew Tim Russert, and he was just a prince of a guy. But I have to tell you, folks, this orgy of coverage from about four o'clock Friday afternoon on ceased to be about Tim Russert and instead it's been about the media and who they are and how...

Tim Russert / Archbishop George Niederauer Washington DC, Jun 18, 2008 / 04:11 am (CNA).- Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Communications Committee, the late Tim Russert on Tuesday for his devotion to his Catholic faith, family, work as a journalist and his work with Catholic charities."Russert was valued by Americans for his tremendous command of the political and electoral process and his commitment to discovering each aspect of the story that contributed to people having a better awareness of the issues of public life and candidates for political office," Archbishop Niederauer said....

Given the great strides that have been made in preventing and treating heart disease, what explains Tim Russert’s sudden death last week at 58 from a heart attack? The answer, at least in part, is that although doctors knew that Mr. Russert, the longtime moderator of “Meet the Press” on NBC, had coronary artery disease and were treating him for it, they did not realize how severe the disease was because he did not have chest pain or other telltale symptoms that would have justified the kind of invasive tests needed to make a definitive diagnosis. In that sense, his...

President Bush held a meeting this morning in the Roosevelt Room on the Midwest flooding Transcript President Bush meet this morning in the Oval Office with General Dan McNeill, Former Commander of the International Security Assistance Force Transcript President Bush honored Black Music Month in the East Room Transcript President Bush and First Lady Laura attended a wake for journalist Tim Russert at St. Albans School in Washington, DC Enoy your visit to Sanity Island

Russert's funeral arrangement has been made and is as follows: On Tuesday, June 17, 2008, a wake will be held at St Albans School in Washington, DC. It will be open to the public. According to the Washington Post, the public wake will be held from 2 to 9 p.m. eastern time in the Cafritz Refectory of the Albans School, which is between Wisconsin and Massachusetts avenues. Other private vigils are being held in the Washington and in Buffalo New York areas, where Russert grew up. His funeral, which is closed to the public, will be held on Wednesday June...

Only with Tim Russert's sudden death at the age of 58 has his true stature as a landmark journalist become as widely recognized as it has long deserved to be. To ask who will replace him as host of "Meet the Press" is to confront the reality that there is no one comparable on the horizon. Those of us who have followed "Meet the Press" since the long ago days of Lawrence Spivak know that Russert was the best of some very good hosts. What made Tim Russert special was not some trademark catchword or contrived persona. What you saw...

Still reeling from Tim Russert's death, NBC News must now contemplate replacing the man who not only dominated the Sunday morning talk shows, but served as chief political commentator and ran the Washington bureau. The "Meet the Press" host had what was arguably the most important and far-reaching job in television news, particularly in an election year. He died of a heart attack Friday while preparing for another week's edition of "Meet the Press." NBC wasn't talking about potential successors while planning Russert's wake on Tuesday and memorial service Wednesday that will be televised on MSNBC from the Kennedy Center....

Here's one thing you can say about journalists: Surely no one loves us as much as we love ourselves. That's one lesson of the Tim Russert coverage. A friend told me Sunday: "I now know more about Tim Russert than I do many members of my family." After Russert's shocking death Friday at age 58, television kept serving up witnesses to his expertise, intelligence, diligence, kindness, faith, love of family, Buffalo and the Buffalo Bills. The self-indulgence was breathtaking. On Monday's "Today," Matt Lauer interviewed Russert's son, Luke. The show basically gave over the first half-hour to the Russert story....

there was another chapter in Mr. Russert’s career that is less known, and that offers another insight into his personality. And it is one which he arguably thrived at nearly as much as he did sitting behind his desk at NBC News: as a political strategist and operative in one of the most brutal political environments in the country. Mr. Russert worked in the early 1980s as a counselor to Mario M. Cuomo, the Queens Democrat who had just been elected governor of New York; I was covering the new administration for The Daily News. Albany was a political roughhouse,...

The Talk Shows Sunday, June 15th, 2008 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas; American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Red Cavaney; Earth Day Network President Kathleen Rogers. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Tribute to late host Tim Russert.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La.; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.THIS WEEK (ABC): Former Sens. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., and John Edwards, D-N.C.LATE EDITION (CNN) : Reps. John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.; Gov. Janet Napolitano, D-Ariz.; Douglas Holtz-Eakin,...

Among all the tributes offered Friday night on the various cable networks to Tim Russert, only one that I saw managed to use the opportunity to crassly advance a political perspective and advance a personal political ambition. Chris Matthews is salivating at the chance to run for US Senator in 2010 against Arlen Spector in Pennsylvania. He has made no secret of this. Friday night, MSNBC caught up with Matthews in Paris, where he was vacationing. Asked about his memories of Russert, Matthews had only one story to tell -- about how on the eve of the Iraq war, he...

NBC's Tim Russert died of a heart attack on Friday. Only the deaf, dumb and blind can be unaware of this fact. Ever since the unfortunate death of one of the major players in the field of media and politics, non-stop media coverage has drummed this fact home to millions of Americans. Enough, already. This media coverage, still going strong, is becoming quite unseemly.

HAMPTON, Va. (AP) - If not for "Meet The Press" and its host, Tim Russert, Jim Webb figures he may not be a United States senator. And a debate moderated by the NBC newsman who died Friday was a turning point in Democrat Timothy M. Kaine's campaign for governor. Both candidates fondly recalled Russert on Saturday at the Virginia Democratic Convention and acknowledged his role in pivotal moments in their 2005 and 2006 campaigns. Webb said his September 2006 appearance alongside Republican Sen. George Allen on "Meet The Press" was the turning point in his narrow, come-from-behind victory over Allen...

[ Snip ]... I'll bet deep in the heart of that skanky pants weasel Olbermann he's plotting how he can swing into Russert's shoes when he's not worthy to lick them. There will probably be some crocodile tears tonight and then a casual couple of 'chance' meetings with NBC execs just after the funeral. Then he'll get his agent to call and raise the issue. Maybe even get some bloggers to start a campaign.... And there will be nobody at NBC to say, 'How dare you, sir? Apologize, sir!' Yes, it will be Countdown time for Keith."

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. Exodus 20:16May God Bless Tim Russert's family for the orderal they are suffering after Tim's untimely death. Though he was on the Left with the rest of the NBC news department, he would be considered a saint when compared to Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthhews. I have been wondering for some time if Tim Russert's vague testimony about a conversation he may have had with Scooter Libby had been the lynchpin that effectively lynched Libby. It was. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had cavity-searched everything that walked in order to "get something" on...

Watch this video where Chris Matthews displays his utter lack of class with Keith Olbermann. While almost every other journalist and blogger on both sides of the political spectrum are giving condolences and highlighting Russert’s deserved credit of being one of the most fair and unbiased journalists of today’s media, Chris Matthews used the opportunity to go off on an anti-war rant. He added insult by comparing him to the “American people” in the sense of being fooled by the Bush administration into supporting the war. Besides displaying how opposite he is than Russert on the subject of bias, he...

Don't get me wrong: I liked Tim Russert. If there was one member of the drive-by media who was remotely fair, it was him. He will be missed. Today, however, the drive-bys are in wall-to-wall mourning and retrospectives. As a historian, my problem is one of perspective. Russert's death, as with that of Peter Jennings a few years ago, shows how self-obsessed the media is. Has anyone ever seen a retrospective of this type on any of our soldiers? Of any of the innocent people killed on 9/11? Aside from Daniel Pearl, who was a member of the media, was...

Appearing by phone on Friday's The O'Reilly Factor on FNC, former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg recalled for fill-in host Laura Ingraham how Tim Russert recognized there should be more to newsroom diversity than just diversity by gender and skin tone, that “you need ideological diversity.” Goldberg, who was forced out of CBS News after he pointed out their liberal bias, lamented: I wish his colleagues understood that part of Tim Russert, too. That he knew that we needed all kinds of people in journalism because if we didn't have it we were going to get one-sided journalism. Goldberg read...

I know this may come off as callous and insensitive to some, but it has to be said. While I have no animus against Tim Russert, I am again in amazement how thoroughly the news world has been turned on its head because of the death of one journalist. One of them.

WASHINGTON — Veteran NBC newsman Tim Russert died Friday of an apparent heart attack. The host and managing editor of NBC's "Meet the Press" was 58. Longtime NBC anchor Tom Brokaw went on the air with an emotional special report to confirm Russert's death. Brokaw said his colleague died at his desk in the network's Washington bureau.

In this natural flurry of news following NBC's Tim Russert's too-early death, I am struck by a fact that exists barely under the popular perception. In these rememberances about Mr.Russert, clear mention is made of him first working for the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan, Hillary Clinton's immediate predecessor as Senator from New York. It was following this period as a Democrat Party Functionary (DPF), that he joined NBC. Similarly (more recent and famously) George Stephanopoulis went almost directly from the Clinton White House to anchoring ABC's Sunday interview program. Chris Matthews of NBC's cable channels worked for Tip O'Neil,...

"It's just a shame. Tim was a regular guy with that perpetual smile he wore naturally all the time. He loved life and got everything he could out of it. Whether it was at dinner here in Florida while his son was taking golf lessons, or on the set of Meet The Press, Tim was always the same with me: genuine. He never condescended to anyone and was the consummate professional. He will be hard to replace. He was the closest thing there was at any of the networks to an objective journalist."

Tim Russert, the Democratic operative turned NBC commentator who revolutionized Sunday morning television and infused journalism with his passion for politics, died this afternoon. Russert, 58, collapsed while recording voiceovers for his Sunday morning interview program, NBC reported. He was initially reported to have suffered a heart attack while working in his office on Washington's Nebraska Avenue, but the network said later only that he was "stricken at the bureau" and subsequently died. Further details were not immediately available. Russert served as NBC's Washington bureau chief and the host of "Meet the Press," the top-rated Sunday talk show, which had...

When newsman Tim Russert published a memoir about his father, "Big Russ and Me," he says he wasn't prepared for the huge number of letters and emails he received from readers eager to talk about their own fathers. He's now compiled some of the best of those responses into a follow-up book, "Wisdom of Our Fathers." Russert, the moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," spoke with Beliefnet about his father's reaction to the book, his own role as a father, and the place of prayer in his life.

With just over six months before United States citizens choose their 44th president, the 2008 election is already proving to be the most fascinating and potentially one of the closest contests in living memory. Among those who will help Americans decide are the ubiquitous political pundits who help drive the national conversation and shape public opinion.

Sources close to Arianna Huffington are claiming just that. Arianna Huffington is currently on book tour for her new political tome Right Is Wrong: How The Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded The Constitution, And Made Us All Less Safe. She's booked all over CNN, ABC, and CBS (but not Fox News Channel because she chose not to go on there). And NBC? Well, one insider says she was booked on Keith Olberman and Morning Joe to talk about her tome -- and then unbooked. " Arianna's accolytes are pointing the finger at Tim Russert, well known to be ridiculously thin-skinned,...

The liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America has gone on the attack against longtime “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert, saying he has “regularly smeared” Democrats on a variety of issues. In its “Weekly Update,” Media Matters launched its attack by asserting that Russert, as the host of Democratic presidential debates, has all but ignored important issues such as the mortgage crisis, global warming, wiretapping and executive power, while questioning Dennis Kucinich about his claim to have seen a UFO and John Edwards about his expensive haircut.

Tim Russert is a graduate of Cleveland State Law School, which hosted the last Clinton-Obama debate, but Russert never mentioned the connection during the debate, or during the post debate coverage. This seemed odd given the relative low profile of the school, as well as the fact that Russert managed to work in yet another reference to having grown up in Buffalo, "three hours down the road", during the middle of the debate. Viewers certainly would have found the information at least mildly interesting and/or curious. It seems like Russert is embarrassed by having attended a nationally unknown law school...

NOTE: here is the old story. I remembered that Tim Russert had become physically ill after watching 5 hours of footage of the Juanita Broaddrick interview. All these years, Russert has known that Bill Clinton really did rape Juanita. He had to know of Hillary's role in threatening and silencing women. For those who saw tonight's debate, many think that Russert was unusually tough on Hillary. Was this, consciously or subconsciously, Russert's way of finally doing something about the injustice? Was he putting a stake into the heart of the vampire? ======================================================================= NBC finally will air the long awaited Rape...

Calling Washington, D.C., "corporate-occupied territory," consumer advocate Ralph Nader launched his fifth campaign for the presidency Sunday. "I'm running for president," said Nader in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." Nader downplayed the impact he might have on the ultimate outcome of the race, saying "if Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form."

Ralph Nader told Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press this morning that he is running for President. Russert was visibly upset, pleasing with Nader that he might give the election to John McCain just as he had done for George Bush in 2000: Gore would've been president and not George Bush. You, Ralph Nader are responsible for what has happened the last seven years. Surely Nader does not want that. Nader tells us that he believes that large corporations have taken over our government, but could this be a code for something else. Why isn't Nader supporting presumptive Dem...

Amusingly, the Politico headlines Hillary Clinton’s Meet the Press interview today “Hillary Clinton attacks Barack Obama.” The headline is somewhat inaccurate, as Clinton spent much of that interview defending herself from some dishonest attacks coming from the left. But it’s not entirely inaccurate, as she does use her defenses to poke holes in Obama’s record, or lack thereof. I guess I just “attacked” him too, by Politico’s way of thinking. On the basic substance of the racially-tinged brouhaha between the Clinton machine and the Obama campaign, the Clintons have more of the facts on their side. That’s not to say...

despite those serious differences, I thought there was much to like and admire about Ron Paul. What I had always appreciated about him was his outspoken support for the Constitution, the fact that he didn't get caught up in the trappings of Washington power, that he wasn't a hypocrite. I believed all that. And I have to thank Tim Russert for blowing his cover. I just simply didn't know that Ron Paul plays the Washington racket just like the rest of the gang. The only difference is he has figured out a system of plausible deniability for himself – a...

For the first times in this race I’ve heard a candidate for the White House state that 911 was the United States’ fault? Paul excuses Osama Bin Laden in his theory that if we didn’t have troops overseas the ruthless thugs would not have attacked us. Ron Paul had to defend himself several times with I might have said that, but I’m not campaigning on it.