Free Republic

The racist skeletons in Charles Pickering's closetPresident Bush dumped Trent Lott because of his segregationist baggage. So why is he fighting relentlessly for a judge who has refused to come clean about his own bigoted past? - - - - - - - - - - - -By Sean WilentzMay 12, 2003  | When Senate Democrats voted last March to reject Judge Charles Pickering's nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Majority Leader Trent Lott called the vote "a slap at Mississippi, my state." In fact, the bitter party-line vote on Pickering revolved around the same issues that...

Kenneth Starr's 'illegal' leaks were holding virtually the entire Washington press corps in his thrall.At the top of the independent council's heirarchy of status were his favored reporters and producers: Michael Isikoff at Newsweek, correspondant Jackie Judd and her producer Chris Vlasto at ABC News and Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post.Below them, others often scrambled for access. Starr granted it immediately to the networks and newsweeklies, but the big regional papers had to scrape by on the leavings. The New York Times was second best in his eyes to the Post. Cutouts emerged--conservative lawyers close to the investigation--who fed...

Kamiya vs. O'Reilly Salon challenges the bullying Fox host to stop misrepresenting our "Liberation Day" story and debate its author fairly. - - - - - - - - - - - - April 23, 2003 | On April 11, Salon published, as its lead article, a piece by executive editor Gary Kamiya. The headline read: "Liberation Day: Even Those Opposed to the War Should Celebrate a Shining Moment in the History of Freedom -- the Fall of Saddam Hussein." The accompanying photograph showed an Iraqi man kissing an American soldier. Here is the central argument of the article: "To...

The conscience of the left is a wonderful thing to behold. I remember some commentator during the Vietnam war who found his way into the "Current Wisdom" of The American Spectator -- it may have still been The Alternative then -- who blamed Johnson or Nixon or whoever it was who was getting the blame in those days because he had woken up one morning to find that he was "rooting for" the Viet Cong! There he was, rooting (and tooting) against his own country and for its enemies and it was all the government's fault. The bastards! What...

<p>Gary Kamiya, executive editor of the left-leaning Internet journal Salon (www.salon.com), confirms what some Americans have only suspected: Liberals were cheering for the enemy in Iraq.</p> <p>"I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong," Mr. Kamiya wrote last week. "Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings."</p>

An Iraqi man kisses an American soldier in downtown Bagdhad Wednesday April 9, 2003.Liberation dayEven those opposed to the war should celebrate a shining moment in the history of freedom -- the fall of Saddam Hussein. - - - - - - - - - - - -By Gary KamiyaApril 11, 2003  |  "Paris is shooting all her bullets in the August night." Those are the words with which Albert Camus opened "The Night of Truth," the soaring essay from the collection "Resistance, Rebellion and Death" written during those hot nights in summer 1944 when Paris was liberated. "In this...

How neoconservatives conquered Washington -- and launched a war First they converted an ignorant, inexperienced president to their pro-Israel, hawkish worldview. Then 9/11 allowed them to claim Iraq threatened the U.S. The rest is on CNN tonight. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Michael Lind - April 9, 2003 America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve? Quasi-Marxist explanations involving big oil or American capitalism are mistaken. Yes, American oil companies and contractors will...

Salon gets new round of financing By Carolyn Pritchard, CBS MarketWatch.com Last Update: 5:48 PM ET March 28, 2003 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - Salon Media Group said Friday that it completed an additional round of financing, allowing it to continue operations while it works to become profitable. The owner of online magazine Salon.com also announced that it now has more than 60,000 paid subscribers, up from 47,000 at the end of 2002. The current round of financing, which totaled $800,000, was led by existing Salon investors Bill Hambrecht and John Warnock, a Salon board member. Including this round, the firm...

The thin men sitting in the hut are the lucky ones: Iraqi soldiers who escaped U.S. bombs and Saddam's "execution committees." .... All of the Iraqi soldiers speak of their fear of their commanding officers and the armed security men who make sure that no one defects. The term the soldiers use is "execution committee." The men say the officers warned them that if they do successfully surrender, they will be killed by the Kurds, so they shouldn't think about it. "Qasim Daragi," a soldier from Baghdad who was stationed not far from Falah Tal Afar, also fled the Thursday...

Salon gets new round of financingBy Carolyn Pritchard, CBS MarketWatch.comLast Update: 5:48 PM ET March 28, 2003SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - Salon Media Group said Friday that it completed an additional round of financing, allowing it to continue operations while it works to become profitable.The owner of online magazine Salon.com also announced that it now has more than 60,000 paid subscribers, up from 47,000 at the end of 2002.The current round of financing, which totaled $800,000, was led by existing Salon investors Bill Hambrecht and John Warnock, a Salon board member. Including this round, the firm has raised $2.1 million since...

I just think this is Awesome and obviously reflects all the dedicated and vigilant work of FReepers everywhere: Our little grassroots site is AHEAD OF A publically traded COMPANY! WOW!!

Is it possible that a shred of intellectual honesty resides at Salon.com? (OTC BB:SALN.OB - .04 at closing) -------------------------- See no evil Progressives have lots of arguments against the war on Iraq -- some of them compelling. But why aren't they burning to free Saddam's oppressed masses? March 19, 2003 | As one watches protest marches, antiwar advertising and local arts events, one has to wonder whether the left has really weighed the moral issues posed by the horrors of Saddam's regime -- weighed life by life the repression of the 24 million Iraqis who live in a ruthless police...

Michael Savage's long, strange tripHow a Jewish kid from the Bronx went from swimming naked with Allen Ginsberg to spewing the ugliest bile on talk radio.By David GilsonMarch 5, 2003  | At first glance, Michael Alan Weiner seems like an improbable candidate to be America's angriest, most vicious conservative radio host. Born 60 years ago in the Bronx, Weiner has lived in Northern California for most of his adult life, making a living as an herbalist and nutritionist. He communed with Fijian traditional healers, got married in a rain forest and studied ethno-medicine at the University of California at Berkeley....

Readers rally 'round SalonA letter from the editor - - - - - - - - - - - - Feb. 28, 2003  |  Dear Salon reader, Thanks for everything! In just the few days since we posted my letter on Feb. 21 asking for your help, we've already received several thousand new subscriptions and gift subscriptions, as well as many Well subscriptions and other contributions. This outpouring of support is helping keep Salon going. From all across the political spectrum, from all walks of life, and from all over the world, it seems, Salon's unique group of think-for-yourself readers...

Salon is going out of business and blames Coulter, Drudge and Limbaugh says Limbaugh. Salon is going out of business and not because of Coulter, Drudge and Limbaugh but because people on the net were not buying all the lies they told. The liberal lies that is by people without a clue. They were selling a lemon....

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 17, 2003 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Online magazine publisher Salon Media Group Inc. warned that it may not survive beyond this month if it can't raise more money to pay its rent and other bills. The San Francisco-based company painted a grim financial picture on Friday in a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Things are so bad, Salon said, it stopped paying rent for its San Francisco headquarters in December, prompting the landlord to issue a Jan. 29 demand for a $200,000 payment. To raise money, the company said it may...

Savage with the truth Michael Savage's right-wing bestseller is an ignorant, error-filled, Coulter-like screech of hatred against left-wing "traitors" and uppity women like Sandra Day O'Connor. Here's the funny part: This guy has a Ph.D.! - - - - - - - - - - - - By Ben Fritz Feb. 19, 2003 | Conservative radio hosts have come to dominate the airwaves with ferocious rhetoric that's often filled with ad hominem attacks and blatant untruths, but Michael Savage is easily the worst of the bunch. .... Criticizing the rhetoric on Savage's radio show, which has about 5 million listeners...

Feb. 22, 2003 Dear Salon Reader, Did you ever get the feeling that some people want you dead? Last week's flurry of news stories about Salon's imminent demise produced another wave of hate mail from those eager to dance on our grave.

<p>Here's a sampling from this week's e-mail bag: A gentleman named David Owens jauntily greets us with, "Hey d---ks----rs! I just read you can't pay your rent. Where are all your liberal buddies now? Oh well." A Hugh Curd rejoices that "thank mohammad, your truly worthless rag is going to fail ... maybe you can get some fresh capital from your bug-chasing friends in san francisco or your terrorist buddies in north africa. you failed! move to france and smoke cowardly dong." Stan Willock offers these words of consolation to Salon readers: "[They] will still have PBS, where hundreds are misinformed and entertained at taxpayer expense, as well as CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC. All are losing viewers to the fair and balanced Fox News Channel and to conservative talk radio. Best of luck looking for a new job. Hopefully you qualify as a member of a preferred group (person of color, female, gay, lesbian, etc)." And these are the more genial letters! I'll spare you the ones spelling out the lurid physical punishments their writers would like to inflict on me personally, which would make even Saddam blush.</p>

The prime-time smearing of Sami Al-Arian, By pandering to anti-Arab hysteria, NBC, Fox News, Media General and Clear Channel radio disgraced themselves -- and ruined an innocent professor's life. ...Thirty-seven days after the Oklahoma City miscue, Fechter's exposé landed on Page 1 of Sunday's May 28, 1995, paper. Picking up where Emerson had left off with his inflammatory 1994 documentary "Jihad in America," which argued angry Muslims at home pose a larger danger to this country than Muslim terrorists abroad, Fechter breathlessly reported that Al-Arian had raised money for Islamic groups that had killed hundreds of people around the world....