Free Republic

David Letterman will continue his late-night show on CBS through August 2012 – and maybe longer. The host and CBS have worked out a new contract, though an announcement may not take place for some days. Mr. Letterman’s company, Worldwide Pants, and CBS have agreed on the details of the contract, including, for the first time, a reduced license fee for the 11:35 p.m. program, “Late Show with David Letterman,” and now are waiting for a “deal memo” that will lay out the terms in formal language. The news of the new deal for Mr. Letterman was first reported in...

How sleazy and rock-bottom was Maggie Rodriguez’s interview of Levi Johnston and his family, aired on The Early Show this morning? At one point Rodriguez asked Levi’s sister whether she thought the Palins were “snobby.” Consider that. CBS thought it was good journalism to ask and appropriate to air the opinion of: the sister of the former boyfriend of the daughter of a former vice-presidential candidate whether she thought that former vice-presidential candidate’s family was “snobby.” View video here.

Recent earthquake activity in Alaska provided “CBS Early Show” co-hosts with a ready-made metaphor for a segment on the personal lives of some of the those surrounding Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. But their quake turned out to be barely a ripple. Hosts Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez couldn’t contain their smirks as they introduced the piece. “There's been an earthquake rumbling outside Anchorage, but there is some other rumblings, as well, near Wasilla,” Smith snickered. “Oh, indeed,” Rodriguez chimed in with her eyebrows raised. “Sarah Palin says that she is focused on one thing, governing Alaska. But it has been...

Lara Logan was named chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News in June, and now this - the journalist just gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Logan and her husband, Joseph Burkett, welcomed Joseph Washington Burkett V to their family on December 29. The birth of their child is a pleasant chapter in a romance marked by scandal. Though both Logan and Burkett were separated from their respective spouses when they met, the relationship that began in Iraq in 2007 caused a flurry of tabloid commentary. The front page of the New York Post featured a story calling Logan...

"After an outcry from the White House and conservative bloggers who claimed that the report had been based on falsified documents, CBS retracted the story, saying that the documents' authenticity could not be verified. Rather, who had been with CBS for decades and was one of the most familiar faces in American journalism, was fired by the network the day after the 2004 election."

After two years of relentlessly bad ratings news, Katie Couric finally has something she can smile about. . . That makes four straight weeks where her audience was bigger than at the same point last year, according to Nielsen Media Research. The improvement could be a result of the positive feedback Couric received for her interview of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin during the presidential campaign. Palin fumbled on a question about what publications she read regularly, and the interview was a launching point for one of Tina Fey's "Saturday Night Live" spoofs.

CBS Poll: Uncommitted Voters Say Obama Won Oct. 8, 2008(CBS) Uncommitted voters named Barack Obama as the winner of the second presidential debate as well, according to a CBS News/Knowledge Networks poll. Immediately after the debate, CBS News interviewed a nationally representative sample of 516 debate watchers assembled by Knowledge Networks who were "uncommitted voters" - voters who are either undecided about who to vote for or who say they could still change their minds. Forty percent of these uncommitted debate watchers said Obama won the debate, 26 percent said John McCain won, and another 34 percent thought it was...

(CBS) CBS News Investigative Producer Laura Strickler wrote this story for CBSNews.com. Over the weekend, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin accused Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) of associating with terrorists. “Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who target their own country,” Palin said. What is she referring to? FACTS: Palin is talking about Obama’s association with a 1960’s anti war radical who now lives in Chicago named Bill Ayers. Obama met Ayers in 1995. The senator has repeatedly noted that when Ayers committed his domestic acts of terrorism forty years ago, Obama was...

At the union this morning.... My daughter was at the union this morning for the media event....CBS was shooting live.... Many students showed up with pro McCain signs mostly made of posterboard and magic markers.... CBS was selectively 'removing' certain signs prior to the broadcast...then a few minutes later.....someone started handing out professionally made Obama signs. As this woman got near my daughter the nametag came into view.....the CBS producer was stacking the deck for Obama by personally passing out the signs..... Then the camera angles were set to cover the maximum number of those signs.....making the crowd look MUCH...

(NEW YORK) They scold us for “being unfair,” remind us to “ask all the candidates the same questions,” and occasionally, they boo us. From Canton to Colorado, some of the tens of thousands of people attending Sarah Palin’s rallies regularly take it upon themselves to give the media a piece of their minds. So I thought it only fair to turn the microphone around, and give a handful of rally attendees a chance to air their grievances about the way in which the media has covered the Republican vice presidential nominee. Watch the video below:

Former GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson is pushing back hard against a CBS reporter’s editorial assessment of his remarks at a rally for John McCain and Sarah Palin earlier today. “Seems as if, all of a sudden, some of my old buddies over at CBS have become very sensitive to what they consider to be hyperbole on the presidential campaign trail. Imagine that,” Thompson told Townhall. Listen to Senator Thompson's full statement here. CBS Reporter John Bentley, who covered Thompson’s presidential campaign as an embed reporter, wrote a very negative analysis of the speech Thompson gave to introduce GOP vice...

Did anyone else see the Letterman Show tonight, Friday 8/15: when actor Ben Kingsley walked out to great applause, he walked up to Dave Letterman and said "God Bless American Enthusiasm!" and then repeated himself, "God Bless American enthusiasm!" Except CBS simply filtered out the word "God." Both times. Watching closely, I know I saw Kingsley's lips form the word "God" both times, his lips were clearly moving before I heard "...Bless American enthusiasm!" I thought I was imagining things, but it happened a second time!

Anti-Obama and right-wing bloggers have been throwing more and more criticism against the wall to see what sticks. One of their more fanciful charges is that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, born in Hawaii in 1961, is not a U.S. citizen and therefore cannot be elected president. In the face of Internet insinuations that the Illinois Senator was actually born somewhere outside the U.S. and therefore does not fall within Article II of the Constitution ("A natural born Citizen") and the 14th Amendment, Barack Obama's campaign has posted a copy of his birth certificate on its rumor-discrediting Web site, www.fightthesmears.com....

(CBS) Barack Obama leads John McCain 45 percent to 39 percent in the latest CBS News poll. Despite Obama's highly-publicized foreign trip and McCain's recent high-profile advertisements, the findings are unchanged since a CBS News/New York Times poll released last month. The percentage of undecided voters - 13 percent - also remains steady. Obama's overseas trip, which was widely seen as a success, has not enhanced perceptions of his effectiveness as a commander in chief. Just 20 percent of those surveyed say Obama is "very likely" to be an effective commander in chief, down 4 percentage points from last month....

I’m not sure this is even worth mentioning. I’d think nothing of it…except McCain’s top 10 list from the day before is still there. If you remember the list was “The 10 Ten Signs Obama is Overconfident About The Presidential Campaign”: 10. Proposed bill to change Oklahoma to “Oklobama” 9. Offered Bush $20 for the “Mission Accomplished” banner 8. Asked guy at Staples, “Which chair will work best in an oval-shaped office?” 7. The affair with Barbara Walters 6. Having head measured for Mount Rushmore 5. Guy sits around eating soup all day 4. He’s voting for Nader 3. Offered...

For those of you who don't keep up with the conservative blogosphere, one of the memes they've been trying to push for the past couple of weeks is this: Barack Obama may give a good prepared speech, but his dirty little secret is that he's actually an empty suit who's totally at sea without a teleprompter. Today, for example, Andy McCarthy, offers up this snippet from an Obama press conference in Jerusalem: Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way...

WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Monday overturned a decision to fine CBS Corp (CBS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) television stations $550,000 for airing a brief breast flash by pop singer Janet Jackson during the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia announced Monday that it has charged former CBS 3 anchor Larry Mendte with a felony count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization. The government's case against Mendte, 51, is set out in an "Information" – the formal charging document. The Information charges Mendte with one count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization and thereby obtaining information in furtherance of a tortious act. The Information says Mendte accessed the private e-mail accounts of former co-anchor Alycia Lane hundreds of times from from his Chestnut Hill home, his vacation home, KYW and...

CBS News sinks to new low; publishes crackpot global warming story, attributes it to Associated Press, kills it with no retraction Yesterday I posted a story from CBS News: Quake n’ Bake: Global Warming Causes More Energetic Earthquakes? The main headline was this: Seismic Activity 5 Times More Energetic Than 20 Years Ago Because Of Global Warming This drew a lot of attention because of the total lack of verifiable science associated with it. I posted some graphs of USGS data showing that the opposite was true, that recent earthquake energy was actually less that in the early 1900’s, and...

On Wednesday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Julie Chen teased an upcoming segment on Barack Obama: "...during the long primary season, we all learned a lot about Barack Obama. He is a Senator. He's a Harvard grad. He's a husband. And he is a father. But this morning, you're going to learn five things you probably don't know about Barack Obama." Later, in David Letterman style, correspondent Jeff Glor introduced the story: "...here are the top five things you likely don't know about Barack Obama." Among those things, were important facts such as "Number four -- in addition to enjoying basketball...