Free Republic

May 20, 2003, 9:00 a.m. All the News that's Fit to Print… …for the whole world to read. here is no doubt that the Jayson Blair outrage has created a crisis at the New York Times. And since the scandal caps a long series of complaints about the paper's leftward bias, the Blair affair's power to hurt the Times has become more than the sum of its parts. Yet those who believe that the New York Times is on the ropes are fooling themselves. Beneath the well-publicized controversies over the Times' ideological bias lie a couple of lesser known and...

There is no doubt that the Jayson Blair outrage has created a crisis at the New York Times. And since the scandal caps a long series of complaints about the paper's leftward bias, the Blair affair's power to hurt the Times has become more than the sum of its parts. Yet those who believe that the New York Times is on the ropes are fooling themselves. Beneath the well-publicized controversies over the Times' ideological bias lie a couple of lesser known and intertwined stories: the tale of Times owner, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and of the business strategy that he and...

The Jayson Blair story points to a serious problem alright, but not to a solution. I think I have a solution. It's no secret that a great many of us no longer trust the New York Times. The paper has always had a liberal flavor, of course. Yet in the past, the Times's news coverage maintained sufficient balance and integrity that it could justly be deemed the "newspaper of record." That is no longer true. In many ways, the New York Times remains an excellent paper, yet I deeply mistrust what I read there. I know the paper has a...

There is a mystery at the heart of the gay-marriage debate. I call it the "libertarian question." The libertarian question (really a series of questions) goes like this: Why should any form of adult consensual sex be illegal? What rational or compelling interest does the state have in regulating consensual adult sex? More specifically, how does the marriage of two gay men undermine my marriage? Will the fact that two married gay men live next door make me leave my wife? Hardly. So how, then, does gay marriage undermine heterosexual marriage? Why not get the state out of such matters...

The Democrats think they understand the political implications of the Santorum flap. They do not. The conventional wisdom of the Democrats on the Santorum affair is set forth in places like The New Republic's &c. blog and in a recent column by Eleanor Clift.As the Democrat's see it, the Santorum affair will do substantial damage to the Republican party for some time. That's because, on social issues generally, and on homosexuality in particular, the public is divided into roughly three camps — social conservatives, social liberals, and social moderates. Social conservatives, who see homosexuality as immoral, form a large...

    April 24, 2003, 8:45 a.m. Defending Senator Santorum The Pennsylvania Republican has been subject to shameful treatment. come to the question of homosexuality and public policy from a different perspective than U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. I would like to see sodomy laws abolished, and have said so publicly. I should also note that I am not religious, and do not see homosexuality as sinful. Nonetheless, I am convinced that Sen. Santorum's recent remarks on homosexuality have been badly distorted by both the Democratic party and the mainstream press. The shameful public response to Sen. Santorum's statements is a...

Last month, in "Heather Has 3 Parents," I wrote about a Canadian law suit that clearly reveals the slippery slope on which we shall surely be set by legalized same-sex marriage. A court in London, Ontario has been asked to declare three people the legal parents of a single child (the biological mother and father, and the lesbian partner of the natural mother). Since conception, the sexual relationship appears to have been confined to the lesbian partners, both of whom live with the child. Yet the biological father, a close friend of the biological mother and her partner, frequently visits...

March 31, 2003, 9:15 a.m.Troop DearthThere are not enough U.S. troops in Iraq. Friday's White House press briefing was a sickening sight to behold. That's probably a bit too strong a reaction, but it's how I feel. Within limits, a reporter's job is to pose tough questions. Yet this press corps is all too eager to catch the administration in an embarrassing admission of error. It takes only the slightest hiccup in the war to draw out the partisanship and Vietnam nostalgia of the liberal media. Having said that, the opening of the war, with all its dramatic success,...

Although all eyes are currently on the general Baghdad area, we are also on a course for war with North Korea, perhaps within the next six months, but surely within the next six years. Proposals for negotiations, whether multilateral or bilateral, are fatally flawed. Nothing short of war will stop the North Koreans from developing and selling nuclear weapons and fuel. The question is whether we will go to war before, or after, North Korea spreads its nuclear material. A case can be made for holding war off until we are struck first, even if by nuclear terrorism. But that...