Free Republic

Quin Hillyer is a conservative, but not a Fred Thompson lackey. His observations? I am firmly convinced that Fred Thompson still has a real shot at the nomination...I watched him with Wolf Blitzer just an hour or so ago and he came across very very well indeed. He really is hitting on ALMOST all cylinders now, more so every day since beginning to really engage about December 1. ...it is also worth noting that the utterly scurrilous Politico story yesterday almost certainly depressed Thompson's vote in Iowa. As I said on Fox News yesterday, for a news outlet to publish...

Confederate Yankee catches Roger Simon of the Politico making a Fred Thompson visit to an Iowa firehouse sound like it went much worse than it did. Simon describes Thompson's "sour expression" on his face, and suggests that Thompson offended the firefighters when he mentioned his "silly hat" rule. CBS News - you know CBS News, that longtime friend of bloggers - offers video, that shows a lot of laughter and good spirits all around. Come on, man. Thompson apparently makes a reference to this botched story in his latest little video from the road: "Remember, we don't raise our hands...

In this long election cycle, we may be learning as much about media bias as about the candidates. PJM’s Bob Owens has more on the questionable characterization of Fred Thompson by The Politico’s Roger Simon. Fire Chief Dan McKenzie cast more doubts on The Politico’s chief political correspondent Roger Simon’s version of events at McKenzie’s Waverly, Iowa fire station in Simon’s article “Fred Thompson: Lazy as charged.” Questions had been raised about Simon’s article based on a video of Thompson’s appearance, which seemed to show the candidate behaving in a radically different manner from the one described by The Politico...

I’d like to follow up on Roger “Event? What Event?” Simon’s Politico story with some details about Fred Thompson’s visit to the Waverly, Iowa newspaper. You know, the newspaper where Thompson’s staff made Simon and Mark Halperin wait outside. It seems that Simon appeared a bit miffed by the exclusion and that, in my opinion, colored his entire story. According to the Waverly Democrat (via an e-mail commenter), here’s what happened. Two national journalists who had covered the Bill Clinton and Magic Johnson appearance in Waterloo earlier in the afternoon showed up for Thompson’s sit-down session, but were asked by...

The bold and brilliant Hugh Hewitt doesn't hesitate to ask reporters appearing as guests on his radio show to describe their personal political leanings. Most decline to do so in a self-righteous huff, the typical response being along the lines "that is irrelevant to my reporting, which I play down the middle." There are rare-but-welcome bursts of candor, as when former WaPo political reporter Tom Edsall famously acknowledged to Hugh that he, along with the overwhelmingly majority of his erstwhile WaPo confreres, were indeed Dems and liberals. I mention this because a few weeks ago, Hugh had as a...