Free Republic

Bush has warned against for five years. Iran’s nuclear program, its support of groups like Hezbollah and its strident anti-Israel and anti-American statements appear to make it a prime target for American retribution. But the administration finds itself relying on Israel to cripple Hezbollah and on the United Nations and an ad hoc alliance of European nations, China and Russia to try to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program. “Iran is the enemy that best fits the definition of the adversary Bush has defined,” said Robert Malley, director of the Middle East program at the International Crisis Group. “This is the...

A Christian for the N.Y. Times -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: August 3, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Joseph Farah -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Who says the New York Times is anti-Christian? Why just the other day, I read a beautiful profile of an evangelical mega-church pastor from Minnesota. You could just tell the reporter for the Times loved the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd. It isn't Christians the Times loathes. It's just right-wing Christians. And so does the Rev. Gregory Boyd. Boyd has some interesting ideas – given that he claims to base his beliefs on the same Bible I read. But let's start with abortion...

CAMBRIA, N.Y., July 31 — Reaching out to rural voters in New York and elsewhere in the nation, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Monday for increasing federal support for struggling farm communities to revitalize rural America. In a speech delivered on a 152-year-old family farm, Mrs. Clinton called for major federal investments to expand broadband Internet access in rural communities, promote the development of alternative fuel sources like corn-based ethanol and encourage medical school graduates to practice in agricultural areas. “We can build a new rural future,’’ Mrs. Clinton said, after listing economic problems that she said have led...

WASHINGTON, July 28 — Two summers ago, on a Congressional trip to Estonia, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton astonished her traveling companions by suggesting that the group do what one does in the Baltics: hold a vodka-drinking contest. Delighted, the leader of the delegation, Senator John McCain, quickly agreed. The after-dinner drinks went so well — memories are a bit hazy on who drank how much — that Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, later told people how unexpectedly engaging he found Mrs. Clinton to be. “One of the guys” was the way he described Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, to...

WITH Israel at war with Hezbollah, where, you might wonder, is Al Qaeda? From all appearances on the Web sites frequented by its sympathizers, which I frequently monitor, Al Qaeda is sitting, unhappily and uneasily, on the sidelines, watching a movement antithetical to its philosophy steal its thunder. That might sound like good news. But it is more likely an ominous sign. Al Qaeda’s Sunni ideology regards Shiites as heretics and profoundly distrusts Shiite groups like Hezbollah. It was Al Qaeda that is reported to have given Sunni extremists in Iraq the green light to attack Shiite civilians and holy...

POUND for pound and pounding for pounding, the Israeli military is one of the world’s finest. But Hezbollah, with the discipline and ferocity of its fighters and ability to field advanced weaponry, has taken Israel by surprise. Now that surprise has rocketed back to Washington and across the American military. United States officials worry that they’re not prepared, either, for Hezbollah’s style of warfare — a kind that pits finders against hiders and favors the hiders. Certain that other terrorists are learning from Hezbollah’s successes, the United States is studying the conflict closely for lessons to apply to its own...

As the bloodbath in Lebanon spilled past its second week — with at least 400 Lebanese dead and many more presumed buried in rubble; some 800,000 refugees, nearly a quarter of the population, on the run; and the fragile nation’s infrastructure shattered — there was no easy way out for either Israel or Hezbollah, the combatants locked in what each saw as a deadly existential struggle.

ROCKY HILL, Conn., July 28 — Senator Joseph I. Lieberman commissioned a poll in January as he prepared for his fourth campaign for the Senate, and the results were sobering. Mr. Lieberman was tied against a hypothetical primary opponent, described only as a Democrat who was opposed to the Iraq war and was critical of Mr. Lieberman’s ties with President Bush, an aide recounted. That poll was one of a number of early warnings that emerged well before Mr. Lieberman found himself locked this summer in a career-threatening battle with Ned Lamont, a Democratic primary challenger who is opposed to...

WASHINGTON, July 27 — Coal-burning utilities are contributing money to one of the few remaining climate scientists openly critical of the broad consensus that fossil fuel emissions are intensifying global warming. The critic, Patrick J. Michaels, is a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and Virginia’s state climatologist. Dr. Michaels told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists’ global warming research. So a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign for him last week and has raised at least...

KEVIN BARRETT, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has now taken his place alongside Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado as a college teacher whose views on 9/11 have led politicians and ordinary citizens to demand that he be fired. Mr. Barrett, who has a one-semester contract to teach a course titled “Islam: Religion and Culture,” acknowledged on a radio talk show that he has shared with students his strong conviction that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job perpetrated by the American government. The predictable uproar ensued, and the equally predictable...

by Mark Finkelstein July 23, 2006 - 06:47 Don't the press in general and the New York Times in particular take pride in portraying themselves as ever-the vigilant defenders of the First Amendment? But judging by an editorial in the paper this morning, the Times experiences a power loss worse than the one currently gripping Queens when it comes to defending the First Amendment rights of groups it disfavors, in this case the tobacco industry. Entitled Take the Tobacco Pledge, the editorial urges ratification of The World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, known colloquially as 'the tobacco treaty.'...

Two days ago, the New York Times suggested an out-of-character response to dealing with the crisis in the Middle East should the U.N. Security Council fail to enforce Resolution 1559, which requires Hezbollah to disarm. "If the Security Council isn't willing to issue such explicit demands or link them to clear punishments," the paper editorialized, "the United States, Europe and key Arab allies, who are also eager to see the fighting and Hezbollah contained, will have to bring serious pressure on their own." Of course, the editorial continued, "[t]he United States will have to take the lead." The NYT's argument...

The New York Times has morphed from the newspaper of record — "All the News That's Fit to Print" — into the Bush-hating newspaper of record — any Bush bashing that fits. Take the deficit, which is coming down because tax revenues are going up. It was our big story right at the top of the show. It's a good story because it shows that the Bush policy of tax cuts isn't in place simply to give his rich friends some extra cash for bigger yachts. Money in the economy instead of in the treasury produces more economic activity which...

New Yorkers are endowed with certain inalienable rights, among them bragging about the city’s water — so pure it doesn’t need to be filtered, so delicious it is better than bottled. So it may surprise, perhaps even insult, proud residents to hear that federal officials are worried that the fabled water — coming from the largest unfiltered system in the country — is getting muddier and may have to be completely filtered, at a cost of billions of dollars, if it cannot be kept clean. For much of the last year, the century-old water system that delivers 1.3 billion gallons...

Weapons WASHINGTON, July 18 — The power and sophistication of the missile and rocket arsenal that Hezbollah has used in recent days has caught the United States and Israel off guard, and officials in both countries are just now learning the extent to which the militant group has succeeded in getting weapons from Iran and Syria. While the Bush administration has stated that cracking down on weapons proliferation is one of its top priorities, the arming of Hezbollah shows the blind spots of American and other Western intelligence services in assessing the threat, officials from across those governments said. American...

Speaking at a boisterous rally for Israel near the United Nations headquarters this afternoon, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said she supported taking “whatever steps are necessary” to defend Israel against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraq and Syria in the military conflict in the Middle East. Senator Clinton, addressing a crowd of several thousand people, said the United States must show “solidarity and support” for Israel in the face of the “unwarranted, unprovoked” seizure of three Israeli soldiers by members of Hamas and Hezbollah, which she referred to as among “the new totalitarians of the 21st century.” “We will stand with Israel because...

CAN we cure our ailing health care system by sending in more doctors? That is the treatment prescribed by the Association of American Medical Colleges, which has recommended increasing the number of doctors they train by 30 percent, in large part to keep up with the growing number of elderly patients. But the most serious problems facing our health care system — accelerating costs, poor quality of care and the rising ranks of the uninsured — cannot be solved by more doctors. In fact, that approach, like prescribing more drugs for an already overmedicated patient, may only make things worse....

AS liberals try to articulate a post-Bush foreign policy, some are feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance. They have always thought of themselves as idealistic, concerned with the welfare of humankind. Not for them the ruthlessly narrow focus on national self-interest of the “realist” foreign policy school. That school’s most famous practitioner, Henry Kissinger, is for many liberals a reminder of how easily the ostensible amorality of classic realism slides into immorality. Yet idealism has lost some of its luster. Neoconservatism, whose ascendancy has scared liberals into a new round of soul-searching, seems plenty idealistic, bent on spreading democracy and...

It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power. Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to...

Little Green Footballs notes one of the New York Times' "memorable photographs," which was taken by Times photographer Joao Silva. Silva was in the room with a “Mahdi Army” sniper who was trying to kill American soldiers: The Times' commentary on the photo, by Assistant Managing Editor for Photography Michele McNally: "Right there with the Mahdi army. Incredible courage." We have written before about the wire services' use of Iraqi stringers who appear to be members of, or at the least friendly with, terrorist groups. This is a step beyond that, as Silva isn't just an anonymous stringer, but is...

GAZA, July 12 — The expansion of the Gaza crisis into southern Lebanon, confronting Israel with a conflict on its northern and southern borders, has demonstrated that the central issue at stake is regional, not local. Louai Beshara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas’s political bureau, is in Syria and is said to be backed by Iran. For Israel the issue is not simply the Palestinians and their actions, including the rocket fire into Israel. It is the broader problem of radical Islam — of Hamas, as a part of the regional Muslim Brotherhood, and of...

He is either the leading man of MSNBC or its leading agent provocateur, but Keith Olbermann has no problem embracing either role. “You can’t spell momentum without Olbermann — or something like that,” he said in a telephone interview, with a typical sprinkle of wry in his voice. The momentum reference related to MSNBC’s recent aggressive positioning of the program “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” as the centerpiece of this all-news cable network’s latest effort to become more competitive with Fox News Channel and CNN. MSNBC revamped its prime-time schedule two weeks ago, shelving many of its prime-time hosts in favor...

Another Mission ‘Accomplished’ Published: July 11, 2006 There not much to crow about in the White House midsession budget review. But President Bush is likely to gloat, anyway. /snip The revenue surge is neither a sign that the tax cuts are working nor of sustainable economic growth. A growing number of economists, most prominently from the Congressional Budget Office, point out that upsurges in revenue are also the result of growing income inequality in the United States, an observation that is consistent with mounting evidence of a rapidly widening gap between the rich and everyone else. As corporations and high-...

IN 2003, the Bush administration left the war in Afghanistan unfinished and moved on to overthrow Saddam Hussein. This grand diversion of military, intelligence and diplomatic resources not only jeopardized success in Afghanistan but also initiated the collapse of international support and respect for the United States. As we approach the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, American and NATO forces are fighting a resurgent Taliban. Leaders like Mullah Muhammad Omar remain at large, and Osama bin Laden emerges regularly to threaten the West and inspire his followers. It is true that Afghanistan has taken historic steps toward democracy....

Flight Lessons ON June 11, 1957, the Atlas, America's first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, took its inaugural flight from Cape Canaveral in Florida. It lasted 24 seconds. The missile roared off the launching pad and soared to about 10,000 feet before its engines failed. Tumbling out of control, the rocket fell through its own trail of fire before the safety officer on the ground sent a radio signal that told the wayward rocket to blow itself up. The rocket's designers, though disappointed, learned a lot. It was clear that, despite the pummeling the Atlas took as it careered out of control,...

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines. "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," the group quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying in a report to be posted today on...

You might not have enjoyed the highways last weekend, but in Washington we see cause to celebrate. Two score and ten years ago, our forefathers brought forth across this continent the interstate highway system, which you could call America's pyramids except that the pyramids were so puny. Cheops was a piker next to Dwight Eisenhower, the creator of what is reverently known in Congress as the greatest public works project in history. Eisenhower's granddaughter and great-grandson came to town last week to celebrate those 46,000 miles of pavement and to listen to speeches by master builders such as Don Young,...

Hot Air's "Vent" by Michelle Malkin shows video of FR's FReep of the New York Times in Washington DC on July 3rd. Kristinn Taylor of FR, makes the case.

On a sudden hush in the media By J.R.DunnJuly 4, 2006Is it my imagination, or is there a sudden hush in the shrieking media barrage today? Was it only yesterday that the NYT and WaPo were roaring and thundering, month after month, at President Bush and the GOP—- to surprisingly little effect? Have we run out of phony scandals yet? Where is the Bush = Hitler crowd? To be sure, the Kossacks are still fussing in a corner of the web. And any moment now the heavy artillery of the Left may resume lobbing shell after exploding shell at the...

After years of competitive and often contentious dealings, President Bush and Senator John McCain of Arizona are building a deepening if impersonal relationship that is serving the political needs of both men. Given their history of intense rivalry and sometimes personally bitter combat, their newfound partnership is seen by some Republicans as born more of political calculation than personal evolution. Either way, it could prove valuable to Mr. McCain in his efforts to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 by sending a signal to Mr. Bush's conservative base and fund-raising network that, at a minimum, the White House will...

New York Times, Pinch Sulzberger, Rumsfield With the publication of the location, security details, and the local topography surrounding Mr. Rumsfeld’s home in Maryland in its June 30th Escape section on second homes, as well as similar information on that of Mr. Cheney, in the thinly held guise of public interest, a vaporous veil if there ever was one, the New York Times has seemingly retaliated for being called to task for its incessant hobbling of the war on terror through its repeated release of classified programs over the objections of the Bush administration. This information, which includes color photos...

The Talk Shows Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; NASA Administrator Michael Griffin; Lt. Col. Michael Colburn, director of the President's Own U.S. Marine Band. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. FACE THE NATION (CBS): New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller; Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Carl Levin, D-Mich. THIS WEEK (ABC): Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; actress and United Nations goodwill ambassador Mia Farrow.LATE EDITION (CNN) : Reps....

Eric Lichtblau’s story in the New York Times, June 22: Bank Data Secretly Reviewed by U.S. to Fight Terror By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN Eric Lichtblau today, on CNN’s Reliable Sources: "“USA Today”, the biggest circulation in the country, the lead story on their front page four days before our story ran was the terrorists know their money is being traced, and they are moving it into—outside of the banking system into unconventional means. It is by no means a secret." ---snip---- Here, courtesy of Chris Fotos, is a bullet-point list of quotes from the story saying that the...

Top editors from the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, responding to criticism over publishing stories about a government program that tracked millions of financial records in search of terrorists, on Saturday defended their decisions to publish government secrets. "We weight the merits of publishing against the risks of publishing," wrote Dean Baquet, Los Angeles Times editor, and Bill Keller, New York Times executive editor, in an op-ed piece that ran in both newspapers. "There is no magic formula, no neat metric for either the public's interest or the dangers of publishing sensitive information," the piece continued. "We...

WASHINGTON, July 1 — As the dust settled on a consequential Supreme Court term, the first in 11 years with a change in membership and the first in two decades with a new chief justice, one question that lingered was whether it was now the Roberts court, in fact as well as in name. The answer: not yet. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was clearly in charge, presiding over the court with grace, wit and meticulous preparation. But he was not in control. In the court's most significant nonunanimous cases, Chief Justice Roberts was in dissent almost as often...

Vice President Dick Cheney, traveling into the home turf of The New York Times, criticized the paper Friday for disclosing information about a secret government program to track the financing of terror suspects. "Leaks to The New York Times and the publishing of those leaks is very damaging to our national security," Cheney said at a fundraising lunch for Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J. "Putting this information on the front page makes it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks." The paper reported last week that shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the government obtained access to an...

Here's a quick roundup of some hard-hitting editorial cartoona about the TreasonTimes. The first one actually appeared in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, which is pretty stunning.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, newspaper editors have faced excruciating choices in covering the government's efforts to protect the country from terrorist agents. Each of us has, on a number of occasions, withheld information because we were convinced that publishing it could put lives at risk. On other occasions, each of us has decided to publish classified information over strong objections from our government. Last week our newspapers disclosed a secret Bush administration program to monitor international banking transactions. We did so after appeals from senior administration officials to hold the story. Our reports — like earlier press disclosures of secret...

A leading Senate Republican said Friday that he was not sure that Congress should pass legislation to create new military tribunals for terror suspects, a stance that raised doubts about prospects for a White House plan to establish an alternative to the commissions struck down this week by the Supreme Court. The senator, John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he had not yet decided what course Congress should take. But Mr. Warner, who will preside over hearings on the issue in July, said he was concerned that new tribunals, even if authorized by...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Friday, June 23, 2006 12:32 a.m. EDTFox Makes Up News, NY Times Editor Says Former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines has leveled a shocking charge against Fox News: The leading cable news network makes up its stories. In his new autobiography "The One That Got Away,” Raines – who, ironically, resigned over made-up stories at the Times – writes: "Fox, by its mere existence, undercuts the argument that the public is starved for ‘fair’ news, and not just because Fox shills for the Republican Party and panders to the latest of America’s periodic religious manias....

Are the New York Times, the L.A. Times and others honoring the threat when they publish classified information about our anti-terrorism methods? Judging from their actions it would appear that Bill Keller at the New York Times, and others, see a greater threat from the Bush administration than from those engaging in acts of jihadist terrorism. full article here... =========================================================== Treason Sinkhole swallows up Old Hag Sooooo, lemme get this straight: The New York Times defends the outing of a top secret program on the basis that the terrorists probably already knew about the program and the program was secret...

The NY Times points cranks, radicals, al-Qaeda operatives and would be assassins to the summer homes of Cheney and Rumsfeld - Friday, June 30, 2006 12:36 PM In an apparent retaliation for criticism of its disclosure of classified intelligence to America's enemies, the New York Times June 30th edition has printed huge color photos of the vacation residences of Vice President Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, identifying the small Maryland town where they live, showing the front driveway and in Rumsfeld's case actually pointing out the hidden security camera in case any hostile intruders should get careless: http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/travel/escapes/30michaels.html Make no...

You could call it "Treason Central," or "al-Qaida West," but no matter what you call it, the building housing the once-august New York Times at 229 West 43rd Street in New York City is a beehive of anti-American hostility, where selling out the nation's secrets has become the newspaper's stock in trade. This latest episode of the Times revealing information vital to the government's ability to protect the American people from new 9/11s is just another example of the Times' contempt for the security of the people of the United States of America in a time of war. To say...

NEWARK, June 26 — For many who gathered here on Monday, the day marked the passing of yet one more piece of New Jersey lore, an urban monument for drivers on the Garden State Parkway. It had been the subject of a popular song and even had a role in a recent episode of "The Sopranos." It was the toast of a town whose bustling industrial past was awash in breweries, from Ballantine and Krueger to Hensler and Feigenspan. It was the 60-foot-tall Pabst beer bottle, which had loomed 185 feet above Newark for 75 years, serving as a guidepost...

Melissa Ludwig Express-News Staff Writer The Dean of Library Services at University of the Incarnate Word canceled the library's subscription to the New York Times Wednesday to protest recent stories exposing a secret government program that monitors international financial transactions in the hunt for terrorists. "Since no one elected the New York Times to determine national security policy, the only action I know to register protest for their irresponsible action (treason?) is to withdraw support of their operations by canceling our subscription as many others are doing," Mendell D. Morgan, Jr. wrote in a June 28 email to library staff....

NOTE: this is intended to be a news item, not a solicitation. I have removed all of the hot links and item number. (As with the recent eBay listing for the QUITCLAIM DEED to al-Zarqawi's bombed out house, the proceeds from this will go to FreeRepublic.) ==================================================================== Printer Version: All |  Listed in category:  Collectibles > Historical Memorabilia > Political > US > Other Items Osama thank you card sent to treasonous NEW YORK TIMES Item number: Seller status: Your item has been bid up to US As of Jun-29-06 07:42:40 PDT Current bid: US   End time: Jul-04-06 19:51:28 PDT (5 days...

June 29, 2006, 6:21 a.m. All the Treason that’s Fit to PrintWith great power comes great irresponsibility. By Deroy Murdock The most puzzling thing about the New York Times’s exposure of America’s counterterrorism secrets is that this Manhattan-based newspaper has no apparent sense of self-preservation. If the Times were headquartered in, say, Bismarck, North Dakota, its spectacular disregard for human safety might be explained by the low probability that terrorists ever would hit its community directly. However, the Old Gray Lady occupies the bull’s-eye on Islamofascism’s dartboard. The Times undermines U.S. national security from its base at 229 West...

Oversight of the government's national security policies is needed now more than ever.The Decision on whether to publish information that government officials assert would damage national security is one of the gravest choices a newspaper can face. There may be times when editors get it wrong, either printing material that proves harmful or withholding information that should have come to light. But these are risks that the Constitution contemplated and that the Framers were persuaded were worth tolerating to ensure a free and vigorous press. Justice Potter Stewart stated this trade-off well in a concurring opinion in the Pentagon Papers...

Forget the warplanes in the skies of Iraq or the Special Forces in the Afghan mountains. Our entire national security strategy — your security from getting gassed in a subway or bombed in an office building — has been reduced to this: begging. The Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, had to go to the New York Times and literally beg for your life. The Times had found out about yet another successful and legal spy program, and they were planning on letting Al Qaeda know about it, too, by putting it on the front page. Secretary Snow begged the...

Need a newsboy's canvas NYT delivery bag to accessorize either an Osama character or Boris Badenov (enemy spy from Rocky & Bullwinkle). Anyone have one? Anyone have on to donate that we could stencil with NYT? Make one? Thanks.