Free Republic

America Needs A New New Deal By KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL and ERIC SCHLOSSER The Bush administration has proposed the most expensive government spending plan in American history, allocating as much as $700 billion to a Wall Street bailout. The proposal was attacked by members of both parties, who immediately began negotiations to find an alternative. The Bush plan was not only a political blunder; it was also a complete repudiation of the administration's own economic policies. It could not be justified by any of the core beliefs governing free enterprise and the free market. As with the decision to invade...

The Tyranny of Super-Delegates Barack Obama's stirring victory in Iowa was also a good night for our democracy. The turnout broke records and young people – who were mobilized and organized – participated in unprecedented numbers. And now that Iowans have spoken – the first citizens in the nation to do so – here's the Democratic delegate count for the top three candidates (2,025 delegates are needed to secure the nomination): Clinton – 169 Obama – 66 Edwards – 47 "Huh?" you say. "vanden Heuvel, you made a MAJOR typo." In fact, those numbers are correct: the third-place finishing Sen....

Feinstein's FuryUp against the big media spin machine By Peter Byrne 29 weeks later: Following the fallout from Metro's investigation of Sen. Feinstein. I AM PLEASED to announce that my national exposé of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's conflict of interest has been selected as one of the 25 most underreported stories of 2007 by Project Censored, headquartered at Sonoma State University. I cherish this award because it means I am doing my job as an investigative reporter. Stories that the mainstream media ignore often reveal truths about our system of governance that editors at corporate daily newspapers work overtime to cover...

Grant K. HolcombOctober 17, 2006 On Monday October 9, 2006, I walked into my home to see my wife and son watching CBS Evening News just as Ms. Couric was introducing Ms. vanden Heuvel's "freeSpeech" segment. As a combat veteran I was devastated to hear such an intentional misrepresentation of the Iraq war. Because of what I heard, I was ashamed to be an American for the first time in my life. Truth, ethics, integrity, honor, professionalism, and patriotism have meaning to the vast majority of U.S. Citizens. These values are part of our nation's foundation and need to be...

The main message is the Sunday Shows.  Message 1 will be the Saturday Shows and message 2 will be the show guest links post.  Then I'll post the ping list.ABC This Week (George Stephanopoulos) Meme: The battle is joined!  Place your bets!  How badly will the GOP lose? Topics: Power Politics: Two Sunday exclusives as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and DNC Chairman Howard Dean join me to discuss gas prices, the 2006 elections and the war in Iraq. Will record low approval ratings for President Bush and rising gas prices fuel a Democratic takeover of Congress in...

p>The Talk Shows Sunday, March 26th, 2006 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Gary Schroen, former CIA agent; Democratic strategist James Carville, Republican strategist Mary Matalin. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and national security adviser Stephen Hadley. THIS WEEK (ABC): Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.; Gov. Brian Schweitzer, D-Mont.; Harvey Mansfield, author of "Manliness," and author Naomi Wolf. LATE EDITION (CNN) : Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and...

Katrina Vanden Heuvel: Tancredo a 'White Supremacist' Nation magazine publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel said Sunday that illegal immigration foe, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., is animated by a "white supremacist" philosophy - and insisted that illegals are "the backbone of this country." Following the Colorado Republican on ABC's "This Week," Vanden Heuvel told host George Stephanopoulos: "Tancredo, on your show today - he looked pleasant. But I will say that what's happened in our country is that some of the white supremacist thinking that used to be represented by David Duke has been absorbed by people like Tancredo." Vanden Heuvel called...

Journal Editorial Report (Paul Gigot) - FNC show page Meme: The Bush administration policies are a failure and Bush has bad poll numbersBush's bad poll numbers are sinking the RepublicansBush must clean house and replace those the MSM hates (because they're not listening to us!)The paleocons and country club Republicans have turned their back on Bush (the Nixon wing of the party tries to rise again) Topics: 'Civil War'? - Tune in this weekend for a discussion of Iraq and Harvard professors' campaign against Israel. (Opinion Journal web site promo)Is Iraq really headed toward civil war? An interview with Reuel...

The I-Word is Gaining Ground--UPDATED In 1998, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, currently under indictment on corruption charges, proclaimed: "This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law...The other road is the path of least resistance" in which "we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us...[and] close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking...and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system." That arbiter of moral politics was incensed about the possibility of Bill Clinton escaping unpunished for his "crimes." Fast forward to December 2005. Not one official in...

In the dark days after the election of 2004, the mainstream media was touting the making of a permanent rightward shift, and the progressive community was deeply deflated. It was difficult, in those times, to maintain a sense of hope--as corruption, war, lies and injustices large and small loomed all around, and outrage about the Right's assault on our democracy threatened to overwhelm us. A year later, the dark and menacing clouds that hovered over The Nation's November 2, 2004 cover ("Four More Years") seem to be slowly lifting. Millions of us are organizing, agitating, mobilizing--and there are many hard-fought...

From a citizen: Dear Scott: We all know the problem: the leftward tilt of the Liberal Media Monolith . Anyway, the BIG problem is that the media can subtly reinforce an untruth, -- an urban legend -- to a point where it becomes the Conventional Wisdom. And we must face it, an incorrect opinion left uncontested is a fact . There are hundreds of examples the MSM/LMM deny. The canards that the Iraq war was "all about oil" and that Bush was "in bed" with the Saudis. Is that why oil closed yesterday above $58 a barrel? But here's is...

Dear Scott: I think it’s a pretty well foregone conclusion that there is a tilt towards the Left in the media, something which you battle every day. Some call it the Mainstream Media (MSM). I prefer to call it the Liberal Media Monolith. http://gregcontreras.blogspot.com/2005/06/note-to-scott-mcclellan-fox-cant-do-it.html

ROUNDTABLE Peter Beinart, the editor of The New Republic; Michael Tomasky, the executive editor of The American Prospect; and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation, are three leading voices for liberalism today. Now, following the re-election of George W. Bush, and with the continuing dominance of Republicans in Congress, the politics they stand for is arguably more embattled than at any time since 1933 and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Barry Gewen, an editor at the Book Review, asked the three editors to discuss and debate the present state of liberalism in America, and its future. Why has...

I n 2004 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Inspector Generals (IG) in various departments of the federal government issued reports revealing fraud, mismanagement and corruption. Here is my list of the Bush Administration's Ten Most Outrageous Scandals thus far uncovered by government investigators:

This past November, I wrote about the right's semantic trickery and proposed an idea for how we could debunk and decode the conservative's Orwellian Code of encrypted language: A Republican Dictionary. I put together a small list and asked readers to send me their own entries. Response has been overwhelming--more than 375 people have sent definitions. I published a small sample of the entries I've received in this space earlier this month. Below I'm publishing a second batch of reader submissions to this on-going project. We're going to continue posting additional entries in the weeks ahead, so click here to...

"Why is it that liberals are so afraid to take their own side in an argument?" asks Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation and one of the world's hardest leftists. Her question was directed at Sen. John Kerry because he has been parsing his positions to mask the truth that he is the most liberal U.S. senator. "But why allow the L-word to be defined — and turned into a negative — by thugs at the Republican National Committee?" she continued in her piece posted on the magazine's Web site. "Isn't it time, after more than 20 years of...

If you haven't been following the take-no-prisoners approach of the Congressional Republican leadership--ramming through Medicare legislation by threatening reluctant GOP colleagues, barring Democrats from conference committees, keeping roll call open for almost three hours (breaking with the usual fifteen minutes)--Senator Chuck Hagel's (R, Neb) recent remarks convey some sense of the damage being done to our parliamentary system by the rightwing thugs currently running Congress. "It's almost anything goes," said Senator Hagel, far from a liberal voice, in criticizing his own party's leadership. "I think we're on the edge of something dangerous if we don't turn it around...It's like the...

More inside the Beltway spinning at work: Libya's coming clean on WMD is solely the product of Bush's war in Iraq. That's what the Bush Administration wants us to believe. And the Beltway paper of record seems awfully accepting of the Administration's spin. In Sunday's Post, Dana Milbank writes, "It has been a week of sweet vindication for those who promulgated what they call the Bush Doctrine." Richard Perle scurried to tell Milbank, "It's always been at the heart of the Bush doctrine that a more robust policy would permit us to elicit greater cooperation from adversaries than we'd had...

SHOW: THE O'REILLY FACTOR (20:00) December 1, 2003 Monday Transcript # 120101cb.256 SECTION: News; Domestic LENGTH: 2381 words HEADLINE: Talking Points Memo and Top Story GUESTS: Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Tammy Bruce BYLINE: Bill O'Reilly BODY: BILL O'REILLY, HOST: THE O'REILLY FACTOR is on. Tonight, Hollywood gearing up to unseat President Bush. We'll tell you about a strategy meeting to be held tomorrow out there. Mr. Bush was criticized by some for visiting the troops in Iraq. We'll find out what's behind that. Is racism in play in the Michael Jackson case? We'll talk to a guy who says yes. And...

Will he or won't he? Will retired four-star General, ardent critic of Bush's national security policies, telegenic TV commentator, and recently declared Democrat Wesley Clark enter the crowded presidential race? As a former military officer, Democrats believe Clark could make the party more viable on foreign affairs than it's been since a general named George Marshall was containing Communism under the command of a president named Harry Truman. (That's the conventional wisdom, though the staggering cost of the badly bungled Iraqi occupation has diminished the Republican advantage on defense no matter who runs against Bush.) While media commentary on...