Free Republic

We’ve covered the hot debate raging between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church on this site. And we’ve covered plenty of arguments for and against the Obamacare mandate that businesses, through their insurers, offer free contraception. But we haven’t covered a defense quite like this. It goes like this: “Maybe the founders were wrong to guarantee free Exercise of religion,” but they did and the administration needs to respect that. Wait, what? That‘s what Washington Post editor Melinda Henneberger told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews last night while defending Catholics. Here’s the full quote: “Maybe the Founders were wrong to guarantee...

Borrowing a page from Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s investigation of how elected officials funnel taxpayer dollars to projects that increase the value of properties they own, the Washington Post has conducted a study revealing that 33 members of Congress earmarked more than $300 million for projects within two miles of land they own...

Things haven't gotten much better for Newt Gingrich ..... The former House speaker abruptly canceled a meeting with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval ... Not even Gingrich's campaign advisers know why the campaign scheduler called it off, irking them and those in Sandoval's office who had helped set up the event. ..... Other signs of disarray appeared Wednesday. Gingrich's schedule called for a 1 p.m. rally in Reno, but volunteers put out word that the event would be at noon — and that supporters should show up at 11:30. .....

Would someone please buy the Washington Post's Josh White a clue? He can't seem to get a handle on the "motive" for the actions of Yonathan Melaku (actually, I think White is pretending). Melaku has just pleaded guilty and will be sentenced to 25 years in jail. Authorities say he vandalized military grave markers, shot at the Pentagon and military museums, and was working on an improvised explosive device. But the headline to White's story (HT Atlas Shrugs) and the reporter's content act as if no one has the foggiest idea what drop Melaku to do what he did (words...

Washington Post blogger, Erik Wemple, has accused certain media outlets of declining to report on a potentially big political scandal that recently broke. Obviously Wemple must be referring to the arrest last week of Zachary Edwards, the former Obama staffer and member of a prominent Democrat campaign consulting firm who was accused of attempting to steal the identity of the Republican Secretary of State of Iowa in an attempt to falsely smear him. Neither Wemple's Washington Post nor any of the other major media outlets with the exception of the Des Moines Register which attempted to place a positive spin...

On Monday, NewsBusters broke a story about Washington Post blogger Aaron Blake using Twitter to dig up dirt on Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. On Tuesday, the former House Speaker spoke to St. Louis radio host and Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch about this saying, "It’s a little sad to see a paper the quality of the Washington Post stoop to...the National Enquirer approach to life" adding they "would rather worry about rumors about conservatives than facts about the President" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Media Bias: In the early days of the Gulf War, pundits marveled at the specter of Iraqi troops surrendering to journalists. Well, now it's even worse: Journalists are giving the Democratic Party its talking points. The Washington Post's 27-year-old star blogger Ezra Klein has been called "whiz kid," and "brat packer" and a "wunderkind." Now he's actually advising Democratic chiefs of staff, briefing them last week about the supercommittee in Congress, according to a report by Fishbowl-DC on MediaBistro.com. That means the relatively novel idea that bloggers can be placed on an equal footing with reporters in congressional briefings has...

More realistically, Sacramento’s Legislative Analysis Office calls the Central Valley starting point a “big gamble.” In the all-too-likely event that funding for the rest of the system never materializes, the report adds, “the state will be left with a rail segment unconnected to major urban areas that has little if any chance of generating the ridership to operate without a significant state subsidy.” It would be a train to nowhere, but at least it would go nowhere fast. As questionable as this project is, we would have less business objecting if the only money at risk was California’s. But the...

The Washington Post’s vendetta against Cuban-American Marco Rubio continues with another hit-piece last week and with MSM soulmates CNN and The Los Angeles Times chiming in. But the WaPo’s rancor against the most lopsidedly Republican voters in America didn’t start with the Rubio hit-piece last month. To wit: Imagine the proar from the MSM/Democratic axis upon discovering a Tea-Party placard that celebrates the mass-expulsion of Hispanic U.S. citizens from U.S. shores. (Heck, one that celebrated the expulsion of illegals would detonate their hair-trigger charge of ‘RACISM!”) Well, back in August 2007 a mass-expulsion of U.S. citizens of Hispanic heritage was...

Last week, the Washington Post attacked Marco Rubio for “misrepresenting” his family’s story. The Post got called out by other newspapers for the Post’s egregious truth stretching to make its story fit. In the quotes the Washington Post cited, the reporter misrepresented the context of Marco Rubio’s remarks. It was true that Rubio had gotten some details wrong. But it was also very clear that they were the innocent mistakes of a son retelling his parents’ story. It was also true the Washington Post got parts of its reporting wrong. But the Washington Post has not stopped. Now the paper...

The Washington Post released on its website yesterday afternoon an article by Manuel Roig-Franzia that has to rank as one of the more disgraceful pieces of personal hit journalism in memory—alleging that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio “embellished” the facts surrounding the departure of his parents from Cuba. You can judge for yourself by the piece itself and the devastating takedown of it by the Miami Herald‘s Marc Caputo. I just want to offer a few thoughts, based on years working in newsrooms, of how a piece like Roig-Franzia’s comes to be and why it is usually published even when it...

Sen. Marco Rubio is firing back at a Washington Post report that claims he embellished his Cuban family’s history. *** “To suggest my family’s story is embellished for political gain is outrageous,” he said in a written statement. “The dates I have given regarding my family’s history have always been based on my parents’ recollections of events that occurred over 55 years ago and which were relayed to me by them more than two decades after they happened. I was not made aware of the exact dates until very recently. “What’s important is that the essential facts of my family’s...

Oh, no. Looks like the Washington Post has put the Reagan curse on Herman Cain. In the lead story in the Post's Friday electronic edition, Post reporter Sandhya Somashekhar characterizes Cain's positions as "simple." For the smart set - those sophisticates who see nothing but gradations of gray - simple just means "simplistic." How many times was the great Ronald Reagan pasted with the "simple" label by liberal and Republican establishment detractors? Now it's Cain's turn to be Reagan-simple. That should buck up Cain considerably. The Washington Post and New York Times don't give front-page, lead story billing to candidates...

Before the MNSBC-Politico Debate, I wondered why in God’s name the Republican candidates would bother giving press and air time to a bunch of liberals asking snide questions down their noses to the GOP about issues not one person cares about.After that debate it convinced me the GOP candidates should be more discerning in their debates. And now, as Ben Domenech notes and I too can confirm, I think the candidates should boycott the Washington Post Bloomberg debate on October 11th. The debate is billed by the Washington Post as “exclusively” about the economy. I had relished them having this...

Four in 10 Americans “strongly” disapprove of how President Obama is handling job as president in the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, the highest that number has risen during his time in office and a sign of the hardening opposition to him as he seeks a second term. While the topline numbers are troubling enough, dig deeper into them and the news gets no better for Obama. Forty-three percent of independents — a group the president spent the better part of the last year courting — strongly disapprove of the job he is doing. Forty seven percent of people 65...

Translating the WaPo’s Bank-Talking-Point Editorial By Abigail Caplovitz Field | September 7, 2011 Yesterday the Washington Post ran a grotesquely bank-skewed editorial chastising New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for his refusal to play ball with the hush money “50 state AG” settlement on the table. Matt Stoller pointed out that the Washington Post owns Kaplan schools, a for profit network of schools, and Schneiderman’s investigating for-profit schools, a fact that the WaPo didn’t disclose. But the Kaplan connection is important in another way too, as it probably explains why the WaPo had so much empathy for the banks...

Monday, August 29, 2011. 6:24 PM Toward the beginning of his radio show today, Glenn Beck responded to an effort this past Friday by the Washington Post to smear him and his Mormon faith by means of a skewed article with an even more misleading headline (“Mormon Glenn Beck: Hurricane Irene and East Coast earthquake a ‘blessing’ from God,”) As discussed in an earlier article in the Philadelphia Jewish Culture Examiner space, the Post was successful if its goal was to spread the impression that Beck really believed that last week’s natural East Coast hurricane and earthquake were themselves a...

A quote often (mis)attributed to German National Socialist propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels is “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.” That thought process certainly appears to have been absorbed by the Washington Post. Friday’s Post blared a headline “Mormon Glenn Beck: Hurricane Irene and East Coast earthquake a ‘blessing’ from God,” connected to an article by Elizabeth Tenety in its “On Faith: A Conversation on Religion and Politics” section. Tenety’s first paragraph reads: "Not willing to be outdone by Pat Robertson, Glenn Beck recently weighed in on God’s communication by way of natural disasters, telling his...

A quote often (mis)attributed to German National Socialist propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels is “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.” That thought process certainly appears to have been absorbed by the Washington Post. Friday’s Post blared a headline “Mormon Glenn Beck: Hurricane Irene and East Coast earthquake a ‘blessing’ from God,” connected to an article by Elizabeth Tenety in its “On Faith: A Conversation on Religion and Politics” section. Tenety’s first paragraph reads: "Not willing to be outdone by Pat Robertson, Glenn Beck recently weighed in on God’s communication by way of natural disasters, telling his...

Today is the two year anniversary of Sarah Palin resigning from being Governor of Alaska. In the light of that resignation here is a piece written before the midterm election which highlights the impact that resignation had on the election and the future of the Republican party. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2590825/posts

Former senator says Vargas should stay in U.S. Former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) said Sunday that Jose Antonio Vargas, the former Washington Post reporter who came out last month as an illegal immigrant, should be allowed to "become an American." "It's a difficult problem, and what we need to do is find a way in which Jose can continue to contribute to this country," Martinez said on ABC's "This Week." "He wants to be an American," Martinez continued. "This is a great thing. This is the Fourth of July. We need to talk about the fact that this is a...

A Mark Halperin misstep this is not, but Newsweek magazine columnist Evan Thomas had some pretty strong words for President Barack Obama Friday. On “Inside Washington,” host Gordon Peterson asked his panel to suggest a way to overcome the current impasse and get Congress and the White House moving on a budget deal. Thomas offered up a solution, but also expressed his frustration with Obama. “Yeah, because it’s happened before – Obama has got to be President of the United States,” Thomas said. “He has to be two things. He has to make a public case of how bad is...

Colby King of the Washington Post comments on the GOP field.

Rarely does a story hit with the impact of former Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas’s revelation in the New York Times magazine Wednesday that he is an undocumented immigrant. Within minutes of it appearing on the Times’ website, it burned across Twitter like wildfire, pushed along each time with passionate endorsements from influential journalists. Meanwhile, ABC News blasted excerpts from its exclusive interview with Vargas, which will air on “World News” and “Nightline” tomorrow and “Good Morning America” on Friday.... The Post, the paper that hired Vargas as an intern, put him on a team that won a Pulitzer...

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitizer prize winning reporter who has worked for the Washington Post and Huffington Post, has revealed that he is an illegal alien in a coordinated media push with the New York Times and ABC News seeking amnesty for illegal aliens like him.Vargas also revealed that he breached White House security by using a fake ID, including when he covered a state dinner. And that a superior at the Washington Post knew and approved of his actions.Vargas made the revelations in an article he authored published in the upcoming New York Times Sunday Magazine.Vargas writes that at...

They’re an opposition research arm of the Democratic Party . NYT: Help Us Investigate the Sarah Palin E-Mail Records On Friday, the State of Alaska will release more than 24,000 of Sarah Palin’s e-mails covering much of her tenure as governor of Alaska . Times reporters will be in Juneau, the state capital, to begin the process of reviewing the e-mails, which we will be posting on nytimes.com starting on Friday afternoon E.D.T. We’re asking readers to help us identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight. Interested users can fill out a simple...

An unusual example of media efficiency. There’s a huge new supply available of her e-mails as governor and an eternally huge demand among Palin-hating liberals for new dirt on her. If you’re a cash-strapped editor, why not match one to the other and let the market do your work for you? Palin derangement is like the wind, or the sun: All the media has to do is harness it to provide a limitless supply of productivity.Just think, if she runs for president, they might be able to outsource whole stories to their liberal readership instead of just document analysis. Then...

President Obama spent last week talking about the success of the auto bailout, but his conclusions about its success may be a bit misleading, according to the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler. The title of the piece is: President Obama’s phony accounting on the auto industry bailout. Kessler spells out four examples of things President Obama has said since June 4 on the topic of the auto bailout that aren't completely correct. * Chrysler has repaid every dime to the government: The U.S. government only got 90% back of their combined loans to Chrysler, made during both the Bush and Obama...

Former White House lawyer, David B. Rivkin, Jr. is having quite a run. On the heels of his national success planning and leading the lawsuit by 26 plaintiff states challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, Rivkin is being honored as one of the best law firm writers in America. The prestigious 2011 Burton Award for Legal Achievement has been awarded to Rivkin for his Washington Post article, “Why the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Policy is Doomed,” which ran in the Feb. 13, 2010 edition. The article, written by Rivkin and his Baker Hostetler law colleague Lee A. Casey,...

From JunkScience.com WashPost: Freedom of Information Act not for skeptics’ useby Steve Milloy In a bizarre Memorial Day editorial, the Washington Post criticized climate skeptics for using the Freedom of Information Act to pry documents concerning Climategater Michael Mann from the University of Virginia. The Post labeled the skeptics’ FOIA efforts as “harrassing” and “nuisance tactics.”The Post, however, has been entirely silent on Greenpeace’s efforts to FOIA documents from the University of Virginia concerning Pat Michaels, University of Delaware concerning David Legates and from Harvard University concerning Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas — efforts that are truly “harrassing” and “nuisance” in...

Should Republicans abandon Paul Ryan's plan for Medicare? Yes No

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Washington Post Co. said Friday that revenue was flat in its newspaper publishing division in the first quarter but net profit fell by two-thirds on lower enrollment in its education business. The Post Co., which owns the Kaplan chain of schools and television outlets in addition to its flagship newspaper The Washington Post, said net profit was down 67 percent in the quarter at $15.2 million. Revenue was down seven percent in the quarter that ended on April 3 to $1.06 billion while earnings per share fell to $1.87 from $4.91 per share a year ago....

Washington Post “fact-checker� Glenn Kessler awards Rep. Paul Ryan two Pinocchios for statements like this: There’s a lot of misinformation about what we are proposing and what we are not proposing. We’re saying: Save Medicare by reforming it for people who are 54 and below by working like a system just like members of Congress and federal employees have. To claim that Ryan is misleading people about his plan, Kessler takes a page from the Politifact playbook, converting differences of opinion into factual disputes.What’s Kessler’s beef? Under a 1997 law, the government pays a set rate of 75 percent of...

Here’s a concession from a Democrat Party partisan in the Washington Post: The truth is that Palin remains the only real first-tier presidential candidate the Republicans have — the only candidate who has been on a national ticket. Should she decide to run an active campaign, she would likely recover a good bit of the ground she has lost…It’s still not too late for her to give a series of serious policy speeches; not too late for her to put together a real campaign staff; not too late for her to crisscross Iowa and New Hampshire; and not too late,...

Two mainstream news organizations are receiving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars from Obamacare’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) — a $5 billion grant program that’s doling out cash to companies, states and labor unions in what the Obama administration considers an effort to pay for health insurance for early retirees. The Washington Post Company raked in $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies and CBS Corporation secured $722,388 worth of Americans’ money. “It is fine with me if they continue covering the ObamaCare debate,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, in an e-mail to The Daily Caller. “When NBC used to...

The Washington Post suspended one of its most seasoned reporters Wednesday after editors determined that “substantial” parts of two recent news articles were taken without attribution from another newspaper. Sari Horwitz, longtime Post investigative reporter, was suspended for three months for plagiarizing sections of stories that first appeared in the Arizona Republic. The stories concerned the investigation of...Jared Lee Loughner... Horwitz copied two paragraphs from a Republic story ... when she wrote an article that was first published on The Post’s Web site March 4. A second story...included 10 paragraphs from a Republic story about a search of Loughner’s home....

The Washington Post apologized Wednesday for publishing two articles in March that "contained substantial material that was borrowed and duplicated, without attribution, from The Arizona Republic newspaper." "This is the most serious kind of matter for a news organization," executive editor Marcus Brauchli said in a statement to The Cutline. "Taking information without attribution is unethical and not in keeping with The Post's standards of journalism. There are no mitigating circumstances for plagiarism." The Post, in the apology, doesn't name the reporter or link to the articles in question. But from the paper's own description of the articles, published shortly...

Our 911 protest was "defensible opposition" against the Ground Zero Mosquestrosity. Our June 6th protest was "defensible opposition" against the Ground Zero mosquestrosity. So the Islamic overlord imam Rauf, who hopes to institute sharia in America and extols the work of the anti-American vile Jew hater Qaradawi, is once again revealing his supremacism and contempt for 70% of America's people. Wake up, America.

In order to force the absence of a “quorum,” and thus delay an inevitable Republican victory, senate Democrats have fled Wisconsin, holding their votes hostage “Dog Day Afternoon” style in motels across Illinois. In the mean-time union members, government employees, and teachers—some with students in tow—have been playing hooky to mau-mau the remaining members of the state senate. Enter Monday's lead editorial in the Washington Post. Choosing the side of moderate reform rather than rabid collectivism, the Post cautioned that “abolishing contract negotiations between unions and management is not necessarily a panacea for state and local governments - or a...

Washington Post owned Slate.com used a crude misogynist wordplay to call Sarah Palin a c*** in a headline for an article published Tuesday about a supposed secret Sarah Palin Facebook account. The headline reads: Sarah Palin Uses Alternate Facebook Accunt to Praise Sarah PalinThe article, posted in Slate’s “Slatest” section, is based on an article from Wonkette titled, Sarah Palin Has Secret ‘Lou Sarah’ Facebook Account To Praise Other Sarah Palin Facebook Account, that in a rare show of class for Wonkette does not use the sexist slur in the article.Two commmenters at Slatest criticized Slate for the slur with...

Last year I wrote a column about how President Obama totally disrespected Black America (during Black History Month of all times) and there was no outcry from within our community. Now, you have the same thing happening again, of course during Black History Month. This time the offender is the illustrious Washington Post (WP) newspaper. They are supposed to be one of the top newspapers in the country, so this makes their offense even more egregious. Next Wednesday, the WP will be hosting a town hall meeting in Prince George’s County, Md. For those who live outside of this area,...

Washington Post owned Slate.com used a crude misogynist wordplay to call Sarah Palin a c*** in a headline for an article published Tuesday about a supposed secret Sarah Palin Facebook account.The headline reads: Sarah Palin Uses Alternate Facebook Accunt To Praise Sarah PalinThe article, posted in Slate's "Slatest" section, is based on an article from Wonkette titled, Sarah Palin Has Secret ‘Lou Sarah’ Facebook Account To Praise Other Sarah Palin Facebook Account, that in a rare show of class for Wonkette does not use the sexist slur in the article.Two commmenters at Slatest criticized Slate for the slur with one...

What would be worse: if Norah actually believes it--or if she doesn't? Norah O'Donnell has claimed that the Washington Post and the New York Times provide straight-up information, without bias, of the sort that would be appealing to members of the putatively non-partisan "No Labels" group. Norah's mind-boggling assertion came on today's Morning Joe during a discussion of AOL's acquisition of HuffPo for $315 million. Reacting to indications that Arianna Huffington may be be guiding her creation toward the center and away from its leftist roots, WaPo's Jonathan Capehart argued the move made sense on the theory that people such...

I should probably preface this post by admitting that I was a participant in the Washington Post's America's Next Great Pundit contest, a misguided and perhaps ultimately futile attempt by WaPo to expand its youth demographic among the ever-declining readership it lays claim to. In fact, my submission was drawn from an essay posted to this very website, entitled-appropriately enough, considering the subject of this post-Spin. You can judge for yourself whether it's worthy of being published in Washington D.C.'s most widely-circulated newspaper. My own view, even prior to submitting the piece, was that it would be rejected by the...

M o n d ay,  January 24, 2011Ever wonder how the ultra-liberal Democrat supporting Washington Post survives?What WaPo doesn't want you to knowFrom Eric Dondero:In the age of the enormously successful cable giant Fox and internet news sources, Google News, Yahoo News, and Drudge, scores of print newspapers are going under. Just in the last two years: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Philly Daily News, Ann Arbor News, and Rocky Mountain News have all called it quits. So, how does the grand old Washington Post survive in such an environment? From DailyCensored.com:the answer to how the Washington Post is surviving can be found in...

Like an addict vowing to give up booze or heroin, Washington Post writer Dana Milbank is organizing readers to vow to not read about Sarah Palin for the next month. Kristinn Taylor and Andreea Shea King write in Big Journalism: "The Post has picked up the call initiated this morning by Post columnist Dana Milbank, adding a Twitter link on the column page. The link generates a message to be sent from a Twitter member's page that reads, 'I'm making February a Palin-free month. Will you join me?' "The Post added the Twitter link to Milbank's column this afternoon, several...

Former Govs. Mike Huckabee (Ark.), Sarah Palin (Alaska) and Mitt Romney (Mass.) make up the top tier of the 2012 Republican presidential field, according to a new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News. Huckabee took 21 percent of the vote while Palin received 19 percent and Romney 17 percent among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents. No other potential candidate made it into double digits, although former House Speaker Newt Gingrich received 9 percent and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took 8 percent. The rest of the field received 3 percent or less support. The results were largely consistent across...

As a candidate for president, Sen. Barack Obama nonetheless pledged to revive the assault-weapons ban. These weapons serve no conceivable lawful purpose. Mayors and police chiefs, whose constituencies pay the bloodiest price for traffic in such guns, have pleaded for sensible laws. In Mexico, where assault weapons purchased in the United States have been responsible for tens of thousands of murders, Mr. Obama's counterpart, Felipé Calderon, has lodged similar requests. But President Obama has taken only minor steps toward redeeming Candidate Obama's promise. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a nonprofit organization that advocates for gun control, noted that...

<p>Saturday's rampage does illustrate the need for tighter control of semiautomatic weapons and ammunition. The gunman arrived at the supermarket with a Glock semiautomatic equipped with an extended magazine of about 30 bullets and additional ammunition. The long-lapsed federal ban on assault weapons, which prohibited such high-capacity magazines, should be reinstated: There is no justification, outside of law enforcement or military use, for such ammunition. A magazine with a smaller capacity might not have stopped the gunman, but it might have at least reduced the carnage. President Obama once promised to push to reinstate the assault weapons ban but has backed down in the face of political opposition, and it is, sadly, hard to imagine that the shooting will usher in a new era of political openness to even reasonable gun control measures. It is a sad irony that last year Arizona joined Alaska and Vermont in permitting anyone over 21 to carry a concealed weapon without a background check.</p>

Arizona gun laws were relaxed further in 2010 when Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signed a National Rifle Association-backed bill repealing a state law requiring gun owners to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. State law now permits anyone 21 or older and legally qualified to own a firearm to carry the weapon without a concealed-to-carry permit. Brewer's predecessor, Janet Napolitano, now secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, had previously vetoed attempts to toss out the concealed-carry permit law. The new law won praise from gun groups. "This is a major victory for gun owners in Arizona,"...