Free Republic

The Wall Street Journal uses the following reasoning to support the bailout bill: "Our point isn't to absolve Wall Street or Washington -- far from it. The point is that credit manias are by their very nature societal, which is why the panics that follow can do so much damage to Americans outside the financial arena. They are part of a larger psychology that sweeps everyone up in euphoria for a time, only to send everyone into a defensive crouch when the credit stops. The challenge at such a moment is to prevent a panic from becoming a crash that...

FREEP WSJ POLL - Who Won Friday Night’s Debate on Foreign Policy? http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/09/26/who-won-friday-nights-debate-on-foreign-policy/

If Barack Obama loses the presidential election, it may well be the result of a public perception that he is detached and elitist -- a politician whose expressions of empathy for hard-working Americans stem more from abstract solidarity than a real connection to the lives of millions of citizens. Suggestions that Sen. Obama has failed to relate to working- and middle-class voters in swing states have dogged his campaign for months. His choice of Sen. Joseph Biden as his running mate only marginally corrects the problem. While Obama supporters attempt to dismiss the charges about their candidate's perceived hauteur, they...

Bush's Lonely Decision September 15, 2008 Now that even Barack Obama has acknowledged that President Bush's surge in Iraq has "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams," maybe it's time the Democratic nominee gives some thought to how that success actually came about -- not just in Ramadi and Baghdad, but in the bureaucratic Beltway infighting out of which the decision to surge emerged. excerpt Consider what confronted Mr. Bush in 2006. Following a February attack on a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, Iraq's sectarian violence began a steep upward spiral. excerpt The "Sunni Awakening" of tribal sheiks against al...

Note: Brian Fitzpatrick contributed to this articleThis past Tuesday (Sept. 9), The Wall Street Journal allowed a homosexual activist to criticize GOP “gay-bashing” on the top of its op-ed page – but didn’t let readers know the author has a dog in the fight. In his lengthy article, “The GOP Should Kiss Gay-Bashing Goodbye,” James Kirchick is identified simply as “assistant editor of The New Republic.” But Mr. Kirchick is not just another opinion writer. Kirchick was named the 2007 Journalist of the Year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA). In 2006, he won the NLGJA’s Excellence...

Our call for "community organizer" jokes brought some amusing ones: • Nelles Hamilton: What's the difference between a "community organizer" and a pit bull? Teeth. • Dagny Billings: What's the difference between a "community organizer" and a seeing-eye dog? Even a blind man can see the dog is actually helping someone. • Michael Roberson: What's the difference between a "community organizer" and a Chihuahua? The Chuhuahua will eventually shut up. • Bob Vorick: What's the difference between a "community organizer" and a puppy? One will grow up to become a loyal servant of mankind. • O. Nara: What's the difference...

** EXCERPT ** "Sarah Palin is in the crucible of national politics. Just as sunlight through a magnifying glass becomes concentrated to a burning intensity, so too will the media's focus either destroy Mrs. Palin or strengthen her to a tempered resolve. Her Wednesday evening speech is David's stone flung at the liberal establishment's Goliath. If she delivers, we will soon be speaking of 'Palinism' politics and the era of the 'Palinites.'" -- Jim Sever "I don't think the lower 48 media pack will faze Governor Palin one bit. Sparring with them will be a piece of cake for someone...

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin went straight at the critics of her vice-presidential nomination, using an intensely watched national address to portray her experience as governor as sufficient, her time as a small-town mayor as an asset, and the attacks on her record as the work of an elitist media and political establishment. Speaking to a loudly enthusiastic crowd of delegates at the Republican National Convention, and to a national audience drawn into days of debate about her selection, Gov. Palin used the large stage to introduce both herself and her family. In the process, she also...

OPINION Why Obama Can't Close the Sale By AL HUBBARD and NOAM NEUSNER September 3, 2008 Even before John McCain shook up the presidential race by tapping Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate, polls weren't showing the late-August lead that Barack Obama (and many Republicans) expected. Why so? It's not because of the brilliance of the McCain campaign. Rather we believe that -- despite the media's best efforts to exempt Mr. Obama's policies from critical examination -- American voters aren't sheep. They pay attention to the candidates and positions and make wise decisions about who should lead the...

Iraq and Georgia, both of which have democratic governments, are sandwiched between Iran and Russia, two of the most authoritarian governments in the world. Russia has been collaborating with Iran to strengthen the latter's nuclear program and its military. It is also steadily arming Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez. Russia's invasion of Georgia came exactly one month after Iran test-fired its Shahab III intermediate ballistic missile in order to intimidate neighbors like Israel and Iraq, and two weeks after Mr. Chávez traveled to Moscow to formalize a "Strategic Alliance" with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev. Meanwhile, Iran's proxies...

If any doubt remained that former fighter pilot John McCain loves to take unconventional risks, he put them to bed Friday by picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Introduced in Dayton by Mr. McCain, Governor Palin swung the bat pretty well. We'll now see if she can hit curve balls. It's a daring pick because Mrs. Palin has never faced national scrutiny and hasn't had to deal with foreign policy. Most VP choices are designed to do no harm, and we tend to agree with the maxim. Democrats are already saying they can't wait for Mrs. Palin's...

Things are supposed to be looking rosy for Democrats this November. But in case Barack Obama loses the Presidency, an excuse is all ready to go: America's too racist to elect a black man. Not even, in his Vice Presidential pick Joe Biden's inimitable description, one so "articulate and bright and clean." This narrative has gained traction with the Democratic Presidential candidate's recent setbacks in the polls. We hear it from the convention crowd in Denver and liberals in the press. The older, poorer, white, often Hillary voter who sounds ambivalent about the Obama coronation is an enticing scapegoat.

Vladimir Putin proved last weekend that Russia's army can push over Georgia's army. In the past 48 hours, the West has begun to push back. If its leaders stay the course, they may yet turn Mr. Putin's meager military success into a significant political defeat. Snip Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are specialists in the Soviet era and are acutely aware of the price paid in human terms to bring the Soviet Union to dissolution in 1991. It must discomfit them to see that achievement threaten to unravel, especially after having invested so much...

The Wall Street Journal has posted (and we republish below) an extraordinary series of editorials that, since 2002, have doggedly exposed the financial and intellectual rot that is now washing across America in the form of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; you could find no better primer on the origins of the crisis we face: Paulson’s Fannie Test 07/15/08 – Does Hank Paulson want to leave the U.S. financial system better than he found it? That’s his test in the wake of his commitment to use taxpayer money to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.Fannie Mae Ugly 07/12/08 – Investors...

A bill introduced in Congress this week would "compel" oil and natural gas companies to produce from federal lands they are leasing. If only it were that easy to find and produce oil. Imagine, an act of Congress that could do what geology could not. These lawmakers ask why oil and gas companies want more access to federal lands to drill if they aren't using all of the 68 million acres they already have? Anyone with even the most basic understanding of how oil and natural gas are produced – and this should include many members of Congress – knows...

So much moral good was expected from "campaign-finance reform" that Barack Obama's announcement yesterday that he will opt out of public financing for his Presidential run is an historic moment. Senator Obama is the first candidate since the law was passed in the 1970s not to take matching funds for the general election. Even candidate George W. Bush, flush with cash in 2000 and 2004, didn't do that. The campaign-finance law may have been on life support, but being the one who finally pulled the plug seems to have put the Illinois freshman in a churlish mood. "John McCain's campaign...

Some of the most sensible decisions of the Supreme Court's centrist majority have concerned business law, and yesterday the Justices handed down another good one. The decision will protect the free-speech rights of all parties – companies and unions – during labor negotiations. At issue in Chamber of Commerce v. Brown was a 2000 California law that prohibited businesses from using state grants or program funds to "assist, promote or deter union organizing." That sounds neutral enough, even fair. However, at the behest of the labor lobby, the law was designed as an elaborate sleight-of-hand to use taxpayer money to...

McCain's Energy Drill June 18, 2008 Page A14 Behold, a miracle: Public anger over $4 gas is forcing at least some of our political class to confront their energy contradictions. Last week, Republicans Jim Walsh of New York and Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland -- two longstanding opponents of offshore drilling -- asked for a mulligan. We can now add John McCain to the roll: In a speech in Houston yesterday, the Senator finally came out in favor of increasing domestic energy supplies. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121374864081982763.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corporation and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, warned that financial pressures on US newspapers would see them "deteriorate tremendously". Speaking at the D: All Things Digital conference in California, he said newspapers will have to lower their profit margins from 30pc to 10pc, and publish stories people "want to read" rather than articles designed to win Pulitzer Prizes. Rupert Murdoch: 'huge opportunity'He said the Wall Street Journal, acquired by News Corp last year, would begin taking market share from its rival, the New York Times within months by increasing its coverage of general...

To say lawyers and technology mix like oil and water might be an overstatement. Still, from time to time we come across a tale in which a smallish technological problem leads to big headaches for lawyers. It always makes is wonder if life in the law weren’t a little less thorny back before the days of email and electronic discovery, back-up tapes and terabytes of data....one could download several documents through PACER’s federal court filing system, copy the black bars that cover the text on the screen and paste them into a Word document. And, like magic, there would appear...

NEW YORK Print circulation continues on its steep downward slide, the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed this morning in releasing the latest numbers for some of the country's largest dailies in the six-month period ending March 31, 2008. When a full analysis appears it is expected to find, according to sources, the biggest dip yet, about 3.5% daily and 4.5 for Sunday. The following circulation compares the new data to the same period a year ago. Daily circulation is the Monday-through-Friday average. -- The New York Times lost more than 150,000 copies on Sunday. Circulation on that day fell a...

NEW YORK Print circulation continues on its steep downward slide, the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed this morning in releasing the latest numbers for some of the country's largest dailies for the six-month period ending March 31, 2008. When a full analysis appears it is expected to find, according to sources, the biggest dip yet, about 3.5% daily and 4.5 for Sunday. The following circulation compares the new data to the same period a year ago. Daily circulation is the Monday-Friday average. --The New York Times lost more than 150,000 copies on Sunday. Circulation on that day fell a whopping...

<p>BRUSSELS -- Incendiary allegations in a new book by a prominent European prosecutor are further stoking anti-Western tensions in Serbia ahead of pivotal elections.</p> <p>Carla Del Ponte, who until January was chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, writes in a book released in Italian earlier this month that she found evidence that ethnic Serbs were kidnapped from Kosovo and taken to Albania to harvest and sell their organs.</p>

There must be some nostalgia at CBS News for the good old days, when the network was roundly hated and people at the political extremes longed to see it fail. Now that it is failing (it is a laggard in the ratings), nobody seems to care. Gone are the conservatives, who wanted to buy the network to sanitize it and rout out alleged liberal journalists. Also gone are the political lefties, who believed that CBS was the captive of its advertisers. In media, to be hated is an affirmation that you are succeeding. At The Radio & Television Correspondents’ Association...

People are figuring Hillary Clinton out. And that's a problem. At least, it is if you're Hillary Clinton. That's a theme of Pegggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column of today, Getting Mrs. Clinton. Along the way, the indispensable Ms. Noonan disperses numerous valuable insights into Hillary's persona. From our NewsBusters perspective, of particular interest were these paragraphs on the way the MSM has come to view her, and vice versa [emphasis added]: Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot...

The only thing new about the presidential campaign’s latest “race card” episode, which was triggered by former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, is that the Wall Street Journal’s March 13 editorial analysis of her comment was dead wrong. It started with the opening sentence: Is it just us, or does Barack Obama seem a mite too quick to play the race card when facing criticism from political opponents? Yes, it is just y’all. Obama did not play the race card, he simply responded to a racial comment by a high-profile Hillary Clinton supporter. “If Obama was a white man, he...

John McCain may help Republicans buck the historic trends that should give the Democrats the White House, according to the Wall Street Journal and NBC. Despite voters wanting to elect a Democrat by a 13-point margin, McCain sits in a virtual tie with both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, indicating a large amount of discontent with the specific Democratic candidates. In this case, even a tweaked sample of registered voters doesn’t help: A couple findings in the new poll capture how conflicted Americans are. By a 13-point margin, 50% to 37%, registered voters say they would prefer a Democrat to...

Last April, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece by me titled "Mr. Spitzer Has Gone Too Far." In it I expressed my belief that in America, everyone--including Hank Greenberg--is innocent until proven guilty. "Something has gone seriously awry," I wrote, "when a state attorney general can go on television and charge one of America's best CEOs and most generous philanthropists with fraud before any charges have been brought, before the possible defendant has even had a chance to know what he personally is alleged to have done, and while the investigation is still under way." Since there have...

One might call it Shakespearian if there were a shred of nobleness in the story of Eliot Spitzer's fall. There is none. Governor Spitzer, who made his career by specializing in not just the prosecution, but the ruin, of other men, is himself almost certainly ruined. Mr. Spitzer's brief statement yesterday about a "private matter" surely involves what are widely reported to be his activities with an expensive prostitution ring discovered by the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. Those who believe Eliot Spitzer is getting his just deserts may be entitled to that view, but...

Over the past week an unprecedented level of attention has been received by my YouTube channel, where for several months we have hosted a powerful video documenting torture and abuse of prisoners in Yekaterinaburg. For more than 60 days, the controversial video had about 6,500 views, but after a Wall Street Journal article about Lev Ponomarev linked to it, within days there were more than 30,000 views and hundreds of comments. However yesterday I received the following notification in my email inbox: Dear Member: After being flagged by members of the YouTube community and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video...

John Fund writes: Mr. McCain bruised his standing with conservatives on the issue when in 2005 he became a key player in the so-called gang of 14, which derailed an effort to end Democratic filibusters of Bush judicial nominees. More recently, Mr. McCain has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito, because “he wore his conservatism on his sleeve.” My hostility to John McCain is well known to regular readers, and it’s tempting to believe this....

Excerpt - The Wall Street Journal's Web site, WSJ.com, will keep a significant portion of its content behind its paid-subscription wall, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said Thursday. Speculation that News Corp. would make WSJ.com a completely free site had been rife in recent months, since Mr. Murdoch had signaled he was contemplating lifting the subscription wall. Mr. Murdoch had indicated that lifting the pay wall could broaden the Journal's online audience and boost its Web advertising revenue, offsetting any loss in subscription revenues. ~ snip ~

A politically progressive friend of mine always seemed to root against baseball teams from the South. The Braves, the Rangers, the Astros -- he hated them all. I asked him why, to which he replied, "Southerners are prejudiced." The same logic is evident in the complaint the American political left has with conservative voters. According to the political analysis of filmmaker Michael Moore, whose perception of irony apparently does not extend to his own words, "The right wing, that is not where America's at . . . It's just a small minority of people who hate. They hate. They exist...

Excerpt - Murdoch's Dow opens Web Journal to some free access LONDON, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Dow Jones & Co has begun opening access to previously paid-for online Wall Street Journal content just weeks after the $5.6 billion buyout by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (NWSa.N: Quote, Profile, Research). An item in the Wall Street Journal Europe newspaper on Thursday said the company has rolled out a new Web site offering free access to all its editorials and opinion columns. Core news content remains a subscription service. The move represents one of the first tangible signs of how Murdoch is putting...

How often do the editorial boards of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal not only agree, but coincide on foreign policy? Rarely enough so that today's twin broadsides on the Democratic presidential contenders is worthy of special notice. Both editorial boards scold the Democrats for not only getting Iraq wrong, but also for seriously misrepresenting the progress achieved through the surge. The Post's criticisms get tart indeed: A reasonable response to these facts might involve an acknowledgment of the remarkable military progress, coupled with a reminder that the final goal of the surge set out by President Bush --...

<p>When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.</p>

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar. Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so. But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression [snip] Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render...

It was the fall of 1999, and the newspaper I edited, The Wall Street Journal, was awash in money. Thanks to the dot-com boom and the lush advertising it generated, we were running the presses at full tilt nearly every day, yet had to turn away ads for lack of space. Even as the good times rolled, two non-newspaper names kept coming up. I recall being stunned to learn that the main place where our own readers checked stock prices was the finance section of Yahoo. A couple of kids from Stanford had launched a search engine called Google. Already,...

This editorial was written in 1949 by the late Vermont Royster and has been published annually since. When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar. Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so. But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression--for those who...

With a week to go before the News Corporation takes control of Dow Jones & Company, there are already management changes under way at the top of Dow Jones. Richard F. Zannino, Dow Jones’s chief executive, will leave the company after staying for a time to help with the transition, Dow Jones announced yesterday. People briefed on the matter said that both Mr. Zannino and L. Gordon Crovitz, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, would be succeeded by trusted lieutenants of Rupert Murdoch soon after the takeover was complete. Executives at both companies say there will be a broader...

The Iowa caucuses will be held on January third, and voters in New Hampshire will cast their votes in the nation's first primary on January eighth. Additional January primaries and caucuses will be held in Michigan, South Carolina, and Florida among other states. And on February fifth, Super Tuesday, nearly two dozen states from New York, New Jersey and California and in-between the two coasts could determine the presidential nominees of both major political parties. Senator Hillary Clinton has been leading in the national polls as well as in Iowa and in New Hampshire against her two main rivals, Senator...

Murdoch Says WSJ Web Site to Drop Fees Anticipating Big Ad Revenue, Murdoch Says He Expects to Drop Subscription Fees Wsj.com ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) -- News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said Tuesday he intends to make access to The Wall Street Journal's Web site free, dropping subscription fees in exchange for anticipated ad revenue. "We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having 1 million (subscribers), having at least 10 million to 15 million in every corner of the earth," Murdoch said. News Corp. has agreed to acquire Dow Jones & Co. for about...

NEW YORK The Wall Street Journal editorial page, never a huge fan of the Clintons, took what may be its harshest shot yet at Hillary Clinton today, with an editorial that called here everything from a double-talker to a truth-evader. “In the 1990s, ‘Clintonesque’ became a by-word for political double-speak. ...,” the editorial began. Later it noted, “But with another Clinton running as if she's all but a sure thing for the White House, Clintonesque is once again becoming a politically relevant adjective. ... The junior Senator from New York seems increasingly to have adopted her husband's political methods ......

Being a woman is Mrs. Clinton's biggest asset--and she's trying to seem like one.

Rupert Murdoch, who is set to complete his $5 billion takeover of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, says he wants to move the newspaper beyond its financial core and target mainstream competitors such as the New York Times. Speaking at a conference in San Francisco on Wednesday night, the News Corp. chief said: “We have a lot of plans and a lot of ideas that need to be refined. But I want to improve it in every way – in what it does now in finance to start with, but I also want to add more national and international...

It is believed, with some cause, that partisanship is the reason "nothing gets done" in Washington. So what if there was an issue, involving the poorest of the poor, on which there was bipartisan agreement, and still nothing got done? Our most battle-scarred readers will guess immediately what is at issue -- farm subsidies! At the moment, the sun and moon have aligned to form a left-right coalition to raise the lot of some of Africa's farmers. Arguably the greatest misfortune to befall these farmers is their crop: cotton. In the U.S., the lords of King Cotton still have the...

In Olso Friday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World. The prize was also not awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police earlier this year while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe.

Just about every month, CNW Market Research meets with a group of would-be car buyers and plays a trick on them. Sometimes the company, which specializes in auto sales trends, takes a Toyota Camry, removes any identifying logos, and tells them it's a new model from one of the U.S.-based auto makers. Or it takes a domestic car and tells them it's a Toyota or another import make. Either way, the result is the same. "If they think it's an American car, the perception of the vehicle falls dramatically," said Art Spinella, vice president of the Bandon, Ore.-based firm. "Detroit...

It's Forward Into Battle!" That's how Newsweek describes the impending battle between the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, once Rupert Murdoch is legally owner of the financial daily. There are all sorts of predictions about what will happen, particularly how Murdoch might change the Wall Street Journal, And what the New York Times will do to meet the challenge. Newsweek, at least, predicts “all-out war”. Others don't go quite so far, but there is agreement that Murdoch has lots of ideas for the Wall Street Journal once he takes over. If he accomplishes them all, he will...

Despite his remarks on coverage, some expect changes on the Journal's business side first. If the Gray Lady didn't have enough problems battling industrywide woes, now she has Rupert Murdoch to worry about. The media billionaire has made no secret of his desire to take aim at the New York Times once his News Corp. acquires Dow Jones & Co. and its flagship Wall Street Journal in a $5-billion deal expected to close this fall. Murdoch said during an earnings conference call last week that he wanted the financial newspaper to have "more coverage of national, international and nonbusiness news...