Free Republic

Thirty-five dollars: As I write, that’s the price for a barrel of oil. We’re extracting like crazy and burning like there’s no tomorrow, for real, pumping carbon dioxide into the air we all share. Meanwhile, very few pumps are turning a profit. Ten thousand dollars: that’s what I would have offered a climate change denier pundit, who prefers to be called a climate change “doubter.” I was ready to pay Marc Morano $10,000 if 2016 turns out not to be one of the 10 hottest years ever recorded. He didn’t take the bet, because 2016 will indeed be among the...

<p>TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's foreign minister said Friday that the al-Qaida operatives Iran now has in custody were arrested before the May 12 suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia and couldn't have been involved in the attacks.</p> <p>"There is no possibility that they were able to do any (bombing) operation nor could they lead these kind of military operations," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters at one of several impromptu news conferences he's held recently to counter American accusations that his country is failing to fight terrorism. "When they are in prison all their connections are cut with the outside."</p>

When Osama bin Laden was banished from Sudan in 1996, he left the country in a rented Soviet jet — an aged and antique Tupolev flown by a Russian pilot he did not trust. With him were a few bodyguards, his military commander, Saif al-Adel, and two sons named Sa’ad and Omar — both young men in their late teens. Although it was the corrupt Islamic government of Sudan that had robbed Osama bin Laden of much of his vast personal wealth, he blamed America for his misfortunes, according to Pulitzer Prize-winner Lawrence Wright. “He held America responsible for the...

The Department of Homeland Security responded Friday to questions from Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., about why the agency was allegedly planning to buy some 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the next five years. DHS told Whispers it regularly fills all of its goods and services requirements at one time because it's cheaper for the agency, and that the 1.6 billion number was misleading because the language of DHS's purchase said it would need "up to" a certain amount. One solicitation by the agency—for training centers and law enforcement personnel—was for "up to" 750 million rounds of training ammunition over...

In the 1967 film "A Guide for the Married Man," a husband, played by a peerless Walter Matthau, is given lessons in ways to cheat on his wife safely. The most essential rule: "Deny! Deny! Deny!"—no matter what. In an instructive scene, he's shown a wife undone by shock, and screaming, with reason: She has just walked in on her husband making love to a glamorous stranger. "What are you doing," she wails, "who is that woman?" "What woman, where?" the husband serenely counters, as he and the tart in question get out of bed and calmly dress. So the...

From Mark's website - Also, Mark gets an excellent call from a neurosurgeon who gives an inside look on what exactly Obamacare will do. For example, instead of patients, some people over a certain age will be considered, "units," as they try to dehumanize patients and the care they receive.

On the eve of his appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee to discuss the Solyndra bankruptcy, the Energy Department has provided reporters with advance excerpts from Secretary Chu’s prepared statement. The remarks indicate that Chu will continue to defend the green energy loan guarantee program that gave the now-bankrupt solar panel company more than $527 million in taxpayer dollars.

"Film critic and talk show host Michael Medved has decided to put in print on Townhall.com the attack he has frequently broadcast on radio against those of us who are opposing the North American integration being pursued by the Bush Administration activity under the auspices of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.".... ....."Serious readers for centuries are alert to recognize that ad hominem attacks generally mask an inability to counter an argument on logical or evidentiary grounds. In the days of Lenin, communist agitators took the ad hominem attack to a new level, perfecting techniques to discredit their...

In a stunning and historic trip under the utmost secrecy, a delegation of families of fallen U.S. troops have traveled to Iraq to counter critics of the war effort, just days before the Nov. 7 midterm elections. The delegation of “Gold Star Families” agreed to provide the Sacramento Union with an exclusive account of their trip to Iraq based on the assurance that news of their mission would not be published until they had safely left Amman, Jordan. So secret is their trip that even members of the Bush Administration were kept in the dark about their planned activities. They’ve...

WASHINGTON -- The last time the Dow Jones industrial average closed at a record high, America was living in a giddy economic era when good times and budget surpluses seemed as if they might continue indefinitely. It was Jan. 14, 2000, the start of another year, another century and another millennium. The economy was roaring along. The jobless rate was a low 4 percent. The "new economy" of young entrepreneurs energized markets with new tech companies that didn't turn a profit. Nobody seemed to care, and excesses piled on top of excesses.

<p>FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ON NOT CAPTURING BIN LADEN: 'At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers. They ridicule me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed'...</p>

Yesterday evening, I received a call from my column syndicate, Creators Syndicate. The Associated Press had phoned my editor to inform her that it would be sending a response to my column yesterday about detained AP photographer Bilal Hussein. (Funny how quickly they respond now. Where have they been the past five months? Oh, right: Busy covering up the news about Hussein's April 12 capture by the military at a Ramadi apartment with an alleged al Qaeda leader and a weapons cache.) The AP last night asked my editor to supply its corporate communications office with my newspaper client list...

IT'S bad enough that friends of Hezbollah terrorists could trick so many journalists with just a tall story and a rusty Lebanese ambulance. Worse is that some of those journalists seemed so eager to believe this ambulance was indeed wickedly blown up by an Israeli missile fired straight through the big red cross on its roof -- leaving not even a scorch mark. But worst is that even now that this hoax has been exposed, none of the countless writers and commentators who fell for it have admitted to passing on as fact the propaganda of terrorists. It is this...

The media war against Israel Early in the recent Lebanon war, the blogosphere revealed the fabrication of images by Reuters, whose reputation is now in shreds among those dwindling numbers in the western mainstream media who still acknowledge there is such a thing as the truth. Since then, the nature and scale of the various frauds perpetrated by the media during that war put those doctored Reuters pictures into the shade. The western media are no longer merely producing questionable professional practices in reporting a war. They are now active participants in it — and on the wrong side of...

International journalists discuss Lebanon war coverage; NYT bureau chief: Israel 'not interested in Lebanese deaths' A number of journalists claimed during a convention in Jerusalem Monday evening that Israel and the IDF were mostly to blame for the way the foreign media covered the Lebanon war. The panel of journalists, largely from the international media, convened to discuss their coverage of the war, at a conference arranged by the Media Line agency's Mideast Press Club. "Journalists' access to the battlefield is controlled exclusively by the IDF," said Simon McGregor-Wood, Chairman of the Foreign Press Association, and Bureau Chief of ABC...

Fauxtography Defender's Faux News Turns out that Greg Mitchell, the Editor & Publisher editor who has been attacking the blogosphere like a rabid ferret for pointing out the bogus news from the Middle East, has first-hand experience with staging news. (Hat tip: Confederate Yankee.) Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts,...

All Your Fakes Are Belong to Us A jawa video spoof on Beirut Fauxtography.

Amid the controversy over certain pictures from Lebanon, a longtime student of war photography asks, "I'm not sure if the craft I love is being murdered, committing suicide, or both." By David D. Perlmutter (August 18, 2006) -- The Israeli-Hezbollah war has left many dead bodies, ruined towns, and wobbling politicians in its wake, but the media historian of the future may also count as one more victim the profession of photojournalism. In twenty years of researching and teaching about the art and trade and doing photo-documentary work, I have never witnessed or heard of such a wave of attacks...

It's the story that the journalistic elite would rather just go away. In the aftermath of Reuters' admission that one of its photographers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated two war images from Lebanon after bloggers smoked out his crude Photoshop alterations, and all 920 of his Reuters photos were pulled, evidence of far more troubling photo staging and media deception in the Middle East continues to pour in. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com) calls it "fauxtography." Reuters on Sunday withdrew an image of smoke rising from burning buildings after an Israeli air strike on the suburbs of Beirut on...

The first Photoshop war Lebanon war's doctored photos could be harbinger of photojournalism crisis Gal Mor The photo of an apparently new Mickey Mouse doll, resting on a ruined street in the Lebanese town of Tyre following an Israeli Air Force attack, took me back to a British TV show called "Drop the Dead Monkey," which aired in Israel about 15 years ago. One of the journalists in Channel 4's satirical show used to hang around battle zones with a teddy bear in his trunk and place it at disaster zones a short time before cameras began shooting, in order...