Free Republic

There is some good debate and conversation happening in the wake of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. But there is also plenty of nonsense. Consider this gem from the New York Times editorial of this morning about police arrests: "there can never be a justification for any lethal assault on an unarmed man." How absurd. In Ferguson, there is evidence that Michael Brown was attempting to wrest the officer's gun away. Should Darren Wilson have waited until Brown was successful before defending himself? Whatever the facts from Staten Island, if a single officer finds himself in a struggle...

Whatever liberal leanings he might have, sometimes the political animal in Chuck Todd just can't contain itself. Take today's Morning Joe, where Todd host absolutely annihilated Alison Lundergan Grimes, Dem candidate for senator from Kentucky, for her refusal to say whether she voted for Barack Obama for president. Todd ripped Grimes as "ridiculous," then twice declared that she had "disqualified herself." Ouch! Even Mika Brzezinski was embarrassed by Grimes' cringe-worthy performance, as you'll see in the screengrab. View the video here.

Alexander the Great. Stonewall Jackson. George S. Patton. To this list of some of history's greatest military strategists, a new name must be added: that of Barack Obama. That is, if you agree with Joe Scarborough's take on President Obama's statement at yesterday's press conference that "we don't have a strategy yet" regarding possible attacks on ISIS in Syria. According to Scarborough, speaking on today's Morning Joe, President Obama's "no strategy" statement was "straight out of The Art of War where when you were weak, you make your enemies think you were strong. When you were strong, you make your...

Q. How do you know that Barack Obama's weakness poses a serious threat to the security of the free world? A. When a leading foreign policy voice of the Washington Post agrees with a leading foreign policy voice of the Wall Street Journal that such is the case. It happened on today's Morning Joe, when WaPo's highly-respected David Ignatius agreed with a WSJ op-ed by Daniel Henninger, "While Obama Fiddles," that darkly concludes: "past some point, the world's wildfires are going to consume the Obama legacy. And leave his successor a nightmare." Said Ignatius: "those are harsh words from the...

On this weekend's Fox News Watch, panelist Jim Pinkerton proposed a simple way to clear up much of the murk surrounding JournoList. Let the Washington Post respond to the 20 questions about the matter that MRC head Brent Bozell has posed to the Post's executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, in an open letter. JournoList was created by lefty blogger Ezra Klein in 2007, who continued to run it after becoming a Post staffer in 2009. Responding to Pinkerton's proposal, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican, a liberal member of the News Watch panel, swung and missed at Bozell . . . View video...

Demonstrating once again that Israel remains a favorite whipping boy of the liberal media, there was John Heilemann of New York magazine on today's Morning Joe defending John Kerry's grotesque claim that Israel risked becoming an "apartheid state." According to Heilemann, Kerry's ugly accusation was "not actually an unreasonable statement." To his credit, Joe Scarborough promptly riposted, saying "I couldn't disagree with you more." View the video here.

On February 2nd, NBC correspondent Pete Williams announced Breaking News during the 5 PM ET edition of Hardball: the Christmas Day Bomber, Umar Abdul Mutallab, was giving fresh, actionable information to the FBI which the United States is in turn "aggressively chasing down." Less than an hour later, this NewsBuster [AKA FReeper governsleast] blogged on the matter, wondering whether by leaking the news, "the Obama administration compromised national security," in an attempt to deflect the criticism it had been receiving for mirandizing Mutallab rather than treating him like the enemy combatant he is. On today's Fox News Watch, panelist Jim...

On Friday, this NewsBuster [FReeper governsleastgovernsbest] noted how Pres. Obama, questioned at a news conference in Japan, twice refused to say whether he thought the United States' dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was "the right decision." Yesterday on Fox News Watch, Jim Pinkerton noted the NewsBusters nugget. The Fox News contributor and New America Foundation fellow observed that PBO's failure had huge implications for America's nuclear deterrent. View video here.

FReeper governsleastgovernsbest, AKA Mark Finkelstein, is scheduled to appear on Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski's radio show today at 10:35 AM. Listen live at the link!

NewsBuster--and FReeper--Mark Finkelstein was a guest yesterday on the Joe Scarborough Show, the nationally-syndicated radio show that the Morning Joe anchor co-hosts with Mika Brzezinski. Listen to audio here. For days, Scarborough had been lambasting Republicans for going after Pres. Obama on his speech to schoolchildren. Finkelstein argued that it was not so much the potential for indoctrination as the cult of personality which was objectionable. He pointed out that the Obama-centric study guide for the speech was of a piece with messianic image that the president has allowed to grow up around him, going back to the presidential campaign...

Mark Finkelstein, recently returned from Iraq, will be the guest of Keith Rasmussen and Maggie Glynn who host Loud & Clear on Central Jersey 1450 Saturdays 4 pm - 7 pm Eastern. Mark will join Loud & Clear at 6:30 pm Eastern. Mark Finkelstein, blogging at the Media Research Center's NewsBusters.org, calls Sen. Chuck Schumer (D - NY) out: "The claim to support the troops is a sham. Supporting the troops is merely something to be figured out later. It's an afterthought, to be addressed after Democrats, with some Republican support, rush through a resolution telling our troops that the...

Cal Thomas had the line of the night on this evening's Fox News Watch. Here's how the conservative commentator explained Americans' dissatisfaction with progress in Iraq: "Part of the problem here is we have Desert Storm with the 100-hour war. Everybody came home. There were victory marches, General Schwarzkopf leading. The press was full of stories: 'we finally got the Vietnam monkey off our back.' Now we're used to the very quick action. It's not going to happen, except thank goodness Jack Bauer is coming back to make it happen on '24' - that's what we're waiting for."Well said,...

Iraq Diary: Up In a BIG Plane Posted by Mark Finkelstein on November 10, 2006 - 03:20. I?m writing this from the passenger deck of a C-5 somewhere out over the Atlantic, heading toward Rota, Spain. There were a couple of major plot twists before we were able to board. We had initially been told there simply might not be any available seats. As it turned out, that wasn?t quite it. Our plane was to be carrying an exceptionally heavy load of military goodies to be delivered to Iraq and was right at its payload limit. Once it was determined...

FReeper governsleastgovernsbest, AKA Mark Finkelstein, is pleased to announce that, as of today, webcasts of his weekly TV show 'Right Angle' are now available online at http://rightangle.clarityconnect.com/ Right Angle is a conservatively-oriented TV talk show originating in the liberal haven of Ithaca, NY. Now in its sixth year on the air, 'Right Angle' recently was named 'Best of the Best' among all Time Warner public-access shows in its area. Please check out the beautiful new web site, and view a show or two at the Archived Shows tab!