Free Republic

Whoops. On the very day that the New York Times takes President Bush harshly to task for failing to promote human rights in China, the president meets at the White House . . . . with five Chinese human rights activists. Railed the Times in this morning's editorial, Past Time for Speaking Out: Two weeks before he goes to the Beijing Olympic Games, President Bush remains unacceptably silent about China’s crackdown on basic human rights. [H]is refusal to speak out publicly and clearly about China’s repressive behavior is an abdication of leadership and a blot on his record. But just...

Underlying the hurry to disown the senator, of course, is the party’s brutal agenda of trumpeting the gay-marriage issue. To the extent Senator Craig, a stalwart in the family values caucus, might morph into a blatant hypocrite before the voters’ eyes, he reflects on the party’s record in demonizing homosexuality. The rush to cast him out betrays the party’s intolerance, which is on display for the public in all of its ugliness. But it also betrays their political uneasiness as the next election approaches.

This is exquisitely rich. Today The New York Times is accusing the Bush administration of an illegal leak of secret information, which may endanger American lives. Wow. No sense of irony over there at The Times. They can leak the NSA secret wiretapping program, they can leak the Treasury Department's secret program of following terrorist money, they can leak secret memos on the progress of the war, but none of that, evidently, seems to Times editors to endanger Americans. But this latest so-called leak by the Bushies does. And worse, the so-called leak is — get this — an Iraqi...

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, The New York Times reported on Saturday. Citing U.S. officials who spoke on Friday on condition of anonymity, the Times said the decision to ship the weapons quickly came after relatively little debate within the administration, and noted in its report that its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others who could perceive Washington as aiding Israel in the manner that Iran has armed Hezbollah. The munitions are...

The always modest, always charming Howell Raines, executive editor of the New York Times, has a new autobiography out, “The One that Got Away,” a sequel to his 1993 memoir “Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis.” Dipping into his latest book on his love of fly fishing, we find Raines still rising to the conservative-bashing bait. On page 189, he lets fly with thoughts about liberal bugbear Fox News: “Fox, by its mere existence, undercuts the argument that the public is starved for ‘fair’ news, and not just because Fox shills for the Republican Party and panders to the latest...

Facing shareholder dissent and getting flak for bloated executive pay deals, The New York Times is frantically searching for crisis p.r. experts as the company gears up for a public battle over the future of the newspaper giant. Chairman Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. and other top management have been criticized for putting off the concerns of Morgan Stanley portfolio manager Hassan Elmasry and for a share price that's plummeted 50 percent since 2002. Soon after Morgan's attack last week on The Times, the publisher's spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis, was phoning Knight Ridder spokesman Polk Laffoon seeking advice, sources familiar with the...