Free Republic

Why risk provoking the Carol Moseley Braun defense? You know, when pointing out obvious deficiencies of public officials who are black is portrayed as a form of bigotry. Thus, if I observe, that Foxx wasn't ready for the job her main qualifications being a law degree and a cozy spot under the wing of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who elevated her for reasons mysterious then suddenly I'm Bull Connor tightening my grip around an axe handle. When in reality, the defense itself is racist: the racism of low expectations, the unsupportable notion that certain public figures are exempt...

The US Supreme Court agreed yesterday to consider overturning the fraud conviction Conrad Black, the former owner of The Daily Telegraph, who is serving a 6 1/2 year sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice. The court's justices will hear arguments later this year over the convictions of Black, the former chairman and chief executive of Hollinger International, and two other former executives in connection with payments of $5.5 million (£3.6m) they received from a Hollinger subsidiary. The men argued that they did not commit fraud because they did no harm to the company. They turned to the highest US...

Former Bears coach Mike Ditka, who has repeatedly voiced his support for Donald Trump to the Chicago Sun-Times, blasted President Obama during a radio appearance Thursday."Obama is the worst president we've ever had," Ditka told hosts Sid Rosenberg and Bernard McGuirk during an appearance on their morning show on WABC-AM in New York.Ditka, who guided the 1985 Bears to a Super Bowl victory, questioned Obama’s skills as a leader. "Barack Obama's a fine man. I mean, he's pleasant," Ditka said. "He would be great to play golf with. He's not a leader. This country needs leadership. It needs direction. It...

On a day when most normal Americans are relaxing and celebrating the Fourth of July with family and friends, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg is giving full vent to his Liberal Rage Syndrome by angrily lashing out at Republicans by labeling them as the "treason party." Oh, he pretends he COULD be labeling them as such but won't. However, this disingenous denial is belied by the fact that reading his column leaves no doubt that he is most definitely making that accusation. And for those few people who are actually fooled by his lame denial, there is the very title...

Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s campaign for mayor of Chicago is going… well, mostly as expected. The feisty former Congressman has been conducting “listening tours” of the city where he’s been caught using hand sanitizer (!) after talking to constituents and driving reporters to paroxysms of violent rage. Now he brings the fun to the Chicago Sun-Times, who describe him as “characteristically combative” and “downright annoyed” at some of their questions. The interview is the first extended one he has given since the announcement he is running for mayor, sitting with reporter Fran Spielman and answering some...

Over the next ten we will present to you America's top ten journalists that are most biased to the left. On this list you will find denizens of the Old Media that just can't seem to help themselves from delivering the news with a leftward tilt, journalists for whom balance means to condemn all Republicans and conservatives, folks that never met a righty they could like much less agree with or even report upon fairly. This list will be peopled by journos that, in true Kealian fashion, simply can't understand those Republicans and/or conservatives. After all, these journalists never met...

For the Chicago Sun-Times, columnist Laura Washington laments the degraded state of American newspapers. She says that “hard news” has been replaced by “fluff and titillating trash.” Washington also cries that real news is an “endangered species.” But if newspaper writing has been laid low, Laura Washington’s column is an example of that wretched state as opposed to an example of the opposite as this is one of the messiest columns I’ve seen in a while. And naturally it’s all because of raaaacism according to Washington. Washington starts her piece scolding the news media for missing the Scott Lee Cohen...

Unionized workers in the Chicago Sun-Times' newsroom have rejected demands for deep pay cuts and work-rule changes, putting at risk a planned sale of the financially struggling newspaper to an investment group. ... Members of the Chicago Newspaper Guild were asked to lock in temporary 15% compensation cuts and agree to wiping out seniority rules and reducing severance guarantees. The union rejected those demands 83-22 Tuesday. Sun-Times Media Chairman Jeremy Halbreich has told workers that a rejection will mean the end of the company.

Sun-Times Media Group Inc. reported late Thursday a net loss of $168.8 million, or $2.04 per diluted share, narrowing slightly its loss of $192.4 million, or $2.39 per share, from a year ago -- but forcing the company to impose a new round of deep cuts, its CEO said. Last summer, the publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and dozens of other Chicago-area papers completed an extensive round of expense cuts by reducing staff by 19%, outsourcing distribution, and cutting the physical size of its newspapers. "In the first half of 2008, we successfully implemented a $50 million annual cost reduction,...

'We're the ones with the babe on the ticket." -- Rush Limbaugh, crowing about the Republican ticket. Rush was talking about Sarah Palin, right? But hey, maybe he's got a man-crush on McCain. As Limbaugh and others drool over Palin's Suzanne Pleshette-circa-1975 attractiveness, the governor of Alaska has become an overnight celebrity. Of course, such fame is relative. As of Sunday, if you googled "Sarah Palin," you got 453,000 hits. If you googled "Kim Kardashian," you got more than 7.8 million hits. God Bless America. But over the last few days, a lot of us were learning all about the...

Jay Mariotti, a firebrand sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, announced he is quitting the print biz loudly proclaiming that newspapers are "dying" and that he didn't want to go down with the ship of the struggling industry. Naturally, the management of the Sun-Times is not amused. Mariotti told Chicago's CBS 2 news that newspapers are in serious trouble and he wanted out before he was forced out. "It's been a tremendous experience, but I'm going to be honest with you, the profession is dying,'' Mariotti told CBS 2, "I don't think either paper [Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune] is going...

When attempting to defuse an embarrassing situation, the best strategies rely on early and full disclosure in the hope that the eventual revelations prove anti-climactic. Barack Obama apparently hasnÂ’t learned this yet, but the Tony Rezko trial may wind up schooling Obama on the principle. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Rezko and his associates provided three times as much money for Obama than the presidential candidate has admitted: During his 12 years in politics, Sen. Barack Obama has received nearly three times more campaign cash from indicted businessman Tony Rezko and his associates than he has publicly acknowledged, the Chicago...

CHICAGO The New York Stock Exchange halted on-the-floor trading of Sun-Times Media Group Inc. (STMG) when its share price opened at $1.00. Under NYSE regulations, floor trading is stopped whenever a company's stock slips below $1.05 per share. Trading on the Chicago Sun-Times parent company (NYSE: SVN) continued on other platforms, and in after-hours trading late Friday the share price rose to $1.09, up 9 cents or 9%. In the past 52 weeks STMG -- which in addition to the woes of nearly every big-city publisher has suffered from alleged looting of hundreds of millions by former top executives including...

Is the Chicago Sun-Times, currently on the auction block, hoping to be purchased by either Bill Maher or Christopher Hitchens? In a staff editorial yesterday arguing that Mike Huckabee's continued presence in the Republican race for President is actually aiding John McCain by making McCain look more moderate, the Sun-Times issues the following edict, "Huckabee has no chance of being elected president. And thank God for that, too. This is a man who believes the world was created in six days." (Click here: http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/801030,CST-EDT-edit19b.article) There are two ways to react to this. We could demand to know which of the...

Sun-Times Media Group Inc. said Monday it is up for sale and open to a deal that will reward shareholders while securing the future of its Chicago-area newspapers and Web sites. The company's chief executive officer, Cyrus Freidheim Jr., said the board agreed to explore a sale because several key management initiatives are well under way. In recent weeks, the owner of the Chicago Sun-Times has trimmed $50 million in annual costs, more than 10 percent of its overhead, and settled a tax liability with Canadian authorities. He said the company would consider all alternatives, including partnerships and the sale...

They always say that the passage of time sometimes dulls the memory of a person's past, that oft times only the good memories remain. More often, though, time plus a large dollop of myth making and lies creates a whole new world out of the past. Dick Simpson is more evidence of the later than the former. In a whitewashing of the foolishness and destruction wrought by his anti-American comrades in the vaunted "summer of love," Chicago Sun-Times columnist Simpson wonders "Can we revive '60s-era ideals?" Surely, anyone who has a clear memory of those tumultuous days would quickly reply,...

Jennifer Hunter, the Chicago Sun-Times writer and wife of Sun-Times publisher John Cruickshank, who wrote the recent story skewered here on Newsbusters revealing a supposed "staunch Republican" from Philly who has suddenly decided to support the Democrats in 2008, has written a new piece today claiming she is being "harassed by a group of irate Republicans" because of her badly researched column. (The interviewee in her piece claimed to be a "staunch Republican" even as his cash donation records prove he almost exclusively supports Democrats) Her follow up, however, seems more like the kid caught with her hand in the...

CHICAGO Conrad Black, who led the thieving band of executives that put the Chicago Sun-Times pretty far down the road to ruin, had just been convicted in a Chicago federal courthouse, but Publisher John Cruickshank had something more urgent to talk about Friday afternoon in the tabloid's offices. "We're not going to start being a Democratic paper or a liberal paper or a conservative paper or an ideological paper -- we're an independent paper," he said. "We're not going to be a small L liberal paper. We're not going to bind ourselves to a party or ideology in anything." On...

CHICAGO The Sun-Times Media Group, publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, is reporting a 34-point-9 (m) million dollar third-quarter loss because of declining advertising and circulation revenue. Sun-Times officials also say they have found that the grant dates on some stock option awards to executives and key employees from 1999-to-2002 were misdated. It says the amounts resulting from options misdating do not appear to have had a material impact on financial results. But the company will determine whether the misdating will require the restatement of affected prior-year results. The net third-quarter operating revenues declined 13 percent to 99-point-one (m) million dollars...

Weakening circulation among the challenges faced by Cruickshank As temperatures turned seasonably brisk, John Cruickshank was waiting for his home furnace to be fixed Friday. Not that he needs one to feel the heat. That comes from simply being publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and chief operating officer for all of parent Sun-Times Media Group's area papers. As at so many newspapers, Sun-Times circulation and ad revenue are down. But Chicago's No. 2 daily's troubles are compounded by the lasting effects of the Draconian profit margins demanded by the company's now-indicted former bosses and the still-healing wounds of a circulation...