Free Republic

When Tina Brown was Newsweek’s editor, a magazine cover heralded the “Obama Conquest.” Now he’s just the creep in the corner office who keeps women nervous. ... There’s a word for guys who hide out in their offices; bark at underlings while barking at underlings, then, worst of all, blame everyone around them when those promises aren’t kept. The word is “weak,” and women don’t like it any more than men do.

The blogosphere and cable channels are all atwitter over a discussion Bill Maher had with Sam Harris, Ben Affleck, and Michael Steele last week. The topic? Whether too many Americans are engaged in Islamophobia in their criticism of Islam. At one point, Affleck said, “We've killed more Muslims than they've killed us, by an awful lot.” At another, he called the criticism of Islam “ugly,” “gross,” and “racist.” He compared the criticism of Islam with someone calling a Jew “shifty.” Is he right? He is not—and neither is the decade-plus shutting down of this important discussion. The shibboleths used to...

Wednesday night, the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley made no mention of the results from the latest CBS News poll that gave President Obama and Democrats poor marks ahead of the November 4 midterm elections on issues ranging from the economy to ISIS to terrorism to who voters are most likely to vote for. Regarding the midterm elections, Republicans find themselves ahead of Democrats on both a generic ballot and specific issues. Republicans have a six point lead against Democrats overall (49 percent to 43 percent with those leaning left or right, 46 percent to 40 percent without) and...

Rather characterized the current state of journalism using the term interregnum — “the old order is gone, but the new order is not yet in place.” The major concern for the future of journalism, he said, is how it will be financed in a way that provides the audience with quality, integrity-driven content in the years to come. ... Rather also noted that the measure of journalism and those who cover it is the level and quality of service provided to the public. Commercial enterprises that report the news hold the public trust, he explained, and doing so with integrity...

Sunday on the Fox News Channel's "MediaBuzz," Sharyl Attkisson blasted the mainstream media for being President Barack Obama's lap dogs. While discussing the media's lack of coverage of the growing threat of ISIS, Attkisson said, "Here's my cynical viewpoint. It would have been on the front page had the administration wanted it to be on the front page," and "The media waits for the administration to dictate the agenda and coverage."

The same newspaper that crucified President George W. Bush for the Abu Ghrab scandal even though Bush was many, many layers of government removed from the American military guards at the heart of the Iraqi prison scandal has given President Barack Obama absolution for the gross incompetence of the Secret Service even though Obama is in direct contact every minute of every day with the agency charged with protecting his life. Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times has written a churlish, excuse-making article published Tuesday night that at once hints Republican lawmakers want to see...

Big, busy Morning Jolt to close out the week — an appalling failure of immigration law enforcement, an indictment in that long-forgotten GSA conference scandal, another trip down memory lane for a beloved prematurely-canceled television show, and then this glaring change in our national politics: Funeral Services for the Anti-War Movement Will Be Held Next Week Howard Kurtz writes the obituary of the anti-war movement. Born in 2003, the movement experienced sudden difficulties in January 2009, struggled and limped along for the past few years, and finally collapsed in the street in front of the White House least week: Medea...

Can Touré Neblett not see the incandescent irony of his statement? His show-ending rant on The Cycle today condemned the censorship of the shocking images of war. Railed Touré: "we're blocked from seeing so much of the cost of war, of the evil of war as if we are too sensitive or squeamish or unable to handle the graphic truth." Touré focused on one particular photo, taken by photojournalist Kenneth Jarecke during the first Gulf War, deploring the fact that AP refused to publish it. Incredibly, Touré then proceeded to . . . censor the photo himself, declaring that "it's...

Fifty years ago, on Sept. 7, 1964, a political ad called “Daisy” aired on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson. The commercial opened with a little girl in a meadow, then a horrific nuclear blast filled the screen. We’ve been feeling the fallout ever since. It was only a minute long. The paid ad ran on national television only once, and only on one network, NBC. But that’s all it took.

James Vanderbilt's Truth, the high-profile movie chronicling the scandal that derailed Dan Rather's career, has gotten the greenlight to begin shooting this fall. Brett Ratner's RatPac Entertainment and Echo Lake Entertainment will finance the movie, starring Robert Redford as the iconic news anchor and Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes, Rather's producer. At the same time, FilmNation has come aboard to represent international rights and will pre-sell the project to foreign buyers at the Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday night (based on the cast, it's sure to whet appetites). Mythology Entertainment is the driving force behind Truth, which was...

How many nine-year-old Antonio's need to die in Chicago before the national media will park its satellite trucks in front of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's City Hall and demand answers and action. How many black people, including black children, need to die in Chicago before the national media stops counting civilian casualties in Gaza as a political weapon against Israel and starts counting them in one of our own cities. Overnight in Chicago 10 people were shot. One night. One. How many more until the national media cares enough to look into the root causes of the violence, poverty, despair, terrible...

Huff Post’s Ryan Reilly recently had problems telling the difference between earplugs and rubber bullets. He also has long struggled with telling the difference between fact and fiction. Reilly was recently arrested covering the mob violence in Ferguson, Missouri. He described the loss of his cell phone and communication devices incident to his arrest as “dehumanizing,” which gives you a sense of his priorities I suppose. But Reilly’s clownish debut on the national stage isn’t news to anyone who has followed his checkered history as a “reporter.” Reilly formerly worked for a privately owned website that served as a Department...

In 2003, my Atlantic colleague James Fallows performed a huge public service. He painstakingly reviewed the evidence and concluded that perhaps the single most iconic anti-Israel image did not in fact document an Israeli action at all. Muhamed al-Dura was, we were told, the name of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy shot dead by Israeli soldiers, as he crouched against a concrete wall beside his helpless father. This image still defines the conflict for millions in the Muslim world. It was cited by Osama bin Laden as justification for his crimes. However, and having examined the evidence, Fallows concluded: It now...

And why reporters won’t talk about it. The idea that one of Hamas’ main command bunkers is located beneath Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is one of the worst-kept secrets of the Gaza war. So why aren’t reporters in Gaza ferreting it out? The precise location of a large underground bunker equipped with sophisticated communications equipment and housing some part of the leadership of a major terrorist organization beneath a major hospital would seem to qualify as a world-class scoop—the kind that might merit a Pulitzer, or at least a Polk. So why isn’t the fact that Hamas uses Shifa...

In response to a report that the Facebook group "Death to Israel and the Zionists" is offensive, Facebook has declared that it "doesn't violate our Community Standards." Similarly, the also declared that the group "DEATH TO ZIONISTS" was also found not to violate Facebook's standards. Here are the declarations from Facebook reporting on their decision: And: Death to Zionists' page wrote on the first day of their group’s creation, “Army of Mohammed has started to return.” ...And, of course, the group "Death to the Jews" is still up on Facebook.

On Thursday, with PJ Media's J. Christian Adams as her guest, Fox News's Megyn Kelly recited a list of assertions (under oath, she reminded us) made by Internal Revenue Service officials which have later been shown to be lies or cause for agency flip-flops after "new" facts have been revealed. It's a significant list. By implication, it's an indictment of the vast majority of the establishment press, which has refused to give the IRS scandal the attention it deserves. Video and a transcript follow the jump. ... The establishment press has been almost completely uninterested in telling their readers, listeners,...

Both ABC World News with Diane Sawyer and NBC Nightly News failed to mention a new, troubling report from the Census Bureau on Thursday night that sales of new homes decreased by 8.1% in June and that May’s originally reported double-digit increase was revised lower, from almost 19% to only 8%. The CBS Evening News did cover this story, but it only was in the form of a 12-second news brief from anchor Scott Pelley. Pelley grimly reported that: “Today's report on the housing market is raising concerns about the economic recovery. Sales of new homes dropped sharply last month,...

When I interviewed The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart two years ago for a documentary I co-directed, The Muslims Are Coming!, one of the questions I posed to the talk show host was: Do you think your show has had an impact on issues? Surprisingly, Stewart responded “no.” At first, my co-director, Negin Farsad, and I thought Stewart was being unduly modest. But he was actually being sincere. Stewart went on to list issues he had railed against for years—such as media sensationalism—and noted that nothing tangible had changed despite his best efforts. But if that question were put to Stewart...

Predictably, the nation’s mainstream media has launched a sob campaign publishing stories and airing broadcasts illustrating the industry’s support and compassion for the barrage of illegal immigrant minors that have entered the U.S. recently. Of particular note is a lengthy piece published this week in the capital-area’s mainstream newspaper, the Washington Post. It sympathetically tells the story of an illegal immigrant from Honduras who grew up dirt-poor (a child servant who sold tortillas on the streets) and has lived for a decade in the Washington D.C. area. The woman, Allis Godoy, abandoned her children in Honduras when she came to...

Wow. A reputable poll shows that the public believes Barack Obama is the worst president since World War II. Worse than Richard M. Nixon, driven from the presidency by Watergate? Much. Worse than Jimmy Carter, for decades the very symbol of the feckless chief executive? Loads. Worse than George W. Bush, still a lightning rod on the left and a symbol of disappointment on the right? Definitely. These startling poll results set loose the predictable reaction: A flurry of told-you-so nods on the right and a fusillade of this-tells-us-nothing assertions on the left. For once, they're both right. Obama is...