Free Republic

The union representing state troopers has backed off allegations that a drug investigation of Sherry Johnston was slowed down last fall to shield the national candidacy of Gov. Sarah Palin. An inquiry Monday by officials for the Public Safety Employees Association concluded that investigators did not delay a search warrant for political reasons, said union president Rob Cox. Charges of political meddling erupted last week because of misunderstandings between investigators working on the case and senior state public safety officials, Cox said.

Like a pack of randy 15-year-old boys, the press dives right in. "Virginity Pledges Don't Stop Teen Sex," screams CBS News. "Virginity pledges don't mean much," adds CNN. "Study questions virginity pledges," says the Chicago Tribune. "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds," heralds the Washington Post. "Virginity Pledges Fail to Trump Teen Lust in Look at Older Data," reports Bloomberg. And on it goes. In other words, teens will be teens, and moms or dads who believe that concepts such as restraint or morality have any application today are living in a dream world. Typical was the lead for the...

NEW YORK (AP) — You're standing in line at a deli behind two day laborers fumbling with cash and struggling with English, when the clerk begins spewing hatred. Go back to your country, he says, or go eat at Taco Bell. What would you do? Stand in uncomfortable silence, hoping simply to leave as quickly as possible? Tell the clerk to shut up? Or join in with the bigotry, kicking the men while they're down? When ABC News set up that scenario in a New Jersey deli, hiring actors to portray the clerk and laborers and hiding cameras to record...

In the summer of 1984, 10th-grader Irwin Nanofsky and a friend were driving down the Apalachee Parkway on the way home from baseball practice when they were pulled over by a police officer for a minor traffic infraction. After Nanofsky produced his driver’s license the police officer asked permission to search the vehicle. In less than two minutes, the officer found a homemade pipe underneath the passenger’s seat of the Ford Aerostar belonging to the teenage driver’s parents. The minivan was seized, and the two youths were taken into custody on suspicion of drug possession. Illegal possession of drug paraphernalia...

This is a column on awards for the year's worst reporting. You will read what an expert panel determined to be the most outrageous quotes of the mainstream liberal media for 2008. I think you will find them amusing for openers. But they have significance far beyond their considerable entertainment value. The quotes that follow show you how extreme the biased, dishonest and fraudulent journalism of the mainstream media has become. The media monitors that I have confidence in agree that bias during the past presidential campaigns reached new extremes far beyond anything of recent memory. The easiest way to...

WASHINGTON -- The decline of The New York Times continues, alas and egad. On Monday, the Times was duped by some scoundrel who sent the newspaper's Web site a rude e-mail about Caroline Kennedy. It supposedly was signed by Bertrand Delanoe, the mayor of Paris. Now the Times has had to admit: "We posted a letter that carries the name of Bertrand Delanoe, the mayor of Paris, sharply criticizing Caroline Kennedy. This letter was a fake. It should not have been published. Doing so violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers." Well, I,...

Get ready for the geek-in-chief. President-elect Barack Obama used to collect comic books, can't part with his BlackBerry, and once flashed Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" sign. That and other evidence has convinced some of Obama's nerdier fans that he'll be the first American president to show distinct signs of geekiness. And that's got them as excited as a Tribble around a Klingon. Obama is good at "repressing his inner geek, but you can tell it's there," especially when he goes into nuanced explanations of technical_matters, said Benjamin Nugent, author of the book "American Nerd:...

On a recent day, Jim Cahill strolled through the electronics department and perused the CDs at Nebraska Furniture Mart in Kansas City, Kan. Instead of buying the Slim Shady CD, he was out to steal it. Within seconds he had the disc in his pants pocket. He continued strolling through the store, but within minutes he was surrounded by guards. After a brief struggle, he was in handcuffs. But Cahill wasn’t about to head off to jail. He is the loss prevention general manager for the Omaha-based retailer and was leading a training program. Such programs are important to profitability...

NEW YORK -- The New York Times admitted Monday it published a fake letter purportedly from the mayor of Paris criticizing Caroline Kennedy's bid for a U.S. Senate seat as "appalling" and "not very democratic." In a note posted Monday on its Web site, the Times said the letter signed by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe was a fake and should not have been published because it violated the paper's standards and procedures for publishing signed letters.

DHP Review: Frost/Nixon by Dirty Harry Friday, December 12th, 2008 Frost/Nixon is a full on respectable, accomplished and intelligent retelling of the now famous series of interviews English television personality David Frost conducted with disgraced former President Nixon in 1977, just a few years after Nixon’s resignation. No on can argue a successful stageplay has been transformed into a beautifully shot narrative with two memorable performances by Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost. The film holds your attention and reeks of competence from beginning to end. All that’s missing is a point. Since 1976’s All The President’s...

On Wednesday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith interviewed actor James Franco, who stars opposite Sean Penn in a new movie about gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk: "Actor James Franco is here to talk about his role in the much-talked-about new movie, 'Milk.' He is amazing in it." At the end of the show, Smith thanked Franco for being a guest and offer this review of the movie: "James Franco in 'Milk,' amazing performance. Sean Penn, off the charts. It's a must-see for everybody." On November 30, CBS’s Sunday Morning offered a similar glowing description of the film, describing...

Just because you can, does not mean you should. Look, as conservatives or Republicans, we truly do get the point that much of Hollywood despises us or the ideology they have convinced themselves we blindly follow. For the last two decades or so, they have channeled much of that anger into films that have bashed Richard Nixon or George W. Bush. And now, purely because he can, director Ron Howard and his team are giving us "Frost/Nixon." A feel-good film for liberals that once again, in case you missed the plethora of earlier offerings, trumpets the evils of President Richard...

They don't have political rallies to bring them together anymore, but it's no secret that a lot of people out there don't much like Barack Obama. The president-elect, according to his more fervent campaign-season detractors, has a raft of unforgivable faults: He's a socialist, a Muslim, an actual love-child of Malcolm X. His birth certificate was missing, his book had been ghost-written by William Ayers, and his wife, "Mrs. Grievance," as a National Review cover dubber her, was perennially on the cusp of getting caught ranting against the white man. The only thing keeping the Illinois senator's infamy from going...

"But if she wants to run for president she's gonna have to get somebody to move to Anchorage, Alaska and help her take her game to another level," he said smiling. "Let's be clear about this ... it's really cold there most of the year."

NEW YORK, (AP) -- MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday. David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent. Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at...

By now you’ve all heard the Fox News report last week that “unnamed� former McCain advisers leaked that Sarah Palin was confused about whether Africa was a continent, and which countries were in NAFTA. I was perfectly happy staying under the radar as an anonymous source for Fox News‘ Carl Cameron, but now that Palin has accused her accusers of being “unprofessional…jerks…cowards… taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news� and begun to cast doubt on the Fox News report, maybe she’s right to a certain extent. For those of us on the McCain...

As the nation prepares for President-elect Barack Obama and his family to move into the White House, many Americans can't help but notice clear parallels between them and the family of the late President John F. Kennedy. His was a presidency filled with idealism, glamour and excitement, observed co-anchor Harry Smith on The Early Show Friday. "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans," Kennedy said in his inaugural address. A young senator had been elected to lead his country. Now, 47 years later, the nation has chosen another young senator. "Change has come to America," Obama...

The mind reels at how news organizations might employ this technology in the future. Will we see holograms of reporters standing outside in hurricanes?

Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL) is under fire for agreeing to pay $121,000 in “hush” money to a former mistress who was set to file a sexual harassment suit against him when he fired her from his campaign staff. “The point is, I was paying her for sex,” Mahoney said. “When she cut me off I had no further use for her. It’s not like she knew anything about campaigns or advertising. She’s the one who reneged on the agreement we had. Then she blackmailed me. Clearly I’m the victim here. I just hope the voters will appreciate that.” Senior Democratic...

Earlier in the week, disgraced former CBS anchor Dan Rather told attendees of Time Warner's Politics 2008 Summit that the press “has been in a defensive posture for some time,” that pressure from conservatives has led to “self-censorship” and that journalists should be “Fiercely independent and even ornery from time to time.” ... Um, this would be the same Dan Rather who exercised self-censorship in his fawning interview with Saddam Hussein in 2003 - whom he knew wouldn't hesitate to pull out his sidearm and shoot him between the eyes while the camera was rolling if he got pissed off...

On Thursday's ABC World News, anchor Charles Gibson's lead-off story was on the presidential campaign: "Two weeks, five days to go, home stretch. Barack Obama and John McCain began today laying out their closing strategies. And while Obama continues to hold a double-digit lead in most national polls, it is the results in individual states that are all important." The emphasis on Obama's supposedly huge, possibly insurmountable lead is used by some in the mainstream media to suggest the inevitability of a Democratic win. But you have to wonder, at least in this instance, what polls ABC News is...

BEAVER — An Industry man arrested after openly carrying a handgun to an August presidential rally in Beaver wore an empty holster to court on Monday and defended his right to bear arms, but the judge wasn’t buying his argument. District Judge Douglas Loughner ruled in Beaver County Court Monday that John Noble, 50, of 1063 Willowbrook Drive should stand trial on misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and disrupting a public meeting, stemming from the Sept. 29 rally for Democratic presidential running mates Barack Obama and Joe Biden. According to hearing testimony, the incident was at least partially triggered by...

An Iranian news agency said Tuesday that a United States warplane had been forced to land in Iran, but the Pentagon said there was no evidence to support the claim, and Tehran moved quickly to play down the claim. Within moments of the first report on the semi-official Fars news agency, an Iranian state television channel, Al Alam, said on its Web site that the plane “was not a military plane and did not belong to the United States.”

October 06, 2008, 9:20 a.m. Shame of the Fact-CheckersBy the Editors American journalists take pride in policing political debates for inaccuracies. During the last few election cycles, many news outlets have institutionalized a “factchecking� feature that grades politicians’ veracity during campaigns. Over the last few months, a number of journalists have suggested that John McCain is running a particularly dishonest and dishonorable campaign and that journalists should not allow the desire to be even-handed keep them from saying so. That judgment, by our lights, tells us more about journalists’ political inclinations than about the campaigns. Neither the Republican nor...

Congress is working on the controversial $700 billion bailout of the national economy. A lot of Americans are angry about it, but Henry Paulson, the secretary of the Treasury, says an extraordinary emergency demands action that was once unthinkable. Paulson has helped to nationalize two mortgage giants, seize the nation's largest insurance company, manage the biggest bank failure in U.S. history, and oversee the end of Wall Street as we know it. Who is Henry Paulson? 60 Minutes shadowed him these past two weeks as he worked to convince the Congress that it should give him perhaps more power than...

(NEW YORK) They scold us for “being unfair,” remind us to “ask all the candidates the same questions,” and occasionally, they boo us. From Canton to Colorado, some of the tens of thousands of people attending Sarah Palin’s rallies regularly take it upon themselves to give the media a piece of their minds. So I thought it only fair to turn the microphone around, and give a handful of rally attendees a chance to air their grievances about the way in which the media has covered the Republican vice presidential nominee. Watch the video below:

Vanity Fair editors estimated that McCain's fierce saffron shirt dress with the popped collar, diamond earrings, four-strand pearl necklace, white Chanel watch and strappy shoes totaled up to $313,100. _______________________________________________________ I say do not watse your time reading the lie at the link just provided for verification of the original lie.

This Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted by telephone September 19-22, 2008, among a random national sample of 1,082 adults, 916 registered voters and 780 likely voters. The survey includes additional interviews with randomly selected African Americans, for a total of 163 black respondents. The added interviews (commonly referred to as an "oversample") were completed to ensure there were enough African American respondents for separate analysis; the group was not over-represented in the reported results from the full sample. The results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Error margins...

Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit against CBS is getting whittled down like a redwood at an Alabama beaver party. A Manhattan judge yesterday threw out two more of Rather's claims against the network, including his charge that his former bosses committed fraud by falsely promising to help restore his reputation after he became a "scapegoat" for a discredited story about President Bush's military career. "We are extremely gratified that the court has now dismissed the vast majority of Mr. Rather's claims," CBS said in a statement. Rather's lawyer, Martin Gold, said that despite Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman's ruling striking...

All politicians have a basic stump speech that they stick to when campaigning on the road. However, when Sarah Palin gives her stump speech the Associated Press claims, in a story written by Sara Kugler, she is sticking to a "basic script" like some programmed robot (emphasis mine): John McCain took a risk in picking little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate, but now the campaign's playing it safer. She's sticking to a greatest hits version of her convention speech on the campaign trail and steering clear of questions until she's comfortable enough for a hand-picked interviewer later...

The decision by MSNBC to yank Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from anchor duty during live political events did not exactly send a thrill up the leg of liberal bloggers. A number of them denounced the cable channel yesterday for making a change that had long been sought by NBC News veterans, saying MSNBC was caving into pressure from John McCain's campaign and the right wing. MSNBC President Phil Griffin denied that complaints from either Republicans or NBC journalists were a factor. He said he reached the decision after "talking to my guys, mainly Olbermann," after the Republican convention. Olbermann...

We’ve now reached the point where gossip sites are forced to debunk rumors being circulated uncritically by the mainstream media. Keep updating, Charlie. No rest for the weary. KURTZ: But if it’s a “Lifetime Movie of the Week,” Lola, then it seems to me that it’s a very mixed picture from the point of view of a ticket that is trying to get, you know, John McCain and Sarah Palin elected president and vice president of the United States. In other words, it’s great to be a celebrity, and she’ll get a book deal out of it and maybe her...

"I'm a f***in' redneck who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes. But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some s*** and just f***in' chillin' I guess. "Ya f*** with me I'll kick (your) ass." Ah yes. Class and eloquence return to the White House. GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin must be trembling in her NRA hip waders after reading those words on her future son-in-law's MySpace page. Except it's been deleted - I wonder how many six packs of Moosehead it took to get...

NEW YORK -- The candidates have accepted their parties' nominations. The running mates are in place. Now it begins in earnest. First thing is: Don't heed the polls you're seeing right now. Sure, by midweek, the Web site Real Clear Politics was showing an average lead for Barack Obama of about six points, with the Democratic nominee cracking 50 percent for the first time in the Gallup Poll. It's not bad news for Obama, but then it's not really news at all. If Obama hadn't seen some sort of polling "bounce" in the wake of the Democratic Convention -- now,...

Jihadi 101: Un-Photoshopped pic shows true nature of Obama's "school." The class photo of Barack Obama's fifth grade class is a fake. That's what a photographer and seventies fashion expert is saying, claiming he sees tell-tale signs of airbrushing and Photoshop hijinx. Brent Gitchenstein, former airbrush master for Dog Fancy Magazine, said the picture taken in 1972 purports to show Obama with a group of his classmates in Hawaii. However on closer inspection, the photo appears to a well-crafted fake, with several people airbrushed out and objects altered. "Note how everyone in the damn class has a moo moo,...

CBS) The presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain is now even at 42 percent to 42 percent, according to a new CBS News poll conducted Monday-Wednesday of this week. Twelve percent are undecided according to the poll, and one percent said they wouldn't vote. This is in contrast to a poll conducted last weekend, where the Obama-Biden ticket led McCain-Palin by eight points, 48 percent to 40 percent. McCain has also closed the enthusiasm gap some with Obama, but it still exists. Fifty-five percent of Obama's supporters are enthusiastic about their choice, and now so are 35% of...

I thought Palin's speech was quite good: well-written, well delivered. And, as I said earlier, I think she's a genuinely engaging person, and comes across very well. There were just a couple of problems. One, which I have seen people notice, but which I suspect won't be a big deal for a lot of voters, is that it had very little substance. The other, which the commenters I saw on TV for some reason neglected to mention, was that she told a lot of lies. A few that stood out for me, or that I spotted in my quick run-through...

The nine people convicted in the Newsday circulation scandal were each sentenced Friday to 5 years' probation and up to $125,000 in fines, escaping potential restitution totaling $5.9 million and up to 20 years in prison. Those sentenced - in what federal prosecutors said was the end of their investigation - included Louis Sito, a former top Newsday executive who ran the newspaper's day-to-day business operations, and Robert Brennan, former vice president of circulation. Sito also served as vice president of Hispanic media at Tribune Co., which owned Newsday and the Spanish language Hoy, also implicated in the scandal. The...

September 2, 2008, 10:32 pm Alaska Party Official Says Palin Was Not a Member By The New York Times The chairwoman of an Alaskan political party that advocates a vote on the state’s secession from the union said Tuesday that she had been mistaken when she said Gov. Sarah Palin was a member of the group. A front-page story in The New York Times on Tuesday and articles in other news media reported that Ms. Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party for two years in the 1990’s. The information in the Times article was based on a...

In March or April 2007, three noncommissioned United States Army officers, including a first sergeant, a platoon sergeant and a senior medic, killed four Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots to the head as the men stood handcuffed and blindfolded beside a Baghdad canal, two of the soldiers said in sworn statements. After the killings, the first sergeant — the senior noncommissioned officer of his Army company — told the other two to remove the men’s bloody blindfolds and plastic handcuffs, according to the statements made to Army investigators, which were obtained by The New York Times. The statements and other...

(CNN) – Eager VP-watchers waiting for the text message announcement of Barack Obama’s choice of running mate have gotten their answer: It’s Hillary Clinton. And Tim Kaine. And Kathleen Sebelius. Since declaring the Democratic vice presidential pick would first be announced over e-mail and text message, several hoax announcements of the Illinois senator's choice have circulated, purporting to be from the Obama campaign. The latest came in e-mail Friday morning that hit the inboxes of many White House reporters, carrying the subject, "My Vice President."

On the day Mitt Romney bowed out of the presidential race last February, his supporters latched onto something of a consolation prize that appeared to bode well for his political future: the warm embrace of hundreds of conservatives whose seal of approval he had long sought. -SNIP- Yet as Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, is said to have emerged as a top contender to be Senator John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate, a vocal segment of conservative leaders and grass-roots activists have mobilized against him, with some going out of their way to block his path to the Republican...

A trio of Republicans have defected from their party's likely presidential nominee and kicked off an effort to garner support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The group, called Republicans for Obama, is led by two moderate Republicans -- James Leach, a former U.S. representative from Iowa, and Lincoln Chafee, a former U.S. senator from Rhode Island -- along with Rita Hauser, a prominent fund-raiser for President George W. Bush. Their reasons for crossing party lines are diverse, ranging from the war in Iraq to overspending in Washington, and signal unhappiness not just with the candidacy of Republican Sen. John...

I don't recall the names our Secret Service have given the two main political candidates.Ronald Reagan was "Rawhide". John Edwards was the "Breck Girl"Who are the 2008 Candidates?(suggestions accepted)