Free Republic

Do the major media outlets in the U.S. have a liberal bias? Few questions evoke stronger opinions, and we cannot think of a more important question to which objective statistical techniques can lend their service. So far, the debate has largely been one of anecdotes (“How can CBS News be balanced when it calls Steve Forbes’ tax plan ‘wacky’?”) and untested theories (“if the news industry is a competitive market, then how can media outlets be systematically biased?”). Few studies provide an objective measure of the slant of news, and none has provided a way to link such a measure...

Ali al-Timimi, 41, who recently got a doctorate in computational biology at George Mason University, was convicted last week on ten federal counts of supporting and encouraging terrorist activities. He was convicted of urging his followers to join Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime and Lashkar-e-Taiba, a violent Pakistani radical group known for participating in the decade-long insurgency in Indian-controlled Kashmir and for attacking the Pakistani Shi’ite minority. That group may have been involved in the massacre latst week of Pakistani Shi'ites. Although the charges on which al-Timimi was convicted carry a mandatory prison sentence of life in prison without the possibility...

The “Teflon Terrorist” And Risk Of Infiltration Ron Kessler in his new book The Terrorist Watch quotes FBI Director Robert Mueller on the subject of WMD and the risk of infiltration: “Al Qaeda is tremendously patient and thinks nothing about taking years to infiltrate persons in and finding the right personnel and opportunity to undertake an attack. And we cannot become complacent, because you look around the world, and whether it’s London or Madrid or Bali or recently Casablanca or Algiers, attacks are taking place.” In November 2007, FBI Director Mueller gave a speech in which he warned against the...

Press Release: Election Study Finds Media Hit Hillary Hardest Obama, Huckabee Fare Best; FOX Is Most Balanced (not a typo) TV election news has been hardest on Hillary Clinton this fall, while Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee have been the biggest media favorites, according to a new study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) at George Mason University. The study also found that Fox NewsChannel's evening news show provided more balanced coverage than its counterparts on the broadcast networks.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - During the anthrax mail attacks in 2001, Bill Paliscak, a gung-ho, hockey-playing postal investigator who had missed 3 days of work in 11 years, removed a filthy filter above a mail-sorting machine to preserve it as evidence. Anthrax-laden dust showered down on him. Skip to next paragraph David Scull for The New York Times Bill Paliscak cannot live at his home until an elevator is installed. Enlarge This Image Agence France-Presse Workers in October 2001 cleaned the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, where employees like Mr. Paliscak were exposed to anthrax. Four days later he began to...