Free Republic

ABC's Kate Snow from New York: There's a battle going on right now over how the networks will be allowed to cover Sarah Palin's big day of visits in NY with world leaders. Palin is scheduled to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai shortly, followed by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and then with McCain advisor, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The networks had arranged for a "pool" camera- one camera to cover the meetings, whose video would be pooled or shared with all networks. Such arrangements are standard when dealing with intimate high-level meetings between leaders and candidates. But...

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...

Now there's a headline sure to make Rush Limbaugh's face a little redder. The claim comes to us from George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs, which has studied network newscasts for 20 years running. After analyzing the nightly ebb and flow of our current race, the center's researchers see a pattern (Via the Los Angeles Times): ...that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign. You read it right: tougher on the Democrat. Just how does one measure "tougher," you ask? During the...

Ithaca, N.Y. — The Best Of Everything? By REBECCA JAMES   The Commons is a popular gathering place in downtown Ithaca, N.Y. (Photo by Gloria Wright)     ITHACA, N.Y. — When your town has made more than 25 lists that call it one of the best cities in America, you might be surprised that one magazine would call it one of the "Twelve Great Places You've Never Heard Of."But along with that 2006 designation from Mother Earth News, Ithaca seems to make the grade no matter what's being ranked. It's one of the "lesbian friendliest cities," has the "best...

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia announced Monday that it has charged former CBS 3 anchor Larry Mendte with a felony count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization. The government's case against Mendte, 51, is set out in an "Information" – the formal charging document. The Information charges Mendte with one count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization and thereby obtaining information in furtherance of a tortious act. The Information says Mendte accessed the private e-mail accounts of former co-anchor Alycia Lane hundreds of times from from his Chestnut Hill home, his vacation home, KYW and...

Los Angeles(Reuters) - Many Hollywood celebrities who had supported Hillary Clinton are rallying behind Barack Obama, pledging money and star power to the Democrat's U.S. presidential bid before a big fundraiser next week. Experts say that since Clinton conceded defeat this month after a grueling Democratic nominating contest, celebrities have quickly united behind Obama. The result, they said, could be a campaign cash windfall for the senator from Illinois, but star support doesn't necessarily translate directly to votes. Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior scholar at the University of Southern California, said that once a politician becomes known, voters look for...

In the name of "defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt" the Associated Press is now selling "quotation licenses" that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that "fair use" -- the right to copy without permission -- means "Contact the owner of...

October 08, 2007, 0:00 a.m. Coded on CampusIvory-tower decay. By Michael Barone I am old enough to remember when America’s colleges and universities seemed to be the most open-minded and intellectually rigorous institutions in our society. Today, something very much like the opposite is true: America’s colleges and universities have become, and have been for some decades, the most closed-minded and intellectually dishonest institutions in our society. Colleges and universities today almost universally have speech codes, which prohibit speech deemed hurtful by others, particularly those who are deemed to be minorities (including women, who are a majority on most...

Liberals around the country are smiling today at an Associated Press poll and story circulating on the web claiming that conservatives read less than liberals, non more so than former Colorado Democratic congresswoman Pat Schroeder who despite being president of the American Association of Publishers decided she felt like insulting half of her potential reading audience by dusting off an old liberal refrain: "The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes,' [...] It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no...

NEW YORK - Christiane Amanpour's work on the documentary series "God's Warriors" took her directly to intersections of extreme religious and secular thinking. She watched, fascinated, as demonstrators in San Francisco accused teenagers in the fundamentalist Christian group BattleCry of intolerance in a clash of two cultures that will probably never understand each other. Understanding is what Amanpour is trying to promote in "God's Warriors," which takes up six prime-time hours on CNN this week. The series on religious fundamentalism among Christians, Muslims and Jews airs in three parts, 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday through Thursday. Many people know only stereotypes...

WASHINGTON - Five journalists must identify the government officials who leaked them details about a scientist under scrutiny in the 2001 anthrax attacks, a federal judge said Monday. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered the reporters to cooperate with Steven J. Hatfill, who accused the Justice Department and FBI of violating the federal Privacy Act by giving the media information about the FBI's investigation of him. The reporters named in the opinion are Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek, Allan Lengel of The Washington Post, Toni Locy, formerly of USA Today, and James Stewart, formerly of CBS News....

Who is Alan Gottlieb, the gun champion who wants to put me in jail? Regular readers know I am being investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. This silly flap grows out of a column I wrote nearly two years ago about buying a handgun at a New Hampshire gun show. Gottlieb and like-minded gun fanatics went into spasms a few weeks ago after the column came up again on local radio. Gottlieb wrote my boss, Globe Editor Marty Baron, demanding I be fired, and asked the ATF to investigate his allegation that I was guilty of...

Sean Penn has experienced backlash for talking openly about his political beliefs, but sees such discussion as more respectable than promoting movies. "There's baggage attached to coming out publicly on stuff, but there's baggage - in my view, more damaging baggage - to goin' and (appearing) ... on Jay Leno's show, philosophizing about 'Uncle Buck' or whatever you're hawkin'," the Oscar-winning actor tells Esquire magazine in its September issue, on newsstands Wednesday. Penn, 46, has bitterly criticized President Bush, toured Iraq to observe the war there and helped rescue workers with door-to-door searches for survivors after Hurricane Katrina swamped New...

August 6, 2007 6:30 AM Harry Potter and the Deathly Intelligence Leakers can only Scholastic keep a secret? By Peter Hoekstra The fate of Harry Potter in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows was a closely guarded secret that was not supposed to be revealed before the book’s official release on July 21. The U.S. Postal Service tried to protect the secret when a mailman asked a Chicago-area woman to give back two copies of the book he had accidentally delivered before the release date. The mailman feared that he would lose his job for delivering the...

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 5 — For the last 14 months, high-tech insiders have been eating up the work of an anonymous blogger who assumed the persona of Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive and one of the world’s most famous businessmen. The mysterious writer has used his blog, the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, to lampoon Mr. Jobs and his reputation as a difficult and egotistical leader, as well as to skewer other high-tech companies, tech journalists, venture capitalists, open-source software fanatics and Silicon Valley’s overall aura of excess.

<p>You've got a tough job up there in the clouds riding herd over the folks. Apparently you're having problems with the folks speaking out against the America hating left. But that's ok. Just keep your eyes closed, ears plugged and your jaws flapping. Eventually the folks will tune you out and we'll all be better off for it.</p>

Al Gore III pleaded guilty Monday to possessing marijuana and other drugs, but a judge told the former Veep's son he can withdraw that plea and have the charges dropped if he successfully completes a drug diversion program. What a bargain! Cops say the 24-year-old was going 100+ MPH in his Prius on an Orange County freeway when they pulled him over. Multiple drugs were found in his car.

PHOENIX — Federal investigators on Saturday began gathering debris from two news helicopters that collided while covering a police chase on live television and crashed, killing all four people aboard. The investigators plan to lay out the wreckage elsewhere to try to determine the point where the two aircraft collided Friday, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Howard Plagens said. "We're just mapping out the locations ... how things are scattered, that's our main focus," he said. Investigators said they'll need at least another day to finish going through the debris, which was sprayed across the ground and landed atop nearby...

I've been sitting on some facts for a few days at the request of Ryan Horsley. BATFU had threatened him that he needed to cease all blogging and keep their agents and inspectors free from being photographed or observed, or they would go to the judge and file a complaint of harassment. Ryan was in a dilemma--he has been single-handedly bearing the burden of his defense against a fe(de)ral government with practically unlimited resources--yet if he continued to allow his persecutors to operate in the dark, that is where they would kill Red's. The new complaint is calculated to be...

There is an epidemic of handgun violence in Boston's poorest neighborhoods, and the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is investigating me? Consider this my confession. I plead guilty to offending the loony gun lobby. In the likely event you missed this alleged story, here are the facts. You be the judge. Twenty months ago, a lifetime in columnist time, I wrote in this space about going to a gun show in New Hampshire. The idea was to see how easy it would be to buy a handgun just across the border from Massachusetts, which has some of...

Peach-coloured toilet roll to match her complexion, and rose petals in the toilet bowl. One hundred-and-twenty designer bathroom towels also in peach. Ten highly specified designer floor lamps. And that's before we get to the insistence that the security team wear 'neat dark sweaters' and use metal detectors. Directing a night shoot in New York for one of her movies, her perfectionism resulted in the production running a few hours behind schedule. Just before one take, she noticed more light than usual. "Where the **** is that light coming from," she screamed. "It's 5.30am," a hesitant crew member responded. "I...

Montville Township was tops among eight New Jersey towns included in Money magazine's best 100 places to live in the United States, weighing in at No. 13. No New Jersey town made the top 10, but six Garden State towns were in the top 50, including the Middlesex County Borough of Sayreville, which was 47th on the list. Hillsborough (23rd), River Vale (29th), Marlboro (33rd), Berkeley Heights (45th), Readington (58th) and Moorestown (78th) rounded out the Jersey selections. Moorestown had been the top choice in 2005.Middleton, WI., was the best place to live, the magazine said. Towns were ranked on...

BBC admits fake winners on charity appeals   Dan Sabbagh, Media Editor of The Times, and Philippe Naughton   The BBC suspended all phone-in competitions today after admitting that it had put fake winners on air during its flagship charity appeal programmes, Children In Need, Comic Relief and Sport Relief. On each occasion, the "winning caller" heard on air was a member of the production team posing as a viewer. The World Service pop programme White Label, the TMi show on CBBC and BBC 6 Music’s Liz Kershaw Show also duped viewers in a similar way. Mark Thompson, the...

President Bush, at podium, speaks to members of the media prior to the ribbon-cutting ceremony ... At this morning's ribbon-cutting for the newly renovated White House Briefing Room, President Bush dropped in just long enough to rub reporters' noses in his cheerful refusal to take them seriously. ... the president was in full frat-boy mode, clowning around during introductory remarks by C-SPAN's Steve Scully. ... Bush apparently felt Scully went on too long. "I like a good, short introduction," Bush jeered as soon as Scully gave up the podium. Here's the transcript. "We missed you -- sort of," Bush...

AS THE WORLD'S scientists near consensus on human causes of climate change, even Exxon is cutting contributions and distancing itself from the global warming denial industry. The deniers haven't conceded defeat, and lately have found a substitute for the "sound science" they once demanded. Their new tactic is the drive-by shooting. The objective is distraction, to be achieved by demeaning the oracles, particularly the "Goreacle," of global warming.

Dan Rather might have left CBS under a cloud, but his star still shines brightly -- at least among some on the distaff side of the NBC networks.Rather was a scheduled guest on today's "Morning Joe," and neither Erin Burnett, reporting in from CNBC, nor MSNBC newsreader Mika Brzezinski, could curb her enthusiasm.Burnett was first to confess. CNBC'S ERIN BURNETT: You know who I had a crush on? . . . Don't you have Dan Rather coming on in a couple of minutes? Alright, so, when I was little, I thought I was going to marry Dan Rather. I watched...

Been getting a ton of mail about my column of last week. My main point: "All the posturing about illegal immigrants is really an attack aimed at everybody whose name ends in 'ez.'"Snip....What really caught my attention was his link to a forum at FreeRepublic.com where my column was being, umm, discussed. One posting had the same bandito featured on Ralph's Mexifornia license (turns out it's the actor Alfonso Bedoya in "The Treasure of Sierra Madre") and said: "Borders? Borders? We don' need no steenking borders. We don't need no steekin' Roger Hernandez neither!"

Your child is next door on the computer, destroying the world as we know it and wrecking two of the most fundamental values that underpin society - first, as I shall explain, the distinction between truth and falsehood; second, the inviolability of personal property. While the little blighter is about it, your darling ten-year-old is also helping to destroy the record industry, the publishing industry, newspapers and cinema. And what is more, this activity is highly addictive, and is more likely than not to make young people into addicts of gambling, pornography and insidious forms of self-deception. Maybe you think...

CBS EVENING NEWS anchor Katie Couric is being accused of slapping an editor -- after he injected a word she detested into a script! "The stress has caused her to blow up at her staff for small infractions on the set," charges NEW YORK magazine reporter Joe Hagan, in a story set for publication on Monday. "During the tuberculosis story in June, Couric got angry with news editor Jerry Cipriano for using a word she detested— 'sputum' —and the staff grew tense when she began slapping him 'over and over and over again' on the arm, according to a source...

As a member of rock 'n' roll royalty, Sir Elton John does not take kindly to being outranked. Not even by Princes William and Harry. So when his chauffeur-driven people carrier was stopped because of royal security around the Concert for Diana, the veteran singer flew into one of the rages for which he is renowned. "Get out of my ****ing way," he screamed at a policeman. "Don't you know who I am? I've been working all ****ing day and I need to get to my ****ing dressing room."

To say the amnesty bill was an emotional issue is an understatement. The Capitol Hill phones rang non-stop, causing some members to simply unplug them and turn off their answering machines. They were hearing from their constituents that they don’t want this amnesty bill to pass and they were ignoring these pleas. But to have a citizen arrested because they disagree is beyond the pale and begs the question, why do they care more about illegal aliens than they do their own constituents? Homeless activist, Ted Hayes, was on Capitol Hill, like thousands of other citizens who make unscheduled visits...

Here’s something a little more light for a Friday afternoon, but demonstrates the mainstream media’s biased view of the world.Among the "Quick Hits" on CNN’s "American Morning" on Friday was a brief on how the drought in the Southeast is affecting the production of Jack Daniels Tennessee whiskey in Lynchburg, Tennessee. The water levels in the cave spring that supplies the Jack Daniels distillery are "dangerously low" according to the brief by co-host John Roberts.After giving the brief, Roberts and substitute weather forecaster Reynolds Wolf began the weather report with the following exchange: JOHN ROBERTS: "Reynolds Wolf is here with a...

<p>ALEXANDRIA, VA, June 6, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Yesterday, while filling-in for Regis Philbin on Live with Regis and Kelly, CBS News Early Show anchor Bryant Gumbel actually boasted about once calling conservative culture-critic Robert Knight "a f***ing idiot". Gumbel used the actual word at the end of a June 29, 2000 interview on CBS's The Early Show about whether active homosexuals should work as scoutmasters in the Boy Scouts. Mr. Knight, then with the Family Research Council, is now the director of the Media Research Center's Culture (MRC) and Media Institute.</p>

~~~snip~~~ However, Mr Grzebski, who saw his story unfold first in the Polish media and then saw it repeated around the world, has now said he was never in a coma for 19 years. "I never said any of those things, I was not in a coma for 19 years, I only spoke to one journalist and what they wrote was not true - and every time the story was printed new things emerged," he added. ~~~snip~~~

There was an almost audible sigh of relief in parts of America's capital this weekend after a TV network said it would not reveal the identities of scores of clients of the alleged "DC madam" because they were not well enough known to be "newsworthy".

Not so long ago, the only way to talk back to The Post was to write a civil letter to the editor, with a verifiable name and address, or to contact the ombudsman. Now, click on "view all comments" at the end of a story, column or blog on washingtonpost.com and enter a new world that challenges long-held practices and that can unnerve some journalists and readers. The online comments are immediate, use only e-mail addresses as identification and can be raw, racist, sexist and revolting. Jim Brady, washingtonpost.com's executive editor, said, "It's much more of a free-for-all." Washingtonpost.com is...

The bombshell sex probe of a Washington, D.C., madam that already has caught one Bush administration official with his pants down may soon focus on well-known political pundits who have appeared on TV. "There are several thousand names, tens of thousands of phone numbers, from administration officials to lobbyists to advisers who are well known, people who appear on television," said ABC News' Brian Ross, to whom alleged madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey turned over her little black book. In an interview with CNN, Ross refused to identify any more of the customers of Palfrey's "escort service" and did not indicate...

I did a search; couldn't believe this hadn't been posted. Russert spells out I-R-A-K on the air.

(Exposing and Compating Liberal Media Bias) On the April 25 edition of "The View," the same day Rosie O’Donnell announced she is leaving in June, Barbara Walters proclaimed she is "not crazy" about President Bush. Why? His motorcade temporarily disrupted her walk home. Walters is apparently so lost in the celebrity world, that the slightest inconvenience sets her off. A shocked Rose O’Donnell inquired "did they recognize you?" as if Barbara is more important than the others waiting for the motorcade to pass. Walters than exclaimed "[Bush] is the president, he is not a king." And Barbara Walters is a...

PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers returns his series "Bill Moyers Journal" to taxpayer-funded PBS stations on Wednesday night. On Monday, National Public Radio’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross offered Moyers a very favorable interview to promote the show. Near the end, Gross asked Moyers about charges of liberal bias bandied about when Kenneth Tomlinson headed the board at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Moyers said "He singled out Now with Bill Moyers for a bias that didn’t exist." Moyers didn’t try in this comfortable liberal forum to pretend completely that he was non-ideological or a "Thomas Paine radical." He proclaimed "There's...

Barbara Walters just told her viewers (on her morning liberal talk show THE VIEW) about how George Bush made her mad because she was not able to cross a street in New York due to barriers in place for the President to pass through NY. An officer recognized Walters, but told her she had to wait just like other people for the President to pass before she could cross. She was there for 15 minutes when she and others crossed anyway. She then said the President is not a King and that she didn't much like President Bush anyway. End...

BLACKSBURG, Va. - Sometime after he killed two people in a Virginia university dormitory but before he slaughtered 30 more in a classroom building Monday morning, Cho Seung-Hui sent NBC News a rambling communication and videos about his grievances, the network said Wednesday. Cho, 23, a senior English major at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, killed 32 people in two separate attacks Monday before taking his own life. Network officials turned the material over to the FBI and said they would not immediately disclose its contents beyond characterizing the material as “disturbing.” It included a written communication, photographs and...

Touchy, touchy! Diane Sawyer is in the business of dishing out tough questions and challenging people's answers. But when a guest on today's "Good Morning America" politely corrected her on a First Amendment matter, the GMA host was quick to accuse him of "attacking" her. Los Angeles-based radio talk show host Larry Elder was Diane's guest, in to discuss the Imus matter. Sawyer introduced him as a "conservative radio host" though on his own site Elder describes himself as a "libertarian" and "a blend of fiscal conservative and social liberal." Of course we all know how many times the...

A student Republican club at the University of Vermont has folded, its undoing sealed by financial problems that included payment of a speaker's fee to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The College Republicans took out a $7,000 loan from the Student Government Association to help pay the fee for the October 2005 speech by Gingrich. The club failed to repay the loan for more than a year, and after several warnings was decertified last month by the Student Government Association.

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) -- A federal judge has told Toledo's mayor that a radio reporter who was barred from attending a news conference must be allowed into future news events. U-S District Judge James Carr ordered the mayor's office yesterday to notify W-S-P-D about upcoming news conferences. The station sued the city after one of its reporters who is also a talk show host was barred from a news conference last week. Mayor Carty Finkbeiner's office says it issued the ban because the reporter is not objective. A day later, Milliken and other station employees forced their way into a...

It was hard to tell what was making Andrea Mitchell angrier: Bill O'Reilly's assertions that NBC has a liberal bias, or his repeated and perhaps ungentlemanly references to the lady's "30 years" of experience. In any case, the look on Andrea's face was unmistakable: she was not the happiest of campers. Mitchell appeared on this evening's Factor for purposes of touting her new book. But kudos to O'Reilly for taking the occasion to directly confront a leading NBC light with the network's undeniable leftward tilt - which Mitchell proceeded to flatly deny. This is must-see video, which you can...

Don't bother sending anything to that e-mail address below -- because I don't care. That address on the bottom of this column? That is the pathetic, confused death knell of the once-proud newspaper industry, and I want nothing to do with it. Sending an e-mail to that address is about as useful as sending your study group report about Iraq to the president. Here's what my Internet-fearing editors have failed to understand: I don't want to talk to you; I want to talk at you. A column is not my attempt to engage in a conversation with you. I have...

Caught on Tape: James Brolin Touts 9/11Conspiracy Website on 'The View' Posted by Tim Graham on December 28, 2006 - 15:55. The Christmas break replay season offered a chance to catch up on shocking episodes of "The View" on ABC. On December 26, a replay of the December 6 program gave viewers in the Eastern and Central time zones the chance to see James Brolin pitch a government-set-up-9/11 website: "Can I tell you to have a look at www.911weknow.com? And then wait until I see you next time." The first broadcast was blocked in the East due to doting live...

National Public Radio media reporter David Folkenflik was stunned by a June speech at Harvard by Times reporter Linda Greenhouse, which was very explicitly liberal. National Public Radio media reporter David Folkenflik was stunned that New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse would give a stem-winding liberal speech at Harvard in June, when commentary is rarely heard from "hard news reporters." Greenhouse, well-known in reporter-or-activist debates for marching in a rally for abortion rights in 1989, tore into the Bush administration and conservatives: "our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and...

BPI wants tax breaks for new acts The recording industry invests 17% of its turnover in new music The UK recording industry says it should get tax breaks for finding the next generation of recording artists. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) wants its members to be eligible for tax credits which are currently awarded to businesses conducting research. Such a system would lead to "greater investment" in new music, said BPI chairman Peter Jamieson. The BPI was responding to a government programme which is seeking advice on how to make the UK more creative. It says its members should be...