Free Republic

Jeffrey Zaslow, a longtime Wall Street Journal writer and best-selling author with a rare gift for writing about love, loss, and other life passages with humor and empathy, died at age 53 on Friday of injuries suffered in a car crash in northern Michigan. [snip] At the Journal his subjects ranged from the anguish of losing a car in the Disney World parking lot, to the power of fathers' lunchbox letters to their daughters, to the distinctive pain of watching a beloved childhood stadium go under the wrecking ball. More recently, he became one of America's best-selling nonfiction writers, known...

I only hope, dear readers, that you aren't as sick of reading about Katie Couric, the beleaguered anchor of the "CBS Evening News," as I am of writing about her. But the taint of plagiarism sweeping through CBS News was, quite possibly, the low point of Couric's seven-month tenure. That's saying a lot. Yes, here's yet one more column about the shooting star of the television-news business. I can take it if you can. Earlier this month, CBS put a video commentary on the Internet in which Couric lamented that children take less interest in using libraries than they used...

Debbie Schlussel, 37 years old, supports her pundit habit by practicing commercial law in suburban Detroit. She is among the most proactive B-list pundits. Almost daily, she emails her appearance schedule, availability or sharp-elbowed conservative commentaries to 5,000 people in media and politics. Maybe you've seen her: Telling MSNBC's Chris Matthews that Rep. Mark Foley's fixation on young pages was "a known fact" in the halls of Congress. Punditry perspective: Appearing on the pundit circuit is "great for me with my sources. More people will talk to me if they see me on TV," she says.In the wake of North...