Free Republic

“What I’ve got is F*****G Golden,” said jailed Democrat Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. He was referring to his opportunity to appoint an IL senator to Congress after then Senator Barack Obama became President in 2009. Well, pardon my hubris, but what I have is Golden also, in today’s Hades of Politically Correct Journalism. I have a FIFTIES JOURNALISM DEGREE from that same state, Illinois. Therefore, permit me to advise you budding cub reporters and “J Skul” students of some imperatives I was taught way back when Dinosaurs roamed Wright Street into Greg Hall. “Just the Facts, ma’am; Just the Facts,”...

In America, “accuracy, honesty, transparency, impartiality, and accountability,” went out the day Obama came in The country infamous for its running dog-mainstream media cheering anything Obama in a cacophony of barks, including the “fundamental transformation” of their own country, is now branching out through its State Department to the world. Bureaucrats of the U.S. State Department, who have already taken it upon themselves to teach “ethics” to the “up and coming journalists” of India, are going to “embed” up-and-coming Russian journalists in American newsrooms. Having gained control of the mainstream media on home turf, why not try for world media...

Now that the United States has "normalized" relations with Cuba, which was taken off of the State Department terror sponsor list this week, journalism professors from American universities are starting to train students inside the communist country. Despite the liberal leanings of the professors embarking on this task, this is a very good thing. Press freedom and holding government accountable through the sunlight of reporters are two fundamental principles of a free society. Because of this, despite "normalization" and a "new era," the Castro regime still counts practicing journalism as a crime. It's not just that they are studying journalism...

The economic recovery is really coming along great. For the third time since the expansion began in June 2009, the U.S. economy suffered a setback. Don’t call it a setback. It’s a strategic retreat. Those ‘optimistic’ estimates keep being revised. Such declines in GDP are rare in economic expansions, pointing to the fragile nature of the current rebound. The economy hasn’t contracted in three different quarters during good times since the 1950s. It’s the fault of the GOP. Also the weather. That’s the weakest reading since frigid winter temperatures derailed growth at the start of 2014. We can’t have an...

WBRZ reporter Brett Buffington was arrested after a run-in with officers at the scene of a burglary investigation Thursday morning. According to The Advocate, the Baton Rouge, La. ABC affiliate’s reporter was booked on counts of interfering with an officer and intimidating a public official. Police placed Buffington in the back of a police unit until the area was made safe, the report says. Buffington was then issued a criminal summons and told he was free to leave, to which he told an officer, “Hope you enjoy the rest of your career.” The report says the officer took the comment...

FACT CHECKER: “ISIS didn’t exist when my brother was president. Al Qaeda in Iraq was wiped out when my brother was president.” Bush seems to have fallen prey to Washington conventional wisdom, in which ISIS suddenly emerged into consciousness in the past year or so. That may be fine for armchair analysts or journalists. But that’s little excuse for a presidential candidate, who might have to grapple with this problem if he or she is elected president. With some fine-tuning of his statement, Bush could have made the case that Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq, combined with the president’s...

By now, I assume most of you have figured out that I’m not a huge fan of Sen. Ted Cruz. I’m even less of a fan, however, of what passes for journalism in this country these days, by which I mean the shallow, image-driven, trivia-obsessed folderol that seeks to find the “gotchas” in the most ridiculous things. Did Obama ordering orange juice on the campaign trail mean he’s not a “regular guy” who can relate to the kind of simpletons these overpaid celebrity journalists assume we are? Did Hillary Clinton not tipping in a diner mean she’s insensitive to working...

Full title..."Not how they roll: Pentagon asks media to scrap old footage of ISIS columns" ISIS may be on the move, but not the way you see on television, claims the Pentagon. Footage of the menacing, black-clad terrorist army rolling across the desert in long convoys predates U.S.-led air strikes that have forced the jihadists to travel more discreetly, say senior State Department and Pentagon officials. They have asked television networks to stop using stock footage that makes the terror army seem more mobile - and more formidable - than they say it actually is. “One Toyota speeding down the...

President Obama is taking heat for calling for changes in "how the media reports," during an anti-poverty event where he also took a swipe at Fox News. At the Georgetown University discussion on Tuesday, Obama lamented how, sometimes, the poor are cast as "sponges" who don't want to work. "I have to say that if you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu -- they will find folks who make me mad," Obama said. "I don't know where they find them. They're like, I don't want to work, I just want a free Obama phone...

America is crumbling before our eyes. Once, the U.S. was the envy of the world with its modern roads, airports, railroad bridges and other infrastructure. Everything was first-class. Now, it’s third-rate. An Amtrak passenger train derailed Tuesday in Philadelphia, killing at least seven passengers. The investigation into the crash is only beginning, and it’s too early to say what caused it. But it’s not too early to say that Amtrak’s crumbling infrastructure didn’t help matters. “It’s an extremely heavily used stretch of track,” transportation analyst Matthew L. Wald told CNN, referring to the area where the train derailed Tuesday night....

Little Rock journalist Suzi Parker, author of “Sex in the South: Unbuckling the Bible Belt" and a former contributor to Salon, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News and other outlets, recently self-published her first novel, "Echo Ellis: Adventures of a Girl Reporter," about "a Southern reporter living in Bill Clinton's Arkansas who often finds herself in dangerous yet thrilling situations." As Parker put it in a recent interview, "Echo is my alter ego. She has many adventures that I may or may not have had in my life." Check out the noir book trailer above, in which she describes...

Just when you think the GOP might modernize, the knuckles start dragging again, this time on immigration and trade. It’s political suicide. If you want to see where the impulse to reform the Republican Party in a more libertarian direction of limited government, social tolerance, and free markets goes to die, look no further than the recent attacks on immigration and freer trade by Jeff Sessions, the influential senator from Alabama. Every time the GOP seems finally ready to orient itself in a forward-looking, post-culture-war direction, some holdover from an America that never quite existed to begin with blows his...

The transparency standards for an NFL quarterback rising higher than for the Secretary of State surely speaks to the bread-and-circuses quality of 2015 America. We expect more from our gridiron heroes than from our nation’s leaders. Perhaps the tizzy over Tom serves as a tacit admission that we also expect more responsiveness to public opinion from 345 Park Ave. than from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. No law decrees that a quarterback must turn over his texts and emails to the NFL the way that the Federal Records Act demands that the Secretary of State turn over correspondence to the government. Yet...

Global warming will eventually push 1 out of every 13 species on Earth into extinction, a new study projects. It won't quite be as bad in North America, where only 1 in 20 species will be killed off because of climate change or Europe where the extinction rate is nearly as small. But in South America, that forecasted heat-caused extinction rate soars to 23 percent, the worst for any continent, according to a new study published Thursday in the journal Science. University of Connecticut ecologist Mark Urban compiled and analyzed 131 peer-reviewed studies on species that used various types of...

Climate change could drive to extinction as many as one in six animal and plant species, according to a new analysis. In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut, also found that as the planet warms in the future, species will disappear at an accelerating rate. “We have the choice,” he said in an interview. “The world can decide where on that curve they want the future Earth to be.” If emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to grow, climate researchers project the world could warm by...

A YOUNG student from Seattle has been revealed as a senior female ISIS agent responsible for recruiting women to join the terror group. On Twitter, she is known as @_UmmWaqqas, and is pictured shrouded head-to-toe in black; an inscrutable and high-ranking officer of ISIS who boasts more than 8000 followers online, and is in close contact with the British, Americans and the jihadi brides in Syria. Channel 4 News has since revealed her identity as a woman in her 20s who went to school in the US, and by her friends’ accounts grew up as a regular teenager in a...

The GOP 2016 field may still be picking its way through suitable campaign messaging on immigration, but activists already are defining their party's approach to reform: "Mass Deportation." On the same day that House Republicans were holding a hearing on whether people born in the U.S. should get automatic citizenship, immigration and civil rights activists affixed that brand to Republicans in Congress and by extension, the party's 2016 hopefuls. "The GOP-controlled Congress has all but cemented its anti-immigrant legacy and may meet its destiny in 2016," the activists said in a report they released Wednesday with the words "Mass Deportation"...

CNN ranked #2 in cable news in April, easily topping MSNBC in Total Day among both total viewers and adults 25-54, and M-Su and M-F primetime in the demo 25-54. The network has now beaten MSNBC for 10 straight months in Total Day among both total viewers and the demo. CNN Program Highlights: The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer (5-7pm) ranked #2 in cable news in the demo (157k) ahead of MSNBC by +134% (67k) and up +9% vs. year ago, while MSNBC was down by -54%. Erin Burnett Outfront (7pm) easily beat MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews in the...

SOMETHING happened while the immigration system in the United States got broken, something that should change the way we talk about fixing it. Years went by, and nature took its course. More than 11 million unauthorized immigrants settled into our communities; many formed families and had children. Now at least one of every 15 children living in the United States has an unauthorized parent, and nearly all of those children are native-born United States citizens. Think of that statistic, one in 15, the next time you drive by a school or a playground. Think of those children living with the...

Good news for Obamacare supporters: It's quite a bit less unpopular than it was a few months ago. The uptick leads to the question: Will the Affordable Care Act ever actually be popular? Looking at the long run, Republicans may have done the law a favor by naming it Obamacare. Former presidents usually bask in a nostalgic glow after they leave office. While events could still make a difference, Obama is well-positioned to take advantage of that effect: To date, at least, he has no major wars to regret, and the nation hasn't plunged into a new recession. If long-term...