Free Republic

Rush Limbaugh celebrated 24 years on his national radio talk show Wednesday, and that date is as good as any to benchmark when the country began its journey into a deeply polarized political climate. Limbaugh -- universally called Rush by friends and critics alike -- almost single-handedly started a narrative that recast Americans into conservative heroes or liberal villains, patriotic saviors or mainstream media dupes. He was helped by the 1987 demise of the Fairness Doctrine, the longstanding regulation that required broadcasters to present both sides of a issue in roughly equal measure. He was perfectly poised to take advantage....

A Times pressroom is being further downsized “in response to the decline in revenue and page counts.” Ten union pressroom employees will be laid off at the end of August. The LAT pressroom has been hit hard by layoffs in the past. Last year the paper closed their Orange County printing facility as a cost-cutting measure. There are currently about 127 pressroom employees at the one remaining printing facility The full email from management is included after the jump. The email below was found at the union blog Save Our Trade. Ronnie Pineda GCC-IBT Local #140N As we have previously...

Legacy Media's Selective Bachmann Outrage Carol Platt Liebau Posted at 12:12 PM ET, 6/26/2011 The editors of the LA Times clearly thought they had caught Michele Bachmann in some sort of hypocrisy, given her support for a smaller, less expensive federal government. Today's paper features a big story running on the front page that breathlessly reports that Rep. Bachmann and her husband have -- gasp! -- benefited from "federal aid." That's because the counseling clinic run by Mr. Bachmann has received money over the past six years "that in part came from the federal government," because a farm in which...

After well over 20 years as a proud non-subscriber to the LA Times (I did buy the edition with Clinton's Impeachment story back in 1998 at the news stand), I have subscribed to the Sunday Edition for $0.19 per week for a year. This Sunday paper is regularly $2.50 at the newstand. I told the lady who called that I thought there was no way they could make any money on this and I thought this would make them go out of business sooner so I couldn't refuse the offer. Please seek this offer out and maybe we can sink...

For many Afghans, U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's dismissal over intemperate remarks in a magazine profile has served mainly to underscore their own weariness with a conflict that has dragged on for nearly nine years with no end in sight.For some, the general's woes have sharpened fears that the Western campaign against the Taliban movement — which ruled the country for five long, harsh years — is floundering. And many Afghans think that the Americans, like the Soviet Union two decades ago and so many would-be conquerors, ultimately will fail.McChrystal won the respect, even affection, of many Afghans with...

There are glimmers of hope for Democrats battling to retain control of Congress in this fall's elections, with the party holding a slender edge in public trust for shepherding the economy and small gains in those saying their finances are healthy, according to a new poll. The reeling economy remains the American public's top concern, according to an Associated Press-GfK Poll conducted earlier this month, making public attitudes about it crucial for both parties' hopes in November. The good news for Democrats: By a slim margin (47% to 42%), people trust them more than Republicans to guide the economy. And...

I have sent the following e-mail to Nick Goldberg, the Editorial Page Editor for the Los Angeles Times: Nick, A recent op-ed in your paper defending ACORN makes at least two factual misstatements: 1) that ACORN staff offered to help shield an underage prostitution ring at only two offices, and 2) that no voter fraudulently registered to vote by ACORN had ever actually cast a ballot. Furthermore, your paper failed to disclose that the author of the op-ed, Peter Dreier, has been a (presumably paid) consultant for ACORN in the past . . . something that might help explain how...

Monday 12/22, 2:41am CT -- This entry was formerly entitled, "Elect Schwarzenegger President? Obama Says Yes We Can! Dear L.A. Times..." Now, the plot thickens -- the story of the story. As it turns out, this article was featured in Drudge Report as well as Free Republic and then... poof! The lead disappeared! Funny how that can happen. Was it because of the implications this has, at such a sensitive time -- what with cases before the Supreme Court showing Obama to be a fictitious candidate, not a natural born Citizen at all? And with Congress yet to certify the...

One of the nation’s top biodefense researchers has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailing assaults of 2001 that killed five, the Los Angeles Times has learned.Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the past 18 years worked at the government’s elite biodefense research laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md., had been informed of the impending prosecution, people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and with the FBI investigation said.Ivins’ name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case that disrupted mail service...

Critics say the Arkansas governor cashed in on the school shooting with the 1998 publication of 'Kids Who Kill.' By Richard A. Serrano Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 26, 2008 JONESBORO, ARK. — After two middle-school boys in camouflage gear shot and killed four classmates and a teacher here, leaving 10 others wounded and a community shattered, it seemed inevitable that someone would see opportunity in the tragedy for a book deal. Indeed, within days a publisher agreed to pay $25,000 to an Arkansas writer to produce a book on youth violence. Victims' families were outraged. They called the...

The U.S. is known for its "paranoid style" of politics, so brace yourself for the next Big Scare coming down the pike (literally) -- the Trans-Texas Corridor. Isolationist conservatives, emboldened by their jihad last year against the Dubai Ports World deal, have identified this road project as the spearhead of a conspiracy to dissolve the United States of America. Texas awarded a planning contract in 2005 for the first phase of the corridor to Cintra, a Spanish multinational company, and its San Antonio partner, Zachry Construction. (Cintra also won a $1.3-billion contract last year to build a 40-mile extension of...

Over at Captains Quarters, Captain Ed ponders an interesting question brought forth by one of his readers. Apparently, the only evidence of Fred's work at National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association is a copy of the NFPRHA's board minutes from September 14, 1991 that claims that the group had hired Fred. The big question is, at what point did Fred begin working there? Here's what Captain Ed found. Now a new bit of indirect evidence has been found. Arent Fox brought Thompson into the firm to be "of counsel" in 1991 for his expertise in their lobbying business, including...

GARDEZ, Afghanistan — After completing their deployment to this remote firebase, the Green Berets of ODA 2021 left for home covered in glory. The 10-member Special Forces team, part of the Alabama National Guard, returned to their families in the spring of 2003 with tales to tell of frenzied firefights and narrow escapes. ADVERTISEMENT Its commander had nominated each of his men — as well as himself — for medals for valor. The team's performance was heralded as evidence that the Guard could play as equals with the regular Army in the war on terrorism. But the team also had...

On a tape of a closed-door meeting with advisers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says that Cubans and Puerto Ricans are naturally feisty and temperamental because of their combination of "black blood" and "Latino blood." "I mean Cuban, Puerto-Rican, they are all very hot," the governor says on the recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times and made available on its Web site Friday. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it." The six-minute tape was made earlier this year. On it, Schwarzenegger and Chief of...

THE RESOLUTION UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED FRIDAY by the U.N. Security Council calling for a "full cessation of hostilities" in Lebanon comes too late for the more than 1,000 people killed in the last four weeks. But its adoption — with the expected consent of Israel and Lebanon — is still a major achievement. If implemented successfully, it not only would prevent further loss of innocent life, but would address what President Bush called the "root cause" of this unexpected and unexpectedly bloody conflict: Hezbollah's creation of its own state within Lebanon. Hezbollah, a Shiite movement nurtured by Iran, proved that it...

In the weeks leading up to the release of The Passion of the Christ film over two years ago, Tim Rutten, media columnist for the Los Angeles Times, wrote no less than six hyperventilating columns that dealt almost exclusively with breathless concerns over anti-Semitism in Mel Gibson's film. At one point, Rutten attacked Mel Gibson as "a little brat" and "an unwholesomely willful child playing with matches."  Yet when the blatantly anti-Christian and anti-Catholic The Da Vinci Code was released a few months ago, Rutten's reaction was a ho-hum and a yawn; far from a concern, Da Vinci is "only...

A Los Angeles Times editor, hoping to give his journalists a break from reporting the often grim news in America's second-largest city, offered an unusual morale booster Monday: pony rides. Managing Editor Doug Frantz ..."I hope it boosted morale..." Like many major U.S. newspapers, the Times, forced to compete with news Web sites on the Internet, has seen circulation decline.

The 43-foot San Diego landmark represents clear government favoritism toward one religion.THE GRACEFUL SIMPLICITY of the towering cross atop a San Diego hill belies its convoluted history. It starts with a small wooden cross erected on the city-owned hill nearly 100 years ago, apparently for Easter sunrise services. Atop 822-foot Mt. Soledad, there is little to block the first rays of the sun. Over the years, crosses were vandalized or blown down and replaced; the current version was erected in 1954. It is a striking sight, visible from Interstate 5 and surrounded by an imposing spiked-top fence. In 1989, a...

SACRAMENTO — State intelligence reports released Thursday by the Schwarzenegger administration include material suggesting that the governor's anti-terrorism operation was interested in the actions of the Minuteman volunteer border patrol group. The reports also include a cryptic reference to "suspicious conversations at a mosque" in San Diego. TState officials released more than 80 intelligence reports prepared for the state Office of Homeland Security, in response to The Times' disclosure that two reports carried information about domestic political protests ranging from antiwar gatherings to protect-the-seals rallies. Large sections of the reports shown to reporters had been removed. The homeland security office...

LAST WEEK, IT LOOKED as if Sacramento might use a fraction of this year's multibillion-dollar budget surplus to expand health coverage for more kids in California. But in their final budget negotiations, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature decided that it was better to cave to a small group of vocal Republicans who believe that sick 3-year-olds should be punished for their parents' actions.