Free Republic

Starting August 1, the left-wing Ohio newspaper, The Toledo Blade, intends to lay off about 130 of its unionized employees due to a permanent shutdown of its Toledo production center that handles printing and inserting. ... In 2013, The Blade lost $8.5 million and has been losing millions for years. As of now there are no plans that will affect the advertising and news-gathering departments. In 2012, The Toledo Blade urged it readers to re-elect President Obama, arguing in part that "He has dealt effectively with economic recession at home

Since Monday, April 14, ABC's Claire Shipman has been touring the network and cable news networks to promote her new book that she co-wrote with Katty Kay entitled "The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self Assurance-What Women Should Know." Despite the eight television appearances Shipman has made since last Monday, only two interviews openly acknowledged her marriage to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

Have you noticed all the talk about so-called white privilege over the last couple months? All of a sudden, out of nowhere, white privilege has become the latest cause for the progressive left. Our moral betters on the left are telling white people to “check your privilege.” All this phrase really means is shut up and go away. The whole point of telling people to check their privilege is to stifle debate and silence criticism of progressive race baiting. This includes Jewish Holocaust survivors, who were told by faux intellectual Toure Neblett to “check their privilege.” Apparently in Neblett’s world...

On May 26 the New York Daily News launched a series about the Santa Barbara tragedy titled "America in Denial." It is a perfect demonstration of how the left plans to deny or downplay many facts in the horrid Santa Barbara attacks while perverting others so they can push gun control.

According to the AP, a CIA agent’s name was leaked by the White House . The AP calls it an “embarrassing flub” even though it was a crime when an aide in the Bush administration leaked the name of part-time agent Valerie Plame. What’s given little attention in the story is the fact that the Washington Post reporter who wrote the story sent his copy to the White House to be checked for “accuracy.” ... First of all, any reporter worth his salt would not depend on the subject he’s reporting on to verify accuracy. That’s just crazy. He’d make...

HARRIS-PERRY: "All right so let's review the whole story. Wealthy owners? Check. Profit made from the sale of black bodies? Check. Racial angst? Mmm, check. We're going to have more on the case for reparations after this." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osKA0bvELq0 For the record, NBA players are the highest paid professional athletes in America, easily surpassing all other major team sports. According to Forbes, the average salary in the NBA in 2012 was $5.15 million a year. With the average career lasting 4.8 years, that equates to $24.7 million in total compensation — this is the “average.” The NBA’s top player, Kobe Bryant,...

It's not just Republicans saying President Barack Obama is out of touch as the VA scandal continues to grow. CNN's John King on Sunday's "Inside Politics," noted that "More and more Democrats in key 2014 races are calling for the president to get a spine, they say, and fire his Veterans Affairs secretary" Eric Shinseki. "And what more and more Democrats are saying privately is scathing, calling the president and his team detached, flat-footed, even incompetent."

This post was updated at 4:40 p.m. ET. A federal judge in Detroit has ruled that Democratic Rep. John Conyers, the second-most-senior member of the U.S. House, will appear on the August primary ballot, overturning a decision by Michigan's secretary of state who said the candidacy was invalid.

UPDATE: As usual, the media news stories got fundamental facts wrong here. Of particular interest, half the people killed here were stabbed to death. Also, you won’t hear this in the news, the magazines that the killer used were also apparently limited to holding no more than 10 rounds (note that the Sheriff said that all the magazines were legal under California law). Obviously neither point fits the gun control check list. My guess is that because of these points the news media interest in this story will be relatively short lived. UPDATE: The Santa Barbara Sheriff’s office had interviewed...

Among the most reliable features of the filtered news we get each day is that the media will giddily report good news for the Democrats and ignore any bad news for them. In good news cycles for Democrats the media throws away any pretense of impartiality and leads the cheers for their home team. The classic example of media losing it over good news for their guys were the April 2006 polls showing George W. Bush had sunk to just 34% in the polls. The media, particularly CNN, repeated the “good news” so often their excited viewers could “Rocky Horror...

...."It's good to be out," he said as he strolled across the Ellipse, suit jacket tossed over his shoulder. "The bear is loose."... He also ran into a very excited woman named Karen. "Oh my gosh, this is like the best day of my life," Karen said. She then posed for a photo with Obama.

In nearly four and a half weeks, the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows have offered 110 minutes to an evolving Obama administration scandal involving secret lists designed to keep veterans from receiving proper medical treatment. Back in January, it took those same network shows just four and a half days to churn that much coverage for Chris Christie's Bridgegate.

“Blacks are only a small percentage of our community (but) the courthouse is filled with them,” says a long-serving public defender who writes under the pen name of Michael Smith in order to protect himself and his family. “The halls and gallery benches are overflowing with black defendants, families, and crime victims,” says the attorney. (1) “For blacks, the courthouse is like a carnival…they all seem to know each other…hundreds and hundreds each day, gossiping, laughing loudly, waving and crowding the halls.” Public defender Smith is finally opening up after many years of dancing to the tune of flawed media...

[Video] 8 Year Old Schoolboy Reprimanded For Thinking a Cloud Looked Like a Gun During Assignment May 22 2014 by Dan Cannon Share This Post So I think we’re officially to the point where our public schools are punishing children for their imagination. According to KKTV, Second grader Kody Smith was assigned to go outside, look at the clouds, and then use his imagination to draw what he saw. “Draw a picture of what you see in the clouds from your imagination and that picture is a gun,” explained 8-year-old Kody. Because it was a gun, the teacher at Talbott...

CNN President Jeff Zucker declared his network would “not going to be shamed” into covering Benghazi and other stories without “real news value” at an awards dinner Monday. Capital New York reports that Zucker explained CNN’s post-plane plans during an interview at the Deadline Club’s annual dinner on Monday night. “I don’t think there’s any question about our commitment to breaking news, as evidenced by all the questions about the plane,” Zucker told The New York Times’ Bill Carter (RELATED: The five most ridiculous aspects of CNN’s missing Malaysian flight coverage). “So we’re still there whenever that happens,” he continued,...

We have often noted how NBC, and its cable-news sister network MSNBC, form a virtual arm of the Democratic Party. Now, with the creation of their new “Growing Hope” website, MSNBC has abandoned all pretense of being an actual news network, and has completely joined forces with the Democratic Party. The site operates as a Democrat voter haven, full of positive messages that tout the value of belonging to the Left and decry the faults of being a conservative. Some of these messages are quite explicit. Lean Forward, an MSNBC motto developed in 2010, morphed into a campaign theme President...

Chicago Scoop: Obama to Chicago May 22 for Senate Democrats fundraisers Lynn Sweet @lynnsweet | Email WASHINGTON--President Barack Obama returns to Chicago on May 22 to headline big money fund-raisers to benefit the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Sen. Dick Durbin's re-election warchest. Obama, who touched down in Chicago in March for funders to bankroll the Democratic National Committee, will appear at a reception at the home of Michael and Tanya Polsky and a dinner at the home of Fred Eychaner, the CEO of Newsweb Corporation and one of the biggest Democratic donors in the nation. Obama needs the Senate...

A scientific study which suggests global warming has been exaggerated was rejected by a respected journal because it might fuel climate scepticism, it was claimed last night. The alarming intervention, which raises fears of ‘McCarthyist’ pressure for environmental scientists to conform, came after a reviewer said the research was ‘less than helpful’ to the climate cause. Professor Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading and one of five authors of the study, said he suspected that intolerance of dissenting views on climate science was preventing his paper from being published. If he and his four co-authors are...

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough tore into the leadership at the New York Times on Friday morning for what he characterized as a misleading self-defense over the reasons for the firing of former Executive Editor Jill Abramson. He observed that the Times admitted that the pay discrepancy issue was a factor even after they denied it at first. The appearance of a cover-up on this issue led Scarborough’s co-hosts to predict a backlash against the paper and even a wave of cancelled subscriptions from female subscribers. Reading from the latest piece in the New Yorker, Scarborough noted that the Times...

Liberals often say they’re big on tolerance, but apparently tolerance must flow only one way – toward liberals and their favored identity groups. So says MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart. Appearing as a guest on Monday’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Capehart rebuffed the idea ... [T]olerance, no, is not – it should not be a two-way street. It's a one-way street. ... That’s the perfect encapsulation of liberalism – they will make you to understand that you are wrong and they are right. You will tolerate whoever they like, but as for you – tough luck. If you don’t...