Free Republic

Last night after watching CSI, itself an interesting episode spun off from the recent car-crash death of the investigative reporter, I left the t.v. on and tuned to WUSA 9, the CBS flagship station in Washington, District of Corruption. I wanted to catch the weather news and see the coverage of the March for Life. Well, there was plenty of the former and none of the latter. Zero. In the city where the event took place, and tens of thousands of folks marched downtown, it was ignored as though it never happened. They did, however, had enough time to dedicate...

For the last couple weeks and several more to come, Chris Christie will get more air time on MSNBC than drone murders, gentrification, NSA spying, and network neutrality put together. Why not? He's a Republican, and Democrats are only fighting it out between the 40 yard lines. Why are some stories “news” and not others? Why will New Jersey governor Chris Christie's antics make the top of MSNBC news broadcasts for weeks to come, while the poisoning of 300,000 people by corporate greed and government abandonment on a scale not seen since Katrina dips below the radar as soon as...

MOSCOW, January 22 (RIA Novosti) – A bill that would have branded Russian media outlets that receive more than 50 percent of their funding from abroad as “foreign agents” was withdrawn from consideration in the State Duma on Tuesday. The bill’s authors said they had decided to reintroduce the legislation at a later date with a lower threshold for qualification as a foreign agent. The decision to withdraw the legislation was made because of the current situation in Ukraine, where violent clashes between police and anti-government protesters entered their third day Tuesday. The law's authors said the violence had been...

Gabriel Sherman’s exhaustive, inflammatory biography of Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, released days ago by Random House, has already prompted network pushback. “While we have not read the book,” a Fox News spokesperson told the New York Times, “the only reality here is that Gabe was not provided any direct access to Roger Ailes and the book was never fact-checked with Fox News.” Sherman’s 538-page tome, “The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News – and Divided a Country,” is the product of three years of work and hundreds of interviews. It paints...

In 2009, Carlos Slim, the second-richest man in the world, invested $250 million in a lending agreement with the New York Times. Now, the Mexican billionaire is set to double that investment -- and it could hurt the Times. Bloomberg's Edmund Lee reports: [Sorry, can't quote due to Bloomberg excerpting restrictions ... see the article instead]

WASHINGTON — Worse than Richard Nixon. An unprecedented abuse of powers. The most un-American president in the nation’s history. Nat Hentoff does not think much of President Obama. And now, the famous journalist says it is time to begin looking into impeachment. Hentoff sees the biggest problem as Obama’s penchant to rule by executive order when he can’t convince Congress to do things his way. The issue jumped back into the headlines last week when, just before his first Cabinet meeting of 2014, Obama said, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone … and I can use that...

On yesterday’s program we didn’t have a chance to get to our usual letter of the week and so today, I’ll close the program with this week’s letter, or rather, a card. On Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama turned 50. And last night, she marked the occasion with a “50 and Fabulous” celebration at the White House. So this morning: my birthday card to the nation’s First Lady. Dear First Lady Obama, It’s me, Melissa. Happy Birthday and best wishes for at least another 50 years of good health, great joy, and remarkable achievement. The life you have already lived...

In a little POTUS Possum, President Obama said that he doesn’t see the second term as just playing defense; he intends to do some good, “even if nobody is paying attention”. In David Remnick’s juicy piece on POTUS at The New Yorker titled “Going the Distance: On and off the road with Barack Obama”, we get a close look at Barack Obama and his intentions for the coming year. Remnick puts it on the line, explaining that 2014 is the President’s final year of relevancy before 2016 captures all of the attention. "And, after a miserable year, Obama’s Presidency is...

I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being. ” said Jackie Robinson” If you want Egyptians to respect you, you better respect yourselves and treat us fairly. You can criticize us, disagree with us but with honesty and fairness, not by false accusations and fierce attacks, and ruining the reputation of our country in front of your public opinion and misleading your readers and spreading lies and fabricated narrative stories. Your job is to publish facts and not to incite for violence or biased to terrorism against...

While The Foreign News Agencies and Media supporting terrorism and launching a fierce campaign against Egypt since the overthrown of Muslim Brotherhood, the US Congress slamed bamed their own media and really made them look and sound like Imbeciles and Morons! Since the overthrown of Muslim Brotherhood by the 30th of June revolution, the US politicized media are calling our revolution a military coup and attacking Egyptians in any step they make whether in relation to the road map moving forward or measures taken in protecting our national security against terrorism. This fierce campaign launched against Egypt by foreign media...

Michelle Obama at an earlier vacation in Spain.There have been no media reports on First Lady Michelle Obama’s extended Hawaii vacation since it was abruptly announced she was staying behind when her husband and daughters returned to Washington from the family’s annual Christmas vacation to the state where the president was raised as a teenager. A Google News search shows only a handful of articles just after New Year’s Day based on local reports Obama was staying at the Maui estate of Oprah Winfrey. Those articles mentioned Maui locals upset by road closures near Winfrey’s estate. Since then there have...

The Washington Post wants you to know First Lady Michelle Obama is “more than meets the eye.” To celebrate Mrs. Obama’s upcoming 50th birthday, the publication printed a glowing feature about her in its Express newspaper. The piece lists a few “Myths” about the First Lady, debunking each one with important “explanations.” Here’s just a couple: Myth: She is a food tyrant of Bloombergian intolerance. “Her focus on the nation’s eating habits has led to complaints that she wants to deprive Americans of dessert. But Obama repeatedly expresses her belief in moderation, talks about her affection for French fries and...

CBS finally ended its almost six-month long ban on the IRS-Tea Party investigation to announce to its viewers, on Tuesday’s CBS This Morning, that the FBI is not expected to “file criminal charges” and has yet to find “proof of political bias.” However in the time since CBS last reported on the scandal on July 24, they have censored bombshells in the investigation like: Rep. Darrell Issa accusing the FBI of stonewalling; the discovery of e-mails by IRS officials sent both to the FEC and the White House; and most recently the announcement of an Obama donor being named in...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie just endured the worst week of his five years in elected office, battered by a scandal involving traffic jams as political payback and implicating several top — and now former — aides. And yet, Christie still holds down the top spot in our rankings of the 2016 Republican field — a sign of both the considerable strengths he retains in the race and the lack of an obvious challenger to his dominance. Make no mistake: Bridge-gate has hurt Christie and slowed, badly, the considerable momentum he built during a sweeping reelection victory in 2013. But,...

Network news viewers are declining in unprecedented rates, from an average of 48 million nightly network news viewers in 1985 to 24.5 million in 2013, according to Pew Research analysis of Nielsen Media Research data. Young people aged 18-29 are the least likely to watch network news regularly (only 11 percent did so in 2012), and 49 percent of people in this age group say they never watch the news.

In less than 24 hours, the big three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they’ve allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service controversy. Since the story broke on Wednesday that aides to the New Jersey governor punished a local mayor’s lack of endorsement with a massive traffic jam, ABC, CBS and NBC have responded with 34 minutes and 28 seconds of coverage. Since July 1, these same networks managed a scant two minutes and eight seconds for the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups. In contrast,...

You can feel the charm when you watch her operate in person, that Sarah Palin. You don’t expect it, but it’s there – the awkward mix of pseudo-authenticity and charisma, the smooth way with a room full of reporters, the way she just carries on, regardless. Me, I was taken aback. She’s practically my new bestie, now. Squeezed my hand, called me “honey,” even stopped to squeeze my shoulder on her way out and thank me. We had a wee chat and a laugh. Palin was here Friday for an early breakfast event to promote her new series on a...

In less than 48 hours, ABC, CBS and NBC deluged viewers with coverage of Chris Christie's traffic jam scandal, devoting a staggering 88 minutes to the story. In comparison, these same news outlets over the last six months have allowed a scant two minutes for the latest on Barack Obama's Internal Revenue Service scandal. The disparity in less than two days is 44-to-one. [See a chart below.] From Wednesday through Friday morning, the latest on Christie's Traffic-Gate led 11 out of 13 news programs. NBC produced the heaviest coverage, over 34 minutes. CBS followed close behind with more than 30...

CNN's Anderson Cooper decided to offer a bit of relief from the hard news of the day. Earlier, like many TV stations, CNN ran a story about what happens when boiling water is thrown up in the frigid air of the polar vortex (it immediately freezes). On Wednesday Cooper aired a follow-up video story - what happens when one urinates outside in the frigid air of the polar vortex.

"We have no right to be boring or irrelevant,” Tucker Carlson says. “The Washington Post already has that covered.” Beneath the bluster, Carlson, the conservative pundit and former Crossfire co-host, has reason to brag: The Daily Caller, the news site he founded in 2010, has defied insider snickering to become a major news source for the right. “What I despise most about the legacy media isn’t just that they’re mindlessly liberal, though they are,” Carlson says, “but that they’re conventional and boring and unwilling to report unfashionable truths. That’s death.” The Caller will never be called boring. Carlson and his...