Free Republic

On Thursday night’s Politics Nation, MSNBC host Al Sharpton wrapped up his show from New Orleans by insisting the Fourth of July is a great day to unload your talking points in defense of Barack Obama. Just like Thanksgiving. And Christmas. And perhaps at weddings and funerals. “It's a day to celebrate our great are country, to rest, relax and maybe have a barbecue. But you know what that means. Your wacky uncle or your Ted Cruz-loving neighbor or your cousin who watches Fox News all day may swing by for a burger or a dog,” he suggested. “But...

Newbusters reports that in the wake of tens of thousands of illegal aliens swarming over the American border, the broadcast networks are refusing to use the word "illegal" to describe these illegal aliens. And that's not because they are using words like "invaders" or "soon-to-be Democrats." Instead, viewers are hearing words like "refugee" and "undocumented." NBC News went so far as to create the Twitter handle #RefugeeRiders. NBC''s Lauer began his editorializing by arguing that “as so many issues in this country do it's going to boil down to politics. And wherever you stand on the issue, one side or...

Since its birth in the 1920s with the first national radio networks, the modern MSM has always had a cozy relationship with power, and until the creation of Fox News, one channel on your TV dial or satellite guide, that power has almost exclusively meant their fellow Democrats. The media have long voted overwhelmingly Democrat in presidential elections; as Walter Cronkite once said at a Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner in the mid-1990s, in-between feting the Clintons on his yacht in Martha’s Vineyard, “Everybody knows that there’s a liberal, that there’s a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents.” But in the...

After last week’s breathless headlines putting Gov. Scott Walker at the center of a nationwide “criminal scheme,” the mainstream and left-leaning media are being forced to step back from such sensational indictments. The man doing the forcing is the special prosecutor who raised the specter of said conspiracy in a court document — part of 268 pages of previously sealed records dumped last week by order of a federal appeals court and embraced by John Doe prosecutors.

Liberal bias in the media is so pervasive that partisan propaganda themes created by Democrats, for the purpose of electing Democrats and advancing their partisan agenda, take on a quasi-reality. Years ago, after seeing the umpteenth reiteration of a too-familiar theme, I remarked that the New York Times should create a standing headline -- "Republicans Divided" -- and run it as a regular column. If more than 80 percent of journalists are Democrats, as evidence clearly demonstrates, then what the media report about politics (and everything else) must be viewed skeptically: Is this true? Are all the facts as described?...

Yesterday I travelled on London buses from around noon to 5pm, in the Western part of town. During all that time I saw relatively few white faces, and the ones I did see were generally builders, so in all probability Poles. On the bus I read a discarded copy of the London free paper Metro, carrying the irresponsible front-page headline "Student is murdered 'for being a Muslim'". Irresponsible because, when I read the actual article, the alleged motive for the killing of Nahid Almenea in Colchester, Essex, on Tuesday morning was nothing more than a wild conjecture. The only...

Johannesburg - Journalists were forced to take off their shoes, and get down on their knees before Venda traditional leaders at a media briefing in Johannesburg on Sunday. The bizarre briefing was over a report by the Sowetan newspaper last week that SABC chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng had been given a wife as a gift. At the start of the briefing by Mudzi Wa Vhurereli ha Vhavenda, a lobby group of Venda traditional leaders and healers, reporters were instructed to remove their shoes and get on bended knees so that they could perform a cultural ritual before beginning. Most...

On This Week with George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning, ABC News Chief White House correspondent Jon Karl asked former Vice President Dick Cheney if his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week, in which Cheney and daughter Liz accused President Barack Obama of wanting to take America “down a notch,” was tantamount to calling Obama a traitor. “It almost seems like you’re accusing the president of treason here,” Karl said, “saying he’s intentionally bringing America down a notch.” While adding that he intended “no disrespect” to Obama, Cheney launched into a comprehensive critique of the president’s foreign policy, which he...

Almost 800 babies and children were buried in a mass grave in Ireland near a home for unmarried mothers run by nuns, according to new research Wednesday which throws more light on the Irish Catholic Church's troubled past. Death records suggest 796 children, from newborns to eight-year-olds, were deposited in a grave near a Catholic-run home for unmarried mothers during the 35 years it operated from 1925 to 1961. Historian Catherine Corless, who made the discovery, says her study of death records for the St Mary's home in Tuam in County Galway suggests that a former septic tank near the...

Various statements and events defy the claim of a ‘universal consensus’ on ‘harmful’ climate change. “Have you noticed that the nature of the crisis du jour may change, but the solutions always involve higher taxes and more power for the political class?” ... There’s a reason some global warming enthusiasts demand that the media refuse to print or broadcast skeptical views. Polls show Americans continually rank “climate change” near the bottom of lists of important issues. Apparently, “global warming is harmful because shut up” is the only argument many activists have left. And there’s a reason the Environmental Protection Agency...

"........By week’s end, perhaps recognizing that the story was not finding willing buyers, IRS Commissioner Koskinen, tried another tack, claiming that the emails were not “records’” and therefore could be destroyed without consequence. John Hinderaker, the ace litigation lawyer who is one of the authors of Powerline found this argument unpersuasive, citing federal law and the agency’s own operating manual and concluding: As the IRS investigation continues, Koskinen and others at the Agency should not be allowed to get away with the facile suggestion that Lerner’s emails -- all of them! -- were not “records” and therefore could be destroyed...

When CNN rolled out the red carpet for Hillary Clinton’s town-hall interview with Christiane Amanpour, they did more than just build a set and invite an audience to participate. According to the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, who attended the event, CNN warmed up the crowd for Hillary and even coached them on how to cheer and make noise to demonstrate enthusiasm for the former Secretary of State. Note the whoops at the beginning of the broadcast, and near the end of this clip when Amanpour asks about her decision on running for President — cheers that were part of the...

In its latest poll on confidence in U.S. institutions, Gallup reports that Americans’ faith in the three major news media platforms—television news, newspapers, and news on the Internet—is at or tied with record lows, and that trust in Internet or online news topped television news for the first time. The number of Americans who have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers has dropped from its 1979 peak of 51% to 22%, while their confidence in television news has fallen from a high of 46% in 1993 to just 18% today. Online news finished slightly ahead of...

Conservative pundit Glenn Beck admitted on his radio show Tuesday that he was wrong and liberals were right for opposing the invasion of Iraq. “[Liberals] said we couldn’t force freedom on people,” Beck said at the start of his radio show on Tuesday. “You were right. Liberals, you were right, we shouldn’t have.” “You cannot force democracy on the Iraqis or anybody else, it doesn’t work. They don’t understand it or even really want it,” Beck said.

mainstream media reporter Glenn Thrush revealed that a former editor of his at Newsday in 2008 delayed and buried his story on Hillary Clinton's defense of a child rapist because "it might have an impact." When Thrush wrote the story on February 24, 2008, Clinton was battling Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. The more things change, the more they stay the same. ... Newsweek had killed the story to protect its ally Clinton in the White House. ... Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has pioneered the use of social media to further level the playing field, said,...

Public confidence in television news is at an all-time low, according to a survey released today by Gallup. ... only 10 percent said they had “a great deal” of confidence in T.V. news, and 8 percent said they had “quite a lot” of confidence.

MSNBC is the network where ex-host Martin Bashir suggested that someone defecate and urinate on Sarah Palin. Yet, the suddenly sensitive Joy Reid on Wednesday warned viewers that she was about to feature someone saying the word "Redskins," what she deemed to be a "racial slur." [See video below. MP3 audio here.'] Hours after the U.S. Patent and Trademark office had cancelled the Washington Redskins trademark registration, Reid played a clip of Senator Harry Reid attacking the team. The host fretted, "And I just warn people, he does use the name of the team. So, I'm just going to warn...

If bad interviews can truly be used to determine someone’s readiness for the highest office in the land, then pollsters can save themselves a lot of time by removing Hillary Clinton from their list of 2016 contenders. Back in 2008, after Hillary’s own party sold her out, the conservative movement was energized by the selection of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate. Accordingly, her political head found itself in high demand by the left. Critics began by questioning her experience. But once they got a hold of her true record of reform and budget-cutting in Alaska,...

HAILEY, Idaho — An Idaho county commissioner held a press conference in the hometown of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl this week to tell reporters and outsiders to leave the town and the Bergdahl family alone. The Times-News reported that Blaine County Commissioner Larry Schoen said people should stop attacking Bergdahl, his family and the people of Hailey for standing by the former prisoner of war. Schoen said the town only wanted to see the local man reunited with his parents, Bob and Jani Bergdahl, after spending five years as a prisoner of the Taliban in Afghanistan....

Twenty years ago this week, former football great O.J. Simpson savagely attacked and killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman. The double murder and subsequent trial generated a small library of videos and books, the most recent of the latter being Kim Goldman’s, Can't Forgive: My 20-Year Battle with O.J. Simpson. I just finished Goldman’s insightful memoir yesterday. I must have read at least ten other books on the case. A year ago this week, the trial of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin began in Sanford, Florida. Although not as sensational as Simpson’s, Zimmerman’s...