Free Republic

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Annenberg poll released on Wednesday reveals something that an exasperated portion of the country likely feels is overdue: The majority of Americans -- 54 percent -- wish that Sarah Palin would step back into the shadows of public discourse. As we noted, that includes over 60 percent of Democrats and almost 40 percent of Republicans. Meaning that Sarah Palin must constrain her possible media audience to only 46 percent of the population of the United States, and a little over half of her party. Somehow, we doubt she'll starve. Palin has been remarkably adept at parlaying...

In what appears to be an act of leftist self-defense, an unbylined story at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, describes certain Colorado Democratic politicians' crticisms of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg over recent "off-base remarks about two of its cities," but noted no reactions from Republicans — who are genuinely outraged, as opposed to arguably trying to cover their political tracks. ... Bloomberg told Simon Vozick-Levinson that in recent recall elections in the Centennial State, "The NRA went after two or three state Senators in a part of Colorado where I don't think there's roads. It's...

The missing in action Geraldo Rivera is stricking! (Rush made me think of this when he asked what would the reaction be if the media/politicians/etc were denied access to the Katrina victims and the Superdome). Rivera is on a long overseas trip Maybe I've missed something. Has O'Reilly interviewed him? When was Geraldo Rivera reluctant to get in front of the camera and give his opinion? What gives? Geraldo melting down (crying) over the little babies!! "I don't know man, let them out of here, let them walk out of here - you have thousands and thousands of people in...

Hardball host Chris Matthews made some bizarre comments about the potential Republican candidates for president in 2016 on Tuesday night. Speaking to Jeanne Cummings of Bloomberg News and Republican strategist John Feehery, Matthews took a swipe at Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and suggested “he's the Republicans' John Edwards.” [See video below.](VIDEO-AT-LINK)The Hardball host never explained why in the world he would compare a man who cheated on his wife while pursuing the presidency to Senator Marco Rubio, but nevertheless the snide remark took his panelists by surprise. While Republican John Feehery didn’t directly condemn Matthews’ unusual comparison of Edwards and...

Gazette opinion: Obama earned the low ratings Sometimes, you have to admit you're wrong. And, we were wrong. We said that things couldn't get much worse after the sub par presidency of George W. Bush. But, President Barack Obama's administration has us yearning for the good ol' days when we were at least winning battles in Iraq. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal polls show that Americans are giving Obama lower marks than in 2006 when Iraq was going poorly for Bush and a tepid response to Hurricane Katrina sunk Bush's ratings. It's not that popularity polling should be the final...

Chris Matthews’ disdain for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and his decision to sue President Obama over his use of executive orders reached a fever pitch on his Hardball program Monday night. Speaking to David Corn of the liberal Mother Jones and Howard Fineman of The Huffington Post, Matthews maintained that Speaker Boehner’s lawsuit “is the kind of Mickey Mouse that goes on in third world countries before they have a coup because people were just sick of it.” [See video below.](VIDEO-AT-LINK)Matthews’ harshest condemnation of Boehner began when he promoted Erick Erickson a “guy on the hard right” who opposes...

On the day before the Fourth of July, the New York Times went out of its way to show its disgust for Americans against illegal immigration in Murrieta, California who turned away buses of illegal immigrants for, of all things, waving American flags and chanting "USA!" "Nobody was even being released in Murrieta," the Times' editorial board wrote on Thursday. "But the mayor urged residents to complain, and in a pageant of ugliness, dozens took action: They waved flags, screamed 'U.S.A.!' and turned three buses back." The Times' editorial urged Obama to "go big" on executive actions by granting amnesty...

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...