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"It all started with Oprah. A few weeks ago, New York Post reporter Philip Recchia heard that Winfrey, recently embarrassed by the plagiarism of memoirist James Frey, had begun using Barrie's service to vet submissions and make sure prospective guests hadn't cribbed someone else's work. Recchia called Barrie and asked how his service worked, and Barrie offered to test a sample chosen by the Post. Recchia e-mailed a 2005 speech by Hillary Clinton. In a matter of minutes, Barrie found five instances of plagiarism." "Oddly, Recchia decided not to run a story about the senator. (When asked why, he declined...

July 10, 2006 - Do you want a white Jew to represent you in Congress? The answer to the Jewish question is a resounding "no" on Nostrand Avenue in Flatbush - epicenter of a vicious political contest, even by Brooklyn standards. "Some ethnic groups are trying to control the area," warned Jude Saint-Phard, a 67 year-old construction worker who is black. "It's a master plan," he added. "It's the same plan that took Downtown Brooklyn from the blacks, that took Park Slope! Once they have the Congressional seat, they are pushing the blacks out of the area." I ask which...

It was nice to see the New York Times commemorating Independence Day this week with a tribute to its favorite Revolutionary War hero, Benedict Arnold. Times editor Bill Keller spent the day attending Revolutionary War battle re-enactments, where he passed the Continental Army's secret battle plans to the British. Get Yours FREE! This week I plan to reveal my own top secret information: an interview I did with the New York Post the week my current No. 1 best seller, "Godless," was released. On account of an important breaking story on Angelina Jolie's new tattoo, the Post never found room...

SHAME ON Hillary Rodham Clinton. Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing publishing mogul, is hosting a fund-raiser in July for her Senate reelection campaign. Her explanation is that Murdoch, based in New York, is an important constituent: ''I'm very gratified that he thinks I'm doing a good job." Murdoch runs Fox television, home of Bill O'Reilly and company. No far-right media enterprise has been more relentlessly dishonest in its efforts to destroy American liberalism in general and the Clintons in particular. Fox was prime cheerleader for the bogus Whitewater investigation and the impeachment campaign against Bill Clinton. Fox exists to oppose every...

READING HABITS: 1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country. 2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country. 3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles. 4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts. 5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running...

As the Iraqi website Iraq The Model suggested yesterday, the world is waking up to the very real possibility that the extensive violence we are seeing linked to the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet, Muhammed, was a setup. Believable suggestions are being made that these violent protests have been arranged to offset European and American pressures to 1. stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons (God help us), 2. get Syria entirely out of Lebanon, and 3. reduce or stop financial aid to a Palestine government controlled by Hamas. iraqthemodel.blogspot.com What we have learned overnight is that three additional cartoons which...

Howard Stern may be coming down with a Sirius case of the bleeps. High-level executives of the satellite broadcaster are developing an internal standards-and-practices document that will set boundaries for Stern and other shock jocks, The Post has learned. “It’s something that’s being taken very seriously," a Sirius source said. Stern's new show also is being broadcast on a time-delay, giving him the opportunity to censor the program — which he already has done. Stern moved to Sirius in part because satellite-radio services such as Sirius and XM — unlike free terrestrial radio — are not policed by the FCC,...

Has The New York Times declared itself to be on the front line in the war against the War on Terror? The self-styled paper of record seems to be trying to reclaim the loyalty of those radical lefties who ludicrously accused it of uncritically reporting on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Yet the paper has done more than merely try to embarrass the Bush administration these last few months. It has published classified information — and thereby knowingly blown the covers of secret programs and agencies engaged in combating the terrorist threat. The most notorious example was the paper's...

December 16, 2005 -- IN the space of 11 months, the nation of Iraq has held three national elections in the midst of war, terror and chaos. The first chose the people who would write a constitution. The second was to ratify the constitution, which passed. And yesterday, the third election was to select the 275 members of the new Iraqi parliament. As American public opinion turned and growled and complained and as American politicians and thinkers scurried about in search of a place to hide, the people of Iraq and the developing political class of Iraq began taking a...

QUIT. It's that simple. There are plenty of more complex ways to lose a war, but none as reliable as just giving up. Increasingly, quitting looks like the new American Way of War. No matter how great your team, you can't win the game if you walk off the field at half-time. That's precisely what the Democratic Party wants America to do in Iraq. Forget the fact that we've made remarkable progress under daunting conditions: The Dems are looking to throw the game just to embarrass the Bush administration.

November 17, 2005 -- Bill Clinton demonstrated yet again yesterday that, as far as he's concerned, the rules don't apply to him. In a speech to students at the American University of Dubai, the former president fired a rhetorical broadside against President Bush, saying the invasion of Iraq was "a big mistake." Toppling Saddam Hussein may have been "a good thing," said Clinton, "but I don't agree with what was done."

Lost amid the discussion of whether last week's election results portend a dismal future for Republicans has been a more interesting question: Does San Francisco's balloting this year foreshadow its eventual withdrawal from the United States of America? We ask simply because voters there are acting as if the city's already seceded. Featured on last Tuesday's ballot were two referenda: Measure H, to ban possession of handguns save by cops and the like; and Measure I, the "College, not Combat" referendum that condemned military recruiting in the city's high schools and colleges. Both won by wide margins — 58 percent...

...The bitter battle has all the hallmarks of a classic family drama. It pits the toddler children of Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Deng, a Chinese-born woman in her mid-30s, against Mr. Murdoch's children from his first two marriages. One of the key debates: Who should inherit the family's $6 billion fortune and Mr. Murdoch's control of News Corp.... But despite his job title, one of the few businesses Lachlan had a free hand in managing was one of News Corp.'s smallest, the New York Post, a tabloid paper that was one of his father's first acquisitions after he moved to...

AREN'T we lucky? Isn't it great? We have patriotic ingrate Jane Fonda, the multiple divorceé who was born with a silver hoof in her mouth, acting as spokespig for our country again. Although she's born here, isn't there a way we can throw her out since her basic career is to bad-mouth the United States of America? If being a smoker is against the law, how about being a traitor? If spitting on the sidewalk is not allowed, how come spitting on the U.S.A. is OK? If double-parking gets a fine, shouldn't there be some small punishment for treason? Hanoi...

Is there a weekly contest at Air America to see which host can make the most asinine public statements? Perhaps there's a chart in the breakroom where each silly press outburst gets a happy face sticker next to the person's name?

From the universe of annoying liberal habits, here are two that consistently jump off the page: --- When our viewpoints are intentionally misrepresented, to suit their cartoonish horns-on-heads images of conservatives. --- When they use their still-considerable mainstream media muscle to hire phony, weak, or otherwise ineffective "conservatives" for radio, television and newspaper gigs, in order to make our side look foolish. That likely explains how lightweight pundit Tucker Carlson has landed yet another TV talk show

We might as well have a little fun with this. Given the New York Post's history of excellent headline puns:...I thought it might be fun if we all try to guess what tomorrow morning's NYP headline will be! But just to make it interesting: If anyone posts what turns out to be the actual headline of tomorrow morning's NEw York Post, I'll give that Freeper a $5 Amazon gift certificate. Rules are below. Be creative! Think like a Post editor! Post your best guess (one guess only) below!

The final item in the Sept. 30, 1944 "Activity Report of Virginia Hall," American intelligence agent, was No. XV: "Were you decorated in the Field?" "No," she had typed, "nor any reason to be." The answer was typical of her matter-of-fact sense of duty. But William J. Donovan, known to a generation of spies as "Wild Bill," begged to differ. On May 12, 1945, Maj. Gen. Donovan, director of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, informed President Harry Truman that Hall was, for her extraordinary heroism, to receive the Distinguished Service Cross -- second only to the Medal of Honor....

Lawyers for Saddam Hussein said today that they have started legal action against The Sun after the newspaper published a front-page picture of the deposed dictator wandering around an Iraqi jail in his underpants. Ziyad Khasawneh, who heads Saddam's 20-strong defence team based in Jordan, told The Times that he would also be starting legal action against US forces in Iraq and Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, for allowing Saddam to be photographed in jail in breach of international law. The photographs appeared in both The Sun and the New York Post, which are owned by the News Corporation,...

Living in New York, I have no choice but to read the New York Times every day. I try to leaven it with the Daily News and the New York Post, but it's a witch's brew. The News has somehow cast itself as the newspaper of the underclass, so it feels obliged to report every bit of mayhem coming out of New York's poor neighborhoods. Somebody killed somebody over a jacket. Somebody got shot over a parking space. A grandmother in a housing project was killed in the crossfire by drug dealers. News about democracy demonstrations in Lebanon usually appears...