Free Republic

When Sarah Palin talks, people listen. They might not always agree, but they certainly hear the former Alaska governor loud and clear. Recently the hockey mom was a guest on the Sean Hannity show and like many conservatives, Palin took aim at National Public Radio and several other federally funded arts and educational agencies. "NPR, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, all those kind of frivolous things that government shouldn't be in the business of funding with tax dollars -- those should all be on the chopping block as we talk about the $14-trillion debt that...

You hear him at the end of nearly every NPR broadcast. The host wraps up the news. And then on comes the mystery voice, reading the underwriting credits. The voice utters authoritarian decrees, postulating that "Silk is soy" or asserting that "ADM" is "supermarket to the world." And then there's the payoff line, as the steady elocution of the mystery voice waxes ever so slightly on a solitary word. "This is NPR. National Public Radio." If Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) gets his way in the House of Representatives today, the mystery voice may have to alter his patter. "I want...

The Republican-dominated House on Thursday voted to block taxpayer funding for National Public Radio programming, dealing another blow to the broadcasting network that already is reeling from a yearlong series of missteps. Though the bill is not likely to pass the Senate and the White House issued a statement opposing the bill, it marks another black eye for NPR, which saw its chief executive officer and its top fundraising executive resign earlier this month after being filmed denigrating conservatives and the tea party. “We’ve see NPR and its programming often veer far from what Americans would like to see as...

As the House of Representatives votes today on whether to cut National Public Radio funding, consider a thought experiment: Imagine that Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly had IRS agents force you and every American to contribute money to the companies that produce their shows. Imagine further that they also had Congress and the Federal Communications Commission force NPR to fire “All Things Considered” host Michele Norris and replace her with a Limbaugh protégé. Even if you like Rush and O’Reilly, the thought of these coercive actions surely sticks in your craw. Yet that is just what Free Press, a leading...

The NPR/ Schiller Doctrine Schiller proceeded to introduce and regale his potential donors to the vacuous ruminations of those whom refer to themselves as the intellectual elites of this world--the Liberals in charge--as they like to think of themselves. Here are a few things that Schiller, in near-lisp, declared: Schiller Speaking On Behalf Of NPR -"We all think that we don't have enough Muslim voices in our schools, on the air, it's like when the nation was not having enough female voices on the air." Our Take: Comparing Muslims to US Women? This boastful imbecile, Schiller, really needs to look...

The House on Thursday passed a bill to defund NPR, a measure strongly opposed by the White House but one Republicans say will save taxpayer money. The GOP-backed measure, which will be sent to the Senate, passed 228-192. One Republican voted present, and seven voted against the bill. No Democrats supported it. Thursday's vote delivers another blow to NPR, which has suffered a wave of bad press in recent weeks. NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller was placed on administrative leave last week, following the release of video footage that showed him criticizing the Tea Party and claiming NPR could survive without...

WASHINGTON – The House on Thursday voted to end federal funding to National Public Radio. Republican supporters said it made good fiscal sense, and Democratic opponents called it an ideological attack that would deprive local stations of access to programs such as "Car Talk" and "All Things Considered." The bill, passed 228-192 along mainly partisan lines, would bar federal funding of NPR and prohibit local public stations from using federal money to pay NPR dues and buy its programs. The prospects of support in the Democratic-controlled Senate are slim. Seven Republicans broke ranks to vote against the bill.

This is a typical 'scare' tactic by the militant left, "If you ban me, you will lose such and such." Some of PBS programming are positive... as long as they don't enter into politics and religion, the method is to basically tell the American public that funding for the NPR is tied with having any Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on. What a bunch of lowlifes, you are to be defunded because you are divisive, anti Judea-Christian and pro-Islamic racist, got it? Yet? NPR [NationalPalestinianRadio]? Do not make it into "GOP" VS others. The argument for defunding NPR WBEZ - ‎44 minutes...

The House just voted 236-181 to remove federal funding for National Public Radio via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In wake of conservative James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas sting videos of National Public Radio (NPR) senior executives, House Republicans are set to vote Thursday to defund NPR completely. They’re expected to pass a bill that would pull all taxpayer money out of NPR, including the money that’s funneled through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The bill’s sponsor, Congressman Doug Lamborn, Michigan Republican, told The Daily Caller he thinks NPR will survive in a free market situation. But, even if it wouldn’t, he questions the need to fuel it with taxpayer money. “Certainly, it would survive,” Lamborn said. “They have...

In conservative James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas’s third major National Public Radio (NPR) sting tape release, Betsy Liley, the taxpayer-funded radio network’s director of institutional giving is heard saying controversial left-wing billionaire George Soros has donated to the organization before last October’s $1.8 million gift. Liley is currently on administrative leave, but her bosses, Ron Schiller, the president of NPR’s nonprofit foundation, and NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation) were both fired. Liley brought up Soros and his nonprofit organization, the Open Society Institute, while discussing what kind of on-air publicity the Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust would want in...

Gov. Rick Scott turned down $2.4 billion taxpayer (or borrowed from foreign countries) dollars the US Dept. of Transportation offered Florida. The money would’ve helped to create a high speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando. Supporters also want future lines between Orlando and Miami and maybe one day Orlando and Jacksonville. The Florida Times-Union ran a story on Saturday suggesting US senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) might go after the money despite Scott’s concerns. The header to the story in the print edition was “Nelson fighting to get back rail money.” The header to the online story read “Florida loses...

In the public policy conversation today, there is nothing funnier than hearing the leadership of National Public Radio deny there's a liberal bias at play over there. Even when the Daily Caller posted sting video of their top fundraiser Ron Schiller describing America as remarkably undereducated and the Republicans as ruined by racist, gun-toting, phony Christians, NPR's reaction was repeating Sentence One: Who, us, biased? Schiller resigned, and then the NPR Board ousted CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation), who hired him. She was only a sacrificial lamb. Nothing has changed, policy-wise. The new interim CEO, Joyce Slocum, picked up exactly...

If the resignations at National Public Radio continue at last week's pace, there may be no need for Congress to defund the aging dinosaur, because there will be no one left there to turn the lights on. The latest is Betsy Liley, NPR's director of institutional giving. Conservative activist James O'Keefe secretly recorded phone conversations between Liley and a man masquerading as a potential donor from a fictitious group called the Muslim Education Action Center, which the man said had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The fake donor said his group was worried about a government audit. Liley told him...

It just keeps happening. NPR's leader ship keeps tripping over its microphone wires and then asking everybody else to plug them back in. I know everybody thinks I must be in a vindictive mood, celebrating the sudden departure of NPR CEO Vivian Schiller after her handpicked personal fund-raiser was caught on tape disparaging Tea Party activists and Jews and taking more shots at me. I'm human and do have some thoughts, but it's OK to keep them to myself: Schiller's very public missteps allow everyone to draw their own conclusions about her. I'm not being vindictive when I say that...

If NPR is a non-biased news organization… Why is MoveOn.org trying to save them? Maybe NPR has suddenly decided to promote neutral non-biased news organizations? The Boston Globe reported: …MoveOn.org, the left-wing pressure group, is promoting a petition that urges Congress to “protect NPR and PBS and guarantee them permanent funding, free from political meddling.’’ Yet political “meddling’’ is the inescapable price of taking political dollars. Conservatives would complain about NPR’s liberal tilt no matter where its funding came from, just as liberals complain about the conservative tilt of Fox News. But if NPR were no longer on the government...

It just keeps happening. NPR's leadership keeps tripping over its microphone wires and then asking everybody else to plug them back in. I know everybody thinks I must be in a vindictive mood, celebrating the sudden departure of NPR CEO Vivian Schiller after her hand-picked personal fundraiser was caught on tape disparaging Tea Party activists, Jews and taking more shots at me. I'm human and do have some thoughts but it's okay to keep them to myself. I will not slander her in the way that she impugned my intellect and my integrity with condescending comments after my firing. She...

An update on our post from Sunday about the questions that have been raised regarding conservative political activist James O'Keefe's editing of his secretly recorded video of then-NPR chief fundraiser Ron Schiller slamming conservatives. NPR's David Folkenflik has done more reporting on the differences between the 11 1/2 minute video that O'Keefe's Project Veritas produced and the two hours worth of video that O'Keefe says is the largely unedited account of a lunch that Schiller and another NPR fundraising executive had with two men posing as representatives of a Muslim group that wanted to donate $5 million to NPR Al...

Forget about defunding NPR. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS aren’t going anywhere. Just like 1994, the GOP will lose its nerve in the face of the Democrats’ Muppet Parade. They may cut some around the edges, but life partners Burt & Ernie will still be able to afford their rent-controlled apartment, and Garrison Keillor will still enthrall Upper West Side residents with pseudo-folksy tales from the prairie. We’ll always have NPR, because we’ll always have liberals.

The majority of things on network television appear there by design. And since it is the American left that controls most of the agenda coming out of popular culture and hence television programming, you have to ask yourself, "Who are they hoping to convince?" I'm pretty sure a lot of parents were asking themselves that question among many others as "network television's most 'family friendly' show"--Glee posed a conundrum for the father of a homosexual character on the broadcast. In a scene that left many a parent with gaping mouths hanging open, a character of this season's cast mildly scolds...