Free Republic

The surge in the price of energy couldn’t come at a worse time. The average price nationally of regular gasoline has shot up to a record $3.28 a gallon. Combine that with the collapse of the housing market and the seizing financial sector, and it is putting a boot to the gut of an economy that is either already in a recession or close to one. The Bush administration can’t be entirely blamed for the pain at the gas pump. But its shortsighted energy policies — zealously focused on increasing the energy supply, with little attention paid to conservation and...

Along with his signature bright white hair, the most striking aspects of Senator John McCain’s physical appearance are his puffy left cheek and the scar that runs down the back of his neck.

The Valentine’s Day massacre at Northern Illinois University, like the killings at places such as Columbine High School and Virginia Tech, has evoked expressions of horror and sympathy and familiar questions about the killer’s motives and mental health. Atrocities like these make Americans feel angry and perhaps helpless. Our political leaders are not helpless. They could match public shock with prompt, concerted and effective action to make mass shootings a less frequent fact of American life. But neither party’s leaders have shown any sign of stepping up their responsibilities. The latest campus carnage barely caused a ripple in presidential politics,...

NYT: MCCAIN'S BIRTHPLACE IN CANAL ZONE RAISES ELIGIBILITY QUESTIONS...

The White House sided with Sen. John McCain and accused The New York Times on Friday of repeatedly trying to "drop a bombshell" on Republican presidential nominees to undermine their candidacies. White House deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel... "I think a lot of people here in this building, with experience in a couple campaigns, have grown accustomed to the fact that during the course of the campaign, seemingly on maybe a monthly basis leading up to the convention and maybe a weekly basis after that, the New York Times does try to drop a bombshell on the Republican nominee. "And...

was nothing more than a political hit job and not only did it backfire as McCain is raising money off this story but also sent shares of the Times' stock slipping more than 6%.

Talk To The Newsroom - The McCain Article. ...The Times has received more than 2,000 comments, many of them criticizing the handling of the article. Editors and reporters who worked on the article will be answering questions on Friday. Please send yours to askthetimes@nytimes.com.

Contact the Slimes Chairman & Publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. publisher@nytimes.com and... President, General Manager, Scott H. Heekin-Canedy president@nytimes.com Let these leftist jerkwads know your opinion on their story about McCain.

The NY Slimes article based on an unproven claim of something that didn't happen eight years ago is disgusting. The innuendo-laced hit piece shows to what extent the Liberal Media will go to ensure a socialist like Obama get elected President. Forget the fact that they held this story since December. Forget that Rush Limbaugh and anybody that follows politics knew they would do something like this. But remember just how far and vile the liberals in media will go to regain power and maintain power. This is an all out declaration of war on Republicans and conservatives because the...

John McCain’s campaign promised to “go to war” against the New York Times Wednesday night after the newspaper posted its long-awaited story on McCain's alleged relationship with a telecom lobbyist. Both McCain and the woman in question denied having a romantic relationship. The story, word of which first leaked to the Drudge Report in December, relies on anonymous sources tied to McCain who said the lobbyist was warned to keep her distance to the senator in the run-up to his first presidential bid. In the piece, McCain is quoted as telling Times Editor Bill Keller that he never did anything...

The liberal New York Times is wasting no time in smearing John McCain, the Republican Party nominee for President. Late Wednesday, the Times published to its website a story set to hit print editions Thursday, linking McCain to a female lobbyist. The paper suggested the Arizona Senator has been engaged in an illicit relationship. "A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet," the Times reported. "Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff...

TOLEDO, Ohio - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain issued a statement Wednesday night saying he "will not allow a smear campaign" to distract from his campaign as published reports questioned his relationship with a lobbyist. The Washington Post quoted longtime aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met with Vicki Iseman and urged her to stay away from McCain. The New York Times suggested an inappropriate relationship between the Arizona senator and Iseman, a Washington lobbyist. The New York Times quoted anonymous aides saying they had confronted McCain and Iseman, urging them to stay away...

<p>The CaucusThe latest political news from around the nation. Join the discussion.</p> <p>Vicki Iseman at an awards dinner in 2004.</p> <p>A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.</p>

Memo to New York Times Public Ed itor Clark Hoyt: Your urgent atten tion is needed on the slanderous 7,000-word front-page article published last Sunday about homicides allegedly committed by US veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. We say "allegedly," because the article lumped those merely accused of a homicide with those who've already been convicted. But that was the least of the piece's problems. As our colleague Ralph Peters so adroitly demonstrated on these pages Tuesday, the article embraced the hoariest of overwrought clichés - the US combat vet as psychotic killer. But on what evidence? None at...

Today, the NY Times has the first part of a special series - War Torn:Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles. It appears that the troops are coming home and becoming murderers. Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: "Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife." Pierre, S.D.: "Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress." Colorado Springs: "Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring." Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the...

In a long report published on Sunday the New York Times appears to be trying to promulgate the idea that our returning military vets cannot successfully reintegrate back into their communities and into "normal lives" after returning from the stress of active duty overseas. The Times seems to be saying that our veterans have become murderers and are so mentally wracked that coming home is difficult for them. Their entire report is written as if the rate of murders committed by returning veterans is shockingly high. But, a look at real statistics proves that vets are less likely to become...

Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army. This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.” Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian...

Mr. Thompson leavened his responses with the kind of one-liners that many supporters had hoped he would use sooner. Asked about the United States response in a confrontation with Iranian speedboats, Mr. Thompson said, “I think one more step and they would have been introduced to those virgins that they’re looking forward to seeing.� At another point, he offered that “you can tell that the news is good coming out of Iraq because you read so little about it in The New York Times.�

....the story made me both laugh and cry, because it reflected something so true — how much, since 9/11, we’ve become “The United States of Fighting Terrorism.” Times columnists are not allowed to endorse candidates, but there’s no rule against saying who will not get my vote: I will not vote for any candidate running on 9/11. We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate. What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But...

Michael Vick, victim. That's how Selena Roberts' article in today's New York Times largely portrays the NFL QB accused of involvement with dogfighting. The article's headline sets the tone: Vick Is Trapped in His Circle of Friends. Excerpts: The crooked circle Michael Vick drew around himself has tripped and squeezed him. The first to fail Vick was Davon Boddie, a cousin and personal chef. His marijuana possession charge in April led police to a white house with black buildings behind it on Moonlight Road in Surry County, Va. [Darn that Davon. If only he hadn't been busted on the pot...

Today, Michigan Republican Pete Hoesktra sent a scathing letter to NYT executive editor Bill Keller, detailing what Hoekstra called the Times' "...recklessness in repeatedly disclosing highly classified intelligence programs to enemies who seek to attack our nation," and the Times' coverage of the Foreign Intelligence Act amendments. Hoekstra said of the Times' editorial titled, "The Fear of Fear Itself," "The only real basis for "fear" here is the scare tactics being perpetuated by the Times, which has knowingly and willfully misrepresented the new law to scare the American people." READ THE WHOLE LETTER HERE Mr. Bill Keller Executive Editor The...

On a night four years ago, five soldiers back from three months in Iraq went drinking at a Hooters restaurant and a topless bar near Fort Benning, Ga. Before the night was over, one of them, Specialist Richard R. Davis, was dead of at least 33 stab wounds, his body doused with lighter fluid and burned. Two of the group would eventually be convicted of the murder, another pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and the last confessed to concealing the crime. Now some in Hollywood want moviegoers to decide if the killing is emblematic of a war gone bad, part of...

It had to happen. President Bush’s bungling of the war in Iraq has been the talk of the summer. On Capitol Hill, some of the more reliable Republicans are writing proposals to force Mr. Bush to change course. A showdown vote is looming in the Senate. Enter, stage right, the fear of terrorism. Yesterday, the director of national intelligence released a report with the politically helpful title of “The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland,” and Fran Townsend, the president’s homeland security adviser, held a news conference to trumpet its findings. The message, as always: Be very afraid. And don’t...

A former Navy sailor charged with supporting terrorism by disclosing secret information about the location of Navy ships and the best ways to attack them also discussed attacking military personnel and recruiting stations,

The White House denied that the report was timed to the Senate debate. But the administration controls the timing of such releases and the truth is that fear of terrorism is the only shard remaining of Mr. Bush’s justification for invading Iraq. This administration has never hesitated to play on fear for political gain, starting with the first homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, and his Popsicle-coded threat charts. It is a breathtakingly cynical ploy, but in the past it has worked to cow Democrats into silence, if not always submission, and herd Republicans back onto the party line. That must...

PERHAPS no fact is more revealing about Iraq’s history than this: The Iraqis have a word that means to utterly defeat and humiliate someone by dragging his corpse through the streets. The word is “sahel,” and it helps explain much of what I have seen in three and a half years of covering the war.

BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents. “In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.” But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When...

Here's how you kill a book: First, see to it that it emerges into the public eye on the Friday of a holiday weekend. Then, express ostentatious boredom at its contents. Then, attack. Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson declined to comment on the question of whether the campaign leaked to The Washington Post a copy of one of two forthcoming biographies of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. And though there’s no confirmation that the Clinton campaign leaked either book, there is at least some circumstantial evidence that points that way. “The only people who have an interest in putting it out on...

Over the last couple of weeks I have seen an odd change on my trips to work in the morning. While many papers give discounts on their evening edition, and many new start up businesses offer free items to lure in consumers, one would not expect such an act from a business around for 150 plus years. A person echoing "FREE NEW YORK TIMES" on my train platform. They were handing out a free copy of the New York Times. The piles of papers remained high as this man continued to echo the phrase "FREE NEW YORK TIMES". As my...

...On one level the debate can be seen as a polite discussion of political theory among the members of a small group of intellectuals. But the argument also exposes tensions within the Republicans’ “big tent,” as could be seen Thursday night when the party’s 10 candidates for president were asked during their first debate whether they believed in evolution. Three — Senator Sam Brownback; Mike Huckabee; and Tom Tancredo of Colorado — indicated they did not. ...The reference to stem cells suggests just how wide the split is. “The current debate is not primarily about religious fundamentalism,” Mr. West, the...

REVERSE the races, change the sport, and you have the Kobe Bryant "rape" hoax all over again. It frightens me that, in this day and age, three demonstrably innocent men can be dragged into the public square in chains and be unjustly accused, tried and convicted in the media - forcibly lynched - for a rape that never happened. There are many victims in the case of the guiltless Duke lacrosse players. And many more perpetrators who, through wishful thinking, greed, arrogance or lunacy, kept this case going long after the accused boys should have received a heartfelt apology. But...

WASHINGTON - The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran. The focus of American concern is known as an "explosively formed penetrator," a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb being used by Shiite groups in attacks on American troops in Iraq. Attacks using the device have doubled in the past year, and have prompted increasing concern among military officers. In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch)-- For the second time in a matter of days, a major institutional shareholder voting advisory service is recommending that New York Times Co. stockholders withhold votes for the company's four Class A directors at its annual meeting later this month. Glass Lewis & Co.'s suggestion follows similar advice from Institutional Shareholder Services, which made its call last Thursday.

Rudolph W. Giuliani told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik’s relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik’s appointment as New York City police commissioner, according to court records. Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony. Mr. Giuliani’s testimony amounts to a significantly new version of what information was...

March 16, 2007 Editorial Phony Fraud Charges In its fumbling attempts to explain the purge of United States attorneys, the Bush administration has argued that the fired prosecutors were not aggressive enough about addressing voter fraud. It is a phony argument; there is no evidence that any of them ignored real instances of voter fraud. But more than that, it is a window on what may be a major reason for some of the firings. In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack...

<p>NY TIMES PLANS TUESDAY HIT ON GORE, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE: 'Scientists argue that Gore's warnings are full of exaggerated claims and startling errors'... Developing..</p>

Watching the Bush team wrestle with Iran, North Korea and Iraq reminds me of something that used to be said of the Reagan administration: The right hand never knew what the far right hand was doing. In fact, my bet is that when the inside history of the Bush team is written, we will discover that, contrary to its carefully managed image of a disciplined core operating from consistent, conservative principles, it has actually been one of the most internally divided administrations — ever. The only thing the Bush folks all agreed on was that they would never do anything...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — European governments are resisting Bush administration demands that they curtail support for exports to Iran and that they block transactions and freeze assets of some Iranian companies, officials on both sides say. The resistance threatens to open a new rift between Europe and the United States over Iran. Administration officials say a new American drive to reduce exports to Iran and cut off its financial transactions is intended to further isolate Iran commercially amid the first signs that global pressure has hurt Iran’s oil production and its economy. There are also reports of rising political dissent...

States with the greatest number of guns in the home also have the highest rates of homicide, a new study finds. The study, in the February issue of Social Science and Medicine, looked at gun ownership in all 50 states and then compared the results with the number of people killed over a three-year period. The research, the authors said, “suggests that household firearms are a direct and an indirect source of firearms used to kill Americans both in their homes and on the streets.” The researchers, led by Matthew Miller of the Harvard School of Public Health, drew on...

New York Times Gets Another Story Very Wrong - This Time it’s about Marriage Accused of “journalistic malpractice” for skewing stats to incorrectly show most women not marrying By Peter Smith NEW YORK, January 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The New York Times has once again published another 'hit piece' on the institution of marriage, alleging that for “the first time more American women are living without a husband than with one”. However, US census data for 2005 shows that the January 16th front-page story in the New York Times is just another disturbing showcase of the Times’ tolerance for...

The New York Times has once again published another 'hit piece' on the institution of marriage, alleging that for “the first time more American women are living without a husband than with one”. However, US census data for 2005 shows that the January 16th front-page story in the New York Times is just another disturbing showcase of the Times’ tolerance for “journalistic malpractice”. “For what experts say is probably the first time,” writes Sam Roberts on the Times front page, “more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census...

this New York Times photograph of a crowd of Lebanese refugees: This is probably nothing. If it’s photo manipulation, it’s certainly an incredibly mundane example, and I can’t think of a reason why anyone would do it. I’m tossing this to the lizardoid community for comment from the other photoshop geeks out there, without rendering any judgment yet. In other words, I am not saying this is a definite fake; I know we’ve got quite a few experts at digital manipulation among our readers, and I’m sincerely asking for their opinions. But look at the image of the man in...

We’ve been down this road before. This time, it has to be different. There have been too many times that President Bush has promised a new strategy on Iraq, only to repeat the same old set of failed approaches and unachievable objectives. Americans need to hear Mr. Bush offer something truly new — not more glossy statements about ultimate victory, condescending platitudes about what hard work war is, or aimless vows to remain “until the job is done.” If the voters sent one clear message to Mr. Bush last November, it was that it is time to start winding down...

EL SALVADOR, November 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - On April 9, New York Times reporter Jack Hitt produced what may be called a 'hit piece' against the pro-life movement in El Salvador.  The piece, laden with scare tactics, culminates in his tale of woe of a woman who he says had an illegal abortion when she was 18 weeks pregnant and was sentenced to thirty years in prison.  The only problem with the story is that the woman was found guilty of strangling her full-term baby shortly after her birth.Writing in an editorial in one of the largest papers in...

As the Vietnam War worsened and Democrats suffered midterm election defeats, then-President Lyndon Johnson questioned advisers in 1966 about troop escalation and military supply shortages, according to taped telephone recordings released Friday. Johnson, in one conversation with former President Dwight Eisenhower, said he was doing his best to win the war. "I'm trying to win it just as fast as I can in every way that I know how," he told Eisenhower, who offered his support. Johnson added, "I need all the help I can get." Johnson railed against "commies" that he said ran the New York Times and against...

Yesterday we noted that Jill Abramson, managing editor of the New York Times, had remarked that "people are always surprised when I tell them that we sell a lot of subscriptions at West Point." Many readers wrote us to explain why this is. Here's one of them, Rob Munden: Cadets are required to subscribe to the New York Times (fees deducted from your account, no alternatives given), and unless things have changed from the late '80s when I was there, plebes [freshmen] are required to be conversant with every story on the front page and front page of the sports...

Not allowed to post from NYT.

(snip) Banking Data: A Mea Culpa Since the job of public editor requires me to probe and question the published work and wisdom of Times journalists, there’s a special responsibility for me to acknowledge my own flawed assessments. My July 2 column strongly supported The Times’s decision to publish its June 23 article on a once-secret banking-data surveillance program. After pondering for several months, I have decided I was off base. There were reasons to publish the controversial article, but they were slightly outweighed by two factors to which I gave too little emphasis. While it’s a close call now,...

Many adults in the United States believe the current federal government has not been completely forthcoming on the issue of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a poll by the New York Times and CBS News. 53 per cent of respondents think the Bush administration is hiding something, and 28 per cent believe it is lying. Only 16 per cent of respondents say the government headed by U.S. president George W. Bush is telling the truth on what it knew prior to the terrorist attacks, down five points since May 2002. On Aug. 6, 2001, a Presidential Daily Briefing titled...

Democrats are seizing on another leak of classified information to the New York Times -- information not yet seen by Members of Congress and not formally divulged to the House and Senate intelligence committees, the newspaper said. The leaked information, like previous leaks before it, is being used against the Bush administration and Republicans politically, just five weeks before the midterm elections. The New York Times reported on Sunday that an April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate (an assessment by America's 16 intelligence agencies) concluded that the Iraq war has heightened Islamic radicalism and made the global terrorist threat much worse....