Free Republic

The New York Times is developing a bad habit of sending its columns to the Obama administration for approval. Daniel Harper at the Weekly Standard reported yesterday on a no-no committed by then-contributing Times columnist Peter Orszag, former director of Obama's Office of Management and Budget and an Obama-care booster in an October 20, 2010 column, "Malpractice Methodology." Halper wrote in part: The latest Bob Woodward books reveals that Peter Orszag, at the time a columnist for the New York Times, sent a draft of an article to White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett for review and comments before publishing....

A new survey conducted by the NY Times, MSNBC and the DNC shows, for the first time, President Barack Obama taking the lead in the battle-ground states of Texas and Oklahoma. The poll of 1,000 likely adults* conducted in the days following the inspiring Democrat National Convention shows Obama ahead 52-48 in Oklahoma and 53-47 in Texas. Both candidates have seen their images improve with these generally backward voters in the wake of their respective party conventions. Obama is now at break-even in his approval rating at 48% after being below par at 46/51 a month ago. Romney's numbers are...

The famous aphorism in the title of this blog is variously attributed to Red Skelton at the funeral of legendary movie mogul SOB Harry Cohn, or George Jessel at the funeral of even more legendary movie mogul SOB Louis B. Mayer. It also is quite apt in describing the commercial success of Newsweek's recent cover story, "Hit the Road, Barack." Nat Ives of Ad Age reports: _____________________ The Aug. 27 issue urging a Romney victory "may have just knocked one out of the park on newsstand sales," according to the Magazine Information Network, or MagNet, which tracks magazine sales. The...

Full title: Judicial Watch Obtains ‘4 to 5 inch Stack’ of ‘Overlooked’ CIA Records Detailing Meetings with bin Laden Filmmakers Obama Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications: Obama White House ‘trying to have visibility into the UBL (Usama bin Laden) projects.’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained records from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Department of Defense (DOD) regarding meetings and communications between government agencies and Kathryn Bigelow, the Academy Award-winning director of The Hurt Locker, and screenwriter Mark Boal in preparation for their film Zero Dark Thirty, which details the capture...

In a recent article published in the New York Times, reporter Jason DeParle casts the fact that more lower-class mothers are having children out of wedlock as a product of class conflict. He posits a theory of marital “scarcity” in which the upper classes have greater access to marriage than the poorer classes. DeParle paints a bleak picture, writing that “College-educated Americans like the Faulkners are increasingly likely to marry one another, compounding their growing advantages in pay.” He reports that “Less-educated women like Ms. [Jessica] Schairer, who left college without finishing her degree, are growing less likely to marry...

The New York Times Company, which has been shedding assets and focusing on its core newspaper and Web site, is preparing to sell another of its properties. The company has a letter of intent to sell the About Group, the unit that includes the About.com online resource guide, to Answers.com, a question-and-answer site, for $270 million, a person familiar with the deal said on Wednesday. It is not clear when the deal will close because financing has not yet been secured. When the Times Company originally purchased About.com in 2005 for just over $400 million, analysts questioned how compatible About.com...

There is no evidence that Mitt Romney exercised his powers at private equity firm Bain Capital after 1999 or directed funds’ investments after leaving, The New York Times reported. Although some documents place the Republican presidential hopeful in charge of Bain from 1999 to 2001, a period in which the company outsourced jobs and ran companies that fell into bankruptcy, it is not related to who was running Bain at the time, the Times reported. Romney has tried to distance himself from this period in Bain's history, saying on financial disclosure forms he had no active role in Bain as...

Since we’re dreaming here, why not start with that part of the Constitution most beloved by Americans? I would rewrite the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law” is a peculiarly stingy way to begin an amendment that protects the rights of conscience, speech, press, assembly and petition. James Madison proposed more capacious language for those rights. He would have said, for example, that “the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or...

I came of age when the word “drive-by” entered the American lexicon. By high school graduation, I lost one cousin to gun violence and another was incarcerated for a gun crime. I know many harmed by guns and even more who feared the possibility. I always wonder if, but for the Second Amendment, there would be a more radical commitment to compromise and peacefully working through easy and difficult issues. In writing the Second Amendment, the Framers didn't envision the kind of gun toting that is permitted across this country today.... I am not naïve enough to believe that doing...

The double standards operating against outspoken conservatives are legion. Perhaps no one knows this better than talk radio host Rush Limbaugh who has been the target of the left's hatred for decades now. Watching the latest news in the business of sports, he's got to be shaking his head in dismay. If you're a liberal like Bill Maher, a generous donor to a Super PAC support Barack Obama's re-election efforts, and you invest as much as $20 million to buy a part of the New York Mets, the New York Times gives you favorable coverage. Completely leaving out Maher's recent, and...

New York magazine’s recent profile of New York Times Co. (NYSE:NYT) Chairman Arthur Sulzberger does a great job portraying the family drama and economic pressures that led to the ouster of his one-time friend CEO Janet Robinson. Perhaps hoping to end the depressing story on an optimistic note, the article raised the notion that Bloomberg L.P., the private media company founded by New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, would ride to the rescue of the beleaguered publisher “and save the paper from itself, a kind of best worst-case scenario for the Ochs-Sulzberger family.” -snip- New York Times Co. is adrift. Its...

Recent weeks have seen ombudsmen at both the New York Times and the Washington Post defend their respective newspapers from charges of journalistic bias and a deep-seated, enduring slant to the political left. Described as “trusted [intermediaries] between…an organization and some…external constituency,” it is the job of New York Times ombudsman Arthur Brisbane and the Post’s Patrick Pexton to represent “the broad scope of constituent interests” by seeking to present readers with facts and straightforward, impartial reporting. (1) Of course anyone with a sense of humor—or any sense at all—will get a real kick out of claims of straightforward and...

Complete Title: The Soros Summit - Free Beacon exclusive: Inside the secret Miami meeting of George Soros’s liberal conspiracy ### A secretive network of left-wing billionaires and their political operatives descended on the luxurious Biltmore Hotel in Miami over the weekend to discuss strategy for the coming elections. The location of the conference had been kept a closely guarded secret by the members and guests of Democracy Alliance (DA), a collection of ultra-wealthy liberal donors formed in 2005, and is reported here in a Washington Free Beacon exclusive. Attendees roamed the grounds at the 150-acre tropical resort on their way...

Media Matters’ Founder David Brock showed no shame when he was caught illegally using guns for his own personal protection. Indeed, Media Matters’ continues to lash out at others who own guns or support letting individuals use guns for the own protection, even increasing their attacks. In April alone, Media Matters ran 32 articles attacking the NRA alone. Additional pieces have defended the Obama administration’s Fast & Furious program and dealt with other gun related topics. Media Matters also attacked me three times over the last two weeks: I had an op-ed in the New York Daily News and an...

I received multiple tips late Thursday about layoffs at the New York Times, including this report: More than 50 people were laid off on the corporate side. The layoffs include George Freeman, one of their well-known in-house lawyers. The worry is this is just the begginning of cuts — and that the company is putting pressure on the unions. Several of the people who were laid off were minorities, including African Americans and Hispanics. Another tipster says of Freeman: He was “one of the two go-to guys on news-department legal matters, from story vetting to fighting First Amendment cases. The...

Forget the fact that Cuba is a one-party totalitarian state where leadership is entirely dependent on how closely related one is to a certain Fidel Castro rather than any electoral process. The good news is that "Cuba may be the most feminist country in Latin America." That laughable premise has been published by New York Times blogger Luisita Lopez Torregrosa. Of course, that revelation would be news to the best known female group in Cuba, the Ladies In White (photo) who have been oppressed by the Communist regime and their thugs. Ms Torregrosa bases much of her analysis on the...

New York Times publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr has suddenly become the moose in the room that everybody now wants to talk about, including his disgruntled staffers...and Taiwanese animators who have produced an hilarious video about his bizarre management style (below the fold). The Taiwanese parody is based on a recent email sent by Times science and health reporter Don McNeil to about 150 fellow staffers. Reading McNeil's explosive email, one gets the impression that Sulzberger's primary qualification to helm the Times was to live through birth:

"What am I gonna do? Am I gonna eat cat food? Am I gonna move in with my kids? Am I gonna commit suicide?" These complaints come not from a laid-off auto worker or a victim of foreclosure, but from longtime New York Times reporter Donald McNeil. His alarming quote expresses his fears that the New York Times Co. will freeze its defined-benefit employee pension plan and make the transition to a defined-contribution system. The Newspaper Guild, the union, which represents McNeil and other Times journalists, released his complaints and others in an Internet video as a protest against the...

Few prominent economists have a worse record predicting the impact of Obama’s economic policies than Paul Krugman. Writing for the New York Times and touting his close “genuine contact” with the “smart” economists and others in the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership, Krugman has been, and remains, Obama’s most important champion. Not only has he been defending Obama’s Keynesian-type deficit-spending, but he has been advocating still more of these same failed policies. The economy just can’t gain ground. Thirty-four months since the "recovery" started in June 2009 and the actual number of jobs have increased by just 0.4%....

Rick Santorum’s profanity-laced outburst at Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times has elicited a fair amount of comment in the political world, as one might imagine – including among Fox News analysts. If you’d like to hear two very different interpretations of Senator Santorum’s reaction, you can watch Brit Hume here and Sarah Palin here. Hume wasn’t harsh in his critique of Santorum, saying he was probably “fatigued” and showed “some exasperation,” but added that Zeleny is a “reasonable guy” who asked a legitimate question and would have taken Santorum at his word when it came to a clarification....