Free Republic

Sidney Blumenthal, an unpaid senior adviser to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, was arrested the day before the New Hampshire primary in Nashua, N.H., on a charge of drunken driving, according to the police. ...Blumenthal was a top aide to Bill Clinton during his presidency, advising him on relations with the news media and policy matters. The police in Nashua said he was arrested early the morning of Jan. 7. “Mr. Blumenthal’s vehicle was seen traveling at a high rate of speed through our city streets,” said Sgt. Dennis Linehan of the Nashua police. After failing sobriety tests, the...

<p>BALTIMORE (AP) — A grieving father won a $2.9 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals out of a belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.</p> <p>Albert Snyder of York, Pa., sued the Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified damages after members staged a demonstration at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.</p>

BALTIMORE, Maryland (AP) -- A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals in the belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.

Morgan Stanley Sells Entire New York Times Stake Link only due to copyright restriction.

On Yom Kippur, which ended just last evening, Jews quite literally beat their breasts while asking forgiveness for all the sins committed during the previous year. The confessional prayer enumerates literally dozens of different transgressions. But while the syllabus of sin is seemingly comprehensive, there would appear to be one lacuna. Nowhere in the menu of misdeeds does "schadenfreude" appear. We might just have to petition to have it added in time for next year. Because Jonah Goldberg's I’m Rather Grateful is such a delightful dose of schadenfreude-on-steroids as to be as irresistible. Go ahead, read it and enjoy. There'll...

Over the past three weeks, 45 families and 31 individuals -- approximately 200 people -- entered Canada at the Detroit River crossings and applied in Windsor for shelter and social assistance after filing refugee claims with the Canada Border Services Agency. Municipal agencies dealing with the sudden influx of mainly Mexican refugee applicants are renting out hotel rooms and bracing for predicted thousands more to come. "I don't believe that Windsor's residents and taxpayers should have to foot the bill for U.S. immigration policy," Francis told The Star. He was referring to the suspected source of the problem -- a...

Just ran across this interesting video on Breibart Breaking news videos.

The ex-newspaper editor took great delight in making fun of President Bush for falling off a Segway - the two-wheeled, motorised, gyroscopically balanced scooter that, its makers promise, will never fall over. However, he was bitten by karma and suffered the same fate as Bush.

Arnold's Health Flop After Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled his universal health-care plan for California in January, almost everyone was laying down palms in Sacramento. Here was a Republican Governor putting aside political squabbling and "doing big things that Washington has failed to do," as Time magazine put it. What a change seven months later, with the plan on the cusp of collapse. There's a lesson here about health-care "bipartisanship" when it's merely a cover for bad policy. The California legislature is now in the second month of the fiscal year without a budget. Deadlocks are routine because the state requires a...

Many on the left regard Rupert Murdoch, architect of the rise of Fox News Channel, as the anti-Christ. More accurately, Murdoch deserves the title of the anti-Pinch. Murdoch's successful bid to take over Dow Jones & Company, publisher of Wall Street Journal, is a nightmare-come-true for Pinch Sulzberger, the hereditary occupant of the chairman of the board's and publisher's office at the New York Times. Poor Pinch. Murdoch is everything that he is not. Conservative, smart, and wildly successful in the media business. As a result, Pinch faces serious challenges as a family member, business leader and corporate strategist....

Senior managers, targeted for dismissal at The Denver Post under a budget-cutting plan trimming 37 full-time positions from the newspaper's editorial ranks, started receiving their walking papers early Monday. The notices to management personnel, who aren't protected under a Denver Newspaper Guild contract, came after a June 8 deadline for employees eligible for a voluntary buyout to make their intentions known. Sixteen current Post editorial staffers indicated acceptance of the newspaper's voluntary buyout offer. They have until Thursday to rescind their decision. Among those notified that their last day would be Friday are Perspective Editor Todd Engdahl and columnist Jim...

It’s been a brutal day at the San Francisco Chronicle, as managers walked from desk to desk, handpicking reporters and photographers to be laid off. “The white envelopes are going out,” said one insider. “It’s definitely a bloodbath,” added another. The Chron plans to lay off up to sixty union-represented newsroom employees in the next week. For the past week, the paper offered buyouts in an effort to cut eighty jobs, but only about twenty employees took the offer, one insider said. See the buyout offer after the jump. Among the list of managers who were canned was the Chron’s...

Weeping Paris dragged back to court in handcuffs Last updated at 19:46pm on 8th June 2007 A sobbing Paris Hilton was forced back into court in handcuffs today after the judge who originally jailed her decided to get tough on the celebrity heiress. A Los Angeles County Sheriff's vehicle arrived at her Hollywood home to collect her on the orders of Judge Michael Sauer and she has now arrived at the courthouse. The Sheriff used a private entrance to escort her into the courtroom. Shamed Paris was originally due to make an impassioned telephone plea to a court in an...

SHARON -- For more than four decades, Ron Czik has proudly worn the label of Yankees fan. Czik, 47, is not about to turn his back on his beloved team now, even as the once-mighty pinstripers stumble into Boston tonight more than 13 games behind the Red Sox. But ask him his reaction to the transformation of the Bronx Bombers into the hapless pushovers of the American League, and Czik's feelings pour out as if drawn from the five stages of grief. Denial: "Statistically, there's nothing on paper that would explain why they're doing this badly." Anger: "Right now, all...

May 10, 2007 -- The son of a New York Times newsman was arrested on the Upper East Side yesterday when he pulled over a retired detective and flashed a fake badge, a source said. William Roberts, 19, was driving down Second Avenue at 62d Street when a car cut him off. He turned on lights and sirens he'd installed, pulled alongside the driver and told him to stop, the source said, adding that Roberts carried ID saying he works for the Brooklyn DA.

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...

See for example this thread first. There's buyouts at the Denver Post (to hear them, it's almost a boast!) As a FReeper I laugh while they reduce their staff The Dinosaur Media's *TOAST*!

At first, it was just a trickle. Indian call center workers become serial job hoppers, boosting their salaries 20% with every new position. Factory workers in Vietnam leave for the holidays and don't return. Computer programmers in Bulgaria don't bother to answer the want ads of a Los Angeles movie studio. But today, anecdotes of a global labor crunch have turned into a flood. Last week, staffing agency Manpower Inc. released the results of a survey of nearly 37,000 employers in 27 countries. It turns out that more than four out of 10 employers around the world are having trouble...

WTWK, formerly Air America for the Champlain Valley, is stunting this weekend. The new format is to be unveiled on Monday. Could oldies via satellite be making a return to the airwaves ever since Kool went classic hits?

KQDS/Duluth drops liberal talk Listeners in the Twin Ports got a rude awakening this morning when they turned on the radio expecting to hear Sam Seder, but instead heard golden oldies. In a surprise move, KQDS in Duluth-Superior, which had been airing Ed Schultz and programs from Air America Radio for the past year and a half, has dropped liberal talk for oldies music...There was one rumor claiming that oldies was only temporary, and that a FOX 'News'-style conservative talk format would be the permanent format, but nothing else out there would give credibility to this rumor... As for the...

<p>Air America Radio, a liberal talk radio network, said Monday that it had reached a tentative agreement to be sold to the founder of a New York area real estate company.</p>

A CIA panel has told former officer Valerie Plame she can't write about her undercover work for the agency, a position that may threaten a lucrative book project with her publisher. Plame's outing as a CIA officer in July 2003 triggered a criminal probe that culminates next week when Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby goes on trial for perjury and obstruction. But in what could be a precursor to a separate legal battle, Plame recently hired a lawyer to challenge the CIA Publications Review Board, which must clear writings by former employees. The...

WASHINGTON - Former Democratic Party boss and Clinton friend Terry McAuliffe is lambasting John Kerry’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, calling his effort to unseat President Bush "one of the biggest acts of political malpractice in the history of American politics." In his scrappy memoir, McAuliffe criticizes the 2004 campaign that he was responsible for defending but ultimately lost to what he describes as a more organized Republican machine. McAuliffe calls the Kerry campaign gun-shy, distracted and incompetent. McAuliffe is close to Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton and will support her presidential bid if the New York senator runs in 2008. McAuliffe’s...

Wall Street has a soft spot for the "soft landing" thesis, but to me it's crystal clear that a serious economic slowdown is under way. What has been surprising: not that the economy is weakening but that so many people seem to expect a soft landing, and therefore remain in denial about the seriousness of the slowdown. I guess the predilection toward a soft landing is a function of the following: So many folks in the investment business -- and in the country at large-- haven't experienced a consumer-led recession in so long that they think this outcome is just...

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 Falling prices trap new homebuyers Neighbors in a new Garden Grove tract say a developer's plan to slash prices by about $140,000 has left them owing more for their homes than they're now worth. By JEFF COLLINS The Orange County Register

After a rash of fawning, poor-widdle-victims media blitzing, and eight weeks in theaters, the Dixie Chicks documentary, Shut Up and Sing, has finally passed the $1 million mark in box office receipts. Woo. Hoo.

Mr. Franken, who is on a U.S.O. tour of Iraq and Afghanistan and says he is owed $360,750 by the network, declined requests for comment. Through Air America’s spokeswoman, he said, that “although I do not know the specific details about A.A.R.’s progress through the Chapter 11 restructuring process, I was pleased to hear that they had received a letter of intent from a prospective buyer.” He added his hope “that the network’s ownership situation and financing difficulties will be resolved while I am away.” When he returns, he faces competition from an unexpected source: Product First’s Ed Schultz, who...

Dixie Chicks to Split Up After Grammy's? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Jim Roberts Dec 13, 2006 The Dixie Chicks just scored the big trifecta with Grammy nominations. The one-time country band that turned their collective backs on the music genre, its stars and its fans cleaned up with the three majors, Best Album, Song and Record for “Taking the Long Way” and the single, “Not Ready to Make Nice.” The Chicks were one of eight acts with five nominations each, as it appears that the Grammy's are desperately trying to give the gals some love for their America bashing ways. Now a...

FLORENCE, Colorado (AP) -- Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph laments in a series of letters to a newspaper that the maximum-security federal prison where he is spending the rest of his life is designed to drive him insane. "It is a closed-off world designed to isolate inmates from social and environmental stimuli, with the ultimate purpose of causing mental illness and chronic physical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis," he wrote in one letter to The Gazette of Colorado Springs.

EVERY day, Will Hertzberg owns a little less of his three-bedroom house in Corona. Like hundreds of thousands of other homeowners around the state, Hertzberg has a mortgage that lets him choose how much he pays each month. Like many of them, he always chooses to pay as little as possible.....But his debt is swelling, and his mortgage company controls his fate. "I am rather screwed," he said. ....Hertzberg bought his house 11 years ago for $129,995..... Comparable homes in his neighborhood fetch more than $400,000...... Over the years he has taken out $190,000 in cash through refinancings......Hertzberg's home equity...

Times are so tough at the New York Times that the publishing giant can't afford to move many of its staffers into its glitzy new Eighth Avenue headquarters. With office rental rates soaring in Midtown, Times chief Janet Robinson and head bean-counter Len Forman said this week that the company is actively looking to rent out even more than the five floors it had marked for other tenants earlier this year. The Times had originally planned to put its employees in all 28 of its floors in the 52-storey skyscraper, set to open this spring. Some of that space was...

See for example this thread first. I tell you I never get tired of watching MSM'ers get firedSchadenfreude, they say is the word of the day (I'm hoping for FReepers to get hired...!)

What happened on the first feed of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric tonight? First there was "bad tape and audio on an Elizabeth Palmer report from Baghdad," an e-mailer says. "Then there was no audio on the final kicker piece, which was supposed to start a series on 'Giving.'" Couric apologized for the audio problems and signed off prematurely. "They had to get off the air four minutes early," another e-mailer said. CBS showed Couric standing on the set while theme music played and credits rolled. ("One got the feeling that heads were going to roll, too," a...

John Nichols Sat Nov 18, 11:12 PM ET The Nation -- Of course, House Democrats made a mistake in choosing the slick favorite of Washington special interests, Steny Hoyer, over shambling populist John Murtha to serve as House Majority Leader. In one of the more ridiculous exercises of journalistic irresponsibility by a Washington press corps that is distinguished by nothing so much as its ineptness when it comes to offering useful perspective to the American people, Murtha was dismissed as an ethically-challenged mess of a man while Hoyer, the candidate of K. Street, was presented as the tidier Democrat. The...

Arizona (liberal) organizers failed to make their goal of registering 22,000 new latino voters...also true of their efforts in San Francisco, Dallas and other places that had big rallies earlier in the year. They expected to register 1 million, but but to date have registered 146,000.

Riot police reinforcements were deployed in Marseille last night after the latest outbreak of urban violence in France left a young woman in a critical condition with life-threatening burns.President Jacques Chirac expressed his horror at the attack hours after the 26-year-old woman and three others were ambushed by rioting teenagers while travelling on a bus in the southern port city. The assailants – said by some witnesses to be as young as 15 – forced the vehicle's doors open, spilled flammable liquid inside, and set it alight. There were similar attacks in major cities across the country at the weekend,...

Claiming that The New York Times duped her into granting an interview for what turned out to be a drug company-funded advertising supplement, Jane Pauley has sued the newspaper for fraud. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, the 55-year-old broadcaster charges that she believed that the Times interview was for a news article on mental health issues, but that the story (accompanied by a full-page photo) ran in an October 2005 "special advertising supplement" promoting psychotherapeutic drugs sold by Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical firms. Pauley, who in September 2004 disclosed her battle with bipolar disorder, alleges...

Having soaked up just about every last bit of limelight from the CIA leak scandal, former GOP-appointed Ambassador Joe Wilson is burning up the campaign trail on behalf of Democrats while apparently planning a full-time move away from Washington, D.C., ROLL CALL reports Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson — who was famously outed as a CIA operative by columnist Robert Novak — have told friends that they are ready to quit Washington. One source tell ROLL'S Mary Ann Akers, the Wilsons, the parents of 6-year-old twins, have “settled on” Santa Fe, N.M. "We have entertained for a while...

When somebody from the Herald used to get a job at the Globe, we’d always say he was going to the velvet coffin. Now, I guess it would be more accurate to just describe the money-losing rag as the coffin. The New York Times bought the bible of political correctness 15 years ago for $1.1 billion. And now, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Globe has fallen into the red and it can’t get up. And the pompous, pampered poodles in the newsroom can’t blame their financial meltdown solely on Craigslist, Google, or even George W. Bush. It’s finally...

The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.

A year after the Paris riots violence and despair remain endemic in the rundown suburbsFLAMES lick around a burning car on a tiny telephone screen. Omar, 17, a veteran of France’s suburban riots, replayed the sequence with pride. “It was great. We did lots of them and then we went out and torched more the next day.” Omar, whose parents immigrated from Mali, was savouring memories of the revolt that erupted 12 months ago from his home, the Chêne Pointu estate in Clichy-sous-Bois, in the eastern outskirts of Paris. “We’re ready for it again. In fact it hasn’t stopped,” he...

EPINAY-SUR-SEINE, France. When the call came about a car burglary in this raw suburb north of Paris one night last weekend, three officers in a patrol car rushed over, only to find themselves surrounded by 30 youths in hoods throwing rocks and swinging bats and metal bars. Neither tear gas nor stun guns stopped the assault. Only when reinforcements arrived did the siege end. One officer was left with broken teeth and in need of 30 stitches to his face. The attack was rough but not unique. In the past three weeks alone, three similar assaults on the police have...

I really, really hope Rush Limbaugh sees and picks this up today. COURIC: CBS 'EVENING NEWS' RATINGS DISASTER Monday, Oct. 16, 2006 NEW YORK CITY WABC 7.1 WNBC 5.3 WCBS 3.7 LOS ANGELES KABC 5.9 KNBC 3.1 KCBS 1.5 WASHINGTON, DC NBC 9.3 ABC 7.8 CBS 2.5

Schadenfreude - it's a German word defined as "a malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others." Normally, most of us would be embarrassed to admit that we've got it. But when it comes to the New York Yankees, well, residents of the North Shore are shamelessly embracing both the word and the malicious satisfaction that goes with it. It all stems from the humiliating collapse of the beloved Boston Red Sox during the regular baseball season, followed by the even more humiliating collapse of the hated Yankees during the playoffs. With a lineup that reminded some of Ruth, Gehrig...

When Bill Clinton made his speech to the Labour Party conference, he bamboozled a few by finishing with the word "Ubuntu".

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Los Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson was forced out Thursday, a month after he defied parent company Tribune Co.'s demand for what he considered potentially damaging staff cuts. He is being succeeded by David D. Hiller, who has been publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the Tribune Co. said in a statement. "Jeff and I agreed that this change is best at this time because Tribune and Times executives need to be aligned on how to shape our future," said Scott Smith, Tribune Publishing president. "We thank Jeff for his leadership of important advances at the...

The Bolton Plan: If Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.-R.I.) continues thwarting a Senate vote to confirm John Bolton as the permanent U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the White House plans to make a second recess appointment of the embattled diplomat. According to an administration source who requested anonymity, if the Senate does not vote on Bolton before his current recess appointment expires December 18, the President will again name Bolton to the post during Congress’ post-election recess. In order for Bolton to be paid, however, he would also have to be appointed to a different position while his formal title...

Stronach joins Domi in the sin bin Homewrecker accusations will tarnish MP's calm, cool image Don Martin National Post Wednesday, September 27, 2006 OTTAWA - They were always together -- and it always seemed so unnatural. On the campaign hustings in the middle of hockey season. Drinking in a trendy Toronto bar in March. Sharing a fruit plate at the Magna Golf Club in June. Whooping it up at the Calgary Stampede in July. And that was just 2006. The unlikely friendship between MP Belinda Stronach and retired Toronto hockey enforcer Tie Domi dates back years. You'd watch them...

If you're a progressive researcher, red flashing lights will go on in your brain and a siren will go off as you read one key word in the following and not just for the usual reasons: It appears that Air America, the liberal talk-radio network, won't be on the air much longer in Dallas-Fort Worth. Guadalupe Radio Network, a Midland-based Catholic broadcasting company, has announced on its Web site that it will take over two Dallas-Fort Worth stations as of Oct. 1: KXEB/910 AM, which is Air America's Dallas-Fort Worth station, and KJON/850 AM. Guadalupe Radio will broadcast in English...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2101084__________________________ az chela (827 posts) Sun Sep-10-06 07:21 PM Original message I received a very unsettling email today from Cindy Sheehan Edited on Sun Sep-10-06 08:20 PM by az chela She said that people now are saying the she is irrelevant and unimportant!!!! Since I love Cindy dearly this breaks my heart. She took on the bush administration with no support except her great desire to stop the war and get rid of the current evil administration.Last year she spent almost the entire year traveling all over the world to tell people the truth about bushco.Before that no one gave...