Free Republic

Liberal umbrage-monger David Corn– of the Mitt Romney 47% and the Rand Paul hates Dick Cheney video fame– says the difficulty with making African-Americans angry enough to vote against Republican “intimidation” tactics is that they don’t realize they’re being intimidated… Chris Matthews: What about the attempt to intimidate them out of voting? Corn: Well, that’s true. It’s happening…and when you do that– when people wanna vote or they’re thinking about voting in an election– they do get ticked off and it motivates them. But…they are so disaffected or so distant from this election that they may not even know that...

A Times Square Elmo was busted in a sting operation by cops looking to combat overly aggressive panhand­ling by costumed creeps, sources said. A picture of the female character handcuffed and dressed in a fuzzy red outfit was posted on Twitter by the Midtown South Precinct Tuesday.

Two crime-fighting characters in Times Square have landed in the spotlight, and it’s not for saving lives. The NYPD told 1010 WINS two men, one dressed as Batman and another dressed as Spider-Man, were arrested after a brawl with another man at the Crossroads of the World Saturday night. Police said the fight started on 44th Street and Broadway after 23-year-old Thomas Rorke heckled the superheroes, CBS 2’s Matt Kozar reported.

The Times of London, on Sept. 2, published an article by Gregg Carlstrom about a recent decision by Israeli authorities to declare 988 acres in the Gush Etzion region of Judea and Samaria (close to where three Israeli teens were kidnapped and murdered in June) ‘state land’ (Israel makes biggest land grab in 30 years after teens murdered). Here’s a map of the area in question:Map created by Ha’aretz The Times of London article (behind a pay wall) included this opening passage: However, it is completely inaccurate to say that Israel “formally annexed” the land in question, as such formal annexation would...

It has become clear that Cliven Bundy was transgressed by the New York Times, his words taken out of context and retailed in such a way as to mean something they were not. Bundy is no racist, and the attempt to make him look like one is another step downward in the collapse of American national media. But conservatives still have a right -- in fact, a responsibility -- to be annoyed with Bundy. To wit: Bundy did not walk, not stumble, did not swerve into the trap set by the New York Times. He was not ambushed, he was...

I began reading the entirety of the first section of the New York Times at nine years old, and continued that practice, more or less, for decades. I regarded The Times with a sort of reverence, as have many in this country and the wider world, and now see that its influence, because of its history and standing in the culture, is much wider than one might think for a newspaper, even a so-called “paper of record” that “sets the news table” for the United States. For example I have heard, way too many times, that a friend or colleague...

Five-Thirty-Eight's Nate Silver mocked New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as a "hedgehog" who "only knows one thing." When asked to describe what a hedgehog is, Silver pointed to Friedman specifically and the op-ed columnists at the Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal: ... They don’t permit a lot of complexity in their thinking. They pull threads together from very weak evidence and draw grand conclusions based on them. They’re ironically very predictable from week to week. If you know the subject that Thomas Friedman or whatever is writing about, you don’t have to read the column. You can...

Either New York Times writer David Kirkpatrick is ignoring his own colleagues’ work, or the Hillary Clinton supporters are laying out early foundations to combat what will be the biggest criticism of her tenure as Secretary of State if she decides to run for the Oval Office. The New York Times' assertion that Al Qaeda’s involvement in the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi is particularly questionable considering the preponderance of evidence that shows otherwise. In his piece, Kirkpatrick writes, ”But the Republican arguments appear to conflate purely local extremist organizations like Ansar...

In October, some of the first tangible aspects of the Affordable Care Act made their debut, allowing millions of Americans to start signing up for new health insurance options, Times journalists covering the rollout would like to hear how you have been affected by it. If you have shopped for insurance through one of the new state-run insurance exchanges — online markets where people can browse health plans and see if they qualify for federal subsidies — please tell us about your experience by answering the questions below. Your comments and contact information will not be published, but a reporter...

A newly hired New York Times columnist is an anti-Israel conspiracy theorist who is so opposed to “normalization” with the Jewish state that he once fought to prevent a think tank from translating his novel into Hebrew. Influential Egyptian author Alaa al-Aswany sparked controversy in literary circles in 2010 when he tried to block the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information from publishing a Hebrew translation of his novel The Yacoubian Building. IPCRI co-chairman Gershon Baskin told the Washington Free Beacon that his organization enlisted Amos Schocken, the editor of left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz, to publish the Hebrew translation....

In addition to your daily dose of liberal invective, you will now get a monthly infusion of anti-Israel conspiracy on the New York Times opinion page. Earlier this month, the New York Times announced that it had hired Egyptian novelist Alaa Al-Aswany to write a monthly column for the paper. But according to Egypt scholar Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Al-Aswany buys into the conspiratorial notion that a cabal of Jews controls American leaders. Writing in the New Republic, Trager explains that Al-Aswany has been able to cultivate an image of himself in the West...

It is far from clear how badly the country’s environment will be damaged by the government shutdown. But the immediate prospects are not promising. Republicans who detest the Environmental Protection Agency were not bothered in the least by the fact that the agency furloughed more than 90 percent of its 16,000-plus full and part-time employees. But people living near toxic waste sites will be bothered. Forced to perform what amounts to emergency triage, agency officials said they had no choice but to stop work on about 500 of the nation’s Superfund sites, more than 60 percent of the total, with...

The New York Times Company [$NYT] reported second quarter 2013 earnings 48% below last year's quarter due to severance and other "special" items but digital paid subscriptions rose 40%. Despite rising numbers of readers and paid subscriptions, the company continues to struggle as advertising revenues continued to fall again— 6% in this quarter. This is the eighth sequential quarter of declining print and digital advertising revenues. "Print and digital advertising revenues decreased…

After purchasing the Boston Globe in 1993 for a then-record $1.1 billion, the financially troubled New York Times just announced it sold the 141 year-old paper to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry for a mere $70 million. That's a straight 93% loss. Figuring in two decades of inflation would only make it worse -- as does the fact the Times retains the Globe's pension liabilities, estimated at over $100 million.

Dimock is the sacred myth fractivists just won’t let go, as a recent story from the failing, and always politically correct (perhaps there is a connection), Los Angeles Times demonstrates, with the Scranton Times piling on for good effect (yes, that Times, the conflicted one whose owners are in the water testing business). It appears the Los Angeles Times needs to bump up their circulation numbers, so this past Sunday they trotted out the “Dimock” story once again (perhaps inspired by watching Gasland 2 on HBO).

On September 10, 2010, the day before our enormous freedom rally at Ground Zero protesting the Ground Zero victory mega-mosque, the New York Times profiled a Muslim named Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, who had no place to pray. The whole story was a subtle advertisement for the Ground Zero mega-mosque. But as it turns out, Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam is not quite the "moderate" that the leftist NYT dhimmis assumed he was, but calls openly for the murder of apostates from Islam -- here in the U.S. Here again we see The NY Times legitimizing and norming the most extreme voices. They...

I always believed that giving to a good cause or helping victims of a disaster was a noble thing to do. I mean, “There but for the grace of God go I”, right? With the recent uncovering of scandals within the government, more and more investigators are digging to uncover other cases of fraud and mismanagement. Is nothing sacred anymore? A recent investigation exposed by CNN, The Center for Investigative Reporting and the Tampa Bay Times have found that there are dozens and dozens of charities that basically do next to nothing for the causes they raise money for. 50...

especially interesting in a New York Times story from Friday on Iran, where they found it advantageous to edit out an America-hating Iranian who wished the Times building would burn down: “He is a war veteran, a good manager and a religious person,” said Noushin Sobhani, 31, a gynecologist. She and her parents voted at the Imam Sadegh University, where most of Iran’s cadre of bureaucrats are trained. “We hate America,” her father said, smiling. “I hope The New York Times building burns down.”

The New York Times editorial board ripped the Obama administration in a scathing editorial Thursday afternoon, writing that it has “now lost all credibility” after revelations that the administration has been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers. It came as something of a surprise, considering the board’s normally friendly view toward the administration. But in the editorial, the Times’ board criticised the Obama administration in much of the same way it scrutinized the Bush administration. It wrote that the Obama administration’s justification for the program —

The good news is health care costs are going up more slowly. The bad news is that families continue to see larger medical bills. The typical cost to cover a family of four now exceeds $22,000, including the amount paid in insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs, according to the latest Milliman Medical Index for 2013. Milliman, an actuarial and benefits consultant, puts the cost at slightly less than the amount a family might pay to send a child to an in-state public college for a year. This year’s increase over last was only 6.3 percent, according to the analysis from...