Free Republic

St. Margaret's Tartans are in the USA Today final round for best HS boys lacrosse team in the country! St. Margaret's won the Southern California title recently, which is as high as HS teams can progress. (There is no state or national championship.) Thanks to friends like you voting in the 1st two rounds, St. Margaret's finished #3 in the country in Round 2 voting, and 1st in bracket. (Bracket and popular vote weren't necessarily in synch, depending on bracket) . In the final vote, it's all popular vote, which is serious business. (Dopey way of determining the best boy's...

I ran across this heavily edited article at USA Today written by Susan Page.  In it, she reports a new book coming out by a man she describes as having a "33-year career with the CIA."  This man is Michael Morell who praises Barack Obama as "extremely thorough" but claims that Governor Palin had "no understanding of national security issues" back when he claims to have met her in 2008. Everything from the headline to the image Susan Page uses indicates who the USA Today writer was interested in spotlighting.  (Yep, Governor Palin remains the left’s ultimate bogeyman).  Furthermore, when one digs a tad...

Writing in USA Today, Alexandra Samuels, USA Today's columnist for their "voices from campus" section, believes that people trying to have big lips are racist. Specifically, Ms. Samuels is referencing the "#KylieJenner Challenge," in which teenagers suck on shot glasses so that their lips are "plump and pouty" like Kylie Jenner's, who is on the reality TV show "Keeping Up With The Kardashians." While Ms. Samuels warns teens that the practice is dangerous, as it has led to bruises and some disfiguration, the main point of Ms. Samuels's piece is that trying to create big lips is racist. The article,...

USA Today caused a stir last night when they published a column from Anjem Choudary, whom they describe as “a radical Muslim cleric” from London specializing in shari’a law. Earlier in the day, the Financial Times attracted a raft of criticism for publishing a column that insinuated that Charlie Hebdo‘s staff brought on their massacre themselves, but Choudary doesn’t even bother with a sop to free speech, which he dismisses as a non-Islamic concept. Instead, Choudary blames France for not protecting “the sanctity of a Prophet,” and says we should not expect anything else other than murder from Muslims...

Do you want to know if the stock market is going to crash next year? Just keep an eye on junk bonds. Prior to the horrific collapse of stocks in 2008, high yield debt collapsed first. And as you will see below, high yield debt is starting to crash again. The primary reason for this is the price of oil. The energy sector accounts for approximately 15 to 20 percent of the entire junk bond market, and those energy bonds are taking a tremendous beating right now. This panic in energy bonds is infecting the broader high yield debt market,...

At some point, a compendium of condemnations against the Obama administration’s record of media transparency (actually, opacity) must be assembled. Notable quotations in this vein come from former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, who said, “It is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering”; New York Times reporter James Risen, who said, “I think Obama hates the press”; and CBS News’s Bob Schieffer, who said, “This administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.” USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page has added a sharper edge to...

Abortion is a “right” is a claim often made by the media – and USA Today is no exception. USA Today’s Editorial Board penned a piece entitled, “Abortion safety as a pretext: Our view” on Oct. 10. In it, the staff called abortion a “right burdened by so many unnecessary obstacles” and detailed how “abortion foes” are “chipping away” at Roe v. Wade’s “guarantee.” From the beginning, the piece claimed, “States have every obligation to ensure that abortions are performed safely.” “But when states use safety as a pretext to put providers out of business,” the staff argued, “they make...

Last week, Breitbart News revealed a secret video game journalist mailing list used by a clique of influential writers, editors, and bloggers, some of whom attempted to bully their colleagues with it in an attempt to shape the news agenda for political purposes. We can today reveal the complete list of journalists, some 150 key industry figures, on the list. Outlets with representation span the entire video games journalism universe and include Polygon, Ars Technica, Wired, Eurogamer, Destructoid, Kotaku, Joystiq, TechRadar, and many other well-known brands in games publishing. But they also include freelancers and staffers for publications as solidly...

Leland Yee should be making national headlines. A Democratic state senator from San Francisco, a statewide candidate until this week, and a rising member of Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein’s Democratic political machine, was arrested on Wednesday by the Justice Department for wire fraud, corruption, and his alleged involvement in illegal gun deal between Chinatown gangsters and Islamist militants. **SNIP** Yet four of the most prominent news outlets in America — CNN, USA Today, Politico and the Chicago Sun-Times — made no mention of the Leland Yee scandal within two days of the story breaking. When Politico finally ran a...

Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin was convicted on 20 of 21 counts of corruption and bribery today. USA Today reporter Rick Jervis did a bit of a profile of Nagin in the course of reporting on the convictions. It included a recounting of the his time at the city's helm during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But one thing it oh-so-predictably did not include was Nagin's Democratic Party affiliation

A few random news items from around the country: •Dinesh D’Souza, a prominent conservative filmmaker, was indicted for allegedly violating federal campaign-finance laws. The indictment was “the result of a routine review by the FBI of campaign filings with the FEC by various candidates after the 2012 election for United States senator in New York,” said a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office. Routine. A Google search for “liberal filmmaker indicted” did not turn up any liberal filmmakers who have been indicted. •James O’Keefe, a conservative maker of provocative films, said the New York State Department of Labor had taken...

A glance at the top of Tuesday’s USA Today reveals an article at top right headlined “Texas abortion limits take hit.” Below, reporter Rick Jervis reported “A federal judge on Monday struck down tough new abortion restrictions in Texas.” But then he said it was “a move that may galvanize abortion-rights activists amid the legal barbed wire unfolding across the nation.” This vivid metaphor — imagining the pro-lifers making America some sort of prison — is not in the online story (with a double byline that adds Michael Winter): A federal judge Monday struck down key abortion restrictions in Texas...

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel found itself a friend in major American newspaper USA Today recently, when a press release about its efforts to have Alicia Keys cancel her upcoming show in Israel appeared almost verbatim in an article on the newspaper’s website. The American Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg first tweeted about the disturbing similarities Thursday, a day after the article appeared. “@USATODAY ran a BDS press release as a story. Here’s the newspaper piece Here’s the release” he wrote.

Children are impressionable, and McDonald’s has managed, in the majority of cases, to make children prefer McDonald’s over all other fast food choices. Some people have decided that McDonald’s marketing is to blame for the fact that kids eat French fries and not fruits and veggies. Or, at least, the claim to believe McDonald’s possesses such awesome powers. And they even pretend that they think children are somehow wise leaders in society. Thus, from MSNBC and Morning Joe:“Nine-year-old Hannah Robertson doesn’t want a Happy Meal. She wants a healthy meal. And she’s not shy about saying it: Hannah took her...

Politico reported earlier today that Washington DC has begun to turn against Barack Obama and his administration. Thanks to Obama’s own arrogance, write Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, he has little good will inside the Beltway anyway, and that leaves him with few passionate defenders in the latest scandal cascade: The town is turning on President Obama — and this is very bad news for this White House.Republicans have waited five years for the moment to put the screws to Obama — and they have one-third of all congressional committees on the case now. Establishment Democrats, never big fans of...

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

The co-author of a book on partisan science recently examined by Pacific Standard argues that our reviewer was a little too partisan himself. Any book that touches upon politics almost automatically angers half of the American public, regardless of what is written inside of it. It takes a special person—an objective, open-minded and self-critical one—to read and learn from a science book that criticizes people with whom the reader likes and agrees with politically.Recently, Pacific Standard published a review (“Red Science, Blue Science,” January/February 2013) by Wray Herbert, a pop psychology writer,of political writer Chris Mooney’s book The Republican Brain...

LINK ONLY PER FR POSTING RULES: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/10/15/swing-states-poll-women-voters-romney-obama/1634791/

USA Today is unveiling its most extensive redesign since its launch 30 years ago, effective with today’s paper. The paper that revolutionized newspapers three decades ago with splashy color photos and info graphics is going to increase color, photos and info graphics even more with the redesign. The website’s redesign will go into effect in beta form over the weekend before going live on Monday.

USA Today came out with a one year forecasted jobs growth graph that has some interesting results. According to the survey, the only states that are forecasted to grow jobs by 2% or more are Right-to-Work states – Wyoming, Utah and Oklahoma (Note: USA Today does not identify states in this way). The majority of states slated to see negative job growth are 7 to 1 Forced Union states, Georgia being the only exception as the sole Right-to-Work state.