Free Republic

It is obvious to me that reporter Eli Saslow came to our city with an agenda -- to show that only unenlightened racists who believe wild and untrue stories about Sen. Barack Obama could possibly be against the candidate. Mr. Saslow chose an older portion of town with older residents and then ascribed their supposed views to our entire city.

Last fall, Barack Obama explained why he hadn't been wearing an American flag pin on his lapel. "I won't wear that pin on my chest," the presumptive Democratic nominee said. "Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism." What a difference a presidential campaign makes. Obama, who suggested back then that the flag pin "became a substitute for I think true patriotism" after the Sept. 11 attacks, now regularly sports the patriotic symbol at campaign events. He even briefly employed...

LONDON. A third of the Coptic sculptures at the Brooklyn Museum of Art are modern fakes. Its collection of late Egyptian sculpture was, until now, the second largest in North America. Brooklyn curator Dr Edna Russmann, who is concluding a study of the works, warns that other museums which acquired Coptic sculptures in the past 50 years are likely to face similar problems. The unmasking of the forgeries will be revealed in an exhibition on “Coptic Sculpture in the Brooklyn Museum”, opening on 13 February 2009. The Art Newspaper can reveal that ten of Brooklyn’s 30 sculptures are now deemed...

The Justice Department on Friday agreed to pay more than $5.8 million to Steven Hatfill, the former government scientist once branded by the Justice Department a person of interest in the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001. The legal settlement to Hatfill, in cash and an annual payments, signals the end of a civil lawsuit Hatfill brought against the Justice Department and FBI, accusing them of violating his privacy rights by improperly leaking sensitive information about the anthrax investigation to reporters. "I think it's a gratifying end to a very sad chapter in [Hatfill's] life and that of the FBI and...

What happens when the "fact-checkers" don't check facts and the "watchdogs" don't watch? Consider the case of those who claim to be watching politicians for lies and deceptions and pretend to analyze Senator Barack Obama's new patriotic "Country I Love" television ad, airing in 18 states. The Annenberg Political Fact Check, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz have written analyses of the Obama ad. But they are as flawed as the ad itself.

Uncontacted" Amazon Tribe Actually Known for DecadesKelly Hearn for National Geographic NewsJune 19, 2008 Recent photos of an uncontacted tribe firing arrows at a plane briefly made these Amazon Indians the world's least understood media darlings. Contrary to many news stories, the isolated group has actually been monitored from a distance for decades, past and current Brazilian government officials say. No one, however, is known to have had a face-to-face meeting with the nomadic tribe, which lives along the Peru-Brazil border. And no one knows how much, if anything, these rain forest people know about the outside world. The tribe—whose...

In a dramatic report, the New York Times has uncovered a conspiracy by the United States military to conscript children. Posing as male nannies, bow-tie wearing Republicans wisk away infants as their single mothers fulfill their dreams in exciting careers away from the drudgery of traditional home-based chores. They then force these babies into combat zones and cover up their misdeeds with the complicity of the right-wing hate media. This conspiracy came to light in today's Times. Buried deep inside a front page story detailing how George W. Bush has personally foreclosed on millions of American homeowners in order to...

"A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There's a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year. If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it's not surprising that would happen." --Barack Obama, Palm Beach fundraiser, May 22, 2008. The presumptive Democratic nominee for president needs to be more careful in his use of statistics. If he is going to blame Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh for "ginning up" hate crimes against Hispanics, he needs solid data to back up his allegation. The hate crimes statistics that he...

What is it with photographers these days? Are they really all terrorists, or does everyone just think they are? Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We've been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required. Except that it's nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph...

SUBOTICA -- A Bosniak man in northern Serbia is under arrest for staging and then reporting incidents made to look like hate crime. Serbian police (MUP) in Subotica say they yesterday detained Samir K., 35, on suspicion that he threw a Molotov cocktail at his own house, in addition to spraying nationalist graffiti, and then reported this. The suspect was further found in illegal possession of firearms and explosives, and will be charged with causing ethnic, racial and religious hatred and intolerance, as well as with attempted murder in an unrelated incident. His claims started to unravel when the suspect...

Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) has been a fairly undistinguished member of the House of Representatives for nearly a quarter of a century. He is a career member of the Financial Services Committee who has made little or no name for himself since his first electoral victory, and has maintained incumbency through the funneling of pork back to his district. Even his Wikipedia entry says that Kanjorski "usually plays behind-the-scenes roles in the advocacy or defeat of legislation and steers appropriations money toward improving the infrastructure and economic needs of his district." “But [in] the temptation to want to win back...

AL DURA UPDATE: "Israel Radio's Paris correspondent Gil Michaeli has just reported that the French Court of Appeals has overturned the libel judgment against Phillipe Karsenty and has determined that Karsenty did not libel France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin when he reported that the 'death' of 12-year old Mohamed Al-Dura at Netzarim in the Gaza Strip in September 2000 may have been staged, and that it was unlikely that the death was caused by IDF soldiers." Perhaps the Israeli military should start filing foreign libel suits against media outfits that collaborate in fake reporting. There's likely enough to keep quite...

A Hardball epic . . . Message to Chris Matthews: when ripping a guest for his lack of historical knowledge, try to avoid making a history mistake of your own in the same segment. It happened on this afternoon's Hardball. After lambasting a guest for not knowing his Neville Chamberlain history, Matthews surmised that the attack on the USS Cole in October, 2000 happened under . . . President Bush. View video here.

MoveOn.org sponsored a contest for the best 30-second pro-Barack Obama TV commercial. The winner, according to the Associated Press's article, "MoveOn ad features pro-Obama Republican," was an ad starring Air Force veteran John Weiler. The spot includes Mr. Weiler, whose military service is to be commended, saying "I've been a Republican since before I could actually vote." Not only that: "I'm a lifelong Republican and I'm voting for Barack Obama." I don't know if Mr. Weiler is a lifelong Republican as he claims. I do know that if the Associated Press is accurate in its reporting, he must have been...

The story is about climate change, and when I saw the accompanying photo of a fish lying at the bottom of a dried lake, I immediately screamed fake. Take a look, there's no way the buzzards or other predators wouldn't have picked it clean in the time it took for the lake to evaporate.

Radio talker Randi Rhodes, who last week was suspended from Air America for obscene language at a public appearance, has switched to Nova M Radio, a competing syndicator. Clear Channel Denver announced Thursday that Rhodes will be reinstated in her afternoon timeslot (1-4 p.m.) on KKZN 760 AM, under a new contract with syndicator Nova M Radio, effective Monday. Nova M Radio, another progressive radio outfit, was founded by some of the originators of Air America. Celebrity voices will fill in for Rhodes until a replacement is named. According to Kris Olinger, who manages Denver's Air America affiliate, Rosie O'Donnell,...

Watching the Democrat Presidential candidates swing through the state of Pennsylvania, it's as if the state all of the sudden had an epidemic of "lifelong Republicans", going through a change of heart and switching over to the Democrats. Not to take part in their primaries, but due to ideological reasons. Obama seemed to be the major, perhaps the only, beneficiary of all these former "lifelong Republicans", now Democrat voters. It seems that we are dealt this left wing propaganda every election, every primary year. Hordes of "lifelong Republicans" who tell us that they are now Democrats. In reality, the vast...

AP Shuts Down Blogger With Threats of Legal Action Well, here is what might be a landmark case for the blogosphere, for the Internet, and for the future of our new media, citizen journalism. The AP has just sent a cease and desist letter to Brian C. Ledbetter telling him to stop using their copyrighted images on his website, snappedshot.com. Snappedshot.com is a site predicated on criticism of photo-journalism. In pursuit of his criticism, Mr. Ledbetter uses photos from across the web that he thinks are doctored or misleading in some way. He then reports his opinion on the bias...

Editor quits, paper apologizes over doctored photo Updated: 2008-02-19 07:56 A newspaper apologized Monday and its chief editor resigned over a fake picture scandal, in which a photographer manipulated images to show Tibetan antelopes roaming under a bridge on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. Photographer Liu Weiqiang's fake shot that appears to show Tibetan antelopes crossing near a bridge on the Qinghai-Tibet railway as a train passes. [china.com] The Daqing Evening News, based in the oil city of Daqing, Heilongjiang province, said in a statement on its website: "We sincerely apologize to Chinese Central Television (CCTV), Xinhuanet and other media that published...

Riots inspired by the Newsweek report have broken out elsewhere in the region. But at least 17 people have died in Afghanistan, where the worst violence erupted in the town of Ghazni, south of Kabul.The magazine said that notes from Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemenis held at Guantánamo, blamed a guard stomping on a Koran for an incident in August 2003 when 23 detainees tried to kill themselves. One of the 13 told Mr. Falkoff, according to his notes, that another detainee had attempted suicide "after the guard took his Koran and threw it in the toilet." A...

(IsraelNN.com) Hamas leaders spoke to the Arabic language Ash-Sharq il-Awsat newspaper recently and explained that as Muslims, they are allowed to lie. In an interview printed on Thursday, senior Hamas terrorists explained, “A Muslim is permitted to say things that oppose his beliefs in order to prevent damages or to be saved from death.” This approach, known in Arabic as “taqiyya,” was behind several Hamas leaders’ recent public expression of support for Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, they explained. Senior Hamas terrorists in Samaria, who were recently released from jail, publicly expressed disapproval with the Hamas takeover of Gaza and...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) poses as a civil rights group, defending the rights of Muslims in America. But it was founded by Hamas as a front for Hamas's terrorist activities. Ghassan Elashi, who was the head of CAIR's Texas chapter, and another CAIR founder, Omar Ahmad, attended a key meeting in Philadelphia in 1993. An FBI memo characterizes this meeting as a planning session for Hamas, Holy Land Foundation, and Islamic Association of Palestine. Out of this meeting CAIR was born. In December 2004, a federal judge in Chicago ruled the Islamic Association of Palestine (along with the...

The Dixie Chicks are partners in name only - the multi-platinum- selling trio is all but broken up, according to a source close to the group.Natalie Maines and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison made just a handful of appearances together in 2007 - and now they rarely even talk, the source reveals. "The girls have gone their separate ways," the source close to the Texas-raised country musicians told The ENQUIRER. "They were not getting along when they toured together during 2006, but they managed to stay civil. Now when they're not forced to be together, the girls don't even...

After a two-year investigation into the killings of up to 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, the Marine Corps has decided that none of the Marines involved in the incident will be charged with murder. Instead, two enlisted Marines and two Marine officers will face trial in coming months for the killings and for failing to investigate them. The most serious charges have been leveled against Marine Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, who is scheduled to be arraigned on charges of voluntary manslaughter in California next week, the last step before the case officially moves to trial. Initially called a massacre...

GARLAND, Texas (Dec. 29) - A 6-year-old girl who won four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert with an essay falsely claiming her father died in Iraq isn't going to the show after all. The contest's sponsor, a store chain named Club Libby Lu, withdrew the prize Saturday and awarded it to another contestant. It didn't identify the new winner. "With this decision, we hope to revive the intended spirit of the contest, which was designed to make a little girl's holidays extra special," Club Libby Lu chief executive Mary Drolet said in a statement Saturday. Officials of the Chicago-based...

The winning quotes in the MRC's "Best Notable Quotables of 2007: The Twentieth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting." As noted in previous CyberAlerts, the awards issue was posted, with videos, on Monday, December 17, but following tradition, today, Friday and Monday -- the last weekdays of the year -- CyberAlert will run the winning quotes followed on succeeding days by the runners-up. The Media Research Center's annual awards issue provides a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 2007 (December 2006 through November 2007). To determine this year's winners, a panel of 53 radio...

Media watchdog website Honest Reporting has awarded their annual Dishonest Reporter Awards. Some of these stories you know and some you don't--probably because they were ignored by the media. Some were even covered here at NewsBusters. The "winners" included Christiane Amanpour for “God's Warriors,” the BBC for covering up an internal investigation into its Mid East reporting, US government funded Al-Hurra TV's former 'director Larry Register for dhimmitude, a UNC Daily Tar Heel article about breaking up with a boyfriend because of Israel and of course Charles Enderlin and the Mohammad Al Dura Fautography that launched the Second Intifida. See...

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who had a hand in The Associated Press’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize for photography before being jailed without charges by the United States military, finally had a day in court last week. But his story, which highlights the unprecedented role that Iraqis are playing in news coverage of the war, is really just beginning. snip A spokesman for the military said that Mr. Hussein had been detained as “an imperative security threat” and that he has persistently been “treated fairly, humanely and in accordance with all applicable law.” In a lengthy e-mail message, the spokesman said...

The Other Fallujah Reporter Posted By Michael J. Totten On December 16, 2007 @ 2:17 pm “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” — Thomas JeffersonI just returned home from a trip to Fallujah, where I was the only reporter embedded with the United States military. There was, however, an unembedded reporter in the city at the same time. Normally it would be useful to compare what I saw and heard while traveling and working with the Marines with what a colleague saw and heard while working solo....

For months, our magazine has been subject to accusations that stories we published by an American soldier then serving in Iraq were fabricated. When these accusations first arose, we promised our readers a full account of our investigation. We spent the last four-and-a-half months re-reporting his stories. These are our findings. ::very big snip:: In retrospect, we never should have put Beauchamp in this situation. He was a young soldier in a war zone, an untried writer without journalistic training. We published his accounts of sensitive events while granting him the shield of anonymity--which, in the wrong hands, can become...

'Dead' Iraqis Show at Press Conference Smiling, Waving By Jim Hoft | November 30, 2007 - 10:07 ET How Embarrassing!Picture this...You report to the international news agencies that 11 of your family members in Iraq have been slaughtered! You hold several press conferences and gain great sympathy.(AFP)You become an overnight sensation with the antiwar media.You've never had so much sympathy and attention in all your life. You even get a state funeral in Jordan where you make a living as a Baathist anti-Iraq War journalist.(Awad Awad, Deseret)You get photos taken of you and your official government guest sobbing in grief....

NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. military's plan to seek a criminal case against an Associated Press photographer in Iraq without disclosing the charges or evidence against him makes a mockery of American democratic principles, AP President and CEO Tom Curley said Saturday. "This is a poor example—and not the first of its kind—of the way our government honors the democratic principles and values it says it wants to share with the Iraqi people," Curley said in a column in The Washington Post. The U.S. military notified the AP last weekend that it intended to submit a complaint against Bilal...

BAGHDAD — Coalition forces detained (24) suspects Sunday during operations targeting al-Qaida networks in central and northern Iraq. Coalition forces captured a wanted individual during operations north of Samarra. The wanted individual is believed to be involved in al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) media networks and was involved in attacks against Coalition forces. In addition to the wanted individual, Coalition forces detained three suspects without incident. During other operations in Samarra, Coalition force detained (11) suspects during operations targeting al-Qaida’s courier and media networks, as well as weapons facilitators and associates of senior terrorist leaders. During operations in Baghdad, Coalition forces...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US military has filed a formal complaint with an Iraqi criminal court accusing a detained, award-winning Associated Press photographer of being a "terrorist media operative," the Pentagon said Monday. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said the military made the complaint about Bilal Hussein, who has been held for more than 19 months without charges in US military custody, to Iraq's Central Criminal Court. "We believe Bilal Hussein was a terrorist media operative who infiltrated the AP," he said. "MNF-I possesses convincing and irrefutable evidence that Bilal Hussein is a threat to security and stability as...

NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. military plans to seek a criminal case in an Iraqi court against an award-winning Associated Press photographer but is refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented. An AP attorney on Monday strongly protested the decision, calling the U.S. military plans a "sham of due process." The journalist, Bilal Hussein, has already been imprisoned without charges for more than 19 months. A public affairs officer notified the AP on Sunday that the military intends to submit a written complaint against Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as...

CNN Pre-Plann(T)ed & Censored Every Question & Questioner at Dem Debate(?)! [NOTE: I've tried to compile what I think is the most informative postings on this.] CNN's Las Vegas Post Debate Analysis-- A Clinton Reunion It's hard to have a bad debate performance when: ** The audience is planted in your favor** The questions are planted in your favor** The questioners are your supporters** The after debate spin room includes 2 former and 1 current staff members The post debate was as Clinton-friendly as the actual debate.The CNN debate may have been pre-planned and censored every step of the way, but...

CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux, while moderating the second half of the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas on Thursday night, added her own "two cents" to a question she fielded from an "undecided voter." After the voter asked the nominees what qualifications a Supreme Court nominee should possess, Malveaux directed the question to Senator Christopher Dodd, and added whether or not he would "require nominees to support abortion rights." LaShannon Spencer, who was identified as a member of the First African Methodist Church, asked the question near the top of the 10 pm Eastern hour. She highlighted how health care and...

Facts Don’t Matter! - A stunning revelation stated almost in emphatic unison from three of the most respected and read political weblog posters presenting at Blogworld & New Media Expo. This bold announcement came out at a lightly-attended conference module held as part of the “Political Track” at Blogworld last week. The module held Friday, November 9, 2007, in a Las Vegas Convention Center conference room was entitled “Right vs Left: Who’s Winning The Battle Of The Blogosphere?” It featured a discussion panel of six political commentators (three from the conservative viewpoint and three from the liberal, uh, progressive viewpoint)....

In an era of thinly veiled media bias, it's probably fitting that as positive reports pour out of Iraq on an almost daily basis, the situation there has virtually disappeared from the radar screens of mainstream news outlets. For the first time in months -- in fact, since the U.S. troop surge was put in place in June -- coverage of U.S. policy in Iraq does not rank among the top 10 news stories as tracked by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The percentage of news stories devoted to events in Iraq, moreover, has shrunk to 3%, the lowest...

The story of General Petraeus getting accidentally shot in the chest is a case in point. One of his own soldiers had pulled the trigger. Normally, something very bad would have happened to that soldier and his commander. Instead Petraeus sent that soldier to Ranger School, and his Captain (Fred Johnson) was promoted early. In June, I witnessed LTC Fred Johnson helping to restore security and rebuild Baqubah. Fred Johnson is a believer in second chances. Some months ago, a soldier in Baghdad wrote a piece on the way war can degrade the morals and affect the judgment of combat...

SHOCK DOCS: THE NEW REPUBLIC 'SHOCK TROOPS' STORY COLLAPSES WED Oct 24 2007 12:29:44 ET The DRUDGE REPORT has optained internal documents from the investigation of THE NEW REPUBLIC'S "Baghdad Diarist", Scott Thomas Beauchamp, an Army private turned war correspondent who reported tales of military malfeasance from the Iraq War front. The documents appear to expose that once the veracity of Beauchamp's diaries were called into question, and an Army investigation ensued, THE NEW REPUBLIC has failed to publicly account for publishing slanderous falsehoods about the U.S. military in a time of war. Document 1: Beauchamp Refuses to Stand by...

With one move, the Senate majority leader embarrassed himself, his party and his cause. Game, set and match to Rush Limbaugh, a result that ought to alarm any Democrat who assumes that the party can't botch the 2008 election. Mr. Limbaugh, who on his Palm Beach-based radio show regularly slams anyone whom he believes to be unpatriotic - that would be anyone who disagrees with him that the Iraq War was justified and is going splendidly - recently called U.S. active-duty personnel who oppose the war "phony soldiers." Whether he meant all such critics or just one is a tedious,...

Monday night, KDFW-Channel 4 ran a piece about 70-year-old James Walton, owner of Able Walton Machine & Welding in West Dallas, who, early Sunday morning, shot and killed and man trying to break into his business. What made Walton's story so extraordinary was that it was the second time he'd killed an intruder in three weeks. As it happens, Walton also lives at his place of business. But today you will not find the Fox4 story on the station's Web site; there's a page for it, but no accompanying video. (Update: It's available here.) That's because Rebecca Aguilar's piece elicited...

By DAVID B. CARUSO | Associated Press Writer 5:36 PM EDT, October 16, 2007 NEW YORK - An Air America radio personality apologized Tuesday for saying that a colleague, the liberal talk show host Randi Rhodes, had been the victim of a violent street mugging perpetrated by "the right wing hate machine." Air America's Jon Elliott announced on his late-night show Monday that Rhodes had been assaulted Sunday while walking her dog in Manhattan near her Park Avenue apartment. He also speculated that the attack was the work of someone trying to silence a liberal voice. Elliott's account of the...

Air America Host Randi Rhodes Mugged By Rogers Cadenhead Watching the Watchers Air America Radio host Randi Rhodes was mugged near her Manhattan apartment Sunday night, losing several teeth in a brutal attack that has knocked her off the air while she recuperates, fellow host Jon Elliott announced on his show early Tuesday morning. "It is with sadness that tonight I inform you that my Air America colleague Randi Rhodes was assaulted last night while walking her dog near her New York City home," Elliott told his listeners this morning on Air America. The attack took place near the corner...

Air America radio host Randi Rhodes is temporarily off the air, but claims she was brutally attacked near her Manhattan apartment are bogus, her lawyer and a police source said today. Fellow host Jon Elliott claimed on the liberal radio network that Rhodes had been mugged while walking her dog, Simon, on Sunday night. Elliot, who said Rhodes lost several teeth in the attack, waxed about a possible conspiracy. "Is this an attempt by the right-wing, hate machine to silence one of our own?" he asked on the air, according to Talking Radio, a blog. "Are we threatening them? Are...

Philadelphia, Oct 15, 2007 / 02:43 pm (CNA).- While gaffes by the secular press covering religion are somewhat common and often humorous, they usually aren’t as bad as the Associated Press’ latest error. On Friday, AP reporter Nicole Winfield incorrectly wrote that Pope Benedict XVI supports therapeutic cloning. The article accurately states that Pope Benedict XVI has asked the South Koreans not to resume embryonic stem cell research, now that the scandal caused by Hwang Woo-suk is receding from their collective memory. Hwang claimed to have cloned human embryos and was lauded as a national hero until his work was...

A Utah teenager has admitted creating a fake Asa Coon Web page on the social networking site Myspace.com. Posing as the gunman in Wednesday's shooting at Success Tech Academy in Cleveland, the 19-year-old creator of the fake Web site said in an email exchange with the Plain Dealer: "I don't generally give out personal information ... I, like many others (search for any famous person) make fake profiles on MySpace for the sole purpose of giving people a place to vent their thoughts and feelings." Several national television news organizations and Web sites have quoted from Coon's page as real....

TuesdayÂ’s Metro section of The Washington Post covered a controversy at D.C.Â’s George Washington University, where posted appeared on campus blaring "HATE MUSLIMS? SO DO WE!!" Post reporter Susan Kinzie mentioned that the GWU chapter of the conservative Young AmericaÂ’s Foundation denied the posters were theirs, and Kinzie noted that it was probably a prank, since the fine print at the bottom had the words "'Brought to you by Students for Conservativo-Fascism Awareness' -- and a postscript recommending a BBC video on the politics of fear." But while WednesdayÂ’s article in Metro confirmed that it was a prank "produced by...