Free Republic

Apart from the sheer mass of the Clintons’ earnings, perhaps the most intriguing revelation contained in the release of the Clinton tax data last week was that Bill Clinton received a whopping $15 million advance in 2001 for what would become his autobiography, My Life. As even the New York Times noticed, this was significantly “larger than previously thought” — or, more exactly, than previously reported. For example, an August 7, 2001 article in the Times puts the figure vaguely at “over $10 million.” A Wall Street Journal report from the following day cites a more concrete figure of “close...

f you visited Amazon.com this weekend, hoping to buy a book that happened to have been published by MacMillan, you got a rude surprise. You couldn’t do it. Whether you hoped to buy an e-book for the Kindle, or an old-fashioned physical book, Amazon wouldn’t sell it to you. In a protest against the pricing model that MacMillan and other publishers had negotiated with Apple for the iBookstore, Amazon simply removed the “buy” button from MacMillan’s books. The protest didn’t last very long — just long enough to be noticed and to make the New York Times on the evening...

INVESTORS HAVE BEEN FIXATED on Google the past few weeks, as its shares have tumbled nearly 25% from a peak of $475 -- and the fact is, there could be a lot more tumbling ahead. The share price could well be cut in half over the next year as the Internet giant grapples with growing competition from Microsoft and Yahoo!, increased pricing pressures in its online ad sales and mounting concern about what's known as click fraud. Suffice it to say, there are those who disagree... But the list of challenges the company faces is nothing short of mind-googling. As...