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Democrats outright expect journalists to "be on their side" and feel "horrified" when they're pressed by journalists, a White House reporter says. A "prominent White House reporter" made the remark while speaking anonymously to journalist Julia Ioffe for an article on the dramatic shift in coverage of the Trump and Biden administrations, notably the expectation from the latter of positive framing. "Democrats in general have a much thinner skin," the reporter said. "This is not unique to Trump but Republicans never expect a fair shake, so if you cover them fairly, you can have a good working relationship with them....

Texas' controversial voter identification law will remain in effect, possibly through November's elections, after the Supreme Court on Friday denied an emergency request from a coalition of Latino advocacy groups and Democratic lawmakers who say the measure is discriminatory. The unsigned order from the justices did not explain their reasoning, or whether there was any opposition. While it is a temporary decision, it could affect enforcement of similar laws in other states during a hotly contested presidential election year. A lawsuit challenging the Texas law known as SB 14 is still pending in a federal court, and the immediate issue...

Former President Jimmy Carter says Newt Gingrich knows exactly what he is doing when he uses phrases like "food stamp president" and talks about the poor learning a work ethic. Carter says this rhetoric is "appealing to the wrong element in South Carolina." [snip] "When you emphasize, over and over, welfare, food stamps, and ‘Why don’t the black people get jobs," and if I’m president, I’ll make sure they turn toward a work ethic, rather than an ethic of welfare and food stamps, that’s appealing to the wrong element in South Carolina," the former President said on CNN.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, everybody. Please have a seat, have a seat. It is wonderful to see all of you. I've got a lot of friends in the room here. People who knew me before anybody could pronounce my name. (Laughter.) People who knew me before I had gray hair. (Laughter.) It is wonderful to see those of you who’ve been friends for a long time, and it’s wonderful to see new friends here as well. What I'd like to do is to make some very brief remarks at the top and...

The U.S. raid that killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan Sunday also turned up an "intelligence harvest" of computer-based data, according to media reports. Exactly what was seized by U.S. authorities in the raid has yet to be confirmed -- and may never be confirmed -- but a number of news outlets reported that computer hard drives, CDs, DVDs and USB sticks were taken from the compound where bin Laden had been living. The compound reportedly had no telephone or Internet connection. Footage aired on NBC on Tuesday showed what looked like damaged computers at the compound, while...

John Edwards is denying a report that he’s going to marry longtime mistress Rielle Hunter, a source close to the former North Carolina senator tells POLITICO. "John Edwards says the story is false," the source said on Friday, responding to the National Enquirer’s story that Edwards got engaged to the mother of his lovechild just weeks after the death of his wife, Elizabeth. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47182.html#ixzz1AU8aI06c

A House panel on Tuesday found Representative Charles B. Rangel guilty of 11 counts of ethical violations, ruling that his failure to pay taxes, improper solicitation of fund-raising donations and failure to accurately report his personal income had brought dishonor on the House.

Elizabeth Smart continued testifying about her 2002 kidnapping Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City. Smart began testifying Monday about her ordeal at the hands of Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee. She described how she was taken from her home in the middle of the night, forced to a campsite in the foothills above her home and held captive and raped repeatedly for several weeks.

Jupiter has lost one of its iconic red stripes and scientists are baffled as to why. The largest planet in our solar system is usually dominated by two dark bands in its atmosphere, with one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere. However, the most recent images taken by amateur astronomers have revealed the lower stripe known as the Southern Equatorial Belt has disappeared leaving the southern half of the planet looking unusually bare. The band was present in at the end of last year before Jupiter ducked behind the Sun on its orbit. However, when it...

Despite a last-minute weekend deal that put the Senate on the brink of passing health care reform this week, liberal and moderate Democrats remain on a collision course over the bill, as both sides dug in Sunday for the next phase of negotiations. President Barack Obama’s liberal base and powerful union leaders once hoped the expected House-Senate conference would partly undo a year of retreats and compromises, with Obama weighing in to nudge the moderate Senate bill to the left. But the titanic struggle to lock in Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) as the 60th senator for the first key test...

A woman accused of holding down a child while her husband sexually assaulted the girl — an act captured on video — pleaded guilty in a Travis County courtroom Friday and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Mariana Garcia's punishmentfor two counts of aggravated sexual assault was part of a plea bargain with prosecutors. The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. Charges are pending against Garcia's husband, Adrian Navarro, 30. Garcia, 24, showed little emotion during the proceedings before state District Judge Bob Perkins. At one point, prosecutor Joe Frederick asked her whether Navarro is her...

Religion and religious expression have been objects of censorship in the public schools for quite some time. However, the intolerance of anything related to religion has taken a turn for the absurd in recent years. It makes no difference that the material in question does not proselytize, or that it was presented to people who by and large do not know that it was religious, or even that it is not meant to be religious. What matters is what school officials consider to be religious. A ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Nurre v....

Fifty one rejection letters -- that is the number Irene Vilar received before she finally found someone to publish a tale so extreme it would surely be fiction if it wasn't her personal story: A woman who says she had 15 abortions and describes it as an addiction. The book, Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict -- a graphic and disturbing tale of one woman's abortions and her personal quest to understand her actions -- is bound to provoke a fury when it is released next week. It is no surprise that publishers backed away. Ms. Vilar says the...

Therapeutic? Probably. Deductible? No. So ruled the U.S. Tax Court yesterday in the case of William Halby, a New York tax attorney who claimed that the amounts he spent on, let's call them personal-gratification-related books and materials, and also numerous professional intimate-therapy service providers, were "medical expenses" that he could deduct under Section 213 of the Internal Revenue Code.

The convicted sex offender accused of snatching Jaycee Lee Dugard from a South Lake Tahoe street 18 years ago, then fathering her two children, told a Sacramento television station that "a digusting thing'' took place but that his life has "been straightened out.'' Phillip Garrido told KCRA 3 in a telephone interview that "you are going to be completely impressed'' when more details of what took place are revealed. "It's a disgusting thing that took place with me at the beginning,'' he told the TV station. "But I turned my life completely around and to be able to understand that,...

This spring, the Obama budget eliminated the "abstinence only" requirement favored by the Bush administration for sexual and reproductive education curricula eligible for federal funding. Last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data that showed the more expansive approach to teenagers' health tutoring will come not a moment too soon. According to an analysis of data gathered from 2002 to 2007, one-third of adolescents had not received instruction on birth control before age 18 and, after years of trending downward, birth rates among teens are rising. In 2004, "nearly one-quarter of females aged 15 to 19, and...

As Republicans continue to hammer Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for a 2001 assertion that’s become known as the “wise Latina” remark, her backers are struggling to come up with a single coherent line of defense. In the past few days, supporters confronted with the remark have offered a range of divergent tactics and tones, offering explanations that span from apologetic to defiant to suggesting Sotomayor may have been joking. President Obama himself addressed the bubbling controversy, which is emerging as among the leading GOP lines of attack against Sotomayor, asserting on Friday Sotomayor “would have restated” the comment if...

Reporting from Sacramento -- The "big five" elected leaders -- Schwarzenegger and the legislative chieftains from both houses -- are slated to begin closed-door meetings today upon the governor's return from Washington, where he spent election day after casting a last-minute absentee ballot. On Thursday a small group of Senate and Assembly members will hold the first of what's expected to be a slew of daily public sessions to wrangle over the details of the budget. Schwarzenegger has called for cuts that would hit every corner of the state. He announced plans to lay off 5,000 of the state's 235,000...

Famously, Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the United States banking system during the first seven days of his first term. And what did he do on the eighth day? "I think this would be a good time for beer," he said. Congress had already repealed Prohibition, pending ratification from the states. But the people needed a lift, and legalizing beer would create a million jobs. And lo, booze was back. Two days after the bill passed, Milwaukee brewers hired six hundred people and paid their first $10 million in taxes. Soon the auto industry was tooling up the first $12 million...

A fairly balanced analysis of how Bush will probably be remembered in the future. It is a Bloomberg article so it cannot be directly posted on FreeRepublic. The article is linked on DrudgeReport.