Free Republic

EMERGENCY MEETING CALLED AT OLD GRAY LADY; NY TIMES NEWSROOM IN CRISIS [DRUDGE OBTAINED THIS INTERNAL E-MAIL TO NY TIMES STAFF] Howell, Gerald and Arthur request that you join your newsroom colleagues at an open forum at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 14, to discuss the Jayson Blair matter and anything else you might have on your mind.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) once told me, “There is a small group of people who believe the same things. They are Republicans. Everybody else is a Democrat.” Lately, the small group has gotten smaller, as the thought police are hunting down heretics belying President Bush’s oft-stated goal of a big-tent party. The hunting season began when then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) was found dangling slowly from a tree in Washington, allegedly for endorsing a political party that had been dead for 40 years but really for failing to summon sufficient enthusiasm for the right-wing social and economic...

Okay, so I got myself these two kitties, see? And they're adorable, see? So set a spell and listen, 'cause I'm telling their tale... Two sisters -- identical brown tigers -- shared a cage at the Center for Animal Care and Control on 110th Street in Manhattan. They were three months old. I would like to say I saved them from certain euthanizing, but they were so adorable, and the other cats available for adoption were mostly mangie things, I can't believe this pair would have stayed a day or two longer had I not decided to keep them. I'm...

Louis Sachar's 1998 novel "Holes," which among other prizes has won a Newbery Medal and a National Book Award, has also, and more important, attracted a fanatical following among children in the middle grades. Since these tend to be the most passionate and also the pickiest members of the reading public, their fierce regard for Mr. Sachar's book should not be taken lightly. Any adult who has read "Holes" — and I suspect there are quite a few, not all of them the parents or teachers of sixth graders — will immediately see the sources of its appeal. There is...

When I think of the current war in Iraq, I get a big smile on my face, and my tummy bubbles over with laughter. Why would a war make me happy? Because, in the long run, this war is giving the world a better chance at being freer, safer, and more just. Note I do NOT say the war will guarantee these results, only that it will dramatically increase the chances. If I were a betting man, I'd bet on these results. I am a fan of George W. Bush, I have admired his patience and persistence in dealing with...

Joseph Stalin became the most important figure in the political direction of one-third of the people of the world. He was one of a group of hard revolutionaries that established the first important Marxist state and, as its dictator, he carried forward its socialization and industrialization with vigor and ruthlessness. During the second World War, Stalin personally led his country's vast armed forces to victory. When Germany was defeated, he pushed his country's frontiers to their greatest extent and fostered the creation of a buffer belt of Marxist-oriented satellite states from Korea across Eurasia to the Baltic Sea. Probably no...

HEWITT — Seven people died about 10 a.m. Friday on Interstate 35 in Hewitt when a bus carrying a group from Memorial Baptist Church in Temple swerved into oncoming traffic and smashed into a sport utility vehicle. Five people on the bus and two in the SUV died, said Tom Vinger of the Texas Department of Public Safety. The chartered bus was taking 34 people to a matinee concert by gospel singer Bill Gaither at Reunion Arena in Dallas. The names of the five bus passengers who died, released by a DPS officer at a press conference at the church,...

Sometimes I find the wackiest sites when browsing the World Wide Web. This morning I came across the site TrueCatholic.org, which claims, among other things, that the true Catholic Church [or tCC, its preferred abbreviation] has left the Vatican years ago, and that there hasn't been a real pope for the last forty years. Until Pope XIII that is, a.k.a. Lucian Pulvermacher [no relation to Lucianne Goldberg]. I'll leave the rest to your imagination, or, if you're really interested, visit the site and have a good laugh.

My daughter was out getting her ears pierced before enrolling in the Navy -- we weren't sure of the age cut-off, or what the risk of infection would be, but that doesn't matter because this is a vanity -- and afterwards we got mighty hungry. I took her out to breakfast, and we had bagels. I had cream cheese on mine, she had jelly. She made fun of me, and I told her she didn't know how to eat a bagel. It made us both so mad we could've stomped our feet. To settle this feud, we thought we should...

A photo so tragic it defies description...

Last night, my brother and his wife told me to look up Ecclesiastes 10:2 in the Bible. They didn't say why. The verse turned out to be a political "blessing" and I'm sure you'll all enjoy it. So start flipping through your Bibles, Freepers, and prepare your hearts for The Truth. If you don't have a Bible, click on the link to find the verse, then go out and buy a Bible today.

Dear Diary: While shopping in a department store one evening recently, I noticed two unattended young children — a boy and a girl, about 5 and 7 — hanging around the sales desk. Out of kindness, boredom or to keep the kids out of trouble, the sales associate engaged them in a conversation about all of the pretty things for sale. At this the boy belted out, "I want a bra!" "Boys don't wear bras," the sales associate said. "My uncle does!" came the very loud reply. Robin Corey

Thomas Golisano, the billionaire third party challenger in the governor’s race, wants to eliminate one of New York State’s most familiar institutions: the toll booth. Mr. Golisano, who is running for governor on the Independence Party line, said New York should consider removing tolls on its roads, bridges and tunnels. “By taking away toll booths,” Mr. Golisano told The New York Sun, “we would save a tremendous amount of taxpayer’s dollars by not having the infrastructure to collect all these tolls, and plus we could make people’s lives much more pleasant.” Mr. Golisano’s position at the intersection of tax-cutting and...

Not since the communist Diego Rivera painted his mural for Rockefeller Center has there been such a ruckus about a piece of art in Midtown. The contretemps has erupted over Eric Fischl’s “Tumbling Woman,” which he sculpted during the weeks when he kept thinking of the image of bodies falling from the World Trade Center. “I didn’t see it,” he told our Rachel Donadio last week, “but it was the most complicated, infinitely complicated resonant image.” He captured it in the form of a woman in free fall, her legs in the air, her head and neck pulling her downward...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 — The United States intelligence community was told in 1998 that Arab terrorists were planning to fly a bomb-laden plane into the World Trade Center, but the F.B.I. and the Federal Aviation Administration did not take the threat seriously, a Congressional investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks has found. That August 1998 intelligence report from the Central Intelligence Agency was just one of several warnings the United States received, but did not seriously analyze, in the years leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks that were detailed today at a Congressional hearing. The existence of the 1998...

TEL AVIV - Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems said on Wednesday it won a $5 million deal to build a "smart" electronic fence around part of Jerusalem. The system, already in use on Israel's northern border with Lebanon and its border with the Gaza Strip, will detect any attempts to cross into the city during day or night and in all weather conditions. The fence is part of the government's efforts to stop suicide bombers entering Jerusalem with a 50-km (30-mile) fence and other physical barriers on the city's borders with the West Bank. At least 80 people in Jerusalem...

WASHINGTON (AP) - More than 200,000 units of blood had to be thrown away in the weeks after Sept. 11, congressional auditors reported Tuesday, as donations from a shaken public far outstripped the needs of victims. The number of wasted pints was five times what typically expires before it can be used, the General Accounting Office told a House subcommittee. The GAO assessment is far higher than previous estimates and significantly greater than what blood banks acknowledge. "Far more blood was collected immediately after Sept. 11 than was needed by survivors or that ultimately could be absorbed by the nation's...

No story yet; will post when the NYTimes does.

It was a rainy Saturday afternoon and I was cleaning the moisture off my glasses as the doors of the uptown No. 1 train opened at 23rd Street. A white-haired man barreled in, talking fairly loudly into a cellphone. I thought nothing of it for about two seconds until I realized we were underground, and he was talking into a cellphone. I took another look and saw that what he held to his ear wasn't a cellphone, but a banana. He was telling the person on the other end of the banana that he was going to marry that person's...

In a bow to the State Department, Mayor Bloomberg’s office has denied Taiwan, a democratic nation that lost nine people in last year’s attacks on the World Trade Center, an invitation to participate in Wednesday’s memorial service for September 11 victims. By shunning Taiwan, Mr. Bloomberg is hewing to the State Department’s one-China policy that says the Communist government in Beijing is the only one with which America maintains diplomatic relations. But he risks offending Taiwanese New Yorkers. The move also raises questions about the ideals that will be expressed at the memorial service. Many have spoken of the...