Free Republic

Rarely does one person in the White House have the influence that Valerie Jarrett has had. She holds the job title of senior advisor, but she's more than that. The president has said she's his best friend. She told us she's involved in nearly every decision that's made, including the choice of his chief of staff or who should sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. And that has sometimes caused friction in a White House that prides itself as being no-drama. As the president enters his final months in office, we talked with Valerie Jarrett about her role, the president's...

During a May 14 commencement address to Old Miss graduates, retired news anchor and journalist Tom Brokaw said, “more guns … will mean more homegrown acts of terror.” Tom Brokaw lamented the continuing expansion of gun ownership and the success of gun rights organizations that support that expansion. According to The Commercial Appeal, Brokaw referenced the homicide rate in Democrat-run Memphis, Tennessee, then said: I’m appalled by the determination of organizations and individuals to arm more people without any appreciation of the consequence of evermore lethal weapons in our midst. More guns and more firearm tolerance will mean more homegrown...

Morley Safer, an intrepid storyteller and interviewer whose name became synonymous with the news magazine "60 Minutes," has died. He was 84. Safer was the longest-serving correspondent in "60 Minutes" history. He joined the CBS program in 1970, just two years after it launched, and worked there ever since, contributing 919 reports over the years. He filed his last report in March.

In a slanted hit piece against religious freedom laws for CBS Sunday Morning, correspondent Mark Strassmann proclaimed: "North Carolina's public bathrooms are the new frontier in American civil rights law....Just since the beginning of this year, lawmakers in 34 states have proposed so-called 'bathroom' bills and 'religious freedom' laws that, critics say, target gay, lesbian and transgender people."The reporter argued that the source of such supposed discrimination was signed into law decades earlier: "These state actions descend from a little-known bipartisan bill signed into law by President Clinton back in 1993....The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, prohibited the government...

Full title: 'NCIS' Star Sean Murray on Michael Weatherly's Final Episode and New Beginnings: 'People Are Afraid of Change' It's the end of the road for NCIS' Michael Weatherly. The 47-year-old star bids farewell on Tuesday to the longtime CBS procedural after 13 seasons and more than 300 episodes playing the charming goofball, NCIS Special Agent Tony DiNozzo. Though Weatherly acknowledged that the end was inevitable, jokingly telling ET's Kevin Frazier earlier this month that he "should've left years ago," his co-star and friend Sean Murray remains hopeful for the occasional cameo. "[In] the world of NCIS, characters come and...

It wasn't quite the Red Wedding, but Thursday brought viewers news of more than a dozen prime-time shows being axed to make room for new programs next season. ABC took the sword to seven series (including country music drama "Nashville" and veteran whodunit "Castle") while Fox is sacrificing five freshman shows, including comedies starring aging pretty boys Rob Lowe and John Stamos. Meanwhile, CBS is deleting "CSI: Cyber" after this, its sophomore season, thus laying to rest the "CSI" dynasty that encompassed four series during a 16-year span. The official body count — as well as new programming blood for...

Morley Safer, the longest-serving correspondent in the history of “60 Minutes,” says it is time to retire. Safer, 84, said in a statement, “It’s been a wonderful run, but the time has come to say goodbye to all of my friends at CBS and the dozens of people who kept me on the air.” CBS announced on Wednesday that the network will broadcast a special hour-long look at Safer’s broadcasting career on Sunday night. …

John Dickerson was one of the better moderators we saw during the campaign season. He asked solid questions and follow-up question, didn’t editorialize and kept the trains running on time with multiple candidates to juggle. This space gave him an ‘A’ for the way he handled a Democratic presidential debate back in December. But an interview with Hillary Clinton that was broadcast this morning on CBS’ Face the Nation was not only profoundly disappointing, but even disgraceful… particularly for someone as seasoned as the 47-year-old CBS political director and host. Never have there been so many questions to a presumptive...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said in an interview airing Sunday that GOP front-runner Donald Trump may encourage riots if he does not win the Republican nomination in Cleveland this summer. Asked on CBS' "Face the Nation" if he was concerned about the possibility of violence if he were able to "overthrow" Trump with the delegates in Cleveland, Cruz insisted there wouldn't but said that Trump might try to fan the flames. "No, it won't, although Donald may do everything he can to encourage riots," he said. "You know, overthrow is such a loaded spin word as ... to bring nothing...

Here’s what is most unusual about this week in news coverage of the GOP nomination drama: what’s not the top story of the week. On April 13, ABC’s World News Tonight correspondent Tom Llamas devoted most of that night’s report to chilling death threats against the Colorado state Republican party chairman, angered at how Donald Trump failed to win any delegates at the weekend party convention. Besides that one report, and two minor mentions (one on ABC’s Good Morning America and on Thursday’s CBS Evening News, that’s all the broadcast news attention given to reports of actual death threats in...

After the network spent days attacking both North Carolina and Mississippi for passing religious freedom laws it labeled “discriminatory,” on Thursday, CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King touted “a major corporate backlash” against Mississippi as “executives from GE, Pepsi, Levi Strauss, and other companies sent a letter yesterday to the Governor Phil Bryant condemning the new law...” In the report that followed, correspondent Mark Strassman promoted one small business owner blasting the measure: “In Jackson, Mississippi, Mitchell Moore owns Campbell's bakery. This Republican says the state's religious freedom law is bad for business.” Moore worried: “...we now have a target...

The America we live in, our nation, our people, our society, is not the America most of us were born in at all. The uniquely American forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the football games, the local bars, the movies, the concerts, and the holidays. But the spirit, which most of us never noticed because we made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, has been fundamentally transformed. The transformation has occurred through the slowly creeping separation of not only the government from the people, but the people themselves from their country. It has taken place...

Brian Jones and Gregg Giannotti of the CBS national radio show "The Gio and Jones Show" had an interesting back and forth on the city of Syracuse on Monday morning. "You know the thing I don't like about them?" Giannotti said. "They say, 'We're New York's team. We're New York's team.' No you're not. You're not New York's team. You're Upstate New York's team. You're Central New York's team." "New York City and like Central New York. It's a long way away," he continued. "It's not really this area. People talk differently there. They look differently there. It's sort of...

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has asked a Ted Cruz super PAC to explain why it gave $500,000 to another super PAC supporting one of his Republican rivals. According to financial disclosures from June, Keep the Promise I - one of four separate committees backing Cruz - gave half a million dollars to CARLY for America, the political action committee supporting Carly Fiorina. Super PACs are legally allowed to give money to other super PACs - they are only prohibited from donating directly to any political campaign. But it's unusual for one of these groups to give money to an...

On Saturday, all three broadcast morning news shows talked about the National Enquirer allegations against GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz, allegations for which there is still no on-the-record source or any other supporting evidence. CBS, which took the high road and skipped the tawdry allegations on Friday’s Evening News, this morning offered a 68-second item read by CBS This Morning: Saturday co-anchor Anthony Mason, which cast the matter as a “he said, he said,” between the two candidates. ABC’s Good Morning America offered a full report from weekend political correspondent Devin Dwyer, in which Dwyer unfortunately cast both Cruz and...

On CBS This Morning on Tuesday, correspondent Chip Reid took notes from YouTube to find out what kids thought about the presidential election. Reid asked fifth graders at a Virginia charter school about the mechanics of the election cycle, insinuating that kids were more civil than the GOP candidates had been behaving. The series of questions focused mostly on how "mean" Trump was, but Reid gave the kids opportunities to praise Muslims and expound on “women’s rights.”

Florida voters "fed up" with Trump and Clinton speak out CBS News March 18, 2016, 7:05 AM Voters in the key swing state of Florida are sharing their frustration about their options in the 2016 presidential race. A focus group comprised of Republican and Democratic voters who oppose both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump offered a revealing look at the anger toward the front-runners in both parties. Clinton and Trump share the distinction of being among the least-liked candidates. "I would rather not vote than vote for either one of these candidates," one woman told CBS News contributor and Republican...

On Friday, the NBC, CBS, and ABC morning shows all blasted Thursday’s Republican presidential debate as “vulgar” “silly” and “childish.” The same networks that have routinely provided ample airtime to Donald Trump’s personal attacks on his rivals, lectured the GOP contenders on civility. Co-host Matt Lauer began NBC’s Today: “Vitriol and vulgarity. The Republican race reaches new lows during last night's debate....Is this any way to elect a president?” Minutes later, fellow co-host Savannah Guthrie lamented: “New nastiness, new lows in the Republican presidential race.”Nets Slam ‘Vulgar’ and ‘Childish’ GOP Debate Reaching ‘New Lows’In the report that followed, correspondent Peter...

Nicholas Meyer, who directed "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," in addition to writing the screenplays for "Undiscovered Country" and "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," has joined CBS Television Studios and Bryan Fuller's new "Star Trek" series as a consulting producer and writer, the network announced Friday.

Roger Stone – Republican Political Consultant, Correspondent, The Daily Caller, Editor, StoneZone.com – joined Steve Malzberg on Newsmax TV to discuss Trump and his South Carolina win. Stone said CBS is about to SLIME Donald Trump on mafia tie claims. “The other thing you should be prepared for Steve is a major onslaught by CBS claiming that Donald Trump has ties to the mafia to the mob. Donald Trump has been licensed by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in toughest gaming regulatory law in the country. There’s nothing to this canard. This is the kind of smears that were...