Free Republic

The liberal Columbia Journalism Review may now want to consider retracting its 2019 screed dismissing Big Tech bias against conservatives as a “myth” that “refuses to die.” CJR’s August 2019 propaganda was plastered with a blaring headline: “The myth of social media anti-conservative bias refuses to die.” CJR Chief Digital Writer Mathew Ingram decried how “DESPITE AN ALMOST TOTAL LACK of evidence to support the theory, alt-right groups and mainstream conservatives alike—including the ones that currently occupy the [Trump] White House—continue to promote the idea that Facebook, Twitter and Google are somehow biased against them.” Oops! That statement aged like...

Are there are any other issues confronting our fractious republic that matter if Americans themselves are too scared to walk outside, lest they be mugged by a "bail reform"-freed perp or shot by a gangbanger in a drive-by shooting? As we get ready to close the chapter on this bloody year of 2021, that is the question all policymakers and all public-minded citizens ought to be asking themselves. Fortunately, if there is a silver lining to be found amid the unprecedented urban looting, the horrific anecdotes of children shot while playing outside and the historic overall homicide rates afflicting so...

The Waukesha incident has once again (and again, and again) raised the specter of societal disintegration in the face of the Defund the Police and Criminal Justice Reform movements. While we may admit that bail is set too high in some cases (January 6 defendants!), the outrageous and unthinking application of “cash bail is bad” is a slow-motion bomb going off. Double and triple digit increases in violent crime in Democrat-run cities that employ such policies are creating outrage among the law-abiding. Why should their grandparents and children suffer when such fools run the asylum? The suspect in the Waukesha...

Inappropriately and dangerously low bail recommendations have been a hallmark of the Milwaukee District Attorney’s Office since Democrat John Chisholm was first elected.Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm has launched an investigation into what he called the “inappropriately low” bail set for Darrell Brooks, Jr., the suspect in the deadly Christmas parade attack in nearby Waukesha, Wis. Sunday afternoon.Brooks, who faces five counts of first-degree intentional homicide, was freed after posting $1,000 bail even though he faces serious felony charges in two different open cases in Milwaukee. In the most recent, he allegedly “ran [the victim] over with his vehicle”...

In the 2020 election, the far left failed miserably. At the presidential level, Donald Trump added 11 million votes to his 2016 total. In other races, the GOP had a particularly good Election Day as Republicans gained control of at least a dozen U.S. House seats, a governorship, three state legislative bodies and probably retained control of the U.S. Senate, although the answer will not be known until the outcome of the two Georgia races are decided in January. Some House Democrats were furious with the far-left “Squad” gaining control of the airwaves and promoting such messages as “Defund the...

If caring about black lives means more than a slogan, let’s hope Jon Ponder’s model is replicated nationwide, with support from both sides. Less than 24 hours after Black Lives Matter activists torched Kensoha, Wisconsin, in the name of racial justice, President Donald Trump granted a surprise pardon to Jon Ponder, a black man and convicted bank robber who turned his life around and now devotes his work to helping others do the same. “Jon, we honor your devotion to showing returning citizens that they are not forgotten,” Trump said from the White House. “I will continue to give all...

The partisan divide over Trump confidante Roger Stone’s sentencing for the non-violent, process crimes of witness tampering and obstruction further illustrates just how divided we are as a country. If you’re a Democrat, even someone who might typically be for issues like prison reform and fair sentencing that seeks to rehabilitate rather than simply punish, you probably want to see Stone die in prison. If you’re a Trump-supporting Republican, even a ‘law-and-order’ type who would like to throw away the key on marijuana users, you probably think he’s getting a raw deal. I’m one of those who think Stone got...

MATT DRUDGE, who rose to stardom when he broke the Monica Lewinsky story around the last presidential impeachment, still runs the news aggregation site that bears his name during this one. And he’s still one of the most influential people in the media. The now-52-year-old Drudge and a skeleton staff effectively invented clickbait. They still present lines of juicy, but context-less text, aggregated from around the web, in a typewriter font: “STUDY: Farmers have most sex…” “Interior minister warns of repeat of migrant influx into EU…” “HILLARY 2020? ‘DON’T TEMPT ME’…”

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner swiped back at Joe Biden after the former vice president said it was "improper" for Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump to serve as top White House officials. "He's entitled to his opinion, but a lot of the work that the President's had me doing over the last three years has actually been cleaning up the messes that Vice President Biden left behind," Kushner said in an interview with Israel Channel 13's Barak Ravid released on Tuesday. Kushner specifically pointed to criminal justice reform, which the Trump administration passed. "(It) rolled back a lot...

The liberal uproar that ensued after former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort was sentenced to a ‘mere’ 47 months in federal prison said more about their true nature than any of their shallow virtue signaling ever could. Because as it turns out, when it comes to criminal justice, liberals are far more about vengeance, forced ‘equality,’ sick sadism, and wielding the system as a bludgeon against their political enemies than they are about what is actually good for society.I know. I know. Criminal justice and sentencing reform were issues compassionate liberals and conservatives alike were supposed to be able to...

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump frequently brings up prison reform at his Make America Great Again rallies. The subject is on his short list of favored topics, like the wall at the Mexican border and killing NAFTA. Trump brought up prison reform in his 2018 State of the Union address. On Monday, he thanked the International Chiefs of Police for working with him on the issue. The question is, will Trump embrace reform of federal mandatory minimum sentencing? At times Trump looks as if he is ready to make the plunge. In June, he commuted the sentence of Alice...

Prison reform has normally been an issue embraced by Democrats, not Republicans. But, perhaps, like so many other things in the Trump administration, this, too, is about to change. Last Thursday, President Trump held a roundtable discussion at his Bedminster, New Jersey, property, five governors were in attendance. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 37.8 percent of prison inmates in the U.S. are black, 58.3 percent white, 2.3 percent Native American and 1.6 percent Asian. Yet, blacks are arrested more, charged more, sentenced more harshly and confined to prison longer, even for minor infractions. In Georgia, according to Department...

CNN's Don Lemon Named To 'Worst Journalism Of 2014' List by Wochit Don Lemon has picked up a dubious honor: ranking in a Columbia Journalism Review fellow's list of the "worst journalism" of 2014. The anchor has made headlines throughout the year for controversial moments during his tenure as a CNN newsroom anchor. In a post written by David Uberti, the CJR fellow makes a case for why Lemon deserves to be ranked along with other missteps in journalism over the past year. Uberti wrote, "As one of the most recognizable anchors on CNN, Don Lemon has helped lead the...

Ever since John McCain said at a town hall meeting in Januray that he could see U.S. troops staying in Iraq for a hundred years, the Democrats have been trying to use the quote to paint the Arizona senator as a dangerous warmonger. And lately, Barack Obama in particular has stepped up his attacks on McCain's "100 years" notion. But in doing so, Obama is seriously misleading voters - if not outright lying to them - about exactly what Mccain said. And some in the press are failing to call him on it. Here's McCain's full quote, in context, from...

An article by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post on the Eason Jordan resignation quoted Steve Lovelady "of Columbia Journalism Review" as saying of this event, "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail." This struck me as a grossly unprofessional remark by anyone who claimed to be a journalist. So, I wrote a detailed letter to the Editor of the Review, demanding an apology. Back came a letter this morning from Mr. Lovelady, which makes it clear that neither he nor the Review have a clue about the blogosphere. They do not understand our work, nor do...

HammeredPublished: Sunday, February 6, 2005 8:43 PM EST How blogs are shattering the arrogance of the Columbia Journalism Review ... and why that's good for journalism Laura Vanderkam Joseph Newcomer had never heard of the Columbia Journalism Review, the magazine of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, before friends told him to check out what CJR said about him in the January/February 2005 issue. Newcomer, a Microsoft programming teacher who has studied typesetting for decades, suspected the hubbub was about his recent assertions that CBS's 1972-73 memos on President Bush's National Guard service were fakes. Sure enough, "Blog-Gate," by...

Defining Bias Downward Holding Political Power to Account Is Not Some Liberal Plot Reed Irvine, the energetic liberal-bias hunter who died November 16 at eighty-two, wasn’t always wrong. Irvine founded Accuracy in Media, the conservative press watchdog group, thirty-five years ago. He was stone blind to his own prejudices, and he could be scurrilous and unfair in his attacks, but he knew something about our major media, most of them based in the urban capitals of what we now call blue states and influenced, naturally, by their context. Irvine must have been amazed in the end by all the company...