Free Republic

Tom Cruise has returned his three Golden Globes statues amid the ongoing controversy surrounding the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Cruise won the best actor honor in 1990 for Born on the Fourth of July and in 1997 for Jerry Maguire, as well as a best supporting actor award in 2000 for Magnolia. Earlier today, NBC announced that it would not be airing the 2022 iteration of the Golden Globes. Said the network in a statement: “We continue to believe that the HFPA is committed to meaningful reform. However, change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly...

Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Monday showed its commitment to transparency and positive relations with the press by denying access to designated pool reporter David Martosko of the Daily Mail: The Clinton campaign’s decision to ban media access and force a reporter to pee in the woods simply because he works for a foreign newspaper is deeply problematic and reveals a disgusting nativism that has no place in American politics today. The campaign denied this, naturally, but appears to have given contradictory, gibberish explanations to Martosko, who told the Washington Post: [Clinton spokesman Nick] Merrill then insisted that the decision...

In my last column I assessed the Republican governors and former governors who may run for president in 2016. Now I turn to the legislators and the rest of the field. Other prospective Republican presidential candidates for 2016 include four young national legislators who will dominate the party in the first quarter of the 21st century. Two of the national legislators, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, have a surprising amount in common: Both have Cuban backgrounds, both arose from the tea party boom of 2009 and ’10, and both represent powerful states in the Electoral...

Immediately after the murder of Chris Stevens, America's Ambassador to Libya,I suggested that the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11 could have profound consequences for President Barack Obama,particulary if he failed to take appropriate action against the murderers–the most likely candidates being members of al-Qaeda's new terror franchise in Mali. But with the US presidential contest entering its critical final phase, the Obama administration deftly avoided getting into any controversy over the murder of Mr Stevens and three other members of the consulate staff by leading everyone to believe the murders were not part of an...

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Viewing the United States through the eyes of a foreign national is one thing. And viewing the United States through the eyes of foreign media professionals is another thing. So as we close-out 2008, and begin a new year with the soon-to-be President Obama, the view from the “foreign news desk” may shed some light on some of the ways in which the world misunderstands both our country, and our President-elect. I don’t have any “McCain scandal” to tell. No tabloid-style inside scoop about John McCain and Sarah Palin squabbling behind the scenes on election night, or Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s...

According to Christoph von Marschall, who is the Washington bureau chief of Der Tagesspiegel, a German daily newspaper, Barack Obama has been snubbing the Foreign Press. Phone calls and emails ignored, and von Marschall says, "We Don't Matter". In the Washington Post today, von Marschall writes a piece which wonders if Obama's avoidance and refusal to answer questions from foreign journalists stems from a certain wariness about the risk of speaking to foreign media and how it can resonate back in America, and he uses the examples of Obama's adviser Austan Goolsbee and his former aide Samantha Power, both of...

Barack Obama is on his way to Europe, where an adoring public awaits. But I wonder if the reception would be quite so enthusiastic if Obama's fans across the Atlantic knew a dirty little secret of his remarkable presidential campaign: Although Obama portrays himself as the best candidate to engage the rest of the world and restore America's image abroad, and many Americans support him for that reason, so far he has almost completely refused to answer questions from foreign journalists. ~snip~ Perhaps Obama considers members of the foreign media a risk rather than an opportunity. His campaign learned the...

BRUSSELS -- A mixture of dismay, despair -- and in one case an unflattering assessment of the IQ of Americans who voted for President Bush -- dominated European newspapers yesterday. "How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?" asked British Daily Mirror in a front-page banner headline that described the election result as a "disaster" and lamented "war more years." "March of the Moral Majority," bellowed the headline on the Daily Mail. The Independent let its pictures do the talking, with the top of Page One featuring images of Iraqis being tortured at the Abu Ghraib prison, hooded suspects on their...

History has shown that appeasement doesn't work, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers said here today. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke at the Foreign Press Center and gave his assessment of the coalition in Iraq a year after the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. "The mission was to liberate the Iraqi people from one of the world's most brutal and dangerous dictators, and to begin laying the foundation for a free and prosperous Iraq," Myers said. "We have done that." The chairman said that if history has shown anything, it is that appeasement just hasn't worked....

The Afghan Government has warned against any cover-up in the investigation into a US airstrike which killed nearly 50 people at a wedding party at the start of July. The warning came amid reports that a preliminary United Nations investigation into the bombing had found that US officials removed vital evidence from the site after the incident. The UN probe is said to have found that US troops cleaned the area - removing shrapnel, bullets and traces of blood. According to The Times newspaper, the UN report says there was no corroboration of the US claim that the aircraft that...