Free Republic

I will be in the courtroom for the duration of the political prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse. Since the trial is streaming on millions of devices around the world, I won’t bore my readers with the same reporting that will be done by countless news agencies. The Kenosha News is putting out articles from the associated press even though they have a full-time assigned seat inside the courtroom. Maybe for once the Kenosha News editor doesn’t want Deneen Smith’s extreme left slant on the coverage of this case. What I will do, however, is point out things that those who are...

The Reign of Right-Wing Primetime Moreover, if you're a liberal viewer in a major city (which typically correlates with higher education) and you have such titles as "Mad Men" and "Dexter" to watch each week, are you going to also be interested in seeing a paint-by-numbers crime procedural on broadcast or a laugh-track-boosted sitcom? On the scripted side, at least, the explosion of complex dramas on cable may have ceded some of the broadcast ground to what one might label Republican tastes.

THE curse continues. Regardless of party, it’s hara-kiri for a politician to step into the shadow of even a mediocre speech by Barack Obama. Senator Obama’s televised victory oration celebrating his Chesapeake primary trifecta on Tuesday night was a mechanical rehash. No matter. When the networks cut from the 17,000-plus Obama fans cheering at a Wisconsin arena to John McCain’s victory tableau before a few hundred spectators in the Old Town district of Alexandria, Va., it was a rerun of what happened to Hillary Clinton the night she lost Iowa. Senator McCain, backed by a collection of sallow-faced old Beltway...

There was a striking moment during the interregnum last November/December (2000) that has stayed with me ever since. Inside Politics was running 24 hours a day on CNN, you will recall. I was watching one evening, several days into the theft, and there was Judy Woodruff interviewing conservative columnist Bob Novak. The question of the hour was whether or not Al Gore should just quit and go home. On this night, Novak was pointing to a public poll that had been running on the CNN.com web site. You know these polls: log on to a news site and give your...

It's a good thing the Statue of Liberty is in New York Harbor and not in the San Francisco or San Diego Bays. If Lady Liberty were on the West Coast, she would surely hide her face in shame at the way some immigrants are discriminated against and blamed for all of California's ills. A California Statue of Liberty might carry this inscription: "When all else fails, blame the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free." On the other hand, New York City tends to be more accepting and welcoming, celebrating the diversity of its people and recognizing immigrants'...

NBC's Today on Tuesday brought aboard Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy and Republican Senator Richard Shelby to separately discuss the evidence for going to war against Iraq, but while Kennedy got plenty of time to say what he wanted, partially because he just kept talking, Shelby received a third of the time, in part because Katie Couric took more time posing questions to him than he used to answer them. Couric challenged Shelby with lengthy questions in which she laid out the attacks on the Bush administration, including taking nearly a minute to read from a hostile New York Times editorial....

<p>Is the future of Michigan really about reparations for slavery? One would think so from the state Republicans' latest divide-and-conquer efforts to hang onto the governor's office. This week's GOP attacks on Democrat Jennifer Granholm aren't even subtle about pitting whites against blacks and Detroit against the rest of Michigan.</p>