Free Republic

One mistake does not change this. @DavidChalian is God's gift to political journalism. #IStandwithDavid

Glenn Kessler is The Washington Post's laughably biased fact checker, and when you think of Kessler, remember this -- remember the "fact" checker who called Romney a liar for saying a president who didn’t go to Israel didn't go to Israel. This guy is utterly shameless, and this morning he's having a full-blown tantrum. Back in July, Kessler did everything in his power to protect Obama from his unbelievably revealing "you didn't build that" moment. At the time, Kessler awarded Romney three of his childish Pinocchios for the unpardonable sin of, you know, holding the president accountable for his words....

When is it ever hilarious that the thought of dozens if not hundreds of black people desperately clinging for life as torrential waters batter their children, mothers or neighbors ever funny? David Chalian, a former political director with ABC News thought it was fair game to use a hate-mongering attack against Mitt Romney and Republicans gathered at the RNC Convention in Tampa, Florida on Wednesday. In his vicious racist attack he said, Romney is, “Happy to throw a party with black people dying.” Chalian, who was recently the Washington Bureau Chief for Yahoo News was fired for his online remarks,...

A funny thing happened on race-obsessed MSNBC tonight. The liberal network failed to give viewers coverage of the speakers who happen to be member of racial minorities. As Francesca Chambers, Editor of Red Alert Politics, reported on August 28th: "When popular Tea Party candidate Ted Cruz, the GOP nominee for Senate, took the stage, MSNBC cut away from the Republican National Convention and the Hispanic Republican from Texas’ speech." "MSNBC stayed on commercial through former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis’ speech, as well. Davis, who recently became a Republican, is black. Then, when Puerto Rican Governor Luis Fortuno’s wife Luce’ Vela...

THE GOAL of attrition through law enforcement for illegal immigrants — or, to use the term Mitt Romney favors, “self-deportation” — has suffered a series of setbacks. The latest came Monday when a federal appeals court blocked major parts of Alabama’s draconian immigration law, including one that required public schools to collect information on pupils’ immigration status. It is increasingly clear that Republican state lawmakers and governors have gone too far in their campaign to harass and bully the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants in the hope that they will simply disappear. Alabama has the distinction of having enacted the nation’s...

snip....The truth is the "legitimate rape" comment made by U.S. Rep. Todd Akin -- as in pregnancy from "legitimate rape" is rare -- is not a GOP anomaly, but rather another disturbing glimpse into the viewpoint too many social conservatives have about women's health and reproductive rights....snip

"This was brilliant timing on the president's part. All last week the Romney campaign was on offense and Obama was dealing with Vice President Race-Baiter and a campaign that had gotten so vicious it had finally backfired. But with the media all excited and eager to use GOP senate candidate Todd Akin's rape comments to damage the Romney-Ryan ticket and the GOP as a whole, Obama picked the perfect time to come before the White House press corps." "First off, by surprising the media, Obama knew the few good ones in there wouldn't be as ready to hit him with...

On Thursday, Chuck Todd, NBC News’ White House Correspondent and Political Director, called a Politico report which revealed that Vice President Joe Biden’s staff actively attempted to edit pool reports, which are used to inform reporters about events on the campaign trail, an “outrage.” He said that the system of distributing pool reports through political staffers may have to change as a result of Biden’s staffer’s behavior. RELATED: Biden’s Staff Tried To Influence Reporting On His Virginia Trip, According To Report Politico reporter Jonathan Martin, who originally reported the infraction by Biden’s staffers, said the attempted influencing of pool reports...

A gunman who allegedly targeted the Family Research Council for its anti-gay marriage views gave right-wing pundits a chance to give liberals—who often are quick to attribute violence to conservative ideology—a taste of their own medicine.

Soledad O'Brien Caught Reading Liberal Blog During Heated Debate With Romney Adviser By Noel Sheppard Created 08/13/2012 - 10:31pm Can CNN's Soledad O'Brien make her sources any more apparent than she did Monday night? While filling in for Anderson Cooper, O'Brien was actually caught on screen looking at an article from the far-left website Talking Points Memo to assist her in a heated debate with Romney campaign senior adviser Barbara Comstock (video follows with commentary): Ali Akbar at Viral Read reported Monday: During her interview with Virginia House of Delegates Republican member Barbara Comstock, O’Brien became visibly flustered and was...

Time Magazine has announced that it will suspend columnist Fareed Zakaria following his admission of plagiraism earlier this afternoon. "TIME accepts Fareed's apology, but what he did violates our own standards for our columnists, which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well. As a result, we are suspending Fareed's column for a month, pending further review." CNN, where Zakaria hosts a show, has yet to respond to a request for comment regarding Zakaria's admission of plagiarism. Earlier this afternoon, Zakaria released a statement...

New York Times food writer and reporter Mark Bittman issued an apology on his nytimes.com blog on Tuesday for a venemous post on the recent death of Chick-fil-A's vice-president for public relations Donald Perry. In a recent blog post, I used an inappropriate phrase to refer to the late VP of PR for Chick-fil-A. My choice of words did not rise to either my own standards or to The TimesÂ’s, and the phrase has been removed from the post. I regret this lapse. In a recent blog post, I used an inappropriate phrase to refer to the late VP of...

The gaffes just keep coming from the Numbskull  Broadcasting Company’s tape-delayed London Olympics coverage. Turns out that live viewers of the women’s gymnastics’ team medal competition on Tuesday saw Russia’s Ksenia Afanasyeva go splat during her floor exercises. Which virtually handed the gold medal to the Americans early on. But NBC coverage edited out Afanasyeva’s dramatic fall from its Tuesday night broadcast, which in and of itself is unthinkable since she’s the reigning world champion for floor exercises

Mitt Romney might have thought it was eminently sensible in an NBC interview in London to repeat exactly what the TV networks had already reported on security at the London Olympics, namely, that there was room for concern. Romney succeeded only in demonstrating how unbelievably shameless and partisan our "objective" media can be. The networks and national newspapers aggressively declared Romney had committed a diplomatic fiasco overseas and repeated London tabloid headlines heckling Romney with insults, such as "Mitt the Twit." Here's what the networks said pre-Romney. On the July 24 "Good Morning America," ABC reporter Nick Schifrin lamented "an...

Mitt Romney, in an interview with Fox News, accused the media of attempting to "divert" attention from more substantive issues by harping on his so-called gaffes overseas. "I realize that there will be some that in the fourth estate ... who are far more interested in finding something to write about that is unrelated to the economy, to geo-politics, to the threat of war, to the reality of conflict in Afghanistan today, to nuclearization of Iran," Romney told Fox News' Carl Cameron, after wrapping up his final event in Warsaw, Poland.

Chick-Fil-A came under criticism this month after a report by the organization Equality Matters revealed that the company donated around $2 million to antigay Christian organizations in 2010. “Guilty as charged,” the fast-food chain’s president Dan Cathy said over allegations that his company is antigay (“We are very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit.”). So. Here we are. Tumblr, listen up. We’re hoping to find a current or former employee of Chick-Fil-A who might want to spill the beans on life inside the alleged antigay company. If that’s you, or you know someone who might...

As NewsBusters previously reported, ABC's Brian Ross on Friday falsely accused a Tea Party member of being the "James" Holmes that orchestrated the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado. "Jim" Holmes during an interview with the Daily Caller had some harsh words for his accuser saying, "What kind of idiot makes that kind of statement?” “Really, seriously, how do we take a journalist seriously when it’s pretty clear they really haven’t done any sort of check on their facts?” told the Caller's Alex Pappas: Holmes informed Pappas that ABC News didn’t contact him before Ross went on air. In fact,...

During the chaotic aftermath of the Colorado shooting on Friday, a particularly chilling moment came when ABC News spoke to the mother of suspect James Holmes by phone. The network reported that the woman, reached in California, "told ABC News her son was likely the alleged culprit, saying, 'You have the right person.'" The article also said that Holmes's mother was "apparently speaking on gut instinct" when she "immediately expressed concern her son may be involved in the shooting death of at least 12 people overnight." Today, she disputed that account, claiming her quotes were misused. If true, that would...

n television journalism, few reporters are as controversial as Brian Ross of ABC News. The investigative correspondent has landed major scoops and won prestigious awards for his reporting on the Peace Corps, Solyndra, and U.S. antiterrorism efforts — to name just a few. And yet, he has also produced more high-level haphazard reporting than perhaps any other reporter on television. Ross came under attack again Friday when he reported that James Holmes, the suspect of today’s theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., may have connections to the tea party — basing that on a single web page that listed an Aurora-based...

In September 2010, the Associated Press prepared an advance report on the expected surge in the Census Bureau's official poverty rate, which rose from 13.2% to a 15-year high of 14.3%. Their stated preoccupation was not with the associated pain, but with "the unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when Congress is at stake." Well, this year's official poverty rate will very likely be the highest seen since the mid-1960s, and there's a presidential election coming up. What's the AP, aka the Administration's Press, to do? It looks like the strategy is to get...