Free Republic

Former President Bill Clinton’s top aide wrote in 2012 that Chelsea Clinton used Clinton Foundation resources “for her wedding and life for a decade” and a top Foundation donor was responsible for “killing” unfavorable press coverage – all as an internal Foundation audit uncovered numerous conflicts of interest and “quid pro quo benefits,” according to emails released Sunday by WikiLeaks. Doug Band, founder of global strategies company Teneo and Bill Clinton’s personal assistant since the 1990s, wrote the Jan. 4, 2012, email to future Hillary Clinton presidential campaign chair John Podesta and two other Clinton aides after receiving word that...

Are government subsidies the cure for what ails the news business? Add Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, to the roster of eminentos who think the answer is yes. In “Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century,’’ Bollinger argues that the condition of the mainstream press, which is slowly being crushed under the treads of the Internet, “may become so grave as to require injections of public funds.’’ He is convinced “that this will prove to be the only way to sustain a free press over time.’’ Bollinger isn’t the only one who would like...

What is it about the Obamas that causes people peering through the glass at the White House to start seeing flashbacks to the excesses of life under the French court before the Revolution? I don’t mean casual “dates” via Air Force One to catch a Broadway show in Manhattan, inconveniencing the country’s largest city. And I certainly don’t expect the American President and his wife to have leftover meatloaf for dinner. But the image we see of the Obamas via the besotted press is one of wretched excess. In a time when nearly a quarter of America’s population is either...