Free Republic

THE NEW YORK TIMES’S Dec. 16 article that disclosed the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping has led to an important public debate about the once-secret program. And the decision to write about the program in the face of White House pressure deserved even more praise than I gave it in a January column, which focused on the paper’s inadequate explanation of why it had “delayed publication for a year.”...

Some formerly Communist countries that eagerly joined the European Union are balking at the social policies that come with democracy. They are led by the union's largest new member, Poland, which is now run by a right-wing nationalist government that seems intent on violating the rights of minority groups, beginning with an attack on gays. The government is led by the conservative Law and Justice Party, founded by the identical twin brothers who now run Poland: Lech Kaczynski, the country's president, and his brother Jaroslaw, who leads the party. Law and Justice got its parliamentary majority by aligning itself with...

MEDIA STOCKS New York Times shares decline By David B. Wilkerson, MarketWatch Last Update: 11:52 AM ET Apr 19, 2006 CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Shares of New York Times Co. were down Wednesday following the company's annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday, where investors who held 28% of the stock withheld their votes for Class A board directors in protest of the company's performance, according to the Times. New York Times Co. (NYTNew York Times Company News , NYT ) was down 2% at $24.85. Morgan Stanley Investment Research, which holds a 5.6% stake in New York Times Co., was among those...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a profile in timidity this week when he vowed to veto a pioneering bill authorizing gay marriage in California. The bill, which both houses of the Legislature passed by narrow margins, would expand the definition of marriage to include a civil contract between two people, not exclusively a man and woman. This was an enlightened and fair-minded stand that made California's Legislature the first in the nation to approve same-sex marriages. Too bad Mr. Schwarzenegger could not find the courage to sign the bill into law. Instead, even before receiving the bill, he announced a tortured...

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU AUG 04, 2005 11:35:09 ET XXXXX NY TIMES INVESTIGATES ADOPTION RECORDS OF SUPREME COURT NOMINEE'S CHILDREN **Exclusive** The DRUDGE REPORT has uncovered a plot in the NEW YORK TIMES' newsroom to look into the adoption of the children of Supreme Court Nominee John G. Roberts. The TIMES has investigative reporter Glen Justice hot on the case to investigate adoption records of Judge Roberts’ two young children, Josie age 5 and Jack age 4, a top source reveals. Judge Roberts and his wife Jane adopted the children when they each were infants. Both children were adopted...

Top editors of the NY TIMES made the decision Monday afternoon to turn up the heat on White House adviser Karl Rove. The TIMES is planning to lead with calls for Rove's resignation, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT. MORE...

Keller Says 'N.Y. Times' Must Look Beyond Its Urban, Liberal Base By E&P Staff Published: June 26, 2005 3:00 PM ET NEW YORK In a lengthy memo published the newspaper's Web site, Bil Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, announced several new policies in response to a recent report by the paper's Credibility Committee. Among them is a fresh attempt to diversify the Times' staff and viewpoints, and not in the usual racial or gender ways, but in political, religious and cultural areas as well. The aim, he wrote, is "to stretch beyond our predominantly urban, culturally liberal...

In a blistering letter to the New York Times, Florida Governor Jeb Bush called the paper's stance on Terri Schiavo a "grotesque and chilling disrespect for the sanctity of life [that] has never been more apparent than in your June 16 editorial." Bush's letter, published in the Times Saturday, said: "Terri Schiavo was a deeply loved daughter, wife, sister and friend. The fact that her brain was atrophied or that she was blind or could not have been rehabilitated doesn't change that fact." In its editorial "Autopsy on the Schiavo Tragedy," the Times, while not naming Bush, denounced "opportunistic politicians"...

WASHINGTON, June 16 - Opponents of the war in Iraq held an unofficial hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday to draw attention to a leaked British government document that they say proves their case that President Bush misled the public about his war plans in 2002 and distorted intelligence to support his policy.

Newsweek's false account of a Koran being dumped in a toilet caused much damage to U.S. foreign policy. On May 20, the New York Times tried to do more damage. It devoted over 6000 words to the deaths of Afghans who had been in the custody of U.S. forces at Bagram Air Base on suspicion of involvement in terrorism. Seven people have been charged for alleged abuse of those described in the Times account. But that didn't stop reporter Tim Golden from including a lot of gratuitous details about the alleged abuse. The article was timed just before Afghan President...

Washington -- When President Bush shakes 1,000 hands, Blake Gottesman is ready with the Purell. When Bush is in his daily intelligence briefing in the trailer on his ranch, Gottesman is on site to dog-sit Barney, the president's Scottish terrier. When a member of the White House senior staff wants a word with the boss, Gottesman is there to recommend yes or no. "People will say, 'Is this a good time to raise something?' " said Joe Hagin, the White House deputy chief of staff. "And Blake will say, 'Well, he's reviewing a speech right now,' or 'He's got a...

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him. The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days. Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle....

THEY can attack at any moment, appearing as if from nowhere, leaving the victim bloodied and battered if he survives at all. There is no remorse, no mercy, no way to stop the primordial urges once the assault begins. But enough about the animal rights faithful, let's talk about the black bears of New Jersey. We jest, of course. The animal rights groups aren't necessarily any more ferociously committed than their armed opponents in muddy camouflage. "We have science on our side; all they have is fanaticism," said Eric Bunk, who describes himself as Northern New Jersey director of United...

NYT PLANS 6,000-WORD STORY ON TORMENT AND DEATH OF 2 AFGHANS AT AMERICAN GI HANDS; AFGHAN PRISON ABUSE DETAILED... MORE... Per Drudge...

For sheer lack of subtlety, the light-saber-wielding forces of good and evil in George Lucas's "Star Wars" movies can't hold a candle to the blogging, advertising and boycotting forces of the right and left. (Or left and right.) More a measure of the nation's apparently permanent political warfare than of a filmmaker's intent, the heroes and antiheroes of Mr. Lucas's final entry, "Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," were on their way to becoming the stock characters of partisan debate by mid-Wednesday, hours before the film's opening just after midnight: The liberal advocacy group Moveon.org was preparing to spend...

IT sounds like something out of the satirical journal Annals of Improbable Research: a team of Swedish neuroscientists scanned people's brains as they smelled a testosterone derivative found in men's sweat and an estrogen-like compound found in women's urine. In heterosexual men, a part of the hypothalamus (the seat of physical drives) responded to the female compound but not the male one; in heterosexual women and homosexual men, it was the other way around. But the discovery is more than just a shoo-in for that journal's annual Ig Nobel Prize - it raises provocative questions about the science and ethics...

THE screen's first official gay bar," as it was labeled by the film historian Vito Russo, appeared in the 1962 political potboiler "Advise and Consent." Its most prominent visitor was a conservative United States senator. As sheer coincidence would have it, Otto Preminger's adaptation of Allen Drury's best seller about a brutal confirmation fight was released on a sparkling new DVD last week just as the John Bolton nomination was coming to its committee vote. Like Hollywood's other riveting political movie of 1962, "The Manchurian Candidate," "Advise and Consent" is fallout from the McCarthy era: the controversial nominee for secretary...

For adults, the fuss over a PBS children's television show featuring an animated bunny - and real lesbian mothers - was nothing new. But for Emma Riesner, 11, who was supposed to be a star of the now-controversial episode of "Postcards From Buster," what began as a participatory social studies lesson has become a harsh lesson in exclusionary politics. "I was pretty upset when the show was canceled, because I was very excited about it," Emma said in a telephone interview from her home in Vermont. "I know some people don't like gays and lesbians because they think they are...

LONGWOOD, Fla. — The map that hangs above Liberty Counsel's weekly planning meeting measures the small firm's national reach, with color-coded tabs marking the status of 33 active cases in 13 states. Their agenda: stop same-sex marriage by using the courts. From an unmarked beige tin warehouse near a railway line at an address they insist on keeping secret, Liberty Counsel has employed a range of legal tactics to fight same-sex marriage across the country. "This is the central command center for the defense of traditional marriage against the same-sex marriage movement," said Mathew D. Staver, president, general counsel and...

Editorial: - Donald Rumsfeld Should Go http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/07/opinion/07FRI1.html . Editorial: - The Military Archipelago ("Prisoner Abuse is Systematic", Blames Bush, saying he's given Al-Qaeda a gift in world-wide recruitment effortd). http://nytimes.com/2004/05/07/opinion/07FRI2.html . Editorial: - Losing Our Technical Dominance("This administration seems misguided in cutting research funds IN REAL TERMS http://nytimes.com/2004/05/07/opinion/07FRI3.html . Paul Krugman - The Oil Crunch (Typical Krugman, blasting/blaming Bush, Calling Iraq Disastrous, etc. Scum) http://nytimes.com/2004/05/07/opinion/07KRUG.html . Ted Conover - My Life as a Guard (Blaming Bush for Not Doing Enough to Prevent Prison Abuse) http://nytimes.com/2004/05/07/opinion/07CONO.html . ANTOINE AUDOUARD (French?) - When Liberators Become Tyrants (You can imagine the vitriol here,...