Free Republic

...The bitter battle has all the hallmarks of a classic family drama. It pits the toddler children of Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Deng, a Chinese-born woman in her mid-30s, against Mr. Murdoch's children from his first two marriages. One of the key debates: Who should inherit the family's $6 billion fortune and Mr. Murdoch's control of News Corp.... But despite his job title, one of the few businesses Lachlan had a free hand in managing was one of News Corp.'s smallest, the New York Post, a tabloid paper that was one of his father's first acquisitions after he moved to...

AREN'T we lucky? Isn't it great? We have patriotic ingrate Jane Fonda, the multiple divorceé who was born with a silver hoof in her mouth, acting as spokespig for our country again. Although she's born here, isn't there a way we can throw her out since her basic career is to bad-mouth the United States of America? If being a smoker is against the law, how about being a traitor? If spitting on the sidewalk is not allowed, how come spitting on the U.S.A. is OK? If double-parking gets a fine, shouldn't there be some small punishment for treason? Hanoi...

Is there a weekly contest at Air America to see which host can make the most asinine public statements? Perhaps there's a chart in the breakroom where each silly press outburst gets a happy face sticker next to the person's name?

From the universe of annoying liberal habits, here are two that consistently jump off the page: --- When our viewpoints are intentionally misrepresented, to suit their cartoonish horns-on-heads images of conservatives. --- When they use their still-considerable mainstream media muscle to hire phony, weak, or otherwise ineffective "conservatives" for radio, television and newspaper gigs, in order to make our side look foolish. That likely explains how lightweight pundit Tucker Carlson has landed yet another TV talk show

We might as well have a little fun with this. Given the New York Post's history of excellent headline puns:...I thought it might be fun if we all try to guess what tomorrow morning's NYP headline will be! But just to make it interesting: If anyone posts what turns out to be the actual headline of tomorrow morning's NEw York Post, I'll give that Freeper a $5 Amazon gift certificate. Rules are below. Be creative! Think like a Post editor! Post your best guess (one guess only) below!

The final item in the Sept. 30, 1944 "Activity Report of Virginia Hall," American intelligence agent, was No. XV: "Were you decorated in the Field?" "No," she had typed, "nor any reason to be." The answer was typical of her matter-of-fact sense of duty. But William J. Donovan, known to a generation of spies as "Wild Bill," begged to differ. On May 12, 1945, Maj. Gen. Donovan, director of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, informed President Harry Truman that Hall was, for her extraordinary heroism, to receive the Distinguished Service Cross -- second only to the Medal of Honor....

Lawyers for Saddam Hussein said today that they have started legal action against The Sun after the newspaper published a front-page picture of the deposed dictator wandering around an Iraqi jail in his underpants. Ziyad Khasawneh, who heads Saddam's 20-strong defence team based in Jordan, told The Times that he would also be starting legal action against US forces in Iraq and Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, for allowing Saddam to be photographed in jail in breach of international law. The photographs appeared in both The Sun and the New York Post, which are owned by the News Corporation,...

Living in New York, I have no choice but to read the New York Times every day. I try to leaven it with the Daily News and the New York Post, but it's a witch's brew. The News has somehow cast itself as the newspaper of the underclass, so it feels obliged to report every bit of mayhem coming out of New York's poor neighborhoods. Somebody killed somebody over a jacket. Somebody got shot over a parking space. A grandmother in a housing project was killed in the crossfire by drug dealers. News about democracy demonstrations in Lebanon usually appears...

What did Newsweek know — and when did the magazine know it?

The release of the six-month circulation figures for U.S. daily newspapers showed big declines at Tribune Co.'s Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. The newspaper industry's twice-yearly circulation report showed modest circulation declines at many dailies, continuing a two-decade-long trend. The latest report, released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, is being studied especially closely by advertisers and Wall Street. It marks the first industry circulation data since several major newspapers reported overstatements this year, beginning with scandals in June at Tribune's Newsday and Spanish-language Hoy. Subsequently, Hollinger International Inc.'s Chicago Sun-Times and Belo Corp.'s Dallas Morning News also admitted...

The Post this morning proudly urges the reelection of President George W. Bush. There are many issues before the electorate, but none more im portant than the War on Terror. So let's be clear: America will be safer with George Bush in the White House. Not totally safe; even the president concedes that. But safer, and that's quite good enough for us. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was a rock. Since then, he has prosecuted the War on Terror with determination. Not flawlessly, not by a long shot, but competently enough so that there has been no second attack...

SUPERCHEF Mario Batali has taken to wearing a "Dem tag" around his neck to express his disdain for President Bush. The culinary king says that every waiter and maitre d' at his crown jewel, Babbo, also wears the tags, which are inscribed with various anti-Bush slogans. "My favorite one says, 'President Cheney?'" Batali told us. "Everyone's wearing them at Babbo. We don't have one fence-sitter." The left-leaning chef says he has a "big box" of the necklaces - made by his friend, designer Corrine Calesso - that he plans to pass out at his eateries Otto and Lupa. "I'm voting...

September 5, 2004 -- C onvention footnote: In a week full of openly hostile and sometimes just downright bizarre pronouncements from the talking heads, one particularly nonsensical comment stands out. On Thursday night, ABC anchor Peter Jennings felt the need to explain to viewers that two protestors had been forcibly removed by security officers from the floor of the Republican Convention when they tried to disrupt President Bush's acceptance speech.

BOSTON - Without question the two biggest "rock stars" at the Democratic convention on night one were Bill and Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton had originally not been scheduled to speak at the convention but Senator Kerry intervened at the last minute to allow her to introduce her husband... Andrea Peyser in today's New York Post got close enough to the Clintons to have the former President place his hand on her naked shoulder. In her piece today she describes the bizarre interaction that happened between the two - behind the scenes last night in the VIP room prior to their...

... Within News Corp., a global satellite, television and movie behemoth, the paper was regarded as a personal indulgence of Chairman Rupert Murdoch. It gave him a platform for his conservative political views, but it was a perennial money-loser. Enter Lachlan Murdoch, now 32 years old. Since he took over the paper four years ago, he made management changes that his father hadn't seen as necessary. Aiming to make the paper profitable, he replaced the entire Post senior management team, with key jobs going to executives he had worked with in Australia. The result: helped by a price cut, the...

“The news for New York City is spectacular," New York’s Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told a City Hall press conference on May 24. He and New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly [Email him] were claiming credit for new FBI crime stats showing major crimes—murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, car theft, larceny and arson—dropping 5.8% in the city in 2003. New York’s crime rate now ranks it 211th of the 230 U.S. cities with 100,000-plus population—behind Omaha, Nebraska and Wichita, Kansas. Unfortunately, there must have been at least one skeptic at the press conference. Hizzoner reportedly “bristled” at suggestions that...

<p>May 22, 2004 -- Jamie Gorelick, one of the Democratic Party's workhorses on the 9/11 Commission, now regrets her relatively low-key approach at Wednesday's public hearing: She says she and her colleagues were too easy on Rudy Giuliani, and should have hammered him instead of "wasting a lot of time in complimenting the mayor."</p>

<p>May 2, 2004 -- CURT Smith, author of "Voices of the Game" and chronicler of all that binds baseball to broadcasting, had a frightening thought. "What if the next Vin Scully is out there and no one will hire him? What if he can't find work because his audition tape isn't loaded with screaming and shtick and hyperbole? Look at it this way: When's the last time 'SportsCenter' chose to replay a classy, dignified call of a team announcer's call?"</p>

The mainstream media have two complementary tactics in covering homosexual-related news: Flooding the zone with stories portraying gays as victims or heroes, and damming up the flow of information, when it would present gays in a less than favorable light. And sometimes both tactics are used within the same story.Consider coverage of the illegal same-sex “weddings” in San Francisco and New Paltz, New York. Several stories on the New Paltz “weddings” mentioned Tom Duane, an openly gay New York State Senator, who represents the Chelsea section of Manhattan.On March 2, Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams charged New Paltz Mayor...

Nachman just died in NYC...Breaking...he was a GREAT newsman.