Free Republic

The woman, 25, said that when they were alone in his office, Gov. Andrew Cuomo asked if she “had ever been with an older man.”

One of the costs of a censorious society is clarity of writing, and consequently of thought. If one must write, evasive thinking is an easier way to dodge cancellation than purely evasive writing. “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” That’s Francis Bacon, and probably the best thing he wrote (unless it’s The Tempest after all). The act of writing is exacting, and it improves with the care and precision of the effort. But this means—as illustrated by the hubbub around the New York Times’s treatment of Scott Alexander, the pseudonymous blogger behind...

At least once every few days, I go to the Twitter account of Alex Berenson to see what he has been reporting regarding Covid-19 and the potential side-effects from the two major vaccines now available. Berenson is generally described as a “Former New York Times reporter and New York Times bestselling novelist.” To be sure, he has done truly exceptional reporting regarding both the virus and the vaccines. Well balanced, well researched, and honest. If the Pulitzer Prize had not devolved into a meaningless ideological award for only the far-left – which it did well over two decades ago –...

It seems that rather than attempt to hold Rush Limbaugh eternally accountable for his sins, this one in particular, what should matter most is the context and his apology.One of the remarkable truths about those who hold a visceral hatred of Rush Limbaugh is the high likelihood they have never listened to his show or read any of his books. They just know they strongly dislike Limbaugh for a good reason, one they can usually validate with a quick search of what others have said about him along with a quote or two for evidence. The most tangible demonstration of...

The myth of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Master of Pandemics, Destroyer of Trump, Boyfriend of America didn't create itself: It was the creation of U.S. media.The week isn’t even over and already New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has threatened a Democrat colleague, attacked nurses and nursing home staff, lashed out at the federal government, and attacked his “critics” for spreading “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories” about that time he literally conspired to hide easily avoidable deaths he caused. Things aren’t looking good for him.This, we’re told by his new enemies in corporate media, is what Democratic accountability looks like....

President Donald J. Trump was sicker with Covid-19 in October than publicly acknowledged at the time, with extremely depressed blood oxygen levels at one point and a lung problem associated with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus, according to four people familiar with his condition. His prognosis became so worrisome before he was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that officials believed he would need to be put on a ventilator, two of the people familiar with his condition said. The people familiar with Mr. Trump’s health said he was found to have lung infiltrates, which occur when the...

The New York Times is defending the creator of its controversial 1619 Project after she doxxed another reporter — and then wiped her entire Twitter history, including messages she had first been challenged over.

The Utah senator wasn't talking about Trump or impeachment, but trying to be polite toward his Democratic colleagues.Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, was given an opportunity to bash Democrat politicians for some of their recent violent political rhetoric. During a TV interview yesterday, clips of Democrats using violent or aggressive rhetoric against Republican-affiliated individuals were played from Sen. Chuck Schumer, Rep. Maxine Waters, and Sen. Cory Booker. “I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price,” said now-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the steps of the...

If institutions like the Times continue endorsing these standards, they will put more and more people out of work and smear more and more people as bigots.The New York Times employed Donald McNeil from 1976 until last Friday.The Daily Beast reported Jan. 28 that on a 2019 student excursion to Peru, which was sponsored by the Times, “McNeil repeatedly made racist and sexist remarks throughout the trip including, according to two complaints, using the ‘n-word.'”Here are more details from the report:[A]t least six students or their parents told the tour company that partnered with the Times that McNeil used racially...

Times Opinion was able to identify individuals from a trove of leaked smartphone location data. In 2019, a source came to us with a digital file containing the precise locations of more than 12 million individual smartphones for several months in 2016 and 2017. The data is supposed to be anonymous, but it isn’t. We found celebrities, Pentagon officials and average Americans. It became clear that this data — collected by smartphone apps and then fed into a dizzyingly complex digital advertising ecosystem — was a liability to national security, to free assembly and to citizens living mundane lives. It...

The New York Times has promised to give staffers “results” after many signed a letter expressing anger over the decision not to fire science and health reporter Donald McNeil, The Washington Post reported. McNeil, the Times’s top COVID-19 reporter, came under scrutiny after allegations that he “repeatedly made racist and sexist remarks throughout” a school trip that he was chosen to guide, according to a past report from the Daily Beast. NYT’s executive editor Dean Baquet later explained that he was first “outraged and expected to fire” McNeil, but changed his mind after an investigation. “I authorized an investigation and...

These training videos are reportedly used at companies such as Dolby, LiveNation, Netflix, Yelp, BuzzFeed, and The New York Times. I can't believe what they put their employees through...

You’ve probably never heard of Gareth Jones. You’ve certainly heard of the writer he inspired, and the classic dystopian novel that writer created. You were forced to read it, or at least the Cliff’s Notes, in high school. But shorn of its context, that novel lacks the full punch it could deliver. Mr. Jones (2019), starring Peter Sarsgaard and James Norton, directed by Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland and written by Andrea Chalupa, provides that context in a must-see film. Mr. Jones is powerfully relevant today, even more than when it premiered in 2019. You have undoubtedly heard of “cancel culture,”...

New York Times Reporter Maggie Astor changes her tune, originally said Veritas videos have “solely” unnamed sources but now says they have “many” unnamed sources. Astor said she labelled the videos “deceptive” because she was unable to corroborate the videos on her own. Astor: “I know of Project Veritas and, before writing my articles about the Video, I knew that it had a reputation for publishing deceptively-edited videos and had been publicly criticized many times for doing so.” New York Times legal team cite Wikipedia to justify mischaracterizing Project Veritas. New York Times legal team excused Astor’s article as an...

An opinion writer who frequently contributed op-eds to the New York Times has admitted to being paid well by the Iranian mission to the United Nations but insists that this did not make him an agent of the Iranian government or influence his writing. Kaveh Afrasiabi is currently under arrest, accused of violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). For its part, the New York Times, which still claims to publish "all the news that's fit to print," is dummying up, keeping its readers in the dark on the subject, and offering no comment.Ira Stoll of The Algemeiner has the...

Over the weekend, a couple of prominent terminations took place in the media universe. A pair of writers from the New York Times each found their tenure at the venerated newspaper curtailed over two separate incidents of questionable decisions they made on social media. It is a ridiculous thing to consider, but what is more ridiculous are the reactions from other journalists who find these results outrageous. Considering that not only have these actions played out over the past calendar year but many in the press were either unconcerned or even supportive of these actions, and now they find this...

Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of Donald J. Trump’s closest allies in Congress, said Monday that the Trump family has given him “nothing but encouragement” in his effort to oust Representative Liz Cheney from her leadership post with House Republicans. But Mr. Gaetz added that he had not spoken to the former president in almost a week, and did not know whether Mr. Trump would get personally involved. At the moment, the Florida congressman does not have the backing of Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, who said over the weekend that he still supported Ms. Cheney but had...

President Trump created the 1776 Commission by executive order last year as part of an effort to counter the leftist narrative taking over our public schools. Unsurprisingly, the commission’s first report has been met with nothing but hostility. Spurred in part by the New York Times’s ahistorical 1619 Project, the 1776 Report seeks to correct some of the central claims made by the 1619 Project’s authors and provide an answer to the Left’s overly negative interpretation of American history. Contrary to what the 1619 Project might suggest, the American Revolution was not fought to preserve the institution of slavery, the...

In late December, scientists in California began searching coronavirus samples for a fast-spreading new variant that had just been identified in Britain. They found it, though in relatively few samples. But in the process, the scientists made another unwelcome discovery: California had produced a variant of its own. That mutant, which belongs to a lineage known as CAL.20C, seemed to have popped up in July but lay low till November. Then it began to quickly spread. CAL.20C accounted for more than half of the virus genome samples collected in Los Angeles laboratories on Jan. 13, according to a new study...

It is infuriating that the Trump administration left so many of these things undone. I wish I could tell you that the incoming Biden administration had a genius plan for combating Covid-19, thick with ideas no one else had thought of and strategies no one else had tried. But it doesn’t. What it does have is the obvious plan for combating Covid-19, full of ideas many others have thought of and strategies it is appalling we haven’t yet tried. That it is possible for Joe Biden and his team to release a plan this straightforward is the most damning indictment...