Free Republic

Two cops and 10 journalists were killed Wednesday when terrorists armed with guns and a rocket launcher stormed the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine famous for making fun of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed and Islamic leaders. The three shooters are still on the loose after they fled from the newsroom in Paris' 11th administrative district, about five miles from the Eiffel Tower.

(NATIONAL) -- Have Americans all of a sudden fallen in love with the Republican Party and that is the reason Democrats were taken to the woodshed in such brutal fashion in Tuesday's mid term election? Not quite, argues John Dickerson Slate's chief political correspondent. "The Republican Party had one strategy it followed in nearly every Senate race: run against the president. It paid off...democratic candidates couldn’t get out of the president’s shadow. Every Democratic attempt to localize the races failed," writes Dickerson in a post election analysis. It was President Obama's unpopularity with voters, plus the democratic "coalition" that failed...

Keith Olbermann is mad as hell at the Daily News for its Wednesday front page featuring the gaunt face of the late Robin Williams, which included the headline “HANGED” and subheads detailing the police report. The current sports Gasbag, and former political gadfly, said as much during a Wednesday rant on his late night ESPN2 show. Boiling his melodramatic soliloquy down to a few words, the front page was too graphic for him. It offended his sensibilities. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/raissman-keith-olbermann-trashing-ny-daily-news-robin-williams-front-page-reveals-hypocrite-article-1.1904100#ixzz3APqs0STa

Text of NY Daily News front page with grey hoodie in background with small image of previous day's front page with photo of George Zimmerman with large type, "NOT GUILTY!":"Emmett Till. Willie Edwards. James Chaney. Michael Donald. Michael Griffith. Yusef Hawkins. James Byrd Jr. Trayvon Martin.""When will it end?""Full coverage of the verdict that shocked America"The lead paragraph in the small box at the top of the page begins:"The nation exploded Sunday..."

The lamestream media doesn't like it when Sarah Palin calls them out for their distortions, innuendo and what the governor calls "making things up" -- which is her rather polite way of saying that the media are liars. The latest example is Helen Thomas' recent comment regarding Israel, for which Gov. Palin scolded the reporter on Twitter, and Thomas promptly apologized. But Sarah Palin let Thomas' colleagues have it with both barrels with another tweet for their failure to criticize the reporter for her remark: Helen Thomas press pals condone racist rant?Heaven forbid"esteemed"press corps represent society's enlightened elite;Rest of us...

I'm sure you've all heard of the recent scandal in New York where the Governor (Eliot Spitzer, Democrat) was caught up in a call girl ring, but there was another scandal before that in which the Governor's political rival, State Senate majority leader Joe Bruno (Republican) found out that Governor Spitzer was using the State Police to spy on him: "I've been in government 31 years and I've never experienced anything like this," said Bruno. "I was stunned to learn Governor Spitzer is using the fine men and women of the New York State Police to conduct surveillance on me,"...

In the wake of the controversy over a new Associated Press rate structure, which has prompted a small outcry from two groups of editors who want lower rates, the New York Daily News has revealed it canceled its AP service a year ago. The Daily News confirmed Monday that it advised AP more than a year ago that it would no longer be a member of the news cooperative. Under AP policy, members must give two years notice of plans to drop the service, meaning the Daily News will no longer receive AP core services in early 2009. “Over a...

The New York Daily News perpetrated an interesting, yet subtly misleading headline about president Bush's Charleston, South Carolina speech on Al Qaeda in Iraq today in theirs titled "W still ties Iraq, 9/11." Following the left's playbook of claiming Bush has illicitly linked Saddam's Iraq to 9/11 their headline made it seem as if Bush, indeed, "still ties" 9/11 to Iraq. It is, of course, a false claim that Bush linked Iraq to 9/11 either then OR now, but the New York Daily News doesn't seem too interested in the truth. And for the headline to say "still ties" they...

Is it just coincidence that a story has appeared touting the fact that Al Sharpton is the descendant of slaves, ones owned by relatives of Strom Thurmond to boot, or is it the unofficial kick-off of Sharpton's presidential campaign, with a major boost from Sharpton's hometown newspaper? Let's put these three stories together: On January 17, a story appears reporting: "civil rights activist Al Sharpton said Monday he is seriously considering a run for president. " And why is Sharpton running? "If we're talking about the urban agenda, can you tell me anybody else in the field who's representing...

A civil war has erupted inside the Daily News over the paper's reaction to revelations that their reporting on a New York City police officer who died of lung cancer was flawed. -snip- For weeks, many insiders at the paper had been congratulating themselves in advance, stating that they felt the stories about the late police officer were "a lock" for a Pulitzer Prize, either in the Public Service category or for Editorial Writing and possibly both. Now, with Editorial Page Editor Arthur Browne publicly blaming the flawed reporting on the news side, many think he is making a last-ditch...

That liberals have so quickly pounced on Rush Limbaugh over a relatively minor on-air error, could it be a sign his accuracy rate is actually rather high? Otherwise, would the mainstream media's obvious glee be quite so pronounced? After all, opponents are monitoring every broadcast, waiting in hope for moments like this. So what was Limbaugh's Colossal Error Of The Century? He incorrectly believed Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was black. Stop the presses! Dog bites man, nobody's perfect. Is this really a big story?

President Bush patiently explained: "The reason it's secret is because if it's not secret, the enemy knows about it." Well, of course. How hard is that? And we're not inclined to work up much of a froth over the fact that the U.S. has been listening in on phone calls to and from, say, Afghanistan since 9/11. Spying on Americans, this is being called, because the administration chose not to seek warrants for the eavesdropping, but it looks more to us like an all-out effort to protect the country in a time of war. Granted, the legalities are not all...

So much for Al Franken's "A-List" celeb aspirations. In confronting US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at a New York event Monday, Franken was exposed as insignificant. With this sobering reality check, perhaps Al will learn to stick to the Smalley routines. Don't take the Radio Equalizer's word for it, New York City newspapers are having a pre-Thanksgiving journalistic feast, thanks to our friend Al. According to the New York Daily News, Justice Scalia wasn't even familiar with Franken as the two sparred during outgoing Time honcho Norman Pearlstine's latest "Conversations On The Circle" event: ....

Gov. Pataki's decision to eliminate the long-planned International Freedom Center from the World Trade Center site marks a low point in the tug of war that began over Ground Zero's meaning and symbols almost immediately after the calamity. A great many people hoped that the rebuilding process would tap the rich vein of America's democratic culture and showcase our best qualities - optimism, energy, ingenuity and diversity. Those people have been sorely disappointed. The unceremonious demise of the Freedom Center makes clear that no statement about mankind's hopes for freedom or democracy will make it to Ground Zero without a...

Air America is being investigated in New York for diverting federal funds--possibly "hundreds of thousands of dollars"--meant for inner-city kids and senior into the station's coffers.Um, why isn't the New York Times, which has spilled tons of adulatory ink on the liberal radio network, covering this scandal on its front page? Radio blogger Brian Maloney has the lowdown. Read the whole thing. He sniffed out the story when he spotted this tidbit buried in the NY Daily News about Air America being targeted in a NYC Department of Investigation probe of kids' and seniors' programs being ripped off in the...

The Reverend Al Sharpton's fledgling talk radio effort, not yet even off the ground, just got a huge boost from the least likely place imaginable: Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh is offering coaching assistance to Sharpton, as he's apparently been invited to guest-host Rush's show for 30 minutes at a time, while being critiqued along the way by the man himself. Is the man-of-many-cigars serious about making Al "the Limbaugh of the left"?

It's not news that the junior senator from the State of New York has been making a point of distancing herself from her party's way-out-there-in-left-field flank ever since November's election debacle. She has talked about the importance of prayer, and of finding common ground on abortion, and of the depredations of the media on children. Yesterday, though, sitting down with the Daily News Editorial Board in the wake of the weekend Minneapolis speech that point-blank posited her as the future of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton made things even more crystal-clear: Too many Dems just plain don't get it. And...

The New York DMV is trying to prevent illegal aliens from getting New York driver's licenses. If you've been reading the New York Times or the New York Daily News or press releases from various organizations, you might have been confused into thinking that they're trying to prevent all immigrants from getting licenses, but that's not true. For instance, the far-left New York Immigration Coalition has a page discussing this issue. Only one sentence on that page makes an oblique reference to this being an issue of legal vs. illegal: The law does NOT say that immigration status is a...

CHICAGO (AP) An appeals court Wednesday upheld the dismissal of an Islamic charity's civil suit accusing six news organizations and eight journalists of defaming the charity by reporting that it was under investigation for possible terrorist ties. The 33-page opinion by the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals brushed aside claims by Global Relief Foundation based in suburban Bridgeview that there were serious doubts about whether the government could prove that it had ever supported terrorism. The news organizations, including The Associated Press, never wrote that the group had ties to terrorism but only that it was under investigation for...

Members of a heartless Long Island gang that hurled a 20-pound turkey through a driver's windshield were nabbed last night as the victim lay in a coma, cops said. Nearly every bone in the woman's face was broken when the bird was tossed from a moving car - hitting her with a force equivalent to a bowling ball dropped from a 20-story building and causing her to lose control of the steering wheel.