Free Republic

This generally is the stage of a campaign when Democrats have to work hard to get excited about whichever candidate seems most likely to outlast an uninspiring pack. That is not remotely the case this year. The early primaries produced two powerful main contenders: Hillary Clinton, the brilliant if at times harsh-sounding senator from New York; and Barack Obama, the incandescent if still undefined senator from Illinois. The remaining long shot, John Edwards, has enlivened the race with his own brand of raw populism. As Democrats look ahead to the primaries in the biggest states on Feb. 5, The Times’s...

WASHINGTON, June 29 — On Christmas Eve 1994, Fred D. Thompson Jr. was out of a job. A 34-year-old self-described late bloomer, Mr. Thompson had graduated from law school just two years before and practiced law only for his father, Fred D. Thompson Sr., who was about to be sworn in as a senator from Tennessee. “I was out on the street, knocking on doors,” recalled the younger Mr. Thompson, who is known as Tony. But attending Brentwood Methodist Church in Nashville that night, Tony Thompson ran into the departing incumbent senator, Harlan Mathews, a Democrat. Mr. Mathews invited Tony...

The New York Times Company annual shareholder meeting traditionally has been a tame affair, where the Sulzberger family, which owns a controlling interest in the company, applauds the achievements of its journalists and, in turn, basks in the applause of investors. But times have changed. With the company’s stock performance lagging, along with much of the newspaper industry, the chairman and publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and his family are bracing for a contentious meeting today. Last year, dissident investors, led by Hassan Elmasry, a senior portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, withheld 30 percent of their votes for the...

Editorial Observer A couple of weeks ago, I checked into a hotel in Bloomington, a Minneapolis suburb framed by the airport and the Mall of America. On the hotel door was a sign: “Firearms Banned on These Premises.” The next day I drove to St. Joseph, an hour west of the Twin Cities, where I saw the same sign. Slowly the logical conclusion sank in. If firearms are banned on these premises, then they must not be banned in other places. Sure enough, a year ago the State Legislature passed a “concealed carry” law, which means that it’s legal to...

It was almost painful the other night to hear Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sing about a war whose purpose Americans never really understood, started by a president who didn’t tell the truth and then waged the war ineptly. And that was before they sang about Iraq. The audience rose for Neil Young’s blast at George Bush, “Let’s Impeach the President,” and sang the words displayed on a huge TV screen, even the 20-something in front of us who had been text-messaging throughout the concert. That same screen also displayed thumbnail photos of slain soldiers while a counter ran up...

by Mark Finkelstein August 29, 2006 - 07:23 A New York Times editorial and an op-ed piece by one of its house columnists have something interesting in common this morning: stamp-your-feet frustration with the way the world is and an inability to suggest what should be done about it. In The Falling Paycheck, the Times editorial board complains that real wages aren't keeping up with the economy's continued expansion. "American employees have not shared in the wealth they’ve helped to create," laments the Old Gray Lady. Sure sounds as if the Times subscribes to the 'surplus value' theory of labor....

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.”...

The Photo that Started it All On the day the Intafada broke out, Tuvia Grossman was riding a taxi to visit the Western Wall. He was unwittingly thrust into the international limelight -- and nearly killed in the process. On September 30, 2000, The New York Times, Associated Press and other major media outlets published a photo of a young man -- bloodied and battered -- crouching beneath a club-wielding Israeli policeman. The caption identified him as a Palestinian victim of the recent riots -- with the clear implication that the Israeli soldier is the one who beat him. The...

The New York Times has morphed from the newspaper of record — "All the News That's Fit to Print" — into the Bush-hating newspaper of record — any Bush bashing that fits. Take the deficit, which is coming down because tax revenues are going up. It was our big story right at the top of the show. It's a good story because it shows that the Bush policy of tax cuts isn't in place simply to give his rich friends some extra cash for bigger yachts. Money in the economy instead of in the treasury produces more economic activity which...

The New York Times buried a report that the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee was urging the Bush administration to seek criminal charges against the newspaper for reporting on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists. As NewsMax reported on Sunday, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., blasted the Times’ decision last week to report that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records. King’s call for a prosecution of the Times was a lead story on cable news shows, wire services like the Associated Press and major...