Free Republic

Never let a tragedy go to waste. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on Monday quickly used the explosions in Boston for political gain, linking the Republican Party to the horrific act. At 4:10pm, Kristof tweeted, "explosion is a reminder that ATF needs a director. Shame on Senate Republicans for blocking apptment." [SECOND UPDATE: More journalists are politicizing the tragedy. See below.]

NO JOKE: NYT MONDAY: Jon Stewart 'modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow'... Developing... "WHAT A JOKE!!!"

NYT columnist Maureen Dowd's support for women and equality in politics ends -- when the women are Republicans! Dowd has filed her nails and filed her Sunday column, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT, and the fur is set to fly against "Republican Mean Girls." "Jan, Meg, Carly, Sharron, Linda, Michele, Queen Bee Sarah and sweet wannabe Christine -- have co-opted and ratcheted up the disgust with the status quo that originally buoyed Barack Obama," writes Dowd. "Whether they're mistreating the help or belittling the president's manhood, making snide comments about a rival's hair or ripping an opponent for spending...

Janet Napolitano and I hadn’t planned to spend New Year’s Eve together.

THE New York Times' news room is bracing for a bloodbath in the next 10 days. The word from inside is that approximately 50 unionized journalists have accepted the buyout proposal, and only another 20 non-union editorial employees have gotten on board. That means the ax could fall on as many as 30 editorial people in the company's first-ever mass firing of journalists in its 156-year history.

As media digest the recent John McCain sex scandal allegations [0] by the New York Times, one side of the story seems destined to get ignored: one of the four co-authors took money from a liberal activist group to fund a hit piece about Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.) in 2006. Before becoming an investigative reporter for the Times, Pulitzer Prize winner Marilyn W. Thompson was editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. As Howard Kurtz reported [1] in October 2006, Thompson was in the middle of what one might call a pay for play hit piece against that state's leading...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 — In most midterm elections, an out-of-power party picking up, say, 14 seats in the House and five seats in the Senate could call it a pretty good night. But for Democrats in 2006, that showing would mean coming up one seat shy of taking control of both the Senate and the House. And it would probably be branded a loss — in the case of the House, a big one. For a combination of reasons — increasingly bullish prognostications by independent handicappers, galloping optimism by Democratic leaders and bloggers, and polls that promise a Democratic blowout...

Five months after President Bush was sworn in for another four years, his political authority appears to be ebbing, both within his own party, where members of Congress are increasingly if sporadically going their own way, and among Democrats, who have discovered that they pay little or no price for defying him. In some cases, Mr. Bush is suffering mere political dings that can be patched up, like the votes by the House this past week to buck him on withholding dues to the United Nations and retaining a controversial provision of the USA Patriot Act. In others, the damage...