Free Republic

Media: Talk about the elite lagging behind a more sophisticated public. Newsweek, trying to overcome its slide into obscurity, thought it could grab attention by smearing Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann. Big mistake. The smear came in the form of this week's cover story, which tried unconvincingly to depict GOP presidential candidate and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann as "The Queen of Rage," with a cover shot that made her look maniacal. But if anything, Bachmann comes across as Thatcheresque in her unmovable opposition to more deficit spending. Question her opposition a journalist may do, but don't make it out as...

BEIJING—The confusion over a major outage in China of Google Inc.'s search sites on Tuesday spotlights one of the most remarkable aspects of the Chinese government's Internet censorship apparatus: It is designed to be obscure. By Wednesday, access to the sites appeared to have returned to normal—searches for some terms, but not all, were blocked. Government officials declined to comment when asked if they were the source of Tuesday's outage, leaving the situation and Google's future in China a mystery for users. China operates one of the most extensive and sophisticated Internet-filtering systems in the world, according to analysts who...

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Matthew 1:21 He was an obscure baby born to obscure parents in an obscure Middle Eastern town witnessed by obscure shepherds, foreigners, and animals. And yet He was and is the single-most central figure in all of history. He had no money to speak of, no wealth, no significant fame, no degrees, no fanfare. He had no home, no wife, no children. He walked with sinners, and rebuked the religious leaders of his day. He...

In January 1999, when Philosophy and Literature announced that Rhetoric professor Judith Butler had won its fourth annual Bad Writing Contest, nobody was much surprised. Many had pointed out the solecisms of Butler, runner-up Homi Bhabha, and previous awardees, and the abstract, twisting grandiloquence of critical theory with a progressive slant was already well known in academic circles. But the contest did have an unusual fate outside the academy. It became news. Philosophy and Literature editor Denis Dutton wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (February 5, 1999), a startling forum for the treatment of academic prose. Articles in...

Microsoft said Thursday it has now let a dozen national governments see its Windows source code in its battle to win lucrative public-sector contracts and to muffle mounting hype over rival operating system Linux. Earlier this year, Microsoft started a new initiative that involved opening up its Windows OS to governments interested in tailoring the software to fit, primarily, their security needs. Microsoft said 12 countries, including Austria, Russia, China and the United Kingdom, had entered into the new deals, with another 35 in negotiations, since the program started in January. The stakes are high. An increasing number of...