Free Republic

Renowned author James Patterson has ripped the New York Times in a fiery open letter over its “lack of journalistic rigor” regarding its Best Sellers list — after the closely-watched list snubbed his highly-reviewed novel about law enforcement in America. Patterson, 76, said his new book “Walk the Blue Line: No Right, No Left – Just cops telling their true stories to James Patterson” initially failed to make the list even though he said it outsold all but three of the books on the list of 15, according to BookScan, which compiles book sales data. He accused the Times of...

No, this isn’t about Maureen Dowd or Paul Krugman. That’s too easy. It’s about a story on flooding in New Orleans today (1 September). Here’s the lead: “The 17th Street levee that gave way and led to the flooding of New Orleans was part of an intricate, aging system of barriers and pumps that was so chronically underfinanced that senior regional officials of the Army Corps of Engineers complained about it publicly for years.” The second and third paragraphs say: “Often leading the chorus was Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps... [who] grew particularly frustrated this...