Free Republic

Pennsylvania Republicans moved on Wednesday to seek personal information on every voter in the state as part of a brewing partisan review of the 2020 election results, rubber-stamping more than a dozen subpoenas for driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. The expansive request for personal information, directed at Pennsylvania’s Department of State and approved in a vote by Republicans on a State Senate subcommittee, is the first major step of the election inquiry. The move adds Pennsylvania to a growing list of states that have embarked on partisan-led reviews of the 2020 election, including a widely criticized attempt...

Born amid made-up crowd size claims and “alternative facts,” the Trump presidency has been a factory of falsehood from the start, churning out distortions, conspiracy theories and brazen lies at an assembly-line pace that has challenged fact-checkers and defied historical analogy. But now, President Donald Trump argues that the vote itself is inherently “rigged,” tearing at the credibility of the system. Should the contest go into extra innings through legal challenges after Tuesday, it may leave a public with little faith in the outcome - and in its own democracy. The New York Times tabulated 131 false or misleading statements...

Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a clear advantage over President Trump across four of the most important presidential swing states, a new poll shows, bolstered by the support of voters who did not participate in the 2016 election and who now appear to be turning out in large numbers to cast their ballots, mainly for the Democrat. Mr. Biden, the former vice president, is ahead of Mr. Trump in the Northern battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as well as in the Sun Belt states of Florida and Arizona, according to a poll of likely voters conducted by The New York...

WASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter talk every day, typically a fast check-in initiated by the Democratic presidential nominee, often from the back of a car between campaign stops. Although Mr. Biden tries to touch base with his two grown children and five grandchildren once a day, doling out “I love yous,” Hunter is a special case. “My only surviving son,” is how the former vice president refers to his “Hunt,” whose battles with addiction have made for a long-running high-wire act within the Biden universe. The stresses of Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign have made an...

NEW YORK, June 18 (Reuters) - The New York Times Co. NYT.N warned on Wednesday its second-quarter profit would fall short of Wall Street expectations, and also cut its full year outlook, citing Iraq war costs and fewer travel-related advertisements. The newspaper publisher, rocked last month by a reporting scandal, saw its shares drop nearly 8 percent after it blamed the lower outlook on the post-war hangover, higher newsprint prices and fewer travel-related ads due to the worldwide SARS scare. Its shares ended down $2.91, or 6 percent, at $45.63 in Wednesday trading on the New York Stock Exchange. "Our...

Bowing to a letter writing campaign from Ukrainian- American groups, the Pulitzer Prize board has quietly convened a subcommittee to investigate revoking the award it gave to New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty in 1932. "We’re just going to look into a variety of complaints, just look into everything," said the administrator for the board, Sigvard Gissler. Inspired by the 70 th anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine — the winter of 1932–33, when Stalin’s FiveYear Plan deliberately starved Ukrainian peasants into submission, killing millions — the Ukrainian groups have mobilized 45,000 letter writers to call the board’s attention to the...

<p>The New York Times and The New Yorker go off the deep end.</p> <p>"Just weeks after the LaRouche in 2004 campaign began nationwide circulation of 400,000 copies of the Children of Satan dossier, exposing the role of University of Chicago fascist 'philosopher' Leo Strauss as the godfather of the neo-conservative war party in and around the Bush Administration, two major establishment publications have joined the exposé."</p>

When liberals wear ties and jackets, it's not news. But for some reason, when conservatives put on baggy jeans, it's a huge story. That seems to be the upshot of a recent cover story of The New York Times magazine titled "The Young Hipublicans," which explores the world of campus conservatives. The article's teaser says it all: "No taxes, no gun control -- but these days blue blazers and gay bashing are not required. College conservatives have learned that by acting like everybody else, they can sway their peers and become the most influential political act on campus." The article,...

How did one of the world's greatest newspapers wind up in a civil war? After being rocked by the serial fabrications of Jayson Blair and the controversial assisted reporting of Rick Bragg, the New York Times has been struggling to repair the damage. But the wounds are far deeper than immediately apparent, in part because of long-simmering resentment over Executive Editor Howell Raines's bruising management style -- and a bureaucratic structure that protected the likes of Blair and Bragg, though their conduct was vastly different. As the newsroom meltdown played out in the press, Raines and his management team hunkered...

LOS ANGELES - When O.J. Simpson was ruled not guilty of murdering his wife, the United States discovered overnight the chasm of difference in perception between blacks (who found the verdict reasonable) and whites (who found it insane). Something similar is going on with the fabrication scandals that have rocked The New York Times this month. Elite reporters and editors are reacting to the Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg revelations with sorrow and anxiety, while the rest of us proles revel in the spectacle of a haughty institution being humbled and mocked. Why are journalists so glum? Because The New...

<p>In the summer of 2000, Maribel Morey, a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame, worked as an intern in the Miami bureau of the New York Times. Many days, she was sent by reporter Rick Bragg to gather quotes for a handful of stories carrying Mr. Bragg's byline about a historic tobacco liability case in which cigarette makers were slammed with a $145 billion judgment.</p>

How the Jayson Blair scandal touched off a struggle for the soul of the Gray Lady. ‘It ain’t bragging if you really done it!” crowed New York Times executive editor Howell Raines in April 2002. The newspaper had just won an unprecedented seven Pulitzer prizes for its coverage of 9/11 and its aftermath—Raines had assumed the office just a week before the planes hit the towers—and he was standing in front of his office in the third-floor newsroom, addressing the staff. Not far away, beside the exposed-metal staircase near the heart of the newsroom, was the cubicle of a hale...

May 15 — The New York Times has begun making inquiries into the work of several staff reporters after questions about their work were raised by colleagues and people outside the paper, according to multiple sources at the Times. EDITORS AT the paper are looking into complaints about fudged datelines, composite scenes and too-good-to-be-true quotes, the sources say. On Thursday evening, a Times spokeswoman confirmed that questions were being asked in the wake of the Times probe of Jayson Blair, who earlier this month resigned after being accused of plagiarism. “Our Jayson Blair coverage has brought forth a variety of...