Free Republic

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post often writes with a good deal of attitude, and his Tuesday column was no exception. In his report on Sarah Palin’s campaign speech in Clearwater, Florida, laced with mocking Palinisms (“darn right,” “betcha”), he wrote that “the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed, if not unhinged.” The “unhinging,” in Milbank’s assessment, came when Palin charged that Obama still has some explaining to do about his relationship with 1960s Weatherman bomber William Ayers. Milbank also wrote that Palin blamed Katie Couric for her “less-than-successful” CBS interview. Other newspapers reported a more light-hearted Palin response to...

The 2007 state fair was days away when Alaska's public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, took another call about one of his troopers, Michael Wooten. This time, the director of Gov. Sarah Palin's Anchorage office was on the line. As Mr. Monegan recalls it, the aide said the governor had heard that Mr. Wooten was assigned to work the kickoff to the fair. If so, Mr. Monegan should do something about it, because Ms. Palin was also planning to attend and did not want the trooper nearby. Somewhat bewildered, Mr. Monegan soon determined that Mr. Wooten had indeed volunteered for duty...

Andrea Mitchell gave it the old college try for Obama this morning. Summarizing the debate on Today, Mitchell managed to cobble together a video clip that showed McCain's only stumble, while snipping out what many including her colleague Chris Matthews saw as the debate's most salient feature: the multiple times Obama expressed agreement with McCain. And so it was that Andrea treated us to McCain's difficulties in pronouncing "Ahmadinejad." But the eight times Obama abjectly agreed with McCain? Not a one made it into the Mitchell editor's cut. Then there was Andrea's parting shot: "The only question is whether in...

The AP's so-called "poll" published Friday finding that at least a third of Democrats and independents harbored some racist animus towards Blacks and could thus cost Senator Barack Obama the White House is a bogus "story." It's nothing but a malicious hit-job against Senator Obama. By re-introducing race as a national topic of debate --when in fact it has been the underlying factor throughout the campaign-- the AP is trying to throw a lifeline for Senator John McCain. The AP knows, like the Republican Party, McCain, George Bush, and Karl Rove, that the only way McCain can secure the White...

After days of intense bipartisan negotiations and meetings today at the White House, the deal to bail out staggered investment banks may be dying amid partisan finger-pointing. Republicans blame Democrats. Democrats blame Republicans, and a key Democrat even pointed a finger at Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain. House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., told Democratic colleagues that McCain's sudden heightened involvement in the negotiations has destroyed chance of an agreement, sources told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. Frank compared McCain's involvement to "Richard Nixon blowing up the Vietnam peace talks in 1968."

If the McCain/Palin ticket wins in November, the Gray Lady shouldn’t deck the halls with holly for the holiday season. No, sir, she should pad them to protect her writers who, fa-la-la bonkers over a world gone “out of joint,” will take every opportunity to resoundingly knock their noggins, hoping the next mad, wild-eyed bonk will somehow “set it right.” How can I be so sure about all this? Well, just look at how McCain’s “Palin surge” has already sent the Gray Lady’s writers into a pre-psychotic state — and not just the liberals, but resident moderate Thomas Friedman. In...

Cable news network: McCain campaign said Campbell Brown interview of spokesman Tucker Bounds was 'over the line.' According to CNN, Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) pulled out of a scheduled interview with the network after a segment with Campbell Brown and a top McCain spokesman Monday night in which Brown asked for examples of a foreign-policy decision made by Republican vice president pick Sarah Palin.

SNIP Now that machine is focused with laser-like intensity on Obama. The clamour is loud and shrill: Obama is vain, inexperienced, liberal and dangerous. It is backed by a clandestine chorus whispering that he has a secretive Islamic past and it uses racially loaded language. It is also only going to get louder. This week, as McCain and the Republicans gather for their party convention in the Minnesota city of St Paul, the noise will become deafening. It has one purpose - to keep the White House in Republican hands at all costs and against the odds. The current mastermind...

For two years now, we’ve heard Barack Obama’s media allies telling us how he was a somehow Not A Politician, that he was the pragmatic soul of civility who was "uniquely qualified to nudge the country toward the color purple." (So said Newsweek.) If that myth hadn’t died under tons of weight to the contrary by now, it certainly should have expired in Springfield, Illinois when he selected Joe Biden as his running mate. The Democratic hatchet men were unleashed. Obama brought the D-word to the table: the Republicans are a “disaster.” The country could not suffer through “Four more...

New York Times publishes correction... 48 years late US Navy Airforce Major John McCain lying on a bed in a Hanoi hospital No one can accuse The New York Times of papering over its mistakes. America's most famous newspaper today issued a formal correction to a review of a Broadway production of West Side Story published no less than 48 years ago. In a further sign of just how seriously the newspaper takes its role as a newspaper of record, the "Gray Lady" also confessed that it had wrongly described John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, as a "former fighter...

PEARL, Miss. -- They're not exactly rooting for him, but prominent white supremacists anticipate a boost to their cause if Barack Obama becomes the first black president. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, of Louisiana, said Democrat Obama would be a "visual aid" to the idea that whites have lost control of America.

"WASHINGTON: A day after Senator Barack Obama said he could support broad energy legislation even though it would permit offshore oil drilling, which he has opposed, an aide to Senator John McCain said Sunday that he too might support such a package."

"Obama Addresses 200,000 in Berlin" -- thus ran the AP headline the day after Barack Obama's much-hyped speech in front of Berlin's Siegessäule or "Victory Column." This 200,000 figure has quickly become the standard estimate of the crowd for Obama's speech in both the American and the German media: so standard indeed that it is for the most part not even treated as an estimate. The estimates given by German public television ZDF actually during the event, however, were as many as 10 times lower. ZDF began its special "Obama in Berlin" coverage [German video] at 6:45 p.m. Central European...

In his first press conference about his tour of Afghanistan and Iraq, Barack Obama declared today that there is growing support for his plan -- to redeploy US troops from Iraq and ramp up forces in Afghanistan. Repeating that Afghanistan and the border region with Pakistan represents the "central front in the war on terrorism," he said the United States cannot wait to send more forces there. "The situation in Afghanistan is urgent and perilous," he said, with the historic Citadel overlooking Amman, Jordan as his backdrop. Both he and Republican rival John McCain are calling for sending thousands more...

You knew this was coming. Wall Street analysts late yesterday downgraded the stock of ABC, NBC, and CBS to "Paparazzi" status in light of the widespread perception that in covering presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama's trip to Europe and the Middle East, that they had lost a substantial amount of objectivity and were instead focusing more on the candidate's image and star power. Jeffrey F. Goldberg, an analyst with Bear Stearns, said, "You can't have NBC, for example, telling us what kind of sunglasses Obama is wearing or spending so much time setting up a photo-op [see below] of the...

In 1828, President John Quincy Adams's reelection campaign reportedly traded on innuendoes that Rachel Jackson had been imperfectly divorced from her first husband. Since her second husband, Andrew Jackson, once killed a man in a duel for the same insult to his wife's honor, Adams was perhaps lucky to lose no more than the presidency to Old Hickory. So, while there are abundant signs that Republicans this year are itching to take the practice to new lows, let's not forget that attacks on first ladies, actual or putative, go back a long way. And for all of the fear in...

I was on a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival this week when Newsweek's Jonathan Alter asked me, "Is Obama a sellout?" The question isn't whether he is a sellout -- it's about what demands are made by grass-roots social movements of those who would represent them. The question is, who are these candidates responding to, answering to? Richard Nixon's strategy was to run in the primaries to the right, then move to the center in the general election. Bill Clinton's strategy was "triangulation," navigating to a political "Third Way" to please moderates and undecided voters. This past week, Barack...

<p>EDITOR'S NOTE: This story appeared on the front page of The Washington Post on Monday under the headline,"In Flag City USA, False Rumors About Obama Are Flying." It was also distributed to 669 news organizations in 56 countries, including The Courier. An editorial and related letters to the editor are on Page A4.</p>