Free Republic

Lost in the overall cratering in the stock market yesterday in reaction to Tim Geithner's awful "soiled the bed" TARP II presentation yesterday -- New York Times Company stock closed at $4.23. As of 3:30 PM today, the stock was up 12 cents. Yesterday's close is the stock's lowest point since the company went public in July 1986, and is down over 50% in real terms during that time:

Americans have watched in horror as President Bush has trampled on the Bill of Rights and the balance of power. The list of abuses that President-elect Barack Obama must address is long: once again require the government to get warrants to eavesdrop on Americans; undo scores of executive orders and bill-signing statements that have undermined the powers of Congress; strip out the unnecessary invasions of privacy embedded in the Patriot Act; block new F.B.I. investigative guidelines straight out of J. Edgar Hoover’s playbook. Those are not the only disasters Mr. Obama will inherit. He will have to rescue a drowning...

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings. A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino...

The world arrived here more than a century ago with the gold rush and later the railroad. Yet one aspect of American life did not come to town until 1996, the year Sarah Palin ran for mayor and Wasilla got its first local lesson in wedge politics. -SNIP- Anti-abortion fliers circulated. Ms. Palin played up her church work and her membership in the National Rifle Association. The state Republican Party, never involved before because city elections are nonpartisan, ran advertisements on Ms. Palin’s behalf. Two years after Representative Newt Gingrich helped draft the Contract With America to advance Republican positions,...

It wasnt so long ago that John McCain was The New York Times' favorite Republican. Now, the editorial board is apparently so fed up that they can't wait until next day's paper and is blogging about him in the middle of the day: [T]here was something surreal, and offensive, about today’s soundbite from the campaign of Senator John McCain. The presumptive Republican nominee has embarked on a bare-knuckled barrage of negative advertising aimed at belittling Mr. Obama. The most recent ad compares the presumptive Democratic nominee for president to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton — suggesting to voters that he’s...

Wiping the nervous sweat off his brow, Adam Nagourney at the New York Times tries to figure out who misplaced the emperor’s clothes.

When a distinguished American military commander accuses the United States of committing war crimes in its handling of detainees, you know that we need a new way forward. “There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful new report on American torture from Physicians for Human Rights. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” The first step of accountability isn’t prosecutions. Rather, we...

The New York Times launches its long-awaited smear of John McCain today, and the most impressive aspect of the smear is just how baseless it is. They basically emulate Page Six at the Post, but add in a rehash of a well-known scandal from twenty years ago to pad it out and make it look more impressive. In the end, they present absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing -- only innuendo denied by all of the principals: Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers....

The liberal New York Times is wasting no time in smearing John McCain, the Republican Party nominee for President. Late Wednesday, the Times published to its website a story set to hit print editions Thursday, linking McCain to a female lobbyist. The paper suggested the Arizona Senator has been engaged in an illicit relationship. "A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet," the Times reported. "Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff...

TOLEDO, Ohio - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain issued a statement Wednesday night saying he "will not allow a smear campaign" to distract from his campaign as published reports questioned his relationship with a lobbyist. The Washington Post quoted longtime aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met with Vicki Iseman and urged her to stay away from McCain. The New York Times suggested an inappropriate relationship between the Arizona senator and Iseman, a Washington lobbyist. The New York Times quoted anonymous aides saying they had confronted McCain and Iseman, urging them to stay away...

<p>The CaucusThe latest political news from around the nation. Join the discussion.</p> <p>Vicki Iseman at an awards dinner in 2004.</p> <p>A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.</p>

I post this on the vanity thread, and have been a part of the Mitt or McCain (or Huck or Rudy) debate since the South Carolina primary ended. I chose to go with Mitt. Everyone has an argument AGAINST the candidates who are NOT their guys...and some are good...others not so good... I frankly understand why some might vote for Rudy, or maybe even Mike Huck...these two guys weren't endorsed by two of the biggest liberal newspapers in America. I think Mitt is the best of the bunch, and I don't understand why ANYONE who is conservative would embrace the...

IT is probably not to his advantage that Mitt Romney’s clean-scrubbed, youthful presence so readily reminds voters of those earnest Mormon missionaries knocking on their doors. If it were almost any other church, a missionary past would most likely be an asset for a presidential candidate. To have spent two years in mission work after high school is a sign of early and admirable idealism, commitment and strength of character. But to many American Christians, those friendly Mormon missionaries embody exactly what they fear and resent about Mormonism. And Mr. Romney, after nearly a year of graciously sidestepping invitations to...

To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal. This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it. They’re falling over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights.

The New York Times is still obsessing over Blackwater – well at least it gives Halliburton a break. Today the Times reports: The American security contractor Blackwater USA has been involved in a far higher rate of shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq than other security firms providing similar services to the State Department, according to Bush administration officials and industry officials. The Times doesn't have any precise figures for Blackwater, but explains: In 2005, DynCorp reported 32 shootings during about 3,200 convoy missions, and in 2006 that company reported 10 episodes during about 1,500 convoy missions. While comparable...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's spokesman on Monday denied a published report that described intensifying debate among White House officials over whether to begin a gradual pullback of U.S. troops in Iraq. White House spokesman Tony Snow said a story in The New York Times about a proposed "gradual withdrawal"of forces in "high-casualty neighborhoods in Baghdad and other cities" is "way ahead of the facts." "There's no debate right now on withdrawing forces from Iraq," Snow said. The report and denial come as a GOP senator said support for the president's war policy was eroding and as the Senate prepares...

MIAMI, June 14 — Addressing rising anger about the cost of owning a home in Florida — and the recent troubles of the state’s real estate industry — the Legislature on Thursday approved a plan for a property tax cut it said would be the largest in state history. The plan was championed by Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican who has vowed to make taxes “drop like a rock,” and Marco Rubio, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, who has made property-tax relief the main goal of his first year in power. The cost of the package was...

March 21, 2007 Editorial Tom DeLay Looks Back Since his forced retreat from power in a corruption scandal, Tom DeLay, the former House Republican majority leader, must have been watching re-runs of “Cool Hand Luke.” That film’s cynical rationalization of life’s conflicts as merely a “failure to communicate” is Mr. DeLay’s approach to explaining the Republicans’ loss of Congress last year. No, no, he insists in a new memoir, it wasn’t voters revolting against the quid pro quo corruption that Mr. DeLay turned into a dark art. Rather, Republicans “did not communicate their message” and overcome “short-term, media-fed issues.”...

March 16, 2007 Editorial Phony Fraud Charges In its fumbling attempts to explain the purge of United States attorneys, the Bush administration has argued that the fired prosecutors were not aggressive enough about addressing voter fraud. It is a phony argument; there is no evidence that any of them ignored real instances of voter fraud. But more than that, it is a window on what may be a major reason for some of the firings. In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack...