Free Republic

It’s a common refrain from the victor: elections have consequences. The victor then goes on to claim a mandate to do A or Z. It’s par for the course. The real question is whether elections have consequences for the media. As it turns out, the answer appears to be yes. On a whole host of issues, the mainstream media’s reporting seems to have a bit more balance, at least compared to the pre-election coverage of some of the campaign’s most important issues. The left will dismiss this as conservative sour grapes, but ask yourself whether you saw, heard or read...

NEW YORK - The morning 23-year-old Sean Bell was shot to death by police, his grieving relatives did something that has become almost routine in such cases: They called the Rev. Al Sharpton. Within hours, the longtime civil rights activist had consoled relatives, held two news conferences, and begun organizing a community rally for the next day. Sharpton has long been a fixture on New York's left-wing scene, and has been especially vocal in his crusade against police brutality since the 1990s. But the Saturday shooting, which left Bell dead on his wedding day and wounded two other black men,...

Comments in Middle East border on bizarre... Bill Clinton (in Qatar) called the cartoon depictions of Muhammad published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last fall "totally outrageous cartoons against Islam," ... In fact, the cartoons are pretty tame stuff -- the Islamic prophet is not shown as dirty, drooling, shaped like an animal or engaged in any unsavory acts, all standard for cartoon depictions of Jews in the modern Arab press. Mr. Clinton is entitled to his opinion, of course, though one wonders why he would want to gin up more hostility toward the West with an inflammatory characterization of...

Is this a wartime election in which America's whole future hangs in the balance, or an ordinary contest over taxes, jobs and health insurance? President Bush probably wins the first. Democrat John Kerry wants the second. Bush and other key speakers at the Republican convention last week cast the election in historic, even epic, terms. Kerry's first response was about domestic policy and personal pique. The outcome of the election depends, at least partly, on whether a majority of voters think the whole world changed on Sept. 11, 2001, or whether life and politics can go on more or less...

<p>SACRAMENTO - When Sheila Kuehl arrived in Sacramento eight years ago as California's first openly gay lawmaker, she was given a cartoon that poked fun at her solitary status: A waiter welcomes her to a dinner of lesbian and gay lawmakers, announcing, ``Table for one!''</p>