Free Republic

Imagine being a supposed journalist that views free speech as a threat to the mainstream media groupthink. You don't have to imagine hard because we now have the example of Steve Coll of the New Yorker magazine who unashamedly proclaims that free speech is a threat to what he perceives as journalism, namely the liberal narrative that he wants to see maintaining a monopoly on public information.Coll isn't just a magazine writer -- he's the dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, and a former managing editor of The Washington Post. And yet, he still presented free speech as a...

It's past time the United States did some soul-searching and accept responsibility for exacerbating an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. This will require a rethink of Washington's current handling of Afghanistan and indeed its entire view of the region. Steve Coll recently made a cogent argument in the New York Times that the U.S. should seriously engage with China and other regional powers. However, this is impossible so long as Washington remains convinced that Pakistan alone is the primary impediment to peace rather than its own mistakes... Both Islamabad and Washington compete to wear the cloak of victimhood. Pakistan remains in...

In the current issue of the New Yorker, Steve Coll, Dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, has a brief piece on Hillary Clinton’s private email problems. He traces the current scandal to…Rush Limbaugh! Hillary Clinton, in her memoir “Living History,” recounts her struggle to defend her privacy while residing in the White House. Some of her stories have a gothic tone. After Bill Clinton’s first inauguration, Harry and Linda Thomason, friends from Hollywood, found a jocular note under a pillow in the Lincoln Bedroom. It was from Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host. How did the note get...

Trevor Loudon Obama File #109 JournoList was an email group of up to 400 prominent U.S. journalists, academics and “new media” activists, who reportedly colluded in the run up to the 2008, to influence public opinion in favor of the Barack Obama and the Democrats and against their Republican opponents. Many “JournoListas” were involved with Marxist based based organizations such as Democratic Socialists of America, or the far left Institute for Policy Studies. Some, like Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect, had close ties to the Obama campaign and Administration. An overlapping group of “JournoListas” , at least eight strong...

Wednesday morning, August 27, between 11 am and 1:30 pm EST or 9 am and 11:30 am mountain time, I'll be chairing a New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force event in Denver at the Colorado History Museum. The keynotes are Senator JOHN KERRY (D-MA), Obama National Security Adviser GREG CRAIG, Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School Dean ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, former Congressman and Obama Adviser MEL LEVINE, former German Foreign Minister JOSCHKA FISCHER, and Aspen Institute President (and former CNN Chairman and CEO and TIME Managing Editor) Walter Isaacson. Our panel will be former Israeli negotiator and New America Foundation Senior Fellow...

Osama bin Laden lives among friends, follows news on satellite television or the Internet and reads books about American foreign policy; this much can be safely inferred from his periodic audio and video statements. His latest topical punditry surfaced just a few weeks ago on jihadi websites when he addressed violence in Gaza and the pope's travels. Because of his passable grasp of current events, Bin Laden may well understand what many Americans do not: that he is more likely to be killed or captured during the next year or so than at any time since late 2001, when he...

'Osama bin Laden is Planning Something for the US Election' US author Steve Coll spent years looking into Osama bin Laden's family. Now, his new book provides a unique insight into the clan. SPIEGEL spoke with him about where the terrorist might be hiding, how his father got his start, and the unique romantic liasons pursued by one of his brothers. SPIEGEL: Mr. Coll, Osama bin Laden recently broke a long silence. He threatened Europe and called for the "liberation" of the Gaza Strip. How seriously should we take these missives? Do they tell us anything about him or about...

Mission to Capture or Kill al Qaeda Leader Frustrated by Near Misses, Political Disputes First of two articles.The seeds of the CIA's first formal plan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden were contained in another urgent manhunt -- for Mir Aimal Kasi, the Pakistani migrant who murdered two CIA employees while spraying rounds from an assault rifle at cars idling before the entrance to the CIA's Langley headquarters in 1993. For several years after the shooting, Kasi remained a fugitive in the border areas straddling Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. From its Langley offices, the CIA's Counterterrorist Center asked the...

If you want the real book on Richard Clarke—minus the Bush-administration attacks and Clarke’s self-promotion—read Ghost Wars, Steve Coll’s new book on the CIA in Afghanistan. “His enemies regarded him as not only mean, but dangerous,” writes Coll, managing editor of the Washington Post. “So palpably did he thrive on an air of sinister mystery,” Coll writes, that Clarke chose Oliver North’s old White House office. Coll is not the first journalist to detect and use Clarke’s knowledge of the sinister and mysterious. While Clarke was White House terrorism czar, he often showed up in news dispatches as an unnamed...

It’s election season, a time when pundits analyze and moralize without pause. But do the commentators who make a big deal of politics actually vote? Some have a hard time finding their way to the ballot box. Maureen Dowd, who savages politicians in her New York Times columns, was AWOL from 9 of DC’s 12 elections from 1994 through 2000. A registered DC Democrat, she voted in two general elections and missed every primary and local contest. Another Dem, The Capital Gang’s Margaret Carlson, also missed the eight DC primary and local elections during those years—despite writing an ode to...