Free Republic

Trib Total Media will stop publishing the print edition of its Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper after Nov. 30 and will lay off about 20 percent of its workforce as it downsizes its print operations and beefs up its digital presence. The changes and cuts announced Wednesday — including the planned layoffs of 106 employees — are the latest moves in a dramatic restructuring of Trib Total Media that began last year and has included employee buyouts, layoffs, closing some papers, selling others and cutting back delivery in Allegheny County.

Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh philanthropist and reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, whose support for right-wing causes laid the foundations for America’s modern conservative movement and fueled the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton, died on Friday. He was 82. Mr. Scaife’s death was reported by the The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a newspaper he owned. He had announced recently that he had cancer. Decades before David and Charles Koch bankrolled right-wing causes, Mr. Scaife and Joseph Coors, the beer magnate, were the leading financiers of the conservative crusade of the 1970s and ’80s, seeking to reverse the liberal traditions...

The Obama administration's Russian reset, designed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was premised on the idea of Russia as a partner with the United States. Hand in hand, the former rivals would address the major international crises of the day. This initiative will be remembered as one of the biggest foreign policy follies of the modern era — a staggeringly naïve exercise in appeasement that emboldened Moscow at Washington's expense. From Damascus to Tehran to Kiev, the Russians have been running rings around a U.S. presidency that believes “leading from behind” is a serious strategy, rather than a policy...

I’ve known Rick Santorum for 22 years, having first met him in 1990 before he’d won his first campaign for Congress. I interviewed him on WORD-FM, an evangelical Christian radio station where I was a frequent guest host (and eventually a full-time host) early in his campaign. If I was not the first media personality to interview Rick, I was one of the first. I had Rick as a guest at the request of my friend, Mark Rogers, who was running Rick’s campaign. Over the years I interviewed Rick at least a dozen times and debated him several times as...

This week, a full and unconditional endorsement of Murtha’s notion has come from a completely unexpected source: the notably conservative Tribune-Review, which is based in Greensburg, Pa., but considers itself a full-fledged Pittsburgh newspaper. It’s controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, one of the chief funders of conservative think-thanks and activist causes around the country. Less than two months ago, the newspaper (daily circulation about 102,000), attacked Murtha’s plan. Printed below is the text of the latest editorial, which was published on Tuesday. Perhaps a few other papers would now like to re-visit this subject, with the third anniversary of the...

With 10 you get egg roll. With presidents you get first ladies. And we've had some mighty nice first ladies in this nation's history. We've also had some kooks. We may get yet another on Tuesday. A very rich and snotty one at that.