Free Republic

Bette Midler ought to try reading a book. To the uninitiated, books are these things made of paper that have words printed on them. Hard words, not just pictures. Stuff that illiterates — some of whom live in lazy, superior, effete, privileged Tinseltown — might hire underlings to decipher for them. The Not-So Divine Miss M, 76, would learn that in 1861, the proud people living in the western part of Virginia voted to tear off from the slave-owning state to form a Union state, many of whose citizens fought and died in the Civil War to end the scourge...

The twisted case of Jussie Smollett is depressing, infuriating — and should end with the maximum prison sentence. But I predict he’ll skate. The reprehensible alleged actions of the gay, black fabulist who cried “MAGA” will be forgiven, excused and ultimately encouraged by sympathetic progressives — deemed justifiable Trumpicide. And it will happen again. And again. Smollett, who claimed he was attacked outdoors by a pair of racist, homophobic white Trumpsters on a frigid Jan. 29 in Chicago, transformed Wednesday from the purported target of a vicious hate crime to a lying, alleged felonious hoaxster. But the fact that the...

Embracing the presidential aspirations of Donald Trump was, from the start, an exercise in magical thinking. In my heart, I wanted the smack-talking, hair-challenged, self-absorbed New York City billionaire Republican to nail down this baby. But in my head? Not so much.

Carly Fiorina scares the stuffing out of me. She lost me at the word “fetus.’’ On the campaign trail and on the debate stage, the lone female candidate among the 16 contenders for the Republican presidential nomination exudes a level of superhuman control posing as gravitas. Every hair is locked in place. No skirt crease is offline. Every word emanating from Fiorina’s sculpted lips is delivered in practiced, soothing tones, her head tilted to an ­unthreatening 10-degree angle.

Bill Cosby is a lousy husband and a possible sex addict. But is he a rapist? I have my doubts. Is Cosby, 78, so diabolically creepy that he secretly slipped Quaaludes into the mouths of his alleged victims, as even President Obama suggests? Perhaps. But I’m starting to think that Cosby’s “crimes’’ were not rapes, but high-pressure seductions.

In a whiny new tell-all, Bill Clinton's favorite ex-intern, Monica Lewinsky, gripes she was reduced to a shame-filled recluse, unable to score a decent job because of her "global humiliation". Make her go away! I’d actually feel sorry for Monica Lewinsky — if she weren’t so damn infuriating. She’s America’s favorite beret-wearing former intern, whose very name has become a synonym for a sex act she eagerly performed on her knees, a dame who rocketed to fame for failing to dry-clean a blue dress stained with the seed of the then-leader of the free world. Now, Lewinsky, 40, wants our...

(edit)   In e-mails leaked by a group waging civil war against Assad to London’s Telegraph, Jaafari assures the boss — whom she calls “The Dude” — that pulling the wool over Western eyes is a piece of cake. The “American psyche can be easily manipulated,” she wrote. Maybe Walters knew she’d climbed into bed with a killing machine. Babs proceeded to ask Assad, gingerly, about violence in his country. It made the tender soul say he felt “humiliated.” He fired Jaafari, and she moved to New York. Weeks later, she had an intimate lunch with an eternally grateful...

Off with their hats! It was bigger than the Super Bowl and as tacky as a legion of Elvis impersonators. Most of all, it was disturbingly white. Yesterday's little wedding of William and Kate, a worldwide showcase of dreadful hats, fad diets and an unusually sour, lemon-yellow-clad queen, was designed to prove to the common man that the royals, finally, were down with the people. But from the moment a triumphant Kate tiptoed with her dad onto the red carpet -- yes, she walked an actual red carpet to and from the altar -- I saw not a potential queen....

Will John Boehner please man up? Liberals and adver tisements for erectile dysfunction make the dubious claim that real men cry. But in the case of the bawling Mr. Boehner, tearing up publicly has transformed from a risky quirk of human nature into an extroverted piece of slobbering, nose-dripping, three-hanky theater.

Barbie she's not. Meet Gwen Thompson, the newest addition to the American Girl canon of dolls -- the wildly suc cessful, extremely expensive brand of faux children that are sold out of a four-story town house in the heart of Fifth Avenue. Little children as young as 4 are addicted to these pricey little monsters. It's like middle-American crack. You have an African-American doll, an American Indian doll. A Jewish one. A doll who "lived" during the Great Depression, and one from the Roaring '20s. And while you were snoozing, the creators of American Girl, which is sold by Mattel,...

Paterson's greatest sin is not that he was horny. Rather, he's cheap. It's as if he were in competition with New Jersey's deposed gay governor, Jim McGreevey, who engaged in sexual ménages à trois with his wife and his hot, male driver following dinner at that fine wings-and-skins emporium, TGI Friday's. Paterson's tastes were so low-rent, he made up with his wife, Michelle, with an intimate liaison at the same Manhattan Days Inn where he met with various women whose names escape. Days Inn, David? Was Motel 6 booked? There is one more thing you need to know about New...

"If you are in a relationship, and it is 'doing absolutly [sic] nothing' for you, makes you feel bad about yourself of situations, just causing unessesary [sic] drama, and ruining things that you may actually care about . . . why would you want that in your life?" She wrote, "Surround yourself around people that [sic] are making moves, and doing what 'they want and love' with their lives, positive energy . . . that's what life all about . . . living." I feel a tear coming on. Two alternate pictures are emerging of Ashley. In one, she's a...

SLAIN ACTRESS' UNWITTING ROLE IN ALIEN WAR (NYC Actress who was murdered by Illegal Alien) By ANDREA PEYSER November 30, 2006 ADRIENNE Shelly always wanted to be famous. But not for this. On a street in Greenwich Village where the indie-film actress and budding filmmaker once worked in obscurity, more than a dozen people came out last night wearing her picture around their necks. Carrying candles and literature, speaking softly and intensely, they gathered on the street. In the evening's warmth, their numbers swelled. In their 30s and 60s, they came from uptown and even New Jersey. All shared one...

Sen. Joe Lieberman stood in the parking lot of Mickey's Oceanic Grill chatting with exactly two people - one supporter and a stranger wearing a dirty tan raincoat with food speckling the left corner of his mouth.......the guy leaned in and asked Joe weirdly, "What color are your eyes?" Joe laughed - then rapidly got the hell away.....on the campaign trail Lieberman, after 18 years in the Senate, struggles to stay alive..... Democrats have abandoned him in droves because of his support for the war in Iraq..... The cooling rain never arrives, and neither do the people. This forced the...

July 10, 2006 - Do you want a white Jew to represent you in Congress? The answer to the Jewish question is a resounding "no" on Nostrand Avenue in Flatbush - epicenter of a vicious political contest, even by Brooklyn standards. "Some ethnic groups are trying to control the area," warned Jude Saint-Phard, a 67 year-old construction worker who is black. "It's a master plan," he added. "It's the same plan that took Downtown Brooklyn from the blacks, that took Park Slope! Once they have the Congressional seat, they are pushing the blacks out of the area." I ask which...

ALL-AH HELL BUSTS LOOSE By ANDREA PEYSER THE young man with the hot head calls himself Abdul lah, which he translates to mean "slave of God." This slave is revolting, in more ways than one. "If anyone disrespects the prophet, it's our duty to kill him," he said. "One drop of Muslim blood is worth all the blood in the world." The man who calls himself Abdullah steeled his gaze at a non-believer. "You insult the prophet," he snarled, "and you will pay." And then this young man with no identifiable name displayed a handmade sign depicting four faces, all...

--SNIP-- Scott Peterson could barely take his eyes off Amber Frey, in her tight, charcoal suit and ratty hair dyed a shocking shade of home-brewed blond. Amber. Sweetie. How close we came! It had been nearly two excruciatingly long years since Scott laid eyes on that pale, slightly yellow-tinged skin and dazzling white overbite. Since he heard that tiny, childlike voice pester him about her kid, her needs, her fears, dreams, hopes, blah, blah and blah. But then, it was also that long since Scott gazed on those gazelle legs that yesterday ended in pointy-toed black sling-backs with three-inch spike...

FOR the second time in 10 minutes yesterday, Lizzie Grubman and her potty posse took over the ladies' room. And wouldn't you know it. Nature called. So there I was, on the third floor of Suffolk County's Criminal Court building, poised outside the lair of the peroxided Mercedes maven, heretofore to be known as the Princess of Pee. But just as I was about to seek my own private audience with the public plumbing, I was stared down by a man who must be 7 feet tall. "Please wait 'til she's done," the bruiser requested. This brought a compelling new...

...Once, tough-guy columnists like Chicago's Mike Royko, New York's Jimmy Breslin and Boston's Mike Barnicle ruled the roost from the local bar, hanging with cops, barbecuing politicians and spinning tales of urban angst. But few local columnists these days have captured that compelling voice, and the reason has much to do with the way the world, and the newspaper racket, have changed.... Across the country, many metro columnists are polite or parochial or tend toward soft-feature blandness. Some newspapers seem to dole out the slots on demographic grounds -- fielding a white man, a woman and a minority -- who...