Free Republic

These maniacs in Copenhagen are voting on your future: President Chavez brought the house down. When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening. But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ - “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road...

Nearly half of Americans, or 49 percent, say they are only slightly or not at all concerned about climate change, while 35 percent are somewhat or highly concerned, the survey shows. Zogby's latest poll shows those with more relaxed views on the issue jumped 10 percentage points from 2007, when 39 percent said they were slightly or not at all concerned. In 2007, 48 percent said they were somewhat or highly concerned. The survey's results emerge as the United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen heads into its final week, amid warnings that global warming could eventually melt the polar...

The Prince of Wales is urging people to give up their cars in favour of walking and public transport to try to reduce carbon emissions. The Prince, who has two Jaguars, two Audis, a Range Rover and still drives an Aston Martin given to him by the Queen on his 21st birthday, said developers had a duty to put public transport and the pedestrian at the heart of their housing schemes. Speaking about the “domination of the car over the pedestrian”, the future King said: “We must surely be able to organise ourselves... in ways in which we are not...

The United States knew about an abortive coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002, and may even have taken part, former US president Jimmy Carter has told a Colombian newspaper. "I think there is no doubt that in 2002, the United States had at the very least full knowledge about the coup, and could even have been directly involved," Carter said in an interview with El Tiempo published Sunday. The former US leader said it is understandable that Chavez continues to blame the United States for the failed overthrow attempt. The Venezuelan president, considered a bulwark of leftism in...

ABC News’ Jacqueline Klingebiel and Lindsey Ellerson report: Levi Johnston discloses exclusive details about life behind the scenes at the Palin household in an upcoming October issue of Vanity Fair, which is set to hit stands today. In the exclusive interview, Johnston, who fathered Bristol Palin’s baby, revealed that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin asked the young parents to keep their pregnancy a secret during her unsuccessful bid for the 2008 vice presidency. “She told me that once Bristol had the baby she and Todd would adopt him. That way, she said, Bristol and I didn’t have to worry about anything,”...

Al Gore and Bill Clinton — ghosts of Democratic victories past who are increasingly showing up to buck up the faithful as President Obama goes through his first real trials in office — were the star guests at the Tennessee Democratic Party’s annual Jackson Day dinner. . . Clinton, who made a bit of political history by actually arriving early for this event, gave a typically rambling, discursive lecture on, among other things, the history of American politics since 1968 and the history of health care reform from 1994 on, accompanied by a corrective lesson explaining how the failure of...

SANTO DOMINGO -- Former Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa said Wednesday that he will soon announce his formal retirement from baseball and that he will not allow his legacy to be stained by steroid-use accusations. "Everything I achieved, I did it thanks to my perseverance, which is why I never had any long, difficult moments [as a baseball player]. . . "I will calmly wait for my induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Don't I have the numbers to be inducted?," said Sosa, who presently serves the Dominican government as Special Ambassador For Investment Opportunities. In an interview with...

The opinion polls have uttered. The country loves the new 50 per cent top rate of income tax. Soak the rich. Smash the bankers. So Government spin doctors are in second heaven. The Conservatives' silence redefines a tomb. And I suppose there'd be quite a turnout for the public flogging of Sir Fred the Shred. But before you book your tickets, hold hard. And before you lynch me as a rich b*****d flying a kite for my own cause, let me beg you to believe that I am not. I believe that this new top rate of tax could be...

A former Manhattan madam who supplied Eliot Spitzer with hookers also counted Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez as a customer - and found him so charming she dated him herself for free, former employees of the call-girl agency tell the Daily News. A-Rod wooed ex-madam Kristin Davis with flowers, jewelry, persistence and heated e-mails, according to the sources. "Throughout the years, there were a number of clients that I befriended and it was not uncommon for them to want the women they can't have whether it be the phone bookers or the madam," Davis said. "In regard to Alex, all I...

Natalie Dylan, 22, claims her offer of a one-night stand has persuaded 10,000 men to bid for sex with her. Last September, when her auction came to light, she had received bids up to £162,000 ($243,000) but since then interest in her has rocketed. The student who has a degree in Women's Studies insisted she was not demeaning herself. Miss Dylan, from San Diego, California, USA, said she was persuaded to offer herself to the highest bidder after her sister Avia, 23, paid for her own degree after working as a prostitute for three weeks. She said she had had...

A married South Shore teacher was living a disturbed double life for nearly two years, police said, allegedly seducing a 13-year-old boy, plying him with booze and having sex with him on kitchen floors and couches, sometimes right under the nose of her husband. Christine A. McCallum, 29, who is on leave from her job at an Abington elementary school, was charged yesterday with seven counts of statutory rape for the serial liaisons in Rockland and Abington from February 2006, when she allegedly took the boy’s virginity, to November 2007. McCallum, a waifish bespeckled blonde who tightly clutched her husband’s...

Absolutely disgusting. This teacher should be fired immediately.

John McCain's campaign is looking for a scapegoat. It is looking for someone to blame if McCain loses on Tuesday. And it has decided on Sarah Palin. In recent days, a McCain “adviser” told Dana Bash of CNN: “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.” Imagine not taking advice from the geniuses at the McCain campaign. What could Palin be thinking? Also, a “top McCain adviser” told Mike Allen of Politico that Palin is “a whack job.” Maybe she is. But who chose to put this “whack job” on the ticket? Wasn’t it John McCain? And wasn’t...

DENVER (CBS4) ― Metro State College is investigating a professor who asked students to write an essay critical of Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin. One student said the instructor singled out Republican students in the class and allowed others to ridicule them. "I was shocked, I was holy cow, this is just an open door for him to discuss politics with us," said Jana Barber, a student in the class. Barber shared the first class assignment with CBS4. Instructor Andrew Hallam asked students to write an essay to contradict what he called the 'fairy tale image of Palin'...

Race is arguably the biggest issue in this election, and it's one that nobody's talking about. The differences between Barack Obama and John McCain couldn't be more well-defined. Obama wants to change Washington. McCain is a part of Washington and a part of the Bush legacy. Yet the polls remain close. Doesn't make sense…unless it's race. Time magazine's Michael Grunwald says race is the elephant in the room. He says Barack Obama needs to tread lightly as he fights back against the McCain-Palin campaign attacks.

So much for nuance, or elevating the dialogue. Locked in a political death match with 52 days to live, the presidential campaigns went nuclear on what looked to be a quiet Saturday, with stumping curtailed because of Hurricane Ike's catastrophic overnight hit on Houston. Sen. Barack Obama's national press secretary, Bill Burton, accused Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) of "cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern presidential campaign history. His discredited ads with disgusting lies are running all over the country today. He runs a campaign not worthy of the office his is seeking." That was prompted by...

LEBANON, Va. (AP) - What's the difference between the presidential campaign before and after the national political conventions? Lipstick. "You can put lipstick on a pig," Barack Obama told a rally in a reference to a line in Sarah Palin's vice presidential acceptance speech. "It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years." Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama told an audience Tuesday that GOP presidential nominee John McCain says he'll change Washington, but he's just like President Bush. "You can put lipstick on a...

HOLY hoop skirts: When did the clock tick back to 1958? When Joe Biden tragically lost his wife and infant daughter in a car wreck in 1972, not a single colleague, friend or competitor advised him to quit his newly won Senate seat to raise his two little surviving sons. Rather, he was sworn into office from the injured boys' bedside, and took to commuting an hour and a half each way from Delaware to Washington. And when Biden's second wife gave birth to a daughter, no one thought to ask him to step aside and stay home. They all...

Sometime you really have wonder at what cost some are willing to see their political ideology advanced. To liberal documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, the bounds are seemingly endless. Moore has made a recent career out of attacking President George W. Bush, bashing conservatives and criticizing business. His latest outrage occurred on MSNBC’s August 29 “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” and when he commented about the coincidental timing of an unfortunate disaster – the potential for Hurricane Gustav to make landfall at the beginning of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. “I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that...

DENVER — Amid a spate of awkward on-air conflicts among MNSBC anchors at this week’s Democratic convention, some staff members say there are sharp internal disputes at the cable network over whether its opinion and personality-driven political coverage has crossed the line. “The situation at our channel is about to blow up,” a high-ranking MSNBC journalist told Politico on Wednesday. Two other MSNBC sources said some of the testy on-air exchanges between Keith Olbermann — whose quick-witted and often caustic commentary has fueled ratings growth — and other network personalities were a public glimpse of much more intense behind-the-scenes turmoil....