Free Republic

Yes, the rest of the world is watching this embarrassing debt ceiling nonsense, and it is growing dismayed. Der Spiegel has a roundup of commentary in German newspapers about the fight, and the universal message is this: The US is holding the entire world hostage, and it's the Republicans that are playing with fire.

Imagine a bargain hunter's shock and dismay when responding to an ad on Craigslist listing a bunch of possessions for sale and then receiving an email announcing that gay people, Muslims, and illegal immigrants aren't allowed to purchase the wares. Read it for yourself. Our tipster, who lives in the D.C. area, responded to an ad on Craigslist, which has been taken down, expressing interest in one of the items for sale. He received this mass email response peppered with casual racism and homophobia. I've highlighted the worst parts, but the whole thing is really amazingly awful. "i have been...

New York (CNN) -- We were at a Manhattan water park when it happened. I was with my then 3-year-old daughter, Luna, playing in a sandpit on a foul, chilly morning beneath clouds that looked like ripped paper. It was no day to be outside, but living in a city of small apartments, it was no day to be inside with a child either. A little girl approached the two of us, clearly interested in playing. But when she arrived, she addressed only Luna. Pointing a finger at me, she asked her, "Is that your baby sitter?" I've been mistaken...

DECEMBER 6--In the days after Bristol Palin was voted into the finals of “Dancing with the Stars,” viewers from across the country wrote to the Federal Communications Commission accusing the ABC show of everything from running a “payola type program” to “encouraging and promoting teen pregnancy.” Many of the complainants, whose letters were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, were upset that, as one Oregonian put it, “the top scores were voted off yet Sarah Palin’s daughter remained on.” One viewer from Pittsburgh alleged that the show’s voting system had been “fixed by extreme supporters of the Tea...

The Internet's been buzzing with talk about how members of the U.S. Tea Party movement have been getting out the vote for Bristol Palin on Dancing With the Stars. The blog Jezebel had a post about it today, complete with quotes from conservative message boards about how Bristol's supporters were exploiting ABC's email voting system to cast multiple ballots for Sarah Palin's daughter. Jezebel quoted one site, FreeRepublic.com, that urged its members to "make liberal heads explode" by voting for Bristol, "even though she is not the best dancer." Well, my liberal head is kind of exploding right now because...

"Mm, your tears are so yummy and sweet! Oh, the tears of unfathomable sadness! My-yummy!" -- Cartman, South Park Admittedly, it has been a lot of fun to watch the wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Left after the savage beating they received on election day. However, it's more than a little disturbing that almost no one on the Left seems to think they lost because they actually did a bad job. In other words, according to liberals: Obamacare, the failure of the stimulus, Obama bowing to foreign leaders, the way they handled the BP oil spill, trying to...

President Obama allowed Republicans to define the terms of the nation's political argument for the past two years and permitted them to draw battle lines the way they wanted. Neither he nor his party can let that happen again. Democrats would be foolish to turn in on themselves in a fruitless battle over whether their troubles owe to a failure to mobilize and excite their base or to win support from the political center. In fact, Democrats held onto moderate voters while losing independents. What hurt them most was this brute fact: Voters younger than 30 made up 18 percent...

...Beaverton Middle School teacher Jason Levin's group wants to infiltrate the Tea Party to discredit the organization. But since Levin's name has been associated with the "Crash the Tea Party" Web site, he has been harassed by people who say they belong to that group. Levin told KATU-TV that his phone has been ringing around the clock and his answering machine is recording threats...

House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) says the "negative atmosphere" created by the tea party movement has influenced the retirement decisions of some House Democrats (but not Bart Stupak): “Do I think that [the] negative atmosphere that’s been created by the Tea Party and by others certainly goes into the thinking of members? I think it does. I think you have to honestly point out that it does,” Hoyer added. “I don’t think that was the determining factor with respect to Mr. Stupak, because again, he was in very good shape in the polls. It wasn’t a question...

SACRAMENTO — Sarah Palin typically generates controversy with what she says. Now the former vice presidential candidate is creating a buzz over how much she'll make at a black-tie gala she plans to headline at Cal State Stanislaus. How much she is commanding for her June 25 appearance at the $500-per-ticket affair won't be known because her contract with the CSU Stanislaus Foundation stipulates secrecy. It's the secrecy that rankles state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who is calling for full disclosure. "The CSU should immediately disclose how much money is being diverted from students to pay Sarah Palin's exorbitant...

U.S. right-wing groups, militias surge: study 8 mins ago PHOENIX (Reuters) – The number of right-wing "Patriot" groups that see the U.S. government as their enemy more than doubled in the last year, fanned by anger over the economy and a backlash against the policies of President Barack Obama, according to a study published this week. The report by the Southern Poverty Law Center said 512 anti-government Patriot groups were active in the United States last year, a leap from 149 in 2008. The "Rage on the Right" report (www.splcenter.org) found that militias, the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement,...

In the end, here's what the history of this attempt to reform health care comes down to: Barack Obama did everything wrong. Instead of using his vast post-electoral capital with the public to push for real reform and clean the Augean stables of the health care industry, he and his team of two-faced creeps like Rahm Emanuel took the Beltway-schmuck route and cut a backroom deal with the targeted industries — buying their acquiescence to a theoretical future of regulatory oversight in exchange for an upfront mountain of taxpayer giveaways. The Obama administration was willing to sell out every inch...

And this year's KERRI DUNN campus Fake Hate Crime award goes to...UC San Diego for getting all lathered up over a noose hung in the library. Folks, whenever you hear the word "noose" used in the same story about a supposed campus hate crime, it is a SLAM DUNK that it is a FAKE hate crime. A Columbia U professor goes BALLISTIC over a hanging noose and it turns out that SHE was the one who hung the noose in the first place. What set off this noose incident was the OUTRAGE over a Compton ghetto themed party that...

If you would like a graphic (literal and figurative) demonstration of our nation's greatest failing, sit in front of your television set and watch NBC cover an international sports event, the Winter Olympics, as if only Americans were participating. Every time the Today show's Meredith Vieira stumbles over the name of the Russian figure skater Yevgeny Plushenko (it's pronounced exactly as it's spelled, Meredith, with the accent on the second syllables) and giggles to show that it's OK to be ignorant, I think about all of the announcers from Canada and Europe who pronounce everyone's name correctly. Their employers care...

'Mexican Man' costume offends Latino shoppers, community groups By Sean Maher EMERYVILLE — A costume dubbed "Mexican Man" has offended Latino shoppers and community groups after being discovered at a Halloween chain store. The photo on the costume packaging shows a man with a thick mustache wearing a poncho and a sombrero. Oakland resident Monica Plazola said she discovered the costume last week at the Spirit Halloween store in Emeryville, which she was visiting with her two children, ages 7 and 9. "We were there at the store, with all kinds of costumes, and that was the only one identified...

Specter wants Wilson censured Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.), who's looked at POTUS from both sides now, was just on the Bill Press radio show suggesting the South Carolina firebrand Joe Wilson be censured for his heckle heard round the world. Said the Republican-turned-Dem: "He apologized immediately afterward but I don't think that’s adequate... If an apology is the consequence of an outburst I think we can expect more – that’s not a sufficient penalty that’s not a sufficient price to pay.. I'm not saying the guy should be kicked out of the House… But there ought to be some rebuke,...

Editor, At the risk of sounding sexist, how did the health care debate get hijacked by an overgrown teenage girl on Facebook? Sarah Palin quit her job as governor of Alaska to become an unpaid right-wing blogger, yet still has the power to disrupt any rational discourse. Possibly related: How did someone like Palin even rise to the spotlight in the first place? Her rise was born in the waning days of the contentious Democratic primaries between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. After the controversial Democratic National Convention Rules Committee decision to split in half the delegates from Michigan and...

"Sleep deprivation, "insult slaps," water dousing and "walling," or slamming a detainee's head against a wall, were techniques used by CIA interrogators to break high-value detainees, according to an agency memo." Holder decision "promises political headaches for President Barack Obama, came after the Justice Department's ethics watchdog recommended considering prosecution of CIA employees or contractors for interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan that went beyond approved limits." Cheney said ""The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions," he said in a statement."

After the Obama-Gates-Crowley "beer summit" at the White House ended, Ronald Walter, a black longtime professor of politics at the University of Maryland, said: "Black parents are using this as a case in point of what they have been saying all along" to their children, "Racism hasn't gone away." Children, and especially black males, "are likely to confront it" from police. (Washington Post, July 30). And on CNN, Colin Powell chimed in with his advice to black children: "When you're faced with an officer who is trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something, this is...

Those words begin this stark, frank, and -- unfortunately -- utterly necessary column by the very fine writer Leonard Pitts, Jr.. The subject is Nazis, who seem to be everywhere these days. Read on: I hope this column makes you sick. See, we'll be talking about Nazis, something many of us are doing lately. Indeed, just this week a fellow named Joseph e-mailed me about a caller he heard on a radio show. The man, vexed over healthcare reform, likened President Obama to Adolf Hitler. Asked why, he said, ``Hitler took over the car companies, then healthcare and then he...

Accusations and responses from Liberal Kook to Rational Conservative:. You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.[ Damn straight! - The US Supreme Court said, "No Cherry Picking Vote Recounts from Democrat Counties....It's UnConstitutional ] You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.[ That's Right - Its like NOT having Politicians pretending to be Health Care Providers ] You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.[ Plame was not "covert" -- she was a political HACK that needed to be outed.....her and her...

Here is video of CNN Anchor Tony Harris losing it over the call by Police Officers in Cambridge, Massachusetts for President Obama to apologize for his accusation that they "acted stupidly" in arresting a Harvard Professor. Harris listened to reporter Don Lemon who was at the press conference, and then just lost it, saying "This is incendiary," referring to the call by the police for an Obama apology. He then put reporter Don Lemon on the spot to share a personal experience of profiling, which Lemon did not seem to want to do.. . . . . . (Watch Video)

...they were upset that their 14-month-old brother Trig, who has Down Syndrome, was "mocked and ridiculed by some pretty mean spirited adults." I'd like to know the names of those mean-spirited adults who mocked and ridiculed her special needs child. I don't believe it for a second. I think what she is talking about is that she was criticized for the way she dealt with her pregnancy with Trig and her caregiving of him after his birth. Remember, Sarah Palin is a right-wing, evangelical Christian for whom "family values" and the role of the mother are paramount. Many right-wing Christians...

...How can an industry survive if it allows other companies, like Google News, to use its content without any compensation? (NYTimes editor) Keller asked him (Google CEO), "When are you going to start paying for our content?" Schmidt stiffened a bit and declared: "We will pay when everyone pays" - everyone with an Internet site, that is. There's an impossible standard... Online sales now provide one-third of his (RIAA VP) industry's income. At best, the music business would be a hollow shell of what it is today... There's another solution. The courthouse. The Associated Press announced last week that it...

Think about it. Has there been a lousier 10 years in American history? OK, the Civil War, granted. And the Great Depression wasn't so hot, either, the pictures suggest. But this one has been close enough to an all-time bad to merit the kind of willful amnesia that I'm proposing. sajohnson@tribune.com

Charitable contributions at Southern California mosques are down by as much as 30% to 50% over the last few years. Blame the climate of fear. That’s what Rafe Husain, a board member for the Islamic Center of Corona Norco, is doing. “People feel tense and uncomfortable,” Husain is quoted as saying in a recent Los Angeles Times article. Just another story about the woeful recession we currently find ourselves in? Mosque-goers are feeling jittery about their dwindling 401k accounts and have decided to fork over less money to the needy? Not quite. What’s got some L.A.-area Muslims in a cold...

If the White House and Pentagon are going to make wise decisions about what to do with the Guantanamo Bay detainees they are going to need accurate information upon which to base their new policies. Yet the single most cited “fact” last week about the terror suspects - that 61 of the men released from Gitmo have returned to fight against us - is simply not true. The number is far lower than that. And the longer “61” is used as a “talking point” by critics of the administration of President No. 44 the longer it will be before a...

MADRID - Spain’s former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar drew criticism Wednesday by reportedly referring to what he called the "historic exoticism" of Barack Obama’s election as US president. Aznar was asked by a journalist from the Spanish edition of Vanity Fair magazine about the election in November of the first black president of the United States. "A historic exoticism and predictable economic disaster," replied the conservative former leader. "Obama is a person of black race who managed to become president of the United States, which is an extraordinary change for them", he said, without indicating whether he was referring...

At least Dick Cheney, as wrong a guy as we've ever had this close to the presidency, goes out in character, thinking that he and George W. Bush were right about everything. The problem is that Cheney's character now sounds as weird and unhinged as Jack Nicholson's in "A Few Good Men." There was Cheney on the Fox television network Sunday, always more a home to him than Yankee Stadium is to Derek Jeter, defending the last days of a dying administration and a dying Republican empire, defending Bush and Iraq and Donald Rumsfeld, defending Guantanamo and torture and surveillance...

TEN words keep ringing in my ears, long after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin supposedly redeemed herself and put to rest the nation's worst fears about the bottom of the Republican ticket. "How long have I been at this?" she asked during last week's high-stakes vice presidential debate. "Like, five weeks?" Say it ain't so, Joe, she's right. No question, Palin killed. She's great on television when she's got rehearsed lines to deliver and no follow-up questions to answer. She's brash and disarming, and she makes you want to send her to Washington and give those boys a big whack on...

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself. Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down. Who says public discourse hasn't deteriorated? The fierce reaction to my column has been both bracing and enlightening. After 20 years of column writing, I'm familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced...

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right. So why do it? It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're...

Leave it to the liberal print media to find some way to kill everyone's Olympics buzz. For instance, did you know that the choice by the U.S. Olympic Committee to have Ralph Lauren stitch the threads for Team USA's opening ceremonies uniform was an unfortunate nod to racism and classism and a futile, nostalgic clinging to America's waning WASP empire? That according to Sameer Reddy (pictured at right, photo via Newsweek) in an August 20 online exclusive for Newsweek

-- A South Carolina senator is fielding negative reactions after he posted a picture of Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden with a controversial comment on the state legislative Web site. S.C. Sen. Kevin Bryant said he "wanted to make people think." But after the public reacted negatively to the image, Bryant said he will take it down. The image shows bin Laden and Obama with the text: "the difference between Obama and Osama is just a little b.s."

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - A Republican state senator from South Carolina is being criticized for a post on his blog that shows photos of Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden wearing similar clothing, along with a line that states the difference between the two is "a little B.S." The image was posted on Sen. Kevin Bryant's blog on Friday without an explanation from the politician. It appears to be a photo of a T-shirt, with images of bin Laden and Obama wearing turbans and the words "OBAMA" AND "OSAMA," with the "B" and "S" each highlighted in red. The American-Arab...

Afew weeks ago, John McCain made a little joke at his wife's expense. Referring to her alma mater -- Cindy McCain is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where she was a cheerleader and sorority sister -- he called it "USC, the University of Spoiled Children." It's not an original joke, of course -- it's been around for ages, possibly even as long as John McCain himself -- but it said a lot about the man who wants to be president. ...Visit any college classroom -- at the University of Spoiled Children, Harvard, Yale, Puget Sound, doesn't matter...

What is it with photographers these days? Are they really all terrorists, or does everyone just think they are? Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We've been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required. Except that it's nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph...

Via Media Matters: During the March 31 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist repeatedly mocked Sen. Barack Obama’s bowling performance — which Scarborough called “dainty” — at a March 29 campaign stop at Pleasant Valley Lanes in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Deriding Obama’s score, he said: “You know Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it’s a man, to be a real man.” Scarborough added, “You get 150, you’re a man, or a good woman,” to which Geist replied, “Out of my president, I want a 150, at least.” Later in the show, after NBC...

We thank Michael Gargano for his resignation as Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs. More importantly, we thank you- the current student body, and especially those who participated in the recent general student strike-for issuing the final blow to his career at UMass Amherst. Since Gargano's arrival in 2003, Student Affairs has attempted to… 1. Gentrify our campus by: - Cutting staffing and operating budgets for the Everywoman's Center, the Stonewall Center, and the ALANA support programs by approximately 50% - Allowing the University' outreach efforts to disintegrate: since 2003, the campus has lost all of its major grant-funded outreach programs,...

Looks like the bedwetters have gotten themselves into quite an ironic pickle. The Supreme Court is deciding on a case of voter ID requirements in Indiana. By now you know the liberal arguments ... it disenfranchises the poor, the minorities, the elderly, blah blah blah. Well it looks like someone didn't do their homework. Faye Buis-Ewing is 72 years old. She has become a "poster child" for the disenfranchised voter that will be protected under a voting system with no ID requirements. But now we've discovered one minor problem. Not only is Faye registered to vote, but she is registered...

Comedienne Rosie O'Donnell has hit back after she was named the world's most annoying celebrity by insisting all stars are irritating.

THEY SAY YOU can't fight City Hall, but last Friday Joey Vento stood tall (at 5-foot-5) in the center ring of the circus to answer a discrimination complaint filed against him by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. Vento's been a handy punching bag for the press. Local editorial writers and columnists have vilified him as a racist, a nativist, a know-nothing, a do-badder, because of his (now world-famous) 4-by-9-inch sign at the window of his Geno's Steaks that reads: "This is America. When Ordering, Please Speak English." Some believe that is hate speech. For some reason (hate, perhaps?) the...

The president's warmongering remarks on the Iranian threat suggest he is psychotic. Really.Forget impeachment. Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.

Conservatives claim to be in favor of stable families, small businesses, hard work, private schools, investment and homeownership. So why in the world are so many on the right attacking the family of Graeme Frost? Frost is the 12-year-old from Baltimore who delivered the Democrats' reply to a radio address by President Bush in September. The seventh-grader pleaded -- in vain, it turned out -- that the president not veto Congress's $35 billion expansion of the children's health care program known as SCHIP. A car crash in December 2004 left two of Halsey and Bonnie Frost's children comatose, Graeme with...

The epithet of choice these days for Republicans who oppose any expansion of government’s role in health care programs is “socialized” medicine. Rudy Giuliani has used the “s-word” to denounce legislation that would enlarge a children’s health insurance program and to besmirch Hillary Clinton’s health plan. Mitt Romney has added a xenophobic twist, calling the Clinton plan “European-style socialized medicine,” while ignoring its similarities to a much-touted health care reform he championed as governor of Massachusetts. Other conservative critics have wielded the “s-word” to deplore efforts to expand government health care programs or regulation over the private health care markets....

Regarding Fran Eaton's Aug. 26 column calling the South Suburbs an abortion-free zone: I remember a number of years back when doctors and clinics advertising that they were doing abortions in this area were threatened, set fire to and picketed, which is likely another reason there are not many openly-broadcast abortion clinics in the South Suburbs. That subject aside, I would like to address the many inconsistencies and illogical arguments in Eaton's column. Eaton name-calls liberals whom she says get "hot and bothered" about resistance to using tax dollars for fixing social ills. Interpretation: Rich people hate when they are...

In these days of 24-hour news cycles churning out forgettable headlines about interchangeable celebrities of no importance, it's nostalgic to be reminded of a time when sensational news spawned complicated conspiracy theories that could be followed for years. Arthur Bremer, an emotionally troubled young busboy from Milwaukee convicted 35 years ago of attempting to assassinate segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, will be released from prison this year. Today's reporters probably only dimly remember Bremer or the serious speculation that he could have been a patsy at the center of a criminal conspiracy masterminded by former CIA operatives working for the...

To some, it is a "corporate coup d'etat," a conspiracy by big business to turn Canada into the 51st state by stealth. Others see it as a plot to destroy the U.S. by forcing it into a North American union with "socialist Canada" and "corrupt Mexico." It is the Security and Prosperity Partnership, a sprawling effort to forge closer ties among the three nations in everything from anti-terrorism measures to energy strategies to food-safety and pesticide rules. Launched two years ago by then prime minister Paul Martin, President George W. Bush and his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, at the so-called...

'Hundreds' cancel trips, homeowner threatens to move out Telluride: Some of the ski fans who have patronized Telluride, Colo., now are calling the ritzy resort "the land of radical liberals" and canceling planned vacations there because the town board voted to approve an ordinance calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. One ski club of 175 people already has made plans to go elsewhere, another skier has threatened to sell his home there and another critic predicted the town soon would bow to Mecca. "It's huge, unbelievable," said Telluride Mayor John Pryor. "Ski groups are canceling...

President Bush, at podium, speaks to members of the media prior to the ribbon-cutting ceremony ... At this morning's ribbon-cutting for the newly renovated White House Briefing Room, President Bush dropped in just long enough to rub reporters' noses in his cheerful refusal to take them seriously. ... the president was in full frat-boy mode, clowning around during introductory remarks by C-SPAN's Steve Scully. ... Bush apparently felt Scully went on too long. "I like a good, short introduction," Bush jeered as soon as Scully gave up the podium. Here's the transcript. "We missed you -- sort of," Bush...