Free Republic

A well-informed, interested public is often hailed as the 'ideal' of democracy. But a new Princeton study suggests that the opposite could be the case - and that people who have no interest at all could be vital to the working of a democratic society. The uninformed are essential to democracy because their apathy helps to dilute the effect of powerful minority interests - for instance, highly educated elites - who would otherwise dominate public life.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the State of Wisconsin on Tuesday over a new law requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification, charging that the measure violates the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit says that the state is infringing on some citizens' right to vote and to be treated equally under the law and amounts to a kind of poll tax on voters who lack the documents needed to get an approved ID. Republican lawmakers and Gov. Scott Walker, who is named in the lawsuit along with a long list of other state officials, have said they believe the measure...

Two of the Democratic Party’s core institutions are challenging a bipartisan consensus on Israel and Palestine that has dominated American foreign policy for more than a decade. The Center for American Progress, the party’s key hub of ideas and strategy, and Media Matters, a central messaging organization, have emerged as vocal critics of their party’s staunchly pro-Israel congressional leadership and have been at odds, at times, with Barack Obama’s White House, which has acted as a reluctant ally to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government. The differences are ones of tone – but also of bright lines of principle – and while...

America will pay a dear price for many decades to come for the way it has allowed its men to be disrespected, dishonored, denigrated, and pushed into the background in the interests of serving some nebulous diversity agenda prompted by leftists and the media. Just consider the abject foolishness of a government policy developed by Lyndon Johnson and his Democrat vote hustlers that PAYS Black men to abandon the children they father. Young black females now are delivering babies into homes that are 70% fatherless, and each day we read of the decay of our urban areas this failed policy...

A Suffolk University law professor has issued a blistering e-mail calling plans to collect care packages for U.S. troops “shameful.” Professor Michael Avery also questioned the intent of an American flag hanging in the law school’s atrium (snip)“I think it is shameful that it is perceived as legitimate to solicit in an academic institution for support for men and women who have gone overseas to kill other human beings,” Avery wrote in an e-mail to his colleagues. “The United States may well be the most war prone country in the history of civilization.”

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, folks. After all of these years, none of us should be surprised, but I still am. Look at how quickly what is known as the mainstream media goes for the ugliest racial stereotypes they can to attack a black conservative. You know who's laughing himself silly today is Bill Clinton. (imitating Clinton) "Yeah, I really did it. Ha-ha. They praised me and they went as far out of their way as they could. Even my old buddy Carville is out there and he's saying, 'Look what happens when you...

Karen Finney is not just any Democrat; she was the spokeswoman for the Democrat National Committee, served in the Clinton White House, was the press secretary for Hillary Clinton's New York Senate race, and is a veteran of four Presidential Campaigns. Tasked with analyzing Herman Cain's surge in the GOP's Presidential campaign for MSNBC last week, Finney offered up the most outrageous, insulting, demeaning single sentence we have ever heard – particularly by someone who supposedly speaks for an entire national political party. "I think he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel that they're not...

A comedian and actor went to Twitter to suggest that the death of Muammar Gaddafi should inspire American liberals to kill Sarah Palin, sparking a virtual fire-storm. That's just what actor and former soda spokesman Orlando Jones did when he turned the death of the Libyan dictator into a call to arms for American liberals to kill the poster woman for the Tea Party movement. 'Libyan Rebels kill Gaddafi, if American liberals want respect the better stop listening to Aretha & kill Sarah Palin(:' Mr Jones tweeted on Friday.

MoveOn.org is planning to launch a protest movement of its own to compliment the Occupy Wall Street momentum with the stated goal of "make[ing] Wall Street pay" and rebuilding the entire U.S. financial system. MoveOn.org is funded by the George Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Another grantee of Tides is the Adbusters magazine, which is reported to have come up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The new MoveOn.org Wall Street campaign serves as further evidence suggesting the anti-Wall Street movement is a well-planned campaign and not the spontaneous uprising its...

"Last night an AFL-CIO sponsored National Teach In was held on line."

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Have you seen any pictures of the Occupy Wall Street protesters on the Upper East Side of Manhattan? The Upper East Side, where they're supposedly marching in front of financial executives' homes? You will not see any pictures of the crowd because the crowd was smaller than the number of media covering them. I was really disappointed. I was saddened by the turnout for the millionaires march on the Upper East Side. There weren't even hundreds of them up there. I mean, even if you use Million Man Math, there wasn't enough up there to outnumber the...

Protestors [sic] are assembling in New York and around the country to let billionaires, big oil and big bankers know that we’re not going to let the richest 1% force draconian economic policies and massive cuts to crucial programs on Main Street Americans. Out-of-touch Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor said he is “increasingly concerned by the growing mobs.” Mobs? That must be what Republicans refer to as the middle class, or maybe the millions of unemployed Americans across the country. As Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters, “The message of the American people is that no longer will the recklessness...

Cheering Economic Terrorism – SEIU Getting Ready to ‘Terrify’ DC: Stephen Lerner at SIEU Meeting Outlines Rules for Creating a Crisis — We Want Their Kids to Hate Them, Name Enemies Like Glenn Beck, Shut Down Bridges, Long Occupations, Recruit Tea Party

The “Occupy Wall Street” protests and former White House “green jobs czar” Van Jones are the beginning of an “American Fall,” according to Rep. John Larson, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. In Tuesday evening remarks before a group of visiting activists and journalists from Egypt and Tunisia, Larson said the United States has drawn inspiration from revolutions in those countries and, as a result, is experiencing its own “Arab Spring, if you will.” In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller following his speech, Larson said left-wing activists with “the right morals” are pushing America’s democracy to “evolve.”

Billionaire investor George Soros said he sympathizes with the protesters who have camped out near Wall Street in New York and inspired similar anti-corporate demonstrations in other major cities across the United S While announcing a $40-million aid pledge at the United Nations for rural African development, Soros told media that he understood the protesters’ rage over big government bailout for banks "Actually I can understand their [protesters] sentiment, frankly," he said. "And at the same time the decision not to inject capital into the banks, but to effectively relieve them of their bad assets and then allow them to...

(VIDEO) "This Is Revolution Not Reform" - Occupy Wall Street Organizer to 'Excited' Al Sharpton: We Are Anarchists and Revolutionaries,"This Is the Beginning of a Revolution in This Country"

As a way to solve the national debt crisis, North Carolina Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue recommends suspending Congressional elections for the next couple of years. “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue said at a rotary club event in Cary, North Carolina, according to the Raleigh News and Observer. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.” Perdue said she thinks that temporarily halting elections would allow members...

WASHINGTON -- It is clear from the way President Barack Obama has been talking about the federal budget recently, and about taxation since he came to office, that all the money that Americans earn belongs to the federal government. The key words in this conversation are "tax expenditures." Obama has lost a lot in tax expenditures, and he wants more of those tax expenditures back. He can spend that money, he believes, more wisely than the citizenry -- that is to say, you and me. He has wiggled and wobbled on the nation's finances over the years. First, he spent...

RUSH: I no longer feel alone! For 20, 21 years I was it. We would get a speech by a Democrat like we got from Obama yesterday, I'd be the only guy refuting it. But now everybody's up to speed. Even the Associated Press is fact-checking Obama and finding that he's dead wrong about all of his assertions yesterday about taxes and who pays them. Greetings, by the way, great to have you, 800-282-2882 is the number if you want to be on the program. I did something last night that I seldom do anymore. I watched cable news. I...