Free Republic

Just got this in email tonight, and thought I'd pass it on to my fellow Texans. There's an important vote coming up on Wednesday, 8 May in the Texas Senate regarding smart meters. This is a call to contact your state Senator regarding this important vote. The email: To my Friends in Texas – I’m going to just ask you to trust me! Most of you on this list know that I’m not into “radical” stuff – and many know that although I have passed along a little info opposing Smart Meters in the past, it has definitely not been...

Economist and humorist Ben Stein placed the responsibility of gun violence on Monday squarely on a media culture that shows “guns resolving problems.” “I don’t really think, with all due respect, that guns are the problem. I’m sure I’m going to get a lot of hate mail for saying this,” he said. “It has to do, in my humble opinion, with how much people are brainwashed by Hollywood into thinking that the solution to all their problems is a gun.” He continued, slamming violent video games: “After a while, I think, the distraction between the imaginary and real is blurred...

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT — The FBI probe into the sex scandal that led to the resignation of CIA director David Petraeus has expanded to ensnare Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced early Tuesday. According to a senior U.S. defense official, the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of “potentially inappropriate” emails between Allen and Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old Tampa woman whose close friendship with Petraeus ultimately led to his downfall. Allen, a Marine, succeeded Petraeus as the top allied commander in Afghanistan in July 2011. The...

Did anyone think the release of Mitt Romney's tax returns would satisfy Democrats and make them focus on the real issues in this campaign, including President Obama's failed domestic and foreign policy record and approaching massive tax increases? If so, please call me for a great deal on Arizona swampland. The Obama campaign's deputy manager, Stephanie Cutter, accused Romney of taking advantage of lower tax rates for capital gains available only to "those at the top." Is Cutter saying Romney is wrong to obey tax law? The tax code is a mess. It, not Romney, should be the object of...

Determined to neuter the grassroots and head off future insurgencies like those of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Ron Paul, Republican party bosses have pulled off an audacious coup, high-handedly turning the GOP into a much more top-down, centralized party. Boehner with gavel Yesterday, the Republican National Committee in Tampa adopted some rules changes that shift power from the state parties and the grassroots to the RNC and the GOP presidential nominee. Former Governor John Sununu of New Hampshire touted the new rules as providing “a strong governing framework” for the party over the next four years. But in fact...

SOURCES: Biden at GOP convention; Secret Service in Tampa say they are Biden advance -- he's coming Monday or Tuesday... Developing ...

By now you've probably heard of how Bishop Robert McManus of the Diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts, asked Anna Maria College to rescind its invitation to atheistic humanist Victoria Kennedy to speak at its 2012 Commencement. Now the Catholic Free Press is reporting that Sister Yvette Bellerose, chairwoman of the Board of Trustees, and Jack P. Calareso, president of Anna Maria College, have asked Bishop McManus not to attend the Commencement either. It has been asserted that the Bishop would be a distraction. What of it? No doubt Victoria Kennedy would have been a distraction for students who actually accept the...

The University of Kentucky’s men’s basketball team is heading to Washington D.C. to meet President Barack Obama this Friday...

Rosen V. Romney is an orchestrated DISTRACTION Bill O’Reilly & Charles Krauthammer were discussing the “Buffet Rule” which most everyone knows is the premise for Obama’s tax raising campaign on the wealthy. Republicans know that he is using this admittedly useless endeavor to foment class warfare. Krauthammer did a capable job explaining how 250 years worth of this additional tax would only amount to about one year of the current deficit spending. He explained that this is pure demagoguery (as we all know) and he added that “demagoguery works.” I will add that the reason why these trivial distractions work...

Hundreds marched through the streets of New York City on Wednesday night in memory of and to protest the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, in what organizers called the “Million Hoodie March.” The march began in Manhattan’s Union Square, where a rally in support of Martin had taken place. Martin’s father Tracy Martin and mother Sybrina Fulton, in New York for interviews with major media outlets, made an appearance at the rally to thank the crowd for its enthusiasm. ”My heart is in pain,” Fulton said, according to the AP.

Forget slut-shamming. Sir Richard’s Condoms and the ad agency TDA_Boulder are using the Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke flap to encourage the Georgetown law student’s supporters to embrace their inner and outer slut.The effort to mock Limbaugh includes a “Sluts Unite” website and social media campaign, which urge supporters to change their social media avatars to one of their 24 slogan-logos. Popular picks include “In Sluts We Trust,” “Proud Father of a Slut,” “You Can Call Me Slut,” “I Believe In Slut,” and “Pro-Slut.”Naturally, the Boulder, Colo. companies have topped off the campaign with an oath for unified sluts:I believe that sex...

Mitt Romney, whose campaign is preparing a multi-million dollar wave of negative advertising to persuade voters that Rick Santorum should not be president, says he is open to the possibility of choosing Santorum to be his running mate should Romney win the Republican nomination. Romney appeared on Fox News Wednesday morning and was asked, "You and Rick Santorum, we haven't seen you go head-to-head yet…In the big picture, could you see a scenario where you two team up?" "Oh, I think it's always possible to have people come together in our party, whether it's Rick and I, or others in...

FEBRUARY 15, 2012 Romney Races to Defend Michigan State Up for Grabs as Santorum Surges BY JOSEPH B. WHITE AND NEIL KING JR. [Subscriber Content Preview] DETROIT—Amid signs Rick Santorum could win an upset victory in Michigan, Mitt Romney escalated his campaign to win the state's Republican primary by taking on the powerful auto union and reigniting the debate over the federal bailouts of two Detroit auto makers. Mr. Romney, writing in a Detroit News editorial-page column Tuesday, attacked as "crony capitalism on a grand scale" the Obama administration's $81 billion auto-industry bailout nearly three years ago. The salvo comes...

Time for Newt to Do the Honorable Thing By DAVID CATRON on 2.14.12 Gingrich can perform one last service for the GOP, drop out and endorse Santorum. About a week after his surprising victory in the South Carolina primary, Newt Gingrich did an interview with ABC News, most of which he devoted to complaints about the tactics Mitt Romney was using against him in Florida: "We have not been as effective in telling the truth as he has been in running ads… which have had to be pulled because they were so inaccurate." His most notable remark, however, was a...

Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, by far the biggest financial backer of Newt Gingrich's presidential bid, is preparing to open his wallet again. But this time, the casino magnate appears to have more than one agenda. In a bit of political chess, Mr. Adelson is ready to not only directly support the former House speaker in the Republican primary, but to use his cash to push Rick Santorum from his position atop the latest national polls, according to people to have discussed the matter with Mr. Adelson. Enlarge Image ADELSON ADELSON Las Vegas Review-Journal/Associated Press Sheldon Adelson, shown with his wife, Miriam,...

Europe is in the midst of a fiscal crisis caused by too much government spending, yet many of the continent’s politicians want the European Central Bank to purchase the dodgy debt of reckless welfare states such as Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal in order to prop up these big government policies. So it’s especially noteworthy that economists at the European Central Bank have just produced a study showing that government spending is unambiguously harmful to economic performance. Here is a brief description of the key findings. …we analyse a wide set of 108 countries composed of both developed and emerging...

China-geddon: A China crash will be scarier than Europe Venky Vembu Dec 2, 2011 Say you’re at a railway station, waiting for the slow train to eurogeddon. You’ve been told that the eurozone is in deep trouble with all those piles of debt, that it will fall apart inevitably, dismembering the euro and inflicting pain and misery around the world. Months go by, and although there’s a lot of shunting and hooting, and lots of frenetic activity, the eurogeddon train doesn’t steam in. You begin to grow impatient, and wonder if the train is coming at all. And then in...

One of the top complaints about wealth distributions holds that the vast majority of the people of the country are excluded from the vast majority of its wealth. Considering the "plight" of all of those 20-somethings at the various occupiers, one could be deluded into believing the truth of the 99% mantra. But what if that wasn't true? Considering there are many branches of the group, let's take a look at its main one, occupying near Wall Street, in New York. Seeing how the occupiers are using other people's food and bathrooms and some living in tents (with others still...

Forty two years ago, Oakland mayor-to-be Jean Quan was a U.C. Berkeley student-activist rallying for a movement dubbed the Third World Liberation Front of 1969. That movement would later give birth to the university's Ethnic Studies Department and influence universities across the country to integrate such a unique discipline. The department studies represent the history and experiences of marginalized people, especially people of color. Quan went on to become many things: union organizer, Oakland Board of Education member, Oakland City Council member, Chabot Space & Science Center board chair. As she tells on her own website jeanquan.org, in the beginning...