Free Republic

A deaf 3-year-old from Nebraska is being asked by the school district to change his name, his family alleges, because the way he refers to himself in sign language resembles “weapons.” Apparently the Grand Island school district has a policy that prevents students from bringing “any instrument…that looks like a weapon” to school, and now hands can be considered “instruments.” “Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous. This is not threatening in any way,” Hunter Spanjer’s grandmother Janet Logue said. Brian Spanjer, the boy’s father, added: “It’s a symbol. It’s an actual sign, a registered sign,...

2nd 'potatoe' moment this week for campaign in Ohio If Barack Obama carries the key swing state of Ohio in November, it won’t be because he and his supporters know how to spell. Today, at a Republican rally in Powell, Ohio, an airplane pulling a banner attempted to capitalize on Mitt Romney’s “joke” yesterday in Michigan about not needing to show his birth certificate. The Democrats have responded by accusing Romney of having joined the “birthers,” and the airplane banner continued that theme. Unfortunately, the supporters who sponsored the banner – MoveOn.org, as reported by a Los Angeles Times reporter...

Vice President Joe Biden will be in Tampa during the Republican National Convention, a campaign official confirms. "Next week, on Monday, August 27 and Tuesday, August 28, Vice President Joe Biden will travel to the Tampa area and other cities for campaign events," an Obama campaign official tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. "Additional details on the Vice President’s trip are forthcoming." The Republican National Convention will run from August 27-30 in Tampa. The Drudge Report first reported the news that Biden would be in Tampa at the same time as the Republican convention.

Vice President Joe Biden is currently under fire for adopting a drawl and telling a group of black supporters that Republicans “gonna put ya’ll back in chains.” But this is not the first time the vice president has been dogged by offensive remarks. ONE. Biden kicked off his 2007 White House run by condescending to his current running mate, saying that then-Sen. Barack Obama was the “first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”He later apologized for the incident—but his penchant for crossing the line stuck with him on the campaign trail.TWO. Biden falsely...

Rarely do prominent American politicians directly and unapologetically abandon perfunctory genuflections of respect toward fellow members of the governing class -- in public, at least.  When pols savage each other and their policies, even the most caustic criticism is typically couched in a forced lexicon of camaraderie ("my friend from across the aisle," "the gentleman from Indiana," etc).  But Rudy Giuliani wasn't much interested in keeping up appearances last night when he appeared on CNBC's The Kudlow Report to react to Vice President Biden's odious "chains" comments in Virginia.  Allahpundit thinks Rudy may have been waiting for an opportunity to...

The Onion is a well known parody site that posts fake headlines intended to amuse the reader. But liberals actually believed the site when it posted a headline proclaiming that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said she was relieved that “not a single American died" in the tragic shooting at a Wisconsin Sikh temple, Twitchy reported Monday. "Unbelievable," tweeted Ana Luiza Farias. "What a cruel, evil thing to say!" another tweeted. "This saddens & disgusts me," said another. "Michele Bachman is one ignorant broad (sic)," another tweeted, while suggesting Bachmann be slapped. Others called Bachmann stupid, while at least one compared...

MSNBC's Chris Matthews implies the Tea Party is racist. Chris Matthews: I think a lot of it is ethnic to it and I'm not trashing people as racist or anything, but I think a lot of it is ethnic. Meaning, they don't like the changing demographic of the United States. So every time -- Max Pappas, FreedomWorks: Yeah, especially Hispanics like Ted Cruz. Matthews: No, no. He's a Cuban-American and that's always been a little different situation. Pappas: Or Marco Rubio? Allen West? Matthews: Every time a speech is written by a Tea Partier, they're not sufficiently happy with saying,...

Katie Yergensen, spokeswoman for USA Shooting, the Olympic-chartered governing body for the sport, says the team is well aware of stigmatization. “It comes hand-in-hand with the nature of the sport. It is generalized in the public, because what we do is different than other traditional sports. . . . But that’s why we are always emphasizing safety, accountability and team building.”

Anthony Weiner’s not shrinking from elected office. The disgraced former congressman — who’s sitting on a $4.5 million campaign war chest — is mulling a bid for citywide office next year and “seriously considering” a mayoral run, multiple sources told The Post. The cocky pol is also open to the post of public advocate as a backup plan, said sources, who described the Queens Democrat as “desperate” to get back into politics. ... “The general feeling is that you can’t text pictures of your penis to a girl, then lie about it, then get kicked out of the House and...

The pool report on President Obama's trip to Roanoke, Virginia says that more than 20 people fainted during the president's speech this evening. "TV viewers may have heard POTUS pointed out a couple of faintings during the rally in downtown Roanoke," writes the pool report. "In fact, fire officials say more than 20 people fell out during the course of the speech. There were waves of exclamation as one person after another swooned."

Patrick Kennedy, a former representative from Rhode Island and son of the late Ted Kennedy, warned in a fundraising email for Congressional Democrats that if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds President Obama’s health care law, then “dangerous Tea Party extremists will go on a rampage.” The fundraising email was sent out Wednesday afternoon, to raise money for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Health Care Rapid Response Fund” ahead of Thursday morning’s expected ruling by the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the health care law. “My father, Ted Kennedy, spent his entire political career fighting tooth and nail for universal...

President Obama has a long track record of insulting the Poles. In 2010 he chose to play golf on the day of the funeral of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the Polish First Lady, and 94 senior officials who perished in the Smolensk air disaster. Eight months earlier he humiliated Warsaw by pulling out of the agreement over Third Site missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. And last night Barack Obama caused huge offence in Poland by referring to a Nazi death camp in Poland as “a Polish death camp” while awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom...

The president referred to “Polish death camps” while awarding a posthumous Medal of Freedom to Polish professor Jan Karski, a hero of the anti-Nazi resistance. Poles believe they're blamed unfairly for the Nazi Holocaust, and the Foreign Minister led the outrage in a late night tweet. The remark, which barely drew notice in America, is all over the Polish news today. On the country's largest television station:

On at least four occasions, MSNBC's Chris Matthews mocked Sarah Palin for how he felt she'd do if she were ever on the hit television game show Jeopardy!. In a delicious example of instant karma, the self-proclaimed brainiac got his chance to show American how smart he was in a special "Power Players" version of the show Monday, but came up quite short finishing dead last with the paltry sum of only $2,300 (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

President Obama tells a joke that is just plain tasteless and nonsensical. Who writes this stuff for him! Obama: "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?" "A pit bull is delicious." First off, I doubt that a pit bull is delicious meat. To say it's "delicious" is probably a stretch unless you have no taste....hmmm. But the second part is the inclusion of the "hockey mom". It's nonsense. How is a hockey mom delicious or not delicious. Has he eaten hockey mom? Is is a metaphor for something negative about hockey moms? Did he just slam...

Biden: ‘My Image of the Military Commander' Was 'Slim Pickens...on the Back of an Atom Bomb' 'Yelling Yippee-Ki-Yay' By Michael W. Chapman April 26, 2012 (CNSNews.com) - Vice President Joe Biden said that when he was first elected to the U.S. Senate back in 1972, his view of U.S. military commanders was epitomized by actor Slim Pickens in the movie “Dr. Strangelove,” riding an atomic bomb like a cowboy and “yelling yippee-ki-yay!” In a campaign speech focusing on foreign policy, delivered at New York University on Thursday, Biden said he ran for the Senate in 1972 “because I thought the...

BELLINGHAM (CBS) – A presentation at an elementary school in Bellingham will go on next week following a controversy in which the words of a patriotic song were changed. Students at Stall Brook Elementary are doing a project on the 50 states and they planned to sing two songs at an assembly April 12. One was to be a tune about the states, and the other was the popular 1984 Lee Greenwood song “God Bless The USA.” But someone changed the chorus of Greenwood’s song to “We love the USA” for the assembly. That didn’t go over well with parents,...

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) on Wednesday morning was asked to leave the House floor after removing his suit jacket to reveal a "hoodie," then putting the hood of his sweatshirt on his head to protest the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida. A photo of Rush can be seen here. "Racial profiling has to stop," Rush said. "Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum." Rush also put on sunglasses. Rush quoted the Bible while presiding officer Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) repeatedly interrupted him, then asked the Sergeant at Arms to enforce the House prohibition on hats in...

At a Congressional forum on the Hill yesterday at which killed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin’s parents were asked to testify, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) took center stage. She claimed first that Martin had been victimized by racial profiling and a “botched police investigation.” But she went even further: George Zimmerman, the shooter in the case, she said, should be arrested “immediately for his own safety.”

SANFORD, Fla. - More than 750,000 people have signed an online petition started by the parents of Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed in Sanford by a neighborhood watch leader. The change.org petition has attracted celebrities like Cher, Chad Ochocinco and Michael Moore, who have tweeted their support for the Martin family. The online attention is garnering the support of more musicians, professional athletes, film industry representatives and numerous other celebrities online, all of whom are calling for justice in this death investigation. Martin's parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, have called on Florida District Attorney Norman Wolfinger to...