Free Republic

The truth is out there, whether we want it or not. David Duchovny has checked into rehab to undergo treatment for sex addiction, E! News has confirmed.

Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden's speech at the Democratic National Convention was great. As I write, he hasn't given it yet, but these are my favorite parts: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." "These Republican leaders have not...

William Ayers, who was a founder of the 1960s and 1970s radical group the Weather Underground, told FOX News correspondent James Rosen in a candid 2004 interview that he still believed he was “on the side of justice” years after the group’s wave of attacks. In the interview, conducted three years after the September 11 attacks, Ayers argued the U.S. government had carried out “many other acts of terror … even recently, that are comparable,” and claimed he and his bomb-planting comrades were “restrained” in their actions. Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, served with Barack...

By MAUREEN DOWD DENVER I’ve been to a lot of conventions, and there’s always something gratifyingly weird that happens. +++Snip+++ But this Democratic convention has a vibe so weird and jittery, so at odds with the early thrilling, fairy dust feel of the Obama revolution, that I had to consult Mike Murphy, the peppery Republican strategist and former McCain guru. “What is that feeling in the air?” I asked him. “Submerged hate,” he promptly replied. ++++snip++++ She thanked her “sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits,” and slyly noted that Obama would enact her health care plan rather than his. ++++snip++++ Afterward,...

A prominent Philadelphia attorney and Hillary Clinton supporter filed suit this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee. The action seeks an injunction preventing the senator from continuing his candidacy and a court order enjoining the DNC from nominating him next week, all on grounds that Sen. Obama is constitutionally ineligible to run for and hold the office of President of the United States. Phillip Berg, the filing attorney, is a former gubernatorial and senatorial candidate, former chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery (PA)...

WHO NEEDS bread and circuses when you've got networking and rock 'n' roll? For every Democratic delegate who is bound for the convention in Denver, desperate to influence the platform committee, there are plenty more looking for the best entertainment acts and the hottest parties -- and they'll have plenty of choices. As the politics have drained from our national conventions, high-level socializing, entertainment (with a purpose) and a chance to brush elbows with celebrities have become the real action at the quadrennial get-togethers. From studio heads to character actors, Hollywood's most devoted politicos have revised their vacation plans to...

Bill Kristol telling Neil Cavuto exclusively that Colin Powell will endorse Obama and speak at the convention.

There’s a huge concern among conservative talk radio hosts that reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all-but destroy the industry due to equal time constraints. But speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.” FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell raised that as a possibility after talking with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. McDowell spoke about a recent FCC vote to bar Comcast from engaging in certain Internet practices – expanding the federal agency’s oversight of Internet networks. The commissioner, a 2006 President Bush appointee, told...

The Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power in Eurasia. It simply announced that the balance of power had already shifted. The United States has been absorbed in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as potential conflict with Iran and a destabilizing situation in Pakistan. It has no strategic ground forces in reserve and is in no position to intervene on the Russian periphery. This, as we have argued, has opened a window of opportunity for the Russians to reassert their influence in the former Soviet sphere. Moscow did not have to concern itself...

ohn Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extra-marital affair with a novice film-maker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today.

what is the deal with all the duplicate threads lately? it seems like there are several of the same threads posted over and over sometimes there are threads that were posted from the day or days before often there are muliptle threads of the same topic on the first page. I have been guilty of this as well even though I have searched for the keyword

Judge Revokes Bond, Suspends Travel DETROIT -- Judge Ronald Giles sent Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to Wayne County Jail for failing to notify the court of his trip to Canada and violating the terms of his bond. Despite Kilpatrick's humble apologies to the court beforehand, Giles said he needed to treat Kilpatrick as an ordinary citizen and sent him immediately to jail. Giles revoked Kilpatrick's bond and suspended all travel. "What matters to me though is how the court overall is perceived and how if it was not Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in that seat, if it was John Six-Pack sitting...

Hooray! The National Enquirer has published photos of former political person John Edwards with a baby. The baby is almost certainly made up in part of DNA he left in a woman named Rielle Hunter, a former Edwards staffer who now spends her time cashing checks and hiding in hotels and denying everything to the media (until Good Morning America finally books her!). So now would be a perfect time for, like, established print media to cover this story, right? Anyone? Ha, no, they are all too embarrassed. Once again, it's up to the internet! The story is still sneaking...

Robert Novak has announced his immediate retirement following the diagnosis of a brain tumor, a prognosis the Sun-Times' political columnist describes as "dire." "The details are being worked out with the doctors this week, but the tentative plan is for radiation and chemotherapy," Novak said. Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak says he has brain tumor The Evans-Novak column was first distributed by Publishers Newspaper Syndicate on May 15, 1963, with the New York Herald-Tribune, the flagship newspaper. When the Herald-Tribune folded in 1966, the Chicago Sun-Times became their home newspaper.

Sen. John McCain's growing popularity among women is fueling speculation that he will selecta female running mate, ripening talk about conservative favorite Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, and former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina, one of his top economic advisers. Political pundits, election strategists and even some Democrats say putting a dynamic woman on the Republican ballot would tip independents, especially the "security moms" who helped President Bush win re-election in 2004. "If McCain picked a woman, it would certainly get the attention and perhaps votes of some Democrats and a number of independents who supported Hillary Clinton," said...

Something's going on. Or some things. A new CNN/Opinion Research poll out Wednesday shows that despite nine solid days of blanket media coverage from overseas with Barack Obama cheered by adoring throngs of Germans and parlez-vousing with the French, making a three-point shot in the Middle East and standing outside No. 10 Downing Street, the freshman Illinois Democratic presidential nominee to be Senator Barack Obama of Illinois stayed static in the polls despite his well-covered long foreign tripsenator is stuck right where he was in the polls before he left.

A family whose house was raided by police in error is outraged that eight officers involved were honored. Police say the eight, who also took fire, "performed bravely."

A passenger traveling on a bus across Canada's vast Western plains stabbed, gutted and decapitated a man seated next to him in an unexplained attack, a witness told media Thursday. The victim had been sleeping before he was repeatedly stabbed in the chest by a man with a large knife, witness Garnet Caton told public broadcaster CBC. The other 35 passengers and driver were jolted by "blood-curdling screams" and fled. "He must have stabbed him 50 times or 60 times," said Caton. When Caton and two others returned to check on the victim, he said they saw the attacker "cutting...

Hillary Clinton's campaign is sending out letters to donors asking permission to roll a $2,300 contribution to Clinton's 2008 general election coffers to her 2012 senate election fund instead of offering a refund. The letter, read to me by one recipient, includes a photocopy of a handwritten note from Clinton that says, "Dear friend, your commitment has meant so much to me over the course of my presidential campaign. You were there for me when I needed you the most and I'll never forget it. I hope you'll help me continue to fight for the issues and causes we believe...

SYDNEY, Australia -- Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Australia on Sunday, saying he wants to use his visit to raise awareness about global warming and address the crisis of clergy sexual abuse. Benedict suggested to reporters on the flight from the Vatican that he would express regret about abuse by priests, though victims' groups are demanding he go further and make a direct formal apology. The clergy abuse scandal is a serious note in the pope's 10-day visit to Australia, his first, during which he will join the World Youth Day festival that has attracted more than 200,000 people. Benedict,...

GULFPORT -- Notably mild-mannered Republican Sen. Thad Cochran shocked many earlier this year with comments about John McCain's volatile temper. He has since mended fences with the GOP presidential nominee. But as first reported at sunherald.com, Cochran told the Sun Herald he witnessed a confrontation between McCain and a Sandinista rebel decades ago in which McCain "got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him." --------------------------------------- "McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerilla group here at this end of the table and I...

NEW DELHI: With Democrat senator Barack Obama busy in the run-up to the US presidential polls, a group of well-wishers in the capital have decided to send him a symbol of his lucky charm, Lord Hanuman, to help him emerge victorious. Obama's representative Carolyn Sauvage-Mar on Tuesday received a gold-plated two-feet-high idol which she will pass it on to the Obama after it is sanctified. The idol is being presented to Obama as he is reported to be a Lord Hanuman devotee and carries with him a locket of the monkey god along with other good luck charms. An hour-long...

OK. So yesterday, in what I guess in retrospect was a lame attempt at satire, I posted this thread about Obama's attempt to reach out to female Hillary supporters. I posted a link to this video that I thought perfectly captured the essence of Obama's campaign appearances. Well, bottom line, nobody clicked on the video link -- which I understand because the thread made it sound like it was just another video of an Obama campaign appearance. So I sent the video to some friends, and they didn't get it either. So now I gotta axe myself: is it me?...

Although today his book is being touted by left-wing reporters and pundits, his initial plans for the project show former White House press secretary Scott McClellan intended to take a much different approach, one that was more sympathetic to President Bush but also quite hard on the "liberal elites" of the Washington press corps and their "hostility" toward the administration. Reading through McClellan's original book proposal, obtained by Politico.com, it is clear that before his editor Peter Osnos took the book on a sharp leftward turn, McClellan wanted to turn the tables on foes in the press gallery including far-left...

ABC News' Ben Newman reports: Sen. Barack Obama's decision to cut ties with Trinity United Church of Christ was not politically motivated, Obama's communications director Robert Gibbs said this morning. "I think what [decision] Barack Obama made in the past few days is a deeply personal, not political decision," Gibbs said in an exclusive appearance on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” (Click HERE for video of Gibbs' appearance). A member of the church for 20 years, Obama faced mounting criticism for his relationship to Trinity after videos from a number of controversial sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and, more...

America's leading commodities regulator has launched an unprecedented investigation into possible market manipulation in the US crude oil market amid record prices which continue to cripple various parts of the global economy. The Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC), working closely with other international regulators including the Financial Services Authority in the UK, has begun a series of detailed inquiries over concerns that energy speculators are behind the rising oil price. In a detailed statement, the CFTC admitted for the first time that it began its investigation in December, taking what it called the "extraordinary step" of disclosing the probe "because...

SAN ANGELO, Texas - A state appellate court has ruled that child welfare officials had no right to seize more than 400 children living at a polygamist sect's ranch. The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the grounds for removing the children were "legally and factually insufficient" under Texas law. They did not immediately order the return of the children. Child welfare officials removed the children on the grounds that the sect pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and trained boys to become future perpetrators. The appellate court ruled the chaotic hearing held last month did not...

WASHINGTON — Three Mexican police chiefs have requested political asylum in the U.S. as violence escalates in the Mexican drug wars and spills across the U.S. border, a top Homeland Security official told The Associated Press. In the past few months, the police officials have shown up at the U.S. border, fearing for their lives, according to Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. "They're basically abandoned by their police officers or police departments in many cases," Ahern told AP. Ahern said the Mexican officials — whom he didn't name — are being interviewed and their cases...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - John Cusack is outraged over the Iraq war, so the U.S. actor channeled his anger into a low-budget political satire -- complete with a chorus line of scantily clad female amputees -- that he hopes will offend. Inspired by anger about the war and questions about the political power held by global corporations, "War, Inc" is set in Turaqistan, a fictional nation occupied by a private U.S. company called Tamerlane and run by a former American vice president. Cusack helped write the screenplay and also stars with Sir Ben Kingsley, Marisa Tomei and Hilary Duff in...

DUBAI, May 1 (Reuters) - A Kuwaiti man released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in 2005 has carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq, his cousin told Al Arabiya television on Thursday. A friend of Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi in Iraq informed his family that Abdullah carried out the attack in Mosul, his cousin Salem told the Dubai-based television channel. "We were shocked by the painful news we received this afternoon ... through a call from one of the friend's of martyr Abdullah in Iraq," said Salem al-Ajmi in a telephone interview aired by Arabiya. He did not say...

It came to me while I was having dinner with Doris Day. No, not that Doris Day. The Doris Day who is married to Col. Bud Day, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, fighter pilot, Vietnam POW and roommate of John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton. As we ate near the Days' home in Florida recently, I heard things about Sen. McCain that were deeply moving and politically troubling. Moving because they told me things about him the American people need to know. And troubling because it is clear that Mr. McCain is one of the most private individuals to run...

Over the weekend, the Obama campaign suffered a further disaster: the Reverend Jeremiah Wright finally seized his 15 minutes of fame. Lured by the irresistible glow of the spotlight, the reverend launched a media blitz that took him from a softball interview with Bill Moyers on Friday, to a speech to a Detroit meeting of the NAACP on Sunday, to a press conference at the National Press Club on Monday morning. Barack Obama is now declaring himself shocked and disappointed at Wright's unrepentantly racist and anti-American views--but Obama can no longer plausibly claim innocence in this matter, because he is...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has requested nearly $2.3 billion in federal earmarks for 2009, almost three times the largest amount received by a single senator this year.

Roger Waters used his headlining set at the Coachella Festival in Los Angeles yesterday (April 27th) to deliver a strong political statement against the US Government. Following a performance which included a complete rendition of Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’, Waters dispatched an inflatable pig across the crowd. On the side of the pig was the message "Don't be led to the slaughter", which was accompanied by a cartoon of Uncle Sam wielding two bloody cleavers. The underside of the pig had the name of Barack Obama along with a ticked ballot box, reports the Associated Press. Waters,...

Danica Patrick used a fuel gamble to take a historic victory in the delayed Motegi round of the IRL IndyCar Series. The Andretti Green Racing driver took the lead with just two laps to go as the rest of the front-runners had to pit for fuel and became the first woman to win a major American open-wheel race. Patrick had run towards the foot of the top ten for most of the race, as Ganassi's Scott Dixon and Penske's Helio Castroneves dominated the event. But AGR's decision to bring Patrick in for an additional fuel top-up at the end of...

“Men, if you want to win, we can win,” Cosby said. “We are not a pitiful race of people. We are a bright race, who can move with the best. But we are in a new time, where people are behaving in abnormal ways and calling it normal … When they used to come into our neighborhoods, we put the kids in the basement, grabbed a rifle, and said, ‘By any means necessary.’ “I don’t want to talk about hatred of these people,” he continued. “I’m talking about a time when we protected our women and protected our children. Now...

A cougar ran loose in Chicago on Monday for the first time since the city's founding in the 19th Century. But by day's end, the animal lay dead in a back alley on the North Side, shot by police who said they feared it was turning to attack. No one knew where the 150-pound cat came from, though on Saturday Wilmette police had received four reports of a cougar roaming that suburb,

An Iraqi news photographer who has been held for more than two years on suspicion of aiding insurgents will be freed this week following an amnesty ordered by Iraqi authorities, the US military said Monday. Bilal Hussein, a photographer with the Associated Press, will be released from US military custody on Wednesday, the US military command in Baghdad said in a statement. "After the action by the Iraqi judicial committees, we reviewed the circumstances of Hussein's detention and determined that he no longer presents an imperative threat to security," said Major General Douglas Stone, the deputy commander for detainee operations....

VALPARAISO, Indiana (CNN) — Hillary Clinton appealed to Second Amendment supporters on Saturday by hinting that she has some experience of her own pulling triggers. “I disagree with Sen. Obama’s assertion that people in our country cling to guns and have certain attitudes about trade and immigration simply out of frustration,” she began, referring to the Obama comments on small-town Americans that set off a political tumult on Friday. She then introduced a fond memory from her youth. “You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside...

WASHINGTON — Stolen and sensitive U.S. military equipment, including fighter jet parts wanted by Iran and nuclear biological protective gear, has been available to the highest bidder on popular Internet sales sites, according to congressional investigators. Using undercover identities, investigators purchased a dozen defense-related items on the auction site eBay and the online network Craigslist from January 2007 through last month and received the items "no questions asked." The Defense Department regards much of the stolen equipment to be on the U.S. Munitions List, meaning there are restrictions on their overseas sales, the Government Accountability Office said Thursday. The equipment...

The Clintons have made a $100-million fortune since leaving the White House, but a Politico analysis found that hasn’t kept Bill Clinton from taking full advantage of the publicly funded perks offered to ex-presidents. In fact, his presidential retirement benefits cost taxpayers almost as much as those of the other two living ex-presidents combined.The price tag for Clinton’s federal retirement allowance from 2001 through the end of this year will run $8 million, compared to $5.5 million for George H. W. Bush’s and $4 million for Jimmy Carter’s during the same period. Since 2001, Clinton has received more of almost...

Obama advance: 'Get me more white people' POLITICO Ben Smith From the account in Carnegie Mellon's paper, the Tartan, of a Michelle Obama event in Pittsburgh: While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.” “I didn’t know they...

One evening last July, Senator John McCain of Arizona arrived at the New Hampshire home of Erin Flanagan for sandwiches, chocolate-chip cookies and heartfelt talk about Iraq. They had met at a presidential debate, when she asked the candidates what they would do to bring home American soldiers — soldiers like her brother, who had been killed in action a few months earlier. Mr. McCain did not bring cameras or a retinue. Instead, he brought his youngest son, James McCain, 19, then a private first class in the Marine Corps about to leave for Iraq. Father and son sat down...

HAMMOND, Ind. (AP) - If Hillary Rodham Clinton is feeling heat from pundits and party elders to quit the race and back Barack Obama, you'd never know it from her crowds, energy level and upbeat demeanor on the campaign trail. "There are millions of reasons to continue this race: people in Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina, and all of the contests yet to come," Clinton told reporters Friday. "This is a very close race and clearly I believe strongly that everyone should have their voices heard and their votes counted." The former first lady weathered a two-pronged blow Friday, with...

ALBANY, N.Y. - The state's new governor revealed Tuesday that he had affairs with several women, including a state employee. The confession came a day after he took over from former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was driven from office amid a prostitution scandal. Gov. David Paterson said the affairs happened during a rough patch in his marriage, and that the employee did not work for him. He insisted he did not advance her career, and that no campaign or state money was spent on the affairs. "I do not feel I have broken my commitment to the people of New...

Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission officials were rattled last Thursday by the discovery of over 400 bottles of illegal booze, each containing a 10-inch rattlesnake in the bottle, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. After receiving a tip several weeks ago, TABC agents raided Bayou Bob’s Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch in Palo Pinto County after the reptile-infused vodka was sold to undercover agents, the paper reported. 411 bottles of the serpent sauce were seized.

March 9, 2008 -- Clintons are trying to steal the nomination from Barack Obama - and he can't let them. The Clintons' campaign attacks put Obama in a bind. If he doesn't answer in kind, he's toast.

At first it seemed like a few random cases of lassitude among Mary Chapin Carpenter devotees in Berkeley, Cambridge and Chapel Hill. But then psychotherapists began to realize patients across the country were complaining of the same distress. They were experiencing the first hints of what’s bound to be a national phenomenon: Obama Comedown Syndrome The afflicted had already been through the phases of Obama-mania — fainting at rallies, weeping over their touch screens while watching Obama videos, spending hours making folk crafts featuring Michelle Obama’s face. These patients had experienced intense surges of hope-amine, the brain chemical that fuels...

The Democrats are trying to give away an election they should win in a walk by nominating someone with real problems -- like, for example, a first-term senator with a 100 percent rating from Americans for Democratic Action and whose middle name is "Hussein." But we won't let them. The bright side of the Florida debacle is that I no longer fear Hillary Clinton. (I mean in terms of her becoming president -- on a personal level, she's still a little creepy.) I'd rather deal with President Hillary than with President McCain. With Hillary, we'll get the same ruinous liberal...

Excerpt... After a decade fighting to stop illegal file-sharing, the music industry will give fans today what they have always wanted: an unlimited supply of free and legal songs. With CD sales in free fall and legal downloads yet to fill the gap, the music industry has reluctantly embraced the file-sharing technology that threatened to destroy it. Qtrax, a digital service announced today, promises a catalogue of more than 25 million songs that users can download to keep, free and with no limit on the number of tracks....