Free Republic

In their ongoing crusade to target and silence decent, everyday Americans as racists, some in the MSM love to use the term “dog-whistle” in order to ascribe racial motives to words like, say, “basketball.” Well, lately I’ve been hearing a dog-whistle of my own — a dog-whistle of the journ-o-list variety that tells me that in their relentless campaign to destroy Sarah Palin and undercut her as a serious political force, the MSM is preparing to up the ante when it comes to using the Governor’s own family and children as a political weapon against her. First, a little background…...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- The president was on his way. Space shuttle Endeavour's astronauts were riding out to the launch pad in a van. And a wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had flown in from her Houston rehab hospital to watch her husband blast off Friday on the historic, next-to-last shuttle mission. Then it all came to a sudden stop. Without warning, a faulty heater part forced NASA to scrub the launch and slam the brakes on the space agency's biggest event in years, a flight made more fascinating to many by the plight of Giffords and her husband, Mark...

Well, it sure didn't take long for the Tucson Truce to collapse. After Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot on Jan. 8 by a berserker who killed six others, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, and wounded 13, the media were aflame with charges the right had created the climate of hate in which such an atrocity was inevitable. The Washington Post story on the massacre began, "The mass shooting ... raised serious concerns that the nation's political discourse had taken a dangerous turn." Following Barack Obama's eloquent eulogy and call for all of us to lower our voices,...

NASA abruptly called off space shuttle Endeavour's final launch Friday because of a puzzling heater failure in a critical power unit, disappointing huge crowds converging on the area for the afternoon liftoff. President Barack Obama and his family were planning to watch Endeavour blast off. It would have been the first time in NASA history that a sitting president and his family witnessed a launch. Already at Cape Canaveral for the liftoff was wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, wife of the shuttle's commander.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — When the National Rifle Association gathers for its annual convention in Pittsburgh, gun control advocates will try to make sure Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is on people's minds, even if she's hundreds of miles away watching the space shuttle launch in Florida. The meeting of the nation's largest gun rights group "will be a great celebration of freedom" in a city where 1 million of the NRA's 3.5 million members live within a four-hour radius, said spokesman Andrew Arulanandam....

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will attend husband Mark Kelly's space shuttle launch in Florida on Friday. In an interview in Houston with CBS' Katie Couric, Kelly said the Arizona congresswoman's doctors in Houston have cleared her to fly to Cape Canaveral, Fla., for the launch of Endeavor. Kelly is the commander of the shuttle mission. CBS released excerpts Sunday of the interview scheduled to air Monday on the "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric." President Barack Obama and his family also are scheduled to watch the launch, although it's unclear if they'll watch it with Giffords.

Giffords, whose astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, will command the shuttle, was "very pleased" to hear of the news, the congresswoman's spokesman C.J. Karamargin said Wednesday. The Arizona congresswoman, who served as chairwoman of the House subcommittee overseeing NASA, had previously asked the president to attend launches, but to no avail, he said. "She smiled broadly," Karamargin said. "This is something very important to her. She has invited the president to attend numerous launches on various occasions, both in person and in writing, so the fact that he is now going to be attending is something that is very meaningful to...

President Obama plans to bring his family to the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour on April 29 to see Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's husband lead six astronauts into space. Giffords wrote on Twitter: "We are very happy that Pres. Obama is coming to Mark's launch! This historic mission will be Endeavour's final flight." The Orlando Sentinel reports that Obama decided to attend for a few reasons, one of which was that he was going to be in the state already to speak at Miami Dade College's

RedState co-founder Josh Trevino has noticed the following: back in January, Paul Krugman was one of many drooling idiot leftists devoid of any moral compass who tried to pin the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords on a lack of Republican civility. Even though, by the time Krugman’s column ran, it was clear that Giffords’ shooter was a mentally disturbed individual whose assassination plot was not motivated by coherent political theory of any stripe, Krugman was not about to let facts get in the way of a good partisan narrative: It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally...

Conservative Sarah Palin returned to the U.S. political arena on Saturday after several months absence with a feisty speech attacking both the establishment Republican Party and Democratic President Barack Obama and proclaiming "the 2012 elections begin here." In a move apparently aimed at keeping her name in the running for the Republican nomination in next year's presidential election, Palin addressed several thousand people in Wisconsin, a state bitterly divided by a political fight over union rights. Palin has been mostly absent from politics since the January shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, when she was criticized for accusing...

Before we get started, here’s a quick and important rundown of the hopelessly biased, corrupt-to-the-core media world in which we presently live… A few dopes, most of them likely Leftist plants and Larouchers, show up at Tea Party rallies with a few dumb signs and it’s a national news story for months. No one from the Tea Party yells the N-word at a Capitol Hill ObamaCare protest and yet there’s a week-long media storm saying someone did — and nary a peep once it’s proved they didn’t. Someone commits a heinous mass murder in Tucson and the entire MSM Complex...

Before we get started, here’s a quick and important rundown of the hopelessly biased, corrupt-to-the-core media world in which we presently live…A few dopes, most of them likely Leftist plants and Larouchers, show up at Tea Party rallies with a few dumb signs and it’s a national news story for months. No one from the Tea Party yells the N-word at a Capitol Hill ObamaCare protest and yet there’s a week-long media storm saying someone did — and nary a peep once it’s proved they didn’t. Someone commits a heinous mass murder in Tucson and the entire MSM Complex spends days blaming Sarah Palin because...

NEW YORK – Three months after the Arizona attack that left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in a coma, she is walking, talking, and wants to attend her husband’s space shuttle launch. But will she ever fully recover? In this week’s Newsweek, Peter J. Boyer has the untold story of the congresswoman’s struggle. Since Giffords was shot Jan. 8, at an event at a Tucson mall, her family and staff, colleagues and friends have been eager to deliver stunning details about her recovery. The first big news was delivered by the president himself at a memorial service: “Gabby opened her eyes for...

Albany, NY (WBEN) -- State Police in the Capitol region are investigating a series of threatening emails that were sent to numerous state and local lawmakers in Albany on Friday. The emails are "similar in content," according to investigators. Troopers are not officially releasing any further information, citing the sensitivity of the investigation. But an Albany-area television station obtained a copy of the email Friday evening, from Assemblyman James Tedisco. (Click here read the entire text of the email, courtesy of WTEN-TV). [email Text near the bottom of the WTEN page that opened] In it, the writer expresses outrage over...

An Ansonia man is accused of threatening a local state representative with a shooting like the Arizona rampage should gun legislation pass in Connecticut. John Matika, 67, of Ansonia, called the office of his Democratic state Representative, Linda Gentile, several times on March 24 and 25 about proposed gun legislation about firearm magazine capacities, police said. The bill would ban guns that take more than 10 rounds of ammunition. During the calls, he said something like the shooting in Arizona that critically injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, left eight people dead and 12 more with gunshot wounds would happen in Connecticut...

"Experience is a dear teacher," said Benjamin Franklin, "but fools will learn at no other." Give some credit to fools: At least they eventually learn from experience. What would Franklin say about people who don't? By that, I refer to gun control advocates alarmed that the Illinois legislature may vote to let licensed individuals carry concealed handguns. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence calls the measure "dangerous." Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center says that it would lead to Tucson-style mass shootings as well as the killing of police. But concealed-carry, as it is known, is not a...

I don't really care if you have a gun for hunting or a pistol to give you some sense of protection at home. It's your right. But what's the point of ammunition magazines that allow the shooter to fire dozens of bullets at a clip? I stopped by a legislative hearing Wednesday at which a roomful of gun enthusiasts was irate about a bill that would make it a felony to own a "large-capacity magazine" that uses more than 10 bullets. The shooter in the Tucson attack on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords earlier this year that killed six and wounded...

or too long we have been lied to about the Left in America. We have been told that leftists are peaceful, open-minded, mainstream and tolerant. We have repeatedly been told that it is conservatives who are mean-spirited, violent, aggressive and close-minded. Progressives would have us believe that it is the political Right that harbors America’s radicals, crazies and extremists. Conservatives have been lambasted for fostering a climate of hate and violence that inevitably led to the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. We were told by the mainstream media and other progressive elites that words have consequences, and that conservative...

PHOENIX (AP) -- An Arizona judge has ordered the suspect in Tucson's shooting rampage to undergo a mental evaluation at a specialized facility in Springfield, Mo., as soon as possible. In a ruling late Monday, U.S. District Judge Larry Burns says that the evaluation will be videotaped and provided to prosecutors and defense attorneys.

Just a couple of months ago, in the wake of Jared Loughner's shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, simple talk of "targeting" a political opponent for defeat was treated as beyond the pale. But let's look at some more recent language -- and conduct -- that our bien-pensant punditry can't be bothered to notice, let alone condemn. In Michigan, protesters opposed to Gov. Rick Snyder's austerity budget broke a window to get into the capitol building. One faces felony charges after assaulting police with an edged weapon; 14 were arrested. In Washington, DC, the windows at GOP headquarters were shot out,...