Free Republic

There are those who say that the tea party is fading in influence, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the movement is on the cusp of achieving what once seemed nearly impossible: keeping the Senate Democratic. A year ago, famed political handicapper Charlie Cook gave Republicans a 60 percent to 70 percent likelihood of capturing control of the Senate; now, he tells me the likelihood of it remaining Democratic is 60 percent. The switch in fortunes can be attributed to many causes — a slate of lackluster Republican candidates high among them — but one thing...

Catholicism is on the decline in the United States. But the numbers would likely be even worse if it weren't for Latino immigrants, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. The study indicates that Catholicism has experienced the "greatest net losses" of any religion as a result of religious converts. While nearly one-in-three Americans (31 percent) were raised as Catholics, fewer than one in four adults call themselves Catholics, the survey found. But the attrittion has been slowed by immigration and the growth of the Hispanic population. One in three Catholics is Hispanic, and 62 percent of all Hispanics...

(The following is the second of three excerpts from The Right Frequency: The Story of the Talk Radio Giants Who Shook Up the Political and Media Establishment, by Fred Lucas; History Publishing Company. The adapted excerpts look at the impact of talk radio on election results.) Before what would turn out to be an historic election, a New York Times article said, “If Larry King’s CNN program functioned as a nominating process for Ross Perot; Rush Limbaugh may be a kind of national precinct captain for the Republican insurgency of 1994.” An election night poll by Fabrizio-McLaughlin of 1,000...

Preaching magazine editor Michael Duduit takes on the challenging task of naming the most important preachers from the recent past. When Preaching magazine was launched in 1985, a look at our list of contributing editors gave you a sense of who would be listed among the most influential preachers in America. That original group included Stuart Briscoe, Maxie Dunnam, Jim Henry, David Allan Hubbard, John Huffman, D.E. King, James Earl Massey, Calvin Miller, Lloyd John Ogilvie, Stephen F. Olford, Haddon Robinson, J. Alfred Smith, John Wesley White and William Willimon, along with several more.Thankfully, many of those preachers are still...

To borrow from President Obama’s Black Nationalist mentor, Jeremiah Wright, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate-baiting chickens “have come home to roost.” The hard-left group has become everything it presumes to expose. On Wednesday, homosexual activist Floyd Corkins entered the Washington-based Family Research Council (FRC) armed with a gun and a backpack full of ammunition. He also had 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches (FRC recently defended the food chain’s COO Dan Cathy for pro-natural marriage statements). The only thing standing between Corkins and mass murder was FRC facilities manager and security specialist Leo Johnson. As Corkins shouted disapproval for FRC’s “politics,” he...

The Tea Party movement morphed from protest signs to campaign signs. That's how a Texas Tea Party activist succinctly put it when I asked him what's become of the movement. He said, "We put down our protest signs, and picked up campaign signs." He said that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's victory lap after passing Obamacare was a "wake-up call." It signaled that mass demonstrations would not bring significant changes. Change would only come through the ballot box. Hearing the call, the Tea Party vacated the town squares and hit the streets where it began organizing for the long-term. It...

Rush Limbaugh celebrated 24 years on his national radio talk show Wednesday, and that date is as good as any to benchmark when the country began its journey into a deeply polarized political climate. Limbaugh -- universally called Rush by friends and critics alike -- almost single-handedly started a narrative that recast Americans into conservative heroes or liberal villains, patriotic saviors or mainstream media dupes. He was helped by the 1987 demise of the Fairness Doctrine, the longstanding regulation that required broadcasters to present both sides of a issue in roughly equal measure. He was perfectly poised to take advantage....

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ron-galloway/the-chickfila-effect-on-t_b_1731161.html

If it's now coming out that the Colorado Killer, James Holmes, was obsessed with being a character in the Batman movie, shouldn't we be having a national discussion on how much Hollywood is responsible for this murderous rampage. And while we're at it, a lot of the other social ills like the sexualization of teens, out-of-wedlock births and gang violence, all depicted in living color on the silver screen? On Tuesday, Matt Drudge linked to a blistering attack on Hollywood by Charles Hurt of the Washington Times in response to the massacre at the midnight Friday showing of the new...

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama visited the home of actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick for a joint fundraising appearance on Thursday night, during which the president offered the gathered stars a rather frightening piece of flattery. The intimate dinner banked about $2 million, with 50 people paying $40,000 each. "Speaking in a dimly lighted, art-filled room, Obama told supporters they would play a critical role in an election that would determine a vision for the nation's future."You're the tie-breaker," he said. "You're the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes."Among the celebrities on hand to...

It’s official: The situation in Sunland Park has gotten crazier than the last two seasons of “Lost.” On Friday, Daniel Salinas was arrested again, this time charged with 18 new felony charges, including receiving and soliciting illegal kickbacks, fraud and ethics violations. Salinas is the man who: *as the border town’s mayor pro tem got drunk with then-mayor Martin Resendiz during a meeting at a restaurant with officials from a California firm during which Resendiz said he got so inebriated he signed city contracts [4]while not realizing their import *has been accused of trying to blackmail rival mayoral candidate Gerardo...

MADISON — While some see a wave of legislation aimed at weakening organized labor following Indiana’s new right-to-work law, Wisconsin is not expected to join it anytime soon. “No,” Cullen Werwie, spokesman for Gov. Scott Walker, told Wisconsin Reporter on Monday when asked if Walker thought the Republican-controlled Legislature would pursue legislation prohibiting labor organizations from requiring workers to join unions. Republicans on the record said they've heard of no proposals. Off the record, some in the GOP said no one is interested in waging another big battle over labor matters in this season of recalls. "Boy, I don't think...

WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday that no one from the White House ever contacted him to make a political decision on a half-billion-dollar loan to a California solar company that later went bankrupt. Testifying under oath on a widening controversy, Chu said he was unaware of his staff predictions in 2009 that Solyndra was likely to face severe cash-flow problems. He said that market changes which led to a steep decline in the price of solar panels were "totally unexpected." Solyndra went belly-up after getting the $528 million loan from the government, and Chu told the House...

Rep. Michele Bachman officially threw her hat into the presidential ring on June 27. Since then, the Minnesota congresswoman has emerged as a Republican front-runner, riding on a wave of Tea Party support and national media appearances. New Yorker Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza spent four days with Bachmann and her staff aboard their campaign jet in mid-June. On Tuesday's Fresh Air, he talks about his unprecedented access to the congresswoman, whom he profiles in the Aug. 15, 2011, edition of The New Yorker. The piece looks at the writers, beliefs and books that Bachmann has specifically mentioned as major influences...

I’m writing this to encourage others to make the effort to amplify their influence like I do. Ever since I began contributing online, I’d made a conscious decision to establish free accounts at media websites from which original articles were sourced so I could cut and paste some of my more carefully constructed comments to many different sites. By doing this, I feel I can increase my own tiny influence just a little bit more. I would encourage everyone to consider doing the same. It takes just a couple of minutes to sign up on most media websites, and most...

Harold Macmillan, the prime minister who watched US power rise as the British empire crumbled, used to say that Britain would play ancient Greece to America’s Rome. These days it looks as if Rome is declining too. The US finds it increasingly hard to drive forward its vision of international trade and economics over the objections of big emerging-market countries.

Stop the presses! (Yeah, no one’s said that in any newsroom I’ve worked in four decades in the business.) A major surprise. (Yeah, more sarcasm.) The Los Angeles Times reports that “California lawmakers kill measure banning gifts to themselves” And the sun rose in the east . . .

Our editorial today (wide application to other states): It was a corrupt system that allowed back-room politicking to redraw every 10 years California's boundaries for congressional, legislative and other districts. Legislators redrew lines to ensure reelection and protect their political parties. There is word for it: Gerrymandering. . . . Unfortunately, Californians apparently have traded one form of special-interest pandering for another.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, or al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, is more than a radical network, comparable to al Qaeda; more than an ideological phenomenon, like the followers of Khomeini in the 1979 Iranian Revolution; and more than a political insurgency, similar to Pakistani jihadism. It is an Egyptian Islamist subculture of great depth and influence. It is therefore also much more than a product of political decisions made by Hosni Mubarak. The Brotherhood was powerful before Mubarak, before his predecessor Anwar Sadat, and before their elder comrade, Gamal Abdel Nasser. But the Brotherhood today is not identical with the paramilitary Arabist-Islamist Ikhwan...

Given the contentious relationship between his followers and many in the conservative movement, it’s safe to say that Rep. Ron Paul’s address to CPAC this year was one of the more anticipated speeches of the political holiday weekend. And Rep. Paul delivered: railing against the “neo-Jacobins” that passed the PATRIOT Act, calling for drastic cuts in military spending, and a passionate repudiation of the Federal Reserve. Opening with a jubilant recognition of the results of last November’s midterms– and, especially, the election of his son Rand to the Senate– the tenor of Paul’s speech was mostly combative towards the more...