Free Republic

Months after announcing he would not make a second run for US president, the defeated 2004 candidate John Kerry on Sunday pressed a different campaign: to protect Americans from harmful pollution. "This is about moms and pops in North Carolina and Mississippi, and places where people may be breathing bad air, or getting sick from wells that are polluted, or losing their fish in their lakes," Kerry said on ABC News. "This is the most compelling issue that I've seen other than war... in all the time I've been in public life." The Massachusetts Democratic senator and his wife Teresa...

Democrat Senator John Kerry has said that US President George W. Bush's latest plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq "ignores the best advice from the US generals". He said that the decision "did not keep faith with the courage and commitment of US soldiers" (in Iraq). Bush had last month unveiled his new Iraq strategy, including sending over 20,000 more troops to Iraq. The plan, however, has met strong resistance from Democrats as well as some Republicans. Currently there are about 132,000 US troops in Iraq, even as more than 3000 American soldiers and tens of thousands of...

The party that holds the majority in both the House and the Senate controls the entire congressional agenda. Everything from what bills are considered, to how long committees debate them, to whether bills get reported out onto the floor, and finally whether a vote gets scheduled, is all determined by the leadership of both the House and the Senate. In the past, there have been instances when members of congress, in their oversight of the President, were courageous enough, regardless of their party affiliation, to step up to their constitutional obligation to be a check and balance on the White...

Rutgers University scientists say their research suggests some people voted for George W. Bush rather than John Kerry because of concerns about death. Florette Cohen, a graduate student in social psychology and Daniel Ogilvie, a psychology professor, used research based on the 2004 presidential election. They found voters in a "psychologically benign state of mind" preferred Kerry to Bush, but Bush was more popular than Kerry after voters received a subtle reminder of death. Citing an Osama bin Laden tape that became public a few days before the election, the researchers say many Americans' unconscious concerns about death resulted in...

With 57 years of White House reporting, Helen Thomas is commonly referred to as “The First Lady of the Press.” She talked to Adbusters associate editor Deborah Campbell about the state of journalism today. Adbusters: You’ve had a front row seat on the White House press gallery since Kennedy, and now you’ve been moved to the back of the room . . . Helen Thomas: Only for press conferences with Bush. He doesn’t want to call on me. AB: What does that say about his view of the press? HT: I’m reluctant to personalize it. No president likes the press,...

Should a temporary majority of 50.7 percent have control over the entire United States government? Should 49.3 percent of Americans have no influence over the nation's trajectory for the next generation?

The quagmire in Iraq and the precariousness of conditions in Afghanistan provide wars enough for discussion, should anyone want a serious one. Nonetheless, the ghost of Vietnam rises again in an odd footnote to the 2004 presidential campaign. This is the belated decision by Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry to release his complete military record to media organizations. If you count yourself among those who have no interest in how the college grades of former Yale men Kerry and George W. Bush compare - they both turn out to be poor - perhaps you missed the point.

To: Fox News et al This morning, I turned on TV briefly (to catch the weather report, since we really need rain here in Tennessee) and I heard you discussing the self-outing of "Deep Throat" yesterday. At the end of your on-air discussion, you said, "If there's another Deep Throat out there, give us a call, won't you. We're waiting for your call." Yeah, bullsh*t. For the past eight months, thousands of people have been sending you information on the 2004 stolen election and you've been ignoring it like a burning herpes sore on your anus when your wife asks...

Hey, you suckups to the twice selected Idiot in chief. Let me make a suggestion. Why don't you give the ultimate sacrifice to your Supreme Court/Diebold selected dunce? Why don't you sign up to go to Iraq and die for him? Your efforts won't go unappreciated either. I'll be sure and nominate all who do for Darwin awards.

Weve all seen and heard of a place called Free Republic, its full of divorced or wife-beating conservative slobs who have the hygene of John Goodman after a long picnic. They thrive on stupid,worthless topics that focus around the "wonder of life" and "lets keep people who cant feel or think alive because were to stubborn to admit that its pretty damn foolish". But above all other abominations in this world is the wretched "Admin Mod", a man of horrible values and the judgement of a meth lab. It is he who makes free republic, well not free at all,...

President Bush has proven to be one of the more adept and agile politicians of the modern era. Time and again, he and his political team have shown the ability to turn potential political vulnerabilities — think 9/11 — into weapons deftly applied to opponents. Democrats would do well to remember that as they gloat over two of the larger political stories out here — the fight over Social Security reform and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's ethics controversies. Friday in Falls Church, Va., the president not only condemned opponents — presumably Democrats — for fighting his Social Security proposal,...

Who is a journalist? That is the question that Jeff Gannon, alias James Guckert, asked in his own defense during a National Press Club panel last week. The club sponsored the discussion to illuminate the differences between legitimate journalists and bloggers -- or imposters. Gannon and a couple of bloggers were on the panel. Gannon made news recently after some liberal bloggers began investigating him when he asked President George W. Bush a question that had as its premise the assertion that congressional Democrats were "divorced from reality." Bush comes to his rare news conferences armed with a list of...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

Press Release: uscountvotes.org Scientific Analysis Suggests Presidential Vote Counts May Have Been Altered Group of University Professors Urges Investigation of 2004 Election http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_2004_Edison-Mitofsky.pdf US Count Votes March 31st , 2005 Officially, President Bush won November's election by 2.5%, yet exit polls showed Kerry winning by 3% [1] . According to a report to be released today by a group of university statisticians, the odds of a discrepancy this large between the national exit poll and election results happening by accident are close to 1 in a million. In other words, by random chance alone, it could not have happened. But...

Milwaukee County certified its election results in the 2004 presidential race without reviewing key documents required under state law to verify the vote count in the city of Milwaukee, the state's top election official said Thursday.

conversions ar hatters

A bitter-sounding Sen. John Kerry dismissed the historic Iraqi election on Sunday, warning Americans not to "overhype" the watershed event. "No one in the United States should try to overhype this election," Kerry told NBC's "Meet the Press." The failed presidential candidate questioned the historic referendum's legitimacy, saying, "It's hard to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can't vote and doesn't vote." Kerry also pooh-poohed reports of a surprisingly high 72 percent turnout by Iraqi voters, insisting instead that the election has "gone as expected." Asked if he thought Iraq was now less of...

Ted Turner called Fox propaganda tool of the Bush administration and indirectly compared the Fox News Network's popularity to Adolph Hitler's popular election to run Germany before WWII. Turner made those fiery comments in his first address at NATPE since he was ousted from Time Warner five years ago. The 66-year-old billionaire who leveraged a television station in Atlanta into a media empire, made the comment before a standing-room-only crowd at NATPE's opening session Tuesday. His no-nonsense, sometimes humorous, approach during the one-hour Q&A generated frequent loud applause and laughter. Among the highlights: On Fox News: While Fox may be...

What happens when habitual warmongering and BushCo lies become part of our daily diet? And then you read the appalling little story about how BushCo is now "taking steps" to further the investigation into why their original intelligence on Iraq was so painfully, treasonously, colon-clenchingly wrong, why they thought Saddam had giant Costco-sized warehouses stacked to the rafters with snarling nukes and nasty biotoxins and active warheads when, in fact, he had nothing but a couple Dumpsters full of rusty 20-year-old shell casings and a bucket of stale glue.

We kill millions of pets every year Who cares if a few get posh shelters and humane laws? OK. So I tend to think people who insist on calling themselves pet "guardians" instead of "owners" are exasperating and a bit wrongheaded, and that such uber-PC thinking does almost nothing to change or improve the behavior of the thousands of animal abusers in this country. And I tend to agree with fabulous dog writer Jon Katz that such semantic sidestepping does more harm to the animals than good, and leads to naive treatment, lack of decent training and an outright ignorance...