Free Republic

Democratic House members are so worried about the fall elections they're leaving Washington on July 30, a full week earlier than normal—and they won't return until mid-September. Members gulped when National Journal's Charlie Cook, the Beltway's leading political handicapper, predicted last month "the House is gone," meaning a GOP takeover. He thinks Democrats will hold the Senate, but with a significantly reduced majority. The rush to recess gives Democrats little time to pass any major laws. That's why there have been signs in recent weeks that party leaders are planning an ambitious, lame-duck session to muscle through bills in December...

Meet the newest Chicago actor: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Breyer will be appearing as the Ghost in "Hamlet" in Hyde Park on Friday, with an encore presentation slated for Saturday. It's part of this weekend's "Shakespeare and the Law" conference at the University of Chicago Law School. Breyer's performance (part of a collection of scenes from "Hamlet," "As You Like It" and "Measure for Measure") will be open to the public, free of charge, subject to space limitations. Also of particular interest at the conference: U.S. Appeals Judge Diane Wood, a senior university lecturer and reportedly a candidate for...

Apparently, the box is locked: Al and Tipper Gore are getting a divorce. The official word from the Gore camp is that the divorce was a mutual decision and that there was no hanky panky, no shenanigans, no side action, nothing on the schnide, no skullduggery, no nuttin’ — just a good ol’ American divorce. While the spin doctors and nurses are acting like nothing went on, an air conditioner repairman who worked exclusively for the Gores said Mr. Global Warming has been inhaling too many carbon credits. “First off, Gore isn’t fat — he keeps all the dough from...

So now the rap on President Obama is that his response to the oil spill along the Gulf Coast hasn't been heartfelt enough. He comes off as emotionally detached, critics say, and, by the way, isn't it a pity that the white folk from the coastal red states who never wanted a black man in the White House in the first place are complaining that he doesn't care about them? Talk about projecting their hard feelings onto others. "The politics of the disaster are Cajun hot, but Obama is cerebral cool," wrote Howard Fineman on msnbc.com. So we get our...

President Barack Obama on Tuesday used the strongest language yet to suggest that BP could face charges in connection with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig and the resulting oil spill, saying if any laws were broken, “my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice.” The president met Tuesday morning with former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham (Fla.) and William Reilly, the Republican former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, the co-chairmen of a bipartisan commission tasked with exploring the causes of the disaster and safeguards for future offshore drilling. “If our laws were broken, leading to...

(KABC) -- Those suffering as a result of the massive spill are being remembered across the country. In South Los Angeles, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church held a special prayer service Sunday. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters are just some of the distinguished guests who participated. "Protect the earth, now. Boycott BP, now," Jackson told the crowd the service. "Don't pay the bill for the spill."

It's easy to lose track of how long your shower's getting--especially when it's 10 degrees out and the only thing that roused you from bed was the vision of a steamy cascade of water. Well, Waterpebble is here to guilt you out of your wasteful ways. The little round device monitors water going down the drain. It records the length of your first Waterpebble shower and uses that as a benchmark, then indicating via a series of gently flashing "traffic lights" when you need to get out of the shower already! Green tells you to start showering, amber means you're...

Just a vanity.

Amidst the innumerable excuses we're bound to hear for tonight's Massachusetts election results, credit Keith Olbermann with likely the most loathsome. The Countdown host would explain things away by accusing Brown supporters of . . . racism. [H/t reader Will H.] Olbermann floated his despicable theory to Howard Fineman: "the Republicans and the Tea Partiers will tell you what happens with Scott Brown tonight whether he wins or comes close is a repudiation of Obama policies. And surely one of Obama's policies from the viewpoint of his opponents is it's OK to have this sea-change in American history—to have an...

Telegraph.co.uk is presenting its second list of the 100 most influential conservatives and 100 most influential liberals in America a year after Barack Obama took the oath on the steps of the Capitol to become the 44th President of the United States.

Christmas cartoons, a ukulele playing youngster and the prince's side of "happily ever after." www.daveweinbaum.com

Friends, What an amazing few days on the road this has been. Your spirits have been high, your faith strong and your spine unbendable. I ended my multiday book tour at The Villages with what had been billed as a rally but could be better described as a candid citizen-to-citizen chat. Today, I have stopped looking for a leader to show us the way out because I have come to realize that the only one who can truly save our country...is us. To change America's course we need to change ourselves, our expectations and our willingness to accept the...

Watertown, N.Y. At the Northside Improvement League here in town a rally for Democratic congressional candidate Bill Owens has just gotten underway with remarks by local Democratic politicians. June O'Neill, executive chair of the New York Democratic party, just finished delivering a stemwinder about "right-wing extremists" bringing their "hatemongering" to the 23rd District. Biden is going to speak any minute, and there are maybe 250 people gathered (50 of them are with the media); Watertown has a population of 30,000. The event is open to the public--no one needed a ticket to get in--but the room is only about 65...

President Barack Obama has been in office just nine months and already he is defending his legacy, pushing back more aggressively against criticism of his record on health care, climate change, closing Guantanamo, reforming immigration laws and financial regulations and managing the war in Afghanistan. For the past two weeks, as he’s jetted across the country to fill Democrats’ 2010 coffers, Obama has been test driving a new speech that sounds a lot like one he’d be giving if he were on the ballot next year: A line-item defense of his record so far, and a sober reminder to supporters...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYjp5zRbR6E

The Community Avengers challenge "the villains of bad government" in two places todayIt's a bird, it's a plane, it's Healthcare Man! Forget hand-made signs, one group of Miami residents is pulling on the Spandex in the name of universal health care. Dressed in superhero costumes, the Community Avengers (or Justicieros Comunitarios), as they call themselves, will be in two places - not at once (they're not that good) - today to challenge, according to their press release, "the villains of bad government and greedy insurance companies." The CA consists of members of the Miami Workers Center, LIFFT (Low-Income Families Fighting...

This guy should be on an outdoor channel. He has many more serious videos with reviews of different guns. Especially Glocks.

President Obama's advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president's top legislative priority. Administration officials insisted that they have not shied away from their support for a public option to compete with private insurance companies, an idea they said Obama still prefers to see in a final bill. But at a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms...

There have been a number of seminal queries which our elders used to define game-changing moments in America’s cultural evolution. Where were you when JFK was shot? Where were you when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon? For me, although it will likely wind up as a Trivial Pursuit bonus round question, one of the treasured turning points may well be: Where were you when Sarah Palin decided to commit political suicide? The odd thing is that I was up in the mountains, forcing myself into a period of decompression from the political theater. I likely wouldn’t have even...

How did Obama manage to spend all his political capital so quickly? Did it all go on the stimulus bill? Wasn’t the whole point of bringing Rahm in as chief of staff that he could work constructively with Congress to pass an ambitious agenda? And isn’t Obama himself the first president since JFK to have entered the White House from the Senate? I’m not sure when everything went wrong here, but I fear that the damage is now irreparable — and that Obama’s agenda is going to be severely scaled back as a result. Our explanation is rather simple: Obama’s...