Free Republic

The sad fact is that it appears completely rational to be ignorant about politics. The cost of being an 'informed' voter - as opposed to a bigotted closed-minded ignoramus - is high, from the time spent following (and interpreting) the news in the paper, online, and on the television. As the following clip notes, "becoming an informed voter is competing with a lot of other needs in your life," from American Idol watching to eating Cheetos in the bath. Of course, the sad truth is that it has never been more important to be 'informed' and so the 'bread-and-circuses' will...

The New York Times spins it this way: The longest-serving president of any of the three network news divisions, Steve Capus of NBC News, stepped down from his position on Friday, six months after Comcast restructured its news units in a way that diminished his authority. Exactly how voluntary was this “stepping down”? John Nolte points to the scandal-plagued tenure of Capus at NBC News: 1. During last year’s presidential election, Andrea Mitchell was caught manufacturing a Romney gaffe where none existed. 2. During last year’s GOP primary, Ed Schultz edited video of Texas Governor Rick Perry to make him...

It's been a week full of liberal media bias examples, but after all, every week is full of them. We saw NBC news purposely edit another video clip smearing Second Amendment supporters in order to push a gun control agenda. This is the same agenda President Obama just happens to be pushing as he continues to single out the NRA and its members as enemy number one. The move by NBC impacted public opinion for a few hours until luckily new media, the team over at Twitchy.com precisely, debunked the entire thing. Although this was a case of editing to...

Many have rightly condemned MSNBC's serpentine editing of a video to make it appear that certain gun rights activists heckled the father of a 6-year-old victim of the Sandy Hook shooting massacre, but let's not pretend this was a one-off event. The liberal media long ago forfeited their respected role as watchdog over the government and have voluntary descended to the status of a public relations arm of the Democratic Party and various liberal causes. It doesn't do it justice to call them cheerleaders, for they are active participants, every bit as much involved in bringing about the events...

Abraham Lincoln, deeply troubled by four years of Civil War bloodletting, gave a great second inaugural address in 1865. By then Lincoln saw slavery as a terrible stench in God’s nostrils, so he mused about why God was taking so long to blow it away with His mighty breath. Lincoln’s words: “If God wills that [the war] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago,...

Isn't it ironic that Republicans keep receiving advice to be more conciliatory and work with President Obama while President Obama not only is receiving the opposite advice but fully intends to be even more divisive in his second term? On "Meet the Press" last week, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said: "There's also a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the (Republican) party. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities." That is outrageously false, but lest you think hypersensitivity to race is all that's...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Aw, darn it! Obama is trying so hard. The regime is trying so hard. They never worked harder trying to overcome all of the messes left by George W. Bush, and here we are. We're on the verge of a recovery! The unemployment situation (they keep telling us) is improving. Even though we added people to the unemployment rolls yesterday, that was called "stability" by the AP. We're still at 375,000 unemployment applications every week, but we're on the verge -- we're on the verge! -- of overcoming the big mess left by George W. Bush and,...

Before examining the ridiculous controversy stemming from Monday night’s college football championship broadcast, let us stipulate that there are more urgent and scary ways to describe the current changes in America. We are becoming a culture of dependency. We are becoming a neo-socialist experiment. We are becoming a dumbed-down nation unappreciative of its founders. We are losing touch with the Constitution and the very concept of liberty. I do not argue that today’s essay is our most pressing problem. But as scores of fine writers address the various angles of our republic’s dangle from a precarious thread, I thought...

As a senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama said that he detested budget deficits. In 2006, when the aggregate national debt was almost $8 trillion less than today, he blasted George W. Bush's chronic borrowing and refused to vote for upping the debt ceiling: "Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.'" In 2008, Obama further blasted Bush's continued Keynesian borrowing: "The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of...

The current state of the GOP brings to mind the surviving Marines in Aliens, with no shortage of demoralized hacks lamenting their inability to resist by channeling Private Hudson: “Maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events but we just got our a**** kicked, pal!” So what? So we took a hit on the Fiscal Cliff. Stand up, brush off and get back into the fight. This is no time for self-pity, no time for weakness. Every combat leader knows that when you take a hit, you regroup, reorganize, and prepare to counterattack. The defense is but a temporary,...

The liberal media have spent 12 years feeling sorry for Al Gore. The Man Who Should Have Won in 2000 has had megatons of positive publicity dumped on him, hailing him as the "Goracle." They cheered as leftists honored him with the Nobel Peace Prize and gave an Oscar to his filmed eco-sermon, "An Inconvenient Truth." So when Gore sold his left-wing cable channel Current TV to Al-Jazeera for $500 million, where were they? Despite the fact that conservatives thought the deal sounded like a ridiculous April Fools' joke, the networks had nearly nothing to say. ABC skipped it entirely....

Just a few days after Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the New York Times' Paul Krugman crowed triumphantly about the federal government's response to the disaster. "[A]fter Katrina the government seemed to have no idea what it was doing; this time it did. And that's no accident: the federal government's ability to respond effectively to disaster always collapses when antigovernment Republicans hold the White House, and always recovers when Democrats take it back." What a fairy tale. Mature adults understand that earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters are an unfortunate fact of life. They...

Some in the media have popularized the term “culture war,” giving the impression that the war being waged against Christianity is the same thing as a war against everything that is traditional. But in 2013, let’s change the term. Let’s call it what it is: “A war against Christ.” Certainly there are many American traditions rooted in Christian teaching and history. But mixing some traditions with what is purely Christ-honoring—although it may recruit support from non-Christian traditionalists or conservatives—dilutes the Christian dye. Take for example the ACLU’s war against Christians praying in public schools while obliging Muslims the ability...

Sometimes there is so much stupid going on in the world that you have to just stop and take stock of it all. Al Gore sells Current TV to Al Jazeera. The Americans who owned the anti-American network Current TV soon will be replaced as owners by foreigners who operate the anti-American network Al Jazeera. I doubt any of the 40,000 regular Current TV viewers would have noticed had the news not gone public. Of course, most of them spend their time writing diaries at the DailyKos, when not being yelled at by their moms to clean their rooms. But...

President Obama never disappoints. When the monthly unemployment rate fails to drop, forget it. What’s important is the number of jobs created. But when the rate actually does drop, forget the growth (or lack of it) in jobs. It’s the rate that matters. And don’t blame Obama for the persistence of slow economic growth and high joblessness. That’s the “new normal.” As for the millions of dropouts from the job market, that’s no big deal, hardly worth more than a passing mention. Full credit is due Obama for his role in the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. He was...

Most of us would be honored to have our name become a verb. Especially those of us in public life. But that is not how Judge Robert H. Bork got into the dictionary. He was "borked" when President Reagan nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court. No sooner had the announcement been made by the White House on July 1, 1987, than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) raced to the Senate floor to denounce the distinguished judge and former Yale Law Professor. In Robert Bork's America, Kennedy roared, blacks would once again sit in the back of the bus, rogue...

On Sunday December 17, 2012, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in San Antonio to kill his X-girlfriend. After he shot her, most of the people in the restaurant fled next door to a theater. The gunman followed them and entered the theater so he could shoot more people. He started shooting and people in the theater started running and screaming. It’s like the Aurora, CO theater story plus a restaurant! Now aren’t you wondering why this isn’t a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting? There was an off...

The year 2012 was a depressing time for people who are already pessimistic about the state of our common culture. Conversely, the re-election of Barack Obama, in large measure made possible by the heavy financial support of Hollywood, projects the optimism of the cultural Left. They anticipate increased blue-state voting patterns in favor of gay "marriage," legalized pot, gun regulations, and what next? Legalized prostitution? Euthanasia subsidized by Obamacare? So let's just line up the cultural winners of Obama's America, where the only impediments to progress are those who believe in religion, manners and "family values." Winner: Seth MacFarlane,...

A "serious" proposal is one that has a reasonable expectation of resolving a conflict. Anyone studying Speaker Boehner's Plan B proposal knows it wasn't serious. Why are so many defending it and bemoaning its defeat? It tells you an awful lot about the dishonest nature of politics in America today. Republicans -- fiscally conservative Republicans -- have argued since forever that tax increases diminish economic growth. For the past two years, they have argued that increasing taxes on the "wealthy" would wreak havoc on our fragile (at best) economy. In fact, three studies have confirmed that this "millionaires tax," now...

Was there anything about the Sandy Hook massacre the media got right on the day it happened? In their rush to be first, they ignored their obligation to be right. Nearly every detail they disseminated Friday was wrong, even down to the name of the killer. Their desire to sensationalize had them shoving microphones in the faces of children who couldn’t possibly comprehend the events of the day. This was just the latest example of how out of control and dangerous the media has become, and it’s time government did something to protect us. You’re probably asking yourself, “What...