Free Republic

If you’re in your late teens and you get shot after assaulting a neighborhood-watch supervisor, and you want someone else to get blamed for your behavior, here are thirteen tips to make you look like an “innocent child” that loves Skittles, doing math and riding horses versus a gangbanger-in-waiting. 1. Don’t have pictures on social media, or on your cell phone, of you holding guns like a gangsta. If you do take pictures with firearms, make certain the weapon is held properly, away from the camera, with your finger off the trigger and it does not give off the I'm-a-criminal-in-training...

I don't care who you are, that's funny! Larry The Cable Guy.

Despite a heavy period of news that included the Boston Marathon bombings and the Jodi Arias trial, MSNBC's second-quarter ratings plunged to their lowest level since 2007. In primetime, MSNBC drew an average of 584,000 total viewers and 196,000 viewers in the key 25-54 age demographic. Those numbers were down 16% and 12%, respectively, from the second quarter of 2012. And they accounted for quarter lows not seen since the fourth and second quarters of 2007, respectively. The network had seen signs of this coming in some dreadful monthly ratings, particularly in May. The same factors contributed to the network's...

You can always count on the White House to react strongly to “internal” threats. Yes, the folks who could care less who is blowing up whom in Syria, Libya or Boston, takes people who snitch on them very seriously. Their newest weapon is a program called “Inside Threat,” which, according to McClatchy, is designed not to just to clamp down on classified leaks, but rather to make sure ANY unauthorized disclosure of ANY information that make them look bad will leave a mark on the miscreant leaker. Given the proclivities of the administration to impale themselves on the sharp edge...

Egotistical musicians often exaggerate their political influence, none more than the nattering, narcissistic rapper Kanye West. He has compared himself in global stature to Apple founder Steve Jobs and has titled his latest album "Yeesus." Rolling Stone magazine has posted part of a West song titled "I Am a God," where West raps that Jesus is the "Most High," but he's a "close high." Now it's The New York Times pandering to West's colossal self-regard -- and it's downright embarrassing. Mouth-breathing Times writer/superfan Jon Caramonica stooped to telling West that "what I find probably the most moving thing that you've...

Barbara1247 wrote:  The Republicans have helped bring us to this sorry state of affairs. - How About More Scandal, Incompetence, Venality, Hubris, Vanity and Error to Start Dear Comrade 1247, You’re a liberal, so even when you are right- like you are now- it’s accidental. So as a public service, let me explain to you, in the simplest terms, what you got right, accidentally. Certainly the GOP has helped establish a track record of what might be the sorriest 25 years of governing in American history. But it’s because they have supported watered-down versions of the Democrat agenda. For every...

Well apparently a president can’t just make new lows for respect of American moral authority in one single term and then let it go at that. Nope. Apparently after getting stiff-armed by our ideological enemies once in the first Obama term- turning his back on American values and getting called out on it- the administration felt the need to demonstrate crumbling American might and values by going back to that well early in the second term too. During the first term, we suffered the embarrassment of the Chinese Communist who publicly lectured Obama about straying away from capitalism and taking...

<p>WASHINGTON, June 6, 2013 — Al-Jazeera is about to bring jihad to American cable TV.</p> <p>Al-Jazeera bought Al Gore’s unwatched Current TV earlier this year and plans to convert it to Al-Jazeera America. That’s right, the alleged news organization that gets much of it’s funding from the Qatar government is coming to American TV screens.</p>

So there it is -- a hitherto-missing link in the chain of information that every Obamaphile was dreading.  Senior Obama administration officials knew that the Inspector General was auditing the IRS for political targeting of conservatives in June of 2012.  The Treasury's general counsel -- that's right, William J. Wilkins -- was told on June 4, 2012 by the IG; Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin was informed shortly thereafter.Neal Wolin was Tim Geithner's Deputy.  That's the second-in-command at the Department of the Treasury.  And Wolin had been around the block; he had held high government posts in the Clinton administration...

Congrats to Hillary Clinton: She’s become everything she said she was fighting against when Nixon was in the White House. She was either liar then or a hypocrite now. If I had to pick one, I’d pick liar and hypocrite. Maybe when she runs from president 2016, she can help herself in the polls and go on Letterman or the Tonight Show or Jon Stewart and talk about whether she wears Obama’s boxers or briefs for him. It could help her. The press would just love it. You see Hillary and Barack can do no wrong. Because, like DC Mayor...

If ponies rode men and grass ate cows, And cats were chased into holes by the mouse … If summer were spring and the other way round, Then all the world would be upside down. Once in a long while, an event evokes one of my favorite historical images: the British Army band, at Lord Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown which sealed the Americans’ revolutionary victory, playing “The World Turned Upside Down.”In this case, the event is the dramatic change over the past two weeks in the “mainstream” media’s coverage of President Obama. From reporters to opinion writers, from newspapers to...

In the old Soviet Union, the oppressed subjects of regime had a phrase used to describe the news media: "There's no pravda in Izvestia and there's no izvestia in Pravda." In Russian, "Pravda," the leading Communist Party periodical, means "Truth," and "Izvestia," the principal state periodical, means "News." The bosses of the Kremlin had no interest in their subjects knowing anything about the world or having any honest opinions expressed. Instead, the news media (also all cultural life, all educational institutions, all common means of ordinary people sharing anything together) was placed in the hands of bureaucratic flacks, well-trained in...

Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput, head of the archdiocese of Philadelphia, said that in addition to the ongoing trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, an equally important story is the “failure” of the “most important national media” outlets to cover the case. “The real story in the Gosnell trial is bigger than the ugly allegations against Gosnell himself,” said Abp. Chaput in his April 25 column. “It includes the failure – the allergic disinterest – of some of our most important national media.” Gosnell has been on trial in Philadelphia since Mar. 18. He is charged with four counts of first-degree murder,...

What a country! as the Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff would say. Smirnoff came to the U.S. in the days when people from the old Eastern Block would risk life and limb to try to get here. Today the only limbs at risk when we allow political sanctuary are our own. There was a lot more freedom in the U.S. then: Freedom from fear, freedom from foreclosure, freedom to work, freedom to run a marathon, freedom to love the country without being called a tea bagger; freedom for citizens to do their part with the government staying out of the way....

72 Congressmen slam media for failing to cover Gosnell, Planned Parenthood infanticide remarks WASHINGTON, D.C., April 18, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a sternly worded letter, 72 congressman have accused the three leading mainstream media networks – ABC, NBS, and CBS – of “blatant media bias” for failing to cover two of the biggest abortion-related stories in recent years: the trial of “House of Horrors” abortionist Kermit Gosnell, and remarks made by a Planned Parenthood representative in support of infanticide. “The broadcasters’ blackout of the Planned Parenthood infanticide lobbying scandal and the Gosnell ‘House of Horrors’ murder trial are the biggest...

The Plain Dealer in Cleveland announced Thursday that it is cutting back home delivery of the newspaper to three days a week. The Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest daily, will be delivered on Sunday and two other still unspecified days of the week beginning in late summer, publisher Terry Egger said in a news release. The newspaper will still be printed every day and be available for purchase at thousands of outlets in northeast Ohio.

Is the Iraq war to blame for the mess we are in? Now, I should qualify that question by explaining "mess" and "we." By "mess," I mean the dawn of Barack Obama's second term, the predictably catastrophic rollout of Obamacare, the exploding debt and deficit, the stimulus boondoggles, etc. By "we," I mean conservatives (particularly those, like me, who supported the war), but also anyone else who doesn't think Obama has done a bang-up job. There seems to be a growing consensus that the answer to that question is "yes." In a recent column, the Washington Examiner's Philip Klein writes,...

CBS finally apologized Sunday night one week after the television show “Amazing Race” broadcast what critics called an “anti-American” segment that offended Vietnam War veterans. “We want to apologize to veterans – particularly those who served in Vietnam – as well as to their families and any viewers who were offended by the broadcast,” said host Phil Keoghan in a statement at the beginning of Sunday’s night’s episode. “All of us here have the most profound respect for the men and women who fight for our country.” The episode caused widespread outrage among war veterans. James Koutz, the national commander...

Sometimes it's hard to measure the distance between the supposedly established, respectable press and the seediest corners of hardcore pornography. On March 1, ABC's "Nightline" celebrated a porn star named "James Deen" (real name: Bryan Sevilla). The apparent "news" hook is his role in a forthcoming movie with the ever-more pathetic Lindsay Lohan. ABC reporter Cecilia Vega sold Deen as a 27-year-old hazard to teenaged girls. They're boasting that he's found a new frontier of porn consumers, "some of them so young we couldn't even interview them on camera. Their parents had no idea that secretly they have a crush...

NBC doesn’t want to deal with George Zimmerman’s libel suit. In a Feb. 20 filing in the case, NBC Universal Media LLC asks a Florida circuit court to stay the case until the conclusion of Zimmerman’s June trial for second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin. --snip-- To recap Zimmerman’s case against NBC News: On the night that he shot Martin, Zimmerman called 911 and narrated his pursuit of the teenager in his gated community in Sanford, Fla. A March 27 edition of the “Today” show abridged the 911 tape, as follows: Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good....