Free Republic

Fate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments and rethink its principles lest it go the way of the Whigs. And where the victor is hailed as the new Caesar, facing an open road to domination. And where Barack Obama, already naturally inclined to believe his own loftiness, graciously accepted the kingly crown and proceeded to ride his reelection success to a crushing victory over the GOP at the fiscal cliff, leaving a humiliated John Boehner & Co....

In an interview with AlterNet this past week, America’s most well-known left-wing intellectual slammed President Obama for his inexplicable “attacks” on civil liberties in the forms of various laws expanding upon the executive powers set forth by President George W. Bush. Speaking with the liberal blog’s Mike Stivers, Chomsky expressed dissatisfaction with the current president’s record on civil liberties: “I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors. The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I...

Allen West just posted this on his Facebook about 30 minutes ago, warning left-wing students they will have to face him if they keep stalking his wife: I completely understand the Alinsky tactics and have no issue with the insidious and incessant personal attacks by the left against me. However, I am warning you, end your harassment of my wife Angela. The students from Florida Atlantic University who have gone to my wife’s office, stalked her at the FAU Board of Trustee meetings, and sent letters to her company headquarters, end it now. This is not a threat, it is...

When my roommate designated our dorm room a BGLTQ safe space by affixing a tiny square of fluorescent pink to our door, it troubled me. The “safe space” signs are a staple on this campus. However, by designating certain areas as BGLTQ safe spaces, we inadvertently imply that all other spaces, by comparison, are not safe for BGLTQ members of our community. In a campus environment that is exceptionally diverse, every space should be safe for all students. Indeed, “safe space” signs serve as a potent indicator that we need to rethink the boundaries of spatial inclusivity on our campus....

The New York Times has a must-read up on how the GOP is losing the tech war — and losing the youth vote. But tucked away in the piece, I found this: [W]e can’t be afraid to call out Rush Limbaugh,” said Goodwin’s fiancée, S. E. Cupp, a New York Daily News columnist and a co-host of”The Cycle”on MSNBC. “If we can get three Republicans on three different networks saying, ‘What Rush Limbaugh said is crazy and stupid and dangerous,’ maybe that’ll give other Republicans cover” to denounce the talk-show host as well.

I'm not big into conspiracy theories. I never bought into the grassy knoll in Dallas or the anti-Obama birther movement. And it will take a lot of convincing for me to believe Oakland Raiders coach Bill Callahan took a dive in Super Bowl XXXVII to please his friend (and opposing coach) Jon Gruden. But I do believe that America's political tilt toward progressivism is the product of a lot of grassroots work by very liberal groups intent on remaking the American economy and culture. One such example is the focus of an interesting piece in the latest edition of the...

Leftist radio host Mike Malloy is aghast at the notion of a "Gun Appreciation Day" to be celebrated by 2nd Amendment supporters on January 19 this year. On his January 14 radio program, Malloy attacked the "right wingers who want to see blood in the streets, the Hannitys, the Limbaughs, they want the killing to start. Glenn Beck would like nothing more!" A few minutes later, Malloy attacked the "crazy bastards" behind Gun Appreciation Day. "I know, let's have Bomb Appreciation Day.... How do you do something like this?!" Of course, Malloy has repeatedly fantasized about the violent death or...

Explaining voter fraud, Benghazi and the fiscal cliff to Fox-watching family members..“The Holidays” are now officially here, and all Americans will soon have to face their extended families and listen to them talk. For many young Americans — specifically young Americans related to old white Americans — Thanksgiving and our various Winter Holidays are extra stressful, because young Americans are largely a liberal, Obama-voting bunch, and old white Americans are mostly not. Unfortunately, old white Americans spend a lot of their time being lied to by conservatives on TV, the radio and the Internet, and while that is not their...

Much of the conservative world seems shocked that the RNC is constrained from doing anything about voter fraud. The left wing blogosphere is laughing at everyone who didn’t know this already. To me, it’s old old news – sort of like the abolition of poll taxes. In fact, the abolition of poll taxes in 1964 is closer in time to the consent decree that the RNC entered with the DNC in 1982 than we are today distant from that same 1982 consent decree. Simply, under the terms of the order, the RNC cannot engage in ballot security efforts to combat...

There are all kinds of reputable pollsters whose results never seem to get anyone at the corrupt Politico excited enough to launch a headline -- this includes Scott Rasmussen. But man alive, the corrupt Politico sure does love them some left-wing pollsters, especially PPP, which is associated with the Daily Kos and SEIU. You would think that would be bad enough, but the corrupt Politico just hit a new low by disguising as serious news an affirmation of strategically leaked internal polling from the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA. Even though Scott Rasmussen has a brand new poll today showing...

The ad was created by San Francisco's Goodby Silverstein & Partners (who created the "Got Milk" campaign.) They want us to know who should be blamed should we not reelect B.O.YouTube link Be sure to view it on YouTube so you can offer YOUR vote.

I'm srry if I'm ignorant but if ur black and voting for mitt romney KILL YOURSELF NOW 16 Oct 12 Reply Retweet Favorite Despite what the media and race-obsessed Left would have you believe, black conservatives are not evil mythical creatures. They are free thinkers who refuse to view their fellow man through the lens of skin color, opting instead to focus on character. ThatÂ’s exactly as it should be. Unfortunately, some very outspoken Obama supporters disagree. And theyÂ’ve taken to Twitter to encourage blacks who plan to vote for Romney next month to kill themselves: @Str8_based If u black...

"Our goal, obviously, is to avoid getting boiled as the electronic revolution continues." "I am not here dreaming of (or worrying about) a world in which computers have displaced the printed word, and us too. I could find no one at this conference who would predict the demise of the newspaper. No one. All saw an important place for us." Those words come from a remarkable letter written by Robert Kaiser, then the Washington Post's newly appointed managing editor, to publisher Donald Graham following a 1992 conference on the future of digital media. Kaiser had attended the event after being...

A poem in four stanzas, because why write a long one, if a short one can sum it up, just about as well, and take less time, and effort, frankly, I mean both to write, and to read; so four should work out well enough, for both of us, and I hope you think so, too, even though I suppose I could, think of ways to make it longer, if I thought it needed to be, but here it is now, before I may be tempted to write more; I think by now you may appreciate it, I mean...

The Left: An Occupy organizer admitted over the weekend that the goal of his protest group was to "overthrow the capitalist system and build communism." So the cat's out of the bag again on this bunch. Where is the outrage? The true agenda of the Occupy movement has been revealed — it's a totalitarian one. Billing itself as a spontaneous people's revolution and embraced by the media and Democrat political establishment, Occupy is really a destructive band of thugs whose goal is the violent demise of democracy. Speaking at a "People's Assembly" in Washington, former Amalgamated Transit Union local 689...

According to the American Conservative Union, the following 19 Senators compiled the most left-wing voting record in 2011. These scores are based on 20 separate votes that were taken by the U.S. Senate in 2011. A score of 0.00 indicates that the senator voted against the conservative position in each of these 20 votes (in a few instances, the senator did not cast a vote).

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They are doing it again - Hurling personal insults and unfounded accusations at non-liberals because there IS NO PENALTY. And they will continue to do so unless you MAKE THEM PAY A HUGE PRICE!

The United Auto Workers plans to take part in more non-violent protests in its fight against what it calls right-wing policies that have hurt the middle class. UAW president Bob King told a crowd of more than 500 at the 75th anniversary of union's first contract with General Motors that more direct action like such as the Flint sit-down strike of 1937 is needed today. “They’re trying to shred the social contract,” King said at the event held in Flint. “We don’t spend too much. This is still a rich country The problem is we’ve lost our moral compass,” said...

Jeff Travis owns a small business in Des Moines and he is absolutely furious at a classroom flier that his son received from his high school social studies teacher. The flier, given to students at Roosevelt High School, features a cartoon and slogans that seem to promote communism over capitalism. “Communism stands for equal sharing of the work according to the benefits and the ability, but in capitalism an individual is responsible for his works and if he wants to raise the ladder,” the flier stated. “While the profit of any enterprise is equally shared by all in Communism, the...

The conversation earlier today between Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep and NPR's Shankar Vedantam about software that can reportedly detect when a CEO might be trying to hide something during a conference call with investment analysts sent us off on a search for more about the research that Shankar was discussing. Layered Voice Analysis technology, according to researchers from Duke University and the University of Illinois, seems to be able to pick up on the "vocal dissonance markers" in the tone of a CEO's voice that signal he or she might be shading the truth, trying to not say something...

South Carolinians are voting today in the GOP primary, which some pundits see as the candidates' last stand for getting the GOP nomination to run in the general election. On weekends on All Things Considered today, host Guy Raz talked with Danielle Vinson, the chair of the political science department at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., about what is often considered "dirty" South Carolina primary politics. "If you don't come of out here with a first or second place, it's hard to keep going," she says. "So by the time they get here everybody takes off the gloves." One of...

At a campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa on Sunday, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum singled out blacks as being recipients of assistance through federal benefit programs, telling a mostly-white audience he doesn't want to "make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money." Answering a question about foreign influence on the U.S. economy, the former Pennsylvania senator went on to discuss the American entitlement system - which he argued is being used to politically exploit its beneficiaries. "It just keeps expanding - I was in Indianola a few months ago and I was talking to someone who...

Bar Vanunu, Mayor of the Binyamin community of Adam, formerly known as Geva Binyamin and situated 4 kilometers northeast of Jerusalem, told Arutz Sheva the decision to allow Arabs to work land at the entrance to the community is "outrageous." "This is very disturbing to the residents and presents a security hazard," Vanunu said. "It is a plot by the left to steal our land on behalf of the Arabs. Not to be immodest, but if I had been mayor three years ago, this never would have happened." According to Vanunu, the Civil Administration sends soldiers with the Arabs every...

Media Bias: In the early days of the Gulf War, pundits marveled at the specter of Iraqi troops surrendering to journalists. Well, now it's even worse: Journalists are giving the Democratic Party its talking points. The Washington Post's 27-year-old star blogger Ezra Klein has been called "whiz kid," and "brat packer" and a "wunderkind." Now he's actually advising Democratic chiefs of staff, briefing them last week about the supercommittee in Congress, according to a report by Fishbowl-DC on MediaBistro.com. That means the relatively novel idea that bloggers can be placed on an equal footing with reporters in congressional briefings has...

Three years after Wall Street and the big banks wrecked our economy, 25 million people are still unable to find full-time work and the gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent continues to grow. But Representative Eric Cantor and his allies in Congress are not just ignoring the concerns of the 99% -- they are making them worse. Join us this Thursday, November 17 at noon in Richmond, at the foot of the Hamilton Street Bridge, as we will declare an Economic Emergency for the 99%. Click here to RSVP. November 17 at noon, the other 99 percent...

Rich, I continue to think the real story here is the media — and Politico in particular. To repeat, I am not a Cain guy, and I think that lashing out at Perry, on the basis of what appears to be close to zero evidence, undermines Cain’s colorable claim to be the target of a hatchet job — if you’re going to charge hypocrisy, you need to stay above it yourself. But Cain’s shooting himself in the foot doesn’t change how we got here — and how Politico is still stoking the flames with irresponsible reporting. Politico’s initial story was...

Yesterday’s crowd-pleaser from MRC TV was just an appetizer. Here’s the main course via Reason — almost 19 minutes of Schiff taking on all comers at Zuccotti Park like some sort of Austrian-school ninja. Watch for the part where he breaks out the rhetorical nunchucks against regulation on grounds that everyone wants to pay lower prices for goods and is duly informed by a guy in a Guy Fawkes mask and keffiyeh that … no, not everyone does. There’s your “Obama 2012″ campaign slogan, I guess.

Journalism: Is the New York Times a news organization or a front for left-wing activists? Reporter Natasha Lennard was filmed leading an Occupy Wall Street panel, offering radicals tips on keeping their identities secret. Openly. In a video that appeared on BigGovernment.com, Lennard, a Times freelance reporter who was arrested with 700 other leftists for shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge this month, revealed herself to be within the actual leadership of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement. Along with four other "comrades," she addressed a roomful of people at a bookstore in Manhattan, officiously advising the fractious movement on how...

No one denies the long suffering of the Schalit family. Noam and Aviva Schalit and their relatives have endured five years and four months of uninterrupted anguish since their son St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit was abducted from his army post by Palestinian terrorists and spirited to Gaza in June 2006. Since then, aside from one letter and one videotaped message, they have received no signs of life from their soldier son. There is not a Jewish household in Israel that doesn’t empathize with their suffering. It isn’t simply that most Israelis serve in the IDF and expect their children to serve...

“President Obama tends to idealize — and rightfully so — Abraham Lincoln, who looked at states in rebellion and he made a judgment that the government of the United States, while the states are in rebellion, still had an obligation to function,” Jackson told TheDC at his Capitol Hill office on Wednesday. “On several occasions now, we’ve seen … the Congress is in rebellion, determined, as Abraham Lincoln said, to wreck or ruin at all costs. I believe … in the direct hiring of 15 million unemployed Americans at $40,000 a head, some more than $40,000, some less than $40,000...

The American dream is alive and well for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, but unfortunately, if you are in the other 99% the jury is still out. "America is obviously a country where you can go from being middle class to upper class, but right now class mobility has sort of collapsed in the United States," says Zaid Jilani, senior reporter for the progressive think tank ThinkProgress.org. (See: America's Middle Class Crisis: The Sobering Facts) This grim reality is in part the impetus for the Occupy Wall Street movement, which, now in its fourth week, will take to the streets...

Occupy Wall Street Protest The Good: - Shorter lines at Starbuck’s. - All the city’s panhandlers are in one place. - The suburbs smell better. - Better chance of obtaining employment for those who actually want to work for a living. - Less folk music in other areas of city. - Lower crime rate. - We’re just one fence away from unemployment solution. - Fire trucks + water = mass shower. - Makes people forget about that embarrassing ‘hockey riot’ in Vancouver. - Gives Wall Street Suits a good chuckle when watching news in their mansions. - City's drug dealers...

The anti-instruction manual — because there are no rules for bad behavior! Children are natural masters of anarchy, but are too often unaware of the power they wield in their cute little hands, and too seldom encouraged by grown-ups to figure that out. In "A Rule Is To Break: A Child's Guide To Anarchy" that determined little devil girl Wild Child wages her own one-girl rebellion against the stifling world of adults who just want her to behave! And she brings her friends along! Prepare for the upcoming Toddler Rebellion with Wild Child as your guide!

AARP uses member resources to advocate same-sex marriage and special rights for immoral behavior Part of their membership fees or profits used to advocate same-sex marriage, homosexual adoption, repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" military policy and special rights for immoral behavior. September 19, 2011 AARP uses member resources to advocate same-sex marriage and pro-homosexual military policy. AARP membership cancellation information provided below. Page 38 of the July/August AARP bulletin contained an article titled "Pride Is Ageless" which announced AARP's plans for "advocacy efforts in the LGBT arena." The article stated "AARP has created a new online home for the...

A taxpayer who doesn’t favor Barack Obama might not mind subsidizing a show where he’s attacked as unserious about the country’s problems. But with PBS talk-show host Tavis Smiley, it’s been a relentless attack on Obama from the left. Everything he’s done isn’t half-socialist enough. On Wednesday, Smiley welcomed fellow leftist and former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert to his show to denounce Republicans for keeping Obama from passing a woefully insufficient second “stimulus” attempt. Herbert thinks Obama's new spending proposal is about one-tenth of what's needed. We need a four-trillion-dollar plan. SMILEY: To your point now, then, whose...

Polly Toynbee, UK Guardian columnist and champagne socialist (house in fashionable Clapham and villa in Tuscany) has been rightly described by Boris Johnson as the living embodiment of “all the nannying, high-taxing, high-spending schoolmarminess “ of the liberal left.

Editor's note: LZ Granderson, who writes a weekly column for CNN.com, has been named Journalist of the Year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. He is a senior writer and columnist for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com, and a 2010 nominee and the 2009 winner of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation award for online journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @locs_n_laughs. Watch him on CNN Newsroom Tuesdays at 9 a.m. ET. Grand Rapids, Michigan (CNN) -- We have seen Michele Bachmann being asked questions about her relationship with her husband, Marcus. We have seen Mitt Romney...

Ed Schultz used a deceptive edit to misinform his audience about the content of Gov. Rick Perry's speech in Iowa yesterday. Schultz claimed that Gov. Perry was calling President Obama a "black cloud hanging over America" when in fact, the governor was talking about the national debt.

Perhaps it was no coincidence that Hollywood Democrats rushed to defend the child rapist, Roman Polanski. In Tinseltown, there’s a culture of redefining time-honored norms while “tolerantly” censoring critics. Furthermore, there’s a tolerance for drug-using children, as Hollywood is viewed as a politically-correct “free love” capital But now the lid on “integer-generational sex” (read: pedophilia) is being reopened. The former child star, Corey Feldman, 40, told Nightline, “The No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia.” Chillingly, chardonnay socialists and adults-first libertarians are often reluctant to speak out. “It’s all done under the radar… But...

If one child complains that he didn't get as much food as his brother because his frankfurter was cut into four pieces, while his brother's hot dog was cut into five pieces, we laugh. What we often don't realize is that the definitions of "fairness" that adults use are often every bit as arbitrary as those of children. This is why politicians are so in love with the word "fairness." Using that word justifies their attempt to swoop in, ignore merit, overrule the market, and take something from one group of people to give it to another group of people...

Often the Left is so predictable. While Norway mourns the deaths of the 92 (so far) shooting victims, kook bloggers at FireDogLake, Democratic Underground, and elsewhere are already labelling the alleged killer to be "right wing." This meme appears to have started with a comment made by a Norwegian political science professor who speculated that the shooter might be "right wing." Even Sarah Palin is now being blamed for the shooting because the suspect reportedly favored the creation of a European Tea Party. The media keeps repeating the mantra that the shooter is "right wing." But what does it even...

While they scramble to bury Rupert Murdoch, they ignore the blatant violation of tax-exempt status by George Soros' pet outfit.The MSM is enjoying a very quiet laugh at the expense of one of their competitors: the Fox News Channel. TheyÂ’re not saying a word about the all-encompassing, possibly illegal abuse Fox News is experiencing at the hands of the George Soros-funded (to the tune of $1M) Media Matters for America. Media Matters was co-founded by current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, something which she proudly proclaims. Her fellow founder is David Brock, the fallen conservative journalist who thereafter drifted leftward....

Muslim women would have to remove veils and show their faces to police on request or risk a prison sentence under proposed new laws in Australia’s most populous state that have drawn criticism as culturally insensitive. A vigorous debate that the proposal has triggered reflects the cultural clashes being ignited by the growing influx of Muslim immigrants and the unease that visible symbols of Islam are causing in predominantly white Christian Australia since 1973 when the government relaxed its immigration policy. Critics say the bill smacks of anti-Muslim bias given how few women in Australia wear burqas. In a population...

Earlier this month, Sen. Marco Rubio made an auspicious debut. Unlike so many first turns in the upper chamber, Rubio’s stirring remarks, which celebrated American exceptionalism, caught fire. The Florida Republican’s words were cited by Senate colleagues and championed by conservatives. To no one’s surprise, the push to put Rubio on the 2012 ticket only increased, even though the charismatic freshman continues to swat away the chatter. Look for the Rubio buzz to continue. In an interview with National Review Online, he says that he will take to the Senate floor for his second speech this week — and this...

Is this what the Left calls civility? The Facebook group "I hate it when I wake up and Sarah Palin is still alive" has grown to well over 3,000 members. 3,249 people to be exact. Over three thousand left-wingers wish to see Mrs. Palin die. And their group's official picture: Some of the comments underneath read: ...Don't forget about comments like these (swearing obscured):

<p>Twelve reasons why the AOL – Huffington Post merger is going down in flames.</p> <p>The tragedy here is that not only will the deal ruin AOL, but it will also ruin the Huffington Post.</p> <p>It is the Peter Principle on a grand scale. None of AOL’s senior editors (Huffington, Roy Sekoff, and Nico Pitney) have ever managed more than a few people. Now they have hundreds and lack the experience to manage a team this big. Behind the scenes, long time Huffposters say that Jai Singh’s departure has eliminated the key adult in the room. Now they need to grow HuffPost and save AOL – not possible.</p>

It's déjà vu all over again. Democrats in congress have re-introduced a small business –jobs bill that has no hope of helping small business. Pandering to labor union interests, filled with Democrats’ flawed understanding of what creates private sector jobs, and crammed full of recycled regulations from the failed Waxman-Markey Energy bill, H.R. 870 is dangerous legislation that uses buzz words rather than sound business principles to encourage small business growth and job creation. The legislation, thinly disguised as a jobs creation bill, panders to the tired, failed policies of Democrats’ left-wing, extremist base. The bill focuses on “green jobs”,...

Suspicious fire destroys Hacienda Heights church, latest in series of crimes against Catholic parishes in CA Investigators suspect arson in a fire that destroyed St. John Vianney Church in Hacienda Heights over the weekend. ..snip The fire, which began shortly after midnight on Saturday, left only a burned out shell where the 5000-member parish’s sanctuary once stood. ...snip The arson at St. John Vianney Church is the latest in a string of crimes against Catholic institutions across California. In January, a vandal spray-painted the words “Kill the Cathlics” on the walls of St. Boniface Catholic Church in Anaheim and St....