Free Republic

She laughed. I had invited Cheryl Hall to the screening of “Religulous” to get a faith-based reaction to comedian Bill Maher's diatribe on the divine. Hall's credentials: longtime member of the United Methodist Women and faithful San Diego churchgoer whose husband teaches a weekly Bible study class. Surely, she would be offended at roasting religion as if it were a Hollywood has-been. But she laughed. Several times. Her defense: “I think God has a sense of humor.” And then she added: “If his point was to make religion look ridiculous, then he did a very good job.” It did not,...

Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin is once again coming under attack because of her Christian faith. A recent Los Angeles Times story claimed that as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin espoused young-earth creationism. The report prompted liberal Internet columnist Robert Paul Reyes to brand Palin a "religious fanatic" with a "Neanderthal faith" who "thinks that 'The Flinstones' is a reality show." Reyes suggests that during tonight's vice-presidential debate, Palin should be questioned about her reported belief that God created the earth 6,000 years ago and that dinosaurs and men coexisted. Mark Looy is co-founder of the creation apologetics ministry...

Rosie's Place is a worthwhile shelter for abused women in Boston Mass.Each year they have a a fund raiser featuring a female comic. This year they selected Sandra Bernhard who as you probably know wished that Sarah Palin would be gang raped by black men.After Reese Hopkins who is the only Republican Black man in Massachusetts exposed this on his radio show (www.wrko.com and then listen live from 10 til noon)He was called by Emily Rooney (Daughter of Andy Rooney) and also by the Woman in charge of the fund raiser.Neither of these self-confessed super geniuses had been aware of...

Cynthia McKinney says 5000 executed Katrina used as cover. News Type: Event — Tue Sep 30, 2008 Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney announced for the first time on Sunday that she has received information that some 5000, mostly male, possibly prisoners were killed execution style, by single gunshot to the head, using the tragic events of hurricane Katrina as a cover. Candidate McKinney made the announcement at a conference in Oakland, Ca, for the Critical Resistance 10 on Sunday. While speaking she informed the audience that she has received information from a sources that were involved in the clean-up and disposal...

America is "dumb" because it remains the most religious country in the western world. This according to Bill Maher, who made such a statement on the September 30 edition of "The View." Appearing to promote his new documentary "Religulous," Maher continued his soapbox rants against organized religion. Elisabeth Hasselbeck set up Maher noting his comparison of President Bush to Osama Bin Laden, and noted that many presidents such as John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, spoke publicly of a higher power. Maher likewise replied "of course, it’s, it’s a religious country, unlike every other civilized western democracy...

Bill Maher's Anti-Religion Movie “Religion is detrimental to the progress of society.” That’s my favorite quote from Bill Maher’s often brilliant, but often unfocused “documentary,” called “Religulous.” It opens in early October right after its debut at the Toronto Film Festival. The articulate, quick-witted comedian sets out in this film — which was supposed to have been released last Easter — to prove that line is true. Directed by Larry Charles, the man who put "Borat" together so skillfully, "Religulous" is blatant about Maher’s feelings: religion is bad. All religions are bad. They are ruining everything. If you go for...

According to their site, Sandra (Gang Rape) Bernhard will continue to perform at the Center for the Arts at the DC Jewish Community Center until Sept. 28, all this week. Therefore I sent e-mails to: Arna Meyer Mickelson Chief Executive Officer arnam@washingtondcjcc.org Margaret Hahn Stern Chief Operating Officer margareth@washingtondcjcc.org Ari Roth Co-Director, Center For The Arts tellari@theaterj.org The e-mail is aimed at Roth, and I added the introductory sentence for the two women. Here is the text. If anyone wants to follow suit, each in his own words, these birds deserve all the flak they can get. TEXT I sent...

The Washington Post isn’t the only daily D.C. newspaper to rave about Sandra Bernhard’s anti-Palin ranting. Wednesday’s Washington Examiner joined in, with the headline "Comedienne delivers enraged optimism." Barbara Mackay claimed "in the end, oddly and subtly, Bernhard’s message is positive." That’s not the impression you’d get from the blog of Theater J, where Bernhard is appearing. It has video of Bernhard calling Palin "Uncle Women," a "turncoat b—h" and a "whore." One complaint on the blog that Bernhard crosses a line of political incorrectness draws a defense from Ari Roth of Theater J that really drops the curtain on...

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is reviewing complaints from both Americans and Canadians about a Web site columnist who recently described Sarah Palin’s supporters as “white trash,” compared the vice presidential candidate to a “porn actress” and called her daughter’s boyfriend a “redneck” and “ratboy.” The incendiary column by Toronto-based writer Heather Mallick appeared on the CBC News site on Sept. 5, after the close of the Republican National Convention. On the same day, Britain’s Guardian newspaper published another column by Mallick in which she trashed Palin’s home state of Alaska as a “frontier state full of drunks and crazy people.”...

The Obama campaign has released new radio and TV ads in Spanish that seek to tie Sen. John McCain to anti-immigrant comments made by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The ads also suggest the Republican has "dos caras" -- "two faces" -- when it comes to his relations with Latino voters. The new messages, airing in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, come in response to recent Spanish-language ads by the McCain campaign that suggest Obama is responsible for the collapse of last year's bipartisan immigration reform efforts. "They want us to forget the insults we've put up with, the...

Monday, September 15th 2008, 9:52 AM Beck/Getty Gov. Sarah Palin The current lie of the presidential campaign, current but certainly not last, is that you are some kind of lousy, sexist bum if you question Sarah Palin's lightweight credentials to be vice president of the United States, or the judgment of the 72-year-old who put her on the ticket in the first place. It means you're supposed to do about as much vetting on her as John McCain. She's a spunky mom, she has a son who's a soldier, she loves guns and hates Roe vs. Wade, and don't worry...

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn): "Barack Obama was a community organizer like Jesus, who our minister prayed about. Pontius Pilate was a governor."

John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick. [READ MORE BELOW]

"GAYS" ARE UPSET BECAUSE SARAH PALIN’S CHURCH WANTS TO SAVE THEM? Excuse me, but what’s wrong with these people? Don’t “gays” have enough to worry about? Now they’re all exercised over Governor Sarah Palin’s church, the Wasilla Bible Church, and its efforts to convert them to normalcy: http://news.aol.com/elections/article/palins-church-promotes-gay-conversion/165471?icid=200100397×1208835546x1200532764. I must not get it. There’s so much antipathy in this country toward homosexuals and yet good people who want to end that antipathy by getting “gays” to return to normal lives are castigated for trying to “pray away the gay.” I realize that at least some “gays” don’t wish to convert...

An Italian museum has defied Pope Benedict by refusing to remove a statue of a crucified green frog clutching a beer mug and an egg. The Vatican had condemned the modern art sculpture as blasphemous. The board of the Museion museum in the northern city of Bolzano voted it was a work of art, however. The board decreed it would stay in place for the remainder of an exhibition. The wooden sculpture by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger depicts a frog about 1 metre 30 cm (4 feet) high nailed to brown cross and holding a beer mug in...

"Using terms that would send Republicans into the history books, Jimmy Carter on PBS calls Barack this Black Boy" I couldn't believe it until I heard it for myself.

Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own business, teaching your life science course, it's early in the term. A student, on the way out after class (never at the beginning of class, rarely during class) mentions something about "carbon dating." This usually happens around the time of year you are doing an overview of the main points of the course, but before you've gotten to the "evolution module"... The student is talking about C14 dating and how it "has problems." But you are a life science teacher and can't think of a single point in your...

A black delegate for Hillary Rodham Clinton says she was called an "Uncle Tom" by Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, 1 of Barack Obama's political mentors.

DHP Review: Religulous Posted by Dirty Harry on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 While more entertaining and better paced, director Larry Charles‘ Religulous can’t help but remind of Morgan Spurlock’s dreadful Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden?, especially at the end where both films are undone by their attempts to close on serious points the preceding 90 minutes of antics simply can’t sustain. It’s surprising Charles let this one get away from him. After all, he also directed Borat, and one of the few saving graces of that humiliation-fest was that it never lost sight of the fact that...

This is the Apocalypse of St. Bill the Stoned. Though funny, smart and often profane, Religulous doesn't want to send you out of the theater with a smile on your lips. The final moments of the film aren't laugh out loud funny, but a parade of images of death and destruction. This, Bill Maher says, is what humanity is in for if it doesn't get rid of the nuerological disorder that is religion. You probably know my bias going into this film. I believe that religion is not just irrational but anti-rational, a Bronze Age worldview that should have been...

Leave it to the liberal print media to find some way to kill everyone's Olympics buzz. For instance, did you know that the choice by the U.S. Olympic Committee to have Ralph Lauren stitch the threads for Team USA's opening ceremonies uniform was an unfortunate nod to racism and classism and a futile, nostalgic clinging to America's waning WASP empire? That according to Sameer Reddy (pictured at right, photo via Newsweek) in an August 20 online exclusive for Newsweek

The Rev. Robert Jones went to the Capitol last Wednesday hoping to make his voice heard. What he got instead was a swear-word laden rebuke from Democratic Sen. Pat Wiggins, who interrupted Jones' testimony to say: "Excuse me, but I think your arguments are bull----." The exchange left Jones, the senior pastor at Oak Park United Methodist Church, stunned and offended. "It is a slap in the face," he said in an interview. The outburst occurred as Jones, 46, testified at an informational hearing on how California will cut global warming emissions. Jones, who is African American, said he went...

Much of America's political conversation is couched in code. And so it was that recently the McCain campaign accused Barack Obama of playing the "race card," two four-letter words that, taken together, trail a wealth of innuendo like a comet's tail. Using the term "race card" as a pejorative is almost always meant to promulgate the big lie that takes hold everywhere from the workplace to the classroom: that black men and women commonly use race as a bludgeon and an excuse, and that they will always blame failures or disagreements on racism. This is belied by objective reality. To...

Obama, his campaign trying to transcend it -- but can't I can't be the only person who sees the snake in the room. The one that slithers away whenever the political pundits start explaining what the latest presidential poll means. From the moment Barack Obama went from a wannabe presidential contender to a front-runner, the race factor curled up and waited to strike anyone who got too close. Former President Bill Clinton got bit. So did the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Still, whenever commentators talk about the close contest between Obama and John McCain, they ignore the snake. Yet anyone who...

The comments presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made about his race in Union, Missouri on Wednesday--was not the first time Obama talked about his expectation that the Republicans will use race to detail his candidacy. Last June at a Florida fund-raiser Obama--the first African American to have a viable chance of becoming president--said the GOP will go after him because he is black. Obama said then, "The choice is clear. Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or...

Christian protests put Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials film trilogy in doubt By Stephen Adams Last Updated: 1:01pm BST 18/07/2008 The future of the film trilogy based on Phillip Pullman's books His Dark Materials is in doubt after the controversial author said he did not know if the sequel to The Golden Compass would be made. The first in the trilogy, which starred Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, was dogged by accusations from American religious groups that it was anti-Catholic and even sought to "destroy God". British author Pullman admitted such objections may have hit US box office sales.... The...

None other than the Rev. Al Sharpton has come to Milwaukee. Well, at least his voice is here. Sharpton’s syndicated radio show recently began broadcasting from noon to 3 p.m. weekdays on WMCS-AM (1290). That’s probably welcome news for some in town; for others, not so much. For some Milwaukeeans, Sharpton is part of the unholy trinity — along with Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson — of outspoken black men who never let white America forget its sad racial past. To others, it’s a welcome relief to have a nationally syndicated African-American radio program with a political focus during daytime...

Christian publisher Zondervan is facing a $60 million federal lawsuit filed by a man who claims he and other homosexuals have suffered based on what the suit claims is a misinterpretation of the Bible.

As Denver dignitaries gathered today for Mayor John Hickenlooper's State of the City address, City Council President Michael Hancock introduced singer Rene Marie to perform the national anthem. But that's not what she did. Instead, Marie performed the song "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," which is also known as the "Black National Anthem." When she finished, the proceedings moved forward, and few seemed to notice that the Star Spangled Banner was never performed. One who did notice was Councilman Charlie Brown, and he took to local talk radio Tuesday afternoon to blast the lack of the nation's anthem at the...

On Friday, Senator Obama warned a cheering audience about the Republicans. “They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?” A few months ago, historian Sean Wilentz dubbed this tactic the “race-baiter card.” Smear your opponents as racists, and if there’s no evidence for the claim, accuse them of using “coded language.” There is no authoritative racial codebook, so the charge is easy to lodge. The campaign need not make such accusations directly, since sympathetic writers will do so. Consider Senator Clinton’s “3...

How far is Barack Obama willing to run from the very same Black nationalism that was fundamental to his victories in so many state Democratic primaries? The nominee-apparent is in pell-mellFireObama flight from everything that does not conform to his own "race-neutral" worldview. Obama's political contradictions compel him to reject his most fervent supporters, and apparently to reexamine his ties to the Black Church as an institution.

Still bitter from his spanking at the hands of Clint Eastwood (background here), conspiracy nut and race-monger Spike Lee is clinging to Barack Obama for revenge. He told a film festival crowd this week that he has gathered 1,000 hours of footage of his Obamessiah on the campaign trail and will produce a documentary about the candidate. The dour director instantly cheered up. Via SilverDocs, Lee gloats: Discussing his Hurricane Katrina epic When the Levees Broke, Lee referenced the current flooding in the midwest and said, “The infrastructure of this country is crumbling, and money’s going elsewhere.” He paused, then...

BET founder Bob Johnson, despite his consistent support of Hillary CObama’s election as President during a segment on Wednesday’s "American Morning." "I believe that if Senator Obama leads this country the way he ran the primary, it will become a historic event for African-Americans, probably greater than the Emancipation Proclamation, which was signed in 1863."linton, placed an unequivocal importance on Barack

Senator Barack Obama is now the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America. This seems like a good time to consider who this man is. Here are some quotes from his autobiographies Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope that might help Americans and the rest of the world get a sense of this man who is one general election away from the Oval Office. Before you read them consider that Henry Kissinger once remarked that presidents come into office and leave office the the same men. The job is too demanding to permit opportunities...

Trailer Because it's billed as a more personal project for Mark Pellington after a string of interesting, idiosyncratic thrillers ("Arlington Road," "The Mothman Prophecies"), "Henry Poole Is Here" is all the more disappointing. Pic's tendency to lecture on the power of faith and religion and on the demerits of science seems to assume an almost childlike audience that needs to be spoon-fed Pablum. This tale of a single man whose medical death sentence is reversed in part by a neighborhood of believers won't advance the profile of the always-likable Luke Wilson, and Christian moviegoers will have to show up in...

Noteworthy, not because this is the first time he’s said something this vile but because it’s not. He floated it to our favorite liberal in February during an interview on Fox News radio (and, sad to say, wasn’t called on it) and thought so highly of his bon mot that he recycled it for his new book. Either no one’s taken him aside to explain how disgusting it is or someone has taken him aside but he thinks it’s so important and righteous that he’s going to keep deploying it anyway. I don’t know which is worse. Bear in mind,...

In an attempt to explain how race will impact Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama's run for the White House, Newsweek has created a "Racial Resentment Index" exclusively for white people without measuring such biases of non-whites.

But the real reason for Obama’s extraordinary freakout is that he fears the release of the videotape, reported here, of Michelle Obama in the pulpit of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church railing against “whitey.” And we don’t mean Whitey Ford. Four Republican sources have told me that the tape exists. I’ve also been informed that Karl Rove and his allies have a copy of it and are using it to raise funds for independent expenditure groups. The tape, I’m told, will be disclosed as the GOP October Surprise. It’s a ticking time bomb. And I’ve learned that a right-wing Republican billionaire...

Politico.com has a .pdf copy of Michelle Robinson Obama’s thesis in sociology. [http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8642.html] The content is entirely consistent with Barack Obama’s Black identity politics, if not outright Black Nationalist politics, as described in Dreams From My Father, as well as Michelle Obama’s statement that she is proud of our country only when her husband, who can’t be bothered to show respect for our National Anthem, is running for President. It is no surprise that efforts were made to conceal this thesis from the public until after the election. Earlier in my college career, there was no doubt in my mind...

My mother was conceived from a rape. Her mother was a light-skinned Black woman, who at the age of 19 saw her family burned to death in a fire. While she was recovering from shock in a hospital, a White doctor on staff had his way with her. Out of that horrific act, my mother was born. The doctor was never punished and disappeared into the dustbin of history. My mother was subsequently adopted by a Black family and my biological grandmother, victim of the crime, was rendered insane in a mental institution for the rest of her life. Ironically...

Maher to Apologize for Calling Pope a 'Nazi' By Melanie Hunter-Omar CNSNews.com Senior Editor April 17, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - Liberal talk show host Bill Maher, whose controversial comments about the pope drew fire from the Catholic community, is planning to apologize Friday night for falsely accusing Pope Benedict XVI of being a Nazi, the Catholic League announced Thursday. Catholic League President Bill Donohue received a phone call Thursday from an HBO executive regarding comments Maher made last Friday on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher." As Cybercast News Service previously reported, Donohue said Maher "lied when he said the Pope...

Even though the topic on the agenda for Wednesday’s Senate Appropriations Committee hearing was Iraq war funding, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) grasped from the moment he arrived that he was the day’s most important subject — and he was ready to make his case. He arrived on time, wore a crisp suit and entered the room smiling. When he left, after two hours, “Shut up” were the only words he had for his critics. He seemed to pass the test, convincing three Senate Democratic leaders that he’s fit to continue as chairman. Byrd knows that he is the most closely...

The subject of race is all over the media headlines. Reverend Jeremiah Wright told it like it is and conservative America could not take the strong medicine. Sen. Barack Obama had to prepare his greatest speech to address the frenzy that was and is taking place about it. Imagine, Black people having to explain to White America that there is a racial problem in this nation. That alone signifies the degree of importance this issue has. Denial can be the worst enemy and biggest problem. Most recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to weigh in on the issue. She...

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before," the future Mrs. Obama wrote in her thesis introduction. "I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second."

And now to add to the ever-lengthening list of Obamessiah apologists comes TV and Radio talker Alan Colmes to say that Barack Obama is right, Middle America IS filled with racist, overly religious, gun-nuts. On his LiberalLand blog (the formerly secret blog he was hiding from the greater world), Sean Hannity's co-host said the following: And just where is he wrong? Pointing out why people may be bitter or frustrated, that there is xenophobia, that people sometimes cling to religion or feel paranoid about the government and embrace guns doesn’t mean you hate or disdain a portion of the population.First...

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - Sen. Barack Obama was criticized Friday by his two fellow presidential candidates for statements he made recently at a San Francisco fundraiser that could be viewed as derogatory toward rural America. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said Sunday, according to the Huffington Post web site. "And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate...

The Huffington Post's Mayhill Fowler reports that, at that same San Francisco fundraiser where Obama revealed his previously unknown college sojourn to Pakistan, the junior senator from Illinois seemed to try to get inside the mind of small towners in Pennsylvania, with a dose of sociology and a dollop of dime-store psychology. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration...

Hillary Clinton and John McCain both ripped into Barack Obama Friday for reportedly saying residents of small-town America “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” out of bitterness over lost jobs, a remark his opponents interpreted as arrogant...

Durham, N.C. — Attorneys for three former Duke University lacrosse players filed a motion this week asking a judge to lift a stay that keeps them from suing former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong. Nifong filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in January, listing a debt of $180.3 million and David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann – as well as three other players who filed suit – as unsecured creditors, each owed $30 million. Attorneys for Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann, however, say in the April 8 filing that bankruptcy was a tactic he used to avoid a federal civil rights...

An invitation to a "diversity workshop" sent to Sandia Labs employees last week by labs management has drawn complaints because of its suggestion that white people are inherently racist. "Recent studies suggest whites' lack of awareness about other cultures has to do with whites' commitment to maintaining higher social status, or 'white privilege,' '' the invitation said. It also said whites "are likely to persist in racist behaviors unless persuaded to abolish the privileges they receive as members of the white race." Sandia staff received a dozen calls from employees upset about the wording, labs spokesman Michael Padilla said. He...