Free Republic

A Superior woman accused of holding a knife close to the neck of an anti-abortion demonstrator outside of Duluth’s Building for Women last month pleaded not guilty to an assault charge today in St. Louis County District Court. Mechelle Tallulah Hall, 26, is charged with second-degree assault in the alleged Nov. 24 incident. At her initial appearance, last month, Hall told the court, “I know what I did was wrong.” Hall waived a hearing to challenge evidence against her. Judge John DeSanto scheduled Hall’s next hearing for Feb. 16 with a trial scheduled for Feb. 23. The defendant is accused...

No world leader has ever surpassed the accomplishments of former South African President Nelson Mandela. So says actor Matt Damon, who plays rugby team captain Francois Pienaar in Clint Eastwood's Nelson Mandela film, "Invictus," which opens nationwide Friday. “Mandela convinced everybody to not go to war. That involves a lot of personal responsibility," Damon told Tarts at last week’s Los Angeles premiere. "South Africa had the greatest political leader in the world in our lifetime. Period.” The film covers the months in 1995 after Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa after decades of white apartheid rule, a time...

And here we were thinking that slap-stick humor died out with the legendary Charlie Chaplin. If you haven't already heard, a 33 year-old man in Minnesota by the name of Jeremy Paul Olson was arrested yesterday for chucking tomatoes at Sarah Palin during a Mall of America book signing. Olson attempted the tomato barrage from the second floor balcony, but unfortunately missed Sarah and her husband Todd both by about ten feet. He did, however, hit nearby police officers (one right in the face!), which is probably the only reason that he was truly taken into custody. That is, I...

2009 will probably go down as the Year of Stupid. Everywhere you look you see birthers, deathers, deniers, tea fetishists, and semi-literate amateur pundits screaming and frothing over their unsupported, repeatedly debunked line of argument. They are wrong. Dead wrong. Distractingly, even dangerously wrong. And since they will not, or more likely cannot, understand this fact they go on screaming and frothing in a fruitless quest for validation. They'll disrupt town hall meetings, Congressional addresses, and children's birthday parties to remind you, just in case you allowed yourself to forget for even a moment, of just how painfully stupid they...

Author Nonie Darwish, whose new book warns of the advance of Islamic law in the West, completed a scheduled speech at Boston University but not without the interruption of an apparent arson in a nearby restroom. Darwish, whose recently scheduled addresses at both Columbia and Princeton were canceled following Islamic opposition, said the students who arranged her Boston University appearance this week believe the fire was an attempt to hinder her message. "I am still in shock," she said in an e-mail to supporters. "Fifteen minutes before I was to speak at Boston University a fire was set on purpose...

According to a criminal complaint, 41-year -old Stephen Louis Olson of Backus was angry the county planned to log the trees. Cass County officials say the stand is thinned every ten to 15 years. About 100 of the 600 trees were slated to be cut down and sold this month. The money would have benefitted the community and school district. - Authorities say the entire forest must be cut down due to safety concerns. Mike Diekmann of the Cass County Sheriff's Office says that if a saw hit one of the nails, "it would explode like a gun going off"...

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

Conspiracy theorists awaiting Wednesday night's premiere of "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura" might take interest in a curious comment Ventura made in the Los Angeles Times this weekend. Ventura, who has been doing the media rounds promoting his new venture on TruTV, told the paper that MSNBC cancelled his show "Jesse Ventura's America" in 2003 because he did not support the Iraq War. He said the network "in essence" paid him to be silent, which allowed him to purchase a house in Mexico. This is not your first venture into TV hosting since leaving the governorship. What happened to "Jesse...

EDITORIAL November 16, 2009 There are 16 million children in immigrant families in the United States, one of the fastest-growing segments of the population. It’s an old American story made new (snip) when waves of human displacement in recent decades have led to immigration on a scale not seen since Ellis Island. But a country that has been so good for so long at integrating new Americans is stumbling under the challenge. That is the conclusion of Professors Marcelo and Carola Suárez-Orozco, fellows at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and co-directors of immigration studies at New York University....

A Widow Paints A Health Care Protest by Joseph Shapiro On a humid day this summer, in a parking lot at the long back wall of a gas station, Regina Holliday stood on a scaffold with her palette of red, black and blue and started painting a mural. At the center, there's a dying man in a hospital. It's Regina Holliday's husband, Fred. He died on June 17th of kidney cancer. He was 39 years old, with his wife and two young sons. For official Washington, this has been the season of health care overhaul. Fred and Regina's personal health...

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson (R) is setting up a new political group to potentially set up a run for the White House. The former two-term governor, known for his libertarian leanings, is setting up a new 527 group, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican, over which he'll preside as an "honorary chairman." The move raises the specter that Johnson might wage a bid for the GOP -- or Libertarian Party -- nomination for president in 2012. Candidates often set up groups, more frequently Political Action Committees (PACs) to raise money for or support other candidates. Johnson said...

The blogosphere was abuzz today with reports that Barack Obama's undergraduate thesis from Columbia University – in which he allegedly called free market capitalism "tyranny" and slammed the Constitution for fitting Americans with "shackles of hypocrisy" – has been revealed. Only, the reported source of the document, Joe Klein of Time magazine, has publicly declared the whole thing a hoax. "A report is circulating among the wingnuts that I had a peek at Barack Obama's senior thesis," Klein writes on Time's Swampland blog site. "It is completely false. I've never seen Obama's thesis. I have no idea where this report...

Over at HuffPo, Russell Simmons has let go of the wheel and bounced off a guard rail. His apocalyptic melodrama sounds like the typical Hollywood cliche of a Christian right-winger. But these lefties are all about projection, so that’s to be expected. A normal celebucrat post has a pull quote or two you can highlight and make sport of, but Simmons is all pull quote — a bonanza of crazy — so where to begin? Hey, I know, let’s play a game. Here are ten quotes, nine are from Simmons, one is not. Can you pick out the lunacy that...

The Obama revolution, and there was the hope of one, might still succeed. But only if Barack Obama follows the model of the incredibly successful Reagan revolution and heeds the political base that made his presidency possible. Love him or not, Ronald Reagan had at least one outstanding political virtue - his respect for the concerns of those who placed their trust in him. And whenever the political vultures that feast on power tried to lead him astray, they were fired at the insistence of Reagan or his remarkably savvy wife, Nancy. Hopefully Obama and his no-less-impressive mate, Michelle, will...

Another moment of lunacy from this nation’s biggest Oval Office mistake of the 20th century — which may be akin to saying “water is still wet,” but we should be keeping a tally. While in Columbia, former President Jimmy Carter told an interviewer that the Bush administration “could have been involved” in the 2002 coup attempt against Venezuelan wanna-be dictator Hugo Chavez. Dan Calabrese unloads on America’s worst ex-president: On Sunday, Jimmeh told the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo that he believes the Bush Administration was likely behind a coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002 in Venezuela. “I think there is...

Keith Olbermann is not one to pass up an opportunity to attack anything that even hints at being right of center. The repugnant MSNBC host devoted some three-quarters of his Sept. 16 show to claim criticism of President Barack Obama had to have elements of racism, no matter how you sliced it. And therefore, those critics were all despicable human beings, end of story. However, he did manage to find time to revert to old tried and true method of appeasing his angry left-wing desires - a little bashing of former Republican vice-presidential nominee and Gov. Sarah Palin, with an...

BERKELEY — Six months after Tristan Anderson, a former UC Berkeley tree sitter and Bay Area activist, nearly died after being struck in the head with a tear-gas canister fired by Israeli troops, friends are holding a benefit Sunday to raise money for his recovery costs. Anderson, 38, remains at a rehabilitation hospital near Tel Aviv and continues to have setbacks and infections after skull surgery last month, supporters said. The operation came after doctors learned Anderson was suffering from post-traumatic hydrocephalus, a blockage of the ventricles — open spaces in the brain — that causes poor circulation of cerebral...

In Connecticut, we have about 13 separate Mini Tea Parties throughout the state, one each day of the week for Mon thru Saturday, some days have 2, some days have as many as 3 per day! Today in Cheshire, an Obama Health Care supporter drove by me and 62 other Patriots who were at the weekly Monday Tea Party in Cheshire, Connectuicut.

"Luckily, the effect is expected to be relatively small, and shouldn’t induce any negative feedback in the planet’s climate. It just needs to be taken into account when interpreting shifts in Earth’s axis."

Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist who camped out in the summer of 2005 near President Bush’s Texas ranch, is heading for President Obama’s vacation site in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Ms. Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in the Iraq war, said in a press release Monday that she would hold a press conference Wednesday morning at the Oak Bluff’s Elementary School on the island resort. That is where the White House press corps is working during the president’s vacation. “We need to give the president the moral backbone he needs” to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Sheehan said...

Sen. Russ Feingold D-WI says bring'em home regarding the troops in Afghanistan, cites a lack of strategy and believes that increase in troops is not a wise idea. Today, in a meeting with the editorial board of The Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wis., Sen. Feingold called for a flexible timetable to bring our troops out of Afghanistan. Per an e-mail announcement, Feingold said: "After eight years, I am not convinced that simply pouring more and more troops into Afghanistan is a well thought out strategy. And I have raised this issue with the President, with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs...

I AM AS HAPPY as anyone at signs of an economic recovery. But I confess to having mixed feelings about the resurgence of the wing-nut industry. We now have “The Birthers’’ manufacturing myths that President Obama was not born in the United States and therefore is serving illegally. They are following the business plan of those earlier entrepreneurs selling the idea that Obama had killed his grandma. Consider the scare-biz Internet scribe who penned the memorable line: “Obama flies to Hawaii to visit his grandmother and just a few days later she winds up dead. Coincidence?

Daily Kos user aggregatescience reported that MSNBC / CNBC’s Donny Deutsch has called for a boycott of Glenn Beck’s advertisers due to Beck’s asinine claim that President Obama is a racist. Deutch announced the charge on his show, The Big Idea: DEUTSCH: He called this president a ‘racist’ and a ‘hatred of white people’, okay? This has to stop. Here’s the only way this stops. The reason this man does this, this Glenn Beck does this, is because it attracts viewers, it creates controversy… If you’re an African-American or white American who’s tired of this kind of talk, write to...

What to make of Ron Paul? The word erratic comes to mind. On domestic spending, he is a righteous guardian of small government, while on foreign affairs he is a dangerous isolationist who believes the world will leave us alone if we just tend to our own knitting. And as far as Sarah Palin and her supporters go, he is a space cadet, apparently. An interview with Politico published today contains this startling assertion from Paul: 'As for soon-to-be departing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Paul dismisses her supporters as "more establishment, conventional Country-Club type of Republicans."' This is odd indeed,...

WASHINGTON -- It’s not news when the White House tries to manage the news. That has always been the case. But it is news when Obama administration officials -- the folks who proclaimed that they would bring unprecedented openness and transparency to government -- fall all over themselves trying to manipulate news briefings and attempting amateurish stagecraft at public meetings. The president relies on a list of handpicked reporters to call on at his formal news conferences -- and the fortunate few are not necessarily accredited reporters but include new age self-appointed journalists or anyone with a laptop. The White...

Former US lawmaker Cynthia McKinney, who is in an Israeli jail for trying to take humanitarian aid to Gaza, says the White House has done nothing to secure her release. Speaking to Press TV from inside the Israeli jail, she said US taxpayers paid for Israel's 22-day war on the Gaza Strip. “Operation Cast Lead was made possible by the US taxpayers' gift to the Israeli war machine in the form of F16s, helicopters gunship, white phosphorous, depleted uranium, cluster bombs and anything that kills," she told Press TV from inside the Israeli jail on Saturday. McKinney has been in...

Future perfect Can a clothing-optional policy teach her young girls to be comfortable as women? By Jennifer Mattern June 28, 2009 I ain’t what I used to be. But my daughters don’t know that. They can’t imagine me any other way -- this soft, paunchy creature they have come to refer to as “Mom.” I tell them to take a good look, that someday they are likely to look much like I do now. They laugh. Preposterous! I grew up in a household where everyone’s jiggly bits were kept under wraps. Only once, when I was very young, do I...

Not everyone should be a parent. In Sweden, a pair of moonbats are attempting to turn their child into a freak by pretending the poor kid has no gender: Pop’s parents, both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few — those who have changed the child’s diaper — nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents simply say they don’t disclose this information. In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, the parents were quoted saying their decision was rooted in the feminist philosophy that...

. In 1798, during the Quasi-war with France, Congress, with President John Adams’s support, passed the Sedition Act. Outraged by attacks on her husband, Abigail Adams supported the act, which was opposed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, among others. “Let us not establish a tyranny,” wrote an alarmed Alexander Hamilton to an ally in Congress. Indeed, the Sedition Act, an obvious violation of the First Amendment, made a permanent blot on Adams’s presidency. Here is part of its text: “If any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or...

<p>Notice that the comments are "moderated" to prevent "cut'n'paste right-wing talking points".</p> <p>The text is available too. Unfortunately it's at a left wing site.</p>

Cindy Sheehan, who drew national attention for camping outside former President George W. Bush's ranch in protest of the Iraq War, is following him to Dallas. Sheehan will lead a demonstration Monday, June 8, 2009 protesting "crimes against humanity." "We can't allow George Bush's crimes to be forgotten just because he is not in office anymore," she said in an e-mail. While most people in Preston Hollow have gone out of their way to welcome the former president and first lady home, they're not exactly rolling out the welcome mat for Sheehan. "Go away," resident Kathie Taub said. "Go back!...

The prison at Guantanamo must be closed. Even more important, "Gitmo" (as it is infamously known now) and everything it represents must be invalidated. This includes the military tribunal process, the human rights violations, torture, and the blatant disregard for the rule of law. This is President Obama's challenge. As Obama noted in his May 21 speech on the issue, Guantanamo and the activities that occurred there set back the "moral authority" of the United States. Closing Guantanamo would help restore that authority. But Republicans, led by former Vice President Dick Cheney, are opposing this, conjuring up fears that Guantanamo...

Former President George W. Bush recently said that what he missed most about the White House was the cooking of the top-notch chefs there and meeting with members of the military. Funny, Cindy Sheehan didn't make his list. No matter, he doesn't have to do without her absurd antics. She's bringing her roadshow to PReston Hollow this weekend to protest his actions as president. She crossed the line between principled crusader and crackpot long ago, so I shouldn't be surprised at this, and I wasn't the biggest fan of Bush's as his presidency wore on, but this makes me truly...

The radical right wing has launched a vicious campaign of racist and sexist attacks against Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's selection to replace the retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. Sotomayor's "compelling life story" involves a brilliant legal career after being raised in a South Bronx public housing project by parents who moved from Puerto Rico. Sotomayor graduated from Princeton University summa cum laude, edited the Yale Law Journal, then served as a "fearless and effective" New York City prosecutor and corporate lawyer before being appointed to the bench by President George H. W. Bush in 1992. "Since...

EVERY ONCE in a while, you hear a story of life in our town that is painful and infuriating, but leaves you with a shred of hope for human kindness. This one involves a senseless, random attack, a victim's frustration with our insane health-care system and the apparent indifference of police. It happened April 19, when Andrew Lopez, 29, was waiting for a bus at Greene Street and School House Lane in Germantown after dinner with a friend. Lopez happens to be the son of former Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez, who now writes for the Los Angeles Times.

I voted Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I've decided to marry my horse. I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't. I voted Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would. I voted Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it. I voted Democrat because when we pull out of...

Saturday, January 17, 2009 MINDBOGGLING CONSPIRACY BY McCAIN, OBAMA, McCASKILL, LEAHY, CLINTON AND COBURN TO CIRCUMVENT ARTICLE TWO, SECTION ONE OF THE US CONSTITUTION ********** In this article, originally posted in the blog of the same name, "Zapem" breaks a report of the history of sidestepping, skirting, and attempted Constitutional tinkering on behalf of unnatural born Citizen, John McCain -- thereby, an attempt to pave the way for Barack Obama.If one were to look at the activity on Capital Hill during the campaign, there would be no question in their minds that both McCain and Obama were sweating the “natural...

t was only a matter of time before the CDC discovered an outbreak of Michele Bachmann quotes. Bachmann, speaking on Pajamas TV, noted: "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence." The 1976 swine flu scare happened on Gerald Ford's watch. We checked Wikipedia. Ford was a Republican.

President Barack Obama is leaving the door to open to possible prosecution of Bush administration officials who devised harsh terrorism-era interrogation tactics.

This site provides a great analysis on Obama's performance as President based on conservative values. thought it was worth sharing http://www.thebarackobamawatch.com/

DENVER — The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has launched an investigation into a rowdy student protest that prevented former Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, from delivering a speech Tuesday night on campus.University Chancellor Holden Thorp said the investigation by the school's Department of Public Safety could result in criminal charges. The Division of Student Affairs is also probing the incident, he said, and that students could face Honor Court proceedings as a result

I'm sorry I can't give a better link -- the video is in the upper right hand corner. There's no audio but it's hysterical!

... How [Obama] defines recovery may be far different from any definition we've come to expect. Most of us would define recovery as GDP growth, rising employment, higher incomes and a stock market going up 10% a year. Not so Mr. Obama, apparently. Each day it becomes clearer that he has a different idea of recovery. President Obama believes America must "recover" from its sin and addiction. According to Obama the national sin is greed, and the national addiction is to cheap energy. Google "Obama on greed" and you get 7,570,000 hits. Read Obama's campaign book, The Audacity of Hope,...

April 15th. Write that date down; people - it could very well mark the beginning of the end. With the notoriously conservative Tea Party movement gaining steam, is it time to take the ‘United’ out of ‘United States’? An off-the-cuff and seemingly harmless comment from CNBC drone Rick Santelli- who called for a Chicago ‘Tea Party’ in response to Obama’s handling of the worsening economic situation- has now developed into a full-blown national movement. On April 15th, hundreds of thousands of PO’d red meat eatin’ Americans will converge on the streets to protest the Obama administration’s policies and platforms. Over...

MOSCOW. (Andrei Kislyakov, for RIA Novosti) - So do UFOs with little green men inside exist or not? CNN supposedly filmed a UFO moving at a great speed from the right to the left during the inauguration of President Barack Obama. (But those who watched the replay say it was a bird.) After that, former President Clinton's White House Chief John Podesta, now one of Obama's closest associates, demanded that the thick UFO files be made public. The number of UFO sightings has dramatically increased in recent times. According to Britain's Ministry of Defense, there were supposedly 285 UFO sightings...

MSNBC will soon add another liberal radio host, the latest in a series of changes intended to position the network as a venue for left-leaning voices in the evening. Ed Schultz, a radio veteran with a blue-state appeal, will anchor the 6 p.m. hour, to be called “The Ed Show,” starting Monday, MSNBC, a unit of NBC Universal, announced Wednesday night. Last year, the network hired Rachel Maddow, an opinionated Air America radio host, to anchor the 9 p.m. hour, immediately increasing ratings in the time slot. Mr. Schultz said his show would take a “hard-hitting approach to issues,” with...

We have recently heard many shocking stories of brutal killings and ruthless violence related to drug cartels warring with Mexican and US officials. It is approaching the fever pitch of a full blown crisis. Unfortunately, the administration is not likely to waste this opportunity to further expand government. Hopefully, we can take a deep breath and look at history for the optimal way to deal with this dangerous situation, which is not unprecedented. Alcohol prohibition in the 1920’s brought similar violence, gangs, lawlessness, corruption and brutality. The reason for the violence was not that making and selling alcohol was inherently...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kADXWXgxKJk New projections from Ron Paul as his prominence in the mainstream media continues to increase.