Free Republic

Argo director Ben Affleck may be one of Hollywood's leading liberals, but he could take the extra step and enter politics in the not too distant future. That's the opinion of his wife, actor Jennifer Garner, who suggested Affleck's future career direction in a forthcoming interview in Allure magazine.

<p>Two and a half years ago, I called Harlan Ellison because I’d heard through a family friend that he was dying. Well, I heard it through a family friend and because he announced it to an audience of fans at a science-fiction convention in Wisconsin. When I spoke with the legendary – and legendarily combatitive – sci-fi writer on the phone shortly afterwards, his voice was weak. You’d better come by soon, he said. I did, and with a tray full of noodle kugle that my mom made for him and for his wife, Susan.</p>

Head of the NBC News Group Pat Fili-Krushel announced late Friday afternoon that the news magazine "Rock Center with Brian Williams" would be cancelled after its final airing on June 21. “I would like to thank Brian, Alex, David and the entire 'Rock Center' team for their efforts. The show will be missed,” Fili-Krushel wrote in an email released after a very busy news day heading into a weekend. The timing suggests the 4th place (and sometimes 5th place) peacock network was hoping to minimize the public relations black eye associated with the failure of such a high-profile show. The...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Actress Ellen Barkin waded into political waters Monday after she re-posted a message on Twitter calling for Tropical Storm Isaac to “wash every pro-life, anti-education, anti-woman, xenophobic, gay-bashing, racist SOB right into the ocean”. Barkin, best known for her roles in 1982′s “Diner” and 1993′s “This Boy’s Life” along with more recent turns on TV’s “Modern Family” and “The New Normal”, posted the original tweet from user HighwayStarr on Sunday, just hours before the Republican National Convention was scheduled to convene.

Opining today that the Gulf oil disaster is the perfect crisis with which to force cleaner, renewable, and un-Godly expensive and cost-ineffective sources of energy down our throats, Paul McCartney could have stopped there. But he didn't:

Behold GodTube.com, the place where sex, humor and warm spiritual inclusiveness go to die The Internets, they're just so chock-full of gul-dang liberals, aren't they? This is, after all, the big conservative lament. It's like you can't hit your Gizmodo or your Fleshbot or your Savage Love without running smack into some well-read, free-thinking pseudo-hipster gleefully expounding on the joys of anal sex or a recent hilarious Jon Stewart/"Daily Show" riff or offering up a link to some dark, brilliant Polish anti-war animation. Horrible! Or maybe it's a hot sex blogger slapping Fox News for being such an obvious bastion...

Scientists believe they have discovered the secret behind the work of Claude Monet, one of the founders of Impressionist painting. The artist is known to have suffered from cataracts but new research shows how much and for how long this could have had an effect and how it may have produced his distinctive style. Researchers recreated Monet's Water-Lily Pond as he would have seen it. The pond was the subject of a series of canvases which Monet exhibited in 1900 at the age of 60.

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

George Clooney’s plans to build a casino in Las Vegas have been totally scrapped. The actor had planned on teaming up with Brad Pitt and Rande Gerber (Cindy Crawford’s man) to spend £3billion on creating the uber flash casino complex. However, the trio have failed to obtain planning permission and other buildings are now being built in the area. Clooney had planned on opening a smart establishment after he was inspired by his involvement in the Las Vegas based film ‘Oceans 11’. He said: "When I was filming 'Ocean's 11' in Las Vegas, I met with Rande, who owns all...

Colin Farrell is taking a break. The Hollywood hunk, known for his work-hard-play-harder attitude, is being treated for a dependency to prescription medication, publicist Danica Smith said Monday. According to a statement from Smith, Farrell got hooked on pain pills after suffering a back injury. He voluntarily checked himself into the treatment facility, which has not been identified. Smith says the actor is also coping with "exhaustion." "No other comments [are] to be made this time," Smith said.

WASHINGTON -- Bruce Springsteen famously was "born in the USA," but he's getting scorned in the U.S. Senate. An effort by New Jersey's two Democratic senators to honor the veteran rocker was shot down Friday by Republicans who are apparently still miffed a year after the Boss lent his voice to the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. The chamber's GOP leaders refused to bring up for consideration a resolution, introduced by Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Jon Corzine, that honored Springsteen's long career and the 1975 release of his iconic album, "Born to Run."

Ted Rall has offered a "retraction" of his Aug. 4 cartoon that cited a 9,000 figure -- rather than the commonly used 1,800-plus -- for the number of American soldiers who have died in the Iraq war. On Tuesday, Rall wrote in his blog: "I read a story that came off as possible, sourced it using previously reliable informants, and ended up doing a cartoon that I wouldn't have done had I known then what I know now. So this is a retraction of [the] cartoon. Did 9,000-plus soldiers get killed in Iraq? Maybe, maybe not. But as a cartoonist...

Politically charged Cho will go on  By REBECCA LOUIE Yes, she's a raunchy comedian prone to jokes about S&M.  And yes, she finds the Bush administration heinous, to say the least.  But no, Margaret Cho would not necessarily mix the two and possibly harm John Kerry's run for President, and she wishes the Human Rights Campaign had believed that before disinviting her to headline their Democratic National Convention event. "It's a little frustrating," says Cho, who, it was feared, would incite scandal like Whoopi Goldberg did when she made lewd Bush jokes at a Radio City fund-raiser for Kerry. "I...

America's largest circulation suburban daily newspaper, Newsday, wins the prize for ugliest bit of Reagan-bashing on the day of the great man's funeral, publishing a bile-filled screed by columnist Jimmy Breslin that trashed the American icon as "a callous man" who "hated children." "I don't see how anybody can summon grief [over Reagan's death]," Breslin observed. "His whole weeklong funeral is cheap, utterly distasteful American publicity." The Reagan-bashing writer usually inhabits Newsday's editorial section. But in a remarkably bizarre editorial decision, Newsday decided to move up Breslin's hate-screed to page A8, in the midst of its news section, right behind...

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall recently made the news for penning yet another crass cartoon, this one denigrating Pat Tillman, the football star turned soldier recently killed in Afghanistan. Rall painted Tillman as a racist, bloodthirsty idiot who was just another cog in the "El Busho" war machine. MSNBC.com decided to pull the cartoon because it "did not meet MSNBC.com standards of fairness and taste." Blogger Andrew Sullivan called for a protest campaign against Rall and yesterday offered this enlightening Rall quote: "The word 'hero' has been bandied about a lot to refer to anyone killed in Afghanistan or Iraq....

<p>When darkness falls on Wednesday, artist Yoko Ono will appear on the Woodward Avenue lawn of the Detroit Institute of Arts to talk about her "Freight Train" exhibit.</p> <p>It will be the artist/musician's first look at the Detroit installation of the work she created in 1999 as her response to the 1987 tragedy of Mexican migrant workers smuggled across the Texas border and locked in a boxcar to die.</p>