Free Republic

[Norman Lear wryly titled his memoir Even This I Get to Experience (out Oct. 14, Penguin) as a wink to his belief that even the bad times in his life were worthwhile because they made the living interesting. And over the course of 92 years, Lear has led as interesting a life as anyone in Hollywood. Born in 1922 in Connecticut, Lear lived with relatives for a time while his father spent three years in jail from 1931 to 1934 for a dodgy get-rich-quick scheme...] [All in the Family: Season 2 Carroll O'Connor's insecurities and fears drove him to great...

Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson's dad discovered his son was gay and a thief on the same day. The actor admits he had built up quite a collection of stolen gay pornography magazines when he was finally caught trying to leave a store in his native Montana with a backpack full of saucy publications at the age of 14. In a recent an interview with Aisha Tyler for her Girl on Guy podcast, the red-faced star revealed, "I always considered that (incident) my coming out... It was so humiliating. "I had been stealing porn for a while. I had...

An Oklahoma man who had been suspended from his job was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder in the gruesome beheading of a co-worker, who was attacked from behind as the man sought revenge, a prosecutor said Tuesday. Nolen had recently converted to Islam but Cleveland County Prosecutor Greg Mashburn said it appeared Nolen's assault was tied more to his suspension. Mashburn said Vaughan's human resources department suspended Nolen earlier Thursday after another co-worker, Traci Johnson, had complained that she had had an altercation with Nolen "about him not liking white people." "It had more to do with race rather than...

The rationalizations for Obama’s failures are already beginning, and Tom Friedman employs the laziest of all strategies, tearing down a great man to make a small man look bigger. In his Sunday column in the New York Times, Friedman makes a number of highly dubious points. These days there is a lot of “if-only-Obama-could-lead-like-Reagan” talk by conservatives. I’ll leave it to historians to figure out years from now who was the better president. On the question of the domestic economy, there can be little doubt. Reagan inherited far higher unemployment and high inflation, and within a year or so had...

An Oklahoma man beheaded a woman after a workplace dispute on Thursday, the Associated Press reports. Moore Police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis said Friday that the suspect Alton Alexander Nolen, 30, entered the Vaughan Foods processing plant in Moore, Oklahoma on Thursday and beheaded 54 year-old Colleen Hufford. Nolen had recently been trying to convert his co-workers at the company to Islam, Lewis said Friday, according to interviews with the company’s workers. After stabbing and beheading Colleen Hufford, Nolen began to do the same to 43 year-old Traci Johnson, but was stopped when the company’s chief operating officer, Mark Vaughn, who...

The View’s alleged Republican, Nicolle Wallace, probably thinks she did NJ Gov. Chris Christie a favor when she endorsed him today. Wallace, who has been a perennial Palin basher since she worked on the ill-fated McCain-Palin campaign in 2008, described Christie as “progressive.”

Conservative Republican Assemblywoman Michele Fiore of Las Vegas invited a few extra guests Tuesday night to the regular pasta dinners she has for constituents. The meal was the last official stop for a group of young conservatives traveling the country — visiting battleground states such as Nevada first — as part of a $1 million campaign to get the national Republican Party to support gay marriage in its party platform in 2016. The group has been to Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina is the next stop. Nevada already is ahead of the curve, said Tyler Deaton, campaign manager of...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had a pretty simple response to to Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) claim that a proposed constitutional amendment intended to reverse the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision could put "Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels in jail. Here's Pelosi on NBC's "Late Night with Seth Meyers" reacting to a clip of Cruz making the claim on the Senate floor: Cruz said the amendment applies to SNL because NBC is a corporation, and the late-night show has had influence over elections. He called the proposal -- which would give Congress and states more power to...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Six kids from the block where Michael Brown was killed tell the truth about race with some humor in video.Six kids from Ferguson, Missouri, where Michael Brown was shot and killed, have something to say about the state of racism in a humorous video called "Hey White People: A Kinda Awkward Note to America by #Ferguson Kids" created by the T-shirt company FCKH8.com. "Sometimes white people are like, 'But is racism still a thing?' Spoiler alert: Duh. Just because Beyoncé is on your playlist and you voted for Obama, doesn't mean that our generation has seen the end of racist...

MSNBC’S Andrea Mitchell claimed President Barack Obama’s new cabal of foreign policy advisers “looks like a review of our guest list” on the liberal cable news network, with the AP’s Julie Pace explaining that the White House is trying to bring the commentators “into the fold.” Mitchell spoke Tuesday with Pace about Obama’s Monday night dinner with the DC foreign policy intelligentsia, presumably designed to help craft a strategy to contain an aggressive Russia and defeat ISIS in the Middle East. But as the MSNBC host ticked off the guests — including former Clinton aide Sandy Berger, longtime Democratic adviser...

A senior communications aide to Attorney General Eric Holder seemingly called House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa's staff by accident and asked for their help spinning new revelations about the IRS scandal, Issa said in a September 8 letter to Holder. The aide, Brian Fallon, is a former senior aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a well-known personality on Capitol Hill. The letter describes Fallon as “audibly shaken” when he realizes his request to leak documents to help get ahead of news stories about them was mistakenly made to the very office he was seeking to undermine. Issa believes...

Geoff Sherrington writes: National Geographic Magazine had a Global Warming issue in September 2004. New instruments have given new data. By planning now, NatGeo can make a revised issue 10 years later, in September 2014. The 2014 edition should aim to correct what is now known to be wrong or questionable in the 2004 edition. We can help. Here are some quotes that need attention. The first three have some commentary, as is suggested for the remainder.1. “The famed snows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80% since 1912.” P.14 This might have been correct at the time of...

FULL TITLE: No other team wants to pick up openly gay NFL draft pick Michael Sam after he's cut from the St. Louis Rams Michael Sam was not picked up by any other team Sunday after the NFL's first openly gay draft pick was cut by the St. Louis Rams. Sam's dreams of becoming the first gay NFL player have now been placed on hold. Sam is now free to sign with any NFL practice team. Scroll down for video

Since Brown’s death, local or state police have arrested or detained at least 11 reporters or photographers, according to a running tab on the Poynter Institute’s website. Even Amnesty International sent human-rights observers to the city to support free speech and press — the first time it’s done so in this country. Among the first and most widely reported incidents was when Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery and Huffington Post reporter Ryan Reilly were arrested and briefly put in a holding cell after police ordered them to leave a McDonalds. Lowery was “illegally instructed to stop taking video of officers”...

You know what I admire about bigots? I’m referring to the real wackos, the warped, scary, neo-Nazi, open Klansman, proudly sign-their-name haters. You know what’s kinda great about them? At least they’re candid.

He keeps saying no to third run for the White House, but another new poll – this time in Iowa – indicates Mitt Romney would be the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination if he changes his mind. A USA Today/Suffolk University survey of Iowa voters released Wednesday should add to the feeding frenzy over a possible 2016 presidential bid by the 2012 GOP nominee. While the former Massachusetts governor's repeatedly said he's not running again, the attention such speculation captures is a sign of the wide open nature right now of the upcoming Republican nomination race.

Faisal Islam, Channel 4 News economics editor, is to replace Adam Boulton as Sky News political editor.

Fifty years after Julie Andrews starred as that practically perfect nanny, the character is still a role model for young women. Like all Disney movies, Mary Poppins is full of whimsy and adventure, good guys and, if not bad guys, at least shades-of-grey guys. And as we celebrate the film today, on its fiftieth anniversary, let’s not forget its feminist perspective.

When Niki Quasney felt a piercing pain in her ribcage in March, the oncologist treating her advanced ovarian cancer told her to get to an emergency room immediately. But instead of making the short drive to a hospital near her home in Munster, Indiana, she drove alone for more than 40 minutes to one in neighboring Illinois. Quasney said she was “terrified” her local hospital might not allow her and her partner of more than 13 years, whom she wed last year in another state, to be together if she suffered a health emergency. Quasney and her partner, Amy Sandler,...

Gay bathhouses that once remained in the shadows to stay in business are now seeking attention to keep their doors open. Some are doing aggressive online advertising and community outreach. Others tout their upscale amenities like plush towels and marble baths. A bathhouse in Ohio has even added hotel rooms and a nightclub. […] In the heyday of bathhouses in the late 1970s, there were nearly 200 gay bathhouses in cities across the U.S., but by 1990, the total had dropped to approximately 90, according to Damron, the publisher of an annual gay travel guide. In the last decade, bathhouses,...