Free Republic

When all the fanatical Christians disappear, will traffic finally improve? Wait, did I miss it? Did it happen three days ago, on 6-6-06, a.k.a. Tea Time with the Beast, a.k.a. the Great Day of Reckoning, a.k.a. the National Day of Slayer, all the world crashing down in a heap of hissing steam and belching smoke and balmy gusty breezes sometime around noon just after lunch but not before rush hour and hitting right around siesta? I might have been napping. Did the Apocalypse finally hit? Did the deep wish of roughly a half-billion zealous believers come to pass and were...

KALAMAZOO (NEWS 3) - The man accused of dousing former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan with salad dressing has pleaded not guilty in a Kalamazoo court. Samuel John Messick was arraigned on charges of disturbing the peace Thursday. He reportedly tossed a cup of salad dressing on the conservative commentator at a speech he was giving at Western Michigan University on March 31st. Buchanan decided not to press felony assault charges against the man. Messick will be back in court at the end of the month.

God wants oil. This is the message. This is the belief. God wants more oil and also uranium and coal and iron and nuclear waste and whatever the hell else we want to pump into or out of this godforsaken lump of floating space rock. Word to the GOP. In other words, God wants us, if the happily bleak and decidedly nasty interpretation of Bible verse currently extolled by the rabid evangelical mind-set now mauling the American political and social landscape is to be believed, to use up the Earth however we see fit and stomp all over this pointless...

CNN breaking news red banner Arafat refusing to go to Paris.

For many, John Kerry’s salute and “reporting for duty” remark at the Democrat National Convention was a trite gesture; it was a feeble attempt to suggest he was at the public’s service, rather than eagerly seeking political power on his own initiative. Unconvincing and flaccid, it bespoke of a sheep attempting to don wolves’ clothing, rather like the Democrat Party has been trying to do with its recent embrace of veterans so many of its members once shunned as “baby killers”. The strange Kerry salute reminded others of a more quixotic parallel: for fans of the comedy / sci-fi...

Ex-president Bill Clinton, who made famous the phrase, "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," is being honored by The American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City today for his "standard of correct utterance in the use of language." "He was selected because they admired how he was apparently always able to get up before an audience without notes and speak eloquently with full sentences that even had semicolons," the Academy's Virginia Dajani told the New York Sun. The academy last bestowed its "spoken language" award five years ago on former New York...

New York's firefighters are known by many names. Traditionally, they are called the Bravest. After 9/11, many called us the Heroes. Within the FDNY, some refer to themselves as the Brotherhood. Unfortunately, many firefighters have other names for their colleagues that are racial, ethnic or sexual slurs. I know, because I served more than 20 years in the FDNY, and I'm also a gay man. I heard those terms used and saw them scrawled on walls countless times in firehouses throughout the city. On New Year's Eve, one firefighter attacked another in an assault preceded by what some newspapers are...