Free Republic

An association of gays in the military has more than doubled its membership since last year, is setting up more on-base chapters, and plans to hold its next national conference at a Defense Department resort at Walt Disney World. The expansion of the group OutServe in the five months since the repeal of the Pentagon’s ban on open gays shows how a steady stream of service members are coming out of the closet and are becoming better organized to achieve demands for more benefits. ~snip~ Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness and worked to keep the ban,...

Morning Joe remains the home of the overwhelming ratio of liberal to conservative guests. Even so, in recent weeks a narrative unflattering to Barack Obama has emerged around the table: Obama doesn't like his job. He doesn't particularly like people and is in the wrong line of work. An even more damning appraisal was offered today: Obama doesn't think he has failed America. He thinks America has failed him. Or as Joe Scarborough encapsulated the concept, Obama believes our version of democracy is a "stumbling block to his greatness." JON MEACHAM: I think it's, if you think about it from...

JOE SCARBOROUGH: What's wrong with a political party that Michele Bachmann takes the lead and Herman Cain takes the lead and we could go through all the other people that have taken the lead? ... I don't mean to insult anybody here, but it's very obvious watching Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann-- not Michele Bachmann quite as much as Sarah Palin-- and others that have gone to the top of this race. They don't even understand basic policy, basic economics, basic foreign policy. You watch them in the debate and you can figure that out. But, they're in first place....

As the Blaze reported yesterday, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain seems to be Joe Scarborough’s newest electoral target. In speaking about the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO on Monday, Scarborough said, “Herman Cain and this 999 thing is just an absolute joke.” Now, he has an equally negative opinion about the entirety of the Republican Party.

“[A]fter listening to him talk last night in detail, I do not know how many levels there are to Rick Perry,” Scarborough said. “But I do know this … The phrase ‘Ponzi scheme’ is not Rick Perry’s biggest problem. “The word that he’s going to have to wrestle with during Republican primaries, let alone a general election, is the word ‘unconstitutional,’ because when you call Social Security … unconstitutional … this is about as funny as anything I’ve heard on ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’”

Yesterday, after a 1993 letter from then-Texas Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry commending then first lady Hillary Clinton and her efforts to reform health care surfaced, some Republicans are questioning 2012 presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s conservative credentials. The letter and his support for Al Gore in 1988 have fueled Perry’s detractors who suggest the Texan is all style and less substance when it comes to principles. And MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is one of those detractors. On his Wednesday “Morning Joe” program, the former Florida congressman launched into a near 15-minute rant, complete with faux southern accent, ripping Perry’s...

People know that the MSM despises Sarah Palin. Still, it was shocking to hear the dirty little secret so openly stated . . . Jim Vandehei of Politico, on Morning Joe today: "If you talk to any single reporter at any media organization that we're aware of, I don't think that anyone thinks she can be president or should be president." View video here.

When on today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski tried to report the comments of RNC Chairman Reince Priebus on Weinergate, Joe Scarborough shut her down and shut the comments out. "It's just stupid. Just shut up," said Scarborough of Priebus. View video here.

Yesterday, this column jibed Joe Scarborough & Co. for blacking out, during Morning Joe's first half-hour, coverage of Anthony Weiner's epic news conference of the day before. Today, a defiant Scarborough dismissed the criticism the show received, boasting "we'll talk about what we feel like talking about." When the show opened today, it at first seemed that Scarborough was about to make amends for yesterday's poor news judgment. But Joe's mock contrition was just a set-up for a joke. View video here.

When I began watching my DVR recording of Morning Joe today, I was of course wondering which clip from yesterday's Weiner press conference Morning Joe had chosen to open the show. When instead a clip of Jon Stewart mocking Sarah Palin appeared, I literally wondered if I was playing the recording of the wrong day's Morning Joe. But as the first half-hour unfolded, it became obvious that Morning Joe had made a conscious decision to black out any mention of Weiner-gate during today's first half-hour. Hat tip NB reader Matthew E. View video here.

"He's a Morning Joe candidate." That could be the kiss of death among Republican primary voters, but Mark Halperin meant it as a compliment. Today's Morning Joe panel was unanimous in its praise for Huntsman's performance in New Hampshire over the weekend. More from Mark Halperin: "As impressive as any couple I've seen . . . I was pretty blown away by how effective he was . . . more [comfortable in his skin] than Barack Obama and George Bush, and they for me in my career have been the gold standard . . . One of the liberal trackers...

Newt Gingrich came in for some serious criticism on today's Morning Joe for his attack on Paul Ryan's health care proposal. Reacting to footage of Newt on Meet the Press alluding to Paul Ryan's health care proposal as "radical," Joe Scarborough accused Gingrich of being in "the mushy middle." Pat Buchanan came with the unkindest cut of all, saying Gingrich is "out on the left wing of the Republican party." View video here.

I called Trump last Friday to see if he would back off his claim that the president of the United States might be constitutionally prohibited from holding his office. “I’m not finished with that issue by any stretch of the imagination,” Trump told me. “You mock me for that, but his own grandmother says he was born in Kenya and says she was there.” The New York real estate mogul didn’t stop with questions about the birth certificate. Trump also claimed the president’s first book was ghostwritten by a domestic terrorist.

Republicans in Washington are trying to recruit Joe Scarborough to run against Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) next year. Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), told The Hill on Thursday that he has talked to Scarborough a couple times about a Senate bid. And he indicated he’s still working on persuading the MSNBC host to run for the upper chamber. “I’d be delighted to talk to him a third time,” Cornyn said. In 2005, Republican campaign operatives tried to get Scarborough to challenge Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) in the Senate GOP primary. Scarborough passed, and...

Joe Scarborough's "intuitive gut reaction" to the mess in Wisconsin is that Gov. Walker's holdout against union pleas for collective bargaining "seems kind of un-American" to him. It supposedly pained the self-described small-government conservative to say it, but he held to his opinion on Monday's "Morning Joe." "I'm going to get killed for saying this," Scarborough hesitantly prefaced his confession. "I'm going to get so killed for saying this – I hate to say this, but the concept of telling people that they

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning, host Joe Scarborough delivered a scathing rant against Glenn Beck. According to Scarborough, Beck is “losing it before our eyes” and is “bad for the conservative movement.” “He’s bad for the Republican party. He’s bad for Fox News. It’s that simple,” Scarborough said, referring specifically to Beck’s recent work to uncover the socialists, progressives, and unions to the unrest in Egypt and Wisconsin. Guest commentator Pat Buchanan added that Republicans have a “responsibility and a duty” to make sure Beck isn’t speaking for conservatives. Scarborough refers to a recent blog post by conservative writer...

American combat troops will get sensitivity training directly on the battlefield about the military’s new policy on gays instead of waiting until they return to home base in the United States, the senior enlisted man in Afghanistan said Thursday. The Pentagon is launching an extensive force-wide program to ease the process of integrating open homosexuals into the ranks, including into close-knit fighting units. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Marvin Hill, the top enlisted man in Afghanistan where 100,000 U.S. troops are deployed, said that the sessions on respecting gays’ rights will go right down to the forward operating bases, where troops...

Well if he did, I sure missed that episode.

Joe Scarborough may be a morning talk show host now, but from 1995 to 2001 he was a Republican Representative from Florida, and a very conservative one at that. So when he comes out and takes aim at his former party, it really makes you wonder how far they have fallen. (Especially considering it's not a ratings grab.) When asked last night by Chris Matthews why Sarah Palin did so poorly in the straw poll at CPAC, which she did not attend and only got 6% of the vote, Scarborough did not beat around the bush, blasting her for her...

Joe Scarborough and Donny Deutsch consign Sarah Palin’s political career to the ash heap — certainly not the first time anyone’s done that — after her video response to the slanderous accusations of the media regarding her supposed responsibility for the Tucson shootings. Wasn’t that the conclusion media analysts had been flacking before her response, too?