Free Republic

The TV series Friends undermined family values; Sesame Street taught ethnic minorities about civil disobedience; Happy Days had a subtle anti-Vietnam subtext; and the 1980s cop show MacGyver tried to persuade pistol-packing Americans that guns are bad. That, at least, is the considered opinion of Ben Shapiro, an investigative author and right-wing columnist who will publish a detailed exposé tomorrow telling how Hollywood producers, writers and actors have been secretly using TV to promote what he calls a "radical" left-leaning political agenda. Shapiro's book, Primetime Propaganda runs to 416 pages and revolves around comments by 70-odd industry heavyweights who he...

Liberals of the Baby Boomer generation are fond of calling conservatives hypocrites. If a conservative sets a moral line with regard to sexual behavior, then falls short, Baby Boomer liberals point and shout and laugh with glee. If a conservative stands up against government spending, then has a home loan backed by Fannie Mae, Baby Boomer liberals suggest that the nefarious conservative doesn’t mean what he says. If a conservative says that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman, then gets divorced, Baby Boomer liberals shout that the conservative no longer has the right to argue for...

On April 5, President Obama kicked off his newly-minted presidential campaign by announcing that he would be conducting a “Facebook town hall” event streaming live via the website and via the White House website on April 20. Just to ensure that the Facebook audience recognizes that this isn’t merely another media appearance but an endorsement of Obama by the Facebook executives, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg quizzed Obama before an audience of over 1,000 Facebook employees and other internet mavens. The recorded result will be chopped up and distributed via Facebook and the White House...

“One of the most dangerous plots ever instigated for the overthrow of this Government has its headquarters in Hollywood.” The year was 1945. The speaker was Rep. John E. Rankin (D-Mississippi). The forum was the House Un-American Activities Committee. Rankin was a racist, a bigot, and an overall nasty fellow. On this, however, he was absolutely right. The only problem is that he was 70 years too early. Of course, he was somewhat right when he spoke the words, too. Ronald Reagan was head of the Screen Actors Guild from 1947-1952, and again in 1959-1960. During that time, he watched...

Chairwoman Mary Schapiro's general counsel is accused of having a conflict of interest in the Madoff affair that Schapiro knew about. Two influential congressional leaders are directly challenging Security and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Schapiro as a new Bernard Madoff scandal engulfs the agency, this one involving charges of conflicts of interest by her own general counsel. Pajamas Media has obtained a copy of the letter sent to the SEC chairwoman. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) today sent a sharply worded joint letter to the SEC chief, demanding she explain why the she appointed General Counsel...

Accused Ponzi swindler Nevin Shapiro had a knack for making prominent connections. Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade took rides on Shapiro's $1.5 million Riviera yacht. Shapiro, now jailed on federal charges, boasted of giving Shaquille O'Neal a pair of diamond-studded handcuffs as a birthday gift. Two sources recall a photo of the seven-foot-one NBA legend bench-pressing Shapiro like a dumbbell. And when Shapiro's sometime dining companion Carlos Noriega, Miami Beach police chief, met U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at South Beach's Prime 112 steakhouse, Shapiro was there to get his photo snapped with the nation's top law enforcement official, a...

Just got this in my email box. Shapiro hosted for Doyle yesterday and was awesome: We'll have on Congressmen Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), and we'll tackle the latest triumphalism from the Obama White House over the destruction of America's health care system. We'll also have exclusive tape on President Obama's new judicial nominee who many say will be sitting on the Supreme Court within the next year -- and yes, he's a radical socialist! You can listen live here.

Cross-posted at BigJournalism.Already, the media has jumped on the John Patrick Bedell story, claiming that he was a raving right winger “with virulent antigovernment feelings,” as the Christian Science Monitor puts it. And, just as they did with the Joseph Stack case, they’re ignoring the evidence in order to come to that conclusion. John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings. If so, that would make the Pentagon shooting the second violent extremist attack on a federal building within the past month....

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) is the most unpopular man in the Senate, according to his colleagues. "Today we have a clear-cut example to show the American people just what's wrong with Washington, D.C.," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash). "He's hurting the American people," spat Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). What is Bunning doing that deserves such reproof? He has the audacity to stall a 30-day extension of unemployment and COBRA health care benefits on the grounds that the extension would add $10 billion to the federal deficit, which is already expected to hit $1.6 trillion this year. Majority Leader Sen. Harry...

Shapiro's in for Doyle today. Making the case that Obama is politically raping the American people with health care.

Today, President Obama made the most stunning remarks on the economy he has made during his tenure: "For growth to be truly sustainable -- for our prosperity to be truly shared and our living standards to actually rise -- we need to move beyond an economy that is fueled by budget deficits and consumer demand," the president said. "In other words, in order to create jobs and raise incomes for the middle class over the long run, we need to export more and borrow less from around the world, and we need to save more money and take on less...

Rule No. 1 for Being Taken Seriously: Don't post pictures of yourself on the Internet that are not safe for work (NSFW). Rule No. 2 for Being Taken Seriously: Don't whine and cry when people criticize you for posting NSFW photos. Meghan McCain doesn't know either one of these rules. But then, Meghan McCain doesn't know much of anything. McCain is obviously not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. This is a woman who, while appearing on Bill Maher's show, explained that she knew nothing about Ronald Reagan because "I wasn't born yet." (Paul Begala, no intellectual titan himself, quickly...

According to the left, I am now a member of a treasonous group. I cheered when President Obama and his newly-made over milquetoast wife made asses of themselves in Copenhagen while attempting to wheedle the Europeans into granting Chicago the 2016 Olympics. And I gnashed my teeth when the Nobel Prize Committee decided to fete Obama with the Peace Prize. So that makes me an America-hater. “Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?” asks Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, singling out Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as paradigmatic of the conservative “hate America” movement. “The problem for the...

Still No Accountability (excerpted from: http://www.commoditynewscenter.com/blogs/When_Regulators_Need_Regulators) Over the past couple of days the plot has once again thickened, and guess who is back at the center of it all? Mary Shipiro and her agency, the SEC. Didn't hear about what happened? Neither did anyone else. On Friday a story hit the wire late in the day and that has gone largely unnoticed. Around 6pm EST, both the New York Times and Reuters covered what happened and the stories were similarly titled "SEC Lawyers Investigated for Insider Trading." In a nutshell the story goes like this... What is the reason that...

Top Boston philanthropist Carl Shapiro is reportedly facing a criminal probe into his ties to Bernard Madoff, although experts say it’s not clear the 96-year-old Hub man will ever face charges. “When you hit 96, I think you get some immunity,” said Willis Riccio, former New England chief of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Shapiro is one of at least eight Madoff associates targeted by a probe into Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme. Others include Shapiro’s son-in-law Robert Jaffe - a part-time Weston resident who allegedly served as Madoff’s Hub salesman -...

Spokesman Robert Wood says the top US diplomat for the Middle East Jeffrey Feltman and National Security Council member Daniel Shapiro are traveling to Damascus on Tuesday for their second visit to Syria since March. The trip was announced as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad arrived in Syria to meet with leaders of 10 hardline Palestinian groups.

By Judy Shapiro United States News Agency New York --- February 18, 2009...... I find myself in an usual business at a very unusual time. After spending years working with technology leaders in telecommunications, software and security, I wanted to explore the expanding role of social networks in our everyday online worlds. So I went looking for opportunities in this new “cool” space. Not so easy given my decidedly lack of “coolness” (I haven’t seen “20 something” in a few decades). Yet nonetheless, in a sheer stroke of great luck and timing, I recently landed at Paltalk — the leader...

Enough with the pseudonyms. Western civilization isn't at war with terrorism any more than it is at war with grenades. Western civilization is at war with militant Islam, which dominates Muslim communities all over the world. Militant Islam isn't a tiny minority of otherwise good-hearted Muslims. It's a dominant strain of evil that runs rampant in a population of well over 1 billion. Enough with the psychoanalysis. They don't hate us because of Israel. They don't hate us because of Kashmir. They don't hate us because we have troops in Saudi Arabia or because we deposed Saddam Hussein. They don't...

Our political leadership -- folks like President George W. Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and President-elect Barack Obama -- told us that the government would save us. They said that the economic crisis was so dire, so grim, that we needed to allow the government to spend our money to bail out Wall Street. They stated that Paulson, with full authority and no oversight, would be able to right the ship. We were ignorant enough to believe them. Now they tell us that Paulson has exercised his authority recklessly. They say that...

Greg Campbell is an obscure writer for the Fort Collins, Colo. But on Oct. 26, he penned what serves as the perfect window into the mind of many Barack Obama supporters. Campbell attended an Obama rally with his 11-year-old son, Turner. Turner was excited by Obamas typical American Dream stump speech. Campbell himself was excited not by Obama, but by his sons reaction: “For me, (Obama’s message) sunk in because I could see it through the eyes of an 11-year-old.” We have reached a dangerous point in American politics when parents take their voting cues from 11-year-old children. But Campbell...