Free Republic

Senator Patty Murray (D, Wa) doesn't want to hear from her constituents if they are upset at her vote for Obama's take over of our nation's healthcare. One voter in particular has earned Murray's ire. He has almost daily called Murray's offices and in no uncertain terms informed the Senator that he hates her healthcare votes. Really hates it. Murray was so upset that her constituents had the gall to call and complain that she cravenly called in the F.B.I. to trap upset constituent Charles A. Wilson. The F.B.I. came upon an outrageous idea in order to confirm that the...

After learning last week that a sheriff's deputy was about to serve him a lawsuit in Minneapolis City Hall, a North Side activist slipped out through a back office -- accompanied by an aide to Mayor R.T. Rybak. The "great escape," as blogger John Hoff refers to the episode in the City Council chambers, was inadvertently broadcast on the city's cable network during its coverage of Police Chief Tim Dolan's reappointment hearings. Though he admits running down three flights of stairs to avoid being served, Hoff and mayoral aide Sherman Patterson both told a Star Tribune reporter this week they...

TMZ has obtained a never-before published photograph which appears to show John F. Kennedy on a boat filled with naked women -- it's a photo that could have altered world events.

Law enforcement sources tell TMZ Tiger Woods has canceled yet another meeting with the Florida Highway Patrol. We're told Tiger's lawyer canceled the meeting the FHP had wanted for 3:00 PM ET today. The lawyer gave no reason for the cancellation

Gaza Zoo Replaces Zebras With Painted Donkeys Zebras died of hunger earlier this year during the Israel-Hamas war [Pics in URL] Hatem Moussa / AP Zoo workers replaced 2 zebras that died of hunger during the January war with donkeys painted black and white. Mon., Oct . 12, 2009 GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Gaza City zookeepers have found a creative way of drawing crowds to their dilapidated zoo — by painting their donkeys. The Marah Land Zoo's only two zebras died of hunger earlier this year when they were neglected during the Israel-Hamas war. The popular animals were too...

So people at Pfizer are pretty upset about what's going on with their Sr VP HR and her frequent helicopter trips to her cozy cottage in Maryland. And since I dug up some information about Pfizer's infamous party jet back in 2006, I figured I'd use this data to find out how often Mary had been hopping back and forth between her private home and Pfizer's offices on Manhattan Here they are the N numbers for Pfizer's airplanes (see FAA to verify this info.): (more)

** EXCERPT ** Two State Department employees were fired recently and a third disciplined for improperly accessing electronic personal data on Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, Bush administration officials said yesterday. ~snip~ A similar data breach took place in 1992 when State Department officials looked up data on presidential candidate Bill Clinton, in an attempt to find out information from the late 1960s, amid unfounded political campaign rumors that Mr. Clinton had sought to renounce his citizenship to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. That incident triggered a three-year investigation by a...

John Daly has been cut loose by swing coach Butch Harmon, who said Tuesday he was not going to waste his time with a two-time major champion who is more interested in drinking than working on his golf game. ``My whole goal for him was he's got to show me golf is the most important thing in his life,'' Harmon said from his golf school in Las Vegas. ``And the most important thing in his life is getting drunk.'' Harmon said he has worked three times this year with Daly, but he said Daly's behavior at the PODS Championship was...

Governor Deval Patrick has set up a novel political fund-raising system that allows him to skirt the state's campaign finance law by channeling big contributions through the state Democratic Party, which, in turn, has paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars of the governor's political expenses.

My friend Jazz Shaw at Middle Earth Journal points out a plan in the works, endorsed by Markos Moulitsas and Duncan Black to have Michigan Democrats play spoiler in the Republican primary. Their idea is to have Democrats vote for Mitt Romney so that he wins the primary and blunts John McCain's momentum. If Huckabee or Thompson win in South Carolina and then Rudy Giuliani wins in Florida, the thinking goes, the GOP Super Tuesday will go all higgledy-piggledy and the Millenium will have truly started. Or something along those lines. Well, it's not illegal, and they could do this...

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. quickly shut down Santa Claus’ Web privileges after it found out the automated elf it created for kids to instant message with was talking naughty, not nice. Last year, Microsoft encouraged kids to connect directly to “Santa” by adding northpolelive.com to its Windows Live Messenger contact lists. The Santa program, which Microsoft reactivated in early December, asked children what they wanted for Christmas and could respond on topic, thanks to artificial intelligence. The holiday cheer soured this week when a reader of a United Kingdom-based technology news site, The Register, reported that a chat between Santa...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Beauty pageant organizers were investigating Sunday who doused a contestant's evening gowns with pepper spray and spiked her makeup, causing her to break out in hives. Beauty queen Ingrid Marie Rivera beat 29 rivals to become the island's 2008 Miss Universe contestant, despite applying makeup and wearing evening gowns that had been coated with pepper spray, pageant spokesman Harold Rosario said. Rivera was composed while appearing before cameras and judges throughout the competition. But once backstage, she had to strip off her clothes and apply ice bags to her face and body, which swelled...

WASHINGTON - The editor of the Lowell Sun, which last December published a special section in tribute to Martin T. Meehan under a controversial arrangement between the newspaper and Meehan's staff, has purchased Meehan's house

Please forgive the vanity but I wanted to get this out there. I will acknowledge up front that we all have a sense of this so this won't be an entirely new thought to FreeRepublic but I don't think this has been expounded on outside of scattered posts. I apologize in advance if this has already been covered. I have been thinking about the polls lately. I used to think that they were nothing but wishful thinking by the DNC controlled MSM or maybe a bid at self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm thinking otherwise after digesting the shenanigans of our recent elections...

Page 1 above the fold in yesterday's New York Times featured a photo (below) by our new acquaintance Adnan Hajj. I suspect that not all is as it appears to be in the photo, and somehow doubt that Times readers will ever learn why that might be the case.The Reuters caption reads: "A severely wounded Lebanese civilian is carried away on a stretcher at Maameltain bridge, after it was targeted by Israeli air strikes, in the north of Beirut August 4, 2006. (Adnan Hajj/Reuters)" (Thanks to reader David Butz.)

MIA Peter Arnett magically appears in Vietnam journo reunion pic In its December 2005 issue, Vanity Fair magazine manipulated a photograph to make it appear that veteran journalist Peter Arnett was among a group of war correspondents gathered on a teeming Ho Chi Minh City street during a reunion of the Vietnam press corps. In fact, according to a source familiar with the photo shoot, Arnett was not present when photographer Jonas Karlsson shot a group portrait of eight journalists last April. Instead, the former CNN star (who covered the war for the Associated Press) was subsequently photographed solo and...

Just got back from the Georgia National Fair. Ahhhh, the fair. The addicting aroma of deep fried oreos, bratwurst, Indian tacos, caramel apples, assorted meats on a stick, 5 pound baskets of cajun fries drowning in melted cheese, and turkey legs, all set amidst a background of electronic sounds permeating from the midway, people lugging around massive stuffed animals won from a carnie game, barns full of goats and horses ready to be judged, and the most important thing of all: the commercial vendors. Here, in the vast confines of numerous warehouses, hundreds of vendors set up shop, peddling anything...

Security video from a Central Avenue bank's drive-through ATM machine has captured images of the car used by a man to steal from the account of the slain Jersey City family of four whose bodies were found bound and gagged in their Heights home in January, officials said.Hudson County Prosecutor Edward Defazio said investigators have been able to determine the make, model and year of the car and are having the images enhanced with the hope of being able to read the license plate number."We have ascertained, by surveillance, time and observation, that the vehicle used at the drive-in by...

As many of you know, I'm running for State Representative here in Philadelphia.  I've been out visiting the polling sites in my district this morning and here's what I've seen in just the 2 1/2 hours I've been out:   29th and Morris- Two union thugs were handing out Kerry stickers to people entering the polling area (of course, it's illegal to actually wear or present that in the polling area).  I watched for about five minutes until a woman came by and turned them down.  Immediately they started screaming "We've got a Bush supporter here!' and blocking her way. ...

Last week I suggested that the people Kerry hired to run his campaign were incompetent and/or probably do not want him to win. Most have strong Clinton loyalties. This week, we hear rumbles that heads are about to roll among the Kerry-Edwards campaign staff. Of course, there is no way I would believe Kerry reads my babble -- or would act on the information even if he did. But, I'll reiterate: Kerry couldn't be running a worse campaign if he tried. That's a problem for me, too, actually. Kerry is just too darn easy of a target. Look at it...