Free Republic

...Part spy adventure, part science fiction dystopia, and part counter-culture influenced social critique, The Prisoner was groundbreaking television when it debuted in the fall of 1967.... And now, after decades of speculation and anticipation, of deals struck and scrapped, the British cult classic is about to become the latest pop-cultural institution to submit itself to reinterpretation. On November 15, AMC will debut its own version of The Prisoner staring Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen.... ...The question we see playing out on cable news, in blogs, in town-hall meetings, and public demonstrations is "Who do we imagine ourselves to be? What...

PORTLAND, Ore. (CBS/AP) Hollywood actress Sandra Bullock is embroiled in a custody battle between her husband and his porn star ex-wife. Bullock is standing by her celebrity-mechanic husband, Jesse James, as he fights his ex-wife Janine Lindemulder's attempts to regain custody of their five-year-old daughter, Sunny. James has had sole guardianship of the child since Lindemulder, an adult film star

Despite major bombings that have rattled the nation, and fears of rising violence as American troops withdraw, Iraq’s security forces have been relying on a device to detect bombs and weapons that the United States military and technical experts say is useless. The small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” — the power of suggestion — said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than...

Here is video of the authors of a new book on Sarah Palin claiming in an interview on CBS that McCain Campaign officials actually had the lights turned out on Palin the night of the election to prevent her from giving a concession speech. Authors of "Sarah from Alaska" - Scott Conroy and Shoshanna Walsh - say Palin had planned to give a concession speech on Election Night, but Sen. John McCain decided against it. Later in the evening, Palin reportedly returned to the stage with family to have some pictures taken, and McCain Campaign people thought she might try...

A blow-by-blow breakdown of the young president's first year reveals that today's frustration stems not from a lack of policy so much as a lack of common ground. The myth of the American center looms in this, the second part of a week-long series on our country since the 2008 election. I have figured out The Problem With America Today. My inspiration was the recent one-year-later cover of Newsweek, which encapsulates the current conventional wisdom about President Obama in a single headline: YES HE CAN (BUT HE SURE HASN'T YET). Or, as Saturday Night Live put it, President Obama's two...

Joan Orie Melvin is maintaining a 6% lead over Jack Panella for the lone vacancy on the Commonwealth Supreme Court. This contest is considered critical due to a 3-3 party split in the current court makeup. Panella had been heavilly favored to win, but in the waning days of the campaign, his lead dwindled and he begin running attack ads on Orie Melvin as a right wing extremist.

This fourth grade girl thinks she is about to give a school report on where her Dad is stationed in Iraq and is surprised when he shows up for her report.

DEVELOPING http://elections.cbslocal.com/cbs/wcbs/20081104/

Men with an Emerald Isle brogue came top in a poll of 5,000 women worldwide, while the French accent only came fourth, just ahead of Australian.

DEVELOPING

Another sign of the incessant creeping in of eurosocialist attitudes here in the United States thanks to Obama, Pelosi & Reid.

Imagine this. At a time of political turmoil, a charismatic, telegenic new leader arrives virtually out of nowhere. He offers a message of hope and reconciliation based on compromise and promises to marshal technology for a better future that will include universal health care. The news media swoons in admiration. The public is likewise smitten, except for a few patriots who circulate disturbing rumors on the Internet about the leader's origins and intentions. The leader, undismayed, offers assurances that are soothing, if also just a tiny bit condescending: "Embracing change is never easy." So, does that sound like anyone...

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a respectful, big-budget biopic of the prophet Muhammad – that’s not the point – but it’s well worth remembering that while he was one of the biggest movie stars in the world, Oscar-winning director Mel Gibson had his ”Passion of the Christ” turned down by every studio in town. You know, even though 70% of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Now, if Gibson had produced “The Pissing on the Christ…” Producer Barrie Osborne cast Keanu Reeves as the messiah in The Matrix and helped defeat the dark lord Sauron in his record-breaking Lord of the...

WOODSTOCK, Ill. (CBS) ― If you flip someone off in traffic, you might get angry stares or a nasty honk of the car horn, but if you do it in court, expect much more severe consequences. A McHenry County man found that out the hard way. Kane Kellett, 24, raised his middle finger while he was being sworn in to face home invasion charges at a rights hearing, the Daily Herald reported. He also hurled profanity at Judge G. Martin Zopp. Zopp promptly gave Kellett six months in jail for contempt of court. Kellett was wanted on charges of aggravated...

Thea Cox, a burglar caught stealing make-up and women’s clothes has been spared a prison sentence after a judge decided she had endured “a rotten life” as a transsexual. Thea Cox: Outside court the burglar, who was christened Timothy, blamed her life of crime on the public's reaction to her change of sex 26 years ago. Photo: SWNS Cox, 54, was originally given a suspended 12-week prison sentence for having an offensive weapon with her as she carried out four burglaries last year. She returned to the same student flats this summer and carried out two further raids – on...

It seems the planned protest of Lance Cpl. David Raymond Baker's funeral by Westboro Baptist Church, a Topeka, Kan.-based church known for picketing at the funerals of American troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, never materialized. "If they were there, they didn't make themselves known," said Painesville Police Capt. Rick Kline. Painesville police received word from another department that protesters may have been on Walnut Avenue, though none were found upon investigation. There were also two buses that passed by the church before the funeral, but again, no protesters were involved. "(The buses) slowly drove by because of...

Here is video of GOP Rep. Michelle Bachmann on Fox and Friends this morning, where she called on Americans to come to the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, November 5, to get the message to Congress that we do not want Government-run Health Care. Bachmann believes this is one of the last chances to stop Pelosi's push to bring Socialized Medicine to America: "The American people need to stand up again and make sure that Congress hears them this time. Speaker Pelosi is putting her bill on fast track to a vote – and it remains to be seen if the...

Ayn Rand is one of America's great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that "the masses"—her readers—were "lice" and "parasites" who scarcely deserved to live. Yet she remains one of the most popular writers in the United States, still selling 800,000 books a year from beyond the grave. She regularly tops any list of books that Americans say have most influenced them. Since the great crash of 2008, her...

Australian Idol contestant, Toby Moulton, suddenly dropped out of the competition Sunday. Toby said he wanted to go back to teaching and that he realized show business wasn’t for him. Toby made it all the way to the Top 5. He dropped out on Top 4 night, before the results from the week before were announced. The host revealed Toby would not have been eliminated. Pretty crazy stuff. Can you imagine an American Idol contestant making it all the way to the Top 5 and then suddenly dropping out?

Over the past year, he has turned 18, earned his GED and dreamed about moving to California and going to college. All from the confines of a Suffolk County Jail cell. Jose Pacheco is one of seven defendants charged with participating in the hate killing of Marcelo Lucero, and the only minority among the group. He and five others have been held in jail for nearly a year awaiting trial in the closely watched case. PHOTOS: 7 teens accused in Patchogue slaying In prison greens, behind Plexiglas, the 18-year-old repeatedly glanced at his mother and attorney during an interview last...

A Philadelphia newspaper has apologized to readers for mistakenly running an ad congratulating the Philadelphia Phillies on winning back-to-back World Series titles. The Yankees held a commanding 3-1 lead in the championship as of Monday, the day the ad was printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Here is video of Newsweek's Howard Fineman this weekend telling host Chris Matthews, "Of course he is," referring to President Obama being "smarter than us." Chris Matthews had asked Fineman, "Is he smarter than us?" Fineman's immediate response was "Of course he is, much smarter!" Fineman had been waxing eloquent about how "patient" Obama is, and that he is just waiting for the right time and the right way to get his agenda adopted. Just another example of the fawning, biased "mainstream media." . . . (VIDEO)

HOLLY HILL -- The yard sale at 722 Center Ave. has been canceled. That much is clear. The rest of the story, including allegations that police threatened to arrest the 80-year-old homeowner because she didn't have a permit? Not so much. The facts are these: After 60 years in Holly Hill, Pauline Liles is moving to Tennessee to live with her daughter's family. Her husband, Jack, is already there, having suffered a stroke that has immobilized him. Pauline, an old hand at yard sales, was hoping to sell most of their stuff before joining him next week. She advertised the...

A report released last week reveals that most of us believe only teens from poor or single-parent families get pregnant. And we are wrong. According to research conducted for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, only 28 percent of those who report having given birth or fathered a child as a teen lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty line.

Here is video of Ann Coulter and Geraldo sparring over Rush Limbaugh's interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Geraldo called Limbaugh's use of the phrase "man-child President" to refer to Obama as an example of Rush being a "racial provocateur." Coulter completely disagreed with Geraldo. . . . (VIDEO)

AN Indian man claims he has been cheated by the cosmetics firm that makes popular deodorant Lynx after failing to land a girlfriend for the past seven years. Vaibhav Bev has been using Lynx deodorant since 2002, in the hope the company's promotional campaign - which features scantily clad women throwing themselves at men - had some basis in real life. Mr Bev is suing the maker of Lynx - marketed as Axe in his home country - for more than $100,000, seeking compensation for "depression and psychological damage". "I used it for seven years but no girl came to...

After four years of Civil War, approximately 630,000 deaths and over 1 million casualties, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, at the home of Wilmer and Virginia McLean in the town of Appomattox Court House,Virginia on April 9, 1865...

A German plastic surgeon has told how he built himself the perfect wife after wedding a "dowdy" woman "for her potential". Reza Vossough sculpted his 33-year-old bride Cany with eight surgeries to change her chest, thighs, eyes and face, The Sun newspaper reports. In pictures: Plastic surgery obsessions"It's almost like being God — you have the ability to change nature," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "When I first met Cany, she had physical deficiencies, but I could see there was something there ... she had big hips and big thighs, so we made corrections, then did a little bit...

Here is complete video of Rush Limbaugh's extensive interview today with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday . . . (VIDEO)

Diversity. Do we have it? What happens when we get it the way liberals want us to have it? We have plenty of diversity now. America embraces all races and religions. We don;t embrace violence in pursuit of religion, unless you count the liberal view that all things Islam are good. Heck, we even embrace gender identity (whatever the hell that is). What do we end up when we achieve perfect liberal diversity? We get an entire world of people about 5'8"-5'10" with brownish olive skin and straight black hair. (That's what geneticists predict we'll get after all races have...

What would it take for your kids to give up most of that candy they collected while trick-or-treating on Halloween? Or all that candy you've got left over today because you had fewer than expected kids come to your door. Here's a suggestion: Donate the candy to U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq so they can hand the sweets out to local kids there to help show them we're not a country of monsters and bullies. More than 1,200 dentists around the country have registered to buy back Halloween candy from kids for $1 a pound. They'll give the donated...

Here is video of Geraldo Rivera reporting on the White House Halloween Party held there last night. President and Mrs. Obama handed out bags of treats to about 2,000 local children who were brought in for the occasion. Not surprisingly, President Obama came as - himself - wearing casual clothing as he handed out the treats. . . . (VIDEO)

For several weeks, Bj Hurley has been training for her first half marathon. While preparing her body to withstand race rigors, she has weaned herself off a trusted running companion. Among hundreds of runners expected to flood the streets for today's Manchester City Marathon/Half Marathon, Hurley will trot without her iPod, which race rules prohibit. "I wouldn't want to take the chance of running with one and being asked not to come back," said Hurley, a mother of three from Candia. While many runners rely on music from an iPod or portable MP3 player for mental distraction and motivation, the...

Joe Kelly won't go as far as calling Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course a burial ground. But the 91-year-old track historian is quite sure that Willie Doyle, who rode Effendi to victory in the 1909 Preakness, isn't the only guy whose remains are mingled with the turf where the great Seabiscuit and War Admiral famously battled.*** While Doyle's choice of Pimlico's finish line as his final resting place is among the more colorful episodes in horseracing lore, it's hardly unique.*** Some venues honor such requests, such as NASCAR's Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, where Wayne Estes has adopted the informal role of...

Benito Mussolini has an infamous place in modern history, as well he should. Nearly everyone knows Mussolini as the dictator of Fascist Italy and the ally of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. But that is only part of the story.  Mussolini began his political career as an avowed Marxist (defined as the atheist philosophy which holds that capitalism is bad because it enriches a few capitalists to the detriment of masses of laborers and that laborers should take control of all means of production — in order, in theory though not in practice, to be fair to the...

With bailouts and other unabashed socialist projects being embraced by both political parties to "save our economy," has free-market economics been proved faulty?  In the bailout-a-week political climate, it is all too easy to believe that free-market economics are as passé as powdered wigs. Everyone, it seems, is a socialist now, and the old gospel of laissez-faire and free enterprise has been discredited by a cascade of free-market failures that threaten to bring down the economy of the entire developed world. "For too long, the prevailing attitude in Washington has been that the market always knows best," Congressman Henry Waxman...

When did kids stop saying thank you for all the candy they're getting. I am running about 1 in 4 of the kids saying thank you, and I am not talking about the little ones either. Only about half are even saying trick or treat. I also saw some parents following the kids in their car, and I am on a small circle street. Are they just too lazy to walk with the kids?

SALT LAKE CITY — A rap by four teenagers at a McDonald's has gotten them a bad rap in one Utah city. The teens were cited by American Fork police earlier this week for disorderly conduct after they rapped their order at a McDonald's drive-through.

A naked man who climbed out of a window and hid on the ledge to escape his lover's furious husband has been caught on camera. Sun Meng has been given the cold shoulder by his community after the extraordinary picture of him cowering naked outside the flat were posted on the internet. The terrified 25-year-old fled from the balcony window when he was caught in bed with the man's wife at the married couple's flat in Chengdu, central China.

It's deflating news for the sheriff at the center of the investigation into the Colorado balloon hoax. The Boulder County district attorney announced Wednesday that he would personally investigate allegations that Larimer County Sheriff John Alderden improperly conducted his probe into the alleged balloon hoax committed by the Heene family. A lawyer for Richard Heene wrote a letter to the Larimer County district attorney on Monday, accusing Alderden of breaking a Colorado law that prevents officials from publically disclosing information in a case involving charges of child neglect Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/10/29/2009-10-29_boulder_county_da_opens_investigation_into_sheriff_at_center_of_heene_family_bal.html#ixzz0VYcCtwTT

Early Saturday morning, 7Online.com, the website for ABC's New York affiliate WABC-TV, reported the previous night's arrest of Jason Shih, an alleged campaign worker for Governor Jon Corzine (D-NJ) charged with "possession of a controlled narcotic and paraphernalia that is used for distribution." For some reason, although the headline "Corzine campaign worker arrested" shows up in a Google News search, the page is no longer available: "We are sorry, but the URL you requested could not be found. The page you are looking for may have been renamed, moved, or deleted." A search of "Jason Shih" and "Corzine" at 7Online.com...

Michelle Triola Marvin dies at 75; her legal fight with ex-lover Lee Marvin added 'palimony' to the language After their cohabitation of six years, she took him to court, seeking $1.8 million, but won just $104,000, and that award was later thrown out.Michelle Triola Marvin, a former nightclub singer whose claims as the onetime live-in girlfriend of actor Lee Marvin led to a landmark ruling that established the legal concept of palimony, has died. She was 75. Marvin, who had fought lung cancer for the last 18 months, died Friday at the Malibu home she shared with actor Dick Van...

...The hormone fuels sex-drive in both men and women and is associated with competitiveness and dominance.Prior research has shown that high levels of testosterone are also linked to risky behaviour such as gambling or excessive drinking.Scientists in the US measured the amount of testosterone in saliva samples taken from 500 male and female MBA business students at the University of Chicago.Participants in the study were asked to play a computer game that evaluated their attitude towards risk.A series of questions allowed them to choose between a guaranteed monetary reward or a risky lottery with a higher potential pay-out... play safe......

We're Not Gonna Take It!

There's a lot of buzz on Capitol Hill about a new health care memo, by strategist/communicator Frank Luntz, which is filled with advice for opponents of the Democrats' reform legislation. The memo analyzes the public's concerns that national health care will result in lower quality care at higher cost, with an out-of-control deficit to boot, and Luntz recommends language to help critics make the case against the legislation more effectively. For example, he suggests opponents would be better off avoiding the phrase public option; calling it the government option is better. The new memo updates a similar analysis Luntz wrote...

Unless they had explicitly named them, the Senate’s Kerry-Boxer and the House’s Waxman-Markey global warming bills could not have been better designed to inflict more pain on the states that swung red in the last election than on those that went blue. The American Clean Energy and Security Act in the Senate and House’s Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act both call for dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, eventually 83%. (Isn’t it curious that neither bill is titled after the impending global warming catastrophe that they are supposedly designed to avert?) When EPA’s data for carbon dioxide emissions...

Although I am very happy with the events so far in New York and I support both Hoffman's run against a liberal GOP Candidate and the conservative statement to the GOP, I have some concerns. I think that Hoffman's campaign will encourage more independents to buck the GOP establishment. While I think that this is necessary in showing the GOP that the conservative grass roots don’t want the establishment’s compromising, weak spined, unprincipled moderates, when will conservative enough be conservative enough? There are few politicians that espouse the (small l) libertarian, small government philosophies that I believe in. I am...

I just got the American Community Survey in the mail earlier this week. I was curious if any FReepers have actually filled this out or had any related dealings with the Census people. Personally, it reads as a huge invasion of privacy, and I'm leaning towards not filling it out. Other than my Constitutional requirement to participate in the Census every 10 years, I don't feel any obligation to disclose anything further. So, any help from my FRiends out there would be much appreciated.

They say the gesture allows a bug named Cytomegalovirus, which is dangerous in pregnancy, to be passed from man to woman to give her time to build up protection against it. The bug is found in saliva and normally causes no problems. But it can be extremely dangerous if caught while pregnant and can kill unborn babies or cause birth defects. Writing in the journal Medical Hypotheses, researcher Dr Colin Hendrie from the University of Leeds, said: "Female inoculation with a specific male's cytomegalovirus is most efficiently achieved through mouth-to-mouth contact and saliva exchange, particularly where the flow of saliva...