Free Republic

Two billboards in which images of Native Americans are used to make a gun rights argument are causing a stir with some Colorado residents who say the image is offensive and insensitive. The billboards in this northern Colorado city show three men dressed in traditional Native American attire and the words "Turn in your arms. The government will take care of you." Matt Wells, an account executive with Lamar Advertising in Denver, said Monday that a group of local residents purchased the space. "They have asked to remain anonymous," he said. He also refused to disclose the cost but said...

Right blasts RNC 'autopsy' as power grab By: Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman March 18, 2013 12:21 PM EDT The GOP’s prescription to cure the ills that helped bring on yet another disastrous presidential cycle would revamp its presidential nominating rules in ways to benefit well-funded candidates and hamper insurgents - a move that quickly heated up the already smoldering feud between the Republican establishment and the tea party-inspired base. Tucked in near the end of the 97-page report, formally known as The Growth and Opportunity Project, are less than four pages that amount to a political bombshell: the five-member...

Thomas Torres, age 54, was the target of a Connecticut State Police SWAT raid shortly before Christmas two years ago. The Spanish-speaking, subsidized housing resident of New Haven was living in a building infested with drug dealers and prostitutes. He kept his door closed unless given a damn good reason to do otherwise. He didn’t have the drugs the police were looking for and told them so, repeatedly, despite the language barrier, after the raiding party knocked down his door. What followed was the trashing of his apartment and a physical altercation between the unarmed middle-aged man on disability and...

Republican strategist Karl Rove responded to the harsh comments former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had for him at CPAC on Fox News Sunday this morning. Before taking a shot at Palin for not completing her term as governor, he said that Palin was actually in agreement with him on former Senate candidate Todd Akin and that he actually works pro bono for American Crossroads. [....] Rove continued that Palin endorsed in primaries and got involved in other races around so he didn’t understand what the problem was with other people doing the same thing. He defended his work for American...

Add Newt Gingrich to the list of Republicans coming to terms with the loss of the presidential election. On Monday, the former speaker of the House sounded reflective on the "Today" show, saying, "We need to stop, take a deep breath and learn." He added, "The president won an extraordinary victory. And the fact is, we owe him the respect of trying to understand what they did and how they did it." Gingrich said, "But if you had said to me three weeks ago Mitt Romney would get fewer votes than John McCain and it looks like he'll be 2...

Again, a rejection of a RINO who has a Youtube video of him bashing a coal-fired power plant, all the way to articles of him flip-flopping on practically any subject you can think of running as a conservative (and then losing in the general election), isn't tantamount to conservatism being over. Let's face it - Romney had a long track record of being a RINO. There are plenty of past threads here detailing his RINO past as governor, as well as his flip-flops before, during and after the primaries. Yet the GOP-e thought that putting up someone whom they said...

WASHINGTON - Republican activists are incredulous: Why can't Republican Mitt Romney seem to break open a tight race with President Barack Obama given the nation's sluggish economy and conservative enthusiasm to beat the Democrat? "He ought to be killing Obama, and he's clearly not doing that," said 32-year-old R.J. Robinson, one of the thousands of activists attending the annual Values Voters Summit this weekend. "He should be doing better."

Wearing bright orange t-shirts with “undocumented and unafraid” printed on the front, three Mexican illegals, disrupted legislative hearings in North Carolina this Wednesday by yelling at House lawmakers for what they felt were anti-immigration stances. They were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, but proving their t-shirt slogans to be true true, Cynthia Lizabeth Martinez, 21, and Estephania Lizbeth Mijangos-Lopez, 20, were released from jail after the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency determined that they didn’t meet "priority criteria," according to an official statement. The third protester, Uriel Alberto, 24, remains in custody because he has a criminal record

The Log Cabin Republicans, a gay Republican group, on Wednesday criticized a new ad from Rick Perry in which the Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate suggests "there's something wrong" when gays can serve openly in the military but kids "can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school." "Our nation was built upon individual liberty and individual responsibility, and open service by gay and lesbian servicemembers is directly in line with the vision of our Founding Fathers," said R. Clarke Cooper, Executive Director of the Log Cabin Republicans. "It is wrong for Governor Perry to assume being a person of...

The young man in the video pulls in close to his computer camera with the trappings of a typical college dorm room—a loft bed and the clutter of cast-off clothes—piled behind him. Alex Fiorentini isn’t talking about girls, beer or football. Instead, it’s a coming-out moment of sorts. “Is it acceptable to the majority of the population to be an atheist?” he asks the camera. “Nope. Are all of your friends going to accept you as an atheist? Probably not all of them. And yeah, those things are gonna suck. But the real question is, ‘Is it OK to be...

Count your blessings, then get to work. That may be Thanksgiving for more retail workers this year, as stores desperate to pull in buyers on the first weekend of the holiday shopping season push their openings earlier and earlier. Unhappy workers who say the earlier hours ruin their Thanksgiving celebrations are trying to persuade companies to back off, but retailers say they're stuck: It's what customers want. Reporting to work at 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving Dayruinswhat issupposed to bea day spent with family, said Anthony Hardwick, who works part time at a Target store in Omaha, Neb., corralling carts.

Protesters have returned to downtown Oakland, California, to demand the resignation of the city's mayor and aninvestigation toexplain how anIraqi war veteran, Scott Olsen, was hit in the head by a teargas canister at close range, leaving him critically injured. About 2,000 people – half as many as Tuesday night – massed in front of City Hall on Wednesday, tearing down a steel barricade intended to keep them off the grass in Frank Ogawa Plaza.

Next month marks the 21st anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's enforced resignation as Prime Minister. It is now more than 30 years since she first gained power. She was not, of course, the first woman to lead a major country. That honour fell to Indira Gandhi in India and Golda Meir in Israel. But along with Gandhi, Thatcher's 11 years at the top make her the longest-serving woman prime minister the world has seen. The strange thing is that despite the advancement of women in business and the professions and the growing numbers of women entering politics in leading Western countries,...

President Obama of late is making the rounds of aggrieved Democratic constituencies. Next up, a Saturday address to the Human Rights Campaign. "Some LGBT rights supporters are hoping that Obama will take advantage of the opportunity to endorse marriage equality and to denounce initiatives that would ban marriage rights for same-sex couples in Minnesota and North Carolina," reports the Washington Blade. Probably not, for at least two reasons: While Obama has said his stance opposing gay marriage is "evolving," he has given no signal it's fully evolved since he declined to endorse gay marriage in June.

Artificial insemination costs vary widely across Sweden, forcing some same-sex couples to pay significantly more than heterosexual couples who save thousands of kronor by bringing their own sperm. “We think that it is discriminatory that there are different prices for insemination,” Ulrika Westerlund of the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights (Riksförbundet för homosexuellas, bisexuellas och transpersoners rättigheter - RFSL) said to the Aftonbladet daily. RFSL would like to see a development of uniform regulations which apply across the country. “But that would be complicated and would require the state to go in and regulate. However, we...

Lots of people adore funky grocer Trader Joe's. Its vegan pad thai is apparently so delicious that it sparked a smackdown between two women in the frozen-food aisle of a Manhattan location in January. However, the activists at Change.org want to pick a much bigger fight with Trader Joe's: They're accusing the chain of wasting food. Their campaign got a kick-start from documentary filmmaker Jeremy Seifert, who recorded Trader Joe's employees trashing huge bins full of salvageable food in his film Dive! Seifert is a self-professed "Dumpster diver," and he feeds his family with the perfectly good food retailers routinely...

For the second time in the past week, hundreds of laid off state workers rallied in the hot sun on the steps of Minnesota’s closed State Capitol to protest the state government shutdown. Wednesday’s rally again took aim at familiar theme: Taxing the state's wealthiest residents to help solve the state’s $5 billion budget deficit. One man held a sign that took his frustration a step further – he had changed it from “Tax the Rich” to “Eat the Rich.”

Daley: U.S. a 'country of whiners'By Rick Pearson, Tribune reporter 9:36 p.m. CST, March 3, 2011 Retiring Mayor Richard Daley on Thursday contended America is a "country of whiners" that's spent the last four decades fearing the impact of foreign governments on the nation's economy instead of showing the confidence and sacrifice to lead on a global stage. Daley also said he believed taxpayers can no longer finance the current level of government and suggested priorities need to be placed on municipal services that can be privatized or outsourced to cut costs. The comments by the veteran mayor, who is...

The 20th century adage that "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" is a myth, according to new research suggesting that our brains are wired exactly the same way when it comes to love. The self-help bestseller, published in 1992, suggested that when it came to relationships men and women thought and acted very differently -- in other words it was as if they came from different planets. But new scientific research shows we actually act very similarly when we are in love -- whether we are male, female, heterosexual or homosexual. Professor Semir Zeki and John Romaya at...

Ricky Gervais Was Only as Mean as We’d Hoped He'd Be It was such a refreshing treat watching Ricky Gervais go knives out during last year's Golden Globes, attacking the likes of Mel Gibson, Angelina Jolie and Sir Paul McCartney. Honestly, he didn’t say anything any worse then what is said by millions of viewers on their couches, but Ricky was in the room, looking right at his victims. It was a rush. So when it was announced that Gervais would be coming back for more, the conversation naturally turned to, “Can he top last year’s performance?” The press (guilty)...

Several House and Senate Democrats joined feminists at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to push for the introduction and passage of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women’s rights. The conference was timed to coincide with the reading of the U.S. Constitution on the House floor, as ordered by the newly elected Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio). “Recently, Supreme Court Justice (Antonin) Scalia stated his opinion that no provision in the Constitution, or the 14th amendment, would provide full and true equality to women and give them protection against sex discrimination,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said....

“[Senators] want to go home,” Burr said. “When you got a process that has a definitive end, you use slippage backward. That’s why all of these things were orchestrated to come up at this time of year.” Burr would have preferred to see the debate continue next session, since “there is no compelling reason that this needs to be done right now.”

Election losers, welcome to Office Space. Some of the most senior and respected members of Congress are among the dozens of outgoing lawmakers whose offices have been crammed into tiny basement cubicles as their old offices are emptied and refurbished. And while nobody seems to be throwing fits about missing red Swingline staplers, the basement bullpen is quite a comedown for some of the most powerful members of Congress, who virtually overnight went from comfortable congressional veterans to homeless on the Hill. Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), the transportation committee chairman who championed legislation to fix America’s crowded highways, faces an...

With a title like that, I'm sure I'll have every liberal pundit salivating at the idea of another diehard conservative writer taking the same route as the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan. Ms. Noonan recently referred to Palin as a "nincompoop" for a remark she made about Ronald Reagan's legacy. She has made no bones about how little she thought of Sarah Palin as a V.P. pick and she has been highly critical of Palin's decision to quit as governor of Alaska. I worked with Peggy Noonan for a short while at the start of the New York Sun and...

BELLEVUE, Wash., Oct. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Acting on behalf of a Georgia resident and honorably discharged Vietnam War veteran, the Second Amendment Foundation today filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder and the Federal Bureau of Investigation over enforcement of a federal statute that can deny gun rights to someone with a simple misdemeanor conviction on his record. The lawsuit was filed in United States District Court for the District of Columbia. SAF and co-plaintiff Jefferson Wayne Schrader of Cleveland, GA are represented by attorney Alan Gura, who successfully argued both the Heller and McDonald cases before the U.S....

VINALHAVEN, Maine — Like nearly all of the residents on this island in Penobscot Bay, Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, celebrated the arrival of three giant wind turbines late last year. That was before they were turned on. “In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.” Lawsuits and complaints about turbine noise, vibrations and subsequent lost property value have cropped up in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, among other states. In one case in DeKalb County, Ill., at least 38 families...

The wacky dishonest left wants you to believe that their crowd yesterday matched the Glenn Beck rally last month. Well, here’s an overhead shot from yesterday’s astroturfed One Nation rally posted at the left-wing Huffington PostAnd, here is a crowd shot from Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally in late August.So who are you going to believe? The leftist media or your lying eyes?

On Oct. 24, 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole got up at a campaign rally and promptly lost it: "I wonder sometimes what people are thinking about, or if people are thinking at all," he shouted. "Wake up, America!" Those words -- an unmistakable harbinger of the humiliation Dole would experience by losing to Bill Clinton in a landslide 12 days later -- seemed to echo painfully like Taylor Swift singing without the benefit of an auto-tune machine in the bewildering comments made over the last couple of days by President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. It's odd, to...

According to the preview offered by Vanity Fair: [Todd] Purdum spends a day inside the West Wing and talks to Obama’s top aides, who tell him about the challenges of playing the Beltway game, ugly as it has become, even as their boss insists they find a way to transcend it. “There’s a relentlessness to this that’s unlike anything else, especially when you come into office in a time of crisis,” says Obama senior adviser David Axelrod. “We did not exactly ease into the tub. The world is so much smaller, and events reverberate much more quickly, and one person...

... Maybe you fooled around with a guy 30 years ago and have spent the rest of your life as a celibate priest. Maybe you've been in a faithful same-sex marriage for 40 years. Maybe you've passed an HIV test. It doesn't matter. You can't give blood, because you're in the wrong "group." On the other hand, if you're in the right group—heterosexuals—you can give blood despite dangerous behavior. If you had sex with a prostitute, an IV drug user, and an HIV-positive opposite-sex partner 13 months ago, you're good to go. This kind of group-based screening is a long-standing...

June 09, 2010|By Dan Tracy, Orlando Sentinel Angry bicyclists are hoping to strike back and repeal a law taking effect in September that would force them to ride in bike lanes or hug the right side of the road. They've even enlisted the help of state Sen. Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, himself an avid bicyclist and tri-athlete. "I'm one of them. … I'm open to just about anything," Gardiner said, including filing a bill next year. And the bikers might not stop with just the law. Another possibility they are considering is doing away with bike lanes altogether. That could result...

They gather on statehouse steps with signs and bullhorns, risking arrest. They attend workshops on civil disobedience and personal storytelling, and they hold sit-ins and walk out of class in protest. They're being warned that they could even lose their lives. Students fighting laws that target illegal immigrants are taking a page from the civil rights era, adopting tactics and gathering praise and momentum from the demonstrators who marched in the streets and sat at segregated lunch counters as they sought to turn the public tide against racial segregation. "Their struggle then is ours now," said Deivid Ribeiro, 21, an...

According to Gallup, "White single women, unmarried, widowed, divorced, and separated" voted "overwhelmingly" for Obama. On this Memorial Day, this crucial slice of Obama's base of support without whom he would have been elected owe this nation an apology. Blacks; Hispanics; and Moslems voted tribal politics. But this group was more than liberal, it included a large segment of conservatives and independents who had soured on Bush. Today with $13 trillion in debt- almost $12 trillion of it accumulated in the last six months alone, a burgeoning government; a foreign policy in tatters from Iran, to N. Korea to the...

PEORIA - Caterpillar Inc. and other large companies are being criticized by the Obama administration for reporting now that they will take millions of dollars in hits to their earnings because of one portion of the new health care legislation. Caterpillar and Deere were accused of being “premature and irresponsible” by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke for saying a change to Medicare Part D laws would hurt their earnings in the present quarter. Those companies are also being questioned about the amounts they are claiming — amounts that seem to get larger with every company that makes a report...

DNC to Republicans: 'Hands off our health care' Posted: March 26th, 2010 10:47 AM ET Democrats have finally passed the top issue on their legislative agenda - health care - but with Republicans already pushing for a repeal, it's time to sell it. The Democratic National Committee will run ads condemning ten Republicans who voted against the health care bill and touting the merits of twenty-five Democrats who supported it, the organization announced Friday The radio ad campaign, called "Hands off our Health Care" targets several Republicans who support the bill's repeal, including Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao - the lone...

Leftists who decried the War on Terror now use the same terminology to describe center-Left members of their own party. On last night’s episode of MSNBC’s The Ed Show, Ed Schultz interviewed Katrina vanden Heuvel about President Obama’s “sellout” on the health care bill. Katrina complained Obama’s is “a White House which has emboldened the conservadems, people like Joe Lieberman” who “is now holding hostage” socialized medicine. She repeated the elocution moments later while appealing to “citizens who don’t want to be held hostage by the insurance companies.” Schultz thanked her for appearing, adding, “Always the truth coming from you...

The other day, I wrote that President Obama has "run out of both charm and ideas." I was too kind. To judge from the string of whoppers in his dreary jobs speech yesterday, he's also run out of facts. And he's still whining about the problems he inherited and blaming Republicans. He might as well be barking at the moon. That's sort of what he is doing, because the American people are tuning him out at a stunning pace. The latest Gallup Poll gives him a record low 47 percent approval. Only 26 percent in another poll say he deserves...

Gay advocates will push to replace freshman Sen. Joseph Addabbo. Gay advocates are on the warpath after the state Senate killed same-sex marriage last week, and few Democratic senators who voted against the bill are safe from their wrath.After spending more than $1 million to help the Democrats retake the chamber for the first time in decades, powerful gay activists and donors say they'll support challengers against anti-gay-marriage senators in 2010. "It's going to be a bloodbath," one gay operative predicted. "We're going to use every single weapon in our quiver to take these people out. We either need to...

Dozens of people crowded the steps of Vallejo City Hall on Tuesday to protest a recent quoted remark by Mayor Osby Davis that gay people would not go to heaven. The protesters waved rainbow flags, held signs demanding the separation of church and state and some called for Davis' resignation. And then there was a roar. From inside City Hall came the sounds of more than 100 people clapping and cheering, praising God. "Lord, we're not against anybody. We're for our children," prayed New Hope Church Community Senior Pastor Terrence Nichols. "No matter what outside forces may stir up the...

Women can be cruel, and they often do cruel things to men. Despite their reputation as the fairer sex, when it comes to relationships, sometimes women can be downright nasty. It seems like a reverse sexism started to take hold as the feminist movement came about and equality for women began gaining ground. Some women use their girl-power solidarity to come to a consensus on what’s socially acceptable for women to do to men in a relationship. They’ve agreed among themselves that these behaviors are perfectly justifiable regardless of how they play with a guy’s emotions or ego. With that,...

Statistics released Nov. 24 by the FBI show hate crimes against religious groups increased by 9% from 2007 to 2008.USA Today reported that in 2008, there 1,519 incidents against people based on their religion, the statistics show.The figures reveal that while anti-Jewish attacks made up the highest percentage of the attacks (17%), there was an increase in hate crimes against Catholics — 75, up from 61 in 2007.Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said the increase may be due to the Church becoming more vocal on life issues such as abortion and homosexual unions.As...

Washington – The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, today responded to the “Manhattan Declaration” produced and released by 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders indicating that they will not cooperate with laws that conflict with their beliefs, including those recognizing same-sex couples. The document also references the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) as a threat to religious liberty. Yet ENDA – which prohibits workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity – broadly exempts religious organizations. The declaration also argues that religious groups that receive public funds...

I'm a movie guy. I love going to the movies. Don't get there often but I still check out all the trailers online and plot strategy to get out of the house for those movies I really want to see. So I just saw the trailer to the new movie 2012. When I first clicked on it my first thought was aren't we all getting tired of big budget disaster porn but then I paid attention to what I was seeing in the preview and something seemed a little...well you decide: At the 20 second mark we've got the arms...

Republicans will enact the health reform proposal they unveiled this week if they take back the House, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) pledged Thursday. Appearing on the Republican National Committee's (RNC) online town hall, Boehner and other House and Senate leaders said they sensed momentum behind GOP efforts to halt Democratic health reform legislation, which is set for a vote on Saturday. "If we get in the majority after the election, I plan to enact our healthcare plan," Boehner said during the town hall.

Amid scrutiny from numerous decision makers in the NFL community, Dave Checketts released a statement on Wednesday announcing Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from the group seeking to purchase the St. Louis Rams. When it was revealed Limbaugh was part of the group to buy the Rams last week, several people, including NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, stated their ambivalence with the conservative radio personality having stock in the league. Checketts, also the owner of the St. Louis Blues, has decided to move forward on the bid without Limbaugh in the mix, according to the St. Louis Post- Dispatch, seemingly as...

DO NOT GO TO THE CARS.GOV WEBSITE! You will not believe what will happen to your computer if you do. This will explain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWs12ccbOiE

I want to wait until after Independence Day was over before I posted this. Obama didn't do much in the way of appearances today -- but he did send an email to his 'supporters.' He "rewrites" history in the following email. "Friend -- This weekend, our family will join millions of others in celebrating America. We will enjoy the glow of fireworks, the taste of barbeque, and the company of good friends. As we all celebrate this weekend, let's also remember the remarkable story that led to this day. Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, our nation was born when...

THE Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to make an important and far-reaching decision this year that will affect more than 500 million gasoline engines powering everything from large pickups to family cars to lawn mowers: whether to grant the ethanol industry’s request to raise the maximum amount of ethanol that can be added to gasoline. ... Specifically, ethanol producers are asking that the maximum ethanol content in the most common blend of gasoline be increased from 10 percent — a limit set about three decades ago — to as much as 15 percent. The blend the industry hopes will become...

Bob Hunter commentary: NHL hidden in plain sight on Versus Tuesday, May 12, 2009 3:09 AM By Bob Hunter THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Unless you know exactly where to look on your cable-TV lineup, it probably has been easy to miss much of the NHL's postseason. Unless you know exactly where to look on your cable-TV lineup, it probably has been easy to miss much of the NHL's postseason. Tuesday, May 12, 2009 In the spring, I usually make a point of asking people if they are watching the NHL playoffs. For some reason, the negative responses always surprise me. Last...

When she's not cutting hair at her hair salon, Hair Masters 2000, Owner Estela Farjardo's attention is turned to the news, but some recent developments haven't settled well with her. "Everything we do is wrong basically. You're doing this, taking the jobs; I mean basically everything, any way you look at it. We're never good for the community," she said.