Free Republic

Lawyers for Sarah Palin webmail hack suspect David Kernell claim his PC was infected with spyware. The contention may be used at trial to support arguments that the 21-year-old student son of a Tennessee Democrat politician was not personally responsible for the hack on a Yahoo! account maintained by the former Alaskan governor, which was traced back to an IP address used by Kernell. The content of emails and family photos were uploaded onto 4Chan during last year's presidential election campaign. The webmail account was compromised after hackers reset Palin's password using biographical info that was far from hard to...

Farouk Shami of Houston, who made a fortune in the hair care business, is the first Democrat running for governor to start airing TV ads. And he plans to air a lot of them so voters can get to know the relatively unknown candidate. It's not surprising, then, that his first ad is long on image and short on details. The ad describes Shami's early business career this way: "Arriving with $71 in his pocket, a man came to Texas and turned a dream into a reality." Shami made millions by founding Farouk Systems in Houston that makes hair care...

At the top of Friday’s Hardball on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews discovered the reason for President Obama’s political difficulties in recent months: “President Obama has his chin out on just about every hot issue out there....He’s exposed and vulnerable. His poll numbers are dropping. Is he just too darned intellectual? Too much the egg head?” Later in the show, Matthews talked to Atlantic Media’s Ron Brownstein and USA Today’s Susan Page about Obama’s great flaw. He began by wondering: “I’m not attacking intellectuals because I do appreciate their contribution – but when politicians begin to get a little too intellectual,...

Imam says Fort Hood suspect didn't seem radicalAssociated Press 11/05/09 10:35 PM EST SILVER SPRING, MD. — A Maryland imam at the mosque attended by the suspected Fort Hood, Texas, shooter says the Army psychiatrist never seemed to be an extremist. Imam Faizul Khan says he knew Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan for more than 10 years. They first met at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring. Kahn says Hasan was quiet and reserved. They mostly discussed religious matters, but Khan says Hasan never seemed controversial. They rarely discussed politics. Kahn says they spoke often about how Hasan wanted to...

A couple traveling along the river in the area north of Rosario claimed having seen an animal being abducted by a flying saucer. "Later, the both vanished," they said. The likelyhood that cows could fly was always relegated to the province of the impossible. But to Sergio and Laura, this changed last Monday afternoon, when they traveled along the coast near Puerto Gaboto, and believed that they saw a cow in the sky, abducted by a UFO. The couple told the story to journalist Guillermo Brasca in a report transmitted by the Telenoche program on Channel 3. They provided photos...

So new budget projections show a cumulative deficit of $9 trillion over the next decade. According to many commentators, that's a terrifying number, requiring drastic action — in particular, of course, canceling efforts to boost the economy and calling off health care reform. The truth is more complicated and less frightening. Right now deficits are actually helping the economy. In fact, deficits here and in other major economies saved the world from a much deeper slump. The longer-term outlook is worrying, but it's not catastrophic. The only real reason for concern is political. The United States can deal with its...

(CNN) -- Sen. Ted Kennedy would have had a "very, very difficult" time politically surviving the drowning death of a young woman if it happened in the era of blogs, talk radio and 24-hour news cycles, experts said. Sen. Ted Kennedy hit the airwaves to say it was "indefensible" he didn't immediately report the accident. Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, drowned after Kennedy drove his Oldsmobile off a bridge following a regatta party in July 1969. The incident on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, helped dash the youngest Kennedy brother's chances at the Oval Office in 1972 and 1980. Massachusetts was more forgiving...

A Macon man told police he was protecting his wife, three kids, and his home after he shot at an intruder. A Macon Police report says it happened at Hidden Lakes Apartment complex Sunday around 3 a.m. The man told officers he was asleep on his living room sofa, when he heard a noise. The man says he woke up to find a man coming through his window. He says he yelled at the intruder, but he kept coming through the window, according to the police report. The man says he sleeps with a gun, so he pulled it out...

There was Jimmy Johnson and the Lowes 48 car hanging out on the South Lawn. There was Richard Petty — the man who tried desperately to avoid ending up in a picture with candidate Bill Clinton years ago — gladly hamming it up for the cameras. NASCAR had come to the White House. And Barack Obama looked comfortable with it. He was joking and at ease — which is the complete opposite of how his predecessor George W. Bush seemed at these events. Obama was cracking all sorts of jokes. "You know, it is not every day that we have...

You've heard the one about the dog eating the homework, now hear about the cat who downloaded the kiddie porn. Keith Griffin was charged Wednesday with 10 counts of possession of child porn after over 1,000 illegal images were found on his computer, and he claims it's all the work of his kitty. Cops weren't buying Griffin's tale, and busted him in his home. He's being held in Martin County Jail on $250,000 bail, according to tcpalm.com. Could it all be a sinister plot from a vindictive feline? Maybe. After all, cats have been known to play a smooth tune...

The so-called public option is a hot topic of debate at town hall meetings across the country. Supporters say it's needed to keep private insurance companies in check and extend affordable coverage to all. Critics warn that the government should not have so much control over health care and that a public option could eventually eliminate private insurance.

Take a gander at the YouTube video embedded below, produced and posted online by Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog group. Or if you have more important things to do (and I don't blame you) than to watch this venom-spewing performance by a pompous parade of right-wing male commentators, let me describe it to you. A video cavalcade of pompous, annoying, thoroughly unattractive, low-brow guys poke fun at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent clarifications of her position on what she knew (about the Bush administration's use of torture) and when she knew it.

President Barack Obama, weighing advice from both the left and right on his first Supreme Court choice, is likely to seek a judicial version of himself: a moderate coalition-builder.

Writing at The Daily Beast, Scott Horton writes that Spanish prosecutors will soon indict six former members of the Bush administration: former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington and former Under-Secretary of Defense Doug Feith The Spanish prosecutors' "decision is expected to be announced on Tuesday before the Spanish central criminal court, the Audencia Nacional, in Madrid," Horton writes.

While the Pentagon is directing the military response, President Obama is getting personally involved in one of his first major national crises. As U.S. Navy vessel continued to track a handful of Somali pirates in a lifeboat on Saturday, the president received several updates, both written and over the phone. A White House interagency group on piracy met throughout the day as the president's aides monitored the military response.

For environmental activists, the message was clear: Earth Hour was a huge success. Now they say nations have a mandate to tackle climate change. "The world said yes to climate action, now governments must follow," the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said Sunday, a day after hundreds of millions of people worldwide followed its call to turn off lights for a full hour. --snip-- The United Nations' top climate official, Yvo de Boer, called the event a clear sign that the world wants negotiators seeking a climate change agreement to set an ambitious course to fight global warming. Talks in Bonn...

BURBANK, Calif. – President Barack Obama has told Jay Leno he was stunned when he learned of the bonuses that bailed-out insurance giant AIG was paying its employees. Obama told "The Tonight Show" host the payments raise moral end ethical problems — and the administration's going to do everything it can to get them back. But Obama added the bigger problem is the culture that allowed traders to claim them. He says that's got to change if the economy is to recover. According to NBC, Obama was the first sitting president ever to appear on "The Tonight Show." He'd already...

BURBANK, Calif. – President Barack Obama has told Jay Leno he was stunned when he learned of the bonuses that bailed-out insurance giant AIG was paying its employees. Obama told "The Tonight Show" host the payments raise moral end ethical problems — and the administration's going to do everything it can to get them back. But Obama added the bigger problem is the culture that allowed traders to claim them. He says that's got to change if the economy is to recover. According to NBC, Obama was the first sitting president ever to appear on "The Tonight Show." He'd already...

He says the spending bill, which includes thousands of them, is too important to wait. WASHINGTON -- As a candidate, Barack Obama once said that a president has to be able to do more than one thing at a time. Wednesday he proved it, though not in the way he had in mind. He criticized pork-barrel spending in the form of "earmarks," urging changes in the way that Congress adopts the spending proposals. Then he signed a spending bill that contains nearly 9,000 of them, some that members of his own staff shoved in last year when they were still...

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 7:28 pm President Obama declares turning point on earmark reform Today President Obama signed the final version of last year’s budget, as posted here on Friday while it was making its way through Congress, in order to keep the government functioning. As he explained, there was much to speak well of in the bill: “Now, yesterday Congress sent me the final part of last year's budget; a piece of legislation that rolls nine bills required to keep the government running into one, a piece of legislation that addresses the immediate concerns of the American people by making needed investments in...

Ever since he began his uphill battle for the Presidency two years ago, Barack Obama has been getting mobbed for photos and autographs, and that enthusiasm and passion has only grown since he entered the Oval Office. But even President Obama must be a little taken aback by the identity of some of his well-wishers on Capitol Hill of late. After his address to Congress last Tuesday, the same House Republicans who had decried his stimulus plan as the work of just another tax-and-spend liberal crowded around him like starstruck tween girls at a Jonas Brothers concert, all just to...

Once again CNN goes over the top in its gobsmacked praise of its Obammessiah. This time appropriating Ronald Reagan's famous "morning in America" theme and assigning it to President Obama as a result of his not-the-state-of-the-union speech last night. In reality, Obama's speech was more like a moaning in America as opposed to that bright new morning that Reagan invoked. Worse, Reagan's main theme for his "morning in America" ideal was to provoke Americans into a renewal of the American way of self-reliance, one removed from sucking at the teat of government. On the other hand, Barack Obama's main point...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Feb. 24 (UPI) -- The major U.S. broadcasters demonstrated bias towards Republicans in their coverage of presidential campaigns between 1992 and 2004, a new book contends. Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Bucy, both associate professors of telecommunications at Indiana University, are the authors of "Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections" published by Oxford University Press. They analyzed coverage of the elections on ABC, CBS and NBC and concluded all three networks showed a slight tilt to the Republican side. "We don't think this is journalists conspiring to favor Republicans. We think they're just so...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A visual analysis of television presidential campaign coverage from 1992 to 2004 suggests that the three television broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- favored Republicans in each election, according to two Indiana University professors in a new book. Their research runs counter to the popular conventional notion of a liberal bias in the media in favor of Democrats and against Republican candidates.

President Barack Obama won’t speak until prime-time, but his aides fanned out to the morning shows Tuesday morning to talk up his first speech before a joint session of Congress. And the word they used to preview it: “Reaganesque.” “The president believes very clearly that we have to be honest with the American people about where we are,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “He will,” Gibbs said, “tell the country that we’ve faced … greater challenges than the ones we face now, but we as Americans always meet those challenges. But in the Reaganesque...

One of the country's most outspoken conservative commentators, Ann Coulter, may have committed vote fraud. Records and lawsuits show that Coulter voted in Connecticut while living in New York. Records that have been dug up by private investigator Josephy Culligan showed that Coulter was entangled in a lawsuit over rent in 2003 while she was supposedly living with her parents in New Canaan, Connecticut. Property records, however, also show her owning an apartment in Manhattan while she voted in Connecticut. Last month officials acknowledged that such behavior would be wrong, but that they could not do anything unless someone filed...

NEW YORK - Credit markets are beginning to thaw after months of a deep freeze. In a promising turn that could bolster the economy,

Two newspapers set the agenda for the rest of the media: The Washington Post and The New York Times. The stories they break, the play they give them, and the way they characterize candidates, events, and issues are usually adopted by both print and broadcast reporters. As a Christmas gift, I am happy to report that one of those newspapers — The Washington Post — appears to have discarded its liberal slant and become a fair newspaper. As a Washington Post reporter from 1970 to 1985, I have been dismayed by the way the paper, along with much of the...

This is just an update post for hard working conservatives like my father who only have a few minutes a day to check FR.A number of Rezko Watch Blogs hinted during the last week of September that Rezko very likely had begun cooperating with the FBI. The Gov. of Illinois as most already know had accepted over $500,000 in donations from Rezko during his last run for office. Beyond domestic scandals, busy FReepers need to get up to date on: 1. Obama's connection to Iraqi-British Billionaire Nadhmi Auchi. 2. Evelyn Pringle has just completed her series on Obama at opednews.com....

MINNEAPOLIS - While police say a high-profile indecent conduct case in the Minneapolis Metrodome Saturday is closed, a Carroll woman involved in it told the Daily Times Herald she believes she was a victim of foul play rather than a willing collaborator. Lois K. Feldman, 38, of Carroll, and Ross M. Walsh, 26, of Linden, were ticketed for indecent conduct after they were reportedly caught engaging in sexual activity in a Metrodome men's restroom handicapped stall during the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers game with the Iowa Hawkeyes. More than a dozen people in the restroom were cheering Feldman and...

Chicago: US President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday condemned the Mumbai attacks and said the United States must work to strengthen ties with India and other nations to "root out and destroy terrorist networks." "These coordinated attacks on innocent civilians demonstrate the grave and urgent threat of terrorism," Obama's chief national security spokesperson, Brooke Anderson, said in a statement. "The United States must continue to strengthen our partnerships with India and nations around the world to root out and destroy terrorist networks." The statement added: "President-Elect Obama strongly condemns today's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and his thoughts and prayers are with...

US court rules Vatican can be sued for sex abuse by American priests From correspondents in Chicago Agence France-Presse November 26, 2008 11:47am A US appeals court has ruled that the Vatican can be sued for the sex abuse committed by American priests. The Vatican had tried to block a class action lawsuit alleging that it orchestrated a cover-up of sexual abuse by clergy with the argument that it was protected by laws granting sovereign states immunity from most US civil proceedings. Central to the case is a 1962 Vatican mandate, unearthed in 2003, which outlined a policy of "strictest"...

Is the national news media setting up Barak Obama to be a failure? As absurd as that question may seem, there are enough reasons to suspect that such may eventually prove be the case. First of all, the media has taken the position that President-elect Obama's election victory was a "peoples' mandate for change" and second in historical importance to only Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 landslide win. While this may indeed prove to be correct it is equally likely that' in the eyes of future historians, President Obama will be remembered as having gained the presidency by defeating one of the...

How can the Republican Party rebound? The first step would be to quit letting Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham set its agenda. A second step would be for Congressional Republicans to actually try to help President-elect Barack Obama succeed in addressing the country’s dire problems — offering better ideas where appropriate and opposing just when necessary, not reflexively. And the third — maybe the biggest one — would be for GOP governors to use their posts to show the country how conservatives can solve problems, especially the dismal state of American education and its menacing cousin, lagging American...

Just when it seemed the insults hurled at Barack Obama had reached the apex of absurdity, al-Qaida weighs in with a bit of retro name-calling of its own. In a video released last week, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top deputy to Osama bin Laden, denounced Obama as a “house Negro” and compared him unfavorably to “honorable black Americans” such as the late Malcolm X, the black nationalist who practiced Islam. Zawahiri also showed a still photograph of Obama wearing a yarmulke while visiting Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall last summer. The implication was that Obama had become nothing more than a “tool of...

After a losing presidential campaign, the candidate quickly (and often cruelly) is painted as an object lesson in what not to do — but that should not happen in 2008. In order to truly revive itself, the GOP should be more like the real John McCain in the future, and less like the conservative cast of the past decade: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Tom Delay. And it certainly should not look to the likes of Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin to lead a restoration. You do the math: America has a moderate majority — 50% of Americans are...

Barack Obama hasn't yet served a single day in office yet MSN Money writer, Jon Markham, has confidence that he can solve our economic problems for the most fatuous of reasons: he is a good speaker like Ronald Reagan which is why his article is titled, "Why Obama is the new Reagan." In fact, the actual economic policies themselves take a backseat to eloquence according to Markham. First Markham sets up the economic challenge facing Obama (emphasis mine):

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Barack Obama said on Saturday that, with the long U.S. presidential election campaign over, now was the time for Americans to put aside political differences and work together to solve the economic crisis. Obama, a Democrat who won a decisive victory against Republican John McCain in Tuesday's election to become the first black U.S. president as of January 20, vowed to seek unity. He noted Republican President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush had invited Obama and his wife Michelle to the White House on Monday and that the Bushes had offered to do all...

Investors worldwide have prepared for a new chief executive of the most important country on Earth for months by shedding assets and shivering with dread -- and on Tuesday they got their man. The new boss of the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve, armed forces and dollar, the new director of global trade flows, the new captain of the capitalist system, will be a 47-year-old attorney who grew up about as far from the dark center of power as can be imagined -- in sun-baked Honolulu. Barack Obama now stands in broad daylight, where skeptical investors in Tokyo, Singapore, Beijing and...

THE POLL: Pew Research Center, national presidential race among registered voters. THE NUMBERS: Barack Obama 52 percent, John McCain 36 percent.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency. The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, "impetuous" Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier,"...

WASHINGTON -- Significantly more monthly churchgoers are supporting the Democratic nominee -- Sen. Barack Obama -- in this year's presidential election than in the 2004 election cycle, according to a new poll.

Al Gore said in San Jose Saturday that the climate crisis deserves the same type of attention and money from Washington that the financial meltdown is getting. "Instead of a focus only on a bailout, we need to bail in renewable energy," Gore said during a 50-minute speech at the Civic Auditorium. Gore, who turned 60 this year, was a three-term U.S. Senator from Tennessee, vice president for eight years and narrowly lost the 2000 presidential election to George Bush. But it was his move toward environmentalism, symbolized by his starring role in the 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and...

Remember the hot immigration debate? The topic won't be headlining either presidential convention this year — and the border security issue barely drew a crowd Monday to a daylong anti-illegal immigration rally in Denver aimed at keeping immigration before politicians this fall. A rally by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps featuring Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr drew just a few dozen people...

MASSIVE Anti-Illegal Immigration Rally at the Democrat Convention! August 25th! We've got some BIG NEWS for you -- the all-star lineup of speakers at the Rally Against Illegal Immigration just got even BETTER! We've just confirmed that Ambassador Alan Keyes, Congressman Bob Barr, and Reverend Chuck Baldwin -- all of them running for U.S. President -- PLUS anti-amnesty hero Rep. Tom Tancredo, will ALL be speaking at the day-long rally, right near the Democratic National Convention! You DO NOT want to miss this event!!!

The Democratic Party is planning a convention designed to soften the edges on the party's support for abortion rights, with a revamped platform and a speaking lineup that reinforces efforts to broaden Democrats' appeal on the hot-button issue. In a statement fraught with symbolism for those on both sides of the abortion debate, Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa., an abortion-rights opponent, will be given a prime speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month. Casey's father, the late Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey, a Democrat who also held strong anti-abortion views, was denied a speaking role at...

Video here, transcript below. “For many months I have warned that there needs to be active international engagement to peacefully address the disputes over South Ossetia and Abkhazia including a high level and neutral international mediator and a genuine international peacekeeping force , not simply Russian troops.” The truth? Obama has never mentioned Ossetia in a speech. McCain, on the other hand, has. Twice.

Abortion has been dividing the culture, including political parties for over 30 years now. In its last several iterations with the Clintons, Al Gore, and John Kerry, the Democratic party platform has been rather decidedly one-sided.Roe v. Wade is to be affirmed and defended. End of story. Oh yes, there was the language of "safe, legal and rare," but the emphasis was always on 'safe and legal,' with 'rare' little more than an afterthought. Barack Obama is a different type of candidate. As he sees it, Roe is not an endorsement of abortion, so much as an affirmation that abortion...

Washington (dpa) - Barack Obama Wednesday charged that the Bush administration has failed to confront the threat of nuclear terrorism and vowed that if elected president, he would lead the effort to corral errant nuclear materials and stay one step ahead of biological and cyber threats. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, aimed to bolster his credentials on national security with the gathering organized by his campaign - billed as a summit on 21st Century threats at Purdue University in Indiana. While Obama is seen as strong on major domestic issues such as health care and the economy, polls...

What women really want: a touch on the arm By Laura Clout Last Updated: 1:42AM BST 21/06/2008 Scientists have come up with a winning formula for men wishing to seduce women, and it has nothing to do with cheesy chat-up lines or good looks. Research shows that a man can significantly increase his pulling power by simply catching a woman's eye and lightly touching her arm. A study at Aberdeen University found that two-thirds of women agreed to dance with a man who rested his hand on her arm for a second or two while making the request. When the...