Free Republic

Add another name to the growing list of pols and would-be pols eyeing a run for Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat: Former Red Sox ace Curt Schilling. That's right, Mr. Bloody Sock himself apparently told NECN's Brad Puffer in an interview today that he, too, was considering running for the seat. Schilling would presumably run as a Republican -- he supported President George W. Bush in the 2004 election, and he campaigned for Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential race.

Opinion of Congress at 24-year low By Tony Romm - 09/02/09 12:45 PM ET Only about one-third of voters have a positive opinion of Congress -- a 13 percent decline in favorability since April, a new Pew Research Center poll finds. That striking drop in support -- which Pew says puts Congressional favorability at its lowest in 24 years -- is doubly discouraging for Democrats, who ceded ground to their Republican counterparts in Pew's companion poll. A look at the crosstabs reveals the drop in Congressional approval is most apparent among independent voters, only a third of whom now view...

I cracked up – for the first time - on June 4, 1988, three weeks short of completing my Masters degree in Psychology. Some would say I had a nervous breakdown. The psych ward doctors said it was major depression. I say that I saw just how evil my sin is in the eyes of God and it scared the hell out of me. I cracked up, broke down, and de-pressed. I cobbled together some mad reality and blew a fuse. I despaired, decompensated, detached, and derailed. I lost my mind, never to be the same again. Thanks be to...

The United States Department of Education requires all state and local education institutions to collect data on ethnicity and race for students and staff. This information is used for state and federal accountability reporting as well as for reporting to the Office of Civil Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. School district staff and parents or guardians of students enrolling in school are requested to provide this information. If you decline to provide this information, please be aware that the USDE requires school districts to use observer identification as a last resort for collecting the data for federal reporting. Please...

WASHINGTON, DC – Another sex scandal has rocked a South Carolina conservative. The trail of evidence has led reporters to erotic fiction authored by Dick Cheney. Kristin Maguire, a respected South Carolina conservative, has been discovered to be the author of hardcore erotic short fiction. Maguire was the Chair of the Board of Education for years, and appointed by Mark Sanford. Investigation has uncovered several stories written by Maguire under the pen name “Bridget Keeney.” Maguire was also a devout advocate of “abstinence only” sex education. Further investigation of websites Maguire would frequent and chat room exchanges reveal even more...

The Real Lesbian 'Housewives' Coming to Television? September 02, 2009 The cast of "The L-Word" may soon have some stiff competition from a real-life spinoff featuring lesbian couples. Showtime is gearing up to do a real-life version of "The L Word." "The Real L Word: Los Angeles" will follow six honest-to-goodness lesbians leading their everyday lives, according to Variety. The series, from "L Word" creator Ilene Chaiken and reality production team Magical Elves ("Top Chef"), is said to be a girl-on-girl answer to Bravo's "Real Housewives" franchise. Assuming the casting call works out, it's anticipated that the nine-episode season will...

Reporting from Washington - Justice John Paul Stevens, who will turn 90 early next year, has given a hint that this Supreme Court term will be his last, potentially clearing the way for a second appointee from President Obama next summer.

Here is video of an Ohio Judge ordering a defendant who kept interrupting him to have his mouth covered with duct tape. . . . (Watch Video)

After a month of previews, features, arguments and rankings, we're hours away from the kickoff of the 2009 season. Indulge us, please, for one more top 25. Here's my list of the top things to watch as the season gets under way. This is not a ranking, mind you, but merely a list. The items stretch from the games Thursday night to the games in December and January. Here are the players, coaches and games to watch to get a sense of how this season will unfold. And trust us: It really is, at long last, about to start. 1....

We have heard it for so long that most people assume it is true: the Democratic Party is the party of the working man, the hard-working blue-collar guy, the primary beneficiary of the manufacturing economy. Nonsense. The reality is the Democratic Party is both a potent political force in the demise of the manufacturing sector and a primary factor obstructing any type of resurgence. The party has been controlled for decades by forces that in fact are destructive to that most American of enterprises, manufacturing. The rhetoric coming from the party is certainly not representative of their true role. Their...

The recently elected mayor of Doncaster, in South Yorkshire, has infuriated Britain's politically powerful homosexualist lobby by attempting to withhold local funding for this year's Gay Pride celebrations. The funding for this year's event in June went through, but Mayor Peter Davies, a member of the English Democrat party and the father of Tory MP Philip Davies, has scrapped all future funding for the annual Gay Pride event.... Davies is only the second mayor of Doncaster to have been elected directly by a popular vote rather than by council members. He campaigned on a popular platform, that has reportedly alarmed...

Dear America, I hate you. I hate you because you’re stupid, you’re bigoted and you’re dangerous. I know that you’re stupid because you believe in an invisible man in the sky. Not only does that make you stupid, it makes you dangerous. After all, if you’re that easily led to believe in some invisible man in the sky then you might be led into believing in witches and you might burn people at the stake. I don’t care if you “cling” to your religion because you’re not as rich as I am, the fact that you cling to that stupidity...

WASHINGTON - Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual, generating speculation that the leader of the court's liberals will retire next year. If Stevens does step down, he would give President Barack Obama his second high court opening in two years. Obama chose Justice Sonia Sotomayor for the court when Justice David Souter announced his retirement in May. Souter's failure to hire clerks was the first signal that he was contemplating leaving the court. Stevens, 89, joined the court in 1975 and is the second-oldest justice in the court's history, after Oliver Wendell Holmes....

You know, just when you think the democrat/communist party has sunk as far as it can possibly go, they find new ways to dig themselves even lower into the muck. At a townhall meeting in New Hampshire, Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter had a constituent removed for asking a question at her meeting. Carl Tommanelli, a retired police officer, challenged Shea-Porter on the presence of SEIU union thugs who were bussed in from out of her district, a common democrat/communist tactic nowadays. The democrat/communists use the union thugs as “enforcers” as well as “astroturf” style supporters: Paid to show up. This is...

Yes, they walk among us!!! If these are true, it is no wonder our country is in so much trouble. A DC airport ticket agent offers some examples of 'why' our country is in trouble! 1. I had a New Hampshire Congresswoman (Carol Shea-Porter) ask for an aisle seat so that her hair wouldn't get messed up by being near the window. (On an airplane!) 2. I got a call from a Kansas Congressman's (Moore) staffer (Howard Bauleke), who wanted to go to Capetown. I started to explain the length of the flight and the passport information, and then...

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ruled that Section 13, Canada's much-criticized human rights hate speech law, is an unconstitutional violation of the Charter right to free expression because of its penalty provisions. The decision released Wednesday morning by tribunal chair Athanasios Hadjis appears to strip the Canadian Human Rights Commission of its controversial legal mandate to pursue hate on the Internet, which it has strenuously defended against complaints of censorship. It also marks the first major failure of Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, an anti-hate law that was conceived in the 1960s to target racist telephone...

The White House is hiring a contractor to harvest information about Americans from its pages on social networking websites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. The National Legal and Policy Center, or NLPC, revealed the White House New Media team is seeking to hire a technology vendor to collect data such as comments, tag lines, e-mail, audio and video from any place where the White House "maintains a presence" – for a period of up to eight years. "The contractor shall provide the necessary services to capture, store, extract to approved formats, and transfer content published by EOP...

Joseph Shaw has posted on his blog (Oxford Events -- The Weblog of the LMS Chairman) a series of reports on the residential Priest Training course on the Traditional Roman Rite that was held last August 24-28, 2009 in London Colney. This was the fourth such conference organized by the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales in three years, and among the students were two priests from Africa. By the end of the conference, seven priests had managed to say their first-ever Traditional Latin Masses. The London Colney conference is the fourth residential Priest Training course the LMS has...

Adding former Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s name to Logan Airport is a dumb idea. In a June 19, 1964 plane crash, the senator almost lost his life. The senator’s nephew, John F. Kennedy Jr., died in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard. Rep. Lori Ehrlich, a Marblehead Democrat, filed legislation today that would rename the airport Logan-Kennedy International Airport. Everybody needs to slow down and take a breath. The Senate Institute at UMass might be nice, then a school here or there and maybe a hospital wing or cancer center, but let’s not overdo it and let’s be smart. Ted's...

One in 35 Americans are caught up in the corrections system and incarceration is on the rise. Why is this when the US crime rate has dropped so remarkably? The United States incarcerates more of its own citizens than any other nation. It has only 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners. If you count everyone ensnared in the corrections system – on probation or parole – millions of Americans (one of every 31) are anything but free in the land of liberty (1). “Incarceration is a rich country’s hobby,” says Scott Henson, a Texan journalist...