Free Republic

Rep. Michele Bachmann on the Mike Gallagher Show recently: (video)

SNIP . . his enormous cabbage "The Beast" weighed in at 127 pounds at the Alaska State Fair's annual Giant Cabbage Weigh-Off. That's more than a pound heavier than another world-record-breaking cabbage Hubacek also grew this summer. He entered the smaller one in the "green cabbage" category Wednesday in the fair's general crop exhibits contest, where it weighed in at 125.9 pounds. That green behemoth broke a 20-year-old record set by a cabbage grower from Wales in the United Kingdom. State fair officials said that prior to the 1989 mark, the cabbage record had stood for more than a century.

After two successive elections that have exposed the Republican Party to ridicule for its lack of diversity and narrow demographic appeal, the GOP suddenly finds itself with an unexpected bounty. From the West Coast to the East Coast, in some of the smallest and largest states in the nation, the party is currently fielding an unusually diverse crop of serious statewide candidates drawn from the seemingly endless list of constituencies the GOP lost in 2008—notably women, Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans and young people. Electing just a few of these prospects would give the party a dramatic facelift and go...

I apologize for the vanity, but was concerned over the several interruptions that occurred this morning on F&F. Tom Ridge was being interviewed on the controversy behind raising the "threat level" in 2004...it being suggested that this was done to up Bush's points. Right when it got to that area of the discussion, a Geico commercial cut it right off. As soon as the commercial was finished, it went back to the set, where the interview was still going...obviously, the interruption was not known by the anchor giving the interview - because not 10 seconds later, another commercial interrupted the...

When Barack Obama was considering running for president in 2006, the political strategist who had engineered his Senate victory two years earlier bluntly stated a potentially fatal concern. "I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch," David Axelrod wrote Obama. Then and now, that's the question: When the going gets rough, as it did in the campaign and has many times over the first seven-plus months of his presidency, does Obama flinch or fight. Well, both. SNIP Obama is following a familiar arc. He decided to leave the details of...

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- An archaeological dig in Jerusalem has turned up a 3,700-year-old wall that is the largest and oldest of its kind found in the region, experts say. The wall is built of enormous boulders, confounding archaeologists as to how ancient peoples built it. Standing 8 meters (26 feet) high, the wall of huge cut stones is a marvel to archaeologists. "To build straight walls up 8 meters ... I don't know how to do it today without mechanical equipment," said the excavation's director, Ronny Reich. "I don't think that any engineer today without electrical power [could] do it."...

LAVONIA, Ga. (ABP) -- Members of a Southern Baptist church in Northeast Georgia want answers about the police-shooting death of their 29-year-old pastor in a drug-sting operation gone wrong. Jonathan Ayers, pastor of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia, Ga., died during the night of Sept. 1, hours after being shot by undercover police officers outside a gas station where he had just gotten money from an ATM machine. The Stephens County Sheriff's Office initially identified the shooting victim as a suspect involved in a drug transaction. Later officials clarified that drug enforcement agents were not investigating Ayers, but a...

Check out the video at the link:Video: Constituent lectures Congressman on executive power

WASHINGTON – The government is trying to make it easier for Americans to save for retirement, President Barack Obama said Saturday, as he noted the toll the recession has taken on extra income and savings accounts. One initiative will allow people to have their federal tax refunds sent as savings bonds. Others are meant to require workers to take action to stay out of an employer-run savings program rather than having to take action to join it. "We know that automatic enrollment has made a big difference in participation rates by making it simpler for workers to save," Obama said...

September 05, 2009, 7:00 a.m. The Omnipresent LeaderThey want us to “pledge to be a servant to our president”? By Mark Steyn On Friday, I had the rare honor of appearing in the pages of the New York Times, apropos President Obama’s plans to beam himself into every schoolhouse in the land in the peculiar belief that Generation iPod will find this an enthralling technical novelty. As Times reporters James C. McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon wrote: “Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to...

Constitutional Conservative and FReeper Timothy Delasandro is running for Congress to defeat a very liberal democrat, Chet Edwards. Please FReep the poll for a fellow FReeper! Thank you very much. Timothy Delasandro http://www.TimothyForCongress.com

As I'm flying back from Phoenix last night, I had the unfortunate experience of sitting next to your typical loony liberal, homoerotic, never married, middle-aged, balding, pansy, know-it-all about EVERYTHING accountant and part time music teacher (actually I was sitting in the aisle seat and away from this clown but next to the poor married woman in the seat next to me, who he made his new best friend). First off, the guy had diarrhea of the mouth. He shut up only briefly during the entire three hour flight, telling the lady next to me that he was going to...

Here is video of CNN finally doing a report on the "Van Jones Controversy." It mentions specifically his signing a 9/11 "Truther" Petition, but carefully point out that Jones did not "carefully review the language" in the petition before signing, and that Jones has said he never has agreed with the document. It also is careful to say that President Obama "does not agree" with the signing of the "Truther" document. The report mentions Jones' having said he was a "communist", and that Jones made derogatory remarks about Republicans calling them "a**holes." But as you would expect, the CNN Report...

California drivers can't line up to renew their licenses Friday. Wisconsin natives can't order copies of their birth certificates. Georgia consumers will have to postpone registering complaints with state watchdogs. And stranded motorists in Maryland may have to wait a little longer for highway-department help.

America’s problem of energy dependence has been pushed into the background by the brouhaha concerning Democratic health care proposals. In the year-plus since the “Drill Here, Drill Now” movement captured the support of a majority of Americans, absolutely nothing of value has been done to increase the domestic production of energy. This inaction keeps us dependent on foreign oil supplied by countries which hate America. This is a disaster well on the way to happening. And what will happen when the foo hits the fan?

...federal spending went from a drag on the economy to a true albatross by the 1970s. After former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and Ronald Reagan courageously bought our currency a new lease on life, Alan Greenspan was given the helm at the central bank. Colluding with Presidents Clinton and Bush II to simulate economic growth for political gain, Greenspan, and his chosen successor Ben Bernanke, unleashed a torrent of new dollars into the banking system, where they were leveraged to finance the largest asset boom in history. We are now in the process of deleveraging from this boom. It is...

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is hunkered down behind her most powerful chairman, Charles Rangel, amid new revelations about his failure to report millions of dollars in assets, income and business transactions. She says she is waiting for the House Ethics Committee to complete its wide-ranging investigation of the Ways and Means Committee boss. But Republicans are not waiting. "She can't bring herself to do what she knows is right," Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told The Post yesterday. Republicans plan to force votes in Congress that will make vulnerable Democrats facing tight races to side with or against Rangel....

Signaling it's time for action, the Senate's chief negotiator on a health care bill told his colleagues he won't wait much longer for a Republican compromise. "I am committed to getting health care reform done — done soon and done right," Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, said in a statement. He is considering making a formal proposal soon to the small group of Senate negotiators who call themselves the "Bipartisan Six." Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, held a nearly two-hour teleconference on Friday with the other five negotiators from his committee. The group has been struggling for months to come...

One of the biggest tools the President and congressional Democrats are using in the health care debate is the fact that the bill -- H.R. 3200 -- is written in such loose language that they can claim critics are lying about its terms, when all the critics are doing is reading the bill’s provisions as the bill allows them to.  For example, when they say abortion funding isn’t in the bill, that’s right. But because the bill doesn’t prohibit federal funding of abortion -- given the interpretation that courts and bureaucrats have made of earlier laws -- it’s perfectly correct...