Free Republic

The pilot script for NBC’s The Event (premieres next Monday, Sept. 20th) is nothing more than leftist wish fulfillment, a smarmy progressive wet dream that somehow was approved by teams of executives, marketing research firms, focus groups, and Fortune 500 companies looking to advertise their services. It’s a Big Dumb Action Movie wannabe (no doubt they’re gonna make it “hip” and “edgy” with shaky-cam non-cinematography) propelled by a hyper-partisan political premise so preposterous, paranoid, and childish, it will make your head explode. Who, besides surgeons who fix botched lobotomies, would advertise for that?

State universities have become the favorite of companies recruiting new hires because their big student populations and focus on teaching practical skills gives the companies more bang for their recruiting buck. Under pressure to cut costs and streamline their hiring efforts, recruiting managers find it's more efficient to focus on fewer large schools and forge deeper relationships with them, according to a Wall Street Journal survey of top corporate recruiters whose companies last year hired 43,000 new graduates. Big state schools Pennsylvania State University, Texas A&M University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were the top three picks among recruiters...

"There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases." That sounds like a stern headmistress dressing down some sophomores who have been misbehaving. But it's actually from a letter sent Thursday from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans -- the chief lobbyist for private health insurance companies. Sebelius objects to claims by health insurers that they are raising premiums because of increased costs imposed by the Obamacare law passed by Congress last March. She acknowledges that many of the law's "key protections" take effect later...

A founding member of an organization run by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the driving force behind the planned mosque near Ground Zero, claims that the 9/11 attacks were an "inside job" and that Muslims have been made scapegoats, The Post has learned. Faiz Khan -- who has preached at least twice at the former Burlington Coat Factory building, the site of the proposed mosque -- was for years Rauf's partner in the American Society for the Advancement of Muslims, which is dedicated to promoting a better understanding of Islam. Khan also serves on the advisory board of Muslims for 9/11...

As we battle for the heart and sole of the Republican Part, it is unfortunate that some on our side are distorting Mike Castle's record in an attempt to make him more palatable to conservative voters. They have such disdain for conservative challenger Christine O'Donnell, and desire any chance to have another Senator with an R next to their name, that they are willing to lie about Castle's 20+ year career in Washington. They naively believe that there is an advantage to having 51 seats that are fully controlled by people like Castle, who are to the left of Arlen...

| PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WASHINGTON COUNTY JAILShaun Moody MACHIAS, Maine — A Roque Bluffs man was arrested Wednesday after police executed a search warrant at his home and confiscated marijuana, a rifle and nearly $13,000 in cash, according to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. Shaun Moody, 27, was arrested for aggravated trafficking in drugs and taken to the Washington County Jail, where bail was set at $750, according to Sheriff Donnie Smith. Police seized 30 marijuana plants, eight of them in an indoor growing operation; 321 grams of processed marijuana; a rifle and $12,788 in cash, Smith said in...

As Dinesh D'Souza notes in his brilliant profile of the president in Forbes, 52% of America elected a dream, but they didn't know whose dream they were putting in the White House or what sort of personality would drive that vision. On the eve of the 2008 election, veteran newsman Tom Brokaw famously declared that we don’t know Barack Obama. The astonishing admission occurred during a discussion on the Charlie Rose Show, and fellow veteran newsman Charlie Rose agreed wholeheartedly with Brokaw’s admitted ignorance of the man they both wanted to see elected to the most powerful office on earth:...

A British teenager who sent an email to the White House calling President Obama an obscenity was banned from America for life, The Sun reported Monday. The FBI asked local cops to tell college student Luke Angel, 17, his drunken insult was "unacceptable."

Kim Jong-il's Heir 'Met Chinese President' North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's son and heir apparent Jong-un met Chinese President Hu Jintao during a recent trip to China, North Korean sources claimed Friday. They said Jong-un, escorted by a team of three bodyguards, accompanied Kim senior on his China tour but traveled in a separate vehicle from his father and behaved as if he were a member of the entourage to avoid exposure to the press. Kim senior introduced his son to Hu and other Chinese leaders at a dinner in Changchun, Jilin on Aug. 27, the sources said. At the...

The Wall Street Journal reports the White House will officially notify Congress in the next two weeks of a $60 billion deal to sell Saudi Arabia dozens of U.S.-made fighter jets and military helicopters. If it goes ahead, the sale of some 84 new F-15 jets and dozens of helicopter will be the largest U.S. arms deal ever. The Obama administration is pitching the sale as a major opportunity to create new jobs for the beleaguered American economy. Companies including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and General Electric say more than 75,000 jobs could be created to build the new...

A MAN remains in a critical condition after being shot in the neck while trying to chop down a neighbour's door with an axe in Rockhampton last night. The 39-year-old was airlifted to Brisbane from Rockhampton this morning after he was found unconscious at the address in Bolsover Street. Police have interviewed a number of witnesses to the incident just after 7pm yesterday. A number of people are believed to live at the address but the “person of interest” fled shortly after the shooting and remains at large. Police are also yet to recover the gun. The two people are...

After Carly Fiorina won California's Republican Senate primary, many analysts expected her to shake off her conservative mantle and make a lunge for the moderate middle in the general election against liberal incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer. That's not how it has played out. Mrs. Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who's seeking public office for the first time, hasn't tweaked her positions in the slightest. She's still as pro-life, anti-tax and anti-illegal-immigration as she was when she defeated two Republican challengers in June. "Carly, unlike a normal Republican, who would track to the right in the primary and then go to...

CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer got personal with the top House Republican on "Face the Nation" Sunday, asking him whether he’d consider kicking his smoking habit if he becomes speaker. Schieffer, a former smoker and cancer survivor, noted that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has taken $340,000 from the tobacco industry during the course of his career. The discussion: Bob Schieffer: "They've been the largest contributor to your political campaigns over the year. How do you square that with the fact that cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in this country, 435,000 people, their deaths are...

Gallup has released a new poll asking respondents to assess the major accomplishments of Congress in the last two years: the national health care bill, the stimulus, the bailout of auto companies, the bailout of major banks and financial institutions, and the financial regulatory reform bill. The pollsters found majority opposition to all those measures, with the exception of financial reform. The numbers: Bank bailouts, 61 percent disapprove versus 37 percent approve; national health care, 56 percent disapprove versus 39 percent approve; auto bailouts, 56 percent disapprove versus 43 percent approve; stimulus, 52 percent disapprove versus 43 percent approve. Only...

Racist actions in the US, Europe or Israel are usually those of private individuals; but in the Middle East it is often the governments that lead incitement. News that a crackpot minister at an incredibly tiny church in Florida wanted to burn a Koran is a global story. The man’s plan was condemned by just about everyone, though some pointed out that he had a constitutional right to do so. There were several reasons – all obvious – for this universal criticism, boiling down to two: It is disrespectful to another religion and inappropriate for a supposedly tolerant society. Also,...

The explosion of an issue on the national scene often seems to come from nowhere. That is really a misconception; what more accurately defines the process is that the issue bubbles to the surface of our culture and finally reaches what is called a “tipping point.” The definition of “tipping point” is the moment at which an object is displaced from a state of stable equilibrium into a new and different state. That has now occurred with what has become known as “anchor babies,” and the problem lies with the misinformation that has been bantered about. The common argument against...

SPOKANE, Wash. — Spokane police say a 74-year-old pastor was reaching for a handgun in the waistband of his pants when he was shot by a sheriffÂ’s deputy last month. Pastor Wayne Creach was killed as he approached an unmarked police car in the parking lot of his Spokane Valley business after dark. Police Lt. Dave McGovern said Tuesday that Deputy Brian Hirzel warned Creach several times to drop the handgun he was holding, and that Creach instead put it in the waistband. Hirzel ordered Creach to get on the ground, and struck him in the knee with a baton...

An Australian lawyer, Alex Stewart, has smoked pages torn from the Koran and the Bible, posting the video on YouTube just days after an American Pastor's threat to burn the Muslim holy book caused worldwide outrage. In a 12-minute clip entitled "Bible or Koran – which burns best?" Mr Stewart, who works for the Queensland University of Technology, holds up the two religious texts before ripping them apart and lighting the rolled up pages. At one stage he inhales deeply from one of the roll-ups before blowing out the smoke and commenting: "Holy".

Campaign books are almost never “high literature,” nor are they usually intended to be. And no one would mistake Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders for de Toqueville’s Democracy in America, but the new book (published tomorrow) by Congressmen Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy is the next best thing to a classic. It is a war cry. This war cry is not just the predictable excoriation of the failed liberal Democratic policies of Barack Obama, but a striking attack by the three Republican congressmen on their own party for having violated the small government principles upon...

For more than a year now, the mainstream media has demonized the Tea Party as a group of white racists. On September 12, 2010, we set out to see for ourselves if the Tea Party is as “monochromatic” as most of the media has steadfastly claimed to this day. Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/bob-parks/2010/09/12/search-people-color#ixzz0zPTSowk6