Free Republic

This morning, my hometown newspaper, the L.A. Times, carried the headline “Fixes in Jessica’s Law Are Urged.” The sub-head read: “Tight residency curbs on sex offenders can leave them homeless and propel them to re-offend, a panel says.” For those of you fortunate enough to live someplace where the Times isn’t your local daily, let me assure you that a similar news story runs nearly as regularly as Doonesbury and Dennis the Menace.

Just when you think the folks on the left can't get any goofier, they go and surpass themselves. If silliness were an Olympic event, these lunkheads could be counted on to bring home the gold. The fool's gold, that is. Actually, they could probably excel in the sprints, seeing as how they're not weighed down with a whole lot of common sense. In case you haven't gotten the word, the religious left, as I like to think of them, seeing as how they live their lives by a certain dogma, have now determined that poor people are terribly under-represented on...

Burt Prelutsky reads three selections from his book, Conservatives Are from Mars, Liberals Are from San Francisco Being Guilty Means Never Having To Say You Are SorrySex in AmericaThe Flag and Me

All those pundits who were forecasting the November election, busily analyzing blue states, red states and those all-important purple swing states, were spinning their wheels. At the risk of sounding even more presumptuous than usual, I contend that they were wasting their time and yours. If you ever want to know who’s going to win an election, all you really need to do is find out how many people have cats living with them and how many have dogs.

The problem with being a logical human being is that every day, sometimes every hour, you get blind-sided like a quarterback cursed with an underachieving offensive line. It’s bad enough when a movie or a mystery novel scores a big fat zero on the logic meter, but when it happens in real life, if you’re anything like me, you find yourself wondering if you have somehow followed Alice down the rabbit hole.

I have no way of knowing whether the Republican party will go the way of the Whigs, the Bull Moose and the dodo bird. But perhaps it should. After all, when they held control of the House, the Senate and the Oval Office, for the first six years of President Bush’s administration, they were inept, lazy and corrupt. In other words, they behaved just like Democrats.

...Why is it that people who should know better -- adults, I’m talking about, not the kids being indoctrinated on college campuses by tenured Communists and former terrorists -- are falling for Obama’s call for class warfare? Why are so many Americans so eager to accept that corporations are the enemy when corporations not only provide employment, but pay dividends to tens of millions of middle-class Americans either directly or through their pension funds? Why are the same folks who are waging war on corporate America so reluctant to utter even an unkind word about Islamic terrorism?...

Seeing how thrilled so many of my fellow Americans are that a black man -- even a half-black man -- is going to be on the presidential ballot in November I can’t help wishing I were one of them. It’s as if there’s a great big party taking place and I’m stuck outside with my nose pressed against a window. But, frankly, I don’t know what the hoop-de-do is all about.

I must confess I got a chuckle out of Barack Obama’s warning us all to lay off his wife. Sorry, pal, but it’s too late in the game for that. If you didn’t want her to be a legitimate target, you should have told her to stay home with the kids and to keep her yap shut...

I often find myself wondering how seemingly normal people ever wind up being criminal defense attorneys. When even Harvard law professor and one-time member of O.J. Simpson’s so-called dream team Alan Dershowitz claims that over 90% of all criminal defendants are guilty, why would any sane person want to devote his life to trying to spring hundreds, maybe even thousands, of felons?

By Burt Prelutsky If I am asked one question by my readers far more frequently than any other, it’s why do so many American Jews insist on aligning themselves with the far left. Believe me, being Jewish myself, it’s the question I most frequently ask myself. It’s certainly not because Jews are stupid, evil, unpatriotic or dependent on government handouts for their survival, four reasons that certainly explain why millions of my fellow Americans will eagerly line up to vote for any political crackpot so long as he or she is running as a Democrat. Having given it a great...

Barack Obama insisted that he was going to be the post-racial presidential candidate, the man who was going to bring us all together and make us forget our racial differences. It’s funny how that worked out. I guess he forgot to mention his master plan to his nearest and dearest. First, let us consider his wife, Michelle. If she is, as they say, his better half, I’d sure hate to see his other half.

Because California, and Hollywood in particular, have been the punch line for so many jokes over the years, I suspect that people who don’t live out here assume we can’t possibly be that wacky. They don’t know the half of it...

What makes liberals so endlessly fascinating isn’t just that they manage with a consistency that verges on the miraculous to be wrong on every important issue, but the latitude they extend to their political leaders to lie, cheat and steal. For instance, has any liberal ever questioned Al Gore’s apocryphal pronouncements about climate change in light of the fact that the man continues to live in a mansion and gad about in private jets? Now, thanks to Mr. Gore, we are having those new, terribly ugly light bulbs shoved down our throats. And if you think dealing with nuclear waste...

When I was very young, I felt that anyone who wasn’t a cynic was a naïve bumpkin. The young, after all, tend to be impatient with their elders, and I was certainly no exception. To the young, it’s a terrible failing to be gullible, and what they inevitably strive to be, or at least appear to be, is sophisticated...

I’ve been in the WGA for nearly 40 years. That means that during the first two decades of my TV writing career, I was on strike just about every three years. But the last time we struck was in 1988. That one lasted almost six months. It hurt the TV networks because they lost viewers they never got back. It hurt writers because most of us aren’t wealthy, and it’s difficult to go that long without earning a living. It even harmed people who aren’t in show business, but whose livelihoods depend on those who are...

Many people, knowing that I’m Jewish, have asked me if I was deeply offended by Ann Coulter’s observation that Jews are unperfected Christians. I could tell that I disappointed them when I said that I wasn’t even slightly upset. For one thing, I am not religious. What people do or don’t believe, theologically speaking, is none of my business, except in the case of Islamics who want the rest of us dead or at least kneeling to Mecca. But how is it my concern what people believe if it gets them through the bad times or it helps them to...

Liberals: A Puzzlement By Burt Prelutsky I'll come right out and admit that I understand Islamic terrorists far better than I do American liberals. After all, once you realize that young Muslims are taught by their religious leaders that our nation is militarily powerful and technologically advanced because we cut a deal with Satan, you can see where they'd be upset with us. But what is the deal with liberals? How to explain their mushy heads? Was it something weird in their baby formula? Were they potty-trained when they were too young or, more likely, too old? Or is it...

Most people would include compassion on the short list of human virtues. At one point, I would have been one of those people. But, no longer is that the case. Like so many other things, it has taken on a far different meaning in recent times. In the past, compassion was extended to the elderly, the abused, the innocent and the infirm. But during the last few decades, it has become an entitlement demanded by members of various voting blocs. In short order, it has been transformed into political currency doled out by political hacks trolling for votes. But as...

Recently, a friend wondered if John Edwards might not be the biggest hypocrite in our nation’s political history. I was taken aback. With so many Democrats vying for the honor, is it possible that the poster boy for the Hair Stylists of America, a man who’s held office for a scant six years, could beat out a bunch of seasoned veterans who’ve been in the public eye for several decades? If so, it could be the biggest upset since Truman bested Dewey back in 1948. For those questioning why I immediately dismissed Republicans from the competition, it’s because when it...