Free Republic

Vice President Al Gore will deliver his wildly popular “An Inconvenient Truth” multimedia lecture at the University of California, San Diego at 5:30 p.m. May 21 in RIMAC Arena. The event is free and open to the public; however, tickets are required for entry. Sponsors for the presentation are UC San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the San Diego Foundation, the UCSD Helen Edison Lecture Series and the Environment and Sustainability Initiative. Tickets will be distributed only through the UCSD Box Office (a maximum of four per person) by either coming to the Box Office located...

The Guardian, UCSD’s student newspaper, has printed a statement that it says was written by the student who hung a noose in the campus library last week. The student — who remains anonymous — claims that last Tuesday, two days before the noose was found, a friend of hers fashioned it from a piece of rope she had found on the ground, “without thinking of any of its connotations or the current racial climate at UCSD.” She herself then carried the noose with her to the library “and ended up hanging it at my desk.” It was, she says, “a...

Representatives of Massachusetts Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown say Democratic candidate Martha Coakley has until Tuesday to retract an incendiary campaign mailing or Brown will take legal action. At issue is a Coakley flier charging that Brown would have Massachusetts hospitals turn away all rape victims, a claim which a Brown spokeswoman called "a lie," "patently false," and "atrocious." "The campaign is calling on Martha Coakley and [Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman] John Walsh to retract the false statement," says Tarah Donoghue, a spokeswoman for the state Republican party who is speaking on behalf of the Brown campaign. "We're going to...

There comes a moment in politics when the blinders fall off the supporters of the other guy and they discover what you have known all along: He’s a fraud. The blinders just fell off Matt Taibbi, a writer for Rolling Stone magazine. He just now noticed that while 26% of the money Barack Obama raised came from “small” donors, nearly 3 times as much came from big donors, who ponied up a half billion bucks. Where the 26% saw Hope and Change, the 74% saw Invest and Collect. Wrote Taibbi: “What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the...

"They were both elegant and entitled swans, insulated in guarded enclaves, obsessed with protecting and promoting the Brand. Then trouble trespassed into their privileged worlds and both responded the same foolish way." "They presumptuously put themselves beyond authority and, despite all the public relations support on earth, broke the first rule of scandal: Don’t stonewall. Admit your mistake before others piece together the embarrassing facts. Reflexive clampdowns don’t work in an era when privacy is passé and when some media outlets are out there giving cash incentives for true confessions and fake reality." (snip) "Even if Desiree thought Congress was...

To the long list of troubles plaguing the financial industry, add three big ones — make that Big Three ones. The foundering Detroit automakers owe more than $100 billion to their bankers and bondholders, and Wall Street is starting to wonder how much of that will be paid back. With Congress balking at a rescue for the auto industry, and Chrysler and General Motors warning that they could face bankruptcy without one, investors are worrying about financial companies’ exposure to the Big Three, as well as to automotive suppliers and dealers. The intertwining troubles of the auto and financial industries...

Just weeks after posting record profits, steel makers are facing a harsh new reality: dwindling orders, production cuts, layoffs. And tougher times lay ahead, analysts say. The steel industry had been riding high earlier this year, as surging demand from China and other countries, coupled with soaring prices for materials used in steel making, produced the most lucrative market for the metal in more than 60 years. But the credit crisis and global economic slowdown have undercut customers in key markets — construction, automobiles and industrial equipment — sending prices tumbling and prompting steel companies to slash production, scale back...

I AM endlessly charmed by chatter about when this slowdown/recession will end. (snip) But this does not look like a typical recession. A typical recession is brought on by Federal Reserve tightening in the face of excessive demand and rising prices. The economy still functions normally, but purposeful credit tightening slows activity. When the Fed loosens up and money starts flowing, demand increases and growth returns. This, at least, is the pattern of the large recessions we have had since the Great Depression, which was a special case, as we shall see. Smaller recessions have been brought on simply by...

Manpower, the global recruitment company, warned it expected mass layoffs in western economies in December as companies sought to slash headcount ahead of what many forecast will be one of the toughest years for the global economy since the early 1990s. Jeffrey Joerres, chairman and chief executive officer of the US-based group, which recruits 5m people a year for its clients across 80 countries, said the crunch would come in December when corporations wrapped up their budgets for 2009. Most would downsize now in line with their expected revenue and profit targets rather than get into next year and have...

What do bleeding Detroit auto makers, Colombia and green groups have in common? Not a lot, unless you are Nancy Pelosi. If there was a moment that highlights to what extent the Democratic Party has become captive to its special interests, this might be it. Mrs. Pelosi and Harry Reid have spent this week demanding that Washington stave off a car-maker collapse. What makes this a little weird is that Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid are Washington. If they so desperately want a Detroit bailout they could always, you know, pass one. Instead, having punted the Detroit question in the...

Senator Barack Obama on Sunday invoked his own absent father to deliver a sharp message to black men, saying "we need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception." (snip) "Too many fathers are MIA, too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes," Obama said to a chorus of approving murmurs from the audience. "They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it." ..Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, laid out his case in stark terms that would be difficult...

Although it is very useful to know how not to read the Constitution, ultimately, judges, legislators, and executive officials charged with interpreting the Constitution must be able to read it. Reading the Constitution does not require an overarching theory of constitutional interpretation. That would be hype-rintegration. But just as we strive to avoid the Scylla of hype-integration, so too must we steer clear of the Charybdis of disintegration. Although we cannot give a completely consistent theory of constitutional interpretation, we can at least sketch some acceptable approaches to the enterprise. If the task we have set for ourselves sounds halting...

Nothing Barbara West has done in her 22 years at WFTV-Channel 9 has generated the attention of her interview last week with Sen. Joe Biden, Barack Obama's running mate. The contentious chat has become an Internet sensation -- 1.2 million hits on YouTube during the weekend and more than 500,000 on WFTV.com -- and generated controversy about how journalists question their subjects. "The thing that stuns me is that this has become about me," said anchor West, 60. She appeared Monday night on The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel and Larry King Live on CNN and plans to be...

Sarah Palin says she doesn't wear the clothes anymore that have been in focus since it was revealed the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 to outfit her and her family with designer items from posh stores. Addressing the controversy on the campaign trail in Florida Sunday, Palin told a crowd she's "back to wearing my own clothes from my favorite consignment shop in Anchorage, Alaska." That shop is called "Out of the Closet" and its owner, Ellen Arvold, told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen Monday that Palin's been wearing similar outfits on the stump to what she buys at the...

(Sen. Barack Obama (D-13th) said Monday) ... "I think that is the saddest situation and after effect of the Sept. 11 tragedy other than the obvious loss of lives and families. (snip) "We should also examine the foreign policies of the the U.S. to make sure that we occupy the moral high ground in these conflicts. In particularly, we have to examine some of the root causes of this terrorist activity," Obama said, referring to terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and his "sleeper" cells throughout the world. (snip) "It's absolutely critical that the U.S. is engaged in policies and strategies...

During his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, among the best he has delivered, Mitt Romney suspended his campaign, so as not to imperil GOP prospects in the fall. Said Romney, ''If I fight on . . . all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Sens. Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.'' Thus did Romney endorse the John McCain view that the Democrats who intend...

A conservative political commentator says former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's savvy campaigning held Arizona Senator John McCain to only a modest victory in the winner-take-all Virginia Republican primary. A strong showing in the more affluent Northern Virginia suburbs propelled McCain to a close win over Mike Huckabee, who trailed in a recent Virginia poll by 28 points. Exit polls show Huckabee did well among conservatives in Virginia, while McCain did well among self-described conservatives in Maryland. Former Republican National Committee official Genevieve Wood notes endorsements McCain picked up from veteran Senator John Warner and two former Virginia Governors - George...

Gov. Mike Huckabee's folks tell us that the withdrawal of Mitt Romney is a "blessing" for them and that they are "in it for the long haul", which will make the next few weeks quite interesting, eh? I can't say that I blame them. Frankly, I appreciate reading the tea leaves and realizing that getting a ton of delegates is an almost-impossible task - but if I spent millions of my own dollars, as Gov. Romney has done, and invested a non-stop, round-the-clock effort for months and months to campaign for president, I really think I'd have to stay in...

Warren County commissioner Dave Young figures his home area is sort of the "New York, New York," of conservative politics: as the song goes, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. "We are a microcosm of the conservative movement," Young said. "If you can't win Warren County, you can't win." And there are growing signs that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is making it there, and elsewhere. A conservative crescent of Butler, Warren and Clermont counties in southwest Ohio delivered its votes by more than 2-to-1 to George Bush in 2004, crucial in the Ohio electoral...

Mike Huckabee, like his fellow Republican contenders for their party's presidential nomination, is doing his level best to channel the spirit of President Ronald Reagan into his campaign. The hiring of Reagan's old campaign manager, Ed Rollins, to play the same role in his campaign is cleary one example. (snip) Anyway, not long after that, Huckabee veers into what is assuredly Reagan territory, that he opposes the obscure Law of the Sea Treaty. Reagan opposed the treaty many conservatives disparagingly refer to as LOST as a threat to U.S. self-determination. By saying he was the first Republican presidential candidate to...