Free Republic

Details are emerging about David Letterman's sexcapades with women in his employ other than his acknowledged longtime girlfriend Regina Lasko, mother of his now five-year-old son Harry. CBS News producer Robert J. "Joe" Halderman, the man who was arrested for allegedly attempting to extort $2,000,000 out of Letterman by threatening to write a screenplay detailing uncomfortable aspects of Dave's dalliances, is a former boyfriend of Stephanie Birkett, a former Letterman personal assistant. I have already gone on record as saying that after watching Letterman going back to my days working graveyard in the eighties, I gave up on him and...

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, the "bluest" metropolitan region in the United States of America. Do those of you living elsewhere think you're surrounded by Obamamania? Within the city limits, you cannot walk or drive more than half a block before you see the ubiquitous (yet brilliantly conceived) Obama campaign logo or some sort of poster, sign, or t-shirt lauding his existence or victory. People here are still in the moment that began last November, hanging on their own personal sweet love hangover. For all of us who don't buy into the hype, it's difficult to express...

An October 24, 2008 Associated Press story detailed how the cultural influence of the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning TV drama Mad Men has been far more extensive than its surprisingly low ratings might indicate. Within the article, there was this observation about its “elite” and “intellectual” fan base: Fashion designer Michael Kors cited "Mad Men" as an inspiration. The show's beautifully retro-styled stars are on magazine covers. A "Mad Men" DVD was spotted at the elbow of Barack Obama aboard his campaign plane. Being a regular viewer of the program myself (despite the fact I am still on the street...

In his now-infamous I'm-running-away-from-home note to National Review posted on the cyberpages of leftist publisher Tina Brown, Christopher Buckley, conservative legend William F. Buckley Jr.'s writer/novelist son, clearly stated reasons why someone like him would -- under normal circumstances -- utterly refuse to vote for someone like Barack Obama (words in italics are Buckley's): “He [Obama] is … a lefty. I am not." We'll take "Christo" (as his friends call him) at his word, for the moment. His essay is subtitled "The conservative case for Obama," but for reasons I illustrate below, I think it should be instead "A conservative's...

I got the San Jose Mercury News Friday morning (as a matter of principle, I have refused to pay for the San Francisco Chronicle for years - I only read it second-hand), and saw this panoramic photo of Gov. Palin and Sen. Biden at center stage. They were exchanging greetings in that moment when the debate organizers brought up the house lights temporarily so that the audience could be seen as they cheered.

CHICAGO (LNS) — Controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright has just admitted that the rumors are true, and that he is now in cahoots with the Clinton campaign. In a statement released this afternoon, Wright admitted that he grew tired of the fawning over Barack Obama “as if he was some sort of some sort of new savior! I only have one black savior, and that is Jeeezus!” The final breaking point came when in a private meeting, the Obama campaign refused to allow for any sort of cabinet position for Wright. “He said I could not be his right hand...

Sandoval, who represents the city's Excelsior district as the supervisor for District 11, will challenge Judge Thomas Mellon, who has served on the bench since 1994. Mellon, 65, was appointed by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican. Sandoval, a supervisor since 2000, was a deputy public defender in San Francisco and previously worked for former Mayor Art Agnos.

On August 9, 2001, President Bush announced a compromise decision on the contentious question of whether the federal government should provide financial support for research into the curative properties of human stem cells extracted from embryos. Bush’s compromise allowed funding for research into embryonic stem cells that had already been harvested. At the same time, he disallowed funding for procedures that would collect stem cells from frozen (but still living) embryos, since doing so would require their destruction. In the case of those already collected, he said, “The life-or-death decision has already been made.” But that life-or-death decision would not...

Here's the game preview from ESPN.com: LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh is sticking to his preseason assessment that No. 2 Southern California might just be the greatest college football team ever. "There is no question in my mind that USC is the best team in the country and may be the best team in the history of college football," Harbaugh said this week. "As a sort of college football historian, there's no question that this SC team ranks right up there." Chances are good that his opinion won't change Saturday, when the struggling Cardinal (1-3, 0-3 Pac-10)...

A popular San Francisco news anchor inexplicably made a joke on a Wednesday evening newscast suggesting NASCAR superstar Dale Earnhardt Jr. “should marry his stepmother.” First, some background: Preceding the quip by KPIX news anchor Dana King was a flawed report from sports anchor Dennis O’Donnell about the unveiling of the stock car Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be racing with his new team next season. Dale Jr., son of the late NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Sr., is in his final season with Dale Earnhardt Inc., the racing team his father founded and left to Dale Jr.’s stepmother, Teresa Earnhardt. Dale...

SPOILER ALERT! Ratatouille, a Pixar Animation Studios film distributed by the Walt Disney Company, is about a rat that wants to be a French chef. It doesn’t sound impressive, and on its face doesn’t seem like something that would come out of Pixar, which has a twelve-year winning streak (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Cars) made more remarkable by the nation’s declining interest in anything other than the biggest-budgeted Hollywood blockbusters – and, of course, their inevitable (and seemingly endless) sequels. Personally, I had a touch of skepticism about Ratatouille...

I was just about to flip off my TV set when I did a cursory spin around the channels to see if there was something happening I would want to TiVo for tomorrow when I came across ABC's World News Now broadcast, a hodgepodge of previously aired ABC News stories read by minor league anchors getting their first taste of national network exposure (Anderson Cooper began his career on this show). The anchors had just finished a replay of Salon.com refugee Jake Tapper's story on the Coulter-Edwards kerfuffle, which contained Tapper's trademark leftward spin. After it was finished, the male...

By Mark Harris Jack Valenti has gone to that great screening room in the sky, but his legacy persists — for better and for worse — in the form of the movie ratings system. Back in 1968, Valenti's ratings replaced a capricious code of self-censorship with labels designed to help parents make choices. That's still a worthy idea — at least, it would be if it were applied with anything resembling sanity. Last weekend, Eli Roth's Hostel: Part II opened. According to the raters, it contains ''sadistic scenes of torture and bloody violence, terror, nudity, sexual content, language, and some...

I can't believe this got by everybody. What a travesty. I thought Republicans were the dumb ones!

BACKGROUND: This is my response post to a story on the hot new site The Politico. Written by Ryan Grim, it said that the Nevada State Democratic Party excluded Fox News Channel from hosting and televising a scheduled Democratic Presidential debate (per the demands of the MoveOn/Daily Kos types) after Roger Ailes, FNC's CEO, "jokingly compared Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, to Osama bin Laden..." This report by Ryan Grim is a prime example of the reason why Fox News Channel is necessary. Wrote Grim above: "But [Nevada party chairman Tom] Collins and [Senate...

It's the major college football conferences' morbid fear of the equity the nation embraces and celebrates every March that makes NCAA Div 1-A football the biggest fraud in American sports. College basketball fans fondly remember the Davids that slew the Goliaths, even though most of those teams didn't win it all; Valparaiso, Hampton, Gonzaga (now recognized as a perennial power), George Mason, an 11th-regional seed that defeated TWO 1-seeds to make it to the Final Four last year, and Villanova, which did defeat mighty Georgetown (led by Patrick Ewing) to win a real national championship. Villanova won ON THE COURT...

After 90 years in San Francisco high schools, the [JROTC] must go, the S.F. school board decided Tuesday night. The board voted 4-2 to eliminate the popular program, phasing it out over two years. ...JROTC cadets at the board meeting burst into tears or covered their faces after the votes were cast. [snip] Their position was summed up by a former teacher, Nancy Mancias, who said, "We need to teach a curriculum of peace.'' The board's move to dismantle the popular program was led by board members Dan Kelly and [gay] Mark Sanchez with support from Sarah Lipson and Eric...

As a news junkie, over the years I have seen a lot of political campaigns. Some were brilliant, some pathetic, some nasty as all get out. But I have never seen anything like this: A major party candidate trying to get elected by mostly talking about how much weight he has lost. That's right -- current California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat, who is running against liberal Republican high-tech billionaire Steve Poizner for the state Insurance Commissioner post, is battling a multimedia blitz portraying him as in the pocket of the insurance industry by talking about his 70-pound weight...

After an assessment by Democratic Party physician Howard Dean confirming that John Kerry has seriously injured any chance he will be elected President with his remarks Monday evening, the Massachusetts Senator has been deemed eligible to receive yet another Purple Heart. Details to follow (not!) -30-

I was dreary-eyed and slumping in my chair as I saw the news about John Kerry's outrageous statement to graduating students, and how they need to be "smart" or else they would end up "stuck in Iraq." Having heard the audio from the John Ziegler show page on the KFI radio website, I wondered how in the world the Democrat suck-up MSM would spin it to minimize the damage. I couldn't think of anything, but I knew they would. What I didn't expect is this: one of the most reliably slanted newscasts on television, ABC News' Nightline, didn't take the...