Free Republic

Reacting to the escalating firestorm over President Barack Obama's comments calling a Massachusetts cop “stupid” for arresting his friend, the author Henry Louis Gates Jr., Rush Limbaugh blasted the president for mimicking the black supremacist thought of his longtime mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Rather than dodging the question and staying above the fray, Obama provoked a firestorm by calling a much-decorated beat cop’s actions “stupid.” In doing so, Limbaugh said, Obama fell back on the leftist teachers of Wright and early mentors during his years as a community organizer in Chicago. “I think what we learned last night, ladies...

HAVANA, July 11 (Reuters) - Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro predicted that Latin America would be swept by a wave of military coups if Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was not returned to power after his ouster in a June 28 coup. Castro, in a column published late on Friday on an Internet site run by Cuba's communist government, said right-wing military leaders trained by the United States could be encouraged to take up arms against their governments, depending on how the Honduras crisis turned out. "If President Manuel Zelaya is not returned to his post, a wave of coups threatens...

President Obama on Monday called the coup that ousted Manuel Zelaya as president of Honduras "not legal" and joined with the voices of leaders across the Americas in demanding that democracy be respected. Mr. Zelaya was arrested Sunday morning and flown into exile in Costa Rica, but Mr. Obama said he "remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there." "It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections," Mr. Obama said after meeting with Colombian President...

Michael Jackson will live on as a 'plastinated' creature preserved by German doctor Gunther von Hagens. Von Hagens has caused controversy with everyone from the Pope to the chief rabbi in Israel with his practice of embalming corpses with preserving polyurethane. Yesterday, he declared: 'An agreement is in place to plastinate the King of Pop.' Von Hagens said that he spoke with representatives of the Jackson family 'many months ago' and it was agreed that his body will be plastinated and placed next to Bubbles, his late pet monkey who was plastinated a number of years ago and is exhibited...

PMSpeaker Nancy Pelosi, the Leadership of the House, and Chairmen Waxman and Markey have, through their leadership, secured an important bipartisan victory for the American people. The American Clean Energy Security (ACES) Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation Congress will ever pass. This comprehensive legislation will make meaningful reductions in global warming pollution, spur investment in clean energy technology, create jobs and reduce our reliance on foreign oil. The next step is passage of this legislation by the Senate to help restore America's leadership in the world and begin, at long last, to put in place...

NEW YORK (AP) — Jane Fonda has undergone surgery to replace her left knee. The Oscar-winning actress had the operation Tuesday, and blogged about it beforehand. In a wistful post titled "So Long Old Knee" on her Web site, Fonda wrote that her knee joint was to "be sawed out and in its place will go a titanium rod and ceramic joint." According to Fonda, it had been "a strong, faithful knee." She said it helped her "up a lot of steep mountains and across rugged terrain." And she recalled smooches by former husband Roger Vadim (vah-DEEM'), who liked to...

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A former chairman of the South Carolina Election Commission has apologized after his posting on Facebook suggested a gorilla that escaped form a Columbia zoo was an ancestor of first lady Michelle Obama. Minutes after the gorilla’s escape was reported Friday, Rusty DePass posted: "I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors — probably harmless." The comment has since been deleted, but DePass confirmed to WIS-TV that he made it, apologizing and saying it was a joke about statements Obama has made about evolution. DePass is a former chairman of the Richland County Republican Party. He didn’t...

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - E-mails from Holocaust museum shooting suspect James von Brunn indicate that in addition to being a racist, an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier, he also wrote of his belief that 9/11 was a government conspiracy. Von Brunn mentioned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in an e-mail criticizing last month's dueling speeches on national security by President Barack Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney. He wrote that "all informed men" know Sept. 11 was "a USA-Israel inside job."Suspicion of government involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks has grown more widespread. A 2006 poll by Scripps Howard...

<p>President Barack Obama says he's not responsible for how other countries defend religious freedoms but added the United States would never tell people what they can wear to express their faith.</p>

Under intense fire from the right, former secretary of state Colin L. Powell is preparing to answer his Republican critics this weekend in a television appearance that is likely to add fuel to his long-standing feud with top conservatives in his party. The appearance will come just days after Powell, one of the country's leading black political figures, told an audience in Boston that a new Republican Party is "waiting to emerge." Earlier this month, he said the party is in "deep trouble" because "Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less." Conservatives denounced his 1996 GOP...

Take a gander at the YouTube video embedded below, produced and posted online by Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog group. Or if you have more important things to do (and I don't blame you) than to watch this venom-spewing performance by a pompous parade of right-wing male commentators, let me describe it to you. A video cavalcade of pompous, annoying, thoroughly unattractive, low-brow guys poke fun at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent clarifications of her position on what she knew (about the Bush administration's use of torture) and when she knew it.

His battle against terminal brain cancer a day-to-day struggle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy this weekend marks a year since a grim diagnosis gave him just 90 days to live. Kennedy’s fight with a deadly tumor called a glioma has been waged against a little-mentioned fact: A source close to the family says doctors initially predicted he had three months at most to survive. That was in late May 2008. “He really is an inspiration for people with this thing called cancer,” said David Bartlett, 41 of West Warwick, R.I., who is being treated for a brain tumor at Massachusetts General...

Barely six months after running a special about the ‘dark side of chicken factory farming’, Oprah has teamed with KFC to give a free two-piece grilled chicken meal to every family in America. Lucky us. The free meal coupons were offered at Oprah.com yesterday. The October 2008 show focused on contrasting the practices at conventional factory farms with those at organic, free-range farms – and earned her PETA’s 2008 ‘Person of the Year’. From Ecorazzi: Obviously, this is going to come as a shock to PETA — who is in the middle of a renewed campaign urging KFC to change...

Three UK explorers surveying the Arctic ice were down to rations of just 90g of food each per day until a resupply flight reached them on Tuesday. Bad weather had frustrated repeated attempts to land new food stocks at the ice camp set up by Pen Hadow, Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley. The explorers, from the Catlin Arctic Survey, usually consume enough food to give them about 6,000 calories per day. The cut in rations took them down to just 1,000 calories each. In the last few days before the flight landed, the team had gone without any hot food...

A farm worker in Canada has infected a herd of pigs with swine flu, the first documented case of the virus being passed from human beings to animals. The herd of pigs tested positive for the H1N1 virus after the worker returned from Mexico with the disease. The herd has been quarantined. Brian Evans, a senior official from Canada’s food safety agency, said that up to 200 pigs had been infected at the Alberta Farm, and that both the man and pigs are recovering, adding that the virus did not seem to have spread. He emphasised that there was no...

A US health official on Saturday did not rule out the possibility that the A(H1N1) influenza virus outbreak may have originated in California. "As we do our investigations here in the US, we may find that there were cases earlier," US Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) spokesman Scott Bryan told AFP. Several cases of infection were reported in California before the outbreak in Mexico, the epicenter of the swine flu outbreak, where the government has confirmed 427 cases of the disease as well as 16 deaths. The number of confirmed US swine flu cases stands at 160 spread...

WASHINGTON (AP) — One day after saying he wouldn't travel in tight quarters because of the swine flu scare, Vice President Joe Biden rode a train Friday from Washington to Delaware. Known for speaking freely, Biden told NBC's "Today" show on Thursday that he had urged family members to avoid airplanes and subways for fear of contracting the H1N1 flu virus. "I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," Biden said. The comments infuriated the travel industry and triggered several revisions from the Obama administration, whose official advice is less severe. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano commented, "If he could...

WASHINGTON, April 20 (Reuters) - The United States is unlikely to attack Somali pirate bases on land due to the risk of civilian deaths but it may help local authorities fight the scourge, a senior U.S. defense official said on Monday. Somali gangs have captured dozens of ships and earned tens of millions of dollars in ransom, pushing the issue up the U.S. security agenda, particularly after pirates tried to hijack a U.S.-flagged ship with an American crew this month. The brief seizure of the Maersk Alabama and the subsequent hostage drama involving the ship's captain have led to calls...

President Obama came to the Summit of the Americas pledging to "re-engage" with Latin America. He'd wanted to focus on the economy, energy, and security, but other issues ended up getting more attention as he shook hands with one of America's fiercest critics and called for a fresh start in relations with Cuba. President Obama gets a surprise greeting from Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. This dynamic played out today as President Obama met with the heads of state of the 12 countries of South America. "I have a lot of learn and I very much look forward to listening and figuring...

Tomorrow is Tax Day, and conservatives across the country are planning "Tea Parties," intended to be grass-roots "revolts" against the Obama administration's economic policies thus far. Though organized independent of the Republican Party, a number of officeholders and candidates are planning to attend local events. At the White House, Robert Gibbs said that he's not sure if President Obama is aware of the planned demonstrations. He will, however, mark the day with a White House event "to signal the important steps in the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment plan that cut taxes for 95 percent of working families in America," Gibbs...