Free Republic

Tea Partiers are united on the issues of debt, the growth of government, and health care reform. They are socially conservative on the one hand and libertarian on the other, split roughly down the middle. They are older, more educated, and more conservative than average voters, and they are “distinctly not Democrat.” This new information complicated the mainstream media’s narrative about the Tea Party movement. This was not a fringe. Nancy Pelosi, who had earlier dismissed Tea Parties as “Astroturf”—meaning fake grassroots activism—revised that assessment, telling reporters that, in fact, she was just like the Tea Partiers. “Reprinted by permission...

Dear Google comrades Sergei and Larry! The Party looks kindly at your attempts to correct and improve history by unobtrusively modifying the Google logo on notable calendar dates. For years you have zealously informed the masses about progressive and useful events like Earth Day or Earth Hour, while purposefully ignoring Memorial Day (no logo change on this reactionary American holiday). Most recently, you enlightened the unwashed about the Spanish artist Velázquez on June 6 without mentioning the Allied Invasion of Normandy on D-Day, a celebration of which would indeed be offensive to National Socialists. ~ The time is ripe for...

Reinforcing his image of an exceptional orator and a formidable debater, Barack Obama used the controversy surrounding his pastor's provocative sermons to deliver a major speech aimed at uniting Americans regardless of racial, religious, or sexual identity, and bringing them all together for the common cause of fighting capitalism, private property, individualism, self-sufficiency, and other harmful prejudices that stand in the way of change and hope for a better and monolithic America. "I can no more disown Reverend Wright than I can disown class struggle and redistribution of wealth," said charismatic Obama who is believed to stand above the racial...

I WAS A bit stunned to be asked to speak on the Canadian economy. “What happened?” I wondered. “Did the guy who was going to talk about the Belgian economy cancel?” It is a Saturday night, and the Oak Ridge Boys are playing the Hillsdale County Fair. Being from Canada myself, I am, as the President likes to say, one of those immigrants doing the jobs Americans won’t do. And if giving a talk on the Canadian economy on a Saturday night when the Oak Ridge Boys are in town isn’t one of the jobs Americans won’t do, I don’t...

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The self-proclaimed widow admits she's been a bit of a drama queen, and she's not about to apologize for it. The lawyer feels brushed aside after more than two decades of dedication. The preacher had trouble dealing with the death of a man who took the role of the father who abandoned him. And the son is at peace, ready to continue his father's work. A year after music legend James Brown died in an Atlanta hospital, the people who surrounded him in life continue to fight over the future of his fortune and legacy. People claiming...

Monks at a Lowcountry monastery are looking for a new source of income. Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery on the Cooper River, announced Thursday it will cease its egg production business following pressure from an animal rights group. The phaseout of the industry, which has sustained the brothers for more than 40 years, comes after attacks by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Earlier this year, and again this week, PETA charged that the birds at Mepkin Abbey were caged in cramped quarters and suffered inhumane practices. PETA urged shoppers to boycott Mepkin Abbey eggs, which are sold at...

It passed the House by a vote of 420 to 3, President Bush is for it, and it has fervent supporters on both sides of the political aisle—but even that didn’t save the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA or S. 358) from unexpectedly stalling in the Senate last spring. Now, to try and get it moving again, one of the bill’s key supporters, the Washington, DC-based Genetic Alliance has launched a campaign to “turn up the heat” and let lawmakers know “this is a critical issue,” according to Alliance president and CEO Sharon Terry. Anxious to see the bill pass,...

A Bulgarian woman and a Romanian man have the world's best-looking bottoms, according to the jury of a backside beauty contest sponsored by a lingerie firm, a company spokeswoman said Thursday. Beyond a 10,000-euro (14,400-dollar) cash prize, Kristina Dimitrova, 19, and 24-year-old Andrei Andrei each won a modelling contract for the company's next international advertising campaign as well as a year-long insurance policy for their rear ends in case of injury. Some 15,000 people from 29 countries responded to a call by the European company Triumph to post photos of their backsides on the Internet three months ago. The site...

NEW YORK (AP) — An Abyssinian cat from Missouri, named Cinnamon, has just made scientific history. Researchers have largely decoded her DNA, a step that may aid the search for treatments for both feline and human diseases. The report adds cats to the roughly two dozen mammals whose DNA has been unraveled, a list that includes dogs, chimps, rats, mice, cows and of course, people. Why add cats? They get more than 200 diseases that resemble human illnesses, and knowing the details of their genetic makeup should help in the search for vaccines and treatments, researchers say. The list includes...

U.S. engineers have long wanted to fold up an airplane inside a rocket and send it on a mission to cruise through the atmosphere of Mars. They now have a new potential customer for the concept: the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA started a program earlier this year called Rapid Eye to demonstrate technology that would lead to development of a rocket-delivered unmanned plane to fly high over the site of a natural disaster or other "hot spot." The idea is to give the U.S. president a first, quick look at the scene, DARPA Director Tony Tether...

An enormous cold spot in our universe could be explained by a cosmic defect in the fabric of space-time created shortly after the Big Bang, scientists say. If confirmed by future studies, the finding, detailed in the Oct. 25 issue of the journal Science, could provide cosmologists with a long-sought clue about how the infant universe evolved. But other scientists, and even members of the study team, are skeptical of the new claim. Cosmic ice cubes Scientists think that shortly after the Big Bang, as the universe cooled and expanded, exotic particles transformed into the particles we know today via...

WHAT MAKES the current field of candidates so timid? It is clear listening to figures from both parties this year that they still believe Social Security is untouchable. This despite the fact that bringing Social Security into solvency is a relatively easy task. When it comes to the more serious fiscal burdens upon our grandchildren, the candidates are likewise timid. This despite the fact that those burdens only become heavier as we delay. We speak of 2008 as an election year, but it is also the year when the tide of Social Security cash begins to recede with the retirement...

If ESPN’s “GameDay” returns to Columbia, and that appears to be a big if, it would make for good theater. When South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier called out announcer Chris Fowler on Tuesday for misquoting him, it was the latest salvo in what has been an occasional feud since Spurrier was hired three years ago. Now the South Carolina athletics department is trying to have some fun at the expense of ESPN analyst Lee Corso. But Corso and Fowler do not appear amused. Fowler expressed concern that USC has started a Web site called letsshowcorso.com, where fans can “throw” footballs...

IN THE PAST few years there has been increasing concern about global climate change on the part of the media, politicians, and the public. It has been stimulated by the idea that human activities may influence global climate adversely and that therefore corrective action is required on the part of governments. Recent evidence suggests that this concern is misplaced. Human activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way. Climate will continue to change, as it always has in the past, warming and cooling on different time scales and for different reasons, regardless of human action. I would...

In 1989, a solar flare helped trigger the shutdown of a good portion of eastern Canada’s electrical grid. In May 1998, almost 90 percent of all the pagers in use in the U.S. and parts of the Caribbean were knocked out of commission. The culprit this time was the failure of PanAmSat Corporation’s Galaxy IV communications satellite. Such electronic and communications outages reveal the inherent vulnerabilities of our technological civilization, showing what can happen when parts of a complex, interrelated, high-tech infrastructure are disrupted. They also expose what might happen if space weapons were used by an enemy to deliberately...

America is the only nation in history founded on an idea: the proposition that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No other nation can make such a claim. This is what makes us unique. It is why, for more than two centuries, America has been a beacon of liberty for all who aspire to live in freedom. It is also why America was so brutally attacked on September 11. The terrorists who struck the Pentagon and the World Trade Towers despise what America stands...

Sometimes, it seems people would rather throw a screaming fit than admit success. A couple of weeks ago, I read a tirade based on an op-ed piece that appeared in the Washington Post. The authors of this post, Paul X. Kelley and Robert F. Turner, accuse the President of issuing an executive order that: ...has compromised our national honor and that may well promote the commission of war crimes by Americans and place at risk the welfare of captured American military forces for generations to come. My goodness! What evil lurks in this executive order? Well, according to Kelley and...

Is God really just an alien computer programmer for some sort of intergalactic geek squad? Presumably philosophers are just regular people who happen to have more free time than the rest of us due to the fact they don't date much and there's a university willing to pay them to make wild guesses in a consequence-free environment, but below is a theory that just might hold water — if the programmer(s) were skilled enough to make the cyber pitcher leak-proof. This is a sort of "Fermi's Paradox" for compu-nerds. From The New York Times: Until I talked to Nick Bostrom,...

MINNEAPOLIS - A freeway bridge spanning the Mississippi River collapsed during evening rush hour Wednesday, sending many cars into the water. Tons of concrete collapsed and there were injuries, authorities said. Survivors were being carried up the riverbank. Some people were stranded on parts of the bridge that weren't completely submerged. The entire span of the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed about 6:05 p.m. where the freeway crosses the river near University Avenue in Minneapolis.