Free Republic

Actor Michael Douglas is speaking out about an ugly confrontation with a jerk who gave his 14-year-old son “his first taste of anti-Semitism.” The two-time Oscar winner revealed the incident happened last year when he and wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, took their two young children on a family vacation to Europe. “During our stay at a hotel, our son Dylan went to the swimming pool. A short time later he came running back to the room, upset. A man at the pool had started hurling insults at him,” Douglas wrote in an op-ed piece in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. The 71-year-old...

There is about to be a mistake. The only country in the region of which all the other countries are envious -- for opportunity, equal justice under law, freedom to speak without the 2 a.m. knock on the door -- has an election this week. Its citizens are tired of war -- right on schedule for its enemies' plans to destroy it. The Israelis are meant to be tired of war; that is why it is called "a war of attrition." Many Israelis seem to be counting on some deeply wished-for love from the current U.S. Administration. What they may...

Submitted again for consideration, Adam Carolla, born as his very cohort, Generation X, was beginning in 1964. Joining him in this chapter is writer Chuck Palahniuk, born in 1962, another prominent Gen X cultural figure. Consider now, as the swath of humanity that followed the boomers reaches full majority, in fullest possession of its powers, how variant Carolla/Palahniuk countercultures confront what we see on the horizon. How will the legacy of Generation X be written from this point forward? How will a generation’s power-players and cultural icons impact, for example, policymaking on healthcare, strategies for dealing with the radical Islamist...

Veteran journalist Ed Klein said on Saturday that the Obama administration "is up to its eyebrows in efforts to stop" Hillary Clinton from running for the White House — including six investigations launched by longtime presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett involving Clinton's years as Secretary of State. "This administration, the Obama administration, will do virtually anything to prevent Hillary from becoming president," Klein told renowned economist Larry Kudlow on his WABC radio show. Kudlow is also a Newsmax columnist and works for NBC's business channel, CNBC. "It's their view that if she does become president — like her husband, Bill —...

Rik Torfs, rector of the University of Leuven, and Jogchum Vrielink, coordinator of the Centre for Discrimination Law at the University of Leuven, pass along a guest post — quoted below — about a new Belgian law that provides (Vrielink’s translation): Penalization of Sexism For the purposes of this Act, the concept of sexism will be understood to mean any gesture or act that, in the circumstances of Article 444 of the Penal Code,* is evidently intended to express contempt for a person because of his gender, or that regards them as inferior, or reduces them to their sexual dimension,...

This Halloween, Hampshire College students — and Americans who care about free inquiry — have reason to be spooked. As part of its “Hampshire Halloween” celebration, Hampshire’s “Hype Committee” scheduled a performance by Afrobeat band Shokazoba. But that decision quickly turned sour. As Hampshire carefully explained, some students asked “whether [Shokazoba] was a predominantly white Afrobeat band and express[ed] concerns about cultural appropriation and the need to respect marginalized cultures.” Shokazoba keyboardist Jason Moses explained in emails that it began when someone posted, “lol leave it to hampshire to book a bunch of white folks playing afrofunk” on the event’s...

“Evangelical Leader Preaches A Pullback From Politics, Culture Wars,” blared a front-page Wall Street Journal headline on Tuesday. According to the paper, Russell Moore, the new head of the Southern Baptist Convention, “says it is time to tone down the rhetoric and pull back from the political fray, given what he calls a ‘visceral recoil’ among younger evangelicals to the culture wars.” The reporter contrasts Moore’s softer approach to the rise of “gay marriage” with that of his predecessor, Richard Land, who spoke of it as the culmination of the “radical homosexual agenda.” Moore, after the Supreme Court struck down...

We once sang about hoping to die before we got old, but quite a few of my fellow baby boomers have begun to sound like a cross between 1960s sitcom crank Granny Clampett and the 1980s SNL Church Lady when it comes to our kids' generation. I've heard some in my age group lament that the millennials refuse to grow up. I've eavesdropped few remarks like, "Back when I was my son's age, I had a decent job and a mortgage. But you can't get a mortgage on a barista's salary. Come to think of it, back when I was...

It may be days, weeks, months or even years away, but inevitably the stock market—which has more than doubled over the past four years and hit new record highs this year—will descend, as many analysts warn and as history has shown. How big that drop will be and how long it will last are open to debate. In fact, a large number of analysts contend that the bull market still has plenty of pep, which would mean that you don’t have to take extreme defensive steps for a while. But even so, it’s important to think about your own financial...

Members of Generation X, the so-called slackers weaned on Saturday morning cartoons, divorce and cynicism, are now in their late 30s to late 40s. And according to a recent report, those born between 1966 and 1975 really do have something to complain about. A Pew Charitable Trust study, titled "Retirement Security Across Generations," examined the savings behavior of five age groups before the Great Recession hit and found that Gen Xers - the group of Americans following the baby boomers and range in age from 38 to 47 - fared especially poorly during the recent economic down swing. As a...

The Economist ominously reports: The struggle to digest the swollen generation of ageing baby-boomers threatens to strangle economic growth. As the nature and scale of the problem become clear, a showdown between the generations may be inevitable. The statistics are frightening: The average federal tax rate for a median American household, including income and payroll taxes, dropped from more than 18% in 1981 to just over 11% in 2011. Yet sensible tax reforms left less revenue for the generous benefits boomers have continued to vote themselves, such as a prescription-drug benefit paired with inadequate premiums. Deficits exploded. Erick Eschker, an...

Two new polls indicate that contrary to the media hype, Ohio is now a toss-up between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. The American Research poll, conducted between September 10-12, showed Obama ahead 47% to 46%. The latest Rasmussen poll shows exactly the same numbers. There are positive subtexts for Romney in both polls. In the American Research poll, independents favored Romney by a whopping margin, 53% to 37%. This bodes well for Romney with those who remain undecided. In the Rasmussen poll, voters said they trusted Romney on the economy more, which will ultimately prove pivotal, but the biggest edge...

The post-Labor Day, post-conventions polls show President Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney in the three key swing states of Florida, Ohio and Virginia, which ratchets up pressure on Romney to turn things around in the debates in October. Obama is ahead of Romney by five points among likely voters, 49 percent to 44 percent, in both Florida and Virginia, and in Ohio, he has a seven-point lead, 50 percent to 43 percent, according to new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls. “You’d rather be in Obama’s shoes than Romney’s in these three critical states,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist...

TAMPA — It’s an understatement to say Republicans are worried about losing the Senate race in Missouri. Amid the Todd Akin controversy, they’re terrified by the prospect of losing a state they previously thought they could win — and thus falling a single seat short of winning control of the Senate. Now, many of them view Mike Huckabee as the key player in the Akin situation. The former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate has supported Akin all along and has prominently refused to join in the Republican chorus — which includes virtually every office holder, former office holder, political operatives...

A new Missouri poll indicates Rep. Todd Akin’s rape remarks have not hurt Mitt Romney in Missouri, but the comments about “legitimate rape” and the controversy that ensued have damaged Akin, especially among women voters. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch poll found Akin, who had been leading McCaskill by five points and was tied with the Democrat among women voters before his remarks, now trails McCaskill by 9 points overall and by 18 points with women voters. Democrats have tried to tie Akin’s comments to Romney, but the poll found Romney still leads President Barack Obama in Missouri by 7 points,...

Sarah Palin endorsed a third-party candidacy against Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., if he persists in his refusal to drop out of the general election campaign after making startling comments about rape and abortion. “We’ve got to take back the Senate and Missouri is a must-win state,” Palin told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “The way we do that is to have someone like Sarah Steelman be able to run — even if it’s as a third-party candidate — to be able to run and help us take this back.” Palin endorsed Steelman in the primary, which was regarded as showdown...

As Tuesday’s deadline slipped by for embattled Rep. Todd Akin to pull out of the Missouri Senate race without penalty, campaign press secretary Ryan Hite told Newsmax in an exclusive interview that the decision came down to Show Me State voters urging their candidate to “stay strong.” Speaking shortly after the 5 p.m. Central deadline, Hite said that Akin displayed a “sense of confidence” throughout the day even as prominent GOP leaders and organizations urged the Republican to give up his Senate bid following earlier comments that women's bodies can prevent pregnancies in case of "legitimate rape." “The attitude behind...

Former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader told The Daily Caller that former President Bill Clinton is “undermining [President Barack] Obama” to lay the “groundwork” for Hillary Clinton’s presidential run in 2016. Clinton recently told CNN that Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s business record at Bain Capital is “sterling.” TheDC asked Nader if he agreed with Clinton’s statement. “He’s laying down the groundwork for Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016. Everything she is doing and everything he is doing argues that they want to run Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, so while he might appear with Obama in fundraisers...

Conservatism is poorly understood in the United States. It is not right-wing liberalism or nationalism; nor is it political Protestantism. It has nothing to do with a neurotic longing for an ideal past, and reactionaries, who insist there is nothing left to conserve, show that they don’t know the meaning of the word. Conservatism has always had to make the best of a bad situation—the human situation in general. But conservatism earned its name in the context of a particular kind of bad situation, that of imperial Europe in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The great conservatives of the...

Former Gov. Mitt Romney would collect at least 72 of the 110 electoral votes available in eight battleground states if President Barack Obama’s current polling numbers, as reported by The Huffington Post, are overstated by a mere one percent. Romney would win that electoral majority in Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Wisconsin if there is a one percent undercount and if undecided voters there split evenly between Romney and Obama. That would give the former Massachusetts Gov. at least 253 — just a few votes shy of the 270 he will need to claim the White...