Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) - Too busy playing video games to watch presidential ads on television? Barack Obama has found you, too, by becoming the first presidential candidate to buy ad space inside a game. Nine video games from Electronic Arts Inc., ranging from the extremely popular "Madden 09" football game to the street racing "Burnout: Paradise," feature in-game ads from the Obama campaign. The ads—they appear on billboards and other signage—remind players that early voting has begun and plug a campaign Web site. The idea of embedding advertising temporarily inside a video game is relatively new, having only begun about 18...

Kimbo Slice, a one-time homeless man, one-time strip club bouncer, one-time backyard, back-alley brawler turned Internet sensation/big money mixed martial artist isn’t a problem. Only in America, right? He’s said to be a great guy, a boot-strap success story who deserves everything coming to him. I’ve watched him maul “Adryan” a half dozen times alone. You have, or will, too. Kimbo Slice being a street fighter, rather than a Brazilian jiu-jitsu or Muay Thai master, isn’t a problem either. No, he isn’t the best and brightest in MMA. He’d probably get whipped in a second by the sport’s elite, as...

ATHENS, Ga. -- The president of the University of Georgia proposed an eight-team playoff system to determine the NCAA's national football champion. Michael Adams, chairman of the NCAA executive committee, has opposed a playoff for 20 years but said Tuesday the current BCS system is "undercutting the sportsmanship and integrity of the game." Adams wants the NCAA to seed eight teams into the four bowls. If one of the major bowls declines to participate, then another bowl could fill the void. "I believe the season is already too long and demands too much of athletes and the universities that serve...

Are you into the multicultural agenda? Is the drive to diversity a big deal with you? Perhaps not. Maybe you're one of those people who actually like to judge people based on their individual personality and integrity. A Harvard political scientist, Robert Putnam, did a little study that might interest you. His topic ... immigration and ethnic diversity. The results are shocking, not at all what he expected. In fact, the study results that this liberal, academia bed-wetter wanted to wait until after the immigration debate to publish it. Why? Because it is damaging to the pro-illegal immigration debate. Not...

Serbian vampire hunters rammed a wooden stake through the heart of former dictator Slobodan Milosevic to stop him 'returning from the dead'. Miroslav Milosevic, no relation to the former president, gave himself up to police who have launched an investigation. He claimed he and his fellow vampire hunters acted to stop the former dictator returning from the dead to haunt the country. Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia, which led the country to civil war and oversaw the break up of the former Yugoslavia, condemned the desecration of the grave in the eastern town of Pozarevac. The vampire hunters told police...

ATLANTA - A Jewish organization is demanding an apology from a Georgia legislator after a memo using his name claims that evolution was a myth propagated by an ancient Jewish sect. The Anti-Defamation League sent a letter to state Rep. Ben Bridges Thursday chastising him for penning the "highly offensive" memo, which attributes the Big Bang theory to writings in the Kabbalah, a Jewish text. Bridges has denied writing the dispatch, although one of his closest political allies, Marshall Hall, said the legislator gave him the approval to draft the memo. The memo asks readers to challenge the "evolution monopoly...

JOHN EDWARDS CAUGHT IN A LIE This is rich. Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards (who? Oh yeah..him,) the former Democratic vice-presidential nominee who ran with The Poodle two years ago, has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Believe it or not, it all revolves around Wal-Mart...and a game console. You see....Edwards is always bashing Wal-Mart. Not because of their promotion of eminent domain abuse, but because of their policy of promoting low prices and non-union labor. Edwards just isn't going to ever shop there. Or his he? It turns out the answer to that question is...it...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A federal judge on Tuesday delayed next week's execution of cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren to allow him to join a lawsuit by five other death row inmates challenging the state's use of lethal injection. In his request to join the lawsuit, Lundgren, 56, said he is at even greater risk of experiencing pain and suffering during the procedure than other inmates because he is overweight and diabetic. Similar lawsuits filed in several states have led to the halting of executions in Missouri, Delaware and New Jersey. Opponents have argued that the use of the lethal injection...

Jesus Christ has joined MySpace with an online page advertising his love of beards, extreme water-skiing and the Life of Brian. it's part of a campaign by the Churches' Advertising Network to provoke debate about God among young people this Christmas. Posters showing the face of Jesus in beer foam in a pint glass will be accompanied by the question: "Where will you find him?" The adverts will direct readers to myspace.com/isthisjesus - a page on the social networking site MySpace. "It may be very arrogant to set up Jesus's MySpace," said Simon Jenkins, of Churches' Advertising Network. "But it...

WASHINGTON -- Violent crime in the U.S. is on the rise, posting its biggest one-year increase since 1991, the FBI said Monday. Crime analysts said there is a resurgence in gang activity, particularly in the Midwest. Some of the biggest jumps were in Milwaukee, St. Louis and other Midwestern cities. St. Louis in particular has seen an influx of East and West Coast gangs reaching out for new turf. Gangs ''are branching out to smaller cities where there is still money to be made and turf to be ruled,'' says James Alan Fox of Northeastern University. Nationwide, the increase in...

Some organization, the Consumer Federation of America, has has come up with an amazingly stupid idea on how to combat high energy usage. They want to ban advertising of gas-guzzling SUVs on television [pdf]. They have other brilliant ideas, such as an SUV buyback program. Just who would buy them back? Well, I would suppose this gaggle of idiots would propose that either the government (which means the taxpayers) or the automakers buy them back. Either way the cost is passed down to individuals; either taxpayers or shareholders. They also want a federal gas tax that would stabilize, as they...

OK ... working off the premise that I never have an original thought ... let me share something that occurred to me last night whilst I was listening to a few minutes of the Michael Savage show. It is truly perplexing to try to figure out just why our government won't respond to the Mexican invasion. Eight out of ten Americans want the border closed ... yet the politicians who are supposed to be listening to us do absolutely nothing. Twenty-five million illegals have crossed the border from Mexico into the United States since 1990, and the only actions our...

Congressman Patrick Kennedy said he does not recall the accident, or the citations from the Capitol Police. But a police union official charged senior officers ordered the patrol officers to leave the scene; blocked them from running field sobriety tests; and later gave Kennedy a ride home -- in the view of Fraternal Order of Police chapter president Lou Cannon, special treatment. "It's not the normal course of action," he said. "I think that he was given consideration in regards to his position, and that he was afforded the opportunity to be taken home." The Capitol Police issued a terse...

Yesterday China's president Hu Jintal was heckled by someone who managed to sneak into the press gallery covering a White House event. This is simply not allowed in China. In fact, when the video of Hu's remarks at the White House were shown in China the part involving the heckler was blacked out. We now learn that after the incident President Bush apologized to Hu. Apologized? For what? Did Bush apologize because someone managed to slip by White House security? If so ... probably appropriate. On the other hand, if Bush apologized because someone actually heckled the Chinese president, not...

Last week, a young black man accused me of racism – apparently in response to some of my recent columns including “Change Your Ethnicity Day.” The man to whom he made the accusation was also a black man. Unbeknownst to my accuser, the other black man was a guy I took into my home for four months while he was going through a rough divorce. I have to hand it to him. After he told my accuser how much help I had been in a time of need, my friend put the accuser in an awkward position. Though he made...

Most media have missed the most important aspect of Rep. Cynthia McKinney's alleged assault on a Capitol policeman. However this plays out legally, and whatever McKinney, D-Ga., may have belatedly offered by way of an apology, she will probably lose her re-election bid this November. "What?" I can hear the incredulous cry from Washington's expert observers. "That's insane," they're saying. "She has a heavily weighted African-American district that votes overwhelmingly Democratic!" True, but let's not forget that she also lost a re-election race in 2002 for similar -- but ultimately less serious -- reasons. Back then, InsiderAdvantage released a poll...

Google has lost their case to prevent the handover of their private search information to the federal government. U.S. District Judge James Ware (appointed by Bush 41,) has told the Justice Department that it can expect to get at least some of the data they are requesting from Google. Bummer. Why is this so bad? Because the Internet is the last bastion of unregulated freedom in an increasingly un-free world. The government claims it only wants random search requests and what people are searching for, so it can hunt down child pornographers. Too bad. If the government wants to search...

AND YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS IS? Let's see how New Jersey is doing today protecting our right to free speech. Oh, here we go! It would seem that NJ Assemblyman Peter J. Biondi has introduced a bill in the New Jersey legislature that would require anyone who posts a message on an Internet chat room or bulletin board to identify themselves with a legal name and address. My guess would be that Peter Biondi has read some posts about him that upset him ... and he wants that nonsense to stop! What's next? I'll bet that Peter Biondi is working...

I've tried ... tried hard ... but it's no use. I just can't understand why George Bush is so invested in this idea of turning the operations at six essential U.S. ports, New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia, over to a foreign government ... and an Islamic foreign government at that. Security experts are pretty much in agreement that if -- and I think it's a "when" rather than an "if" -- a nuclear device is ever smuggled into this country, the weapon will arrive in a container through one of our ports. Do you think...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., publisher of the best-selling but controversial "Grand Theft Auto" video games, is the target of several law suits filed on behalf of Take-Two shareholders. Law firms Milberg Weiss and Stull, Stull & Brody announced the suits seeking class-action status this week. The actions come on the heels of similar suits filed in recent weeks. Each of the firms is looking for people who owned Take-Two shares between October 25, 2004, the launch of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," and January 27, 2006, the day that Los Angeles' city attorney sued Take-Two for...