Free Republic

Wisconsin and Minnesota have long made fascinating bookends. As longtime readers may recall, the two neighboring states have similar sizes, similar populations, similar demographics, and even similar climates. But they don’t necessarily have similar politics, at least not lately. In the 2010 elections, the Badger State elected Scott Walker (R) governor and gave control of the legislature to Republicans, while the Gopher State made Mark Dayton (D) governor and, in 2012, elected a Democratic legislature*. The former got to work targeting collective bargaining and approving tax cuts, while the latter raised taxes on the wealthy and boosted in-state investments. Nearly...

Are you sick of highly paid teachers? Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit! We can get that for less than minimum wage. That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2...

My wife was recently asking about the Taliban during a conversation with her mother. My m-i-l is a liberal of the NPR/PBS ilk and hissed that the US created the Taliban through the efforts of the CIA. While I know it is true that the U.S. supported the insurgency against the Soviet Union by supporting the Taliban, I'm sure there is a lot more to the story. If anyone has any willing insights - or can direct me to a useful site, I'd appreciate it. I will be away from my computer for the day - so thanks for any...

I am working on my usual Holy Week meditation/letter to you, but I am pausing for a few moments to write you out of the pain I feel for a ministerial colleague in the UCC and the concern I have for the portrayal of one of our UCC congregations and our whole church in the media.  This morning as I did my morning work out on the machines at the health club, at least 5 of the 8 TV sets (the others were sports channels) had brief video clips of Pastor Jeremiah Wright sermons, and then breathless commentary by pundits...

Is Barack Obama seeking to be our first black president, or our first stealth black supremacist president? Since before he officially announced his candidacy, both the Right and Left have commented on the lack of information vis-à-vis just who Obama is and what he’s all about. The candidate has built broad appeal by presenting himself as an open-minded moderate Democrat, but light shed on a little-known aspect – his faith – suggests his beliefs are closer to that of a refined Black Panther.How many Americans would vote for a presidential candidate who was the member of a church that professed...

It’s been a little over a year since my column “Obamination” originally appeared in this space, but the disturbing nature of Democrat presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s relationship with his pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright finally made it into the mainstream press last week. Several video excerpts of Wright’s sermons were aired in which the Reverend called upon God to damn America (using the common distasteful colloquialism), strongly intimated that the United States “deserved” 9/11 as a consequence of its foreign policy, and made claims that ours is a nation controlled by “rich white people” who engineered the AIDS virus to kill...

Okay, now he has done it.......

PHILADELPHIA (Oct. 22) - Philadelphia is home to the least attractive people in the United States, a survey of visitors and residents showed on Friday. The city of more than 1.5 million people was also found to be among the least stylish, least active, least friendly and least worldly, according to the "America's Favorite Cities" survey by Travel & Leisure magazine and CNN Headline News. About 60,000 people responded to the online survey -- at www.travelandleisure.com -- which ranked 25 cities in categories including shopping, food, culture, and cityscape, said Amy Farley, senior editor at the magazine. For unattractiveness, Philadelphia...

As the polls suggest, John Kerry is losing ground against President Bush, he and his new campaign handlers (most of whom are retreads from the Clinton presidency) have reportedly decided on a novel strategy: Staking out just one position on the war in Iraq. After months of embracing every position from damn-the-torpedoes and no-price-too-high-for-victory to parroting Howard Dean's wrong-war, wrong-place, wrong-time formulation, the emerging party line is, as senior Kerry adviser Richard Holbrooke put it, "Iraq is worse than Vietnam." In other words, the Democratic candidate has evidently decided to run against the conflict in Iraq by arguing it is...

In the eyes of Democrats, John Kerry can do no wrong. They don't judge him on what he has done, but only on what he promises to do, blindly ignoring reality, his inconsistent record and the hard facts of his 20-year voting history. He supported ousting Saddam Hussein for years, but ran for office as the antiwar candidate, and now claims he's tough on defense. He was against the war in Iraq, but voted for it, then against the money to fight it with. He was against gay marriage, then for it, and now censures the San Francisco mayor who...