Free Republic

CANTON -- A Canton woman whose son died in Iraq says she was touched by President Bush’s compassion when he met with soldiers’ families while campaigning in northeast Ohio over the weekend. Julie Barkey says the president not only shook her hand, he gave her a hug and kissed her on the cheek. And she says Bush had tears in his eyes as he expressed his sorrow.

I JUST got this e-mail alert from www.goodnewsamerica.us 'If the picture of little 3-year-old Sophia Parlock crying after some Kerry-Edwards Union Thugs ripped up her Bush-Cheney poster and gave her back the pieces got to you, well, you weren't the only one. Well, there's a happy ending. After seeing the picture of the tearful Sophia on her dad's shoulders, aides said the president was sending her a little note Friday along with a signed campaign poster and an autographed photo of the Prez and his dog. "Dear Sophia" Bush penned, "Thank you for supporting my campaign. I understand someone tore...

With the US Federal Election Campaign in fully swing the polls are predicting a tight finish between George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. Would you believe there has recently been a strong surge of support for Mel Gibson as President? This site has certainly been inundated with emails promoting Mel as the next leader of the free world. For those of you who don‘t know Mel Gibson is an actor (of Braveheart fame) who also happens to be an Australian citizen. He was however born in Peekskill, NY making him eligible for President. This situation isn‘t entirely without precedent...

BELOIT COLLEGE'S MINDSET LIST® FOR THE CLASS OF 2008 1.  Most students entering college this fall were born in 1986. 2.  Desi Arnaz, Orson Welles, Roy Orbison, Ted Bundy, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Cary Grant  have always been dead. 3.  "Heeeere's Johnny!" is a scary greeting from Jack Nicholson, not a warm welcome from Ed McMahon. 4.  The Energizer bunny has always been going, and going, and going. 5.  Large fine-print ads for prescription drugs have always appeared in magazines. 6.  Photographs have always been processed in an hour or less. 7.  They never got a chance to drink 7-Up...

David Brooks, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, calls it "bourgeoisophobia" - the hatred of success, most particularly the hatred of commercial achievement. In no small part, it's the kind of mind-set that pushed Mohamed Atta to smash a passenger plane into the World Trade Center, the kind of resentment that drives the Arab street to cheer when a 10-year-old blows himself up in a trendy Israeli discotheque. Brooks points to the anti-bourgeois stance of the French intelligentsia in the 19th century: "Around 1830, a group of French artists and intellectuals looked around and noticed that people who were...

Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle {snip} Unexcused absence Stoops came to mind Sunday in the wake of how the Texas Longhorns dealt with their loss to Cal State Fullerton in the College World Series. They disgraced themselves. They disgraced their school. What a nice finishing touch to a splendid season. Instead of winning their second national championship in three seasons, the Longhorns became the first team in at least 17 years to refuse to participate in the College World Series trophy presentation. Aren't they splendid ambassadors for the University of Texas? Let's be clear about who we're blaming here. The Texas...

Former President Bill Clinton had harsh words for the Bush administration at a fund-raiser Sunday in Las Vegas, arguing that Bush and his supporters are funneling the nation's wealth to the upper class while letting crucial programs suffer. The Bush tax cuts have placed such a burden on the national budget that funds for after-school programs, police officers, benefits for troops and even national security measures have been compromised, Clinton said. "I believe that this is a very important election," Clinton told a crowd of about 350 Democratic loyalists at the Rio. "You've got to understand that the new Republicans...

What I was thinking was: they brought their souls. We are all these physical repositories of ourselves, of our characters and personalities and ambitions. But everybody is a soul, has a soul, and all these people gathered for the funeral of a great man, and their souls came. I tell you this because it somehow has to do with something that followed. Many, not all, were aging or old. They had run the country 20 and 30 years ago. They had lived lives of import and meaning. But they were not this afternoon their official selves, their old formal selves,...

WASHINGTON, June 11 — Nancy Reagan started her seventh day of mourning Friday bowed over her husband's coffin in the Rotunda of the Capitol. By the time the sun set in California 12 hours later, Mrs. Reagan had attended a state funeral at National Cathedral, a formal send-off at Andrews Air Force Base and, after a cross-country flight aboard an Air Force jumbo jet, Ronald Reagan's burial on a hillside outside Los Angeles. For Mrs. Reagan, it was an exhausting and emotional test of endurance, all the more so for an 82-year-old woman who, as friends noted, for 10 years...

The Associated Press Posted: Friday June 11th, 2004, 5:15 PM Last Updated: Friday June 11th, 2004, 6:40 PM PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) - Jane Wyman, the first wife of Ronald Reagan, has released a statement through a friend praising the nation's 40th president. Wyman was married to Reagan from 1940 to 1949, but had limited contact with him after their divorce. Virginia Zamboni, a friend of Wyman's, said the Oscar-winning actress gave her permission to relay a statement to The Desert Sun newspaper in which Wyman said, "America has lost a great president and a great, kind and gentle man."...

Former Vice President Al Gore was to call for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and several other Bush administration officials in a scathing attack on the president’s foreign policy Wednesday, people familiar with the speech told The Associated Press. In a speech at New York University, Gore was to argue that several officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, CIA director George Tenet and a top military leader should step down because the situation in Iraq is out of control. He was expected to place blame for the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal directly on the Bush administration officials,...

I only caught the end of the Barbara Walters' interview. Here's what I heard. BW: Teresa, finish this sentence will you? Teresa Heinz-Kerry is...? TH-K: (dramatic pause) An honest warm person who cares a lot about people. (She forgot to say: who has a brand marketing agency at her disposal to write positioning statements like this.) I really don't need the First Lady to care about me, just about the President, thanks very much. I thought she was patronizing and condescending. Oh, and she said she had a barbecue and ran out of ketchup. Her friends thought she had fountains...

I heard this guy on Ken Hamblin's show today. He's just a regular Joe who wrote a book about what it really means to be conservative in America. Really knew his stuff. He and Ken had great rapport. It's about time we had a book about life in middle-America written by someone who actually lives there. More info is at http://www.conservativelikeme.com including an online version of the first chapter. Good stuff.

WASHINGTON - President Bush, fulfilling a 15-month-old promise, scheduled a jog around the South Lawn Wednesday with a soldier badly wounded in Afghanistan. During a Jan. 17, 2003 visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Bush met Staff Sgt. Michael McNaughton of Denham Springs, La. On Jan. 8, McNaughton, a member of the Louisiana National Guard, had stepped on a land mine 30 miles north of Kabul. His right leg had to be removed above the knee, he lost two fingers on his right hand and he suffered shrapnel wounds in his left leg. The president and McNaughton talked about...

...............Sure, many black Americans continue to register as Democrats, but not as they used to. Today there is no more a monolithic "black vote" than there is a "white vote," and this is another reason we haven't heard anything about it lately - because it no longer truly exists, at least not the way we have understood it in the past. The real issue is that black people are becoming more "American" by the hour, moving from a defined group identity to a more individualized sense of being. If anything, Sept. 11 prompted questions of national identity, and African Americans...

A veteran Plant City High School agricultural science teacher faces fines and criticism after killing two day-old rabbits with a shovel as her stunned class looked on, authorities said Tuesday. But Jane Bender won’t face criminal charges for killing the sickly rabbits, which had been rejected by their mother, officials said. Investigators said Bender killed two rabbits and buried them in a field near the agricultural lab with two others from the same litter that had died. “We felt this person had to be held accountable,” said Hillsborough County Animal Services investigator Dennis McCullough, whose agency filed two civil counts...

WASHINGTON - First lady Laura Bush and Teresa Heinz Kerry will share the harsh glare of the campaign spotlight as their husbands battle for the presidency - but there's little else the two women have in common. ``These are clearly two very, very different women,'' said retired Texas Christian University professor Paul Boller Jr., author of ``Presidential Wives.'' Bush has a reserved, demure bearing and favors a traditional approach to her role. Many see her as a model mother and first lady. ``She's a strong, articulate first lady,'' said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public...

Oregon classes swell as nation's shrinkOregon schools cut 775 teaching jobs this school year, pushing class sizes to the largest in a generation, an analysis by The Oregonian shows. As a result, students get less individual help, receive cursory feedback on homework and, in some cases, give up on asking questions in class, teachers and students say. Unlike last school year, when 90 Oregon school districts lopped days off the school calendar, this year the chief consequence of the budgetary squeeze is bigger classes. Some parents worry their children will fall behind on critical academic skills or feel disconnected from...

Comments, as usual.

Since our lovely First Lady is traveling in Europe, and many photos are being taken of her, I thought I'd take up rintense's suggestion and post a thread with a sampling of some of them.She's been to Paris and Moscow, and has been kissed by an ugly frog while her handsome prince was left at home. Quite an adventure for a lady from Midland, Texas......Feel free to add to these, if you wish!