Free Republic

Following the president’s speech where he promised to end “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” Meghan McCain – pro-gay rights pundit and daughter to Sen. John McCain – weighed in on the Daily Beast blog. Now, I cannot speak for my brothers, but I know many men and women who serve in the military. Let’s give them more credit. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, I suspect it could be said that there is no homophobia in foxholes either. I find it hard to imagine that when a soldier is in a Humvee fighting terrorist insurgents, that the thing on...

I thought Elizabeth Hasselback, the Republican Party's brain trust on the "View," was a little simple. But, intellectually, she towers above the succession of vacuous, narcissistic, pig-ignorant panelists paraded on Sean Hannity's "Great American Panel." Just as you thought American pop-politics could go no lower, a woman with real curb appeal appears on the political scene. Meghan McCain might just be the greatest ditz to date to emerge from that big tent Republicans keep touting. Meghan made her first major debut on the Rachel Maddow Show. There, in defiance of Ms. McCain's empty refrains and non sequiturs, the left-liberal TV...

The Daily Beast’s Meghan McCain talks to Republicans about the party’s crippling technology disconnect—and the new conservative Web zealots who can save the GOP.

BONNEY LAKE, Wash. - Some baristas will soon be the target of a protest because of what they're wearing – or not wearing. It seems some people in Bonney Lake aren't too happy about the bikinis and skimpy outfits. Sex sells and bikini-clad baristas have popped up all over Western Washington. At Cowgirls Espresso in Bonney Lake business has never been better. The baristas wear bikinis, nothing different they say than what you see at the beach. But one Bonney Lake mother says she was outraged when she saw a barista without a bikini at all. "All of a sudden,...

The former “Today” show anchor traced her discomfort with the administration’s march to war back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. “The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying ‘we’ when referring to the United States and, even the ‘shock and awe’ of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable. And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring the ‘Today’ show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this?’ And is this really being properly challenged by the right people?...

On her blog, CBS anchor Katie Couric is once again offering her love and kisses to Jimmy Carter. In a "Katie Couric's Notebook" video (which airs on some CBS affiliates as an Evening News promo), Couric used the occasion of Carter being awarded an honorary doctorate of civil law from Oxford to demand of viewers that "you have to respect him for sticking to his principles." Tell that to President Bush. She began by citing another Carter cheerleader:

The fifth week was the toughest for Katie Couric, whose viewership on the "CBS Evening News" has dropped each week since her debut the day after Labor Day. Her broadcast averaged 7.04 million viewers last week, third to NBC's "Nightly News" (8.56 million) and ABC's "World News" (7.97 million), according to Nielsen Media Research. CBS points out that the "CBS Evening News" is the only one of the three network newscasts with more viewers last week than the same week a year earlier. NBC's margin of victory last year was 2.2 million. "Where we were last week or even in...

"?DEAR MARGO: I am a 38-year-old successful female who is emotionally and financially secure. I have been told that I am very attractive and intimidate men. I would like to get married but am thought to be too independent"

AUSTIN - I'm so sorry, but we are having a constitutional crisis. The timing couldn't be worse. Right in the middle of the wrapping paper, the gingerbread and the whole shebang, a tiny honest-to-goodness constitutional crisis... **snip** The Department of Defense has just proved this yet again with its latest folly of mistaking a flock of Florida Quakers for a threat to overthrow the government. A few months ago, a student at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth tried to check out a copy of Mao's Little Red Book and wound up being interviewed by two feds. Cointelpro and all...

IN RESPONSE to Cathy Young's column ''A moral muddle on the left" (op ed, July 18), I think she should note that although Osama bin Laden is undoubtedly offended by the gross materialism and decadence of Western secular capitalism, and although he skillfully uses the moral zealotry of Islam to forward his agenda, his agenda is quite straightforward and is not based on some categorical imperative to stamp out Western civilization and its freedoms. Rather one has only to read his own words during the past decade to realize that what drives his actions is a rather well articulated agenda:...

Fabian Basabe wears a watch, but don't ask him for the time because he has no idea. He never does.

Just watched "Democratic Strategist" Kirsten Powers on Hannity and Colmes. Gawd, I feel old. It seems the political strategists the media is dredging up have the verbal cadence of Valley Girls. The segment was dissecting Heinz-Kerry's comment about never sending anyone in an American uniform to fight and die for oil and greed. Kirsten had one talking point: "What's wrong with objecting to having people die for oil and greed?" Hannity was nailing Kirsten, the Democratic Strategist. Colmes, bless his heart, obviously felt the need to feed her lines, and she agreed and nodded whole-heartedly , thus saving her from...

WASHINGTON - Teresa Heinz Kerry says anger, not ideology, prompted her to become a Democrat. The wife of Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, says her emotion stemmed from the way the Republican Party, to which she had pledged allegiance, treated Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia in 2002. Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm as an Army captain during the Vietnam War, lost his re-election bid in a bitter campaign against then-Rep. Saxby Chambliss. The GOP had raised questions about Cleland's patriotism because of his position on legislation to create the...

<p>The August blackout that hit New York and a large swath of the Northeast greatly inconvenienced senior citizens.</p> <p>Oh, you already knew that?</p> <p>So did we.</p> <p>That's why we were a little perplexed last week when we encountered a seven-page report, "When The Lights Go Out In The City," put out by Betsy Gotbaum, the city's public advocate.</p>

My wife (as a joke, and under the name "Muggs Polecat III") subscribed me to the email list for the Arianna campaign when Ms. Huffington jumped into the recall race a couple months ago. Here's the email I received this morning. Evidently, she spent a more on her campaign than she took in. (Which is undoubtedly how she would have handled California's finances in the unlikely event of her election.) I'm going to suggest she get some money from her buddy, Gay Davis. I've heard he was pretty good at raising campaign cash. Or maybe she can get Cruz to...

Belonging to the Church of Scientology, which opposes the use of pharmaceuticals for psychiatric problems, drove actress Kirstie Alley, "Rebecca" on Cheers, to vote for George W. Bush for President in 2000 even though she preferred Al Gore on most issues. In an interview with Washington Post "Reliable Source" gossip columnist Lloyd Grove, Alley revealed she voted for Bush because, "although I love Al Gore and I like many of his ideas, I just had a problem with his wife," Tipper, who supports using drugs to correct mental problems. An excerpt from Grove's piece in the Sunday, May 25 Post:...

At last, the movie version of Elizabeth Wurtzel's bestseller Prozac Nation is coming to the screen. Wonder why it took so long? Here's a clue:Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, published in 1994, was Elizabeth Wurtzel's first memoir, a bestseller that focused a huge amount of attention on its author. When Wurtzel was interviewed a few months ago by Jan Wong of the Canadian national newspaper The Globe and Mail, she made some very unfortunate and ill-timed remarks about a certain event that happened right in her own neighborhood on September 11, 2001. "I had not the slightest emotional...

Here's a blast from the past, as dope-addled author-babe Wuertzel says she doesn't understand all the fuss over 9/11... "I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting," Wurtzel told a Canadian journalist last week about her experience being near Ground Zero on Sept 11. "People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me." Remember?