Free Republic

Jean King, Bobby Riggs an 'elaborate mob setup' Tennis star Bobby Riggs, top, and Billie Jean King are shown in action during the "Battle of the Sexes" match in the Astrodome in Houston, on Sept. 20, 1973. The ultimate “Battle of the Sexes” — a 1973 match between the No. 2 -ranked woman tennis player and a retired male Wimbledon champion — was rigged so Mafia bosses could cash in on the betting, a new report claims. The incredible claims have been lobbed at the reputation of the late hard-court hustler Bobby Riggs, by one of his former country club...

Boehner: 'Vast majority' of House GOP wants to act on immigration; Pelosi points to support from 'Bible folks' After months of being told to hurry up on immigration, it's time to wait. House Republicans said they plan to act, but not in haste, after huddling in a closed-door meeting to discuss how to proceed on an immigration bill. While the chamber intends to proceed on immigration, Speaker John Boehner reiterated on Thursday that the House would not take up the Senate immigration bill that passed last month with bipartisan support. Several House Republicans offered their perspectives on the issue during...

After a long day of fiscal cliff chaos, the House will finally hold a vote tonight on the fiscal cliff bill passed by the Senate early Tuesday. The decision to hold an up-down vote virtually guarantees passage of the bill, which would extend the Bush tax hikes for households earning under $450,000. that the bill will pass. For most of the day, House Republicans have said that they could not support the bill without spending cuts, but by Tuesday night it was clear that GOP leaders could not come up with the votes to pass an amendment to add those...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH. So let's see. Martha Raddatz, who is going to moderate the vice presidential debate on Thursday night between Paul Ryan and Joe Bite Me, hosted Barack Obama at her wedding. She used to be married to the FCC commissioner, Julius Genachowski. Raddatz, Genachowski, and Obama all went to Harvard. (Who didn't in this regime?) Now ABC's doing everything they can to say, "Oh, it doesn't matter! Nothing to see here. What does that mean?" Well, how about she tell us who she voted for in 2008? And how about she tell us who she's gonna vote for...

Mike Vanderboegh is drinking Diet Mountain Dew in the cafeteria of the Rayburn building on Capitol Hill, and he is pissed. Not because his flight from Alabama was almost “as bumpy as [his] first marriage,” nor because he almost got into a physical altercation with an “idiot street urban adventurer” outside the National Archives who said Vanderboegh looked like Newt Gingrich. The former militia man turned gun rights blogger is angry because he thinks the Republican “sons-a-bitches” on the House Oversight Committee put on the “ultimate display of public limp dickery” during a Thursday hearing in which Attorney General Eric...

An MSNBC interview from early 2009 has resurfaced to haunt Barack Obama, who explained to Matt Lauer that if he had not fixed the economy within three years, then he will be a one-term president.Check out the video after the break, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.Throughout the entire interview, Obama employs a tired blame Bush rhetoric, but the best part comes with his message for economic recovery. At around the 4:45 mark, Obama makes his one-term presidency remark, saying

Technically, pegging a currency to gold--via some automatic mechanism like a currency board--is no different than pegging it to the euro or dollar. There's nothing inherently difficult about it. Eventually, one might conclude that gold is a better thing to peg to than the euro or dollar. Just read the newspapers and see what Ben Bernanke or the ECB are doing with their floating fiat currencies. Who wants to be a part of that? The Keynesians, at first, will typically try to insist that this is not possible at all. They insinuate that currencies are naturally free-floating, and that to...

Chicago election officials say crews will work overtime to reprogram thousands of electronic voting machines that mistakenly list a gubernatorial candidate's name as "Rich Whitey" instead of Rich Whitney. Chicago elections board chairman Langdon Neal said 530 machines being used for early voting and an additional 4,200 destined for the Nov. 2 election will be reprogrammed and retested. The mistake in the Green Party candidate's name appears on a review screen that allows voters to double-check their selections and not on the screen where the vote is registered. It also is not on paper ballots, Neal said. He said the...

It is legal for lawyers, like anyone else, to give campaign money to politicians. But questions arise when the politicians are local officials with influence over the selection of legal counsel for shareholder lawsuits filed by public pension funds, a role that can be lucrative. A Wall Street Journal analysis documented the extent of campaign giving by plaintiffs' law firms specializing in shareholder litigation. It found that 25 leading firms, their lawyers and family members contributed a total of more than $21 million in the past decade to state-level candidates and party funds, as well as to national-party groups that...

CAMP TAJI – More than 3,000 U.S. Soldiers here took advantage of a new program offering fixed-wing flights off this Camp, Jan. 27, significantly decreasing their travel time back home to the States. Traditionally, Soldiers are transported via helicopter to Joint Base Balad or Baghdad International Airport before they departed to Ali Al Salim Air Base in Kuwait, said Staff Sgt. Rufus Brumfield, senior enlisted adviser with the 384th Movement Control Team, 49th Transportation Battalion (Movement Control), 15th Sustainment Brigade, 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary). "We are able to move numerous [passengers] straight from here and they don't have to stop...

Venture capitalist Scott Murphy (D) will win the special election in New York's 20th district by 210 votes after all outstanding absentee and military ballots are counted, according to projections made by Democratic Party officials and obtained by the Fix. The projections -- based off of the county performances by Murphy and state Assemblyman Jim Tedisco (R) on election night -- show the Democrat gaining 115 votes in Warren County, 96 votes in Columbia County and 70 votes in Washington County as well as scoring smaller gains in several other counties. Tedisco's only major gain, according to the model, will...

Say it ain’t true, Paula. One cog in American Idol’s production machine says the show is completely fixed and that producers have already chosen the final four competitors. According to an unnamed female production staffer, Danny Gokey, Lil Rounds, ...

UPDATE .BIN error information... Aug 16th 2008Posted by: rdsok - Moderator (IP Logged) Date: August 17, 2008 12:07AM Currently the update for AVG Free v8 is corrupted... you will have to wait for AVG Technologies to address the issue with the update. Reporting the issue again by other users here will not do any good until it is resolved. The updates that your AVG currently have will still provide the protection it is setup to detect. In otherwords, not being able to get this update will not make your AVG Free ineffective and as soon as AVG Tech resolves the...

FReep this poll: Giuliani vs Duncan Hunter: http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/poll?poll=173

TIKRIT, Iraq, Feb. 23, 2007 — As the decision making for construction projects fall more to the local and regional governments, the Provincial Reconstruction Development Committees (PRDC) are stepping up to the challenge. Eleven concrete road paving projects - at the cost of $3 million - were recently awarded in the Ninewa Province to 10 municipalities. These 11 projects were recommended by the local PRDC. "The PRDC in the Ninewa Province is quite successful. I attribute their success to the brave Iraqis that refuse to let terrorists and corruption control them and their country." Lt. Cmdr. Suzanne Montgomery Created through...

This past Monday, CBS, otherwise known as See? BS!, Al-Jazeera West, and the Corrupt Broadcasting System, proved once again that it is nothing but a shameless propaganda tool of the Democrat party, by releasing the results of a poll it rigged... uh... conducted recently showing that President Bush's popularity rating has plummeted to an all-time low of 34 percent. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/27/opinion/polls/main1350874.shtml

GOT SCREWED, USA -- Complaining about officiating is a time-honored sports tradition. It's much easier to believe your team got screwed than it got whupped because anger is more manageable than sadness. It's sour grapes, plain and simple. But, America, please forgive Seahawks fans if they sound a little bitter and paranoid after the rest of the country got its sweet, little fairy tale with Jerome Bettis winning Super Bowl XL in his hometown of Detroit. It just seems a bit too tidy, considering how things went down. Here's the rub: No intelligent person, and that includes Pittsburgh fans, watched...

So the Super Bowl wasn't so super. The team that played the best didn't win, although use of the word "best" must be considered relative when you consider how poorly both teams played. On the other hand, the NFL got the ending it wanted, which was another Super Bowl championship for the Rooney family and a fairy tale send-off for Detroit native Jerome Bettis. It is amazing how often the NFL gets what it wants out of these Super Bowls, isn't it? And given the very questionable calls by NFL officials that all seemed to go in favor of the...

DETROIT (AP) - The Pittsburgh Steelers finally gave coach Bill Cowher some Super Bowl satisfaction. Moments after the Rolling Stones rocked a Ford Field filled with Terrible Towels, Willie Parker broke a record 75-yard touchdown run, sparking Pittsburgh's 21-10 victory Sunday over the Seattle Seahawks. Not only did the Steelers earn that elusive fifth championship ring and their first since 1980, but they completed a magic Bus ride that made Jerome Bettis' homecoming - and farewell - a success. "I'm a champion. I think the Bus' last stop is here in Detroit," Bettis said. "It's official, like the referee whistle."...

STEELERS WIN SUPERBOWL X-TRA LARGE DETROIT - Mick Jagger moved up and down the field at halftime more easily than the Pittsburgh offense did for most of the game. In the end, though, Jerome Bettis, the Steelers and their thousands of rowdy fans wound up the big winners on Super Bowl Sunday. Save for a few big plays that changed the game, style points were hard to come by on America's annual football holiday. But to Pittsburgh, the 21-10 victory over the Seattle Seahawks was beautiful _ a gritty grind of a game that included just enough flair to transform...