Free Republic

You’re a mean one Mr. Grinch You really are a heel. You’re as cuddly as a cactus, And as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch! You’re a bad banana, With a greasy black peel! You’re a monster, Mr. Grinch! Your heart’s an empty hole. Your brain is full of spiders. You’ve got garlic in your soul, Mr. Grinch! Well, that’s a pretty good beginning at describing how most conservatives feel about Newt Gingrich these days. More of that later. Of course, many of us felt this way before the 2012 GOP presidential primary began, and have been vindicated as Newt...

Like a lot of progressives, I've been puzzling over the Tea Party phenomenon. Many on the left choose to believe that the hundreds and sometimes thousands who attend the group's rallies are the same old extreme rightwingers who always have been around — usually content to remain isolated individuals or small groups in the shadows but this time encouraged out in the open by incitement from the FarRight media. While no doubt, there's a large truth in that observation, I think it's a mistake to interpret the Tea Party phenomenon mainly in that reductive, generic way. There are, it appears,...

The soon to be former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, is like one of those souffles my mother sometimes made. The recipe warned against premature removal from the oven because the dish would collapse. That is the saga of Gov. Palin. Prematurely plucked from relative obscurity by John McCain and touted as a rising star by many Republican conservatives, Palin collapsed. Though she was treated unfairly and in ways that no liberal woman would have been -- not even Hillary Clinton -- she clearly was not prepared to discuss the issues, the command of which -- or least familiarity of...

I'D never buy a copy of Men's Health magazine, just like I'd never pay for People, Us or even Real Simple. But that doesn't mean I don't sometimes flip through those magazines, and Men's Health is now diversion No. 1 one when I spy a copy at the gym or doctor's office. All because of this tidbit from an article titled "Your To-Don't List — 19 things a man should never do": "Leer ... pervert isn't a label you can just peel off." The ellipses save you from salacious descriptions that detract from the main message. Photos throughout the magazine...

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ opened Wednesday, and, as expected, most of the average columnist’s pre-release complaints were bunk. Yes, the Jews are portrayed rather harshly. But so is everyone else, and I’m pretty sure that’s the point. I haven’t been to Sunday school since second grade, but I think all the merciless beating of that guy on screen was because of our sins. Maybe that’s just my self-loathing Roman Catholic background, right? The movie’s details were unimportant for those looking to bash conservative Christianity. Dartmouth Professor Nancy Crumbine sent an e- mail warning her students the day...

<p>The dust is not about to settle over the intelligence failure in Iraq. But it has already blurred our vision about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).</p> <p>There is still time to remind ourselves WMDs were not the principal reason for going to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq; they were the pretext. And that's why irrefutable evidence was not the standard. Axis of evil regime change was the lodestar.</p>

Fox News hits a new lowest common denominator ...The wondrous blessing God bestowed on Gustave Flaubert -- and on America's own great chroniclers of contagious stupidity, Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken -- is that they lived and died without imagining a thing like Fox News. It's easy to laugh at Rupert Murdoch's outrageous mongrel, the impossible offspring of supermarket tabloids, sitcom news spoofs, police-state propaganda mills and the World Wrestling Federation. Fox News is an oxymoron and Cheech and Chong would have made a more credible team of war correspondents than Geraldo Rivera and Ollie North. Neither Saturday Night Live...

Lawyers, Guns & Money By David Erickson , 05.18.2003 I think I'll buy a horse. First, I miss the mounted police patrolling Grand Avenue here in St. Paul, and second, I want to fit in with the New Minnesota. Thanks to the new conceal carry law, in a mere nine days I can saddle up to Billy's on Grand, wrap the reigns of my trusty equine companion Traveler around a post, and saunter into the bar for a shot of whiskey (and stay there until 2 a.m.) and perhaps a game of poker (with my back to the wall, of...