Free Republic

Joe Biden is once again returning to the Hollywood fundraising trough where he will drink heavily from the largess of wealthy left-wing celebrities, including Jay Leno, Rob Reiner, Barbra Streisand, and John Legend, according to a notice on the Biden campaign’s official site. The virtual Biden fundraiser, titled “Celebration for Change,” is set to take place Sunday. Former Tonight Show host Jay Leno will host the livestream event, Deadline reported. Tickets start at $15 per person and go as high as $1,000 per person at the “champion” level.

President Obama is facing a deepening dilemma about whether to abandon cuts to Social Security in his next fiscal blueprint, which is due out in March. Obama touched the third rail of American politics last year when he proposed a new formula for Social Security and other entitlements that would result in benefits being cut over time. Now congressional Democrats and unions are ramping up their pressure on Obama to drop the proposal, which many fear could become an albatross for the party in the midterm elections. “We want the president to make very clear that he is going to...

What commonality binds Haim Saban, Penny Pritzker, and Warren Buffett, aside from membership in the billionaire's club?  Guilt, and not the quotidian variety -- unfulfilled potential, disappointing behavior, lost love -- that afflicts most of us.  Theirs is a guilt that only afflicts the very rich -- a guilt that arises from wanting more equitable outcomes coupled with an unwillingness to pay the requisite taxes to achieve those outcomes.  It's the same guilt that has plagued Rockefeller, Kennedy, and Mott progeny for decades. Messrs. Saban and Buffett and Ms Pritzker are newcomers to the world of self-imposed tax-deficiency guilt, but...

Michael Moore used some non-union crewmembers when union workers were available in the production of his latest film "Capitalism: A Love Story," a documentary that argues the capitalist system allows for greedy corporations to exploit working-class people. "For all of the different jobs on the movie that could have used union labor, he used union labor, except for one job, the stagehands, represented by IATSE," said a labor source unauthorized to talk about Moore's decision not to hire members of The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. In a statement issued to ABCNews.com, Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said the filmmaker...

Good Friday morning. TOP TALKER – DNC BRAINSTORMS 2012 WITH BUNDLERS -- Jeanne Cummings: “Bracing for a half-billion-dollar onslaught of outside GOP cash in 2012, President Obama’s advisers are quietly working to bring back together the major donor base that produced a record-breaking fundraising haul in his first run for president. In the past few months, Democratic National Committee aides have contacted several of Obama’s earliest financial backers to brainstorm about when and where to host the first money-raising events. Several big donors said they expect the Obama 2012 operation to open its doors this spring, with a string of...

My husband and I were talking tonight and that is always a good thing because he is smart as a whip and to the point and I always learn from him when he opens up. He rarely engages me in political talk because I am basically "too involved" in his opinion. That usually means I know more than he knows about politics. Anyway, he brought up how odd it was to see clapping and cheering at the memorial service last night. In fact, he had to stop watching the "show" because it upset him too much. It broke his heart...

THERE is a God! It passed! The Bush tax cuts have been extended two years for the upper bracketeers, of which I am a proud member, thank you very much. I’m the last person in the world I’d want to be beside, but I am beside myself! This is a life changer, I tell you. A life changer! To begin with, I was planning a trip to Cabo with my kids for Christmas vacation. We were going to fly coach, but now with the money I’m saving in taxes, I’m going to splurge and bump myself up to first class....

Geraldine Ferraro has established a history. No, not the history of embarrassing her gender by taking part in what Democrats probably consider The Fiasco of 1984. Geraldine Ferraro, for the lack of more tactful way to put this, is an unmitigated limousine liberal bigot. I’ll caveat this by admitting that I shouldn’t hold differing forms of the same exact racial bigotry to differing standards. Senator Byrd may have been more evocative when he donned the KKK sheets as …an Exalted Cyclops, but he and Geraldine have both held the same dishonest untruths to be self-evident. Like Senator Byrd in his...

Democrats like to define themselves as the party of poor and middle-income Americans, but a new study says they now represent the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts. In a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data, Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, found that the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats. He also found that more than half of the wealthiest households were concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats hold both Senate seats. "If you take the wealthiest one-third of the...

Midler Wrongly Hacks Down 200 Trees LIHUE, Hawaii (Aug. 22) - Bette Midler cut down more than 230 trees around one of her properties on the island of Kauai without a permit, and the state has recommended she be fined. An attorney for Bette Midler says the trees that were cut down were foreign to Hawaii, and that she had plans to re-introduce native plants to the land. The staff of the Board of Land and Natural Resources recommended $6,500 in fines for having the trees felled and for building a graded road without permits required for the land zoned...

Description: There is a distinct difference between the public policies endorsed by liberals and the policies they actually adhere to in their private lives. That's the case made by Hoover Fellow Peter Schweizer in his new book, "Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy." In it, the author chronicles what he believes to be a double-standard among Michael Moore, Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) when it comes to issues such as environmentalism, corporate America, and tax cuts for the wealthy. Author Bio: Peter Schweizer is the author of several books including...

<p>THE anti-fur folk at PETA may have a new target: Sen. Hillary Clinton.</p> <p>On Dec. 24, the Times' Boldfaced Names column reported that Manhattan furrier Peter Duffy "told us he had just finished a mink coat for Hillary Rodham Clinton."</p>

On Saturday, 'Bennifer' went out shopping at a Savannah Mall where Affleck bought a shotgun, and sources say, $5,000.00 worth of ammo to go with it. He had applied for a gun permit on Monday.The couple also hit the Barnes and Noble, where Ben picked up a copy of David McCullough's John Adams biography and J-Lo bought some magazines.The retail therapy continued Tuesday. A listener told a Savannah radio station that she ran into the couple at the Gateway Country Store that night shopping for a plasma TV. Earlier in the day, they had bought a pickup truck.Armando Ramirez told...

Toward a More Civil Society The real travesty of Prop. N Danielle Steel I am immensely distressed by the misfiring of justice of the naive though perhaps well-intentioned Proposition N, promising "Care not Cash" to San Francisco's homeless. After the court ruling last week, what remains of Prop. N will, in effect, reduce funds to the elderly and disabled homeless, as well as those in job training, to $59 a month -- while those homeless refusing job training will receive about $320 a month. In effect, we have reduced those in most dire need to even more disastrous straits, while...

Critics of the war and critics of the critics of the war circle the wagons. by Hugh Hewitt 04/25/2003 12:00:00 AM Hugh Hewitt, contributing writer ACTOR EDWARD NORTON attacked President Bush as possessing a "low quality mind" this week, and thus joined a long list of stars, pundits, and professors who have elected to stand opposite three-quarters of American public opinion. Others who have done so--including Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, and the Dixie Chicks--have discovered that a lot of folks listen closely when celebrities speak and respond in the marketplace by refusing to buy products or tickets or...