Free Republic

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has opened up his widest lead yet over rival Hillary Clinton in the crucial state of New Hampshire, according to a new poll released Tuesday. The new WMUR/CNN poll out this afternoon shows the Vermont lawmaker with a whopping 27-point lead over the former Secretary of State -- 60-33 percent. That’s a climb of 10 percentage points for Sanders since mid-December and a drop of 7 points for Clinton. It marks Sanders’ highest support and widest lead in any poll in any state so far. His popularity in the state is also sky-high, earning a...

American workers are afraid to take a break. About 57 percent of them don't use all their vacation time each year...

Be honest. You’re a control freak. You’re in a rat race. You’re trapped on the hedonic treadmill, you’re surfing the info tsunami and you’re mainlining off your Crackberry. Gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to work. And that’s exactly the way it should be. Consider the Dickens Paradox. In George Orwell’s essay on Charles Dickens, he wonders what the Victorian novelist’s heroes get up to after the books end: “The answer evidently is that they did nothing . . . That is the spirit in which most of Dickens’ books end — a sort of radiant idleness. His heroes,...

...We are a country obsessed with consumption, which would be fine if we seemed to be fulfilled getting bigger TVs but having less time to watch them. But, in the aggregate, that's not the case. "The things that we get used to most easily and then take for granted are our material possessions -- our car, our house," writes Layard. "But there is lots of evidence that people underestimate the process of habituation." The amount of happiness we think we'll get from a new house, and the amount of happiness we actually get from a new house, are not the...

Zero-sum positional conflict is avoidable in a liberal market society, argues Will WilkinsonHL Mencken once quipped that, ‘a wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife’s sister’s husband.’ Writing last April on the definition of poverty in The New Yorker, journalist John Cassidy takes the logic of Mencken’s satire of low-grade ressentiment fully seriously and plumps for its liberal application to public policy. Cassidy argues that it is indeed a hardship to make less than your wife’s sister’s husband—or your co-worker, your next door neighbour, or anyone within the same national boundaries—and proposes that for...

It seemed like a good idea. Let a lone rat loose on a rodent-free island and then figure out how to kill it. That way, when other islands are invaded by rats, you'll know what to do. Scientists figured they'd trap this foot-long varmint in no time. Eighteen weeks later, they finally trapped it with some fresh penguin bait. On another island. Rodents are a problem just about everywhere. In New Zealand, at least 11 islands have been invaded by Norway rats since 1980, in each case after rats from earlier invasions had been eradicated. The invaders disrupt local ecosystems....

The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest Vol: 29 Issue: 10 - Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - Plain Text Special Report: The Death of Shame I probably spent more time trying to come up with the column title than I will in the course of writing it. There was a time in America when truth counted, and those who lied were held accountable.  It's true, honest! And it wasn't that long ago, really. Oh, there've been celebrated exceptions to the rule -- Teddy Kennedy in 1969 for example. Kennedy drove his car off the Chappaquiddick Bridge with young Mary Jo Kopechne sitting...

<p>Democrat Carol Moseley Braun, who made history as the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate, formally launched her long-shot bid for the presidency yesterday, vowing to "fix the mess" created by the Bush administration.</p> <p>Mrs. Braun faces nine other Democratic candidates &#8212; all men who, for the most part, have raised more money and are beating her in the polls. Nevertheless, she is forging ahead with her campaign, saying that as a former ambassador, senator and local government official she is uniquely qualified to be president.</p>

According to one Democratic source who reached us right before deadline former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley Braun talked by phone last night to Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, who seems to have been on his cell phone at Georgetown's Cafe Milano, where he ran into some of Americas leading political reporters.In any event, per this one 'Golden Source' Ms. Braun told McAuliffe that she was planning to announce that she is NOT running for the Illinois Senate seat, but that she just might want to reserve one of those Presidential candidate slots at the upcoming Democratic National Committee meeting...