Free Republic

Let's not get carried away. Let's not go so far as to suggest we're about to enter into some sort of fluffy utopian tofu puppy happyland where nipples fly free and consciousness expands and the fetid rivers of racism and homophobia that course through the American heartland like acidic sewage somehow magically vanish, somehow become dramatically curtailed, should the twin forces of progress known as President Obama and a vanquished California Proposition 8 somehow come to pass. Let's not be naive. Just because it looks like the Western world is about to get its first black intellectual president, just because...

From Steve Irwin to U.S. soldiers in Iraq, there's still one video you ain't gonna see on YouTube - There is, apparently, videotape of beloved Aussie TV star and naturalist Steve Irwin getting stabbed by the nasty bayonet-like tail of a giant stingray. The video shows Irwin removing the lethal blade from his chest, where it had pierced his heart, just before he loses consciousness and dies almost instantly. We will, most likely, never see this film. This is not because Irwin had, so far as we know, no chance to utter "Crikey!" one last time before leaping into the...

When all the fanatical Christians disappear, will traffic finally improve? Wait, did I miss it? Did it happen three days ago, on 6-6-06, a.k.a. Tea Time with the Beast, a.k.a. the Great Day of Reckoning, a.k.a. the National Day of Slayer, all the world crashing down in a heap of hissing steam and belching smoke and balmy gusty breezes sometime around noon just after lunch but not before rush hour and hitting right around siesta? I might have been napping. Did the Apocalypse finally hit? Did the deep wish of roughly a half-billion zealous believers come to pass and were...

How to address a bitter, war-torn but still somehow giddy and deeply horny nation. My fellow Americans, we're not as royally screwed as everything Bush has done during his miserable term in office would have you believe.

Yaa, you repukes are not doing so well, huh? Imagine, you repukes control the presidency, both houses of Congress, and appointed 7 of the 9 Supreme Court justices. Yet the Supreme Court thre out sodomy laws in all 50 states and recognized the right of government to seize land for any reason. And you couldn't pass your Social Security changes could you? Sorry, that was your last shot. Come November, we're going to start seeing more Democratic faces in the House. It's the end for you guys. You guys are celebrating when Bush's numbers go *up* to 45%. Then Faux...

Tell CNN Not to Ditch Coulter by Robert B. Bluey Posted Nov 29, 2005 David Brock's Media Matters for America today asked it supporters to "Tell CNN to ditch Coulter". The fundraising and publicity pleads: "It's time for CNN to stop helping Ann Coulter to spew her false and offensive bile to the American public". Coulter, HUMAN EVENTS' Legal Affairs Correspondent, is a favorite of Brock's to attack. She appeared on the network last week, apparently prompting the dispatch from Media Matters. As a public service for conservatives, I'm sharing Media Matters' email with you. As liberals bombard CNN with...

OPINION Frank Rich Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ... By FRANK RICH Published: November 27, 2005 An angry country has learned the hard way that it can no longer afford to be without the truth about the Iraq war. To continue reading this article, you must be a subscriber to TimesSelect.

See parents. Check on pets. Stare into a lover's eyes. Or up her dress. Buy one nowThis much we know: There are only a finite number of breaths left in your life. There are only a finite number of times you will have sex in an elevator and a finite number of times you will drink $200 bottles of wine and a finite number of times you will scream your orgasmic joys and endure horrible Texas presidents and eat raw oysters and buy $250 designer jeans and suck down too much Halloween candy and howl at the moon. And...

PRESIDENT BUSH'S new Supreme Court nominee was a historic first after all: the first to be announced on TV dead center in prime time, smack in the cross hairs of "I Want to Be a Hilton." It was also one of the hastiest court announcements in memory, abruptly sprung a week ahead of the White House's original timetable. The agenda of this rushed showmanship - to change the subject in Washington - could not have been more naked. But the president would have had to nominate Bill Clinton to change this subject. When a conspiracy is unraveling, and it's every...

Conservatives can't stop whining about Hollywood, but the embarrassing reality is that they want to be hip, too. It's not easy. In the showbiz wrangling sweepstakes of 2004, liberals had Leonardo DiCaprio, the Dixie Chicks and the Boss. The right had Bo Derek, Pat Boone and Jessica Simpson, who, upon meeting the secretary of the interior, Gale Norton, congratulated her for doing "a nice job decorating the White House." Ms. Simpson may be the last performer in America who can make Whoopi Goldberg seem like the soul of wit. What to do? Now that Arnold Schwarzenegger's poll numbers have sunk,...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

Little proof to the contrary that we are indeed in a very long, bleak tunnel. Is there any light? Then come those times when you read about a 16-year-old girl slashing the throat of a 75-year-old woman for no apparent reason, a woman who was merely walking with her husband near a Berkeley public garden and it's right next to the one about the 16-year-old kid smiling and waving and donning a bulletproof vest before shooting nine people and himself to death in a remote, poverty-stricken region of Minnesota and you can feel the numbness like a wave.

God wants oil. This is the message. This is the belief. God wants more oil and also uranium and coal and iron and nuclear waste and whatever the hell else we want to pump into or out of this godforsaken lump of floating space rock. Word to the GOP. In other words, God wants us, if the happily bleak and decidedly nasty interpretation of Bible verse currently extolled by the rabid evangelical mind-set now mauling the American political and social landscape is to be believed, to use up the Earth however we see fit and stomp all over this pointless...

Corporate radio sucketh, whole and large and true. . . .

LET us be grateful that Janet Jackson did not bare both breasts. On the first anniversary of the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction that shook the world, it's clear that just one was big enough to wreak havoc. The ensuing Washington indecency crusade has unleashed a wave of self-censorship on American television unrivaled since the McCarthy era, with everyone from the dying D-Day heroes in "Saving Private Ryan" to cuddly animated animals on daytime television getting the ax. Even NBC's presentation of the Olympics last summer, in which actors donned body suits to simulate "nude" ancient Greek statues, is currently under...

On the first anniversary of the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction that shook the world, it's clear that just one was enough to wreak havoc. The ensuing Washington indecency crusade has unleased a wave of self-censorship on American television unrivaled since the McCarthy era.Even NBC's presentation of the Summer Olympics, in which actors donned body suits to simulate 'nude' ancient Greek statues, is under investigation.This repressive cultural environment was officialy ratified on November 2nd, when Ms. Jackson's breast pulled off its greatest coup of all: the re-election of President Bush.Or so it was decreed by the media hoarde that retroactively delared...

JON STEWART MAY IMPLODE? [Tim Graham] Jon Stewart, late in the Daily Show last night to Newsweek pundit Fareed Zakaria: "I’ve watched this thing unfold from the start and here’s the great fear that I have: What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may, and again I don’t know if I can physically do this, implode. (Hat tip: David Frum).

What happens when habitual warmongering and BushCo lies become part of our daily diet? And then you read the appalling little story about how BushCo is now "taking steps" to further the investigation into why their original intelligence on Iraq was so painfully, treasonously, colon-clenchingly wrong, why they thought Saddam had giant Costco-sized warehouses stacked to the rafters with snarling nukes and nasty biotoxins and active warheads when, in fact, he had nothing but a couple Dumpsters full of rusty 20-year-old shell casings and a bucket of stale glue.

We kill millions of pets every year Who cares if a few get posh shelters and humane laws? OK. So I tend to think people who insist on calling themselves pet "guardians" instead of "owners" are exasperating and a bit wrongheaded, and that such uber-PC thinking does almost nothing to change or improve the behavior of the thousands of animal abusers in this country. And I tend to agree with fabulous dog writer Jon Katz that such semantic sidestepping does more harm to the animals than good, and leads to naive treatment, lack of decent training and an outright ignorance...

A new year, a Bush-gutted, storm-ravaged world and you in need of some juicy, heartfelt pledges -- This is the year. No, really. This is the it. This is the year you resolve to let it all hang out and lick the fingertips of the divine and stop holding back and stop quivering with unchecked anticipation/dread as you realize that, if you care a whit for self-definition and spiritual nuance and hot wet intelligence and deep karmic color in this tsunami-hammered, Bush-ravaged world, you are desperately needed right now. It's true. Alas, many are dejected. Many of the blue or...