Free Republic

You won't be seeing any video of Howard Dean's x-rated, epithet-ridden New York fund-raiser because Team Dean made sure to bar the TV cameras. Which suggests they expected trouble. Maybe it was the same foresight that inspired Dean to seal his records as Vermont governor for 10 years because of worries, as he put it in a moment of candor to Vermont public radio, about "future political considerations. We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor." So there were no TV cameras last Monday night when pro-Dean comics took the stage...

<p>An all-star high school athlete, Wayne Besen couldn't imagine entering adulthood keeping something so significant as his sexual orientation a secret from his mom and dad.</p> <p>He had successfully navigated the obstacle course many of us confronted as gay teens -- feeling confused and afraid about being gay; getting stuck on a merry-go-round of denial, shame, secrecy and damaging attempts to change; and then slowly embracing your sexual orientation as a treasured part of your identity, as unchangeable as eye color or height.</p>

Thankfully, we have stars to tell us so If you’re an American, chances are there’s a celebrity who thinks you’re dumb. Maybe even stupid. Or an idiot. Or something worse, which we can’t print here. Yes, show a celebrity an American, and that celebrity will show you an ignoramus. Too sweeping a statement? Perhaps. But what about this Michael Moore screed about Americans in the London Mirror earlier this month? “They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet. ...We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don’t know about anything that’s happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing.”...

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who once said that Ken Starr reminded him of the Nazi Heinrich Himmler, on Tuesday night, during a session with left-wing ranter Al Franken, denigrated the Fox News Channel as a bunch of "demagogues." Recalling how past demagogues like Joe McCarthy have "self-destructed," Olbermann raised the unsuccessful lawsuit against Franken for using the "fair and balanced" phrase and queried Franken: "Did you get some kind of comfort from this laughable lawsuit that maybe the latest set of demagogues are starting to fray at the edges and maybe headed towards self-destruction?" Olbermann wrapped up the September 2 Countdown...