Free Republic

The old trolls at the Manchester Union Leader -- New Hampshire's largest paper -- have endorsed Newt Gingrich in the state's upcoming Republican primary. But the pundits on Twitter still had questions!... @jaketapper if a union boss says yes 2 Gingrich, that's reason enuff for conservative voters 2 say no #tcot The unions are now endorsing Newt...WTH Newt Gingrich Endorsed By New Hampshire Union Leader http://t.co/8sb727vK I thought the GOP considered 'unions the problem with America" ! Why in the world would a union leader back Newt or any republican candidate for that matter? Is it some type of rope...

A group of Harvard undergraduates have staged a walkout of economics professor Greg Mankiw's class, in solidarity with the Occupy movement. According to their statement, they know better than Mankiw what ought to be taught in an introductory economics course: "We are walking out today to join a Boston-wide march protesting the corporatization of higher education as part of the global Occupy movement. Since the biased nature of Economics 10 contributes to and symbolizes the increasing economic inequality in America, we are walking out of your class today both to protest your inadequate discussion of basic economic theory and to...

For days, Rachel Maddow (and Ed “Sergeant” Schultz) have been telling us that “a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll says that 91% of the American people” want to raise taxes on millionaires to reduce the deficit. Is is true? Sort of. That’s the percentage of people who are okay with it of the people they called, in the context they asked the question. In other words, the poll they cite is the perfect example of how to get the answers the pollsters want. And it starts with the oldest trick in the book– the polling sample. When you want a...

AOL's purchase of The Huffington Post for $315m, or 10 times revenues, was bizarre. A valuation of $50bn for Facebook, which has revenues of $2bn, was extraordinary. But $10bn for Twitter? That's off the scale. It is 100 times revenues – this year's forecast revenues, not sales that have been generated yet. That cannot make sense. It is reported, however, that Twitter has been talking to potential suitors, including Google and Facebook, about a deal at such a sky-high price. But Twitter's last fundraising was only two months ago and valued the networking site at $3.9bn. Is the company supposed...

Clint Eastwood is better known for his fists than his fashion sense, but that didn't stop GQ magazine from naming him a man of the year. Eastwood joins Barack Obama, Tom Brady, the three stars of "The Hangover" and "Star Trek" actor Chris Pine on five special covers for the December issue (www.gq.com), which hits newsstands Tuesday. Eastwood talks politics, love, religion, diet and women in a wide-ranging interview with deputy editor Michael Hainey, who calls the 79-year-old the "patron saint of late bloomers." Eastwood gained fame for his acting in the spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, but won his...

...On Sunday morning, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, angrily responded via twitter. "Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us'time to deliver' on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND," Grassley wrote.

Political analyst Charlie Cook isn’t a fan of Twitter. Or at least politicians’ use of the social messaging tool. Cook opined a couple days ago that he has “yet to hear a single intelligent remark twittered by an elected official.” Maybe that’s because you’re bound by the medium. You’re only only allowed 140 characters each time you “tweet”. No matter to Cook. “The vacuous utterances Twittered daily from members of Congress make me wonder how they have the time to spend keying in on such banalities and marveling over the narcissism implicit in their belief that anyone cares about their...

Here's a fun exercise for conservatives: Spend some time just listening to your liberal friends. Don't bother to say anything at all. You'll be amazed. I've certainly been wowed every time I've tried it. Libs believe the darndest things. They're not as cute as the things kids come out with, but having millions of adults who are stuck in false beliefs puts our society at a lot greater risk. Among the pearls of political wisdom I picked up from ordinary, friendly, prosperous and apparently intelligent lib friends were the following: 1. Christians. Believing Christians are scary folks, sort of proto-fascists,...

The first organized demonstration against the state's recently passed constitutional ban on gay marriage and civil unions ended at the Dane County Clerk's Office, where a posted sign indicated that marriage licenses are issued Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. The rumor was that a same-sex couple or two would challenge the state prohibition by trying to obtain a marriage license, but nothing was attempted after the protesters, about 100 strong, learned that Clerk Bob Ohlsen was not in the office. It's unlikely they would have gotten far, in any case. As the clerk behind the glass...

Julia Field covered her auburn curls with a blazing pink cowboy hat and listened to her stomach growl. A year ago, the stay-at-home mom from Oak Park would never have imagined herself fasting to protest war. Until then, she had volunteered at her son's elementary school and belonged to the local PTA. Now, armed with a bright pink lawn chair and a motivating dose of outrage, Field has joined a national fast that began July 4 in Washington and has become--from 4 to 8 p.m. for two weeks--a one-woman anti-war crusade. "It might be a little lonely today," Field said...

Less Than 24 Hours Until The Return to the Scene of the Crime Emily showed up to the concert in London sloppy drunk. She was so inebriated she couldn't speak, much less sing. Natalie and Martie, in a panic, yelled, "You're drunk again?" * This is what Emily dreamt last night. She confesses to having these types of anxiety dreams before a big show. Another common one for Emily is where she shows up for a show and, unbeknownst to her, discovers that Natalie and Martie have added choreographed dance steps. * You can't really blame Emily for being anxious...

They may not be running for elected office, but the Dixie Chicks appear to be struggling to work out a kind of political map of their own, heading for concert arenas where ticket sales are brisker and the fans may be more forgiving. The pop-country trio — whose lead singer Natalie Maines set off a firestorm when she criticized President Bush during a 2003 concert in London — announced eight new concert dates in Canada and the Northeast for the first leg of their summer concert tour on Tuesday. At the same time, at least 12 U.S. sites, concentrated mostly...

US President George W. Bush has warned rising oil prices will mean a "tough summer" for US consumers as the high cost of gasoline (petrol) showed signs of becoming a big political issue. But even as more Americans expressed discontent over the price of filling up their gas tanks, Bush suggested there was little his government could do in the short term about the problem. "We're going to have a tough summer because people are beginning to drive now during tight supply," Bush said as he toured a California facility developing hydrogen-powered vehicles. "The American people have got to understand...

Pretty much sums up the entire mindset of the Democratic Party in 4 frames

Greenpeace ship damages coral reef Tuesday, November 1, 2005 Posted at 5:11 AM EST Manila — Environmental group Greenpeace said Tuesday its flagship Rainbow Warrior accidentally struck a coral reef in a central Philippines marine park while on a trip to expose the impact of climate change in Asia, and that it has agreed to compensate the park. The Greenpeace ship briefly ran aground Monday at the Tubbataha National Marine Park, a World Heritage Site in the Sulu Sea, 650 kilometres southeast of Manila, damaging a 96-square-metre area of the reef, a joint statement released by Greenpeace and the park...

HAVANA -- About 200 intellectuals, activists and artists from Latin America and elsewhere issued a letter Monday urging the top United Nations human rights watchdog to side with Cuba in an expected battle over the communist country's rights record. A U.S.-backed resolution to condemn the island's record is usually presented at every spring meeting in Geneva of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which this year was to open Monday and run through April 22. No resolution targeting the island has emerged this year, but Cuba expects such a proposal will be presented and considered in mid-April. Last year's resolution passed...

Plantation, Florida: The Democrats unleashed their girl power in Florida on Saturday, deploying daughters of the presidential contender John Kerry and those of the former presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Also in the charm brigade were the daughters of Senator Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, and of the former vice-president Al Gore, the beaten Democratic candidate in 2000. "We're all going to take back our future," Vanessa Kerry said at a rally in Plantation, north of Miami, one of several the girls deployed in the pivotal state. "He needs your help," she said in reference to her...

Have any of you been over to the lib blogs recently? They're getting wound up of kerry's suckiness, so they are discussing rioting, if the election is close again. Check out any of the comments on http://atrios.blogspot.com for example. This is a funny piece about it: Liberals are Not Entitled to Their RageLiberals lunacy is matched only by their idiocy.

The writing's on the wall - and it's not very polite, reports Charlotte Edwardes in Chamonix. In this pretty ski resort that hugs the foot of Mont Blanc, an ugly Anglo-French conflict is brewing. Local residents are aggrieved at what they call l'invasion anglaise - an influx of Britons buying apartments, setting up businesses and acting as if they own the place - and they are fighting back. Until a few days days ago, the spray-painted insult "Putain les Anglais" (F--- the English) could be read on a wall. "English go home" is sprayed on car bonnets and walls of...