Free Republic

When MSNBC gave Ed Schultz a nightly segment entitled "Psycho Talk," it was apparently in obedience to the truth in advertising laws. On Thursday night, the low-rated host of "The Ed Show" used that segment -- which is supposed to highlight over-the-top rhetoric from conservatives -- to call Rush Limbaugh "a racist, pill-poppin' radio guy." Schultz was outraged that Rep. Steve King, R-IA, had asked NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to apologize to Rush Limbaugh for denying Rush partial ownership of the St. Louis Rams while allowing Jennifer Lopez and Fergie to become co-owners of the Miami Dolphins after worse...

The conventional wisdom about presidential nomination campaigns is almost always wrong. And the pundits' dismissal of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani's bid for the Republican nomination will not improve their batting average. Even though Giuliani is way ahead of everybody in early primary polls, the experts are already writing Giuliani's obituary. Some of this spin is wishful thinking by Democrats who don't want to face him in the general election. Other than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), he is better known and more popular than anyone running for president, even Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). And Giuliani has a...

It is well known that Washington state and Oregon are “blue”, politically speaking. It’s also quite evident that people in these two states love their dogs. These two fact are not mutually exclusive and in fact are related. It’s hard to go anywhere around here and not notice a preponderance of dogs. For the most part, they’re well-behaved, happy and fully engaged with their owners and with each other. On the other hand, the few cats that inhabit this area are either indoors, hiding from all of the dogs, or slithering around outdoors, answering their instincts as feral varmints. When...

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up in “red” states. That's the compelling conclusion of author Michael R. Petit, whose new book, “Homeland Insecurity,” makes a strong case that children in red states are more likely to suffer from poor prenatal care, early death, child abuse and teen incarceration than children in “blue” states. Petit's argument is that states with anti-tax, anti-government ideology are significantly harming their children's health. His book should be required reading for parents and lawmakers -- especially so in California, which is considering legislation that would significantly improve the health of its children. Petit, president of...

Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told his students that when we were his age—he was then close to 80—we would all be fighting the “Christian fascists.” The warning, given 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and television evangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts toward taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. This call for fundamentalists and evangelicals to take political power was...

Barring several series of near seizure-like corrections, Barack Obama will take the Presidential oath of office in January of 2009. It will be a cold January morning, his beautiful wife and daughters will be by his side and they will shiver as he places his hand on the Bible and swears to uphold the Constitution of the United States . His presidency that will follow, if reflective of anything at all of his legislative record, will then seek to dismantle that same Constitution. I have a long track record of predictions on Obama, and all of them have come true....

Rising black star of Democrats connects with evangelicals IN THE latest sign that the “God gap” between Republicans and Democrats is narrowing, one of America’s biggest evangelical churches will this week welcome Senator Barack Obama, the rising African-American star of the Democratic party who has become a leading contender for the 2008 presidential elections. Obama will appear on Friday at the Saddleback church in Lake Forest, California, where at least 20,000 conservative Christians gather each week for services led by Pastor Rick Warren, the evangelical author of the bestselling inspirational book The Purpose Driven Life. At first glance Warren and...

Tomatoes don't agree with John. He is sick within an hour of eating them and becomes sweaty and panicky. But worse than this, they also make him irritable and aggressive and liable to commit violent crimes. Jason has a similar reaction to bread. He has always loved doorsteps smothered in butter for breakfast. But it gives him diarrhoea and a weird kind of depressed 'hangover'. This makes him crave the heroin that once put his life on the skids. It may sound implausible, but a controversial theory is gathering momentum: that one explanation for crime may be found on our...

MANN TALK: An Answer to a Homophobic Pastor’s Letter By Perry Mann Hinton, WV (HNN) – The following is a letter verbatim that appeared in the Sept. 4, 2006 edition of the Charleston Gazette: “Editor: California’s assembly recently passed four bills designed to prohibit or punish anyone who promotes traditional views on marriage and family in the state school system. “Homosexual activists are undermining First Amendment guarantees of free speech by seeking to forbid any view that disagrees with or identifies the danger of homosexual lifestyle. “Moreover, these activists would require California textbooks, which will be produced for many states...

Late one night in 1996, suspicious that Marion Barry was using drugs again, boxing promoter Rock Newman sat him down and told him that he should resign as D.C. mayor and focus on beating his addiction. Newman said Barry cried in his arms. He remembers Barry telling him: "I love you, man. I know I betrayed your friendship." Barry agreed to leave town for a while and take a second stab at treatment. But he wouldn't give up politics. "He felt if he wasn't the mayor, he wasn't nothing," Newman said. Newman is out of Barry's life now; he dropped...

Posthumously yours, Stanley Williams* By David Howard December 20, 2005 NOTE: David Howard, of Ojai, is a peace activist and writer who held a candle for Williams at the Ventura County Government Center on the night of the execution. Dear Arnold Schwarzenegger, I've been dead for a few days now. You've probably already forgotten about me and moved on to more important matters like condemning gay marriage, helping the Minutemen keep Mexicans out of California, and preparing another diatribe to deny clemency to Clarence Allen, the 75-year-old blind Choctaw Indian you'll execute Jan. 17. Still, I beseech you -- once...

This moving and majestic film would be a landmark if only because it is the first Hollywood movie to unmask the homoerotic strain in American culture that Leslie Fiedler discerned in his notorious 1948 Partisan Review essay, "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey." Fiedler characterized the bond between Huckleberry Finn and Jim, a runaway slave, as an unconscious romantic attachment shared by two males of different races as they flee the more constraining and civilizing domain of women. He went on to identify that bond as a recurrent theme in American literature. In popular culture, Fiedler's Freudianism certainly...