Free Republic

PHILLIP Island's iconic fairy penguins have been renamed "little penguins" in Queensland to avoid offending the gay community. In an act of political correctness gone overboard, Sea World theme park operators on the Gold Coast changed the name of their star attraction to avoid being "offensive". Rebecca Smith, spokeswoman for Sea World, confirmed: "We didn't want to upset the gay community. "We didn't have any complaints about the name of the penguins, but someone thought it could be seen as offensive so we decided to change it to little penguin instead. "The name is more politically correct. We're not treating...

This column is not about Terri Schiavo and the wrenching spectacle that has surrounded her tragic fate. May she rest in peace. It is about Congressional Democrats and how they once again pathetically misread what moral values mean in a political context. May they miraculously wake from their persistent vegetative state — or it won’t be long before they are receiving their political last rites. Ever since November, Republicans (aided and abetted by a poorly worded exit poll) have not only succeeded in defining the last election as having been about moral values, they’ve succeeded in defining moral values. In...

N.Y. asks online cigarette buyers to cough up taxNew York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday that smokers who bought cigarettes over the Internet had better be prepared to cough up taxes they tried to avoid by going online. "The law says you got to pay your taxes. The handful of people who don't are just stealing from the rest of us," Bloomberg said in a weekly radio address. The city's finance department this week sent letters to 3,700 smokers asking them to fork over $1.3 million in city taxes from Internet tobacco purchases. The annual loss to the city from...