Free Republic

It was late on a rainy fall day, and a college freshman named Rey was showing me the new tattoo on his arm. It commemorated his 500-mile hike through Europe the previous summer, which happened also to be, he said, the last time he was happy. We sat together for a while in his room talking, his tattoo of a piece with his spiky brown hair, oversize tribal earrings and very baggy jeans. He showed me a photo of himself and his girlfriend kissing, pointed out his small drum kit, a bass guitar that lay next to his rumpled clothes...

Hello, fellow white people! Yeeeeeehaawwwwww! What in tarnation is all this jibber jabber I hear about the Iraqi war going anything but one hundred percent perfectly?! I tell ya what that is: COMMIE talk! These Un-American libs (which include minorities, women, and other minorities, such as blacks and homosexual gay queers!) the war has turned into a black hole with no "forseeable" (whatever in tarnation that big word means) end in sight. To this I say, shut your damn mouth! The only opinions that should be expressed are those that are in total agreement with our distinguished president, Dick Cheney,...

You people are a genuine menace. I think I'll be calling my congressman to see what can be done to shut this place down.

Male athletes aiming to win Olympic medals without resorting to banned drugs could soon have a new, legal way of gaining an advantage over their rivals - wear a dress for two years and then compete as a woman. This week the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the leading body of world sport, will decide whether to amend its rules to allow transsexuals who have undergone a sex change to compete under their new gender. That proposal is controversial enough, since most sex changes are man-to-woman and critics say those transsexuals will retain unfair advantages of height and strength over female...