Free Republic

I want to state at the outset that this essay is not intended to be an endorsement of Ron Paul. While I respect and admire many of his positions and his fidelity to the Constitution, I have strong misgivings about some of his stances on national security. If you could hear the debates between myself and my 20-year-old son, a passionate Ron Paul supporter, you would readily accept the sincerity of my disclaimer. That said, as the political season has heated up, I've been surprised at the tone of the discourse as it relates to Ron Paul. In fact, I...

Cancer treatment has made great progress in recent decades, but the tragedy is that so much of our effort to combat this scourge is just that: treatment. Once a disease appears, there is only so much that can be done. It would be far cheaper, more effective and less traumatic to prevent it. A vaccine for cancer would be a triumph for public health. Did I say “would be”? Actually, it is. Such a vaccine exists for one of the biggest killers of women. But Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is against it, and she’s not alone. Two different vaccines block...

Reporting from Costa Mesa— Michele Bachmann, struggling to regain her footing in the GOP presidential contest, Friday assailed rival Rick Perry, saying he abused his power as governor of Texas and rewarded political donors in a manner similar to President Obama. (snip) She compared it to the federal controversy unfolding around Solyndra, a solar equipment maker that received a $535-million federal loan guarantee and which went bankrupt last month. Republicans have suggested that the guarantee was pushed by the White House to reward a major campaign donor with ties to Solyndra's biggest shareholder, a charge the Obama administration denies. Bachmann...

RUSH: Perry goofed up by using an executive order on the Gardasil -- there's no question he goofed up on it -- instead of taking it to the Texas legislature. He's admitted that over and over again. I think one of the reasons that Perry gets tired is that he had all the questions. He had to answer every question three or four times last night, and he did it smiling. I tell you, I would have probably (by the third or fourth time they came at me on this) have said, "What more do you need to hear on...

Earlier today, I noted that Michele Bachmann finally scored points on Rick Perry by hitting him on his ties to Merck and linking that to the Gardasil mandate Perry imposed through executive order in Texas. This is a fair point on Perry’s record, even given his apology for pursuing the mandate through EO instead of through the legislature, and it’s not surprising that Bachmann was the candidate to first take advantage of the opening. (Mitt Romney passed a mandate on health insurance for all citizens of Massachusetts, which pretty much puts this issue out of reach for him.) However, Bachmann...

The decision to drop terror chieftain Osama bin Laden’s corpse into the Arabian Sea was the final meticulous step in a raid whose details were calculated to exert deadly force but also to achieve maximum effect in the propaganda war: the White House was careful to say bin Laden’s body had been treated according to Islamic tradition, but also to deny his followers a shrine. But while the watery grave may help diminish bin Laden’s status as a martyr to his followers, it was already fueling conspiracy theories; as the administration resisted releasing even photographs of the slain terrorist leader...

Choice tidbits: chrisatyoursix I cant wait to watch @KeithOlbermann at 8 to see why @MMFlinthelped bail out an accused rapist. 14 Dec KeithOlbermann @chrisatyoursix you might want to read in on those charges 14 Dec tommyxtopher @KeithOlbermann @chrisatyoursix Are you saying that holding a woman down after she tells you to stop isn’t rape? (link) Or are u saying that you don’t think Assange has been accused of holding a woman down after she said “stop?” (link) tommyxtopher Because that’s what he’s accused of: holding a woman down after she said “stop.”http://bit.ly/fMVA7m (link) tommyxtopher I’m not asking to be a...

Eccentric comedian and former talk show host Roseanne Barr claimed on her blog July 8 that Republicans are avid kiddie porn viewers who like to have sex with young children. The liberal activist and comedy queen was blogging about sicko children’s author K.P. Bath, who was just slapped with a six years prison term for child porn possession last week. In an item titled “typical republican child porn consuming geek,” Barr posted a mug shot of Bath and wrote that he was “a typical republican who loves reagan and palin and despises the ‘nanny state’ and socialism.”

Of the festivals of nonsense that periodically overtake American politics, surely the silliest is the argument that because Washington is having a particularly snowy winter it proves that climate change is a hoax and, therefore, we need not bother with all this girly-man stuff like renewable energy, solar panels and carbon taxes. Just drill, baby, drill. When you see lawmakers like Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina tweeting that “it is going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries ‘uncle,’ ” or news that the grandchildren of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma are building an igloo next to the Capitol...

Wolfie Blackheart is not an ordinary 18-year-old. She believes she is a wolf — technically, a werewolf — and so she wears a tail. She also wears a harness in case someone special wants to drag her around. And last week, she used a pocketknife in her kitchen to decapitate a dog — already dead, according to Wolfie — that had been missing since Jan. 5. “I severed the head, boiled the head,” Wolfie said. “People make the mistake of hacking the spine, which will fracture the skull.” She added, “You also have to put (the head) outside for the...

There is a new peace coalition in town called Peace of the Action. Peace of the Action is the brainchild of Peace Mom, Cindy Sheehan, who has been striving to make the concept of peace a reality since her son, Casey, was killed in Iraq in April 2004. “Peace of the Action will be setting up Camp Out Now on the lawn of the Washington Monument beginning March 13th and this new peace camp will be the launching pad for daily direct actions against the seat of our government; A government that is involved in so many wars, invasions, bombings...

There is evil hate in Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and their Tea Party Patriot supporter’s voices when they campaign to deny affordable health care to every American, all the while extolling the virtues of their Christian faith. The truth is that they are either lying hypocrites, worshippers of Satan involved in a grand plan to destroy America and the Christian faith, or ignorant of what it means to be a follower of Christ. Christians know that their paramour, Jesus Christ, gave two commands to his disciples when asked what the most important commandment was. He said to love God and...

President Obama has lost his 2012 bid for re-election. He has made key decisions in three areas that, unless he alters his approach (not likely), could well guarantee a Republican victory: an embarrassingly rolled-out, badly-compromised health-care reform bill; his continuing slavish subservience to those on Wall Street that took the country into the economic toilet; and his sad imitation of CheneyBush's imperial campaign in Afghanistan. (Obama's only hope for 2012 may depend on Sarah Palin getting the GOP nomination. Even better if Glenn Beck or Dick Cheney is her running mate -- been mentioned seriously. The Democrats can only hope...

And here we were thinking that slap-stick humor died out with the legendary Charlie Chaplin. If you haven't already heard, a 33 year-old man in Minnesota by the name of Jeremy Paul Olson was arrested yesterday for chucking tomatoes at Sarah Palin during a Mall of America book signing. Olson attempted the tomato barrage from the second floor balcony, but unfortunately missed Sarah and her husband Todd both by about ten feet. He did, however, hit nearby police officers (one right in the face!), which is probably the only reason that he was truly taken into custody. That is, I...

A hilarious edit of an old comic book hammers Charles Johnson's decent into madness. http://racedetective.blogspot.com/2009/12/green-lizard.html

(Reason #)8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

Check this out if your stomach can handle it.

"Joe Arpaio, who calls himself "America's toughest sheriff," has gone rogue. Consumed by ego, accused of racial profiling, and running roughshod over the federal government, this incurable media hound is flirting with another title: "outlaw."

Lemme cut to the chase, Kanye West is phony as was his contrived outburst when he rushed the stage to disrupt an acceptance speech from country singer Taylor Swift, during last night’s MTV Video Music Awards. It was a perfectly executed stunt which was designed to make national headlines (which it did). It was designed to become among the top trending topics in twitter and one of the hot key words in google (which it is). It was obviously designed to take away attention from issues at hand as Kanye’s outburst overshadowed many of the performances and presenters including the...

BERKELEY — Six months after Tristan Anderson, a former UC Berkeley tree sitter and Bay Area activist, nearly died after being struck in the head with a tear-gas canister fired by Israeli troops, friends are holding a benefit Sunday to raise money for his recovery costs. Anderson, 38, remains at a rehabilitation hospital near Tel Aviv and continues to have setbacks and infections after skull surgery last month, supporters said. The operation came after doctors learned Anderson was suffering from post-traumatic hydrocephalus, a blockage of the ventricles — open spaces in the brain — that causes poor circulation of cerebral...

Lynette Fromme, convicted of the attempted assassination of President Ford in '75, has been released from prison, a prison spokeswoman says.

<p>Fellow Freepers, which sort of conservative described in this list are you?</p>

Wingers these days, despite their shrill bravado, are a dispirited group, reeling from recent political developments that signify the utter repudiation of their worldview. In succession, they've latched on to a number of gimmicks to keep hope from being entirely extinguished. Palin is one of those gimmicks and conceivably the most important. And, although she is a gimmick, she is also the current and past respository of hope for deliverance from a poltical reality that crushes their spirit. Clearly, Palin is aware of this phenomenon and appears anxious to exploit it for either political or economic gain or both. Maybe...

Many of the tourists filing past the White House since Barack Obama's inauguration have been taken aback by the weekday sight of silent, orange jumpsuit-clad, black-hooded protesters standing on the sidewalk as a reminder to the president that approximately 240 men are still being detained at the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison. When my daughters joined me Easter Monday morning to be part of the Catholic Worker 100-Days Campaign to Close Guantanamo, we donned our jumpsuits and hoods and proceeded slowly through Lafayette Park to take our positions along Pennsylvania Avenue. Children gawked in wonder, asking their parents why we were...

    When Seattle artist Deborah Lawrence was asked to create an ornament for a holiday tree at the White House, nobody familiar with her work could have imagined she'd stick to snowmen, Santa Claus or Mount Rainier bathed in festive red, white and blue.That Lawrence submitted an ornament with the words "Impeach Bush" on its surface is also no surprise, except to the people responsible for picking her.     Photo courtesy Deborah Lawrence   Artist Deborah Lawrence holds the ornament that will not hang on the White House Christmas tree. The 9-inch ball Lawrence created is covered with...

Well, Michael Schaffer of The New Republic has a few things to say about you: ...the president-elect, according to his more fervent campaign-season detractors, has a raft of unforgivable faults: He's a socialist, a Muslim, an actual love-child of Malcolm X. His birth certificate was missing, his book had been ghost-written by William Ayers, and his wife, "Mrs. Grievance," as a National Review cover dubber her, was perennially on the cusp of getting caught ranting against the white man. The only thing keeping the Illinois senator's infamy from going public is the quiescence of the liberal media. Perhaps you remember....

Cynthia McKinney says 5000 executed Katrina used as cover. News Type: Event — Tue Sep 30, 2008 Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney announced for the first time on Sunday that she has received information that some 5000, mostly male, possibly prisoners were killed execution style, by single gunshot to the head, using the tragic events of hurricane Katrina as a cover. Candidate McKinney made the announcement at a conference in Oakland, Ca, for the Critical Resistance 10 on Sunday. While speaking she informed the audience that she has received information from a sources that were involved in the clean-up and disposal...

Ten years ago today, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, causing a devastating loss of life and signaling that the United States faced new and more serious terrorist threats abroad and potentially at home. That potential became a reality on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked, causing an even more devastating loss of life and sending an even clearer signal regarding the necessity of a smart and focused response to a challenge that could no longer be ignored. Unfortunately, President Bush did not get the message. He and his neoconservative advisers...

Is it possible to fall out of love with your own country? For two years, I, like many Americans, have been focused intently on documenting, exposing, and alerting the nation to the Bush administration’s criminality and its assault on the Constitution and the rule of law — a story often marginalized at home. I was certain that when Americans knew what was being done in their name, they would react with horror and outrage.

When the national political conversation turns to excessive nastiness, will the media remember The Huffington Post? On Bush's last Memorial Day as Commander-in-Chief, Democratic activist Bob Geiger posted an article titled "Dead Troops Remembered by President Who Had Them Killed." Bush is a murderer? Geiger says yes: "Make no mistake about it, George W. Bush is as responsible for the deaths of those men and women as if he himself had fired the bullet or set the IEDs that ended their lives." What's interesting is that your usual Huffington Post blogger doesn't have anywhere near the same amount of hatred...

ROBYN O’BRIEN likes to joke that at least she hasn’t started checking the rearview mirror to see if she’s being followed. But some days, her imagination gets away from her and she wonders if it’s only a matter of time before Big Food tries to stop her from exposing what she sees as a profit-driven global conspiracy whose collateral damage is an alarming increase in childhood food allergies. Ms. O’Brien has presented her views, albeit in a less radical wrapper, on CNN, CBS and in frequent print interviews. Frontier Airlines and Wild Oats stores distribute the allergy-awareness gear she designed....

Rosie O’Donnell, who abruptly left “The View” on ABC last spring after drawing attention and ratings for her opinions on everything from the Iraq war to her co-hosts, is in serious discussions to return to television atop a new soapbox: a prime-time show on the cable news channel MSNBC, according to executives on both sides of the negotiations who have been briefed directly. Under one scenario, Ms. O’Donnell would be given the 9 p.m. slot each weeknight on MSNBC, where she would go head-to-head with two heavyweights of cable talk: “Larry King Live” on CNN and “Hannity & Colmes” on...

It is mid-afternoon in an airy, lower-Manhattan flat, on the ninth floor of a posh-looking building with a doorman. It is a bit dark and there are no lights on. There is a strange quiet feel to the flat, perhaps due to the lack of any appliances - no fridge humming, no TV interference, even no air conditioning, though it is hot and humid outside. Walk into the bathroom, and you will notice that there is no toilet paper, no bottles of shampoo or toiletries. In the kitchen, berries and cheese are laid out on the counter and there are...

"University of Florida student Andrew Meyer struggles with University Police as officers try to remove him from a question and answer session with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Monday, Sept. 17, 2007, in Gainesville, Fla. Meyer, 21, was Tasered and arrested after he angrily and repeatedly tried to ask Kerry about the 2004 election and other subjects during a campus forum.""University of Florida student Andrew Meyer speaks with university police after being removed from a forum where Sen. John Kerry was speaking in Gainesville, Fla., Monday Sept. 17, 2007. Meyer, 21, was Tasered and arrested after he angrily and repeatedly tried...

AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil. In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies. However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is...

No, I’m not kidding. Here’s a paraphrase of what he said: ...the only reason Bush is talking about fatalities is because he didn’t give MN enough money to maintain the bridge. Right, Ed. Because it’s the President, and not Congress, who appropriates highway funds for roads and bridges. What’s more, have we really departed so far from our federalist roots that we’re now blaming the President of the United States for not properly maintaining a bridge in Minneapolis (if that is indeed why the bridge went down)? What about local city officials? County road inspectors? State highway department people? The...

Just five short weeks ago, terrorist sympathizer Cindy Sheehan staged a public hissy fit and announced she was quitting the Democratic party and the antiwar movement over the failure of the Democrats to end the war in Iraq and personal attacks she received from liberals for criticizing the Democrats' failure.Now, claiming to be motivated by the commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence by her arch-nemesis, President Bush, Sheehan has announced a world tour commencing in the president's hometown of Crawford, Texas, on July 10.Sheehan says she will travel on foot to New Orleans, Ft. Benning, Washington, D.C., New York City...

New documents ensure Dubya will rule America, should calamity strike. Free balloons! It's just one of those obscure little unreported-upon conspiracy theory-ready hunks of floating White House detritus, a couple of odd, sticky, foul-smelling documents no one really wants to touch and no one knows quite what to make of, probably means nothing, probably being misread anyway, all a bit overblown and strange and not all that important and not all that different than the way things are now. Unless, you know, it's not. Unless the violent twinge of queasy paranoia crossed with that uncontrolled bout of colon-clenching sighing you...

Cindy Sheehan, the so-called "Peace Mom" who gained national attention protesting President Bush's Iraq war policy by remaining camped in a ditch near his Crawford, Texas, ranch, has issued a resignation letter as the face of the American anti-war movement. "Good-bye America," Sheehan writes in her online diary, "you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it." Sheehan says she came to her "heartbreaking conclusions" this Memorial Day morning, saying, "These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things...

KENT - Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan would like to see today's college students become more active against the war in Iraq. ``I wish college students cared enough about what's going on in Iraq and our country to be as committed as the students were in 1970,'' Sheehan said in an interview an hour before she was to address a crowd at Kent State University on the 37th anniversary of the Kent State shootings. Sheehan, 49, whose son Army Specialist Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq in 2004, said she does not wish for any protest to become violent, but she...

"Rotten Tomatoes UK can exclusively reveal that Kevin Smith's next project - a horror movie - is called "Red State". Up until now Smith has revealed little about the film other than the fact it's a horror movie and it'll be decidedly less joke-y than his back-catalogue. But, in addition to the title, Smith was keen to give us a head's up on the plot of the film. If you've seen any of his "An Evening With..." DVDs, you'll know how much fun it can be to sit down in an audience and listen to "Clerks II" director Kevin Smith...

Is the Clerks and Dogma creator next going to attack middle America, Conservatives, Republicans and Christians in an upcoming movie? It certainly seems so with a recent interview he gave that appears on the moviefan website called Rottentomatoes.com. Smith, known for his irreverent skewering of conventional mores, seems to be in the midst of production on a horror movie based on a "Fred Phelps" styled character. UK audiences recently saw documentary journalist Louis Theroux spend time with members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, a controversial church group made largely of members of the Phelps family and run...

New Yorkers got to kick President George W. Bush's butt on Thursday, sort of. Performance artist Mark McGowan kicked off his bid to crawl for 72 hours across Manhattan dressed as the president, offering the opportunity to kick his backside. The controversial artist from London began his odyssey from New York's Lincoln Centre wearing a rubber George Bush mask, a business suit, knee pads, work gloves and a sign stuck to his cushioned posterior reading simply: "Kick My Ass".

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials. More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.

Seriously! I heard him use this term repeatedly on his show to describe Barack Obama. When is enough-enough? What does this **** have to say to finally send his ass to the ass-heap of history? When are advertisers, station managers, sales represtatives and the American people going to say "you've had your ***** fun - you racist ass, pill-popping, no talent Republican aplogist Ass-pickle, pole smoking prick" - YOU'RE ***** FIRED.What does it take? How many outrages do we have to endure? Perhaps the Department of Defense can ask all the "Halfrican's" in the military how much they love having...

Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) believes Karl Rove was behind CBS’s infamous Bush National Guard memos. Today on Sean Hannity’s radio show, Hinchey asserted that Rove “presented” the documents so that CBS would pick up the story. “There’s a significant amount of evidence,” he insisted, while conspicuously failing to provide any. Two years ago Congressman Hinchey made a similar claim at a community forum in Ithaca, New York. A LGF reader was there and recorded what he said. Audio is available at Little Green Footballs.

In her historical mystery, "The Daughter of Time," Josephine Tey (a pen name of Elizabeth MacKintosh) has Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant, while confined to his hospital bed, solve the 15th century murder of the two York princes in the Tower of London. The princes were murdered by Henry VII, and the crime was blamed on Richard III in order to justify the upstart Tudor's violent seizure of the English throne. Tey makes the point that if a 20th century mystery writer can detect the truth about a 15th century murder, historians have no excuse to persist in writing in...

In what was likely her final legislative act in Congress, outgoing Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney announced a bill Friday to impeach President Bush. The legislation has no chance of passing and serves as a symbolic parting shot not only at Bush but also at Democratic leaders. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has made clear that she will not entertain proposals to sanction Bush and has warned the liberal wing of her party against making political hay of impeachment. McKinney, a Democrat who drew national headlines in March when she struck a Capitol police officer, has long insisted that Bush...

Washington – Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record: “If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but...

Does your weekend need a little cheering up for some reason? Well, here's a contribution from a DU moonbat that's sure to brighten your day and perk up your smile: whereismyparty (195 posts) Sat Sep-16-06 02:33 PM Original message I am mainly hopeless. When I look at all of the deceptions of our government, I feel such an array of emotions: I AM ANGRY that they remain in power and unpunished. That the media allows the government to decieve it's own people so unabashedly. I HOPE the whole powerful cabal's arrogance and distorted view will soon catch up with them...