Free Republic

On his MSNBC show Sunday morning, after playing a clip of Tucker Carlson calling for the release of the LSAT (Law School Admission Test) score of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden's Supreme Court justice nominee, Jonathan Capehart said to his liberal Democrat guest: "Senator Hirono, I'm not going to curse because it's Sunday and I'd get fired. Can you talk about why what Tucker Carlson just said is so repugnant?" Hirono failed to answer Capehart's question. She didn't/couldn't venture anything as to why it was "repugnant" to ask for Brown Jackson's LSAT score. The most she could muster was to suggest...

All it takes is one horrendous debate performance for Biden to blow up the supposed lead he has over Donald Trump. And given his past remarks, it looks like that’s likely to happen. Take this nugget here. Apparently, Biden thinks that we cannot get tough on China for sitting on their hands for nearly a week when they knew COVID would become a pandemic because all Asians look alike. Yes, you can’t tell who’s who regarding a Korean or someone from Beijing. Actually, you can—but the remarks come after the infamous 7-11 Indians statement and the cringeworthy lecture he gave...

Two big problems hit the Obama White House on Oct. 1: the government shutdown, which saw hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, national parks closed, and other disruptions. And the launch of the Affordable Care Act, which was always going to be tricky. The first problem was solved – temporarily, at least – when Republicans and Democrats worked out a stop-gap spending deal, also heading off (for now) a government default on its debts. By most accounts, the White House came out the winner, although President Obama was careful not to beat his chest too much about it. The...

With the federal debt bumping up against the legal maximum, the federal deficit exceeding a trillion dollars each year, official unemployment at 9% and unofficial unemployment twice as high, one might expect some belt-tightening among the governing class. Such expectations have not borne out when it comes to Obama’s minions. More than 75% of the White House staff got raises this year. The average salary increase was 8%. These statistics would seem to contradict Administration claims that salaries have been “frozen.” Presidential Press Secretary Jay Carney contended that “in the context of the nearly four trillion dollars being spent by...

(Intentional mis-spelling by me in post heading; non-intentional mis-spellings by Jay Severin to follow) Jay Severin of WTKK was apparently so upset that he was not invited to Emily Rooney's WGBH soiree that he instructed WTKK's program director to fire Ms. Rooney (allegedly...but oh maybe it was just a budget cut). The following is a nice little email sent by James Thompson Severino III (real name) to Ms. Rooney, as relayed by the Globe's Steve Bailey. Rooney had a paid gig offering commentary on Severin's show... ----------------------------- "Dear Emily," Severin e-mailed Rooney on Wednesday evening just minutes before the big...

Hellooooooo Infidels!!!

Eight months after her son Derek's death in Iraq, Lompoc resident Debbie Argel Bastian is raising money in hopes of visiting the war-torn country where the decorated Air Force captain lost his life. Mrs. Bastian wants to join a tour to Iraq organized by the conservative nonprofit organization "Move America Forward" sometime in late spring. She and other Gold Star families -- those who've lost a family member in the war -- plan to visit military bases and try to connect with soldiers. She will not, however, visit the region where her son was killed last Memorial Day. The Air...

I've been offered admission into West Point and the Naval Academy (class of '09.) I'm leaning towards West Point because I would like to serve in a hard-core, rapidly deployed, infantry/special forces unit. My understanding is that the Army controls the majority of the special forces. Any info would be appreciated.

<p>The Best and Brightest Charles Murray tries to quantify "Human Achievement."</p> <p>BY GARY ROSEN Thursday, October 23, 2003 12:01 a.m.</p> <p>In our age of overused superlatives, none stands in greater need of rehabilitation than "genius," a title that Leonardo now shares with such eminences as Warren Buffett and Eminem. Charles Murray's rough-and-ready test is whether an individual's work makes us ask, in wonder, "How can a human being have done that?" But he doesn't stop there. Incorrigible social scientist that he is, Mr. Murray wants to prove that supreme excellence actually exists in the arts and sciences. The result is "Human Accomplishment," a systematic effort to rate and rank the likes of Aristotle, Mozart and Einstein and to describe the conditions that have allowed them to flourish. Much of this brick of a book is devoted to explaining, in tiresome detail, just how Mr. Murray goes about quantifying the seemingly unquantifiable. His trick is to consult the experts--or, rather, to distill usable numbers from their encyclopedias, anthologies, general histories and biographical dictionaries. An individual making an appearance in at least 50% of the selected sources for a given field wins the label "significant figure." By Mr. Murray's reckoning, there have been 4,002 such "people who matter" in the period 800 B.C. to 1950. Each member of this Pantheon gets an "index score" on a 100-point scale, based on how much attention--pages, column inches, etc.--he receives in the specialist literature.</p>