Free Republic

Well it’s that time of year when all of the rich leftists in Hollywood get out their $40,000 dollar gowns, put on their millions in jewelry, climb into their limos, and head up to the Kodak Theater to pat themselves on the back for being working class heroes. I couldn’t care less about which picture or actor gets a trophy, I just love listening to the political correctness and monumental hubris on display for the world to see. This year I have decided to add my own category. The category is: Which liberal cause will come up most often during...

Charlie Sheen has launched another crude attack against his bosses at CBS and Warner Bros following Thursday's announcement that the remaining season of Two and a Half Men has been scrapped. On Friday, Sheen (now in the Bahamas) called into the radio show Loose Cannons and lashed out at his bosses - whom he called "clowns" - for "getting up in my grill, telling me how to live my personal life." "I kept saying back off, back off - and they wouldn't," he added. "I kept asking for that respect and I couldn't get it.

MADISON, Wisc. -- Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, the GOP's leader in the upper house, said today that access to parts of the Capitol will be closed off to the public starting 6 p.m. A little background. The occupation of the capitol is, in some ways, a fluke. Citizens are allowed to stay overnight in the Capitol if there is a hearing going on and people are giving testimony. Democrats have had a quasi-official hearing going since the start of this impasse, which has allowed hundreds of people to sleep in the Capitol every night. But since the start of this week,...

Manhattan Institute Fellow Steven Malanga tells WPRI that the only reason President Obama could freeze wages is that he is not constrained by same laws Gov. Walker is trying to scale back Steven Malanga pointed out in an interview with the WPRI’s Christian Schneider Wednesday that federal workers do not have the right to bargain for wages or benefits – a fact that allowed President Barack Obama to impose a public-sector wage freeze. “Federal workers do not have the right to bargain collectively for either benefits or wages,” said Malanga. “(Wisconsin Gov. Scott) Walker would only take away that right...

If the protesters were looking for some peace and quiet, they may not get it soon. For the past week, the volume of the protests here has been at times deafening, thanks to dozens of drummers who have kept up their pounding and cheering often well into the night. Now comes word that vuvuzuelas, those long plastic horns so popular among fans at last year's World Cup in South Africa, are about to add to the din.

MADISON, Wis. (WTAQ) - A group based in Utah has begun the process of recalling eight Democratic state Senators from office. American Recall Coalition filed the paperwork Tuesday with the Government Accountability Board.

CALLER: You mentioned at the beginning of the show today that there's an election in Chicago, and right you are. The mayoral election is going to be held where the new hizzoner is going to be picked -- RUSH: The day of the living dead is Election Day in Chicago. CALLER: Yes. The skids have been greased, the checks have been cashed, and -- RUSH: Yeah, right. CALLER: -- and it will happen or something worse than that will happen. But, anyway, Rahm didn't have any problem in the financing area. Politico reports he raised $10.6 million in individual contributions,...

MADISON, Wis. — State senators who miss two or more session days will no longer get paid through direct deposit. They’ll have to pick up their checks in person on the Senate floor during a session.

Rasmussen polled likely voters across the nation to determine whether public-sector unions have persuaded the country that Scott Walker is the love child of Hosni Mubarak and Adolf Hitler, or whether voters have sided with Walker’s attempt to break union dominance in state government. So far, it looks as though the unions have lost the public-relations battle:A sizable number of voters are following new Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s showdown with unionized public employees in his state, and nearly half side with the governor.

But on Wednesday the heads of the police and firefighter unions stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the steps of City Hall united against Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who they both called a "liar." What brought the rivals together? Money. For the past month, Mr. Bloomberg has renewed a call to eliminate a $12,000-a-year pension supplement for about 60,000 retired police officers and firefighters that the mayor has repeatedly called "Christmas bonuses." Mr. Bloomberg said the city is "now kicking in more than $600 million a year to subsidize it" at a time when they're trying to close a $2 to $4 billion budget...

Hot off the pages of Mother Jones, Think Progress and AlterNet: As the nation focuses on the efforts of Governor Scott Walker to take away collective bargaining rights from public employees in Wisconsin, new information is coming to light that reveals what is truly going on here. Mother Jones is reporting that much of the funding behind the Walker for Governor campaign came from none other than uber-conservatives, the infamous Koch Brothers.

The Democratic National Committee's Organizing for America arm -- the remnant of the 2008 Obama campaign -- is playing an active role in organizing protests against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's attempt to strip most public employees of collective bargaining rights.

Talk of bubble trouble is rife again in Silicon Valley. Private internet companies with names barely known in the financial world a year ago are suddenly the focus of heated price-talk – even if they have yet to prove they can raise money at some of these lofty levels.

He acknowledged that Obama is pushing a five-year domestic spending freeze, which the administration says will save $400 billion over 10 years. But Ryan said current spending levels are already too high and that sustaining those levels will not solve the "debt crisis," which he described as the biggest domestic problem facing the federal government. The deficit for this year is projected to hit $1.5 trillion, though House Republicans are trying to whittle that down with their own spending plan for the remainder of 2011. "It looks like the debt's going to continue rising under this budget," Ryan said of...

Civility is making the headlines lately, but if you dig a bit deeper, barbarism is the real story. To wit: Last month, MSNBC.com carried this story from Reno, NV: “Six girls arrested for Facebook ‘Attack a Teacher Day’ invite.” One middle school girl was arrested for inviting 100 fellow middle schoolers on the social networking site to participate in something she called “attack a teacher day,” while five other girls were arrested for responding to the invitation with threats against specific teachers. <---snip---> I hate to be the one to burst our national bubble about the potential for greater civility,...

A panel on Meet the Press discusses Reagan. With video. Please brace yourselves. NBC's Andrea Mitchell: "People are trying, republicans in particular, trying to appropriate Ronald Reagan for their own political purposes now."

This morning, I noticed this message on Google: "President Obama is taking questions on YouTube. Submit yours now." The words in the above google message, "Submit yours now" are for a live link to this page: Your Interview with the President, State of the Union 2011 Most of the questions are asking to have marijuana legalized. That's Obama's fan base, it would appear. What gets to me is the way google happily makes itself into Obama's servant for sludge like this.

Dozens of lawmakers are getting a second dose of high school as they venture across the aisle and ask colleagues to sit with them for President Obama’s State of the Union address next week. <----> snip <----> The bipartisan gesture carries a serious tone for nearly all who have pledged to do away with the typical seating arrangement, which is not assigned but generally gets divided by party. But the humor of asking one of their fellow lawmakers to attend the event as their “date” has not escaped members.

The point of both my pieces seems crystal clear, narrow in their scope, and even a little repetitive. But let me repeat it again… Hollywood has spent the last two decades hammering and insulting Middle America, Christians, and conservatives. Worse, they do it with sucker punches that insultingly come out of nowhere in what’s advertised as apolitical entertainment. Furthermore, this is an industry that prides itself on pushing the “edgy” envelope at every opportunity right in our face and when we least expect it. Sunday night, Hollywood got a taste of their own medicine and proved they couldn’t take it....

It takes a worried man to sing a worried song, and in a recent speech that seemed like Larry Summers' swan song, the president's departed economic adviser warned that America is "at risk of a profound demoralization with respect to government." He fears a future in which "an inadequately resourced government performs badly, leading to further demands that it be cut back, exacerbating performance problems, deepening the backlash and creating a vicious cycle." <----> snip <----> The vicious cycle that should worry Summers is the reverse of the one he imagines. It is not government being "cut back" because of...