Free Republic

Tropical Storm Isaac forced Republicans on Sunday to rewrite the script for their national convention in Tampa, as party officials scrambled to make sure candidate Mitt Romney's message to voters would not be blown off course. Isaac was expected to spare Tampa a direct hit and strike, with hurricane strength, farther north along the Gulf Coast this week. But it has left Republicans who canceled most of their schedule for Monday in anticipation of the storm with a new challenge for the convention's remaining three days: Help Romney make an aggressive, memorable argument to be president, while being careful to...

Thanks to the helpful feedback I have received over these past two, or so, years, I have seen the enormous error of my ways. I used to be against ALL wars and the use of violence, but (and I must admit a little confusion on this one, at first) now it seems that I am against wars, acts of war, and violence ONLY if a Republican is president. Now I understand with perfect clarity that it was good to protest Bush—and if the US-UN resolution against Libya was done when Bush was president, it would have been wrong—but now it’s...

Monika Shreves, a college senior with a petite frame and long, black hair, remembers the first mean girl she met. The girl lived in Shreves's Northern Virginia neighborhood and had the blondest hair and eyelashes Shreves had ever seen. The two arrived together at Girl Scout camp, and the girl assumed command of the cabin they were to sleep in. "This is the cool cabin," she told the other girls who wandered into the campsite, looking for a place to throw down their stuff. She'd size up each girl. "You can come in," she'd tell one. "You cannot," she'd tell...

The housing crisis wasn't caused by much-maligned exotic loans so much as lending huge sums of money to unworthy borrowers, a report released Monday suggested. The misdiagnosis of the housing bubble, whose implosion in 2007 knocked out the broader economy, drove Congress to overreact and ban useful tools, according to a report from the Corky McMillin Center for Real Estate at San Diego State University. The study examined lending practices in 12 countries and found that many make extensive use of loans in which the borrower avoids paying down principal for a fixed period. With the exception of the United...

Look what someone has placed prominently on Wikipedia at very front of the section describing Christine O'Donnells Religious Views: In a 1999 appearance on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, O'Donnell admitted she had "dabbled in witchcraft" and had a "midnight picnic on a satanic altar." Said O'Donnell, “I dabbled into witchcraft - I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. ... I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do.”When explaining her experience, she continued,“I mean, there's little blood there...

Arizona's controversial new immigration law probably would withstand legal challenges on constitutional grounds, according to a panel of three UC San Diego law professors. However, the professors said the law could create problems, such as racial profiling, if it is not implemented properly. The professors spoke Thursday during a panel discussion on the university's campus in La Jolla hosted by the Institute of the Americas, an organization that promotes cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. Arizona's law, Senate Bill 1070, requires police officers to check a person's immigration status if they have a "reasonable suspicion" the person is in...

San Diego, California (CNN) -- Dear Sen. John McCain: Say it ain't so. For many of us who have -- over the years -- admired your courage in tackling difficult issues, this was a painful and disappointing week. A dozen years ago, I was writing a column for the Arizona Republic when I saw a story about your jaw-dropping support from Latino voters. You earned 60 to 70 percent of the Latino vote in re-election campaigns. You were quoted as saying that it was your "honor" to be well thought of by a population for which you had great respect....

I was recently reading a Wikipedia crtique of Ayn Rand's masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged: "In the world of Atlas Shrugged, society stagnates when independent productive achievers began to be socially demonized and even punished for their accomplishments." ... "Atlas Shrugged was generally disliked by critics, ..., reviewing Atlas Shrugged for The Saturday Review, opined that the novel was written with "dazzling virtuosity" but that it was "shot through with hatred." This was echoed by Granville Hicks, writing for The New York Times Book Review, who also stated that the book was "written out of hate." The reviewer for Time magazine asked:...

This morning I was trying to explain to my son why ObamaCare will affect our economy for generations. I was trying to come up with a good analogy. The supporters of the recent Health Care anchor have been mocking those of us who have been trying to warn of the dire effects of the bill by saying "see", there was no financial meltdown the day after. But here is an analogy that explains what is happening. Our economy is a hot air ballon. Less hot air in (due to tax increases) means less lift and more weight added (due to...

Yesterday in an interview with Fox New's Bret Baier Presidente Obama laughed off concern from people who were agast at the process Congress was using in order to deem a non-voted bill passed. The "procedural matters" are not a concern to El Presidente as long as they are able to move his beloved "ObamaCare" back to his desk to be signed into "law". However it won't become law in the United States of America; but in a transformative moment it will become the first law passed in the United Banana Republic. What made us a great nation was not the...

I keep hearing the phrase: "Healthcare is a right". I looked through the Constitution, but I didn't see any mention of Healthcare in it. But I'm reading the outdated original version, and not the Obama recommended Saul Alinsky version. However having read the original version of the Constitution I see the following in the Second Amendment to the Constitution: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." This is not talking about Michelle Obama's right to bare arms, but the right...

I just got laid off and I'm thinking about working for free. I've been working for 27 years and I've been fortunate that this is the first time this has happened to me. I have a family with 3 kids and I won't be able to work for free for very long (for a couple weeks perhaps) but I thought that I might look for work outside my usual 10 hour day in a cubicle tap-tap-tapping on a computer for the tech industry. I got paid well but to tell the truth I'm tired of the hectic pace and Asperger...

When U.S. law enforcement officials last month busted a Mexican drug cartel moving tons of dope and millions of dollars, they announced it in Atlanta. The distribution ring stretched from Colombia to New York to Italy, but the operation’s key hub was Atlanta. Long a commerce and transportation center for giants like UPS and Delta Air Lines, Atlanta tags itself as an “international city.” This time, it embodied that definition in an illicit way. Federal drug agent Jack Killorin calls Atlanta “the new Southwest border.” ... Mexican distribution rings supply about 90 percent of the cocaine, 80 percent of the...

I was traveling extensively in Europe when Reagan described the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire". I remembered all the sneers and derisive jokes about what a simpleton he was. First of all you had to believe there was a Devil and he had some influence over man. You had be Religious. What an idiot! What a moron! I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Northern California recently with my family and the topic of Evil came up in the most unexpected place. In a children's performance at the aquarium. "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". We were hoping for a skit...

I've been following me own advice from today and posting on ABC News site. I've been doing this over the last couple of weeks. I've done it long enough to notice a pattern. My posts show up for about 1 minute and then are deleted by the moderator. In other cases they are deleted immediately. My posts are not vulgar or hateful, but conservative. I also noticed tonight that other posts that were critical of George Stephanoplous were allowed to live for less than a minute before they were deleted. So much for first amendment rights. These aren't for us...

Here's a thought. Take a day off from Free Republic in the next couple of weeks and spend it posting comments and replys on the MSM web-sites. I'd recommend the TV and newspaper sites that you think most independents will read. I try to take a little time out every day to leave a couple posts with links to stories the MSM refuses to cover. Anyway a lot-of-little goes a long way.

She's a Hockey Mom who's supports the National Hockey League's Hockey Fights Cancer campaign. She's lives on an island far removed in values from the American Heartland. She has been criticised for wearing her skirts too short, and the subject of many commentaries and Web sites about her legs. Her interviews have been criticised as being too cute and sophmorish. She has been roundly criticized for not writing her own material, but merely reading off the teleprompter. She has also been criticised for plagarism. She has been made fun of, laughed at on TV and talk shows, and told she...

Senator McCain appeared to have a strategy of not looking directly at Obama during the Debate. I'm trying to understand why he chose to do that. Was it: 1) He was trying to unnerve Obama? 2) He was angry at Obama for the political posturing, back stabbing, and double-crossing that the Democrats sprung on him and couldn't look at Obama without anger? 3) He was trying to make Obama look less important by not looking at him or addressing him directly? I thought there was some risk in doing this because he appeared to "dis" Obama by not looking at...

Idea for new McCain/Palin Ad: Narrator: Obama says he will only raise taxes on the rich. Let's meet some rich people. Rosie Garcia - Denver, CO I own a small taco shop in Denver and I don't feel rich. I struggle to make ends meet and to keep my business going and make sure my workers get paid. I was going to vote for Obama until I realized that he considers me a rich person. LaDainian Johnson - Philadelphia, PA Hey my friends always said I'd be rich someday, cause I work hard made my business work. I just thought...

Here is cautionary tale for travelers considering using Priceline to book their travel... I haven't used Priceline for years because of bad experiences in the past. But I thought I'd give them one more try. I booked a hotel room through Priceline for our family, and requested 2 beds, but got a standard room with 1 king sized bed instead. Somehow in the booking process Priceline swapped what we asked for without us knowing. I'm sure this was just a glitch of their computer system , but none-the-less we didn't know this had occured first. I discovered this later when...