Free Republic

'Mexican Man' costume offends Latino shoppers, community groups By Sean Maher EMERYVILLE — A costume dubbed "Mexican Man" has offended Latino shoppers and community groups after being discovered at a Halloween chain store. The photo on the costume packaging shows a man with a thick mustache wearing a poncho and a sombrero. Oakland resident Monica Plazola said she discovered the costume last week at the Spirit Halloween store in Emeryville, which she was visiting with her two children, ages 7 and 9. "We were there at the store, with all kinds of costumes, and that was the only one identified...

Specter wants Wilson censured Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.), who's looked at POTUS from both sides now, was just on the Bill Press radio show suggesting the South Carolina firebrand Joe Wilson be censured for his heckle heard round the world. Said the Republican-turned-Dem: "He apologized immediately afterward but I don't think that’s adequate... If an apology is the consequence of an outburst I think we can expect more – that’s not a sufficient penalty that’s not a sufficient price to pay.. I'm not saying the guy should be kicked out of the House… But there ought to be some rebuke,...

Editor, At the risk of sounding sexist, how did the health care debate get hijacked by an overgrown teenage girl on Facebook? Sarah Palin quit her job as governor of Alaska to become an unpaid right-wing blogger, yet still has the power to disrupt any rational discourse. Possibly related: How did someone like Palin even rise to the spotlight in the first place? Her rise was born in the waning days of the contentious Democratic primaries between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. After the controversial Democratic National Convention Rules Committee decision to split in half the delegates from Michigan and...

"Sleep deprivation, "insult slaps," water dousing and "walling," or slamming a detainee's head against a wall, were techniques used by CIA interrogators to break high-value detainees, according to an agency memo." Holder decision "promises political headaches for President Barack Obama, came after the Justice Department's ethics watchdog recommended considering prosecution of CIA employees or contractors for interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan that went beyond approved limits." Cheney said ""The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions," he said in a statement."

After the Obama-Gates-Crowley "beer summit" at the White House ended, Ronald Walter, a black longtime professor of politics at the University of Maryland, said: "Black parents are using this as a case in point of what they have been saying all along" to their children, "Racism hasn't gone away." Children, and especially black males, "are likely to confront it" from police. (Washington Post, July 30). And on CNN, Colin Powell chimed in with his advice to black children: "When you're faced with an officer who is trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something, this is...

Those words begin this stark, frank, and -- unfortunately -- utterly necessary column by the very fine writer Leonard Pitts, Jr.. The subject is Nazis, who seem to be everywhere these days. Read on: I hope this column makes you sick. See, we'll be talking about Nazis, something many of us are doing lately. Indeed, just this week a fellow named Joseph e-mailed me about a caller he heard on a radio show. The man, vexed over healthcare reform, likened President Obama to Adolf Hitler. Asked why, he said, ``Hitler took over the car companies, then healthcare and then he...

Accusations and responses from Liberal Kook to Rational Conservative:. You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.[ Damn straight! - The US Supreme Court said, "No Cherry Picking Vote Recounts from Democrat Counties....It's UnConstitutional ] You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.[ That's Right - Its like NOT having Politicians pretending to be Health Care Providers ] You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.[ Plame was not "covert" -- she was a political HACK that needed to be outed.....her and her...

Here is video of CNN Anchor Tony Harris losing it over the call by Police Officers in Cambridge, Massachusetts for President Obama to apologize for his accusation that they "acted stupidly" in arresting a Harvard Professor. Harris listened to reporter Don Lemon who was at the press conference, and then just lost it, saying "This is incendiary," referring to the call by the police for an Obama apology. He then put reporter Don Lemon on the spot to share a personal experience of profiling, which Lemon did not seem to want to do.. . . . . . (Watch Video)

...they were upset that their 14-month-old brother Trig, who has Down Syndrome, was "mocked and ridiculed by some pretty mean spirited adults." I'd like to know the names of those mean-spirited adults who mocked and ridiculed her special needs child. I don't believe it for a second. I think what she is talking about is that she was criticized for the way she dealt with her pregnancy with Trig and her caregiving of him after his birth. Remember, Sarah Palin is a right-wing, evangelical Christian for whom "family values" and the role of the mother are paramount. Many right-wing Christians...

...How can an industry survive if it allows other companies, like Google News, to use its content without any compensation? (NYTimes editor) Keller asked him (Google CEO), "When are you going to start paying for our content?" Schmidt stiffened a bit and declared: "We will pay when everyone pays" - everyone with an Internet site, that is. There's an impossible standard... Online sales now provide one-third of his (RIAA VP) industry's income. At best, the music business would be a hollow shell of what it is today... There's another solution. The courthouse. The Associated Press announced last week that it...

Think about it. Has there been a lousier 10 years in American history? OK, the Civil War, granted. And the Great Depression wasn't so hot, either, the pictures suggest. But this one has been close enough to an all-time bad to merit the kind of willful amnesia that I'm proposing. sajohnson@tribune.com

Charitable contributions at Southern California mosques are down by as much as 30% to 50% over the last few years. Blame the climate of fear. That’s what Rafe Husain, a board member for the Islamic Center of Corona Norco, is doing. “People feel tense and uncomfortable,” Husain is quoted as saying in a recent Los Angeles Times article. Just another story about the woeful recession we currently find ourselves in? Mosque-goers are feeling jittery about their dwindling 401k accounts and have decided to fork over less money to the needy? Not quite. What’s got some L.A.-area Muslims in a cold...

If the White House and Pentagon are going to make wise decisions about what to do with the Guantanamo Bay detainees they are going to need accurate information upon which to base their new policies. Yet the single most cited “fact” last week about the terror suspects - that 61 of the men released from Gitmo have returned to fight against us - is simply not true. The number is far lower than that. And the longer “61” is used as a “talking point” by critics of the administration of President No. 44 the longer it will be before a...

MADRID - Spain’s former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar drew criticism Wednesday by reportedly referring to what he called the "historic exoticism" of Barack Obama’s election as US president. Aznar was asked by a journalist from the Spanish edition of Vanity Fair magazine about the election in November of the first black president of the United States. "A historic exoticism and predictable economic disaster," replied the conservative former leader. "Obama is a person of black race who managed to become president of the United States, which is an extraordinary change for them", he said, without indicating whether he was referring...

At least Dick Cheney, as wrong a guy as we've ever had this close to the presidency, goes out in character, thinking that he and George W. Bush were right about everything. The problem is that Cheney's character now sounds as weird and unhinged as Jack Nicholson's in "A Few Good Men." There was Cheney on the Fox television network Sunday, always more a home to him than Yankee Stadium is to Derek Jeter, defending the last days of a dying administration and a dying Republican empire, defending Bush and Iraq and Donald Rumsfeld, defending Guantanamo and torture and surveillance...

TEN words keep ringing in my ears, long after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin supposedly redeemed herself and put to rest the nation's worst fears about the bottom of the Republican ticket. "How long have I been at this?" she asked during last week's high-stakes vice presidential debate. "Like, five weeks?" Say it ain't so, Joe, she's right. No question, Palin killed. She's great on television when she's got rehearsed lines to deliver and no follow-up questions to answer. She's brash and disarming, and she makes you want to send her to Washington and give those boys a big whack on...

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself. Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down. Who says public discourse hasn't deteriorated? The fierce reaction to my column has been both bracing and enlightening. After 20 years of column writing, I'm familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced...

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right. So why do it? It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're...

Leave it to the liberal print media to find some way to kill everyone's Olympics buzz. For instance, did you know that the choice by the U.S. Olympic Committee to have Ralph Lauren stitch the threads for Team USA's opening ceremonies uniform was an unfortunate nod to racism and classism and a futile, nostalgic clinging to America's waning WASP empire? That according to Sameer Reddy (pictured at right, photo via Newsweek) in an August 20 online exclusive for Newsweek

-- A South Carolina senator is fielding negative reactions after he posted a picture of Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden with a controversial comment on the state legislative Web site. S.C. Sen. Kevin Bryant said he "wanted to make people think." But after the public reacted negatively to the image, Bryant said he will take it down. The image shows bin Laden and Obama with the text: "the difference between Obama and Osama is just a little b.s."

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - A Republican state senator from South Carolina is being criticized for a post on his blog that shows photos of Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden wearing similar clothing, along with a line that states the difference between the two is "a little B.S." The image was posted on Sen. Kevin Bryant's blog on Friday without an explanation from the politician. It appears to be a photo of a T-shirt, with images of bin Laden and Obama wearing turbans and the words "OBAMA" AND "OSAMA," with the "B" and "S" each highlighted in red. The American-Arab...

Afew weeks ago, John McCain made a little joke at his wife's expense. Referring to her alma mater -- Cindy McCain is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where she was a cheerleader and sorority sister -- he called it "USC, the University of Spoiled Children." It's not an original joke, of course -- it's been around for ages, possibly even as long as John McCain himself -- but it said a lot about the man who wants to be president. ...Visit any college classroom -- at the University of Spoiled Children, Harvard, Yale, Puget Sound, doesn't matter...

What is it with photographers these days? Are they really all terrorists, or does everyone just think they are? Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We've been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required. Except that it's nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph...

Via Media Matters: During the March 31 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist repeatedly mocked Sen. Barack Obama’s bowling performance — which Scarborough called “dainty” — at a March 29 campaign stop at Pleasant Valley Lanes in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Deriding Obama’s score, he said: “You know Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it’s a man, to be a real man.” Scarborough added, “You get 150, you’re a man, or a good woman,” to which Geist replied, “Out of my president, I want a 150, at least.” Later in the show, after NBC...

We thank Michael Gargano for his resignation as Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs. More importantly, we thank you- the current student body, and especially those who participated in the recent general student strike-for issuing the final blow to his career at UMass Amherst. Since Gargano's arrival in 2003, Student Affairs has attempted to… 1. Gentrify our campus by: - Cutting staffing and operating budgets for the Everywoman's Center, the Stonewall Center, and the ALANA support programs by approximately 50% - Allowing the University' outreach efforts to disintegrate: since 2003, the campus has lost all of its major grant-funded outreach programs,...

Looks like the bedwetters have gotten themselves into quite an ironic pickle. The Supreme Court is deciding on a case of voter ID requirements in Indiana. By now you know the liberal arguments ... it disenfranchises the poor, the minorities, the elderly, blah blah blah. Well it looks like someone didn't do their homework. Faye Buis-Ewing is 72 years old. She has become a "poster child" for the disenfranchised voter that will be protected under a voting system with no ID requirements. But now we've discovered one minor problem. Not only is Faye registered to vote, but she is registered...

Comedienne Rosie O'Donnell has hit back after she was named the world's most annoying celebrity by insisting all stars are irritating.

THEY SAY YOU can't fight City Hall, but last Friday Joey Vento stood tall (at 5-foot-5) in the center ring of the circus to answer a discrimination complaint filed against him by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. Vento's been a handy punching bag for the press. Local editorial writers and columnists have vilified him as a racist, a nativist, a know-nothing, a do-badder, because of his (now world-famous) 4-by-9-inch sign at the window of his Geno's Steaks that reads: "This is America. When Ordering, Please Speak English." Some believe that is hate speech. For some reason (hate, perhaps?) the...

The president's warmongering remarks on the Iranian threat suggest he is psychotic. Really.Forget impeachment. Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.

Conservatives claim to be in favor of stable families, small businesses, hard work, private schools, investment and homeownership. So why in the world are so many on the right attacking the family of Graeme Frost? Frost is the 12-year-old from Baltimore who delivered the Democrats' reply to a radio address by President Bush in September. The seventh-grader pleaded -- in vain, it turned out -- that the president not veto Congress's $35 billion expansion of the children's health care program known as SCHIP. A car crash in December 2004 left two of Halsey and Bonnie Frost's children comatose, Graeme with...

The epithet of choice these days for Republicans who oppose any expansion of government’s role in health care programs is “socialized” medicine. Rudy Giuliani has used the “s-word” to denounce legislation that would enlarge a children’s health insurance program and to besmirch Hillary Clinton’s health plan. Mitt Romney has added a xenophobic twist, calling the Clinton plan “European-style socialized medicine,” while ignoring its similarities to a much-touted health care reform he championed as governor of Massachusetts. Other conservative critics have wielded the “s-word” to deplore efforts to expand government health care programs or regulation over the private health care markets....

Regarding Fran Eaton's Aug. 26 column calling the South Suburbs an abortion-free zone: I remember a number of years back when doctors and clinics advertising that they were doing abortions in this area were threatened, set fire to and picketed, which is likely another reason there are not many openly-broadcast abortion clinics in the South Suburbs. That subject aside, I would like to address the many inconsistencies and illogical arguments in Eaton's column. Eaton name-calls liberals whom she says get "hot and bothered" about resistance to using tax dollars for fixing social ills. Interpretation: Rich people hate when they are...

In these days of 24-hour news cycles churning out forgettable headlines about interchangeable celebrities of no importance, it's nostalgic to be reminded of a time when sensational news spawned complicated conspiracy theories that could be followed for years. Arthur Bremer, an emotionally troubled young busboy from Milwaukee convicted 35 years ago of attempting to assassinate segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, will be released from prison this year. Today's reporters probably only dimly remember Bremer or the serious speculation that he could have been a patsy at the center of a criminal conspiracy masterminded by former CIA operatives working for the...

To some, it is a "corporate coup d'etat," a conspiracy by big business to turn Canada into the 51st state by stealth. Others see it as a plot to destroy the U.S. by forcing it into a North American union with "socialist Canada" and "corrupt Mexico." It is the Security and Prosperity Partnership, a sprawling effort to forge closer ties among the three nations in everything from anti-terrorism measures to energy strategies to food-safety and pesticide rules. Launched two years ago by then prime minister Paul Martin, President George W. Bush and his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, at the so-called...

'Hundreds' cancel trips, homeowner threatens to move out Telluride: Some of the ski fans who have patronized Telluride, Colo., now are calling the ritzy resort "the land of radical liberals" and canceling planned vacations there because the town board voted to approve an ordinance calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. One ski club of 175 people already has made plans to go elsewhere, another skier has threatened to sell his home there and another critic predicted the town soon would bow to Mecca. "It's huge, unbelievable," said Telluride Mayor John Pryor. "Ski groups are canceling...

President Bush, at podium, speaks to members of the media prior to the ribbon-cutting ceremony ... At this morning's ribbon-cutting for the newly renovated White House Briefing Room, President Bush dropped in just long enough to rub reporters' noses in his cheerful refusal to take them seriously. ... the president was in full frat-boy mode, clowning around during introductory remarks by C-SPAN's Steve Scully. ... Bush apparently felt Scully went on too long. "I like a good, short introduction," Bush jeered as soon as Scully gave up the podium. Here's the transcript. "We missed you -- sort of," Bush...

Description on main page of website: "Some of us — hopefully most of us — are trying to understand and appreciate the effect our recent election will have on you, the citizens of the rest of the world. As our so-called leaders redouble their efforts to screw you over, please remember that some of us — hopefully most of us — are truly, truly sorry. And we'll say we're sorry, even on the behalf of the ones who aren't."

I’m not backing off. I tried to remove myself from the political realm of the US, what BushCo is turning into an Evil Empire, but the blatant audacity of George commuting Scooter’s sentence (he’s not ruling out a full pardon —and you know he will) has dragged me kicking and screaming back in… Did we ever think that the criminality and arrogance of the Nixon White House would be eclipsed in our time with nary a “baaaah” from the Sheeple in Congress?… The recent commutation of I. Scooter Libby’s sentence, however, was the straw that broke my camel’s back of...

Coulter is a prime suspect in the theft of the nation's moral compass. (SALEM, Ore.) - When we grow up we are taught the difference between right and wrong. Well before reaching adulthood, we are supposed to have a sound understanding of the bottom line, and a reasonable appreciation for the fact that mistakes carry consequences. But moral decay, divisiveness and polarity are the order of the day in 2007. As a society, it seems like we no longer aspire to be chivalrous. Instead we go for the most outrageous, the most shocking, the most revealing, and the least-clothed. And...

Just when you thought the New York Times couldn't sink any lower than its chairman Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger ranting how he was sorry America wasn't a socialist and pacifist nation, the money-losing paper manages to surprise you.That's really the only thing you can say after reading Times Arts tv critic Alessandra Stanley's attempt to cast the popular-but-fading Fox show "American Idol" into the 2000 election controversy. Yes, you read that correctly. According to the Times, the reason that teenage girls looove tuning in is because Al Gore didn't beat George W. Bush.The lunacy is just too funny: “Idol,” now...

No young person who has ever followed politics with the ferocity of a sports fan, no citizen who has been an idealist for at least a few hours, hasn't daydreamed about a third party or independent candidate – a third party winner, actually. At some point everyone with a civic soul, no matter what their ideological flavor, has yearned for an independent spirit to break through the homogenized, cuisinarted horse manure that is modern American politics. Yet we are stuck with the same two parties, ad nauseam. It's like a world where there are two baseball teams, the Yankees and...

I have been in a couple of conversations today about my colleague Nick Anderson's most recent animated editorial cartoon. OK, I initiated the conversations. Sue me. You're going to watch Nick's animation, as you should. I bow to no one in my admiration for Mr. Anderson's talent, and I love the way he brings editorial cartooning into something resembling the present. How many other editorial cartoonists would know the Black Eyed Peas from Andy Williams? But. You knew there'd be a but. In this case, the but is a butt. I am not going to discuss the politics of the...

Democrats Call for New Direction From Rubber Stamp Republican Congress In two years, Republican-controlled 109th Congress has done nothing for American people Washington, D.C.—Yesterday’s release of three pages of the National Intelligence Estimate that state plainly that the Bush Administration’s failed strategy in Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism and made America less safe lays bare the need for a Congress that won’t simply rubber stamp failed White House policies. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Democratic leaders from House and Senate today joined to call for a new direction. From Iraq to the...

LONDON, Sept. 18, 2006 — Three words suddenly have a lot of Westerners worried and, it must be said, likely making some wrong assumptions about modern Islam. "Yaum al Ghadab" is Arabic for "Day of Rage." When the Qatari Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi called for a Day of Rage this Friday in response to Pope Benedict XVI's remarks about Muslims, it might have sounded like a call for street violence. But if there is trouble Friday, and there could well be, it will not be because of language but because of what some people choose to do after they have...

The Left-Wing blogosphere is now in an UPROAR over the fact that part 1 of The Path To 9/11 aired last night. Although there were a couple of disclaimers in the movie that it was fictionalized as well as some minor editing changes (primarily the removal of the scene where Sandy Berger hangs up the phone on the team trying to capture Osama bin Laden) the main thrust of the movie is quite clear: the Clintonistas were not serious in their attempts to stop terrorism. As could be be expected, the loony left is OUTRAGED that this movie has...

Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck have crafted an insightful and heartfelt look at the experiences of the Dixie Chicks over the last three years, chronicling the often bizarre consequences of singer Natalie Maines' anti-Bush wisecrack on a London stage. Maines' statement is captured in "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing," as are the meetings where they plot how to circumvent the core country audience and, eventually, how to reroute a tour and cancel shows due to poor ticket sales. It's the rare thorough documentary on a musical act whose dilemmas are faced in the here and now, one that should...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 30, 2006 CONTACT: Brendan Daly 202-226-7616 Pelosi Statement on Rumsfeld Remarks Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today in response to Secretary Rumsfeld’s remarks he made yesterday to the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City: "Secretary Rumsfeld's efforts to smear critics of the Bush Administration's Iraq policy are a pathetic attempt to shift the public's attention from his repeated failure to manage the conduct of the war competently. If Mr. Rumsfeld is so concerned with comparisons to World War II, he should explain why our troops have now been...

Just wanted to send a note and say hey and tell you about one of the darnedest things. And I gotta say it is one of the clearest examples of how CONservatives (not to be confused with honest conservatives) have managed to convince so many people so many lies are in fact the truth. This is indeed a rather mind numbing stor ... eh ... no ... actually it's what I'd expect. So here's what happened, Droppings: Somebody with the screen name of "presidio9" picked up my piece Green diets vs. global warming and posted it on the Internet message...

DENVER -- Democrats pounced on Colorado's Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez and his newly chosen running mate Janet Rowland on Tuesday for comments she made five months ago comparing same-sex marriage to bestiality. In a March 17 broadcast of the Rocky Mountain PBS program "Colorado State of Mind," Rowland said homosexuality is an alternative lifestyle, adding, "For some people, the alternative lifestyle is bestiality. Do we allow a man to marry a sheep?" Democrat Bill Ritter's campaign called the remarks "insensitive, close-minded, derogatory and crude" and demanded an apology. "This shows just how far to the right and out-of-touch the...

So L.A - The Chris Ayres Weblog IT BEGINS with a caricature of Al Gore — grossly overweight and dressed like a Victorian industrialist — pointing an umbrella at an overhead screen of climate data. The former vice-president’s audience is made up of cartoon penguins, who — in spite of the increasingly balmy conditions in Antarctica – snore at his global-warming lecture and fantasise about going to see X-Men 3. “What is Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, all about?” reads the video’s description on YouTube.com, where it was posted. “Global Warming? The Environment? Or something much more BORING?...