Free Republic

Funny really is money. Bill Maher, the host of HBO's "Real Time," announced on Sunday at Citi Field that he had purchased a minority stake in the Mets earlier this year — and the sometimes controversial, always funny comedian wasn't kidding. Maher, a lifelong Mets fan, says he thinks he made a "great investment" by purchasing a share in the team. "I think people sometimes forget there's only one National League franchise in New York City, and they're not making anymore," he said. "I just thought it would be a great place, especially after I've seen some of the ways...

© Miri WTPOTUS January 16, 2012 While I researched and wrote this article over the past week, The Post & Email published a story about a citizen who has challenged Mitt Romney’s eligibility for the presidency. The citizen argues that Mitt Romney’s father, George W. Romney, was a Mexican citizen according to Mexican law, by virtue of his birth in that country. The citizen further argues that it is incumbent upon Mitt Romney to prove that his father naturalized in the USA by the time of Mitt’s birth, in 1947.

Not all campaign books are treated equally. Just look at Edward Klein and J.H. Hatfield. Klein, of course, is the author of the new book "The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House." Hatfield, now dead and forgotten, wrote a book about George W. Bush, "Fortunate Son," during the 2000 presidential contest. Klein's book, which debuted in early May, has been mostly ignored by large media organizations (although not by the book-buying public, which has put it at the top of next week's best-seller list). Hatfield's book, on the other hand, rocked a presidential campaign -- before crashing and burning...

The stunning expansion of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Washington, D.C., area is profiled in a long, interesting and meticulously accurate CNN story that suggests "the nation's capital has become a Mormon stronghold, with Latter-day Saints playing a big and growing role in the Washington establishment."-SNIP-"It's hard to point to federal legislation or a White House initiative that bears distinctly Mormon fingerprints," Gilgoff writes, "while it's easy to do the same for other faiths." He cites as an example a recent White House "compromise" on contraception funding, which he says was "mostly a reaction to...

Liberals keep finding new ways to demonstrate their civility and class. NYU graduate student Matthew Epler fashioned polling data for the Republican candidates during the 2012 primary into sex toys called butt plugs – for a telecommunications class. He decided to market his creations, which met with the winking approval of left-wing outlets. The plugs represent the polling data of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney, rotated around a 3D axis.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has refused to take up a Boston University student's constitutional challenge to a $675,000 penalty for illegally downloading 30 songs and sharing them on the Internet. The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., who was successfully sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally sharing music on peer-to-peer networks. In 2009, a jury ordered Tenenbaum to pay $675,000, or $22,500 for each song he illegally downloaded and shared.

His reaction is priceless.

If ROMNEY gets elected I don't know if i can breathe same air as Him & his Right Wing Racist Homophobic Women Hating Tea Bagger Masters

When asked if average Americans should receive the same quality health insurance as that of their elected officials, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told a group of South Florida healthcare workers that she “earned” her benefits, implying that her constituents had not. “Yes, she really said that,” related Dr. Norman Palgon, a Hallandale Beach-based internist who was in attendance at a forum the Congresswoman conducted last year to garner support for ObamaCare. The good doctor was non-too-pleased with what he clearly felt was the congresswoman’s imperious attitude. Wasserman Schultz, 45, who also is Chair of the Democratic National Committee, is...

...After Supporter Says President ‘Should be tried for treason’ The Obama campaign slammed Mitt Romney Monday for not confronting a supporter who said during a town hall event in Cleveland that the president “should be tried for treason.” “We have a president right now that is operating outside the structure of our Constitution,” a woman said during a question-and-answer session. “And I want to know — yeah, I do agree he should be tried for treason — but I want to know what you would be able to do to restore balance between the three branches of government and what...

CLEVELAND, Ohio – FBI officials today said that while the members of a group arrested in an attempt to blow up a bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park were also involved in the Occupy Cleveland movement, that organization is not under federal investigation. "Let me be clear, the FBI and Department of Justice are not conducting an investigation of any specific group," said Steven M. Dettelbach, U.S Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. "We do not investigate movements or groups, we investigate individuals." The Occupy movement is never identified by name in the affidavit filed by federal officials...

In 2011, death row inmate Abdul Awkal sued an Ohio prison because he was receiving non-halal food while in prison. As a consequence, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction banned all pork products in prison. This year, prisoner James Rivers filed a lawsuit arguing that pork should not be outright banned. He reasoned that, should Muslims not want to eat pork, they had the right to, but that it was discriminatory to ban pork for everyone. Additionally, the prison did offer meals without pork products in them before the ban. To reinforce Rivers's lawsuit, prison authorities argued that the...

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) dodged questions Sunday about releasing papers from his eight years as an Illinois state senator, and his campaign has not answered records requests from the state’s two largest newspapers. Obama’s campaign has prodded Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to make available additional records of her communications during her husband’s presidency. [cut] But two Chicago newspapers have said the Obama campaign has not responded to their requests for comparable papers from his career. On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, moderator Tim Russert asked Obama about the papers from his state legislative days, from 1997 to 2004.

Maureen Dowd is a woman of many talents. She is, of course, a New York Times featured columnist, a Pulitzer Prize winning commentator, and the liberals acknowledged Queen of Snark. Ms. Dowd has also completely blown a gasket, if her column of last week (April 5th) is any indication of her psychological-emotional state. In her column of last week entitled, Men In Black, Maureen employs language and phraseology that her fellow liberals would quickly label “hate speech” if it were uttered by their foes. Ms. Dowd assails the Supreme Court in the most personal and vitriolic terms for their...

What if I told you that a white supremacist group held a conference call demanding a day of action to spill the blood of blacks and Latinos in America? Your reaction would be one of absolute horror. You would immediately decry the racist organization as having no place in our society and demand that the organization be shamed and shunned by the media — and rightly so. Yet, the opposite takes place on a regular basis – if not daily. Black supremacist groups like the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) consistently call for blood shed of whites and no one...

FARMINGTON, Utah -- Sen. Orrin Hatch predicted President Obama's campaign team would use Mitt Romney's Mormon faith against him in the general election. Speaking to a group of GOP delegates at a campaign stop Tuesday, the six-term Republican incumbent warned, "You watch, they're going to throw the Mormon church at him like you can't believe." Asked to elaborate in an interview later, Hatch fingered campaign adviser David Axelrod and White House aide David Plouffe as the masterminds who would insert the issue into the campaign. "Let me tell you something. The Obama people have some of the best political consultants...

After reading about Army Staff Sgt Robert Bales, who, they say, shot up Afghanistan civilians, I couldn’t help noticing this irony: There is all this clamor to try this guy quickly and execute him, never mind his having suffered a traumatic brain injury. Yet this Major Hasan, who shot up Fort Hood while screaming Allah Akbar, still hasn’t stood trial, and they are still debating whether he was insane, even with the clear evidence regarding his motive: slay as many infidels as possible. So we have a guy in a war zone who cracks, and he must be executed immediately....

It’s wrong when you do it, but it’s OK when I do it. Welcome to the world of political discourse. This was demonstrated after State Sen. Stacey Campfield ignited a firestorm over remarks he made on a radio show about the origin of AIDS and the degree to which it is transmitted, or not transmitted, between heterosexuals. Campfield’s comments led to his being denied service in a Knoxville restaurant, an act for which the restaurant owner received a good deal of acclaim from the political left. A frequently used statement was, “She has the right to refuse service to anyone...

niggardly: Not generous; stingy (adjective/adverb) It’s a word that has caused job-ending consequences in the past for politicians and others in the public eye because of its similarities to a racial slur. However, that didn’t deter Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown from using it during an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Dylan Ratigan Show” on Thursday, to describe how he thought some of his colleagues were acting toward veterans. “Of course we’re falling short,” he said. “There are people, as you know Matt, in this Congress who will always send a blank check when it comes to spending money on defense...

Editor's Note: This column was authored by Dr. Stephen Smoot, of Young America's Foundation. Newsweek rhetorically asked America recently, “Why are Obama’s critics (read conservatives) so dumb?” We have to admit that we do fall short of our erudite betters on the Left in the field of expression. Why can’t conservatives rise to their enlightened level of discourse? What is most galling to me is the fact that we cannot even come up with our own witty attacks. Our most visible conservative has to stoop to copying our intellectual betters! Such as when David Letterman referred to Sarah Palin...

This thread is for keeping track of every new breaking story and betrayal in the ongoing "slutgate" scandal. The scandal revoles around Rush Limbaugh showing his age by calling the 30-year-old Democrat political activist and erstwhile Georgetown student Sandra Fluke a "slut" just because she tesified before Congress that she wants other people to pay for the $3,000 per year in contraception that she needs in order to stay worry-free as she hops from bed to bed, from one sexcapade to the next. There have been so many new stories of Democrat slime and Republican betrayal breaking every hour that...

Syndicated liberal talker MIKE MALLOY may have his own controversy, as LIMBAUGH supporters point out that MALLOY made comments FRIDAY that painted victims of that day's deadly tornadoes as "little grease spots on the pavement" put there by "their God." MALLOY's comments, reported by BRIAN MALONEY's RADIO EQUALIZER site, included, "They keep being killed, you know, their God, if this is where they want to look at it, keeps smashing them into little grease spots on the pavement in -- uh -- uh -- in -- in, you know, in ALABAMA and MISSISSIPPI and ARKANSAS and, uh, GEORGIA and, uh,...

Hey there, liberal outrage brigadiers! It sure was fun going after Rush Limbaugh for using the word “slut” in reference to the arguments of a professional leftist agitator, even though he never actually called her one. Here’s your new boycott target: liberal radio host Mike Malloy. Courtesy of the SooperMexican blog, here are Malloy’s absolutely disgusting comments about Midwestern tornado victims: Their God, if this is the way they want to look at it, keeps smashing them into little grease spots on the pavement, in Alabama, in Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia and Oklahoma, you know the bible belt.. where they ain’t...

I did a lot of waffling about whether to comment on Sunday’s SlutWalk march (April 3, 1:30 pm, at Queen’s Park), but not because I have any doubts about the worthiness of the cause. The provocatively named rally, initially organized after a Toronto police officer told a York University campus safety seminar that women could avoid sexual assault by not dressing like sluts, has since gathered steam in reaction to a steady stream of victim-blaming and slut-shaming by judges, other police officers and various media outlets. SlutWalk aims to reclaim the term and rob it of its pejorative connotations, but...

A Colorado high school student quit the school choir after an Islamic song containing the lyric "there is no other truth except Allah" made it into the repertoire. James Harper, a senior at Grand Junction High School in Grand Junction, put his objection to singing "Zikr," a song written by Indian composer A.R. Rahman, in an email to Mesa County School District 51 officials. When the school stood by choir director Marcia Wieland's selection, Harper quit. "I don’t want to come across as a bigot or a racist, but I really don’t feel it is appropriate for students in a...

Three juveniles who allegedly assaulted a cab driver and his passenger in Center City Saturday night while shouting racial slurs will not be charged with a hate crime, according to the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. The teens, who are black, were not charged with hate crimes because there was no evidence that the assault was motivated by the victims' race, said Tasha Jamerson, district attorney spokeswoman. Just shouting racial epitaphs during the commission of a crime doesn't rise to the level of ethnic intimidation, she said. "They just didn't have that in this case," she said. "If they had somebody...

Call University of Florida football players a bunch of classless trash talkers if you want. Call them dirty if you want. But racist? For using the term "cracker"? That seems a stretch.

From the breaking news, one might think that with a woman who claims she had a 13-year affair with presidential candidate Herman Cain, someone is being seriously exposed as a hypocrite. That would be the press. The media can't deny they continue to display a lousy double standard. For Republican candidates, scandalous news is instant. For Democrats, it's eventual, if at all! Ginger White's charges sound a lot like Gennifer Flowers in 1992, when she said she had a 12-year affair with Bill Clinton. So many in the press pounce on Flowers as unequivocal evidence of the media's sense of...

As the Cain candidacy makes clear, women are learning to speak up about harassment, but confidential settlements can get in the way.

Yes, you read that right. Bill Maher, after the mention of Herman Cain’s lead over Romney, says Romney is the only thing standing between us and the rise of the apes. This comment was made during an interview given by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s Good Morning America, Monday morning. If this doesn’t make the headlines tomorrow, and if this isn’t one of the top stories on the MSM news programs, we will all know for certainty the double-standard hypocrisy of the Leftists. From Newsbusters, via Weasel Zippers. STEPHANOPOULOS: Yet, he’s, he’s still leading the field. Still is. I mean, he’s...

When Shehlla Khan's husband became ill, it fell on her to take their three children to the pool. But for Khan, who is Muslim, the task was difficult. The Columbia resident said she was concerned about people watching her swim in the conservative, cover-all dress required by Islamic dress codes, and thinking: "What's wrong? Why can't you take it off?" So Khan, 39, brought the issue up with members of her Dar Al-Taqwa mosque in Ellicott City. The mosque, along with members of a faith-based county group, People Acting Together in Howard, met with the Columbia Association to create a...

When it comes to sex, the media apply different standards to Republicans and Democrats. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton allegedly trolled for women, using state troopers as his procurers. As president, mr. Clinton engaged in oral sex with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. He lied about it under oath and was impeached, though later acquitted by the U.S. Senate. Other sexual accusations tainted Mr. Clinton. That "everybody lies about sex" and "it was just sex" and didn't affect his public responsibilities, were just two of the exculpatory statements from Mr. Clinton's Democratic defenders. James Carville slimed Paula Jones, one of...

RUSH: I am starting to sense it. I am starting to see it. When I sense it, when I see it, it probably is true. That's been my track record. I think I detect the media heading into damage control on the Herman Cain story. A lot of media are. This day five now, and still nobody knows what he did. Not a single media outlet can report what he did! Some are even suggesting that The Politico had no business running this story. These are other journalists who are beginning to say this. ... The media is also in...

"His story has generally been ignored by the mainstream media, because he's been unable to substantiate his allegations. He has come to public attention recently, however, because his planned appearance at the National Press Club drew complaints from a wide array of prominent liberal bloggers, led by Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher. Their petition to prevent Sinclair from renting space at the club – which bloggers feared would lend him credibility – drew more than 11,000 signatures. " "Politico isn't reprinting Sinclair's allegations because they are unsubstantiated. "

A comedian and actor went to Twitter to suggest that the death of Muammar Gaddafi should inspire American liberals to kill Sarah Palin, sparking a virtual fire-storm. That's just what actor and former soda spokesman Orlando Jones did when he turned the death of the Libyan dictator into a call to arms for American liberals to kill the poster woman for the Tea Party movement. 'Libyan Rebels kill Gaddafi, if American liberals want respect the better stop listening to Aretha & kill Sarah Palin(:' Mr Jones tweeted on Friday.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, according to reporters on the ground in Libya, Colonel Khadafy's body -- there's one good thing about this guy's death, and that is the tombstone. We're finally gonna find out how he spells it. There are about 120 different versions of the spelling of Khadafy's name. (interruption) Oh, they did? AP's got a story on how he spells it, it's in the stack here? Oh cool, we know that. So we don't have to wait for the tombstone. Fine. Not what I was going to say anyway. That was just a random thought. According to reporters...

BREAKING NEWS: Gaddafi 'captured' as rebel forces take control of Sirte Leader wounded in both legs prior to capture By DAILY MAIL REPORTER Last updated at 12:27 PM on 20th October 2011 Comments (0) Add to My Stories Share Muammar Gaddafi has been captured by revolutionary forces in Libya, it has been reported today. Gaddafi and his family have been on the run since Nato and rebel forces started closing the net on Tripoli in mid-August. The reports of Gaddafi's capture came on the same day that revolutionary forces said that they had taken control of Sirte - the leader's...

Hank Williams Jr. won't be ready for some football this Monday night. ESPN bounced Williams' trademark opening "Are you ready for some football?" after the longtime voice of Monday Night Football's theme song, after he compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler. "While Hank Williams, Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize that he is closely linked to our company through the open to Monday Night Football," an ESPN spokesman wrote in an email to the Daily News. "We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result we have decided to pull the open from tonight's telecast." The...

The chief of the secretive US special operations command has lobbied against the release of names of American commandos killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday. Thirty US troops were killed on Friday when their Chinook helicopter was shot out of the sky in a remote Afghan valley, but in a break with Pentagon practice, the identities of the dead service members have not been released. The dead included 22 members of the elite Navy SEAL commandos and three Air Force special operators, and senior officers overseeing the special forces are reluctant to publicly identify the slain...

Governor Rick Perry on evolution, in an interview with the Associated Press: "There are clear indications from our people who have amazing intellectual capability that this didn't happen by accident and a creator put this in place. Now, what was his time frame and how did he create the earth that we know? I'm not going to tell you that I've got the answers to that. I believe that we were created by this all-powerful supreme being and how we got to today versus what we look like thousands of years ago, I think there's enough holes in the theory...

(KMOV) – Three men have been indicted for hate crime after threatening to harm an African American on June 4 in Mascoutah, Illinois. Anthony Kunkel, 25, Christopher Berry, 25, and Christopher Jeffrey, 25, have been indicted after the victim says the three men uttered racial slurs and threatened bodily harm to him which disturbed the victim. The three suspects were each charged with hate crime. If convicted, they face one to three years in the Illinois Department of Corrections or up to 30 months probation.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Pat Buchanan said that he didn't mean to slur President Barack Obama by referring to him as "your boy" during a discussion with Al Sharpton. The former GOP presidential candidate and current MSNBC analyst appeared on "Morning Joe" Wednesday to explain remarks he made on that network's Sharpton show 12 hours earlier.

The CNN blog just ran a lengthy interview with Tricia Erickson, who makes a variety of arguments that no believing Mormon should ever be elected President. (Link here; note that in her interview she cites language from the endowment ceremony). Erickson’s arguments...repeats the old evangelical anti-Mormon reasoning that Mormons are all basically automatons, and suggests that any Mormon politician would have a secret church-promoting agenda. It’s an argument straight out of The Manchurian Candidate (and reminiscent of the anti-Catholic arguments raised against JFK)...But what are the implications of the article’s prominent publication today — what does it say about the...

A Bronx man was viciously assaulted and robbed on a subway train Sunday by four men who he says taunted him for being white. Police confirmed they are investigating the assault and robbery of Jason Fordell, 29, but have not labeled it a hate crime. They are seeking the four assailants, who fled the scene. A fifth passenger who police say spontaneously joined in the attack has been arrested. "Everyone on the train was egging them on," said Fordell, 29, of the early-morning attack on the 4 train. ..." [SNIP] "People started saying stupid little comments - cracker this, white...

A young Miami-Dade prosecutor has resigned after he was investigated by police earlier this month for shooting his handgun inside a Brickell Key condominium parking garage after a night of drinking. Manuel A. Guarch, 26, will not be arrested for improperly shooting his Glock pistol, but facing possible termination, he resigned. His girlfriend, Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Heather Griffin, was demoted for her involvement in the episode. Miami police were summoned to the Isola condos on Claughton Island Drive the night of July 1 after security guards and witnesses reported hearing three shots fired inside the garage and a possible...

Lancing the “She Quit!” Boil One Last Time © 2011 By Gargantua One of the more unsettling hallmarks of the unfair, often deceitful, and always unprovoked attacks on Sarah Palin is the way in which she is frequently castigated for doing things commonly accepted when done by others, but which somehow rise to a level of unconscionable effrontery when she does them. A good example is the way that she was excoriated for having posted on her website a map of the United States which used surveyors marks to denote vulnerable Democratic congressional seats for The Tea Party to “target”in...

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Thursday requesting an explanation as to why the Justice Department declined to file charges against a federal prosecutor with child pornography found on his work computer. The finding against the Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) was made by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). According to the Inspector General’s report, the AUSA admitted to spending a significant amount of time each day viewing porn at work. “The OIG conducted an investigation concerning allegations that an AUSA was using his government computer to view inappropriate...

"When President Bush made the same mistake during his campaign for President in 2000, he was roundly criticized as unintelligent."

Rep. Michele Bachmann kicked off her presidential campaign on Monday in Waterloo, Iowa, and in one interview surrounding the official event she promised to mimic the spirit of Waterloo's own John Wayne. The only problem, as one eagle-eyed reader notes: Waterloo's John Wayne was not the beloved movie star, but rather John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer. Mrs. Bachmann grew up in Waterloo, and used the town as the backdrop for her campaign announcement, where she told Fox News: "Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit...

CHICAGO (CBS) — Was the vandalism of 51 floats for the Gay Pride Parade this past weekend a hate crime? Police say they are not investigating it as such. But the parade organizer and the owner of the floats both said they believe it was. The Pride Parade went on as always in the Boystown neighborhood, with appearances by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Pat Quinn, among other dignitaries. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered along Halsted Street, Broadway and Diversey Parkway, high-fiving and embracing strangers and wishing them, “Happy pride!” But the tire-slashing put a damper on the event...