Free Republic

Rudy Panic set in for many Republicans this week, with conservative leaders both nationally and in Iowa concluding they need to settle on a single champion to prevent Rudolph W. Giuliani from winning the GOP presidential nomination. They fear that victory by the socially liberal former New York mayor could permanently shatter the largely successful coalition of social, religious, economic and national defense conservatives that, more often than not, has worked electoral magic for Republican candidates at all levels. "The main driving force behind all of that is a belief that Rudy Giuliani is positioned to win the nomination and...

BRISTOL, N.H. (AP) — Presidential hopeful Fred Thompson said Friday that New York City isn't a model for the rest of the country and that Rudy Giuliani should stop basing his stances on his time as that city's mayor. Thompson, campaigning at a New Hampshire gun store with stuffed moose and deer overhead, told reporters that Giuliani too often turns to his time as New York mayor to explain his support for stronger gun restrictions. "He relates everything to New York City. Well, New York City is not emblematic of the rest of the country, I don't think. I think...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Rudy Giuliani assured a conservative legal group Friday that if elected president he would appoint federal judges who adhere to their principles. He also praised a judge who declared the capital city's gun ban unconstitutional and ridiculed efforts to eliminate the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. In a speech marking the 25th anniversary of the Federalist Society, Giuliani spelled out a conservative legal agenda in which he cited Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts as models for the judges he would appoint to the federal...

GOP Hopeful's Mayoral Appointments At Odds With Pledge To Appoint Conservative Jurists. Presidential contender Rudy Giuliani has been winning over some conservative Republicans by promising to appoint judges in the mold of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and others who might seem likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Judges he named as New York mayor, however, could never be mistaken for Scalia. Giuliani's promise has helped overcome his abortion rights support as an issue for conservative voters. After all, the next president can do little about abortion except to name judges who interpret...

Most Republican presidential candidates can brag about attracting followers with their valiant stances on important issues. Rudy Giuliani's followers support him because they think he can beat Hillary Clinton. In and by itself, the reasoning of Giuliani's supporters is not illogical. Many people do take into account electability when voting for a primary candidate (although most will not sacrifice their basic principles in the name of an election victory). The problem is, this perceived electability is the only thing going for Giuliani. But here is the real kicker: Giuliani is not electable. In fact, he is far less electable than...

Shortly before a Republican presidential primary debate in Columbia, South Carolina, this last May, several conservative activists in the state received mysterious envelopes in the mail. The letters arrived anonymously, each one containing an eight-page document, a typewritten manifesto with a pseudo-academic title: "Mormons in Contemporary American Society: A Politically Dangerous Religion?" The letters depicted Mormonism as based on "hoaxes" and ridiculed the church's founder, Joseph Smith, as a "gold digger turned prophet." The mailing also provocatively dubbed Smith "the Mohammed of the West." "Like the prophet of Islam," it said, "Smith founded his religion upon prophecies and revelations which...

Archbishop George Niederauer will preside and give the homily at the 10 a.m. Mass at Most Holy Redeemer parish in San Francisco on Sunday, Oct. 7 -- the same day the parish will have a booth at the homosexual Castro Street Fair. The archbishop’s visit comes just a week after the parish held a drag show to benefit AIDS victims, despite requests that the archdiocese cancel the event. “Twelve famed drag queens. One pageant. BLOOD!” read an advertisement for the “unveiling of the 2008 Desperate Diva calendar,” held Sept. 29 at Most Holy Redeemer. The parish is well known as...

NEW YORK – Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani says God is a very important part of his life. "I believe in God. I pray to God, and I pray to Jesus for guidance, help,” Giuliani said in an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network. “I have very, very strong views on religion that come about from having wanted to be a priest when I was younger, having studied theology for four years in college.” The former New York mayor said he feels God’s help when “in crisis and under pressure like Sept. 11, when I was dealing with prostate cancer, or...

'We are Palestinian, we are women, we are gay' May 16 12:36 PM US/Eastern Battling against a deeply patriarchal society, Arab Israeli and Palestinian lesbians are uniting to break the taboo of homosexuality and politicise the right to be female and gay. "We are Palestinian, we are women and we are gay," is the slogan coined by Aswat, the association campaigning for lesbian Arabs to be accepted in Israeli and Palestinian society, and whose name in English means "voices". "A lot of lesbians and Arab homosexuals have double lives, marry and lead a secret existence. People say it is forbidden...

Rudolph Giuliani and his consulting company, Giuliani Partners, have served as key advisors for the last five years to the pharmaceutical company that pled guilty today to charges it misled doctors and patients about the addiction risks of the powerful narcotic painkiller OxyContin. Federal officials say the company, Purdue Frederick, helped to trigger a nationwide epidemic of addiction to the time-release painkiller by failing to give early warnings that it could be abused. Prosecutors say "in the process scores died." Drug Enforcement Administration officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com Giuliani personally met with the head of the DEA when the...

Yes, it's former NYC mayor Rody Giuliani in drag having his "breasts" shamelessly violated by "Apprentice" tycoon Donald Trump. Clip from new doc GIULIANI TIME, by Kevin Keating, opens May 12 at Landmark Theatres' Sunshine Cinema in NYC. More at www.giulianitime.com. Yahoo Group at http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/... ... (more) (less)

Orange County Judge Dismiss Case Against Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim http://www.knx1070.com/pages/203493.php?contentType=4&contentId=304887 SANTA ANA, CA (AP) -- A judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming the Angels discriminated against men by giving tote bags to women during a Mother's Day baseball game. Orange County Superior Court Judge Jonathan Cannon ruled Thursday that the giveaway was not biased against men and that the May 8, 2005, event was a way to honor mothers. The lawsuit, filed by Los Angeles psychologist Michael Cohn, claimed thousands of men and fans under age 18 were each entitled to $4,000 in damages because they were treated...

NEW YORK, Dec. 18 -- His national poll numbers are a dream, he's a major box office draw on the Republican Party circuit, and he goes by the shorthand title "America's Mayor." All of which has former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani convinced he just might become America's president in 2008. He is showing the early signs of a serious candidacy: Giuliani's presidential exploratory committee throws its first major fundraiser in a hotel near Times Square on Tuesday evening, and he recently hired the political director of the Republican National Committee during 2006. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released...

For if you persist in trying to hijack the governments of this nation - local, state and federal - so as to remake this great land into a theocratic nightmare, we will destroy you: we will burn you out of your homes and businesses; we will shoot you down in the streets; we will march on and sieze the major cities and capitols across the land. We will make war on you until either you have surrendered or none of you are left alive. We know how to do this, because we are Americans too, and have done it before:...

Fishnet Hosiery Does in Robbery Suspect - New York Times           MONTEREY, Calif. (AP) -- A man's pantyhose led to his arrest, authorities said. An unshaven man wearing a black evening gown, fishnet stockings, calf-high boots and a black wig robbed a USA Gas station Monday morning, authorities alleged.           The armed man stuffed $290 in cash into an ensemble-matching black purse.

New Zealand filmmaker Lee Tamahori, who directed the James Bond movie "Die Another Day," has been arrested in a Hollywood prostitution sting while dressed in drag. Tamahori, 55, was arrested on January 8 when he allegedly sought sex with an undercover policeman while clad in women's clothes, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court. "Mr Tamahori was arrested for soliciting. I can confirm he was dressed in women's clothing at the time of the arrest," Officer Jason Lee of the Los Angeles Police Department said. Prosecutors confirmed they had filed two misdemeanour charges against the...

CARLOS SANCHEZ Gruesome stiletto-stab. A transvestite hooker sobbed in a Manhattan courtroom ..........found guilty of viciously slamming the 4-inch stiletto heel of his shoe into the head of a cabby who'd declined to give him a ride. Carlos Sanchez, 32, struck the cabby so hard during the predawn Christopher Street attack that the heel went 6 centimeters through skin, skull and brain, leaving the victim partially paralyzed. Assistant District Attorney Martha Stolley had presented two eyewitnesses, including one who'd known Sanchez by sight. The mean queen already has a string of prostitution, drug, theft and forgery convictions. He now...

CORONADO NATIONAL FOREST, Ariz. Firefighters have cut a rough line around a wildfire burning in the Coronado National Forest near the Mexican border. However, forest spokesman Gail Aschenbrenner says fire crews remain concerned because of windy and dry conditions expected in the area today. Aschenbrenner says crews made good progress on fighting the fire last night and are working to strengthen their fire lines. The fire has burned across 121 acres in the remote area west of the Coronado National Memorial. No structures are threatened.

Through the ages, men have sworn their adoration for the weaker sex, in paintings and poems, in songs and books and movies. But it has only been in the last century that men have openly admitted that women are better than men in far more ways. China's Mao said: "Women hold up half of heaven," while the Soviet Union's Nikita Khrushchev acknowledged that "It is the men who do the administrating, and the women who do (the actual) work." And even that arch- capitalist billionaire Aristotle Onassis said: "If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have...

No Name Calling Week?     1/12/2005By Warren Throckmorton, Ph.D.Yes, name-calling is wrong. But this event’s sponsors reveal the agenda behind banning it. “There is a special place in hell for people like you!” These words were directed at me by a teacher during this past summer’s National Education Association (NEA) convention in Washington, D.C. This delegate to the NEA convention made his prediction in response to my presence at the NEA’s Ex-Gay Educators’ Caucus booth in the convention exhibit hall. His cheery salutation caught me off-guard given the message of tolerance and acceptance I had been hearing around the exhibit hall....

SMELLS LIKE A HATE CRIME... [KJL] ...Or a desperate host. From a reader: Did you see Keith Olberman [Friday] night on MSNBC? After savaging Fox News throughout most of his "newscast" he took a "talking Ann Coulter" doll and literally bashed it, smashing it repeatedly across the edge of his dest with a look of pure hatred on his desk, until it was in pieces. After the break he held up the naked legs and buttocks of the doll and said, "This is all that's left of Ann Coulter." Then he threw it at the camera.

A Christian mission serving homeless people since 1939 is under investigation for discrimination because its walls are adorned with crosses and other religious imagery. The probe was prompted by a city fair-housing investigator, who also happens to be a cross-dressing Wiccan openly contemptuous of mainstream religions, the Charleston, W. Va., Daily Mail reported. Huntington City Mission The investigation began May 8 when Okey Napier Jr., walked into the Huntington City Mission in West Virginia and noticed the "Christian imagery" and other things that caused the city's Human Relations Commission to probe allegations the homeless shelter violated the state's fair housing...

<p>The U.S. appeals court in Richmond says a Roanoke federal judge should not have dismissed the case of a transsexual state prison inmate seeking to resume estrogen treatments.</p> <p>A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously yesterday to reverse the lower court and send the case back for further proceedings.</p>

EDINBURGH, Scotland (Reuters) - Country and Western diva Tina C wants to share her grief with the world over September 11 and what better way than a Twin Towers tribute album? As she launches into a chorus of her hit song "Kleenex to the World," shame on anyone who suggests it is all a cheap publicity stunt to sell records and revive a flagging career. That is the acerbic message from English drag queen Chris Green who decided with Tina, his larger-than-life, all-American patriotic girl, to push out the boundaries of taste at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival by...

Louisiana priest resigns over Mardi Gras picture Mon May 6, 3:49 PM ET HOUMA, Louisiana - A Roman Catholic priest has resigned as pastor of a church after a coffee table book showed him shirtless in a Mardi Gras crowd next to a drag queen and well-muscled men in biking shorts. The Rev. Thomas Bouterie, 47, pastor of the St. Louis Church in Bayou Blue, appeared in the book "Masking and Madness." "The Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux feels that these photographs could be a source of scandal for some and, thus, prevent Father Bouterie from effectively exercising his ministry," diocesan spokesman...