Free Republic

I just woke up from watching the Democrats' debate last Thursday, and I am rested and ready to report! Someone needs to tell the Democrats to stop talking about their families. I know they're trying to demonstrate their "family values," but using actual, live human beings to illustrate the freakish ideas of the Democratic base just makes normal people uncomfortable. When Chris Dodd was asked about gay marriage, he said he always thinks of his little daughters — aged 2 and 5 — and imagines them turning out to be lesbians, saying he would want them treated equally. To prove...

Who is Arnold Schwarzenegger, really? According to Joe Knollenberg, a Republican congressman from Michigan, he's "kind of a Republican Al Gore." That's what Knollenberg told Fox News' Neil Cavuto on Tuesday night. What's Knollenberg's beef? The congressman represents a district north of Detroit. Among his constituents are the Big 3 automakers. The Big 3 are feeling pretty nervous these days -- on Wednesday the chief executives of GM, Ford and Chrysler appeared before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality to lobby against tighter fuel economy (CAFE) standards. Knollenberg has decided to carry their water -- by attacking California....

Milan - Now I know there are many out there who will think I have lost it when I write that a key, new must-have for men this coming fall will be a pair of leggings to be worn outside, not just in, the house, but that was the big message at the debut Marni men's runway show this morning in Milan. ADVERTISEMENT Leggings made of microfiber cotton and wool, shown in violet, forest green and Milan fog gray, all of them with stirrup straps, except of course for a couple of them cut above the knee, accompanied half the...

Before Michael Buday married his fiancée, Diana Bijon, he decided to honor her family by bucking tradition and taking her last name. But, it wasn't so easy. Under California state law, he needed to pay more than $300, go to court, file a petition, and publicly advertise his name change for four weeks in a local newspaper. If he had simply gone along with tradition, it would have cost only $50 to $80. So Buday, 29, went to court, along with the ACLU, to change the law. They recently announced their plans to sue the California Department of Health Services,...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1752464/posts?page=52 Military meets, exceeds recruiting goals AP on Yahoo ^ | 12/12/06 | Pauline Jelinek - ap Posted on 12/12/2006 4:28:38 PM CST by NormsRevenge WASHINGTON - Though Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the war in Iraq, the Pentagon said Tuesday it is having success enlisting new troops. The Navy and Air Force met their recruiting goals last month while the Army and Marine Corps exceeded theirs, the Defense Department announced. The Army, which is bearing the brunt of the work in Iraq, did the best. It signed up 6,485 new recruits in November compared with its target of 6,150...

NEW YORK: A new study has found a "substantial" drop in US men's testosterone levels since the 1980s, but the reasons for the decline remain unclear. This trend also does not appear to be related to age. The average levels of the male hormone dropped by 1% a year, Dr Thomas Travison and colleagues from the New England Research Institutes in Watertown, Massachusetts, found. This means that, for example, a 65-year-old man in 2002 would have testosterone levels 15% lower than those of a 65-year-old in 1987. This also means that a greater proportion of men in 2002 would have...

SOMETIMES you see a man with a short haircut, athletic build and a military bearing, and you think to yourself, "I bet that man is a Marine." With Major Pain, there is no question. You know he is a Marine. Which makes him an ideal wingman for me when it's time to confront Code Pink and friends about their rude and disrespectful treatment of our soldiers outside Walter Reed Army Hospital. SMASH and Major Pain survey the field of battle There are about a dozen or so protesters there on Friday night. On any given evening, one or two of...

Did the Dems Threaten ABC? The Democrats have gone nuts over the ABC miniseries, The Path to 9/11. But it's a little hard to see why. Maybe it's because Disney and ABC have been reliably pro-Democrat in the past, so the Dems feel betrayed. Looking at the big picture, though, it's a little hard to see what the Dems are complaining about. I haven't seen the miniseries, but I take it that it doesn't portray the Clinton administration as having taken very effective action against the growing threat from Islamic terrorists. What I don't understand is how the Democrats think...

Robyn E. Blumner is one of those feminist writers who specializes in reducing complex issues to lectures on Mars and Venus. Blumner bestows her wisdom in the St. Petersburg Times. The title of a recent offering ("U.S. could use more girlie men") caught my eye. Use them for what – objects of ridicule? But, no, Ms. Blumner is serious. She wants to feminize national security – to take decisions of survival out of the hands of "macho" males and substitute weeping for weapons, sentimentality for strategy and negotiations for no-nonsense. To illustrate her point, Blumner uses the HBO drama series...

As a jubilant Ned Lamont announced his improbable win over incumbent Joe Lieberman, N.O.W. president Kim Gandy stood cheering at his side. The National Organization for Women press release proclaimed, “Peace is a feminist issue and the Iraq war has been a key issue in this campaign. . . . NOW PAC will continue to support Ned Lamont through the general election in November.” Little did Gandy realize that world events would soon overtake Lamont’s “just-give-peace-a-chance” mantra. Because just two days later on August 10, the world was rocked by news of a foiled Muslim plot to blow up more...

For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether "George Bush's mental weakness is damaging America's credibility at home and abroad." For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, "IS BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?" But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly "no." While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: "I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don't think he has the intellectual depth as these...

Deadwood is one of my favorite programs. Set in a South Dakota gold mining camp in the 1870s, it grittily explores the way human beings organize themselves when consigned to a lawless territory that attracts miscreants, varmints and vultures. A recent episode had an especially insightful moment when all the leaders of the camp were called to an important meeting without an invitation proffered to the female owner of the camp's only bank. Alma Garret could have all the money in the world, but because she has two X chromosomes (a distinction more graphically described in the show), she wasn't...

The candidate, immersed in one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, said down for lunch with reporters yesterday and had this to say on the Iraq war: "It didn't work. . . . We didn't prepare for the peace." On the response to Hurricane Katrina: "A monumental failure of government." On the national mood: "There's a palpable frustration right now in the country." It's all fairly standard Democratic boilerplate -- except the candidate is a Republican . "For me to pretend I'm not a Republican would be a lie," he reasoned. But to run as a proud...

A question of manlinesshttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=395271 http://tinyurl.com/zmrh5 By MARTIN NEWLAND, Daily Mail 07/12/06 - News section There is, apparently, a resurgence of manliness in America. Superman has returned to the big screen and unshaven, testosterone-charged film stars such as Colin Farrell no longer look socially marginalised. The A To Z Of Manliness, a compendium of tips on such matters as how to punch properly, is number two on the New York Times bestseller list, while a rash of academic books on the importance of real men have added fuel to the fire. The Boston Globe recently summed up the phenomenon: "We're in...

Nation cringes as the worst president ever continues long, painful slog to the end - It is like some sort of virus. It is like some sort of weird and painful rash on your face that makes you embarrassed to walk out the door and so you sit there day after day, waiting for it to go away, slathering on ointment and Bactine and scotch. And yet still it lingers. Some days the pain is so searing and hot you want to cut off your own head with a nail file. Other days it is numb and pain-free and seemingly...

"Writing," observed the French playwright Moliere, "is like prostitution. First you do it for love, then for a few close friends, and then for money." This aphorism is brought forcefully to mind by the cover of Ann Coulter's latest book, leering at customers from the windows of America's biggest bookstores. As always, the cover features a portrait of the artist as a young tart, blond locks flowing, her size zero little black dress catering to a combination of ideological and erotic perversion that's disturbing to contemplate. In The New York Times, David Carr doesn't hesitate to label Coulter a literary...

 There have been many political candidates who were willing to say or do just about anything to get elected. It’s one of the reasons why politicians are so often rated below used car salesmen in public opinion surveys. On Sunday’s This Week program, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos interviewed John Edwards, the Democrat’s nominee for vice-president in 2004. During the program, the one-term Senator from North Carolina, made a publicity-provoking comment (video here) about the man who vanquished him and his erstwhile running mate John Kerry during the tumultuous campaign. “George W. Bush is the worst president of our lifetime,” he said....

Iran's hardline Islamic regime has had enough of footballers with long hair and plucked eyebrows. "I will ban athletes with an effeminate look," the head of the country's Physical Education Organisation, Mohammad Ali-Abadi said, told the Etemad-Melli newspaper. "It is really disgraceful for Iran that young people step onto fields wearing make-up," the top official fumed. "When a man enters the field with dyed hair and groomed eyebrows he is disrespecting society." The paper said Ali-Abadi appeared to be particularly worried about footballers, and warned that "even though they get away with it now, they will be disqualified in future".

RUSH: The president had a fabulous press conference today. We've got audio sound bites. In fact, just to tease you, grab sound bite number one. Bob Schieffer, well-known member of the drive-by media, anchors the little-seen, very little-watched Face the Nation on CBS on Sunday mornings, even Bob Schieffer had to say this. SCHIEFFER: I must say, this is about as close to the George Bush that one sees off camera as I have ever seen. I mean, if we named presidents the way we do historical figures like Richard the Lionhearted or Ivan the Terrible, certainly today what you...