Free Republic

In another blow to the false narrative advanced by Tea Party operatives and Fox News that the movement is a “grassroots” uprising of ordinary Americans. A co-founder of the national anti-tax Tea Party Patriots movement, failed to disclose during her numerous media interviews and TV appearances that she and her husband filed for bankruptcy and owed the IRS half a million dollars.

With admirable calm, President Obama has sought to deflect the supercharged politics of race by expressing his optimism about American attitudes and ignoring the most extreme statements by his critics. For his own sake, as well as the nation’s, he is wise to give a pass to the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. That is not, however, what they deserve. The behavior of those media provocateurs over the past few months is almost beyond parody. They call the president a racist, even though there is no evidence of prejudice on his part and much evidence to the contrary....

On Sept. 12, a large crowd gathered in Washington to protest ... what? The goals of Congress and the Obama Administration, mainly — the cost, the scale, the perceived leftist intent. The crowd's agenda was wide-ranging, so it's hard to be more specific. "End the Fed," a sign read. A schoolboy's placard denounced "Obama's Nazi Youth Militia." Another poster declared, "We the People for Capitalism Not Socialism." If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists. If you get your information from conservative sources, the crowd was hundreds of thousands strong,...

Glenn Beck, the hottest right-wing voice on the air, worried aloud to his listeners the other day that powerful, sinister forces trying to destroy America might soon "shoot me in the head." But there's fear among his critics, including calmer conservatives, that the victim more likely will be one of Beck's many broadcast targets. After a summer of mob anger at town hall meetings on health care - some of which featured gun-toting protesters - and a burst of Beck-fanned hysteria over President Obama's back-to-school speech last week, the former top 40 deejay has emerged as a goofy dark...

An online backlash is building against Whole Foods Market Inc. chief executive John Mackey, thanks to his op-ed column in The Wall Street Journal knocking President Barack Obama's proposed health care bill.

Anchorage NBC affiliate KTUU is trying to get one last ratings boost out of Governor Palin, running a "retrospective" series this week. The first entry was yesterday...of course it consists of pretty much nothing but criticism, but there are some interesting tidbits in there about the NBC policy toward Palin: "She knew when she came back that she came back to a different environment," Stapleton said. "I think it was -- and I hate to say it -- but I think the Thanksgiving pictures coming out of Channel 2 with a turkey getting slaughtered over her shoulder was her first...

In his novel "The Plot Against America," Philip Roth imagined that Charles Lindbergh, an isolationist and an anti-Semite (but a hell of a flier), ran for president in 1940 and beat Franklin Roosevelt. In his novel "Fatherland," Robert Harris imagined a Britain that had succumbed to the Nazis. These works are categorized as "alternate history." Here is my contribution to the genre: Sarah Palin becomes president of the United States. Far-fetched? Not really. After all, Palin really was on the Republican ticket, and the Democratic candidate was both untested nationally and the first African-American to claim the nomination. A significant...

Everyone seems to have a Sarah Palin story of ignored calls, mishandled invitations or unanswered e-mail. Disorganized is how one might charitably describe the Palin operation. "Basically, it's just rude," says one political operative who is a Palin fan. "They've been running the great snub machine. That's the reason the boys in the Republican Party are unhappy with her." That unhappiness has been building gradually in the past seven months, and it was on full display this week as the party faithful gathered for a fundraising dinner at which Palin originally was invited to speak. She was later uninvited, and...

Pope Benedict's repeated gaffes and the Vatican's inability to manage his message in the internet era are threatening to undermine his papacy, Vatican insiders have said. The Holy See is struggling to contain international anger over the Pope's claim on his first official visit to Africa that Aids "cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems". The Pope's remarks about condoms, and a recent furore over his lifting of the 20-year excommunication of a British bishop who has questioned the Holocaust, has left him looking isolated and out of touch, prompting calls for a radical...

And Jindal's résumé, intellectual confidence and command of policy make him the anti-Palin. Fairly or unfairly, media and intellectual elites (including some conservative elites) regard Gov. Sarah Palin as an inhabitant of another cultural planet. Jindal, while also religious and conservative, speaks the language of the knowledge class and will not be easily caricatured or dismissed. To journalists, policy experts and Rhodes scholars, Jindal is also "one of us."

MONROE -- When Gov. Bobby Jindal talks to the nation Tuesday, he will be feted by the national Republican Party as the GOP's own man of hope -- an antidote to President Barack Obama. Louisiana's 37-year-old governor will deliver the GOP's response to Obama's national address, and it'll be a breakthrough moment. He'll be the talk of political junkies, and the conservative punditry will likely gush over him and his inspirational story, the Rhodes Scholar son of Indian immigrants. But there's a twist: Back home in Louisiana, a state that turns more Republican with every election cycle, Jindal is not...

MILWAUKEE — For a few deeply unpleasant days, the Rev. David Cooper found himself in the crosshairs of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. It was 2003, and the priest had opined to a reporter that women should be ordained. Faraway bishops rumbled about censure. Then he picked up the telephone and heard the baritone of Milwaukee’s archbishop, Timothy Michael Dolan. Father Cooper immediately offered to resign. No, no, the archbishop replied, we just need to repair the damage. “He was very pastoral and caring,” Father Cooper recalled. And how was it resolved? “Oh, I agreed to recant,” he said. “He effectively...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's first two years in office have been called a time of milk and honey, when the resource-rich state was flush with wealth from record oil prices. The second half of her term isn't looking so rosy as Palin faces her first major financial challenge as governor. The rapid decline of oil prices has left the state in a looming budget crisis and a late-entrant in the national recession. And that could have political repercussions for the former Republican vice presidential hopeful, who has signaled an interest in a 2012 presidential run but...

Following an election that has left Republicans with no clear vision about how to regain power, the normally low-profile race to head the GOP's national committee has turned into a six-man showdown that has opened rifts along racial, regional and ideological lines. As Republicans debate their future, the contest for chairman of the Republican National Committee has become a proxy for the major questions at the center of the party's challenges: how to attract young and minority voters, win outside the South and counter an increasingly powerful Democratic majority. After Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chairman, sent party members a...

WashingtonJourneys have cost taxpayers more than $187,000 since 1999 BY CHRIS CASTEEL Published: December 21, 2008 WASHINGTON — In the past decade, Sen. Jim Inhofe of Tulsa has made at least 20 trips to Africa as part of a mission that he frequently describes in religious terms. Sen. Jim Inhofe Inhofe’s African trips have cost taxpayers more than $187,000 since 1999, according to a review of expenses Inhofe and staff members have submitted through the Armed Services Committee. Some of the trips have been taken on military planes that cost thousands of dollars an hour to operate. The military does...

Gov. Sarah Palin's signature accomplishment — a contract to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48 — emerged from a flawed bidding process that narrowed the field to a company with ties to her administration, an Associated Press investigation shows. Beginning at the Republican National Convention in August, the McCain-Palin ticket has touted the pipeline as an example of how it would help America achieve energy independence. "We're building a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline, which is North America's largest and most expensive infrastructure project ever, to flow those sources of energy...

In a case that has now gone to the Supreme Court for review, Republicans in Ohio are challenging the registrations of all new voters whose names and other information do not exactly match those in government databases. It turns out that one of the present Ohio voters who could have fallen into this category is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher - or is it Worzelbacher? - otherwise known as Joe the Plumber.The man John McCain lionised in Wednesday night's debate has since had every aspect of his life scrutinized by the media. They've uncovered some contradictory facts, to say the least: He's...

Warner Todd Huston Examiner.com Attacks Gov. Palin’s Unborn Grandchild 2008-10-05 -By Warner Todd Huston Ben Kamin: In Year 2024 Palin’s Grandchild a ‘Bastard,’ Loser Palin Operates a ‘Lenscrafters,’ Hates Grandson Apparently, Rabbi Ben Kamin thinks he’s a funny guy. Yes, he must be auditioning for SNL with his latest column on the Examiner.com, a Denver based, Internet news service. You see, to devise the newest way to smear Governor Sarah Palin, the “Rabbi” thought it would be hilarious to wonder what the life of Palin’s grandchild, son-to-be of Palin’s daughter Bristol, will be like in the year 2024. This odious...

Senator John McCain had intended to ride back into Washington on Thursday as a leader who had put aside presidential politics to help broker a solution to the financial crisis. Instead he found himself in the midst of a remarkable partisan showdown, lacking a clear public message for how to bring it to an end. At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting....

Excerpt - WASHINGTON — One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The disclosure undercuts a statement by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years. ~ snip ~