Free Republic

Reading this is like watching an unassisted triple play in baseball. You see it, you pause to make sure you’ve seen what you think you’ve seen, and then you marvel at the sheer odds of it having happened. Would a big name at a big magazine like Mark Halperin really sign off on something so absurd, and so fawning in its absurdity, as to be instantly destined for infamy in the blogosphere? Of course not. The odds against it are a million to one. And yet. This is a magic moment, my friends. Instantly comfortable and highly skilled at the...

On Sunday, CBS Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer praised President Obama’s recent media blitz for health care reform: "There’s no question he is the best salesman on the staff," but wondered: "Does he run the risk of overexposing himself?" Politco.com’s Roger Simon dispelled that fear: "It is a risk, but he keeps topping himself." Simon elaborated on Obama’s oratory skill: "Every time you think this guy can’t give another speech that’s better than the last one, he gives another speech that’s better than the last one. And he’s achieving his purpose." He added that the President’s address to Congress...

Even as he declared, “There are many things I like and many things I don’t like” about the Obama administration’s first few months in office, the editorial page editor of The New York Times called Barack Obama “the most extraordinary president of my lifetime.” “If nothing else, the Republican Party’s hysterical reaction to everything he does and says is testament to that fact,” said Andrew Rosenthal. Obama was a central topic of Rosenthal’s May 19 talk from the bima of Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston, where the Montclair resident delivered a broad-ranging address interrupted by frequent laughter. “What is amazing...

The The economy is still a nightmare. The military situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are perilous -- and getting worse. But for all the troubles swirling around the nation these days, America has rarely seemed to be in such steady and capable hands.

Jeff Zeleny. Q: Thank you, Mr. President. During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office? Enchanted you the most from serving in this office? Humbled you the most? And troubled you the most?

From the start, the orator who had reached the White House based in no small part on his eloquence made it clear that he would not necessarily be delivering the same soaring stuff as he did in his campaign. "What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility," Barack Obama said in a conspicuously earthbound inaugural address. "A recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties . . . that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining...

Chris Matthews, along with Lois Romano of the Washington Post and David Corn of Mother Jones, devoted 10 minutes of last night’s “Hardball” to lamenting the religiosity of Republicans. “Why does everything sound like the 700 Club?” Matthews flippantly probed his like-minded panelists. The criticism came in response to recent sound bites from Sarah Palin and Michael Steele — two very popular go-to targets of the left. [snip] “Suspicious” is a good characterization of the liberal attitude toward Christianity. The media was “suspicious” of Palin throughout the campaign, accusing her of speaking in tongues, and admonishing her for her pro-life...

Is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - the former bodybuilder and action hero - getting ready for the next big starring role in his larger-than-life political career? For Californians who read political tea leaves, some signs are starting to emerge: A few months ago, the Republican was on the campaign trail for presidential candidate John McCain, lambasting Barack Obama as a guy with "skinny legs," "scrawny little arms" and socialist ideas. On Thursday, there he was standing next to President Obama - hugging him and praising him as the nation's economic savior and reformer. The governor regularly dismisses talk of another political...

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - As the stimulus plan goes into effect, Sen. Lindsey Graham has some concerns and hopes he and the president can find some common ground. Graham says things are still going to get worse. He supports spending for bridges, roads and infrastructure, but says with other spending measure the stimulus bill missed the mark. "If we would have spent some of this money or half of this money on banking and housing, we'd a had a better result in my opinion," Graham said. Graham highlighted his own bi-partisan spirit. "I think I've had a reputation for reaching...

GOP Sen. John McCain is positioning himself to be one of President Barack Obama’s strongest supporters, effectively giving Democrats the votes they need to override any GOP attempt to block the new administration’s legislative agenda. Obama heaped warm praise on his GOP rival during a dinner held in McCain’s honor the day before the inauguration, calling him a hero. Insiders duly noted McCain was granted a prime spot on the dais at the inauguration, sandwiched in a seat between White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The day after the inauguration, Obama and...

The photo-op after his meeting with Vice President-elect Joe Biden and Sen. Lindsey Graham was yet another bipartisan boon for President-elect Barack Obama. And the man who stole the show was none other than Graham – one of John McCain’s closest friends in the U.S. Senate. Seated next to the South Carolina Republican, Obama nodded pensively as Graham explained that he looks forward to working with Obama to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – even if he would have preferred a different outcome in November. Graham then offered support for the president-elect’s beleaguered Treasury pick and even gave...

Ben Smith: Perhaps the best way to see him is as a neutral in the (lopsided) battle between machine and reformers in Illinois. That's the stance he took in a defining battle, the 2006 contest for the presidency of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. Reformers fault him for failing to support their champion; but he didn't endorse the machine favorite either. He stayed on the sidelines, and kept his focus on the White House. You can accuse him of cowardice for that, or you can grant him that he had decided to devote himself to larger causes and ambitions...

Reporting from Washington -- The Northeast's dwindling cast of Senate Republicans has Democrats circling Arlen Specter's seat in Pennsylvania, convinced the party is well-positioned to make a competitive race out of the 2010 election. Leading the pack of prospects -- at least in celebrity -- is Chris Matthews, the MSNBC "Hardball" host and a former Capitol Hill Democratic staffer. The Philadelphia native has been toying with a run for months, and this week he sat down with state Democrats to discuss the prospect of taking on the five-term GOP senator. Others considered in the mix include Rep. Joe Sestak, who...

This brief history, based on authoritative published sources, is intended to provide readers with an objective and reasonably concise history of the hundreds of years of struggle between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo. Interested readers are strongly encouraged to consult the sources cited for a much fuller treatment of the subject. At the end of the historical summary implications of what is happening in Kosovo for the global jihad and the eventual Islamization of Europe are considered. History Prior to 19th Century The earliest known inhabitants of Kosovo were called Illyrians by both Greeks and Romans. Albanians today claim to...

Having legs like Lindsay Lohan's is not something all girls can achieve, however, what they can easily get is her leggings and that too at a store nearby. Come August and Lohan's leggings will hit Fred Segal stores under the actress' 6126 fashion line, named after her heroine Marilyn Monroe's birthday. The 21-year-old star created her own fashion line with design partner Kristi Kaylor.

Irate parents said a religious education teacher at the Alsager High School in England told students to wear Muslim headgear during a lesson on Tuesday. "But if Muslims were asked to go to church on Sunday and take Holy Communion, there would be war," the grandfather of one of the students said.

Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos," the effort to urge conservatives and Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to prolong the Democratic nomination battle, certainly annoys MSNBC's Chris Matthews who, during primary coverage Tuesday night, denounced the "mischief-making" by "a talk jock." In the 11:30 PM EDT half hour, Matthews offered a "Keith [Olbermann]-style special comment" about how "anyone who voted to screw up the political system of this country with the purpose of mischief should carry that with them the rest their lives." He called it "a ridiculous way to use the vote for which people fought and died,"...

Moscow - Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday that NATO's willingness to enlarge eastward had 'nothing positive' about it and followed 'a Cold War logic.' Lavrov had tough words for the alliance's decision last week to keep its doors open to former Soviet states wishing to join. 'We will do everything in our power to prevent Georgia and Ukraine's acceptance into NATO,' Lavrov was quoted as saying Tuesday in an interview with radio station Ekho Moskvy. Russia views NATO's expansion eastward as a betrayal and an effort by Western states to persevere in the Cold War policy of containment....

MOSCOW, April 8 (Itar-Tass) - Russia does not see any sense in sending troops to Kosovo, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an exclusive interview with the Echo of Moscow radio. He indicated that the situation around the UN mission in the breakaway Serbian province has not witnessed any dramatic changes compared with the period several years ago when Russia decided to pull its military contingent out of there. "We took this decision because we were unwilling to get associated with the policies conducted by KFOR, which could be described as 'the reverted ethnic cleansing'," Lavrov said.

Specialist Robert Terrio and his wife, Kary, thought they had avoided a dangerous deployment a few months ago when he learned that his Missouri National Guard unit would do a tour in Kosovo instead of Iraq or Afghanistan. "There's a certain amount of relief that we weren't being deployed to an active war zone,'' Robert Terrio said. Then, last month, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, a move Serbia refused to recognize. Suddenly, Kosovo started to look a little more dicey. Demonstrators torched the U.S. Embassy in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, mobs attacked several United Nations border posts, and gun...

Another humerous one liner from Fred Thompson. A nice quip after Matthews says his answer should have just “stopped at no.” He responded, “Well thats your opinion, Christopher.” Its all in the tone. Watch the video.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.) dodged a curveball thrown at her by moderator Tim Russert in tonight’s debate after she disavowed the use of torture against terrorists, even in extreme circumstances, only to be told her husband took the opposite position on Russert’s Meet the Press. “Well, he’s not standing here right now,” Clinton responded. The moment brought her huge applause, and her campaign promoted the clip as “Tonight’s Video Moment.” Bill Clinton came up at other moments in the debate as well, with Clinton acknowledging that her husband would likely place a role in her decision-making process if she...

Chris Matthews Endorses Hillary For...Majority Leader Posted by Geoffrey Dickens on November 13, 2006 - 17:02. On this weekend's syndicated Chris Matthews show, the host of MSNBC's Hardball endorsed Hillary Clinton for...Majority Leader. In his final commentary Matthews said the election afforded Clinton "a great new career option," that she was "a natural," and leading the Senate would prove, she has the "necessary ability to bring us together." Matthews puffed up the Senator from New York as an expert on health, education, the economy and even defense issues: "Not only does Hillary Clinton know her stuff, she cares about it,...

BELGRADE -- Aleksandar Popovi? says Ahtisaari’s postponement of Kosovo status due to Serbia’s elections is an excuse. “Ahtisaari’s plan to secretly, working behind our backs, draft a paper on Kosovo’s independence fell through. The real reason why it fell through is Russia’s firm and principled position that UN Charter cannot be breached, and it would appear Ahtisaari understood the Russian ‘no’ quite clearly”, science minister Aleksandar Popovi? says. Popovi?, of prime minister Koštunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), believes that the best option Martti Ahtisaari has at this time is to step down and let an impartial and objective international...

SEN. BOXER KNOCKS FOXNEWS IN INTERVIEW: SEN. BOXER [D-CA]: I hear that you agree with the president. I am not surprised. FOX ANCHOR: We are just trying to bring both sides. SEN. BOXER: Yeah, you are fair and balanced, thank you very much. FOX ANCHOR: Indeed we are...

<p>FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ON NOT CAPTURING BIN LADEN: 'At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers. They ridicule me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed'...</p>

For hundreds of thousands of poor people from the Andes to the Himalayas, the legacy of Cuba's ailing communist leader Fidel Castro will be not revolutionary war but eyesight. For decades, the now ailing Castro, who temporarily handed over power to his brother Raul on Monday, prescribed armed revolution to cure the Third World's ills. But more recently he has preferred to export doctors to treat poor people in the undeveloped world.

WILLIAM Jefferson Blythe III was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Ark. After his mother remarried, he took the family surname, Clinton. Clinton was a good student. He enjoyed playing the saxophone and even considered a professional musical career. While in high school, a fortuitous meeting with President John Kennedy led him to choose a life of public service.

When all the fanatical Christians disappear, will traffic finally improve? Wait, did I miss it? Did it happen three days ago, on 6-6-06, a.k.a. Tea Time with the Beast, a.k.a. the Great Day of Reckoning, a.k.a. the National Day of Slayer, all the world crashing down in a heap of hissing steam and belching smoke and balmy gusty breezes sometime around noon just after lunch but not before rush hour and hitting right around siesta? I might have been napping. Did the Apocalypse finally hit? Did the deep wish of roughly a half-billion zealous believers come to pass and were...

No wait, not six. To hell with that. Make it 10. Ten bucks a gallon, no matter what the going rate for a barrel of light sweet crude. That would so completely, violently, brilliantly do it. Revolutionize the country. Firebomb our pungent stasis. Change everything. Don't you agree? Here's what we could do: Give gas discounts to cab drivers (at least initially) and metro transit systems and low-income folks, those who have to drive their busted-up '78 Honda Civics to their jobs scrubbing restaurant toilets and flipping burgers and vacuuming the residual cocaine from the seat cushions of numb SUV...

Think sex and drugs destroy America? Try naive chastity. Oh, and "Purity Balls" There are these things. These unholy events called "Purity Balls" and you should probably fall to your knees right this minute and thank a merciful and lubricious and happily polyamorous God that you do not know what they are and that you have access right this minute to vast quantities of wine to deflect their nasty karmic arrows because, you know, oh my God. But hey, free country. Purity Balls. No, not some sort of newfangled spherical chastity device to be inserted using vacuum tubes and pulleys,...

It's a shockingly eco-friendly plan from the world's most toxic retailer. Did hell just freeze over? Sometimes you just have to let the possibility breathe. Sometimes you just have to allow that something grand and good and healthy might actually be born from the bowels of the dank and ravenous megacorporate world, like flowers from a dung heap, like vodka from old potatoes, even if it comes right alongside the nastiest, most abusive federal environmental policy you will see in your lifetime. Take Wal-Mart, the most famously offensive, town-destroying, junk-purveying, labor-abusing, sweatshop-supporting, American-job-killing, soul-numbing, seizure-inducing, hope-curdling retailer in the known...

Nina Burleigh Fri May 5, 11:08 AM ET Sometime later this month, way down on the Sewanee river -- or somewhere in Tennessee anyway -- a "Draft Hillary" party will take place, replete with red white and blue gingerbread cookies. I respect and admire Hillary Clinton, and I believe she means well, but this event should strike fear into our hearts. I'm all for having a female president and the Senator might even make a good one, somewhere and someday. The trouble is she can't be elected in 2008. It doesn't matter how many times she teams up with Bill...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rep. Patrick Kennedy was still in college when he took elected office as a state representative. Nearly two decades later, he has spent his entire adult life as a lawmaker. (snip) In Congress, Kennedy has pushed for greater mental health care coverage, citing his own struggles with depression and addiction. (snip) A tennis player and avid reader of biographies and autobiographies, Kennedy has a passion for sailing. "He can go out and be out of the public eye. It's tranquil, and it's something he enjoys," Marcella said. (snip) "He's a warm, nice, optimistic, kind person. That's what...

The William F. Clinton Foundation has posted an Internet job listing for unpaid interns. Seriously. The president that is now the butt of jokes anytime anyone claims they did not have sex with 'that woman' is brought forward apparently would again like to have a gal Friday around to help out. One item on the web site promises hands-on experience and says the interns have the responsibility of interacting directly with the staff. (Insert any joke you would like here). No - I'm not making it up. Page Six gives this account: It's been 10 years since the ex-president faced...

On Tuesday's Hardball, the discussion turned to Jimmy Carter's remarks at the funeral of Coretta Scott King. The former president had brought up wiretapping. Host Chris Matthews observed: "Of course that‘s hot because J. Edgar Hoover was wiretapping Dr. King and feeding all the dirty to LBJ, you know?" The former FBI chief had indeed wiretapped the late civil rights leader, but not on his own authority and initially not for President Lyndon Johnson. King biographer David Garrow wrote in a 2002 Atlantic Monthly article: "On October 10, 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy committed what is widely viewed...

Yes, I know you were drunk. Must've been. Either drunk or on serious meds and/or you just didn't give much of a damn about anything anyway because you're just one of those people, one of those types who comes lurching around the city like a chunk of numbed pain in your big-ass mid-'80s burgundy car with the white top and chrome bumpers -- an old Cadillac? Monte Carlo? -- early last Sunday morning to wreak casual havoc. Is that about right? Do you remember any of it? Here is what I'm guessing: probably not. Let me tell you what happened,...

Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe? Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost? And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob...

Apparently, it wasn't just "invade Iraq and Afghanistan in my name." A special report: Scene: White House private residence, night, not long ago. President Bush present in his most favoritest guns 'n' bunnies PJs. Laura asleep, knocked out by a combination of too much Good Housekeeping and excessive hair-spray fumes. Suddenly, a burst of black smoke. A deep, resonant voice speaks: "Psst! George! God here, taking a break from supervising the well-being of eight billion troubled souls along with infinite galaxies of unimaginable vastness to speak with you directly one more time because, well, you're special, aren't you, George? Yes...

Leather, techno, sex & war: more only-in-SF juice to make you proud. Take that, uptight neocons. It was the moment when we walked by a jam-packed S.F. City Hall and realized it was open to host a VIP techno dance party, while immediately outside its gilded doors upward of 50,000 revelers wandered and shimmied and flaunted their costumes and drank nasty Red Bull cocktails in the huge Civic Center plaza for the third annual Love Parade, everyone baring flesh and shaking their groove thangs to any one of 200 world-class (well, some of them) DJs spinning their wares on over...

At last, one scientist BushCo will definitely -- albeit resentfully -- listen to. Sometimes. So now we know. This is what it takes. This is how far the nation has to crumble and this is how many people have to die and this is how many tens of billions it has to cost and this is how far his dirt-low poll numbers have to fall before Bush will finally come out and say he agrees with one of those godforsaken gul-dang book-learned scientist types. You know the ones. Those informed and well-educated data-crunchers he normally despises like a kid hates...

Just four years ago it was not unusual to find wanted war criminal Ratko Mladic enjoying himself at one of Belgrade's finer dining establishments or getting drunk and belligerent at a football match. Hailed as a war hero and protected by President Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbian army, the former Bosnian Serb general was living the good life in retirement. In contrast, try to imagine Himmler or Mengele attending opening night at the Vienna Opera House in 1950. Mladic remained on the payroll of both the Serbian and the Bosnian Serb military for years after he was indicted for war...

Gartner urges caution before downloading Firefox The Web browser may not be an unstoppable juggernaut News Story by Matthew Broersma FEBRUARY 10, 2005 (TECHWORLD.COM) - Companies should think twice before jumping on the Firefox bandwagon, according to research firm Gartner Inc. The open-source browser has been gaining market share steadily over the past few months, helped by industry support and user enthusiasm, but Firefox isn't the unstoppable juggernaut it might seem. Browser switching is taking place at the level of individual users, rather than organizations, and some of the factors that make Firefox more appealing than Internet Explorer are likely...

CANNES/HELSINKI (Reuters) - The world's largest mobile phone maker, Nokia, and software giant Microsoft struck a deal on Monday to make it easier for consumers to buy digital music on-line and play it back on their handsets. In a comprehensive agreement, which involves a separate deal with digital media company Loudeye, Nokia agreed to put Microsoft's music player software into its handsets. In return, Microsoft, will introduce open standards for digital music compression and piracy protection in its Media Players for personal computers. "Users can synchronize their music collection with their mobile device," Nokia said in a statement. "This agreement...

Microsoft, showing its endurance in the mobile phone business, is expected to announce on Monday a partnership with the largest contract electronics manufacturer, Flextronics of Singapore, to make low-cost smart phones that run on Microsoft's mobile operating system. . The device, in a so-called candy-bar design, will have the interactive features of a smart phone at the price of many standard mobile phones today, Microsoft executives said in advance of the opening on Monday of the 3GSM World Congress, the mobile phone industry's annual trade show in Cannes. . Microsoft began making software to power mobile phones five years ago...

Microsoft Corp.'s 2001 antitrust settlement with the Bush administration hasn't reduced the dominance of the company's Windows personal computer operating system, a Justice Department lawyer said yesterday. There has been "no demonstrable change in the operating system marketplace," government lawyer Renata Hesse said in Washington in response to a question from the federal judge overseeing the accord. "Microsoft continues to have a large share in that market." The 2001 agreement resolved a suit that at one point threatened the world's largest software maker with a breakup ................................................... Kollar-Kotelly, who approved the settlement in 2002, said she wasn't concerned about Microsoft's...

All non-Microsoft browers include a flaw that allows URL spoofing using Unicode characters, which can be exploited by phishing scams seeking to steal login information for online banking accounts. The spoofing flaw, which is demonstrated on the web site of the Shmoo Group, works in the Firefox, Mozilla and Opera browsers, as well as the Safari browser for Macs. The spoof exploits flaws in how the browsers interpret Unicode characters. A link using Unicode characters to replace the letter "a" in "Paypal" will display as www.paypal.com in the browser, but send users to www.xn--pypal-4ve.com - which then displays "www.paypal.com" in...

A federal magistrate has handed a partial victory to Utah's SCO Group, ordering computer giant IBM to turn over more of its Linux operating system-related program codes. U.S. Magistrate Brooke Wells' ruling, released just minutes after Salt Lake City's federal courthouse closed Wednesday, came in the Lindon software company's contractual suit stemming from Big Blue's alleged distribution of Linux applications purportedly tainted with SCO's proprietary Unix code. In a lawsuit tentatively set for trial next fall, SCO is seeking damages ranging from $5 billion to $50 billion from IBM. The Utah company also is in Linux-related litigation with Novell, Linux...

Open Source Development Labs has reportedly rejected reports it is leading a revision of the Linux Kernel to remove code that might infringe software patents Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), which promotes the adoption of the Linux operating system, has denied that it plans to rewrite the Linux kernel to combat claims that it infringes some software patents. Linux Business Week reported last week that, according to "informed sources", the OSDL, Intel, IBM, the state of Oregon and the city of Beaverton are part of a consortium that will rewrite the parts of the Linux kernel that allegedly infringe patents....

IBM goes silent on Linux desktop effort Big Blue mum about progress of the company's move to open source clients By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service January 25, 2005 More than a year after IBM's (Profile, Products, Articles) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano challenged his company to move to the Linux desktop by the end of 2005, IBM has significantly toned down its rhetoric on the subject of open-source clients. "We don't have anything we want to say that's definitive," said Nancy Kaplan, an IBM spokeswoman, as she declined to comment on specifics of the roll-out. "There are...