Free Republic

There’s something weird about Law Abiding Citizen, and it isn’t simply the movie’s attempt to gussy up the legal thriller genre with gruesome, Saw-style theatrics. No, the most notable thing about the film is how it appears to inadvertently channel the recent, inchoate Republican anger at the Obama administration and use it to power a violent revenge fantasy. Don’t believe me? Here are four ways Law Abiding Citizen feels like a Republican wet dream. Mild spoilers ahead: Sympathy with the Devil Jamie Foxx’s district attorney Nick Rice is ostensibly our hero, struggling to put an end to the murderous schemes...

The feeble pulse of moderation in the Republican Party is in danger of flat-lining in the Nov. 3 Congressional election in upstate New York. Luminaries like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have taken opposing sides over whether the party dare tolerate the official Republican candidate in the 23rd district — Dede Scozzafava, a six-term assemblywoman whose record includes refreshing tinges of centrism. Ms. Scozzafava was nominated by local party leaders as eminently electable despite — or because of — her defense of women’s abortion rights and her tolerant views on same-sex marriage. She is already shunned by many more ideologically...

Do the major media outlets in the U.S. have a liberal bias? Few questions evoke stronger opinions, and we cannot think of a more important question to which objective statistical techniques can lend their service. So far, the debate has largely been one of anecdotes (“How can CBS News be balanced when it calls Steve Forbes’ tax plan ‘wacky’?”) and untested theories (“if the news industry is a competitive market, then how can media outlets be systematically biased?”). Few studies provide an objective measure of the slant of news, and none has provided a way to link such a measure...

Journalism Should Own Its Liberalism And then manage it, challenge it, and account for it By Thomas Edsall The floodtide of e-mails and letters to New York Times ombudsman Clark Hoyt after his September 27 column on the paper’s failure to promptly investigate the conservative-initiated stories about Van Jones and ACORN testifies to the failure of the mainstream press to deal with the issue of liberal bias. “Many readers were not buying [the] contention that liberal bias had nothing to do with the slow response to ACORN and, before that, to the resignation of Van Jones, a White House aide,”...

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who has long resisted climate change legislation, has joined the ranks of those pushing for a bipartisan agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. We welcome his change of heart. Mr. Graham has sensibly decided that it helps neither the planet, the country nor his party to block efforts to solve the problem of global warming. . . . . . Mr. Graham’s conversion could encourage Senator John McCain and Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — all past supporters of climate change legislation — to come forward again, and it could attract fence-sitters...

Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning are, in increasing amount: lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ lack of precision in modern language translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one. Experts in ancient languages are helpful in reducing the first type of error above, which is a vanishing source of error as scholarship advances understanding. English language linguists are helpful in reducing the second type of error, which also...

...it is becoming painfully obvious that Brokaw man should no longer be appearing on television as he has totally lost touch with the present. Remember the Presidential debate he moderated? Whether you supported Obama or McCain one thing about the debate just about EVERYONE agreed on was that it was BORING The people in the audience got to submit a question (and more from the internet) but Tom Brokaw got to select the questions. Brokaw picked questions that only he cared about...The latest example of Brokaw's tentative grasp on reality happened on Meet the Press this past Sunday as he...

The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows. Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last...

The Democratic Party struggled at the national level throughout the 1970s and ’80s — all but shut out of the White House — because it was defined by its most extreme elements: war protestors, loony peaceniks, angry black activists, crime apologists, etc. It took years of concerted effort by the Democratic Leadership Council, Bill Clinton and others to reclaim the Democrats’ reputation as reasonable and pragmatic. The Republican Party of today is stuck in the same place, defined by Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, birthers, tea partiers and Joe Wilson. John McCain fell into the trap of being defined by the...

By: Scott Whitlock September 03, 2009 12:00 ET On Thursday’s Good Morning America, for the third time in two years, Sam Champion interviewed an extreme environmentalist who shunned toilet paper for a year as part of a project to be carbon neutral. Colin Beavan, also known as "No Impact Man," appeared on the show to promote a new documentary and book on his experience. This time, however, Champion downplayed the bizarre elements of Beavan’s life. The host made no mention of the fact that, in addition to not using amenities such as elevators, cars and electricity, Beavan also stopped partaking...

Last week I wrote about former President George W. Bush’s unprecedented work on behalf of the African AIDS epidemic. That $15 billion package, first proposed in January 2003, was entirely Bush’s doing, and has been ignored by the mainstream media and liberals who should hail the initiative. Similarly, it has been dismissed by many conservatives who did not like the massive spending at a time of record deficits. I focused on the latest ignored news on the Bush initiative: the remarkable conclusion that it has saved over one million African lives. According to an April 2009 study by researchers at...

Maybe I'm reading too deeply into things as usual, but at least someone here is bound to find this as interesting and mildly irritating as I do. Look at the nature of the synonyms Thesaurus.com gives for "conservative" versus those it gives for "liberal." LIBERAL Main Entry: liberal Part of Speech: adjective Definition: progressive Synonyms: advanced, avant-garde, broad, broad-minded, catholic, enlightened, flexible, free, general, high-minded, humanistic, humanitarian, indulgent, intelligent, interested, latitudinarian, left, lenient, libertarian, loose, magnanimous, permissive, radical, rational, reasonable, receiving, receptive, reformist, tolerant, unbiased, unbigoted, unconventional, understanding, unorthodox, unprejudiced Antonyms: conservative, narrow, narrow-minded CONSERVATIVE Main Entry: conservative Part of...

Are you someone who squirms when confronted with slime, shudders at stickiness or gets grossed out by gore? Do crawly insects make you cringe or dead bodies make you blanch? If so, chances are you're more conservative -- politically, and especially in your attitudes toward gays and lesbians -- than your less-squeamish counterparts, according to two Cornell studies. The results, said study leader David Pizarro, Cornell assistant professor of psychology, raise questions about the role of disgust -- an emotion that likely evolved in humans to keep them safe from potentially hazardous or disease-carrying environments -- in contemporary judgments of...

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that the District of Columbia's law barring residents from keeping loaded handguns at home violated the Second Amendment, gun-ownership advocates had reason to celebrate. But the high court's decision could serve to bolster the other side because of its narrow reasoning, which leaves states broad authority to enact strict gun-control measures, two BU School of Public Health professors assert in the May 28 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. "Gun-control advocates need to have a full appreciation of what the Court did and did not do" in the D.C. case,...

"Michelle Obama Captivates Glittery Crowd in NYC"

If case you missed it (and believe me the MSM is trying very hard to downplay this) One of the planes used as Air force One (yeah they got backups) did a low altitude fly-by of Ground Zero New York on April 27th 2009 at about 10:00 AM. When you read the above it doesn’t really excite anyone. Sounds routine, like such incidents happen everyday and no big deal, right? The problem is that words can’t really give the full impact of what happened. Luckily we live in the modern age where video cameras are everywhere and as such this...

Several years ago I wrote an essay addressing liberal bias in the (mainstream) media. That essay reviewed a scholarly article by a sociologist who did a careful content analysis of leading newspapers. What I didn’t realize at the time was how many people take such statements as “the [mainstream]0 media is (liberally) biased” as an article of faith. The article concluded that the content examined didn’t show much liberal bias, indeed, more conservative bias than many are even willing to consider. Sociologists are good at this kind of thing: debunking myths and taken-for-granted “truths.” It is never a good idea...

A reportedly corporate-financed grassroots" anti-tax movement, paid for, planned and promoted by right wing think tanks, corporate lobbyists and Fox News Channel, has failed to bring about the "popular uprising" against the Obama administration its creators had hoped for. The day of "tea parties" pushed by Republican operatives and partisan advocacy groups such as FreedomWorks, that sought to protest the Obama government's tax and stimulus policies by encouraging people to 'wave tea bags' brought about only a few hundred "tea-baggers" in most parts of the U.S., despite relentless promotion by Fox News TV hosts. Participants had hoped to rally hundreds...

What, exactly, are the protesters protesting? The marginal tax rate rising 3% for millionaires? The Web is buzzing with information about how to throw an anti-Obama Taxpayer Tea Party, something organizers hope will be held today from Santa Monica to South Carolina. But no need to burn up your bandwidth reading complicated instructions. Here's a simpler recipe: Go to a hobby store. Buy a scale model of a U.N. One-World-Government Black Helicopter and a tube of glue. Toss the model kit. Sniff the entire tube of glue. You're all set for the party. I can recall only a few outbreaks...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry isn't immune from your typical American's fear over their job security in this economy. Right now, in fact, it seems as if he might be out of a job pretty soon, as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison looks set to mount a primary challenge against him next year, and early polls show her in the lead. So he's been working hard on his appeal to the right lately, rejecting some stimulus money (and fighting with Hutchison over it), talking with Glenn Beck and, now, appealing directly to the fringe. Last week, Perry announced his support for a...

If John Travolta, an avid user of his private jet and a reported Republican, were to be stopped by law from purchasing an armed fighter plane, would the film actor suddenly be surrounded by the same people who sanctimoniously claim that the Constitution protects the private citizen's right to buy and own an assault rifle? That seems an absurd question, but we often find ourselves in absurd circumstances when we get to the gun issue. A hard fact leers before us: on the subject of guns, constitutional meaning and misinterpretation have been mixed together for so long that far too...

Here is the socialist view of the tea parties remember it's just not about taxation it's about the wreckless, socialist, liberty grabbing,spending of the obama adm.

Mancow wouldn't know a "tea bag" if it smacked her in the face. The Left and the MSM have no idea what the Tea Parties are all about. She also blasts Fox News for its willingness to cover the April 15th Tea Parties next week.

THE FORBIDDEN Saturday Night Live SKIT SNL did a "Bailout" skit, which has created some rather awkward moments for NBC. They spiked the video and tried to shut it down on the Internet. But aha, there's still some sites that have it... http://msunderestimated.com/SNLBailoutSkit.wmv

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Acting swiftly, the Democratic-led House approved a bill Thursday to slap punishing taxes on big employee bonuses at firms bailed out by taxpayers. In some cases the bonuses might be taxed 100 percent leaving the recipients with nothing. [snip] The bill passed as controversy swirled around the disclosure that, while Democrats and Republicans were both railing about the AIG bonuses, Democrats were also responsible for removing a provision, originally contained in stimulus legislation, to ban such bonuses.

BOSTON — The Bangor Daily News was named the best daily newspaper of its size in New England at a Friday gathering of the New England Newspaper Association.

Please Freep this poll on Media Bias. It was originally set up at Political Ref but registration was required, but that has been taken care of by using PollDaddy.com.

(Feb. 14) - It's no surprise to see Abraham Lincoln, the man who held the nation together when it was on the brink of collapse, atop the list of greatest American presidents. But many other presidents are judged far differently by experts than by the general public. Bill Clinton left office with a high approval rating, but a panel of writers who focus on US politics and foreign affairs at the Times, a British publication, considered him mediocre. The president who passed progressive legislation but who saddled himself with the Monica Lewinsky scandal landed at number 23. As panelist Ben...

Lamar Smith, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, strode purposely to the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday to discuss the elephant in the room. And the donkey that isn’t. “The national media spells scandal without the ‘D,’” Smith roared during the one-minute daily speech allotted every member of the House. “Two weeks ago the Governor of Illinois was removed from office,” he said. “All three television networks ran full reports on the story the same night and again the following morning. Not one report mentioned that he is a Democrat.” To reinforce his point,

There’s a reason John McCain married a younger woman. Not only can she spoonfeed the deluded old codger and wipe up his drool, but she’s rational enough to comprehend what the media did to her husband throughout the last election cycle. “I do believe there was a media bias,” Cindy said. “I do believe that the media had a specific agenda…There is very little difference now between journalism and gossip.” “The New York Times profile of me is being used as an example of the bias in reporting in journalism classes at Columbia’s journalism school.” Our sources inside the McCain...

Helen Thomas, the angry old warhorse who has squatted in the front row at every presidential press conference since the Zachary Taylor administration, ‘fessed up to her liberal bias in a Canadian TV interview. “I’m a liberal,” Thomas admitted, “I was born a liberal. I’ll be one ’til I die. What else should a reporter be when you see so much and when we have such great privilege and access to the truth?” So Thomas was born that way. She can’t help it. Her blatant liberal bias is genetic. It’s in her DNA. It’s like being left-handed or blue-eyed. I...

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow bashed competitor Fox News at a Television Critics Association gathering Thursday before she told a small group of reporters she's "never seen a show on Fox at any time ever.” I kid you not. Must be quite a talent to have strong opinions about something you've never actually experienced firsthand, dontcha think?

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 29, 2008 - For the first time, researchers have established a clear link between family rejection of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) adolescents and negative health outcomes in early adulthood. The findings will be published in the January issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a peer-reviewed article entitled "Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health Outcomes in White and Latino Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Young Adults."

To: Jim Clancy clancy@cnn.com Where on earth does CNN get the “information� that there are “scores of civilians� (Jim Clancy this morning) in the air strike targeting Hamas? CNN admits that they are not allowed into Gaza because of the danger, so they “rely� on Arab “journalists� but mainly on Palestinian sources in Gaza for info, oh well, because the Pallywood is a new thing? they have not been known to add dead bodies in Jenin or to fake images as a whole? I realize that they have SOME kids dead, as this was Hamas’ (like Hezbollah's) intention when they...

WaPo steps in Pallywood Doodoo? Something Smells ... Apparently, Gaza journalists are having trouble finding civilians among the casualties. Reports estimate 90% of killed are “militants.”

Quote of the Year Co-anchor Chris Matthews: “I have to tell you, you know, it’s part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My — I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often. ”Co-anchor Keith Olbermann: “Steady.”

The label of gifted, as prized to some parents as a "My Child Is an Honor Student" bumper sticker, is about to be dropped by the Montgomery County school system. Officials plan to abandon a decades-old policy that sorts second-grade students, like Dr. Seuss's Sneetches, into those who are gifted (the Star-Belly sort) and those who are not. Several other school systems in the region identify children in the same manner. But Montgomery education leaders have decided that the practice is arbitrary and unfair.

SANTA FE, New Mexico (CNN) – For The New Mexico Sun News it is either a major scoop or “Dewey Beats Truman” déjà vu 60 years later. “Obama Wins!” is the headline of the edition on newsstands now, complete with “special collector’s edition” in red bold typeface. The Sun News is a bi-monthly newspaper and its Oct 26-Nov 8 issue had to hit the streets, and the newsstands, before the election. So the editors decided to make a leap of faith and declare Democrat Barack Obama the winner. In an article explaining their choice, the editors unabashedly wrote, “When it...

I just added my donation, so I don't feel so guilty cluttering up the boards with yet another vanity. Go donate and write a vanity! Here's why I think we should ignore the polls and continue with our efforts to elect McPalin: 1) I think some of FR's gloom and doomers just might be shills. With the kind of crooked dough that Obama's amassing, ACORN, and Soros has bought in the past, it's not so far fetched that the #1 conservative site would get "seminar callers." That they have senior dates on their page doesn't mean they're not seminar callers--it...

"Sarah Palin should apologize to the Obama campaign and the American people for her role in bringing out the worst in her supporters" ... "Palin's pit-bull mentality has not only set a negative tone, but a dangerous one. She should be censured."

There are three problems with Bill Maher's new movie mocking faith: It misunderstands religion, misconceives God and gets human nature all wrong. I have a fantasy of a counter-movie. I would travel around the world and interview every scientist with a crackpot theory or a quack cure. I'd find researchers who were venal, eccentric, foolish or cruel, throwing in a few responsible scientists for credibility. Call it, say, "Scientifictious." Of course, that would be no more convincing than "Religulous." Religion is not univocal; there are lots of varieties and personalities. There is no shortage of strange beliefs and practices. There...

On the eve of the penultimate presidential debate, a new TIME/CNN poll shows John McCain still struggling in states won by George W. Bush in 2004, a sign that last week's vice-presidential debate had little effect on voter opinion. In North Carolina, which Bush won by more than 12 percentage points in both 2000 and 2004, McCain and Obama are locked in a dead heat, with each candidate garnering the support of 49% of likely voters. In Indiana, which Bush won by 21 points in 2004 and 16 points in 2000, McCain maintains a slight 5-point lead over Obama, with...

On the eve of the penultimate presidential debate, a new TIME/CNN poll shows John McCain still struggling in states won by George W. Bush in 2004, a sign that last week's vice-presidential debate had little effect on voter opinion. In North Carolina, which Bush won by more than 12 percentage points in both 2000 and 2004, McCain and Obama are locked in a dead heat, with each candidate garnering the support of 49% of likely voters. In Indiana, which Bush won by 21 points in 2004 and 16 points in 2000, McCain maintains a slight 5-point lead over Obama, with...

Just when you thought Keith Olbermann couldn’t go any lower, he plunges to new depths that seem almost unimaginable for someone pawning himself off as a journalist. On Friday, the "Countdown" host actually told his viewers that National Review editor Rich Lowry’s published opinion of Sarah Palin’s performance during Thursday’s debate "read like soft core porn." MSNBC’s leading on-air personality disgustingly concluded: "I don`t really care if you sat there last night during the debate and masturbated. But was it really necessary to tell America about it?"

New York - Barack Obama has picked up steam. Over the past two weeks he's seen a small but steady rise in the polls. Immediately after the Republican Convention, the Illinois senator trailed his rival John McCain by three points in the various daily tracking polls. Senator Obama is now up by as many as six or seven points. (snip) Pollsters say that's in part because the vital independent voters are now shifting his way. There's also the Sarah Palin factor. She continues to energize the Republican base. But in her recent interview on CBS, the Alaska governor did not...

New York - Barack Obama has picked up steam. Over the past two weeks he's seen a small but steady rise in the polls. Immediately after the Republican Convention, the Illinois senator trailed his rival John McCain by three points in the various daily tracking polls. Senator Obama is now up by as many as six or seven points. (snip) Pollsters say that's in part because the vital independent voters are now shifting his way. There's also the Sarah Palin factor. She continues to energize the Republican base. But in her recent interview on CBS, the Alaska governor did not...

David Letterman kept up his anger about being stood up by Senator John McCain for a second night in a row - "Here's how it works: You don't come to see me? You don't come to see me? Well, we might not see you on Inauguration Day," Letterman said. I have yet to hear a negative joke about Obama on Leno. He used to joke about the left and right almost evenly but not in the last few months. There isn't a day that goes by where a local music station doesn't have a host talking up Obama and smearing...

As some of you may know, a man named Jim David Adkisson, an unemployed truck driver went berserk and shot up a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville Tennessee. He murdered 2 people and injured about 5 others while they were performing a musical called Little orphan Annie. Adkisson claimed he did it because he was angered by liberalism and in particular, homosexuality. According to a sworn affidavit by one of the officers; "During the interview Adkisson stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were...

There are 5 contracts that I intend to examine to get a start on finding some kind of number to quantify Liberal Bias on Intrade. The first contract is 2008.PRES.CLINTON(H) which seems like it should have zero value. This gives a good glimpse at a baseline bias value. Taking into account the volume of the contract, bias might be expressed as Price * Volume of such a baseline contract. In this case it's 3.2 * 522834, but that's unnecessarily high because the volume is over the life of the contract. So I would use the volume since the convention ended,...

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department pledged Monday to send election monitors around the country to help ensure access to the polls in November, even while acknowledging its limited power to enforce election laws. Civil rights groups fear that an unprecedented minority voter turnout due to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama might be countered by efforts to intimidate or otherwise block people who seek to cast their ballots. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and other Justice officials met with about 42 representatives from voter access watchdogs, hoping to assure them that having a smooth Nov. 4 election is a priority. "The Justice...