Free Republic

If conservatives rally around the flag in times of crisis, liberals rally around the clique. Their assurance that they are right coming from three little words. “Everybody I Know.” The crazies clinging to their guns and religion might have voted for the Republicans, but everybody I know voted progressive. Some wingnuts might not believe in Global Warming, but everybody I know does. Some greedy people might want tax cuts, but everybody I know thinks taxes are too low.

As millions of hardworking Americans struggle to make ends meet, Senate staffers will participate next week in a two-day orgy of back massages, organic food tastings and milk mustache photos. It's all part of a health fair for the staffers, who enjoy some of the best health care in the country. Not only will they get health screenings, they'll also find out if their iPods are too loud. Neither the Senate's Education and Training Office nor the Senate sergeant-at-arms, which oversees the office, would say which vendors are providing the services or how much the health fair will cost taxpayers....

Few are laughing in Australia following Robin Williams' joke that its people are "basically English rednecks". His remarks, made on The Late Show with David Letterman, prompted Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to respond on a Sydney radio show. "I think Robin Williams should go and spend a little time in Alabama before he frames comments about people being particularly redneck," said Mr Rudd.

An attempt is being made to inculcate into our society the notion -- create a meme if you will -- that liberals and atheists are smarter than conservatives who believe in God. Cited as evidence by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa are conclusions gleaned from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health which began with a survey of high school students in 1994 and part of which included a picture-based vocabulary test used to estimate their IQs. Interviews of participants 14 years later showed higher-IQ scorers to be disproportionately liberals and atheists. There is surprisingly simple test that you can perform...

Let me share with you an interesting article from The Washington Post about the teacher of an all-black class in a high school in Alexandria, Va., who expressed his frustration at how poorly the students were performing. The class included both native-born African-Americans and kids who had emigrated from Africa. In a moment of exasperation, the teacher blurted out this question to the native-born students: "Why don't you guys study like the kids from Africa?" One of them shot back the answer. The kid replied, "It's because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study." Another student...

Dan Calabrese notices a scolding tone coming from the Associated Press in reporting its latest polling. It headlines the report by noting that “a grouchy public [is] sticking with Obama,” having seen a 54% job approval rating in its survey — but some bad numbers on the issues. Does the AP report those falling levels of support as a consequence of Barack Obama doing a poor job? No, as emphases from Dan and myself show: The public grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, including war and the economy, continuing the slippage that has...

My theory—call it the “Oakley effect”—is that really smart people often don’t know how to accept and react constructively to criticism. (A neuroscientist might say they “have underdeveloped neurocircuitry for integrating negatively valenced stimuli.”) This is because smart people are whizzes at problems that only need one person to figure out. Indeed, people are evaluated from kindergarten through college prep SATs on the basis of such “single solver” problems. If you are often or nearly always right with these kinds of problems, your increased confidence in your own abilities would be accompanied by an inadvertent decrease in your capacity to...

For much of the Bush administration, the media splashed stories of neoconservative conspiracies and cabals. Exposés about mostly Jewish liberals-turned-conservatives charged that they were adherents of the philosopher Leo Strauss and embraced the Platonic notion of the “noble lie.” In his Republic, Plato outlined an elaborate, ranked utopia, a good city (“Kallipolis”) run by a sort of benign natural selection. The philosopher-kings sat atop hierarchies in which occupations were assigned for the citizenry. To justify arbitrary selections, the rulers would make up “noble lies” about divine edicts, making clear that the occupations chosen for lesser folk were god-given. Once the...

SOME hardworking folks at NBC and MSNBC -- who work long hours for little pay -- are wondering, "Where in the world is Luke Russert?" One insider sniped, "He was hired last year to be the youth correspondent -- he got a great contract and was supposed to cover youth issues, blog and bring in young viewers, but he's been MIA for a while. It's like, 'Well, that's what you get for nepotism.' "

Media watchdog Brent Bozell tells Newsmax that the national media are so slanted to the left that they have been "pamphleteers for the Obama administration." Bozell, founder and president of The Media Research Center — which tracks liberal bias in the media — also said that the major TV networks have refused to call Obama a socialist or even a liberal even though he is "the most radical left-wing president in the history of the United States." See Video: Brent Bozell explains how the mainstream media supports Obama’s socialist agenda - Click Here Now|

Millions of Hispanics, mostly poor and uneducated, have immigrated to America illegally since the early 1990s. Most are Mexicans and most of them are high school dropouts.  Compared to what they might have had in a slum or impoverished rural area of Mexico or Central America, these immigrants have done well here. It has been different story for their neighbors -- middle-class Americans. For them, illegal immigration has often meant a deterioration of their neighborhoods, public schools, and their quality of life -- especially across America's Southwest. Some have watched their culture erode: It's not uncommon to see Mexican flags flying...

They’re rich, they’re famous and they’re better than you are. Why? Because they’re famous, and that means they’re entitled to it. Meritocracy is the fundamental difference between a functional free nation and a society of elite classes that don’t work, don’t accomplish anything useful-- but nevertheless rule. Meritocracy insures a system where those who can do, do. Systems of entitlement insure that those who have no useful skills or abilities tell others what to do, or collect money from them. And that is what we truly mean when we say “Free Country”, not a country without laws, but a country...

Lots of people love this movie of course. But I’m convinced it’s for the wrong reasons. Because to me “It’s a Wonderful Life” is anything but a cheery holiday tale. Sitting in that dark public high school classroom, I shuddered as the projector whirred and George Bailey’s life unspooled.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Paul Krugman, the Princeton University scholar and New York Times columnist, won the Nobel economic prize Monday for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect trade patterns and the location of economic activity. Krugman has been a harsh critic of the Bush administration and the Republican Party in The New York Times, where he writes a regular column and has a blog called "Conscience of a Liberal." He has come out forcefully against John McCain during the economic meltdown, saying the Republican candidate is "more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago" and...

<p>NEW YORK — NBC News reporter Luke Russert said he made a "dumb" misstatement on the "Today" show Wednesday when he suggested that smart people supported Barack Obama for president.</p> <p>Almost immediately, Russert took a hazing in the Web world. Wrote Tim Graham of the conservative Media Research Center on the NewsBusters blog: "Out of the mouths of young, untrained reporters come the unspoken beliefs of the liberal media."</p>

I opened the International Herald Tribune today here in Korea and read an absolutely precious letter from a Mr. Bruce Joffe of Piedmont, California (who, as far as I can tell is a professional writer of leftist letters to the editor): "How can I say this in a politically correct manner? A four-month baby needs a lot of time in the arms of its mother. Most mothers feel a similar need to be close to their baby. And a Downs Syndrome baby needs even more maternal attention. So what kind of family values is Palin exhibiting by going off on...

TOKYO - Toyota is building a $192 million plant in Japan to produce batteries for gas-electric hybrid vehicles, as it seeks to keep its lead in an intensifying race for green cars among the world's automakers. Toyota's joint venture with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, is building the plant in Shizuoka prefecture, in central Japan, Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco said Friday. He declined to give more details. The plant will produce nickel-metal hydride batteries, now in the company's hit Prius hybrid. The Nikkei, Japan's top business daily, reported Friday that Toyota was building another plant in...

"Unity is the great need of the hour. ... Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it's the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country. I'm not talking about a budget deficit. ... I'm talking about a moral deficit. I'm talking about an empathy deficit. I'm taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother's keeper; we are our sister's keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny."...

Liberal Democrats from the North haven't had much success in recent presidential elections — not Hubert Humphrey, not George McGovern, not Walter Mondale, not Mike Dukakis and not John Kerry. Democratic Southerners — Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — have done quite a bit better. Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, knows this history. So why does he think he can be the first Northern liberal Democratic president since John F. Kennedy edged out Richard Nixon almost a half-century ago? First, there is no incumbent president or vice president running for the first time in over 50 years. Add...

It was the year 2000, and I was a young, hungry reporter in Chicago with a young, hungry state legislator on my speed dial -- It's not quite eight in the morning, and Barack Obama is on the phone screaming at me. He liked the story I wrote about him a couple weeks ago, but not this garbage. Months earlier, a reporter friend told me she overheard Obama call me an asshole at a political fund-raiser. Now here he is blasting me from hundreds of miles away for a story that just went online but hasn't yet hit local newsstands....