Free Republic

Obama called a reporter sweetie. Gasp. The pundits are divided on whether he should attend sensitivity training to correct his thinking or whether his coerced apology will suffice. The debate swirls, the opinions proliferate. The lesser pundits anxiously await the position paper from the National Organization of Women before commiting themselves to a firm stance on this vital issue. The rest of the world news takes a back seat. Welcome to another national conversation. Non-stop news coverage of experts, pundits and elites opining on someone else's opining. As in, "What he really meant to say was...", and "He said that...

Date: May 15, 2008 Listening this morning to Sen. John McCain outlining his plans as president, should he win the November election, I wanted to shout things like, “Drill in Anwar, you moron!” and “Liberals are liars – we don’t want you to work with these leftist lunatics!” It has become clear that, like President George W. Bush, instead of leading the country into true conservative policies, Sen. McCain is another wimpy Republican who tries to combine radical social engineering politics from the left with a few watered-down Republican, conservative principles. Some Republicans have been calling people like Bush and...

I was going to title this post "Bend Over, America", but I didn't want to upset the gays. So, by this time I'm sure most of us were expecting to be paying nearly $1 a gallon again for gas and the last of our troops would be coming in from Iraq. Well, at least that's what we were promised by the new Democrat majority in Congress. Instead, their planned retreat from Iraq has (thankfully) failed numerous times and since taking control of Congress, gas prices have risen more than $.50 a gallon. Is anyone allowed to say these things in...

If this seems familiar to some it is because I included this in my novel A Sense of Duty. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19683247&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

A Conservative deconstructs Michael Ignatieff 's views on the Middle East On Sunday, April 13, Michael Ignatieff gave a speech at Toronto's Holy Blossom Temple. It was supposed to clear the air with the Jewish community in regard to his negative comments about Israel during last summer's Israel-Hezbollah war. And one media headline from last month duly claimed "Ignatieff Apologizes for Israeli War Crime Comment." Being keenly interested in the matter, I secured a transcript of the speech and searched for the words, "I was wrong" or "I am sorry." I did not find them. Instead, the deputy Liberal leader...

Relativists claim that what is truth for one person may not be truth for another person, or what may be true for one may not be true for another. If truth is relative to one's point-of-view, who can say what is or isn't politically correct speech? Within American society who could say what is or isn't politically correct to say, if truth (and the truth of the matter even concerning political correctness) was relative to one's point-of-view? A relativist could not say that what was true for them (in terms of what is or isn't politically correct to say) would...

SACRAMENTO, CA (KGO) -- Governor Schwarzenegger says he is opposed to raising taxes to help with California's budget shortfall, but his office is holding conversations about what to tax if he changes his mind. Instead of raising the sales tax, applying it to a range of services might be the way to go to solve the state's budget crisis. The governor's people may be testing those waters with an old ally. Golfers chasing that elusive birdie might have to cut back on lessons, if that makes the list of services to be taxed. "Golf lessons are always a 'want.' Some...

Why are conservatives happier than liberals?FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty: Conservatives are happier than liberals. A study published in the journal “Psychological Science” says it’s because conservatives are better at rationalizing inequalities. Regardless of someone’s income, marital status or church attendance, people with right-wing ideologies report greater satisfaction with their lives than those with left-wing beliefs. Researchers found that conservatives also score highest when it comes to the ability to justify inequalities. For example, a conservative might support the idea of a meritocracy – that if you work hard and perform well, you’ll move up the economic ladder… and if you...

Lawyers for Mayor Bloomberg are asking a judge to ban any reference to the Second Amendment during the upcoming trial of a gun shop owner who was sued by the city. While trials are often tightly choreographed, with lawyers routinely instructed to not tell certain facts to a jury, a gag order on a section of the Constitution would be an oddity. “Apparently Mayor Bloomberg has a problem with both the First and the Second amendments,” Lawrence Keane, the general counsel of a firearms industry association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said. The trial, set to begin May 27, involves...

(05-08) 18:49 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Bernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distribution of child pornography by e-mail in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years. Ward, 57, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a fixture on KGO-AM 810 for three hours every weeknight, known in recent years for his fervent denunciations of President Bush and the war in Iraq during his news talk show. He also hosted "God Talk," a Sunday morning program on religion, and was...

There is a news report starting to make the rounds amongst the MSM on a study that claims to have discovered why conservatives tend to be happier than liberals and it is just the sort of bilge that the MSM loves to promulgate. We may see more of it over the next several days because, while it is titled "Conservatives Happier Than Liberals," it is basically saying that the reason conservatives are happier is because they just don't care about other people. This purported research claims to pinpoint the reason conservatives are happier and it is because they have theirs...

Wal-Mart recently announced that it will be video-taping its gun sales and creating a computerized log of purchases for reference when a firearm is used in a crime. Wal-Mart clerks would thus be alerted and could refuse to make another sale. The recorded images will also be made available to law enforcement as part of any investigation. The move seems to be an understandable, even commendable a step toward plugging any leaks in the system. And, in fact, it might have been universally heralded if it weren't tied to an organization called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which was founded and...

"Either relativism is a genuine theory in which a real assertion is made, or else it isn't. But any attempt to assert relativism without relying on just-plain truth [absolute] would inevitably fail, because it would generate an infinite regress. And, of course, any assertion of relativism that does not rely on just-plain truth would be-self defeating. So it looks like any apparent assertion of relativism is either self-defeating or else is not a real assertion, but something more like an empty slogan." (Jubien, Michael. Contemporary Metaphysics. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997) "The only way the relativist can avoid the painful dilemma...

Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals Wednesday, May 07, 2008 By Jeanna Bryner Individuals with conservative ideologies are happier than liberal-leaners, and new research pinpoints the reason: Conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities. Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found. Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities. The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than...

It is with no pleasure that I put in writing what I have long believed: Though many individual liberals have only goodwill toward black Americans, the liberal world since the late 1960s (i.e., after the major civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s) has done incalculable damage to black America and to race relations in this country. Whether out of guilt or because of its own racist views (i.e., the unspoken but regularly implied belief in the inferiority of African-Americans), the left-of-center's general attitude toward black Americans has been that they cannot be judged by the same standards as others. From...

She was once the darling of conservatives like Newt Gingrich, but now you can't watch a television news-talk program without seeing her calling for more government and showing scorn for those who want less. She's Arianna Huffington, website impresario and author of "Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made Us All Less Safe". I interviewed her for "20/20" last week because I was impressed by the success of the website she created. In just three years she made the Huffington Post a hot liberal opinion site. What happened to Huffington's beliefs? In 1994,...

To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance. In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified. If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings. "Our research suggests that inequality takes...

Open the pages of a liberal magazine or peruse the liberal blogosphere, and you’re bound to come across denunciations of the religious right, if not religion itself. The “reality-based community,” as self-satisfied liberal bloggers call themselves, was a term created in direct response to the “faith-based community,” what the Bush administration called recipients of money from its Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Given the religious right’s use of “faith” to justify hoaxes such as “intelligent design” and the ruinous attempt to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals, the left had good reason to criticize, and sometimes mock, the absurdities that are...

RUSH: I want to expand on what essentially was a throwaway line right before the end of the hour because a lot of people are confused. I said liberals have their principles, and they stand for their principles above all else, and when they do, it is people who get hurt. It is not people that liberals stand for. And some of the e-mails that I have received, "Rush, liberals don't have principles." Oh, yes, they do. They have guiding principles. Doesn't mean they're right, but they have them, and they stick with them. If somebody in their movement sort...

"We're here, we're queer, get used to it!" Dozens of lesbian activists at Smith College climbed in through windows and stormed the podium in a riot scene shortly after Ryan Sorba began a speech on his upcoming book, The Born Gay Hoax. The melee forced an end to the speech before a packed hall in the library on the Northhampton campus. Uniformed police officers and a plainclothes security guard were in the room but mostly just stood and watched. Rather than take action against the rioters, the officers and a university official walked to the podium and ordered Sorba to...

Like in a scene from one of his horror novels, writer Stephen King channeled the spirit of John Kerry while addressing a group of high school students at the Library of Congress recently: I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that.What mysterious and evil force compels liberals to morph into complete...

The lowest form of solidarity, I remember reading somewhere, is generational. What do you have to do, after all, to qualify as a “baby boomer”? Membership in that vast sodality means that you were in your late teens or early twenties during the sixties: an underwhelming achievement that required no more than being able to say “present.” As someone born in 1949, I prefer to consider myself not a mere sixties person but a soixante-huitard. If there didn’t happen to be French argot for this, I would still want to answer to the name “sixty-eighter.” For me, this date-stamped association...

When tough guy interviewer Bill O'Reilly had his much anticipated interview with Hillary last week, Hillary stated flatly, "We can not win militarily in Iraq." This answer, like so many others, went unchallenged. Despite the fact that we are in the process of a military win in Iraq. Can you spell surge? The media and the Democrats are largely silent on Iraq these days. Unless its to celebrate the anniversary of the Bush photo op declaring "Mission Accomplished". Or to throw roadblocks in the way of the, now successful, surge. Or to keep the body count in the public eye....

Postmodernism is a worldview characterized by a belief in the lack of an objective truth, and wehich asserts that assertions of objective knowledge are essentially impossible. A strong part of postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from traditional approaches that had previously been dominant... Some postmodernist idea are: Truth is a "social construct," rather than objectively provable. There is no superior culture; Western culture is no better than any other (see cultural relativism)...

Garry Kasparov criticizes Western countries for providing the autocratic regime in Russia with much needed legitimacy and for ignoring violations of basic human rights in Russia ("Russia's Pre-Olympic Nightmare," op-ed, April 26). Mr. Kasparov ignores the truth that there is only so much that other countries can do to encourage Russia to be freer and less autocratic. It is the job of Mr. Kasparov and other leaders of the Russian opposition to invent and promote a social and economic model that combines freedom and governability. They need a model that combines Russian traditions deeply rooted in the country's autocratic history...

The news media successfully predicted 10 out of the last 3 recessions, so obviously we can trust them about the current one they keep trying to ram down our gullets, right? Well, I suppose if you define a "recession" as being in a generally pessimistic, defeatist mood and really wanting Barack Obama to win the next election, then yes, the news media is in the midst of one of the most pronounced recessions in the whole of human history. The rest of us, though... aren't actually doing so bad. Job losses aren't materializing as predicted, the dollar has begun a...

... There are lots of questions to be asked about Postmodernism, and one of the most important is about politics involved -- or more simply, is this movement toward fragmentation, provisionality, performance and instability something good or bad? ... the postmodern avowal of fragmentation and multiplicity tends to attract liberals and radicals. This is why, in part, feminist theorists have found postmodernism so attractive as Sarup, Flax and Butler all point out. ... postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize local situations as fluid and unpredictible, though influenced by global trends. Hence the motto for postmodern politics might well be...

With two big Fox News interviews this week--Obama/ Wallace last Sunday, and Clinton/ O'Reilly this Wednesday--progressive Democrats aren't likely to be pleased that the party's candidates are spending so much time on Rupert Murdoch's cable network. So right after the news broke of Clinton's upcoming appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor," I caught up with Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas to get his take. "Democrats are being idiotic by going on that network," Moulitsas said by phone. "It’s the sort of stupidity you’re not going to see from John McCain." Indeed, Moulitsas said that Daily Kos is a site that's hostile...

Financial Times reports “OPEC says oil could hit $200,” up from the record $120 a barrel today. If and when that happens, predicted to be this summer, the $3.50 to $4.00 prices you see at the pumps today will top $5.00 per gallon and you can thank liberal environmentalists for that! When Bill Clinton took office in January 1993, the average retail price of gasoline was $1.06 per gallon. By the time Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, that average per gallon price had become $1.25 per gallon, a 17.9% increase in less than four years. By the time George...

THE saddest aspect of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's tirades is neither his dishonest charges, nor his egocentric claim to speak for all black churches, nor even the harm he's done to the dreams of his best-known parishioner. The sorrow and the pity of it all is that the Chicago pastor, who's reveling in his 15 minutes of fame, is only one of many demagogues in all races and creeds who foster cults of victimization around the globe.

Senate candidate Al Franken says he will pay about $70,000 in back income taxes in 17 states going back to 2003. The Minnesota Democrat has been under attack by Republicans for failing to file tax returns in California for several years when the comedian-turned-candidate earned money there. Franken tells The Associated Press he never intended to avoid paying taxes.

Conservatives can bring change too. They just do it the way it should be done. Here is the link: http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19526990&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

It is time for someone to drop the “N-bomb” on Jeremiah Wright: Nut. The guy is whacked out of his mind. Crazy. Unhinged. Certifiable. One step away from roaming Boston Common, pushing a shopping cart and muttering about the Mother Ship. A sane person, given three days of high-profile media opportunities, would spend them trying to convince voters that his pal, Sen. Barack Obama, is a good guy who can be trusted, in part because you’re not such a bad guy yourself. But the Rev. Wright, given that very opportunity, spent 72 hours reaffirming on national television that America is...

It was common in those days, as it is in ours, to identify the Communists as leftist and the Nazis as rightists, as if they stood on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. But Mises knew differently. They both sported the same ideological pedigree of socialism. "The German and Russian systems of socialism have in common the fact that the government has full control of the means of production. It decides what shall be produced and how. It allots to each individual a share of consumer's goods for his consumption." The difference between the systems, wrote Mises, is that the...

There is little doubt that this will be the most controversial column I’ve written to date. But sometimes when working in a university environment one is exposed to ideas that one simply cannot repudiate. And this requires a modification of views – even if those views are deeply held - or very fun, or both. Such an occasion happened last week on Empty Holster Day – an event sponsored by the College Republicans at UNC-Wilmington. It began as an event designed to convince campus leftists that our laws should be modified to allow those above 21 years of age (with...

Were they commenting on the same speech? Rev. Jeremiah Wright goes before the Detroit NAACP, claims that black and white children learn with different parts of their brain, and offers a simpering, unflattering imitation of the way white pastors speak. CNN's Soledad O'Brien gushes that the speech was a "home run" and "really funny."

Barack Obama sought to confront growing doubts about his electability yesterday by declaring that white, working-class voters would rally behind him if he became the Democratic presidential nominee. Mr Obama appeared for a televised grilling to answer questions about his inability to attract blue-collar households in the heartland of America. It followed another damaging loss to Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania last week, which increased concerns among Democrats about whether he is the best candidate to take on the Republican John McCain in November. Mr Obama’s loss by almost ten points to Mrs Clinton in Pennsylvania, where she again won overwhelmingly...

Friday's 20/20 aired a piece on liberal columnist Arianna Huffington in which ABC host John Stossel got to challenge Huffington's views on issues like welfare, OSHA regulations, and the "lunatic fringe" of the Republican party. When Stossel took her to task for living in a $7 million home that is "burning more carbon than 100 people in the Third World" even while she is part of the "war on global warming," Huffington responded: "There is no question that the fact that I'm living in a big house, I occasionally travel on private planes, all those things are a contradiction. I'm...

Lessons from Jefferson - America is politically divided down the center line between individual freedom and a so-called greater common good. Half of the country is trying desperately to protect and preserve a maximum level of individual freedom and liberty for themselves and future generations, while the other half is desperate to take from those according to their means in order to fill the perceived needs that they have failed to fill on their own. Many American voters are struggling to escape the reality that freedom isn’t free and never was. They try to hide from the fact that freedom...

Dulles, Virginia -- Bowing before the politically correct lords of the environmental movement, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared this week that when it comes to the issue of climate change, “America has to lead, and [California is] doing so with or without Washington.” Schwarzenegger was explaining his decision to ratify a two-year environmental alliance between the state of California and the People’s Republic of China under the supervision of the United Nations. Frustrated with the Bush administration’s reluctance to embrace a global climate treaty that would place caps on greenhouse gas emissions, Schwarzenegger engaged the UN and China by making...

McCain spoke with bloggers this morning on a number of issues ranging from William Ayers to Rev. Wright to Tony Rezko. Jennifer Rubin noted that Hamas had endorsed Senator Obama and asked McCain whether Obama might have given "an unhelpful signal" to the terrorist group. McCain's response: All I can tell you Jennifer is that I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States. So apparently has Danny Ortega and several others. I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas's worst nightmare....If senator Obama is favored by Hamas I...

Lynching lawyers, as Shakespeare once suggested, has never appealed much to the legal profession itself – literally or figuratively. But an exception apparently will be made for a group of attorneys who advised President Bush and his national security staff in the aftermath of 9/11. They've been subject to an increasingly determined campaign of public obloquy by law professors, activist lawyers and pundits. Their legal competence and ethics have been questioned. Suggestions have even been made that they can and should be held criminally responsible for "war crimes," because their legal advice supposedly led to detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib...

<p>A man heckling First Lady Laura Bush and daughter Jenna outside the 92nd Street Y was arrested after he punched a wheelchair-bound girl whose parents had told him to shut up, authorities said yesterday. German Talis, 22, was shouting obscenities at the Bushes...Wendy and John Lovetro and their daughter Maureen, 18, who has cerebral palsy.</p>

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Arthur C. Brooks, the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. The author of the 2006 book Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, Dr. Brooks writes widely about the connections between culture, politics, and economic life in America, and his work appears frequently in the Wall Street Journal and other publications. He is the author of the new book, Gross National Happiness. FP: Arthur C. Brooks, welcome back to Frontpage Interview....

Lately I've been thinking of four left wing incidents that happened in Maine over the course of two years. I feel I should get them off my chest I think some of them would be interesting and I think others should know about them. The first one involves an incident that took place in the Bangor metro area two years ago. This freind of mine and his family were having trouble. He had difficulty getting by and he worked at Edwards Shop'n'save in Hampden outside Bangor. He was on food stamps and his wife was laid off and couldn't get...

“What’s that?” asked little Johnson Benson as he stared in wild-eyed amazement at the streams of cars traveling on I-99 toward State College. “They’re called commuters and they’re going to work,” replies his mother, Madine Selkers. “Work? What’s that mommy?” Johnson said, raising his eyebrows. “It’s a way for other people to enable my substance abuse, as well as provide us with a lifestyle of relative ease and border-line criminal behavior,” Selkers said. “These people owe us a living, Johnson, and you should avoid them.” Today, thousands of Welfare mothers, mainly in Blair County and Bellefonte, will keep their children...

Shortage: Al Gore sees no climate improvement since he made "An Inconvenient Truth." Actually, things have gotten worse. As the environmentalists celebrate Earth Day, the rush to replace fossil fuels threatens global famine.A week after Tax Day, April 15, we are forced to endure another indignity, Earth Day, April 22. This Earth Day finds the world threatened not by rising sea levels, but by rising food prices. Many on the planet are more likely to starve than drown, and we have only Gore's disciples to blame. In an interview with the British paper The Sun, the jolly green giant whined:...

China has launched an "education" campaign in Tibet it says is designed to undermine support for the Dalai Lama and any separatist sentiment. The Tibet Daily newspaper said the campaign was to "unify the thinking... of officials and the masses". The initiative follows violent clashes last month between police and monks in Tibet, and pro-Tibetan demonstrations around the world. Beijing has accused the Dalai Lama of inciting unrest - claims he has denied. The Tibetan spiritual leader, who lives in exile in India, insists he has no political role and played no part in the protests by Tibetan Buddhist monks...

“One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that’s come before them, where we’re involved, and it didn’t upset my breakfast at all.” –Ronald Reagan, on the international reaction to the U.S. invasion of Grenada, November 3, 1983 The above quote just about summed up The Great Communicator’s take on pegging U.S. foreign policy to international approval rates. Liberals take a different view. Seemingly, liberals equate international approval-–especially by the Europeans–-with the worthiness of a U.S. foreign policy goal. What would American foreign policy look like under Democrats/liberals? Forget about Jimmy Carter and...

Hillary Clinton blamed her defeats by Barack Obama in caucuses around the country in part on MoveOn.org, the liberal activist group that was founded in 1998 to tell Congress to "move on" from its push to impeach Clinton's husband.