Free Republic

A certain amount of celebrity glow has long been a part of both political parties’ gatherings. But thanks in part to the youthful charisma of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive nominee, the Democratic convention, which begins on Monday in Denver, is shaping up as an unlikely hot spot for the music world, with multiplatinum rappers, indie-rock scenesters, D.J.’s and Jennifer Lopez arriving by the van- and private planeload to perform, rally or schmooze with the political elite. “It’s the Sundance Film Festival for politicos,” said Laura Dawn, the cultural director of MoveOn.org, who also happens to sing with Moby... Kanye...

Ten years ago today, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, causing a devastating loss of life and signaling that the United States faced new and more serious terrorist threats abroad and potentially at home. That potential became a reality on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked, causing an even more devastating loss of life and sending an even clearer signal regarding the necessity of a smart and focused response to a challenge that could no longer be ignored. Unfortunately, President Bush did not get the message. He and his neoconservative advisers...

Remember Joe Wilson? He's the diplomat who went to Niger to investigate Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium, a raw material used in building nuclear bombs, from Africa. He wrote in a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed that he had spent the previous February in Niger, "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people ... associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." A story that has to be the most underplayed...

Cindy Sheehan and Code Pink may be surprised to learn that Barak Hussein Obama has surrounded himself with foreign policy advisors that want the United States Military to preemptively attack a sovereign nation. Wesley Clark, a widely-touted prospect to be Obama’s VP, has publicly called for 5000 American troops to be sent to Darfur in Sudan. Anthony Lake, Secretary of State prospect, and Susan E. Rice, candidate for National Security Advisor, have called not only for the insertion of American troops preemptively, but insist it should be done unilaterally if necessary. The three are ex-Clintonistas who were instrumental in developing...

he two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability. In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees." He called the abuse "systemic and illegal." And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement. Now, in a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of...

Tendentious Antiwar Scholarship by: Michael P. Tremoglie, April 01, 2008 The mainstream media is aghast and agog reporting yet another study, from another expert, claiming how wasteful the war in Iraq is, how Bush lied, and how the war is killing the country. This study is contained in a book titled, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, authored by economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. The authors worked for the Clinton administration. Stiglitz was the former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and Bilmes was also an economic adviser. Newspapers such as the...

LOS ANGELES - Barack Obama picked up the endorsement of a leading anti-war group Friday and said Democratic presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton still has not adequately explained her vote to go into Iraq. Obama told reporters in a news conference that, even though Clinton explains how she would like to end the war, her explanation for her vote leading into the war is disingenuous. He said his opposition against the war from the start will make him the stronger rival to Republican front-runner and war backer John McCain in the general election. Obama's long-standing opposition to the war helped...

Hollywood Gone Mad About Serbia World`s most famous stars will probably advocate the defence of Serbian territorial integrity next month already. Karmen Horvat Tomislav Tustić After German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily wrote last week that peacemaker George Clooney and sensual Sharon Stone decided to aid their friends in the preservation of Serbian territorial integrity, other Hollywood leaders decided to voice their support for "dependent Kosovo". - The world's most famous stars will, most probably already next month, stand in defence of the southern Serbian province in Hollywood, the heart of international movie industry – The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes. -...

...But Bush hatred is different. It's not that this time members of the intellectual class have been swept away by passion and become votaries of anger and loathing. Alas, intellectuals have always been prone to employ their learning and fine words to whip up resentment and demonize the competition. Bush hatred, however, is distinguished by the pride intellectuals have taken in their hatred, openly endorsing it as a virtue and enthusiastically proclaiming that their hatred is not only a rational response to the president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene....On the contrary, they argued, Bush hatred...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House will vote as early as Friday on legislation that would pay $50 billion for the war in Iraq but require that President Bush start bringing troops home.

It doesn't matter how many Oscar winners are in front of or behind the camera — audiences are proving to be conscientious objectors when it comes to this fall's surge of antiwar and anti-Bush films. Both "In the Valley of Elah" and, more recently, "Rendition" drew minuscule crowds upon their release, which doesn't bode well for the ongoing stream of films critical of the Iraq war and the Bush administration's wider war on terror."Rendition," which features three Oscar winners in key roles, grossed $4.1 million over the weekend in 2,250 screens for a ninth-place finish. A re-release of "The Nightmare...

(That's one of Cindy Sheehan's sycophants who travels with her, holding the flag upside down)(It was no accident. They've all got them upside down.)

'WHEN WE go to war for oil, we say we go to war for oil," the Russian military officer said to the British officer. "When you go to war for oil, you say you go to war to liberate people." Can you guess the name of the movie that contained this line? Was it Brian DePalma's anti-war propaganda film "Redacted?" Phil Donahue's "Body of War?" Nick Broomfield's "Battle for Haditha"? It could have been any of these movies. After all, the "war for oil" mantra is a staple of the anti-American/anti-Iraq war crowd. DePalma's film relates the tale of a...

Actors Richard Gere and Charlize Theron joined in on a bash, but this time it had nothing to do with a party; instead it had to do with bashing the President of the United States and the war in Iraq. While at the Venice Film Festival, both actors openly criticized the Bush administration. "How did we elect Bush twice?" Gere asked rhetorically while promoting his new film, "The Hunting Party." In the film, Gere plays a reporter determined to track down Radovan Karadizic, who has been hiding for more than a decade and is charged with genocide and crimes against...

When a South Korean student began his killing spree on the grounds of Virginia Tech back in April this year, slaughtering 32 people, the incident generated extensive coverage worldwide and grabbed the headlines in the regional press as well. There were editorial comments too in the regional press expressing total shock and questioning the state of mind of Cho, the Korean student behind the carnage. And in the letters pages of the local papers readers expressed sympathy and compassion for the families of the fallen. An equally gruesome incident happened this month but hardly a line appeared in our newspapers....

Correcting The Record Myths V. Facts: Debunking Newsweek's Article on Afghanistan: “The Rise of Jihadistan” (October 2, 2006) INCORRECT NEWSWEEK CLAIM: “The 2003 invasion of Iraq did more than divert essential resources from Afghanistan; it created a test lab for new insurgent weapons and tactics that have since been adopted by the Taliban.” RESPONSE: The assertion that the Iraq invasion “diverted” resources from Afghanistan is a talking point of critics of the Bush administration. It is an opinion, not a fact.

HOLLYWOOD - Hollywood activist George Clooney has launched a scathing attack on the media, accusing journalists and producers of neglecting their responsibilities to their country. The Ocean's Eleven star is a vocal opponent of President George W. Bush--and he believes the media has betrayed the public by not reporting the truth about the Bush administration. And Clooney, who joined Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel last week to address the United Nations Security Council about the problems in Darfur, blames the American public for focusing on reality TV shows instead of real news.

Shock and AweI visited the 9/11 memorial in Wesley Bolin Plaza Tuesday and I was stunned by what I saw.  Here's how the Governor describes the memorial.According to governor spokeswoman Shilo Mitchell , Napolitano described the memorial as being " unique, bold, educational and unforgettable," she said. " The memorial uses the sun to articulate words and thoughts."The memorial is an elevated flat ring with phrases cut through the metal.  Throughout the day, the sun shines through the ring and phrases become visible on the side walk.                        What kind of phrases?  Politically correct phrases that bash America.  That's what...

TORONTO -- Five years after 9-11, it's apparent that we all aren't getting along. And the political left is throwing plenty of mean punches. A case in point is that new Bush snuff movie, "Death of a President." Some might say that "snuff movie" is too strong a term -- but how else to describe a movie that clearly revels in the prospect of George W. Bush's being assassinated? Anyone who doubts that movies still have the power to stir up passions ought to come here, to the Toronto International Film Festival, which rates as the most important movie conclave...

A new videotape aired on Aljazeera television has shown Osama bin Laden and senior al-Qaeda members meeting some of the men who carried out the September 11 attacks against the US in 2001. The 90-minute video apparently shows bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, taking part in the planning and preparation of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people... The footage, first aired on Thursday, also shows Abu Hafsa al-Masri, al-Qaeda's then military leader, and Ramzi bin al-Shaiba, co-ordinator of the 9/11 attacks, meeting in al-Qaeda's training camps in Taliban controlled Afghanistan. The tape also says that a previous unknown...

Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck have crafted an insightful and heartfelt look at the experiences of the Dixie Chicks over the last three years, chronicling the often bizarre consequences of singer Natalie Maines' anti-Bush wisecrack on a London stage. Maines' statement is captured in "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing," as are the meetings where they plot how to circumvent the core country audience and, eventually, how to reroute a tour and cancel shows due to poor ticket sales. It's the rare thorough documentary on a musical act whose dilemmas are faced in the here and now, one that should...

President Bush and his team pride themselves in a lot of things; not the least of which is communications. But the cold, hard facts would make the Bush team blush rather than beam with pride, we suspect. Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post this week wrote about, “Bush's subdued public demeanor in discussing Iraq.” ....there are many examples of the White House and the Bush Administration “misunderspinning” when the facts are relatively clear. The White House has had problems communicating beyond those one might normally anticipate in war. “The great irony of this administration is that its opponents credit it...

A new film depicts President Bush being assassinated. Should it be shown? * 55345 responses Yes, it's a good display of free speech. 52% No, the filmmakers have gone too far. 43% Perhaps -- but not in the United States. 5.2%

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 30, 2006 CONTACT: Brendan Daly 202-226-7616 Pelosi Statement on Rumsfeld Remarks Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today in response to Secretary Rumsfeld’s remarks he made yesterday to the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City: "Secretary Rumsfeld's efforts to smear critics of the Bush Administration's Iraq policy are a pathetic attempt to shift the public's attention from his repeated failure to manage the conduct of the war competently. If Mr. Rumsfeld is so concerned with comparisons to World War II, he should explain why our troops have now been...

A book suggesting the September 11 attacks were engineered by the U.S. government is raising hackles among the faithful because its publisher is an agency of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest of several Presbyterian denominations. The book has attracted volumes of criticism, boycott threats and attempted clarifications by various church officials. The book represents the latest conflict within a denomination that in June voted that local congregations could decide to ordain homosexual clergy and that the Trinity, described for centuries as "Father, Son and Holy Ghost," could also be called "Mother, Child and Womb." Yesterday the book, listed under...

Reid: We Need a New Direction to Protect Americans 8/17/2006 2:40:00 PM To: National Desk Contact: Jim Manley or Jon Steinberg, 202-224-2939, both of the Office of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid released the following statement on today's ruling that President Bush's domestic spying program is unconstitutional: "Today's ruling is the latest example of how the Bush Administration has jeopardized our efforts in the war on terror. The Administration's decision to ignore the Constitution and the Congress has come at the expense of the security of the American people....

Right from the get-go, the DUmmies were casting aspersions upon the veracity of the airlines bomb plot in the UK. And now they THINK they have "evidence." I placed "evidence" in quotes because for the DUmmies, evidence really means wild speculation as we shall see in this THREAD titled, "Evidence Suggests Brit Liquid Bomb Plot was Directed by UK/Paki/US Intel." So let us now descend into the wacky world of tinfoil hat DUmmie conspiracy theories in Bolshevik Red while the commentary of your humble correspondent, preparing another dose of Lithium for the patient, is in the [brackets]: Evidence Suggests...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Several concerts on the Dixie Chicks' "Accidents & Accusations" tour have been canceled after slow ticket sales, but the group says it has replaced them with other dates. Kansas City, Houston, St. Louis, Memphis and Knoxville are among 14 cities no longer on the original schedule released in May, according to a revised itinerary posted Thursday on the Dixie Chick's Web site. Other shows, including Nashville, Los Angeles, Denver and Phoenix, have been pushed back to later dates. The North American leg of the tour kicked off July 21 in Detroit. Billboard magazine and other trade publications...

A year after her first war protest in President Bush's adopted hometown attracted thousands and reinvigorated the nation's peace movement, Cindy Sheehan resumed her vigil Sunday. Under the blazing Texas sun, Sheehan and more than 50 demonstrators again marched a mile and a half toward Bush's ranch, stopping at a roadblock. As Secret Service agents stood silently, Sheehan held up her California driver's license and said she wanted to meet with the president. "It doesn't say my new address, but I do live here now," said Sheehan, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., and recently bought land in Crawford for war...

Click the link below to access a video that lasts about 5 minutes of Janeane Garofalo and some Metrosexual zot bait (that visits FR frequently) give their opinion of what goes on at FR and what FReepers are all about!! Click Here then click the image of Jeanine Garafalo!

WALNUT CREEK - Local peace groups are upset over California Homeland Security's intelligence-gathering before a March 18 anti-war rally in Walnut Creek. Ivette Maruri, who recently started up a Contra Costa chapter of Code Pink, a women's peace organization, said she could not believe the government would spend taxpayer dollars to monitor her group. "There's a lot of people who want to come to a protest, but they're scared that the government is watching you, so they don't come," Maruri said. "It's just really intimidating to people." The state's March 7 report included a list of 10 "upcoming California protests."...

It's the Fourth of July and the DUmmies are "patriotically" urging each other to "Put Away the Flags." They are so disgusted with the USA that they frown upon such displays of patriotism. The DUmmies are supported in this belief by left wing whacko, Howard Zinn, as you can see in this THREAD titled, "Put Away the Flags - Howard Zinn." Almost half the replies have been deleted so one can only imagine what extreme anti-American rants were worthy of not even being allowed in DUmmieland. So let us now watch the DUmmies tell each other to put away...

CHICAGO (AP) - John Cusack's motivation for his latest film grew out of something he did not see - flag-draped caskets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Pentagon policy bans media coverage of America's war dead as their remains are returned. The administration of U.S. President George Bush has strongly enforced the ban, something Cusack describes as "one of the most shameful, disgraceful, cowardly political acts that I've seen in my lifetime." So the actor started looking for a project that would illustrate "what happens when the coffins come home." While Cusack's motivation for taking the part are political, he insists...

Artists Speak Out Against the War Michael Stipe, Bright Eyes, Steve Earle, Moby and more play New York anti-war event R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe, Bright Eyes, Steve Earle, Rufus Wainwright, Fischerspooner, Moby, Peaches and Devendra Banhart all performed at Monday night's Bring 'Em Home Now! concert at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom. The event, to benefit a number of anti-war groups, could be seen as an anti-war rally at the third anniversary of the United States' invasion of Iraq, bringing together an array of musical styles -- hip-hop, country, rock, pop, indie and electronica -- with one shared view: It's time...

Hundreds of people filled Tampa's courthouse square Sunday to mark the third anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, as thousands did the same throughout the country. "After three years, it's a failure," said protestor Mabili Ajani. "It's a clear and utter failure." That belief was shared by many of the anti-war protesters, and some sounded off about how to get out of Iraq. "We're going to have to clean the mess up," said Michael White. "Somebody's going to have to. We need to get our children out of harm's way. Strategic withdrawal is where it's at." The...

The First Amendment to the Constitution is arguably the most important. This amendment, packaged with the nine following it as the Bill of Rights, grants citizens the freedoms of press, speech, religion, peaceful assembly and a right to "petition the government for a redress of grievances." Freedom of speech cases are often some of the most hotly contested in the country. Recently, a case involving a high school social studies teacher has been given national media attention. The case involves Denver teacher Jay Bennish, who was put on paid leave from Overland High School after comparing President George W. Bush's...

The DUmmie implosion is proceeding apace as you can see in this THREAD titled, "The RoadMap to Impeachment: 'Violence' is The Answer." DUmmie author, Senator, placed "Violence" in quotes since he means the DUmmies should get "violent" not in the physical sense (which would get him arrested for publicly advocating it) but in the ANNOYING sense. Yes, DUmmie "genius" Senator wants the DUmmies to act incredibly ANNOYING in order to draw attention to their lost cause of impeachment. Ironically, by following DUmmie Senator's RoadMap advice, they are just harming their dopey cause even more since such tactics would only...

You've probably heard about the UMass student who claimed that Department of Homeland Security agents visited him after he checked out Mao's Little Red Book from the library. Well, he has now admitted that he made the story up.

Dec. 21, 2005 - Back in the 1980s, when I was living in Johannesburg and reporting on apartheid South Africa, a white neighbor proffered a tasteless confession. She was "quite relieved," she told me, that new media restrictions prohibited our reporting on government repression. No matter that Pretoria was detaining tens of thousands of people without real evidence of wrongdoing. No matter that many of them, including children, were being tortured—sometimes to death. No matter that government hit squads were killing political opponents. No matter that police were shooting into crowds of black civilians protesting against their disenfranchisement. "It's so...

Where's the dignity? The Republican National Convention is over, and George W. Bush's "leadership" was showcased -- leadership resulting in 962 U.S. service members killed and 6,690 wounded in an unnecessary and counterproductive war that is creating jihadists faster than we can capture or kill them at a cost of $1 billion a week. One billion dollars a week could be spent on supporting homeland security or domestic programs. Under Bush, the number of Americans living in poverty increased in 2003 for the third straight year and those without health coverage rose an additional million people to 15.4 percent of...

AUSTIN -- Erica Anthony-Benavides is a junior at Trinity University in San Antonio, a member of Ladies in Physics and not very politically active. But because she signed a petition against the war in Iraq, a national conservative Internet site has declared her an enemy of America. "I don't know why they want to accuse us of treason. It's not fair. We haven't done anything. We've just said something that somebody doesn't like," said Anthony-Benavides, a native of Corpus Christi. Anthony-Benavides, 19, has been swept up in a new Internet war between the right and left in America that is...

Matt Lauer: "The White House communications director said of your film, it is so outrageously false it's not even worth commenting. The 41st President of the United States, the president's father, called you, I think you probably heard this, a slime ball." Michael Moore: "Have they seen it? Have they seen the film? No. Of course they haven't. I will tell you they haven't seen it. These are un-credible reviews from people who haven't even seen the movie." The film is "Fahrenheit 9/11," and as the title suggests, it's meant to be incendiary. Filmmaker Michael Moore serves up a scathing...

"Give Fox News Channel star Bill O'Reilly credit for even attending Monday night's lefty celeb-glutted premiere of Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' - even if he walked out of the 110-minute Bush-bashing movie halfway through," the New York Daily News said today. The paper reports that on his radio program last week, O'Reilly compared Moore to the National Socialists' master of deceit: "Joseph Goebbels was the minister of propaganda for the Nazi regime and whose very famous quote was, 'If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth.'" But when Moore caught O'Reilly escaping the schlockumentary early, "O'Reilly blushed,...

''Fahrenheit 9/11'' finds domestic distributor GARY GENTILE, AP Business Writer Tuesday, June 1, 2004 (06-01) 17:30 PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Michael Moore's award-winning documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" has picked up a U.S. distributor and will hit theaters June 25. The film will be released by a partnership of Lions Gate Films, IFC Films and the Fellowship Adventure Group, which was formed by Harvey and Bob Weinstein specifically to market Moore's film. The Weinsteins, who run Miramax Films, bought the rights to the movie from The Walt Disney Co., which owns Miramax and refused to distribute Moore's film. The Weinstein brothers...

<p>Citing what he called "arrogance, willfulness and bungling" by President Bush in his foreign policy, Al Gore yesterday blamed flawed policies for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and said six administration officials should resign because of the Iraq situation.</p> <p>In a fiery speech at New York University -- sponsored by the political action committee of the liberal group MoveOn.org -- the former vice president called for the resignations of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George J. Tenet, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas J. Feith and Stephen A. Cambone, both undersecretaries of defense.</p>

LOS ANGELES - Hundreds of pieces of memorabilia from Barbra Streisand’s career will be auctioned off June 5, with proceeds going to charities that the Streisand Foundation supports. ...[snip] The auction, dubbed “Her Name is Barbra,” will feature famous items that trace the career of the singer and actress from the early 1960s to today, ...

The long-dreaded 2004 Olympics in Greece will be the ultimate crossroads for sports and politics in this new and vicious century. The recent photos of cruelty at the Abu Grahaib all-american prison in Baghdad have taken care of that. Yes, sir. We have taken the bull by the horns on this one, sports fans. These horrifying digital snapshots of the American dream in action on foreign soil are worse than anything even I could have expected. I have been in this business a long time and I have seen many staggering things, but this one is over the line. Now...

Is folk music getting its political hackles up? It has often been the soundtrack of American protest, from the labor movement of the early 20th century through the civil rights and antiwar movements of the '50s and '60s. Now, in the midst of our longest and most controversial war since Vietnam, is history repeating itself? There are definite signs that this summer's folk-festival crowds may hear more political songs than they have in many years.