Free Republic

A NINE-YEAR-OLD boy was banned from his school Christmas party because he does not believe in God. Douglas Stewart was asked to stay at home while his classmates were treated to jelly and ice-cream, followed by a visit from Santa and presents. Douglas's mother, Dawn Riddell, was informed that he was unwelcome at the celebration because she had withdrawn him from religious education classes at Cluny Primary School, in Buckie, Banffshire, earlier in the school term. Ms Riddell, 38, said the headteacher, Ian Davidson,had told her that as the youngster had no interest in religion, he could not celebrate the...

The “war room”, the hub of attack, counter-attack and spin which was at the heart of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns in the 1990s, has swung back into action with renewed force after Hillary Clinton was bloodied by her rivals for the first time in a debate last week. With so few stumbles on the road to the presidential nomination, her war room has barely been needed until now but it has quietly been prepared for the moment when she trips up. It was Hillary Clinton who invented the war room during her husband’s campaign and she has developed her own...

Denver police have arrested a 24-year-old man in connection with at least two fires involving Hummer sport utility vehicles in recent days. An officer arrested Grant Barnes during a routine traffic stop about 11:30 p.m., after finding suspicious materials in his vehicle. He was in the same neighborhood, police said. A couple in Denver's Cherry Creek neighborhood said their Hummer was engulfed in flames earlier this week, and the flames spread to another car parked nearby. It's similar to an incident last Saturday when neighbors said they awoke to find Hummer in flames. According to police, the man is being...

I don't track Keith Olbermann's descents into mean-spirited bad taste systematically enough to definitively proclaim that he has charted a new low. Let's just say that he has once again indulged his proclivity to traffic for political purposes in the worst of ill-will.Readers will recall during that during the 2004 presidential campaign, both members of the Dem ticket went clumsily out of their way to alert voters to the fact that Dick and Lynne Cheney have a gay daughter, Mary. In that same mean spirit, on tonight's Countdown Olbermann acidly observed: "the Vice-President is about to become a grandfather for...

Washington – Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record: “If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but...

Haven't the MSM been suggesting it's only Republicans who engage in mean-spirited tactics in the closing weeks of a campaign? Yet in her column this morning, the LA Times Rosa Brooks dug deep into the dreck, depicting W as a drunk. She writes: "When it comes to Iraq, being a citizen in George W. Bush's America is like being a passenger in a car driven by a drunk driver." Shades of the 2000 campaign, when just days before the election a decades-old Bush DUI surfaced, under circumstances giving reason to believe a Gore aide was behind the leak.Credit Brooks with...

Ann Coulter offered more mean-spirited commentary in her latest Universal Press Syndicate column posted Wednesday night. In a Q&A with herself, Coulter asked: "How would your career be different if you looked like [liberal Creators Syndicate columnist] Molly Ivins?" Coulter answered: "I'd be a lot uglier." The conservative Universal columnist also called New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller "(a) a complete moron or (b) a traitor," and said the "mainstream press is in economic trouble" because of "hysterical leftism that drove readers away." Two other Coulter Q&As in her new column: -- "Why is abortion sacrosanct to the left?...

by Mark Finkelstein July 9, 2006 That didn't take long! Just yesterday I suggested readers keep in mind the MSM's bashing of Pres. Bush on his birthday the next time a liberal accused conservatives of being 'mean-spirited.' Groucho fans will know what I mean when I say: bring down the duck! On last evening's Journal Editorial Report , liberal newsie Marvin Kalb said the magic 'm-s' word in condemning the Wall Street Journal for its criticism of the New York Times. The Journal had run an editorial, Fit and Unfit to Print [subscription required] that both explained why it had...

by Mark Finkelstein July 8, 2006 Next time you hear liberals talk about mean-spirited Republicans, you might want to remind them of the cold-water dousing the MSM gave the 60 candles on the president's birthday cake. First there was WaPo's Dana Milbank - that paragon of objective journalism - who on Countdown twisted W's good-natured gesture of inviting onto the podium press people who shared the same birthday into a metaphor of presidential lonelieness and isolation. Milbank also used the occasion to allude to Bush's allegedly dissolute youth. And for good measure, the 'reporter' even managed to revive allegations regarding...

22 Congressmen Hate Christmas This year's "War for Christmas" – keeping "Christ" in the holiday has apparently been won. And, like many "wars," there has even been a Congressional resolution in support of keeping Christmas alive and well. On December 15 the House of Representatives passed a resolution "protecting the symbols and traditions of Christmas" by an overwhelming 401-22 vote. Representative JoAnn Davis (R-VA), the resolution's sponsor, said the resolution was necessary to counter "political correctness run amok." "No one," she said, "should feel like they have done something wrong by wishing someone a Merry Christmas." Twenty-two Democrats played Scrooge...

No Name Calling Week?     1/12/2005By Warren Throckmorton, Ph.D.Yes, name-calling is wrong. But this event’s sponsors reveal the agenda behind banning it. “There is a special place in hell for people like you!” These words were directed at me by a teacher during this past summer’s National Education Association (NEA) convention in Washington, D.C. This delegate to the NEA convention made his prediction in response to my presence at the NEA’s Ex-Gay Educators’ Caucus booth in the convention exhibit hall. His cheery salutation caught me off-guard given the message of tolerance and acceptance I had been hearing around the exhibit hall....

In 2000, the Wisconsin-based costume company began tracking presidential candidate mask sales by five different mask manufacturers and asked 12 different chains to research their sales history. What they found was remarkable: Since 1980, the candidate whose likeness has outsold his opponent's likeness has won the White House. So you can throw out the confusing, contradictory polling numbers being released almost hourly now by Time, Newsweek, Reuters/Zogby, ABC/Washington Post, CNN/USA Today/Gallup and Pooh Bear/Piglet/Christopher Robin. The numbers that truly matter, the numbers that unfailingly point to who will emerge victorious in the presidential election, are the number of Bush and...

The constant whining about how divided the country is and how divisive the political campaigns are this year is getting tiresome. To listen to the Democrats, you would think that George W. Bush is the first Republican candidate they've ever disliked and that this is the first time this nation has faced a close election. Does anyone remember 1984? Do you recall how much the Democrats hated Ronald Reagan? ...Robert Scheer, a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times, admits to liking Reagan personally when he covered him before and during Reagan's governorship of California. However, at the time of...

I am not sure if this is proper FR edicate, but I was curious to know how DU was reacting to Ronald Reagan's passing. As you can imagine, many comments were dispicable, but it is amazing to see what hate drives people to say. For example: (Im sipping some excellent German white wine now) To Ronald Reagan, ...may you rot in hell you sorry evil creep! >clink glasses< Or how about this? I just uncorked some wine that Ive laid up for special occasions, so as to celebrate. "Good riddance, and I piss on his tombstone (metaphorically speaking"). Or this...

<p>Yvonne Wachter's ridiculous attack on me ["Don't ignore Rohrabacher's links to extremists," Reader Rebuttal, Jan. 25] demonstrates why I won't have anything to do with Robert Dornan and his people.</p> <p>There is no one in Congress who has been more active in supporting America's liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore, I have solidly backed President Bush's road map for Middle East peace. Yes, in the process I've dealt with moderate Arabs and Muslims. Of course, for some haters, all Arabs or Muslims are the enemy.</p>

Liberals are revealing their true colors yet again in the happy dance they are doing over Rush Limbaugh’s admission that he is addicted to prescription painkillers and his trip to rehab. With a few notable exceptions, such as liberal commentator and radio talk show host Alan Colmes of Fox News’s “Hannity and Colmes,” the self-proclaimed Party of Compassion is gleeful over the problem that Limbaugh is experiencing. Liberal mean-spiritedness has shown up in many ways of late, including the scuttling of Miguel Estrada, demands to impeach President Bush for his military policy, their fervent scandal-mongering in the Joseph Wilson affair,...

Liberals are revealing their true colors yet again in the happy dance they are doing over Rush Limbaugh’s admission that he is addicted to prescription painkillers and his trip to rehab. With a few notable exceptions, such as liberal commentator and radio talk show host Alan Colmes of Fox News’s “Hannity and Colmes,” the self-proclaimed Party of Compassion is gleeful over the problem that Limbaugh is experiencing. Liberal mean-spiritedness has shown up in many ways of late, including the scuttling of Miguel Estrada, demands to impeach President Bush for his military policy, their fervent scandal-mongering in the Joseph Wilson affair,...

Back in March of this year, way before Rush Limbaugh and ESPN, Esquire ran an interview with a liberal journalist – an interview that, outside the Internet, made only a few ripples. In the exchange with Esquire, Eric Alterman, who writes a column for the Nation, a far-left political magazine, charmingly told the interviewer, “I hate to say it, but I wish the guy [Rush Limbaugh] would have gone deaf.” Call me crazy, but when Alterman says, “I hate to say it,” I have the funny feeling that he really means “I love to say it.” Anyway, it’s not just...

http://www.democrats.org/scotus/bushenstein.html HERE

New Jersey Democratic senatorial candidate former Sen. Frank Lautenberg, left, debates with New Jersey Republican senatorial candidate Douglas Forrester at a street fair where both met campaigning Saturday, Oct. 19, 2002 Metuchen, N.J. (AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer)

October 15, 2002, 12:05 p.m.“Your Kind Not Welcome” Abortion politics keeps the FDA from scrutiny. Can a doctor have religious convictions? Does having religious convictions disqualify him for public service? These are not theoretical questions from a college ethics class. They are questions some doctors are asking themselves after reading the press attacks on a potential candidate for an FDA advisory committee last week. Dr. W. David Hager, a doctor and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Kentucky, was the subject of a piece in Time magazine by Karen Tumulty titled "Jesus and the FDA." Dr. Hager,...

Life & Times Kathleen ParkerIdiotic, absurd comments about 9-11Published April 17, 2002     Printer friendly version RECENT COLUMNS Idiotic, absurd comments about 9-11Apr 17, 2002 Straightforward successApr 14, 2002 Freud for Clinton hatersApr 10, 2002 E-MAIL  Kathleen Parker Every time I hear of another Palestinian "suicide bomber," I think: Darwin Awards. You know, the evolutionary awards bestowed each year on those who purify the gene pool by removing themselves from it. Darwin winners are, in the words of awards manager Wendy Northcutt, "too stupid to live." Likewise, every time I hear Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., speak, I think: There ought to...