Free Republic

An individual's body motion and body type can offer subtle cues about their sexual orientation, but casual observers seem better able to read those cues in gay men than in lesbians, according to a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. "We already know that men and women are built differently and walk differently from each other and that casual observers use this information as clues in making a range of social judgments," said lead author Kerri Johnson, UCLA assistant professor of communication studies. "Now we've found that casual observers can use gait and body shape to...

As a Texan living in Europe, I'm appalled by the state's execution Wednesday of Johnny Ray Conner. Capital punishment is wrong. In the 27 countries of the European Union and in Switzerland, where I live, capital punishment is rightly banned as cruel and inhumane, an offense against human dignity and an ineffective deterrent to violent crime. I applaud the European Union for urging Texas Gov. Rick Perry to spare Conner, who was the 400th person to be executed in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The European Union implored the governor to "exercise all powers vested...

Called the RNC today and told them I wanted the last two years of contributions back. They said they would send the money I sent them just for the last 12 months - $75. The first jerk hung up on me when I insisted I wanted at least two years $$ back so I had to call back. I don't know if they are getting the message or not.

Presidential hopeful John Edwards said Friday he will win much of the South and help the Democratic Party win more U.S. House and Senate seats in the Midwest as well if he is party's 2008 nominee. "You should think not only about who would be a presidential candidate, but who would also strengthen our ability to help us win congressional seats in some of the tough places in this country," Edwards said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. "If we pick up 15, 20 seats in the House, some additional seats in the Senate because we have a presidential...

"...imagine that Ann Coulter is seated in Smith's place. Anything to say to her?"...... Edwards, his right fist curled, feigned a punch and said: "No, there's absolutely nothing. Grow up." AUSTIN -- Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards feigned a punch Thursday when asked what he'd like to say to Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator who seemingly characterized his sexual orientation in remarks at a political confab last week. Edwards, appearing on Texas Monthly Talks, was asked by host Evan Smith to momentarily imagine that Coulter was seated in Smith's place. Anything to say to her? Edwards, his right fist curled,...

LOS ANGELES —  Mike Buday isn't married to his last name. In fact, he and his fiancee decided before they wed that he would take hers. But Buday was stunned to learn that he couldn't simply become Mike Bijon when they married in 2005.

Why West Michigan should de-emphasize sports West Michigan Business Beat By Ben Rudolph, Professor of Marketing Grand Valley State University rudolphb@gvsu.edu “I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.” — H. L. Mencken As anyone who has lived here for long knows, West Michigan is sports crazy. That is pretty much all people want to talk about. If you tell local people that you are not interested in sports they assume you are some type of strange subversive or malcontent. I freely admit that I detest sports. I could not think of anything...

WASHINGTON – The significance of Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi's election as the first female Speaker of the House was not lost on the newest member of North Carolina's congressional delegation, Rep. Heath Shuler. "It was a milestone, and to be able to tell my daughter that she was there is quite significant," said Shuler, D-11th, as he walked back to his office, navigating the underground tunnels of the Capitol. Shuler's vote on Pelosi's bid to become speaker was watched by many yesterday because he repeatedly deflected questions about whether he would support Pelosi when he was campaigning against Rep. Charles...

I am tired of listening to Shep Smith from fox news in describing the fighting in Beirut. I have watched intently and am disgusted with him. It is quite apparent Shep is a liberal and has an agenda. He will make small comments in his reporting taking cheap shots at Israel, yet making Hezbollah look strong. I just watched him interview some young Israel soldiers and the ones he put in his report were anything but seasoned soldiers. Shep would ask them questions like "Are you scared?", "are Hezbollah fierce fighters?", etc. It was sickening. Heh Shep, while don't you...

The left has found its newest sex symbol. His name is Markos Moulitsas, and he's the founder of the eponymous Daily Kos, a popular radical liberal blog garnering thousands of visitors each day. The lonely Blanche DuBois of The New York Times editorial page, Maureen Dowd, describes Moulitsas as the "fast-talking former Army artillery scout with the boyish demeanor and dark brown buggy eyes," and calls him an "Internet messiah." Ana Marie Cox, the Internet potty-mouth turned Time magazine reporter, breathes shallowly and does her lipstick: "Compact and wiry, Moulitsas, 34, exudes quivering intensity. He speaks in staccato paragraphs, punctuated...

When all the fanatical Christians disappear, will traffic finally improve? Wait, did I miss it? Did it happen three days ago, on 6-6-06, a.k.a. Tea Time with the Beast, a.k.a. the Great Day of Reckoning, a.k.a. the National Day of Slayer, all the world crashing down in a heap of hissing steam and belching smoke and balmy gusty breezes sometime around noon just after lunch but not before rush hour and hitting right around siesta? I might have been napping. Did the Apocalypse finally hit? Did the deep wish of roughly a half-billion zealous believers come to pass and were...

No wait, not six. To hell with that. Make it 10. Ten bucks a gallon, no matter what the going rate for a barrel of light sweet crude. That would so completely, violently, brilliantly do it. Revolutionize the country. Firebomb our pungent stasis. Change everything. Don't you agree? Here's what we could do: Give gas discounts to cab drivers (at least initially) and metro transit systems and low-income folks, those who have to drive their busted-up '78 Honda Civics to their jobs scrubbing restaurant toilets and flipping burgers and vacuuming the residual cocaine from the seat cushions of numb SUV...

Think sex and drugs destroy America? Try naive chastity. Oh, and "Purity Balls" There are these things. These unholy events called "Purity Balls" and you should probably fall to your knees right this minute and thank a merciful and lubricious and happily polyamorous God that you do not know what they are and that you have access right this minute to vast quantities of wine to deflect their nasty karmic arrows because, you know, oh my God. But hey, free country. Purity Balls. No, not some sort of newfangled spherical chastity device to be inserted using vacuum tubes and pulleys,...

It's a shockingly eco-friendly plan from the world's most toxic retailer. Did hell just freeze over? Sometimes you just have to let the possibility breathe. Sometimes you just have to allow that something grand and good and healthy might actually be born from the bowels of the dank and ravenous megacorporate world, like flowers from a dung heap, like vodka from old potatoes, even if it comes right alongside the nastiest, most abusive federal environmental policy you will see in your lifetime. Take Wal-Mart, the most famously offensive, town-destroying, junk-purveying, labor-abusing, sweatshop-supporting, American-job-killing, soul-numbing, seizure-inducing, hope-curdling retailer in the known...

When all else fails and you're becoming Nixon 2.0, why not just nuke someone, and smirk? It's just like playing blackjack in Vegas. Invariably, sitting right next to you is some guy, eyes shifty and body twitchy and making weird sounds with his mouth and smelling vaguely of sawdust and horse manure and dead dreams, with a huge pile of chips he is quickly turning into a very small pile of chips. He is suffering. He is playing terribly, grumbling, sneering at the dealer, talking to the cards like they were his personal slutty harem ("C'mon you dumb bitches, do...

Yes, I know you were drunk. Must've been. Either drunk or on serious meds and/or you just didn't give much of a damn about anything anyway because you're just one of those people, one of those types who comes lurching around the city like a chunk of numbed pain in your big-ass mid-'80s burgundy car with the white top and chrome bumpers -- an old Cadillac? Monte Carlo? -- early last Sunday morning to wreak casual havoc. Is that about right? Do you remember any of it? Here is what I'm guessing: probably not. Let me tell you what happened,...

Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe? Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost? And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob...

Apparently, it wasn't just "invade Iraq and Afghanistan in my name." A special report: Scene: White House private residence, night, not long ago. President Bush present in his most favoritest guns 'n' bunnies PJs. Laura asleep, knocked out by a combination of too much Good Housekeeping and excessive hair-spray fumes. Suddenly, a burst of black smoke. A deep, resonant voice speaks: "Psst! George! God here, taking a break from supervising the well-being of eight billion troubled souls along with infinite galaxies of unimaginable vastness to speak with you directly one more time because, well, you're special, aren't you, George? Yes...

CHICAGO — When it comes to gender, Alex Polanco is not easily pegged. Some days, he wakes up in the morning and feels male, pulling on jeans and a T-shirt and leaving it at that. Other times, he wears makeup and one of the wigs he keeps in tidily packed boxes in his bedroom closet

Leather, techno, sex & war: more only-in-SF juice to make you proud. Take that, uptight neocons. It was the moment when we walked by a jam-packed S.F. City Hall and realized it was open to host a VIP techno dance party, while immediately outside its gilded doors upward of 50,000 revelers wandered and shimmied and flaunted their costumes and drank nasty Red Bull cocktails in the huge Civic Center plaza for the third annual Love Parade, everyone baring flesh and shaking their groove thangs to any one of 200 world-class (well, some of them) DJs spinning their wares on over...

At last, one scientist BushCo will definitely -- albeit resentfully -- listen to. Sometimes. So now we know. This is what it takes. This is how far the nation has to crumble and this is how many people have to die and this is how many tens of billions it has to cost and this is how far his dirt-low poll numbers have to fall before Bush will finally come out and say he agrees with one of those godforsaken gul-dang book-learned scientist types. You know the ones. Those informed and well-educated data-crunchers he normally despises like a kid hates...

Can you hear that? That low scraping moan, that painful scream, that compressed hissing wail like the sound of an angry alligator caught in a vise? Why, it's the GOP, and they're screaming, "No, no it can't be, oh my God, please no, this damnable Katrina thing is just an unstoppable PR disaster for us!" After all (they wail), who woulda thought dissing all those poor black people and letting so many of them die in filth and misery in the Superdome while our pampered CEO president enjoyed yet another vacation would cause such an ugly backlash, such harsh criticism...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

... "Senator Kerry has offered to meet privately with President Bush to discuss foreign policy before Bush flies abroad next week and has meetings with key European leaders. Kerry..." No, I'm not kidding. Kerry actually called Bush and said he "offered to get together with him to discuss foreign affairs." I guess because Kerry just got back from there, and Kerry wanted to talk with Bush. "The offer has fallen on deaf ears at the White House. Kerry spokesman David Wade said yesterday, 'We've offered to have Senator Kerry meet with President Bush to discuss his trip to Iraq, if...

'WASHINGTON - Sen. John F. Kerry's brash offer to meet privately with former foe President Bush [related, bio] to discuss foreign policy before Bush's meetings abroad next week with key European leaders has apparently fallen on deaf ears at the White House. ``We've offered to have Sen. Kerry (D-Mass.) meet with President Bush to discuss his trip to Iraq, if the White House is interested,'' Kerry spokesman David Wade said yesterday. ``There are many areas where genuine bipartisanship would make a difference in leading our country forward, whether in national security or children's health care.'' The White House declined comment...

I have signed up I used free email When will I be banned? I have logged in With my new screename When will I be banned? Ever since two thousand It’s been the same old thing If you don’t kiss George Bush butt You are history! I am new here I have posted When will I be banned? Nazi mods are watching They’ve nothing better to do If you don’t kiss George Bush butt That’s the end of you! I have signed up I have posted When will I be banned? When will I be banned Tell me, when will...

I keep hearing from different people that the economy is getting better but everywhere I go, I cant find any jobs! I been unemployed for about seven months. I was fired from mcdonalds because I couldnt cook very good or fast enough. Ive tried getting jobs in different places. I tried applying for work as a janitor, a waiter, a secretary, a housecleaner, a bricklayer, a carpenter ETC. I cant get anywhere and I dunno why? Where are the jobs? How can I get a job fast? I have a highschool diploma and three years of college. I could really...

US Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who had hoped to replace George W. Bush as president yesterday, instead sat in the cold and clapped as the Republican began a second four-year term. Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin patted Senator Kerry on the back shortly before the inauguration Senator Kerry had hoped would be his. As Mr Bush delivered his inaugural address, Senator Kerry, about 10m away on the steps of the US Capitol, joined other lawmakers and the crowd in repeated applause. Senator Kerry looked relaxed, at times wistful. He frequently smiled, able to hide any disappointment over what...

What happens when habitual warmongering and BushCo lies become part of our daily diet? And then you read the appalling little story about how BushCo is now "taking steps" to further the investigation into why their original intelligence on Iraq was so painfully, treasonously, colon-clenchingly wrong, why they thought Saddam had giant Costco-sized warehouses stacked to the rafters with snarling nukes and nasty biotoxins and active warheads when, in fact, he had nothing but a couple Dumpsters full of rusty 20-year-old shell casings and a bucket of stale glue.

When the Jessica Lynch story first made the news, almost everyone believed that she was some sort of Amazon warrior, heroically fighting off the bad guys. I was one of the few who did not believe this story. When the truth came out and I was proven right and the feminazis and the neocons were proven wrong, it was one of the happiest moments of my life. Whenever some feminazi/neocon starts blathering on about how great women in the military are, just say 'Jessica Lynch' or 'Kara Hultgreen' to them. That ought to shut them up. Names like Jessica's and...

We kill millions of pets every year Who cares if a few get posh shelters and humane laws? OK. So I tend to think people who insist on calling themselves pet "guardians" instead of "owners" are exasperating and a bit wrongheaded, and that such uber-PC thinking does almost nothing to change or improve the behavior of the thousands of animal abusers in this country. And I tend to agree with fabulous dog writer Jon Katz that such semantic sidestepping does more harm to the animals than good, and leads to naive treatment, lack of decent training and an outright ignorance...

A new year, a Bush-gutted, storm-ravaged world and you in need of some juicy, heartfelt pledges -- This is the year. No, really. This is the it. This is the year you resolve to let it all hang out and lick the fingertips of the divine and stop holding back and stop quivering with unchecked anticipation/dread as you realize that, if you care a whit for self-definition and spiritual nuance and hot wet intelligence and deep karmic color in this tsunami-hammered, Bush-ravaged world, you are desperately needed right now. It's true. Alas, many are dejected. Many of the blue or...

Visiting with U.S. troops in Baghdad on Thursday, failed presidential candidate John Kerry trashed Commander-in-chief George Bush for making "horrendous judgments" and "unbelievable blunders" that have undermined the war effort. In a series of demoralizing comments first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the defeated Democrat griped, "What is sad about what's happening here now is that so much of it is a process of catching up from the enormous miscalculations and wrong judgments made in the beginning." Kerry said that because of the Bush administration's mistakes, "the job has been made enormously harder." Among the errors cited by the...

"MSNBC is close to signing a deal with CNN's Tucker Carlson, paving the way for the conservative Crossfire co-host to fill the 9:00pm primetime position soon to be vacated by Deborah Norville. MSNBC staffers have been buzzing about the possibility in recent days, three sources told TVNewser. One insider speculated that Carlson's program would attract new viewers to the network, but more importantly, "it shows that MSNBC is a priority and folks are trying their darndest to make it work." Carlson feels that CNN hasn't treated him well, a source said. MSNBC executives, on the other hand, are thrilled by...

John F. Kerry has indicated through sources close to the Democrat party that he intends file papers supporting the Green Party/Libertarian Party recount effort in Ohio. Kerry's filings will consist of a request for expedited discovery as it pertains to a voting machine system known as Triad Systems, and secondly, a motion for a preservation order to preserve evidence in the same matter. These filings are to be made in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. Rep. John Conyer of Michigan and the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, has plans to ask...

Attention, liberal shoppers! Next year, screw those GOP-supportin' companies, and try buying blue Do you care much that greasy ol' Pizza Hut gave tens of thousands in PAC money to the GOP last year? How about the fact that Taco Bell stopped pumping out their happily toxic semirancid meatlike substances just long enough to write a fat check to the conservative Right? Isn't that weirdly fascinating, in a depressing and indigestible sort of way? Does it matter a whit that, say, Fruit of the Loom underwear gave nearly 100 percent of its corporate donations to tighty-whitey-wearing Republicans, nearly every one...

As the world swoons over France's soaring beauty of a bridge, S.F. gets slapped with an eyesore And did you hear the one about how those gul-dang baguette-sucking antiwar French just completed work on this astounding new bridge, a soaring, airy, delicate thing erected in southern France, and it's all over the international press and the French people are justifiably proud and even the venerable Le Monde has deemed the new Millau bridge a "work of art," and the amazing pictures are being featured everywhere, for good reason? And you look at the photos and see the breathtakingly elegant architecture...

Legal pot? Legal gay marriage? Universal health care? What's next, free porn and candy? Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north? Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations? Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires,...

Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north? Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations? Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires, redefine marriage to include gay couples, which it has declared it will do almost...

The odds are very good that you are on drugs. Right now. This minute. As I type this and as you read this and as false Texas dictators rise and sad empires crumble and as this mad bewildered world spins in its frantically careening orbit, there's a nearly 50/50 chance that some sort of devious synthetic chemical manufactured by some massive and largely heartless corporation is coursing through your bloodstream and humping your brain stem and molesting your karma and kicking the crap out of your libido and chattering the teeth of your very bones. Maybe it's regulating your blood...

This is what you won't see in the paper. This is what you won't see on CNN or on MSNBC or CBS News or on any major media Web site anywhere and especially no goddamn way ever in hell will you see it within a thousand miles of Fox News. You aren't supposed to see. You aren't supposed to know. You are to remain ignorant and shielded, and, if you're like most Americans, you have been very carefully conditioned to think Bush's nasty Iraq war is merely this ugly little firecracker-like thing happening way, way over there, carefully orchestrated and...

Here's my suggestion: let them have it. Just do it. Let the sexually bitter and morally frantic conservative groups now dictating governmental policy and FCC agendas and paranoid media attitudes have their time, their brief cultural burp, their little speed bump on the great and beckoning highway that will still lead us all, inexorably, irreversibly, though often agonizingly, toward grinning open-thighed progress. Because here's the fabulous thing: no matter what these faux-Christian groups do, no matter how hard they oppress and protest and clamp down, this is a road that leads, despite all dour headlines and sour prognostications otherwise, toward...

Apparently Senator Edwards had a close brush with the truth some months back, though like the proverbial "broken clock" that shows the correct time twice each day, he didn't linger for long on the cusps of reality. According to Edwards, we live in a split society, which he described as the "two Americas." Edwards attempted to portray this nation as being divided between the "haves" and the "have nots," by which he delineated between those who are financially well-off, as opposed to others who struggle to make ends meet. However, another far more insidious divide exists across the nation, as...

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Greeted by an enthusiastic crowd, John Edwards kicked off a farewell tour as U.S. senator Monday but left little doubt he wasn't saying goodbye to politics. "One thing you can count on is that this fight is not over," the former vice presidential candidate told supporters. The visit to western North Carolina's largest city was the first of six stops Edwards plans across the state over three days. "It's just good to be home," Edwards said after arriving more than an hour late for the rally. "My blood pressure goes down when I cross the line...

So, who are they? Who are the ones who have no problem watching a Monday Night Football game in which huge sweaty steroid pakced men in cute homoerotic tights smash each other as hard as possible hoping they break bodies, induce aneurysms and draw blood during out most violent, drug addled and corrupted national televised sporting spectatcle, but actually picked up the phone to complain to ABC about the 'racy' ad promoting 'Desperate Housewives' that led into the game? They are the same people that complained about 1.5 seconds of Janet Jackson's nipple, the same ones who complain about low...

This just in: Millions of moderate Republicans and gay-terrified evangelical Christians and intellectually numbed conservative parents who thought they were doing some sort of good by blindly voting for Dubya and hence protecting their wee ones from swarthy Islamic evildoers who want to steal their kids' Kraft Lunchables and nuke Disneyland, all should be emerging from a deep fog of savage denial any minute now. Wake, they will, to the increasingly obvious fact that their beloved smirkin' president, the one who seemed to care about them so deeply just a couple weeks ago and who reached out to them and...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Democrat John Kerry on Sunday tried to persuade late-deciding voters that they can put their faith in his leadership by describing the values and beliefs that he says have guided him and would shape his presidency. Kerry said the Bible - and the American dream - says society must take care of its most vulnerable members, but in many ways that test is not being met under the country's current leadership. And he responded to some leaders of the Catholic church who have criticized his support of abortion rights and stem cell research. "I love my...

In Rush's closing segment he said that he just received a story or document saying that lawyers for both the Kerry and Edwards teams were sending out letters to TV stations warning them about showing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement!

<p>Did you hug a priest today? Run from a scary homosexual person? Coo over a copy of Bride's magazine? Fall on your knees and thank God Almighty that your child isn't yet gay or pagan or libertarian and if she is that's OK because it's nothing that regular lithium and electroshock therapy can't "cure"?</p>