Free Republic

Any opposed? Not too likely in Columbus Since 2007, the City Council has made 5,823 decisions, all but 15 unanimous Sunday, September 12, 2010 03:01 AM By Robert Vitale THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH The Columbus City Council reconvenes Monday after a six-week summer hiatus that has left its chambers void of rigorous debate and clashing opinions. In other words, it has been business as usual on the second floor of City Hall. Council members have cast a combined 37,742 votes on policy changes, spending proposals, procedural motions and other matters since January 2007, the earliest date that a majority of the...

Obama vows to end global warming 'denial' after Gore talksTue Dec 9, 4:02 pm ET CHICAGO (AFP) – President-elect Barack Obama said Tuesday his administration would brook no further delay in tackling climate change after discussing global warming with former vice president Al Gore. Sitting between Gore and his vice president-elect Joseph Biden following the hour-long meeting, Obama told reporters: "All three of us are in agreement that the time for delay is over. The time for denial is over. "We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency...

A blog written by antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan and posted on MichaelMoore.com criticizes Charlotte police for allowing counter-protesters to "try to intimidate us" during Sheehan's antiwar rally Tuesday in Bryant Park. But in a memo to top police administrators, one captain said officers had no issues during the two-hour event and expressed surprise at the complaints. "At the School of the Assassins in Columbus, GA, and in Charlotte, NC, we ran into similar problems: police presence that seemed to be there to foster violence. At both places the neo-Nazi, pro-war fascist group "Gathering of Eagles" came out to mostly try...

Legislation Would Dictate Gay and Lesbian Teaching Materials Written for the web by Marcey Brightwell, Reporter Conservative groups are blasting a bill that would dictate the way public school teaching materials reflect gay and lesbians. The State Assembly passed Senate Bill 1437 Monday, prohibiting classroom instruction materials that reflect "adversely" on a person's homosexuality. "We're just the latest community to come along and say, 'Look, we're now the targets, we need protection,'" said the bill's author, Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles. Kuehl said the bill is needed to help protect gay and lesbian students from discrimination and prevent hostile learning...

The Interstate Bakeries Company will soon come out with a new snack cake called the Hostess Thinkie. The idea was inspired by a professor at Georgia Tech who thought so long and hard about a simple problem that it actually became complex. Eventually his brain turned into a rich, cream-filled sponge cake. Maybe some of you have heard of Dr. Phil McKnight, who chairs Georgia Tech's School of Modern Languages. Recently, Sponge Cake Phil was upset when a federal judge struck down Georgia Tech’s speech code as unconstitutional. Tech was also badly embarrassed because the school has now been placed...

It is now firmly established, repeated ad nauseam in the media and elsewhere, that the debate over global warming has been settled by scientific consensus. The subject is closed. It seems unnecessary to labour the point, but here are a couple of typical statements: "The scientific consensus is clear: human-caused climate change is happening" (David Suzuki Foundation); "There is overwhelming scientific consensus" that greenhouse gases emitted by man cause global temperatures to rise (Mother Jones). Back when modern science was born, the battle between consensus and new science worked the other way around. More often than not, the consensus of...

From Harvard on down, US academia is increasingly becoming less a marketplace of ideas than a church in which only believers get seats. When assessing the state of higher education in the United States, such problems as the Harvard faculty's ouster of its president or the unhinged radicalism of Columbia's Middle East studies get the most attention. Lesser institutions tend to get ignored, leaving the possible impression that they do not suffer so much from domination by the far Left. Such an impression would be wrong indeed. For a report from the trenches, I suggest the calm, factual testimony of...

Jay Bennish is a teacher who collects paychecks for teaching Colorado high school students about geography. Here is a sample from one of Bennish’s classes: “Do you see how this economic system [capitalism] is at odds with humanity? At odds with caring and compassion? It is at odds with human rights. Anytime you have a system that’s designed to procure profit, when profit is the bottom motive, money, that means money is going to become more important potentially than what? Safety, human lives, etcetera.” According to Tustin Amole, Public Information Officer for the Cherry Creek School District, the above statement...

If you want to destroy a political forum then turn it into a conspiracy theories haven. This is exactly what is Democratic Underground known to us as Dummyland. At DU the lefties are running all type of insanely delusional conspiracy theories ranging from election fraud, to Bush is going to kill or imprison every Democrat in the country. On the other hand Free Republic is the best political forum on the internet because the vast majority of posters use logic and facts to express their opinions and comments regarding a particular subject. Unfortunately in the last two months there have...

NASHUA, N.H. -- John Kerry's campaign hopes some of the Boston Red Sox' come-from-behind magic will rub off on the candidate.Red Sox co-owner Tom Werner will be outside Holman Stadium at noon Sunday to thank southern New Hampshire Red Sox fans for their support and ask them to support Kerry for president.

Hosts of ABC's "The View" Gang Up on Giuliani for Backing Bush Joy Behar ridiculed Giuliani for claiming that the first thing he said after the 9/11 attacks was "thank God" George W. Bush "was our President" and she insisted that "of course" Al Gore would have been just as "tough" on terrorism. Former CBS News correspondent Meredith Vieira, who participated Sunday in an anti-Bush march, seemed similarly ignorant, scolding Giuliani: "The implication is that if you disagree, I think, with the administration that somehow you are on the side of the terrorists. " Giuliani shot back: "That isn't who...

The heated argument consumed nearly eight minutes, so space permits only some limited excerpts as provided by the MRC's Jessica Anderson who caught the August 31 exchange: Joy Behar: "Did you really say that, 'Thank God he was our President'? That's the first thing you said? You didn't say 'Oh, expletive,' or something?" Rudy Giuliani: "No, no, that wasn't the first thing I said. That's one of the things that I said on September 11th to my police commissioner. It really came out because that was just a few months after that disputed election, and so I had called the...

Radio talk show host Laura Ingraham received a hostile reaction last week from crew on ABC’s daytime show, The View, to the premise of her new book, Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America. Other than Rachel Campos, one of three finalists auditioning to join the show permanently, the co-hosts were all appalled by Ingraham’s contention that elites on the coasts are out of touch with “the heartland.” When Ingraham argued “that the Democratic Party is not connecting with the people who are its logical constituents, from the South and from the...

MRC analyst Jessica Anderson took down Ingraham's session on the November 4 The View. Star Jones: "Now, first of all, the title of the book is 'Shut Up and Sing.' Now, it's an explanation of how the 'elites' -- which I can't stand that word -- from Hollywood, Washington and the United Nations are subverting America. What exactly do you mean, Laura?" Ingraham: "We're supposed to have government of the people, by the people and for the people, and there are elites in this country who are Republicans and Democrats -- Hollywood just comprises one small section of that. The...

Court strikes staggering blow to free speech TACOMA—In a stunning blow to teachers and other union workers, Washington’s Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the state law prohibiting unauthorized use of non-member union fees for politics is unconstitutional. The case was on appeal after the Washington Education Association (WEA) was sued by the state Attorney General (AG) and found guilty in July 2001 of willfully violating RCW 42.17.760, which prohibits the union from using fees taken from non-member teachers to advance political causes without permission from those teachers. The WEA was ordered to pay $570,000 dollars in fines and penalties...

<p>There is something terribly wrong with America's bankruptcy laws. Despite two of the longest economic expansions in history, consumer bankruptcies have nearly quadrupled since the early 1980s. There is no consensus on why this has happened, but it seems clear that bankruptcy is increasingly being used as a convenient tool for those who want to escape their debt burdens.</p>