Free Republic

"Lean Forward," MSNBC's new slogan suggests. The better to stick a shiv in your opponent's back. Ethics-averse Rachel Maddow did exactly that on her MSNBC show last night. After disparaging Republican candidates for their gall in criticizing reckless federal spending and government-controlled health care, Maddow made this jaw-dropper of a claim -- (Snip) These two were so close to the militia movement in this country that Mr. Stockman actually received advance notice that the Oklahoma City bombing was going to happen.

As Barack Obama looks through papers, his eight-year-old daughter, Sasha, spies on him from behind a sofa. The photograph, released by the White House, was taken by Peter Souza, whose brief is to document the Obama presidency. Mr Obama has said that one of the greatest benefits of working in the White House is having his family living in the same building. Despite its spontaneous feel, the image evokes obvious – and possibly intentional - comparisons with famous pictures of a three-year-old John F Kennedy Jr playing under the same desk as his father sat working at it. The photographs...

…and we continue to talk ourselves off the edge of the cliff. For the second week in a row Meet The Press trotted out the most financially incompetent of the financially incompetent and placed them on their undeserving pedestal. Last week it was Tim Geithner, the veritable fox in the hen house of the financial crisis. This week it was Alan Greenspan, one of the grand orchestrator’s of our financial industry’s deregulation and the most vocal advocate of the virus that is neoliberalism. This man has poisoned our economy for almost 5 decades (and he has admitted that his models...

If you sometimes wonder why Rush Limbaugh has changed his mantra from the “drive-by media” (lazy, disinterested character assassins who can’t be bothered to get blood on their hands) to the “state-controlled media” (slavish lickspittle apparatchiks bucking for career advancement), you need look no further than this news announcement, courtesy of Politico’s Ben Smith: Another jump from the media to politics: ABC News’s deputy political director, Teddy Davis, emails that he’s leaving the network to join SEIU’s already-muscular communications and politics operation.

Sarah Ferguson put on a brave face as she ran errands in New York today, ahead of her return to the UK to account to her ex-husband for her latest gaffe. She is expected to meet with Prince Andrew this week to explain how she was caught up in a sting by an undercover reporter, offering access to the prince for £500,000. After the news broke at the weekend she took a pre-arranged flight to Los Angeles to collect an award for her charity work.

President Barack Obama is urging Spain to take "resolute action" to confront Europe's debt crisis. The White House says Obama delivered the message to Spanish President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (zah-pah-TEH'-roh) in a phone call Tuesday. The U.S. had been prodding European leaders to respond aggressively to a crisis in debt-ridden Greece that threatened to spread to other financially weak countries such as Spain and Portugal.

Every Tuesday I go to Murphy's Taproom in Manchester to hang out with a bunch of liberty-oriented people. This is a famous event among Free-staters. About 40-60 people gather weekly for about 4 hours and eat and drink and are merry. I'm no longer allowed to go there, because I don't tip. I've written some of my thoughts about tipping in the past, and have since fleshed out my position in my mind, so I won't focus here on the reasons to tip or not to tip. Here, I want to merely explain what happened tonight. About 6 weeks ago,...

Five years ago today on January 18, 2004, I arrived at Baghdad International Airport on a charter flight from Dubai with about 60 other people to begin working in Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was a mild and cloudy afternoon as we descended onto the tarmac for the short walk into the terminal. The dreary, desolate airport was not operational and didn’t even have electricity, aside from a few lights here and there powered by a generator. We were the only people in the airport, except for a few local national employees wandering around as we lined up just inside to...

Hell, Circle 8.5 -- Just a week after his death, the greatest grafter of all time, former Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, announced today that he was running for president of the netherworld. “This place is a disgrace,” Kennedy said, while bathing in boiling resin and drinking a fifth of Bushmills and getting a massage from a demon named Lilith. “It looks like it’s been run by Republicans. The pagans and unbaptized babies are out of work. The lustful have lost their libido. The gluttons are starving. The hoarders are giving their possessions away. The wrathful can’t stop apologizing. The heretics...

Former President George W. Bush recently said that what he missed most about the White House was the cooking of the top-notch chefs there and meeting with members of the military. Funny, Cindy Sheehan didn't make his list. No matter, he doesn't have to do without her absurd antics. She's bringing her roadshow to PReston Hollow this weekend to protest his actions as president. She crossed the line between principled crusader and crackpot long ago, so I shouldn't be surprised at this, and I wasn't the biggest fan of Bush's as his presidency wore on, but this makes me truly...

So we know who John Galt is...but what about his cousin, Hugh Series?

The Democrat made a net gain today in a count of formerly rejected absentee ballots that pushed his advantage to more than 300 votes in the U.S. Senate race. Democrat Al Franken today extended his lead over Republican Norm Coleman in the U.S. Senate election, following the counting of about 350 formerly rejected absentee ballots this morning by a three-judge panel. Unofficially, Franken took 198 of the ballots, while Coleman added 111. The ballots added about 87 to Franken’s recount lead, enlarging his margin over Coleman to more than 312. The result makes it even more likely that, barring an...

I've had the thoughts we've all had at one point or another, is Walmart an evil empire? I mean, it has forced a lot of small mom and pop shops out of out of business. It does import a lot of products from other countries, instead of domestically. There may or may not be animal sacrifices in the basements and backrooms of your local store. BUT on the other hand, they do provide a lot of jobs to the elderly, the undereducated, and under skilled, and of course, the common man looking for a steady job. They also provide good...

RUSH: Folks, I got the most incredible sound bites for you. Kids in North Korea and Cuba, in Saddam Hussein's old Iraq and other regimes, were taught to sing songs to their leaders. There's a video out that says that the...? Where it was shot? In fact, I tell you. You know what? Since I brought it up, go ahead and grab the bites. It's 36, 37, 38. The beginning of the video says that the video "took place in a neighbor's house in Venice, California Venice, as if it were some kind of spontaneous grassroots effort by a bunch...

'Shameless' parents not teaching skills By James Kirkup Political Correspondent Last Updated: 4:04AM BST 14/05/2008 A generation of young Britons are growing up in "shameless" families where parents lack the basic skills to raise their children, the Conservatives will warn today. Chris Grayling, the shadow work and pensions secretary, will claim that in some parts of the country there is no culture of parents instilling discipline and respect in their offspring. He will tell a London think tank that multiple generations of teenage parents mean that some of today's children have no exposure to elder relatives with traditional experience of...

The BBC kept more than £100,000 viewers had pledged to charity for itself. Staff knowingly withheld money that should have gone to causes including Children in Need and Comic Relief. In another hammer blow to TV's reputation, the corporation has been ordered by its own ruling body, the BBC Trust, to apologise for the scandal on air. Last night it also faced accusations from charities that its behaviour was immoral and disgraceful. News of the racket came 24 hours after ITV was fined £5.7million for conning £8million from telephone voters to top-rated shows. It also emerged that a British Comedy...

HARLAN, Iowa -- From his days of campaigning in Downstate Illinois, Sen. Barack Obama has been asked plenty of times about his views on gun ownership. But the Illinois Democrat and presidential candidate added a new wrinkle Saturday night while campaigning in conservative-leaning western Iowa, when he said his Chicago-native wife, Michelle, recently commented that she could see why rural folks might want to own guns. Here was Obama's discussion of gun ownership and his wife's thoughts during a campaign stop at a middle school: --snip-- "And by the way, Michelle, my wife, she was traveling up, I think, in...

Cardinal Denounces Proposal to Legalize Abortion in the Dominican Republic Says Supporters of the Measure Are Either "Sick", "Hypocritical", or "Comedians" By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, September 10, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com)--The Cardinal Archbishop of Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, lashed out last week at politicians and groups agitating to legalize abortion in the country. When asked  about a recent proposal to legalize abortion for "therapeutic" purposes, he shot back: "No, no abortion, there is nothing more to say." "No one has the right to kill anyone and some of us are sick, some are hypocrites, some comedians who are...

American Music Awards on nowNext up- the Dixie Chicks, in case anyone is interested in hearing their vacuous rants....

Jobless and shameless By Nick Britten Last Updated: 1:29am GMT 16/11/2006 An unemployed father of 15 who lives with his wife and mistress is demanding a larger council house after getting both women pregnant at the same time. 'Shameless' Mick Philpott Mick Philpott claims that he cannot look after his women and children properly because they are crammed into a three-bedroom, semi-detached house. The 49-year-old, who has been nicknamed "Shameless Mick" for the way he claims benefits and keeps adding to his brood, is understood to have agreed to a vasectomy earlier this year, but changed his mind. He lives...