Free Republic

Dem presses USDA to ban 'pink slime' in school lunchesBy Mike Lillis - 03/14/12 06:00 PM ET A Maine Democrat is pressing the Obama administration to ban "pink slime" in school cafeterias. Rep. Chellie Pingree said the product – a blend of beef scraps treated with ammonia and used as a ground-beef filler – is "gross" and unfit for consumption by schoolchildren. In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Pingree is urging the agency to abandon its plan to continue buying hamburgers and other meats containing the product—historically used in animal feeds—for the nation's schools. "It is wrong to...

U.S. defends treated meat dubbed "pink slime" in school mealsIan Simpson Reuters 7:10 p.m. CST, March 9, 2012 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Department of Agriculture is defending the use of ammonium-treated beef, dubbed "pink slime" by detractors, in meals destined for schoolchildren as part of the national school lunch program. The Internet news source The Daily reported this week that 7 million pounds (3.2 million kg) of the product -- beef trimmings treated partly with ammonium hydroxide to fight contamination -- would appear in school lunches this spring. "All USDA ground beef purchases must meet the highest standards for food...

Politics are heating up in France and Germany as French president Nicolas Sarkozy clings to his political life and German chancellor Angela Merkel is under increasing pressure over more bailouts. The Financial Times reports Merkel to join Sarkozy on campaign trail German chancellor Angela Merkel promised to join Nicolas Sarkozy on the campaign trail as the French president took to the airwaves on Sunday to launch a set of German-style structural reforms aimed at seizing the initiative in his uphill re-election attempt. Ms Merkel’s Christian Democrat party said she would “actively support Nicolas Sarkozy with joint appearances in the election...

This oughta’ help that next fast food lunch go down better. McDonald’s is no longer using an additive filler known as “pink slime” in its world-famous hamburgers. What, you don’t know about the pink slime? That’s spare beef trimmings treated with ammonium hydroxide to make them safe and possibly tastier. Pink slime, for all its yumminess, has been the target of some serious criticism, ranging from newspaper reports to a campaign by TV chef Jamie Oliver to get rid of the stuff. As gross and potentially dangerous as it sounds, the government has said pink slime is not a threat....

Turnabout is fair play, so they say. After Politico first reported a story last week of allegation of sexual harassment from Herman Cain by two women, then continued on to report and even promote the report with 90 Cain stories in five days, the notion of innocent until proven guilty has been voided according to conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh. However, on his Friday radio program Limbaugh proposed using Politico’s rules against Politico by getting a conservative “Larry Flynt,” the publisher of Hustler magazine that offers money for sexual misconduct by Republicans, to do the same against the media,...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- "What the [bleep] is Politico doing?" said the man on the phone. "And how the [bleep] are they getting away with this [bleep]?" Reporters rival sailors for their proficiency in profanity, and one of the most experienced political journalists in Washington was cussing a blue streak Thursday evening as he railed against the shoddiness of Politico's reporting on the Herman Cain "scandal."

Truth is, James Carville still thinks Hillary Clinton should be president. But just out of curiousity, what does Bill Clinton's former chief political strategist think of the developing Republican field for 2012? Our pal Scott Hennen, one of the country's top conservative radio talkers, asked Carville just that. And the pair had a, uh, candid exchange: HENNEN: Obviously Herman Cain’s faring pretty well right now in the polls, and all along, quite honestly, had the most passionate supporters in this field; a nonpolitician, which has probably served him well, just as an example of the frustration of the conservative Republican...

With the Occupy Wall Street protests gaining steam in the U.S., it seems obvious to link it with the other grassroots movement that recently shook up American politics — the Tea Party. My colleagues' pieces number among a flurry of others pondering the parallel. Michael Scherer recast Occupy Wall Street as the Tea Party of the American left. Roya Wolverson suggested how the two movements, coming from diametrically-opposed sides of the political spectrum, could find common ground (and perhaps actual policy influence) in their mutual distaste for a Washington dominated by the vested interests of corporations. But while the similarities...

Andrew Breitbart wasn’t supposed to be sitting here in a television studio makeup chair. But when he heard that Anthony Weiner was about to announce his resignation, he dropped everything. Mr. Breitbart, the conservative author and blogger who first published Mr. Weiner’s suggestive self-portraits, had ditched his book-signing in central Illinois and hopped on a flight earlier than planned to the Twin Cities, where he was booked as a marquee attraction at RightOnline, a conservative bloggers conference. “To put myself in Decatur, Ill., without a satellite connection would have put me in a bad situation,” he explained as a woman...

For most big news Web sites, about 60 percent of the traffic is homegrown, people who come directly to the site by dint of a bookmark or typing in www.latimes.com or www.huffingtonpost.com. The other critical 40 percent comes by referrals, the links that are the source of drive-by traffic, new readers and heat-seekers on a particular story.

Dead Man Walker?! Is that the kind of civility President Obama pretended to be in favor of? The call for a kinder, gentler political debate certainly did not last long as the democrat party’s Time magazine lashes out in this headline against Conservative American Governor Scott Walker. What do you think? Did this go too far?

In one of the most closely watched U.S. House races in the nation, Republican Daniel Webster now holds a 7-point lead over Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson in Central Florida's 8th Congressional District, according to a new Sunshine State News Poll.

The local Republican-oriented strategy firm of Landmark Communications is out this afternoon with the first polls in the Republican runoffs for governor and attorney general. In the governor’s race, former secretary of state Karen Handel has a nine-point lead over former congressman Nathan Deal, 45.8 percent to 37.1 percent. Undecideds were measured at 17.1 percent.

Matthew Lesko and Miss Cleo make appearances in John McCain's latest Web video poking fun at his Republican challenger's role as an infomercial pitchman. McCain's re-election campaign on Tuesday released the video featuring half-famous stars from late-night television. The video also recalls a handful of gaffes that have put J.D. Hayworth in an uncomfortable spotlight. The ad follows the revelation last week that Hayworth filmed a 2007 infomercial pitching the services of a Florida company accused of taking advantage of its customers. Hayworth says he didn't properly research the company. His campaign on Monday released three videos of Hayworth addressing...

excerpt: "...the woman tells how Gore greeted her at the door of his room at the Hotel Lucia for the 11 p.m. appointment with a hug that "went on a bit long," then quipped "call me Al." Hotel staff had told the licensed therapist when booking her that the client was Al Gore, but that he was going under the name "Mr Stone." Gore allegedly asked her to focus on his abdominal area and adductors -- the inner thigh muscles -- as well as his back and other areas. While his lower body was covered with a sheet, she said,...

<p>When Glenn Beck told listeners of his radio show on March 2 that they should "run as fast as you can" from any church that preached "social or economic justice" because those were code words for Communism and Nazism, he probably thought he was tweaking a few crunchy religious liberals who didn't listen to the show anyway. Instead he managed to outrage Christians in most mainline Protestant denominations, African-American congregations, Hispanic churches, and Catholics...</p>

The city of Baltimore declared today Frank Zappa Day in honor of the iconoclastic rock musician and composer, who was born there 69 years ago on Dec. 21, 1940. Last week the city's public art commission also announced that a bronze statue of Zappa would be erected outside of a public library sometime next year......

A weeping blonde model claimed yesterday that she ended her affair with Tiger Woods after she woke up in the middle of the night to find him texting other mistresses. Cori Rist, 31, who has a seven-year-old son, said she initially believed the billionaire golfer when he told her his marriage was on the rocks. And she thought she was the only 'other woman' in his life - until she caught him secretly sending texts while he was in bed with her. 'I would wake up sometimes in the night in hotels with him and hear him text messaging,' she...

Porn star Holly Sampson said on an adult Internet talk show that she slept with Tiger Woods at his bachelor party five years ago. "Me and my girlfriends did a bachelor party for Tiger and it was amazing," she said on the show, in which she and other adult stars are interviewed topless. "He picked me to go into the room. I have to say he was really good." Now Jim McBride, the CEO of the celebrity adult Web site MrSkin.com tells Pop Tarts that Sampson has been running ads as a high-paying adult escort for at least seven years.