Free Republic

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Someday, cultural historians will look back on the early 21st century and speculate about what killed the credibility of America’s so-called liberal-media elite. They will ask, Were the wounds self-inflicted or the product of a methodical plot? Make no mistake about it. We did this to ourselves. As a card-carrying member of the leftist media near-elite — alas, I’m not nearly rich or famous enough to be regarded as a 100% elitist — it pains me to see my brethren sinking like the sun in the west. But we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We’ve...

Breitbart: I Have E-Mails Showing Organized Plan For #OccupyWallStreet Protests To Destabilize Government On Fox Business, Andrew Breitbart breaks the news that Big Government has obtained and will release e-mails that prove the organized plan behind the "Occupy Wall Street" protests.

WASHINGTON – Maj. Walter Reed's sword was symbolically handed over to the Navy at a ceremony Wednesday marking the closure of the Army hospital bearing his name, where hundreds of thousands of the nation's war wounded have been treated for more than a century. The tone was somber at times, but mostly celebratory, as more than a thousand former and current staff members and patients — some of them wounded troops from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in wheelchairs who have lost limbs —gathered under a white tent to say goodbye to the Army's flagship hospital. The Army band played,...

The new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll on the debt ceiling crisis reinforces points made in the new issue of National Affairs in two important articles, the first by AEI Vice President Henry Olsen, and the second by Weekly Standard writer Jay Cost. What the poll reveals, as NBC’s Deputy Political Director Mark Murray writes, is that “Strong majorities of Democrats and independents prefer that Democratic congressional leaders make compromises in this budget debate, while almost 70 percent of independents want Republican leaders to do the same.” For me the key phrase in Murray’s comment refers to the desire of independents....

Glenn Beck later this year will end his Fox News Channel talk show, which has sunk in the ratings and has suffered from an advertiser boycott.

Large crowds gathered at Porky's in St. Paul Friday, a few days before the decades-old restaurant closes its doors. Nora Truelson and her late husband opened Porky's in 1953, establishing it as the St. Paul gathering place on Saturday nights. Truelson declined to speak on camera, but her son told 5 EYEWITNESS News light rail construction along University Avenue was a factor in the decision to close. The Truelsons say they are selling their property to their next door neighbor, Episcopal Homes. The restaurant is scheduled to close Sunday; everything at Porky's will be auctioned off Monday. The Preservation Alliance...

Reporting from Las Vegas and Los Angeles — The Sahara hotel-casino, a Rat Pack-era jewel of the Las Vegas Strip that age and a prolonged recession had tarnished, will close in May, owner SBE Entertainment announced Friday morning. Chief Executive Sam Nazarian, the Los Angeles nightclub impresario who purchased the Moroccan-themed casino in 2007 and vowed to restore its hipness, said in a statement that running the property was "no longer economically viable."

The Libyan leader has lost all three pillars of his rule - tribal, military and diplomatic. Judging from his desperate speech last night, he seems to be losing his mind and perhaps his nerves. That's why it's only a question of time for his regime to breakdown. For the last four decades, Gaddafi has based the stability of his rule on a careful balancing act among more than 100 tribes and clans, especially the 30 influential among them, that pride themselves on playing an important role in freeing Libya from colonialism. Gaddafi has used bribes when possible, blackmail and scare...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Kennedys have held congressional seats, the presidency and the public's imagination for more than 60 years. That era ends when Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island vacates his U.S. House seat next month, leaving a City Council post in California as Camelot's sole remaining political holding.

Departing Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter on Tuesday said conservative Republicans who backed Tea Party challengers against establishment candidates in the recent elections engaged in political cannibalism. In his final floor speech, Specter complained there's scant room for centrists like himself in a polarized Senate where civility is in short supply. "In some quarters, compromise has become a dirty word," said Pennsylvania's longest-serving senator, who lost his re-election bid after three decades in the Senate. Specter complained that some GOP senators had helped Tea Party challengers beat incumbent Republicans like Utah Sen. Bob Bennett and Rep. Mike Castle in his Delaware...

Throughout my adult life governments around the Western world have been propagating the gospel of multiculturalism, which tells us that immigrants, from whatever part of the world and whatever way of life, are a welcome part of our "multicultural" society. Differences of language, religion, custom, and attachment don't matter, they have reassured us, since all can form part of the colorful tapestry of the modern state. Anybody who publicly disagreed with that claim invited the attentions of the thought police, always ready with the charge of racism, and never so scrupulous as to think it a sin to destroy the...

PICTURES: UK Harriers to make final operational flights today By Craig Hoyle Operations with the UK’s BAE Systems Harrier GR9/9A ground-attack aircraft will come to an end today, with the nation’s Joint Force Harrier organisation to perform a final series of sorties from the Royal Air Force’s Cottesmore base in Rutland. The farewell is to involve a 16-aircraft formation which will perform flypasts at the RAF’s facilities at Wyton, Cranwell, Waddington, Scampton and Coningsby and also over Stamford, Lincoln and Oakham before returning to land at Cottesmore. The aircraft should take off from around 13:15 local time and land around...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected numerous polls predicting a Republican landslide among House candidates and defiantly predicted tonight that Democrats will retain control of the House of Representatives.

DETROIT — Pontiac, the brand that invented the muscle car under its flamboyant engineer John Z. DeLorean, helped Burt Reynolds elude Sheriff Justice in “Smokey and the Bandit” and taught baby boomers to salivate over horsepower, but produced mostly forgettable cars for their children, will endure a lonely death on Sunday after about 40 million in sales. It was 84 years old. The cause of death was in dispute. Fans said Pontiac’s wounds were self-inflicted, while General Motors blamed a terminal illness contracted during last year’s bankruptcy. Pontiac built its last car nearly a year ago, but the official end...

Due to the fierce competition among the music players, Sony will retire its once-popular Walkman tape player in Japan, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Monday. "Those of us who grew up in the Reagan Decade know: By six years after its 1979 debut, the Walkman had become the iPod of its day," Rob Pegoraro of The Washington Post wrote in a blog post on Monday. "Much like Apple's music player, Sony's gadget was near-ubiquitous, got a little smaller over subsequent revisions, and had cheaper competitors that Weren't Quite The Same Thing."

CHICAGO (AFP) – Little Orphan Annie, the plucky redheaded star of Broadway musical and comic strip fame, has run out of tomorrows ---at least in print. The pop culture icon who sang and danced her way to international fame in the Broadway musical that gave us tunes such as "It's The Hard-Knock Life," and "Tomorrow," ended her decades-long run as a comic strip heroine on Sunday, June 13. Tribune Media Services, the division of media conglomerate the Tribune Company that syndicates the strip to US newspapers, is pulling the plug on the irrepressible Annie, her trusty dog Sandy and her...

How LOST should have ended... Dream of the yellow dog

~ Click here to be added or taken off the list ~ The Women of Lost 4 8 15 16 23 42 - Official Lost Season 6 Thread

After 6 seasons of clues, hints, games, deaths, births, monsters, polar bears, submarines and time travel, along with all around weirdness, television's most innovative show, Lost, comes to an end on Sunday night, concluding the Final Chapter. And I couldn't be happier. Don't get me wrong. I am totally addicted to Lost. Actually, this has been the only show I have religiously watched over the last couple years, as my life has become busier. I always loved T.V., but simply don't have the time anymore. But I always make time for Lost.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The venerable police-courtroom drama "Law & Order" has been axed. NBC announced Friday that the show would end its historic 20-season run on May 24, with a season finale that was never meant to bring the saga to a close. The show starred an ensemble cast currently consisting of Jeremy Sisto, Anthony Anderson, Linus Roache, Alana De La Garza, Sam Waterston and S. Epatha Merkerson, who, unrelated to the show's abrupt cancellation, had already announced she was moving on. Even as it issued a death sentence to the original "Law & Order," NBC announced a new...