Free Republic

Dear MoveOn member, We're writing today because you recently signed a petition calling on CNN to hold Lou Dobbs accountable for his role in promoting the ridiculous "Birther" conspiracy theory about President Obama's birth certificate. Right now, the pressure on CNN is rising, and we need your help to make sure CNN answers for its Dobbs problem once and for all. During the past month, our friends at Presente.org have been running an amazing campaign called "BastaDobbs." They've been calling on CNN to cut ties with Dobbs for his long history of spreading myths about immigrants and Latinos, and his...

Rush Limbaugh will not be an NFL owner and it’s not because, to borrow the title of Al Franken’s book, “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot.� OK. It’s a little bit of that. If Limbaugh and all of his “ditto heads� out there want to blame the liberal, bed-wetting, panty-waste, fruitcake media with the left-wing agenda — and THAT’S why this country’s going to hell in a hand-basket, mister! — for him being rejected by the NFL, well, they’re missing the point. The NFL has a product. The NFL has the most sought-after product in professional sports. The NFL...

A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama's calls to control exorbitant medical bills, has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life "rationing" and even "euthanasia." The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life...But on right-leaning radio programs, religious e-mail lists and Internet blogs, the proposal has been described as "guiding you in how to die," "an ORDER from the Government to end your life," promoting "death care" and,...

GOP to rebrand Dems as 'socialists' By: Roger Simon May 13, 2009 04:32 AM EST A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.” When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?” Which pretty much sums up the attitude some members of the RNC have toward their chairman these...

Former New Yorker editor Tina Brown appeared on Tuesday's "Morning Joe" to rail against the "crazy jihad" and "one-man...hate-fest" of Dick Cheney. Brown, who is now the editor of the Daily Beast website, trashed the former Vice President for constantly appearing on cable news programs to attack the current administration and for claiming that Barack Obama is making America less safe. After asserting that Cheney is about as popular as Pakistan's President, Brown sneered, "In some ways, I kind of admire this kind of crazy jihad, this one man, kind of, hate-fest that he runs on cable shows. I mean,...

A Chance to Make Change Millions of people have responded to the Obama campaign’s request for input on what the priorities of the new administration should be. Labor, the women’s movement, and other people’s organizations are already making proposals that include the following: -- A stimulus package of a half trillion dollars or more, to create millions of jobs, including a public works program. -- Emergency help for the jobless and the victims of the sub prime mortgage crisis. -- Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, so more workers can have unions. -- A concrete timetable for pulling out...

The headline on CNN was "Cheney Attacks!" Correspondent Tom Foreman commented that "even in the bare- knuckle world of Washington these days, this was a remarkably sharp attack by the former vice president just weeks into President Obama's term." And how had the former vice president expressed his fabled bellicosity this time? In an interview with Politico.com, he warned that there is a "high probability" that, in the years ahead, terrorists will attempt to use a nuclear or biological weapon to mass-murder Americans. Cheney said he was concerned that the Obama administration may discard some of the policies that have...

San Franciscans famously fought back against Bill O'Reilly - the conservative Fox news anchor who really, really hates our city - when he said back in 2005 that the U.S. military shouldn't defend San Francisco in case of a terrorist attack. "You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead," he said. Everybody from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Supervisor Chris Daly railed at O'Reilly, calling his comments outrageous. Not content to leave well enough alone, O'Reilly has now sent an underling to the city to make a documentary to show where, supposedly, the politics of President-elect Barack Obama...

Biden to reporter: 'Are you joking?' Sen. Joe Biden laughs off a WFTV reporter's question about Sen. Barack Obama's so-called Marxist principles.

Introduction Teresa of Avila calls for our consideration on several counts: Her writings are increasingly popular amongst unconverted but professing Protestants who find her 'mystical spirituality' attractive in their own 'pursuit of God.' We are thus alerted to a dangerous 'enemy within the gates.' She is revered by Romanists as 'a quintessential Catholic', 'a revolutionary mystic', 'a saint and doctor of the Church', and a co-patron of Spain. This gives us an inkling of the influence she wields over Roman Catholic hearts. Her works, 'long seen as merely devotional treatises . . . are now being mined more seriously for...

They just said it is a foregone conclusion that Obama's win ( my paraphrase). Good lord. Thanks guys. They say it would take a 3000 point rise in the stock market to save McCain now. The dems special interest agenda caused this debacle and the GOP takes the fall. Is there no justice? But WHY never any mention of the stinkin' muck and company Obama keeps?

The campaign of Democratic presidential nominee in waiting Barack Obama is threatening TV stations that dare to run a controversial ad that questions Obama's friendship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.Politico quotes an Obama aide as saying this afternoon, "The Obama campaign plans to punish the stations that air the ad financially, organizing his supporters to target the stations that air it and their advertisers."Politico has posted copies of letters the Obama campaign has sent to station managers and a letter the campaign has sent to the Department of Justice demanding a criminal investigation of the group that is...

In a ruling that surprised some observers, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of a pro-life group to display photos showing the bodies of babies dismembered during abortions. The conservative Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., had brought suit on behalf of the Center for Bioethical Reform (CBR), a California pro-life group. The case involved police detention for 75 minutes of two CBR pro-life activists who in March circled Rancho Palos Verdes Middle School in Los Angeles, driving a large truck displaying on three sides photos of aborted babies. School...

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama accused President Bush on Thursday of launching a "false political attack" with a comment about appeasing terrorists and radicals. The Illinois senator interpreted the remark as a slam against him but the White House denied that Bush's words were in any way directed at Obama, who has said as president he would be willing to personally meet with Iran's leaders and those of other regimes the United States has deemed rogue. In a speech to Israel's Knesset, Bush said: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as...

RUSH: The big news today is that George Bush is over in Israel, and in a speech at the Knesset he made some comments about how talking to tyrants is not the way to defeat them. Magic words are not going to convince your enemies to all of a sudden realize they are wrong. He said this is appeasement. The Obama campaign is erupting. They all think it's about them. Puff Daschle went, for him, what is ballistic on Fox today on the phone. I think the Puffster was actually spitting and might have shorted out his phone. Then they...

Many critics of Ben Stein’s new film, “Expelled,” have expressed distaste—and some have gone absolutely apoplectic—over his linking of Darwinism with Nazism. In an MSNBC article bioethicist Arthur Caplan called the film immoral and even ridiculously calls Stein a Holocaust denier, because of his audacity to link Darwinism with Nazi atrocities. Scientific American calls this aspect of the film shameful.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, hardening his tone towards Israel on Thursday, urged an end to "the occupation" of the West Bank and pushed for a peace treaty to be signed within a year to create a Palestinian state. ADVERTISEMENT The United States rarely uses the politically charged word "occupation" to describe Israel's hold on lands captured in a 1967 war. It is a term Palestinians seeking a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip employ frequently to describe their plight. "The establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it,"...

As in Yeats's Easter 1916, death changes our view of certain people utterly. It's a tricky thing to broach the martyrdom and apotheosis of someone you didn't like and have publicly criticised. The news reports after Benazir Bhutto's death repeatedly featured footage of her uttering the fateful words, "Don't worry, God willing, I will be safe. I will be safe." I'd seen that same interview earlier and at the time I commented scornfully on the platitudes carefully chosen to appeal to her Western audience, the peculiar nasal delivery, the disingenuousness. What I saw after her murder was only vulnerability, the...

The Canadian Islamic Congress has launched human rights complaints against Macleans Magazine and its editor-in-chief, Kenneth Whyte, for publishing a flagrantly Islamophobic article, "The Future Belongs to Islam", in its Oct 23, 2006 issue. This article continues to be published on the Macleans website The future belongs to Islam | Macleans.ca - Canada - Features http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20061023_134898_134898&source= The complaints have been submitted to the British Columbia, Ontario, and Federal Human Rights Commissions on the grounds that the article subjects Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt. The complaints have been accepted by the British Columbia and the Federal Commissions; hearings have been...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is under fire from Jewish groups after a speech he gave at a pro-life event the weekend before last. In the address to the Family Research Council, the former Arkansas governor referred to the deaths of 45-50 million unborn children from abortion as a holocaust. In the speech, he linked the issues of abortion and illegal immigration -- saying the destruction of tens of millions of unborn children has left the U.S. with a worker shortage. “Sometimes we talk about why we’re importing so many people in our work force,” Huckabee...

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul contends that the federal government has overreacted by limiting personal freedom in the wake of terrorist attacks six years ago, noting more people die on U.S. highways in less than a month’s time compared to the number who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. “We have been told that we have to give up our freedoms in order to be safe because terrorism is such a horrible event,” Paul said today to more than 1,000 supporters who attended a rally at a downtown Chicago hotel ballroom. “A lot fewer lives died on 9/11 than...

WASHINGTON, July 19 (AP) A Pentagon official has told Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that questions she has raised about how the United States would withdraw from Iraq feed enemy propaganda. The stinging wording of the message, from Under Secretary of Defense Eric S. Edelman, was unusual, particularly because it was directed at a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Mr. Edelman’s July 16 message, in response to questions Mrs. Clinton raised in May, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. “Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,� he wrote, “reinforces enemy propaganda that the...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicted a wartime leader of Croatia's rebel Serbs of murder, torture and persecution Tuesday and sentenced him to 35 years in prison for a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign of non-Serbs in Croatia. Judges said Milan Martic, 52, was responsible for hundreds of murders from 1991 when Serbs in the Krajina region of northeastern Croatia rebelled and set up a breakaway ministate until 1995 when Croatian forces recaptured the area. He also was convicted of ordering two days of indiscriminate cluster bomb shelling of the Croatian capital, Zagreb, in May 1995...

Liberal Senator Dennis Dawson accused [Environment Minister John] Baird of scare tactics. "The sky is falling-- we've seen this before," Dawson said. "Every time we talk about changes that protect the environment we have people telling us they will destroy the economy." He said similar warnings were issued about the program to curb acid rain, yet it was implemented without difficulty. The story of "the boy who cried wolf " ends, if memory serves, with the wolf devouring the boy. Moral: It's not crying "wolf" if there really is a wolf. It's a time-honoured rhetorical technique, all the same --...

TALLAHASSEE -- State Rep. Don Brown thought he was being "cute." His fellow Republicans in the Florida House had another word for it: racist. Brown, a DeFuniak Springs Republican, apologized Thursday for sending an e-mail to his colleagues that noted the April 17 federal income tax deadline. "Don't forget to pay your taxes -- 12-million illegal aliens are depending on you!" Brown wrote in a message to his colleagues on a state-issued email account. What Brown meant as a joke wasn't interpreted that way. The strongest criticism came from his fellow Republicans -- Hispanics with large immigrant constituencies in South...

Democratic Party boss Howard Dean demanded that Republican presidential candidates denounce conservative columnist Ann Coulter after she referred to Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards as a ‘faggot’ during a speech Friday at a national conservative gathering.

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- White students at Tarleton State University in Texas hold a party in which they dress in gang gear and drink malt liquor from paper bags. A white Clemson University student attends a bash in blackface over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. A fraternity at Johns Hopkins University invites partygoers to wear "bling bling" grills, or shiny metal caps on their teeth. From Connecticut to Colorado, "gangsta" theme parties thrown by whites are drawing the ire of college officials and heated complaints from black and white students who say the antics conjure the worst racial stereotypes....

'Hi my name is Lindy and I deny the existence of the Holy Spirit and you should too.' With that five-second submission to YouTube, a 24-year-old who uses the name "menotsimple" has either condemned herself to an eternity of punishment in the afterlife or struck a courageous blow against superstition. She's one of more than 400 mostly young people who have joined a campaign by the Web site BlasphemyChallenge.com to stake their souls against the existence of God. That, of course, is the ultimate no-win wager, as the 17th-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal calculated—it can't be settled until you're dead,...

Conservative blogger John Hawkins of Right Wing News has now decided to join Michael Medved in a new ad hominem attack by using a disparaging adjective to call me a name (“kooky”) and placing me No. 3 in the list of the 20 “people on the right” he finds most annoying. Hawkins places me between No. 2 Mark Foley, whom Hawkins characterizes as a “page-molesting pervert,” and No. 4 Duke Cunningham, the congressman Hawkins notes is “going to jail for 8 years after taking a bribe.” I am honored to be included on any list John Hawkins wishes to create....

WASHINGTON -- The American military, once a staunch supporter of President Bush and the Iraq war, has grown increasingly pessimistic about chances for victory. For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president's handling of the war than approve of it, according to the 2006 Military Times Poll. In 2004, 83 percent of poll respondents thought success in Iraq was likely. That number has shrunk to 50 percent. Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of how Bush is handling the war, and 42 percent said they disapprove. Just as telling, in 2006's...

Was the Baker Commission bought off by the Saudis? Here is a link to the Law offices of Baker Botts. http://www.bakerbotts.com/infoCenter/ Notice that they have offices in two Arab countries. “Lawyers in the Riyadh office have served in community positions throughout Riyadh and Saudi Arabia as a whole. For example, since 1996 we have had lawyers acting as general counsel for the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce and the Saudi Arabia country coordinator for the American Bar Association's Section on International Law and Practice. In addition, the perspective and experience of James A. Baker III, 61st U.S. Secretary of State...

Russia has banned the hit comedy film, Borat, which has been accused of poking fun at Moscow's neighbour and close ally Kazakhstan. The film stars British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as a spoof reporter on a trip to the US. A senior official at Russia's culture ministry has told the BBC it will not provide a distribution licence. The film has described as a "mockumentary" which follows Mr Cohen's travel across the US. On the way, he has a series of real life encounters with unsuspecting Americans in which he makes the most outrageous, sexist, racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic comments....

BRITISH National Party leader Nick Griffin told a crowd that Islam was a "wicked, vicious faith" and Asian Muslims were turning Britain into a multiracial hell as they tried to conquer the country, a court heard yesterday. Griffin urged the gathering in Keighley, West Yorkshire, to vote BNP to ensure "the British people really realise the evil of what these people have done to our country". The 47-year-old BNP chairman and fellow party activist Mark Collett face a series of charges arising out of speeches filmed by BBC journalist Jason Gwynne, who posed as a BNP supporter in Bradford, for...

BROOKSVILLE, Fla., Nov. 2 (UPI) -- A prominent local Republican in Florida said Tuesday he believed Islam was a "hateful, frightening religion." Tom Hogan, Sr., the recently appointed commissioner of Hernando County, told the St. Petersburg Times Tuesday that he agreed with a letter his wife Mary Ann had written to the paper describing Islam as a "hateful, frightening religion." "Overall, worldwide, it certainly is," Hogan said. "Don't you read your own paper? "There's a saying out there, and there's some truth to it, that not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. It's their thing," he told...

BROOKSVILLE — A Hernando County commissioner said Tuesday that he is “in total agreement” with a letter his wife wrote calling Islam a “hateful, frightening religion.” “Overall, worldwide, it certainly is,” said Commissioner Tom Hogan Sr. “Don’t you read your own paper?” He went on to say, “There’s a saying out there, and there’s some truth to it, that not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. It’s their thing.” The Hogans are widely considered the first couple of Hernando County’s Republican Party, and both have helped lead the party since the 1960s. Their comments earned wide condemnation...

Vatican has adopted a tougher line with Islam By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent (Filed: 18/09/2006) At first sight, there may seem to be little divergence between Pope Benedict XVI's approach to Islam and that of his predecessor. The present Pope, a scholar who has made an extensive study of the faith, is clearly keen to promote understanding between Christians and Muslims and has many personal contacts. At his inaugural Mass as Pope in April last year, he made a point of welcoming Muslim leaders. In reality, however, Benedict XVI has adopted a far more cautious approach than the late John...

September 10, 2006 -- Bill Clinton's camp yesterday demanded that ABC can its controversial film "The Path to 9/11," due to air tonight - and in a scathing new letter accused the network of exploiting the tragedy for ratings. Clinton's wrath comes amid new revelations that the Toronto set of the fictionalized flick was plagued by actors' concerns that the script was playing fast and loose with the truth, sources told The Post. Clinton's lawyer, Douglas Band, and the CEO of his foundation, Bruce Lindsey, penned the fuming missive to ABC bigwig Bob Iger. It was dated Friday but released...

Senate Democratic leadership threatens Disney with legal and legislative sanctionsby John in DC - 9/07/2006 06:02:00 PM This letter was sent today by the entire Democratic leadership of the US Senate. This letter is such a major shot across the bow of Disney, it's not even funny. It is FILLED with veiled threats, both legal and legislative, against Disney. US Senators don't make threats like this, especially the entire Democratic leadership en masse, unless they mean it. Disney is in serious trouble. Read it, then read my analysis of it below:September 7, 2006 Mr. Robert A. Iger President and...

Sorry folks, but I can no longer lend my support to the War on Terror. I'm tired of being lied to by our elected leadership. What am I talking you about, you ask? Specifically, when I'm a told by the President of the United States, that Islam is a "Religion of Peace". How am I supposed to square that statement with reality? How am I supposed to support the decision and policies of our government in waging war when our leaders can't even begin to tell the truth about the enemy we're fighting? If the president fears he may offend...

Ann Coulter offered more mean-spirited commentary in her latest Universal Press Syndicate column posted Wednesday night. In a Q&A with herself, Coulter asked: "How would your career be different if you looked like [liberal Creators Syndicate columnist] Molly Ivins?" Coulter answered: "I'd be a lot uglier." The conservative Universal columnist also called New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller "(a) a complete moron or (b) a traitor," and said the "mainstream press is in economic trouble" because of "hysterical leftism that drove readers away." Two other Coulter Q&As in her new column: -- "Why is abortion sacrosanct to the left?...

Urge to cash in on the housing bubble has spawned an industry of schemers: Every boom has a dark side. The merger mania of the 1980s produced insider trading scandals. The '90s stock bubble was busted for biased investment research. And so it is with real estate, the hottest market of the past eight years. The urge to cash in on rising home values has spawned a growing share of hucksters, schemers and rip-off artists. Learn how to avoid ten of the biggest real estate rip-offs or view Video: Real Estate Rip-OffsClick HereSo far, it is tough to know exactly...

FREDERICTON, N.B., July 19, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As debate rages in New Brunswick over the issue of government funded abortion on demand, a controversial pro-life group has taken advantage of the lively intellectual climate to spread their message. Show the Truth, which specializes in erecting graphic photos of aborted babies at the side of roads for passing motorists and pedestrians to see, is currently touring the Maritimes in the hope of raising awareness about the true nature of abortion. “We're called Show the Truth, and that's exactly what we're doing—it's the visual truth of abortion," said Rosemary Connell, an...

Each year about this time, some parents write in to ask for suggestions of things for their children to read during the summer, in order to counteract the steady diet of liberal-left indoctrination they have been getting in schools and colleges. This year there is a new book that is almost tailor-made for that purpose. Its title is "Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies" by Gregory Jackson. In it, all sorts of political and media spin are shot to pieces by hard facts. If you think that the Constitution of the United States provides for "separation of church and state," that...

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying Monday it had encouraged Iran and North Korea to push ahead with their nuclear programs. Albright, who served under President Clinton, said "the message out of Iraq is the wrong one." "The message out of Iraq is that if you don't have nuclear weapons, you get invaded. If you do have nuclear weapons, you don't get invaded," she said after an investors' conference in Moscow. Albright visited North Korea in October 2000, becoming the highest-level American official ever to travel to the country. The two nations do...

WASHINGTON // Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. fired one of his appointees to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority yesterday after the board member asserted on a local cable talk show that homosexuals lived a life of "sexual deviancy." The termination came a few hours after Metro board member Robert J. Smith, an architect and unsuccessful Republican candidate for the General Assembly from Montgomery County, was publicly confronted by a transit board colleague. Board member Jim Graham, a District of Columbia councilman who is openly gay, called on Smith to disavow his remarks or resign during yesterday's regular meeting of...

The firestorm over her comments about the 9/11 widows showed that America’s obsession with loving or hating Coulter is a psychological phenomenon almost unique in our culture Ann Coulter's new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, has just been published by Crown Forum. With predictable celerity, it has inspired another multiplatform media conflagration between her admirers and her opponents, some of whom don't seem to understand that controversy doesn't hurt book sales. I had resolved never to write about Coulter again, after my cover story on her from last year received 6,360 letters — most of them not warmly positive,...

Cardinal George Pell has declared yet again Islam is more warlike than Christianity, this time to a US Catholic newspaper. The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney told the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) Australia hadn't been affected much by Islamic threat following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but this could change depending "on how many terrorist attacks" Muslim fundamentalists could "bring off successfully", Fairfax newspapers report. In the interview conducted in Rome with well-known NCR reporter John L Allen, Dr Pell said "the million-dollar question" was whether intolerance was a modern distortion of Islam or arose out of internal...

US President George W. Bush isn't known for his willingness for giving interviews, but he recently sat down with German TV presenter Sabine Christiansen for 30 minutes. He answered her questions readily -- but also showed that he's become little more than a spectator of his own political decline. A man and a woman sit in front of an unlit fireplace in the White House. The woman is Germany's most well known TV presenter. The man is the most powerful man in the world -- or at least that's how he's introduced before the interview begins. And yet what we're...

March 30, 2006 MICHAEL SAVAGE(S) CATHOLICISM Here is what radio talk-show host Michael Savage had to say on March 28 about the Catholic Church’s response to the immigration issue: It is a pig story! It’s animal farm all over again. And also make no bones about it, it’s the greedy Catholic Church that was behind it because the people of America walked away from the molesters’ dens and they need to bring in people from the Third World who are still gullible enough to sit there and listen to the molesters…the Roman Catholic Church was behind this, the Roman Catholic...

15 February, 2006 ISLAM Muslim countries seek UN resolution to shield religions A proposal by 57 Muslim countries says that the “defamation of religions and prophets is inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression”. Beirut (AsiaNews) – The world’s 57 Muslim governments are making good on their word. After announcing their intention to have the United Nations ban mocking religion, they are now pressing to include such a ban in a planned new UN human rights body.According to the text of the Muslim countries’ proposal, the new body should strive to “prevent instances of intolerance, discrimination, incitement of...