Free Republic

There is one African-American in the current Senate: Illinois Sen. Roland Burris, who was appointed to fill out the rest of Barack Obama's term after he was elected president... All three African-American candidates are projected to lose their races: Florida's Kendrick Meek to Marco Rubio, Georgia's Michael Thurmond to Johnny Isakson and South Carolina's Alvin Greene to Jim DeMint. (All three are Democrats.)... African-Americans are better represented in the House, where there are currently 41 black members.

With little doubt about the outcome of tomorrow's elections, the speculation turns to what the reaction will be to the historic GOP victories. Will President Barack Obama shift toward the political center? Will all those shiny new Republican lawmakers keep their campaign promises to shrink government and control spending? Will those in the Tea Party movement remain engaged and involved once this battle has been won? All those answers will come in time but what we'll probably find out instantly is will the mainstream media abandon its self-assigned role of liberal cheerleader and return to honest reporting?

A panel full of liberals on Wednesday's Good Morning America attacked the "angry, white" Tea Partiers and lauded the historical importance of Jon Stewart. Daily Beast editor Tina Brown gushed over the liberal comedian as " the only trusted branch of government." Previewing the comic's rally on Washington this Saturday, the former Vanity Fair editor hyperbolically enthused, "You know, I mean, in the end, Stewart and Colbert, really are like the Huntley and Brinkley of today in the sense that people really, really trust them."

By funding numerous rightwing organisations, the mega-rich Koch brothers have duped millions into supporting big business The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has seen – and the biggest Astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related. An Astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some Astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all. Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party belongs...

"The Daily Kos, Twittergate & Obama's Birth Certificate Controversy Posted by Erica The Zapem blog has produced a video, Twittergate - The Democrats Hire A Twitter-Thug, which details how the Democrats hired Neal Rauhauser, a Daily Kos blogger, to paint the tea party movement as racist, homophobic, extremist and every other pejorative you can imagine. Rauhauser owns a company co-founded with Beth Becker called Progressive PST. Zapem says,"The evidence submitted demonstrates the systematic and deliberate provocation towards people in an attempt to elicit unfavorable responses after a series of malicious and vile attacks. The idea was to antagonize, collect and...

How much did the left show its keister on O’Donnell’s alleged gaffe? So much so that the AP/WaPo story on the subject was almost completely rewritten last night, and without an official correction. After the break I will have screen caps and a cut and paste of the text of the article, but let’s start with just the first paragraph. Before: WILMINGTON, Del. — Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from...

GROZNY, Russia – Islamic insurgents attacked Chechnya's parliament Tuesday in a brazen suicide raid that left six people dead and 17 wounded, defying Kremlin claims of stability in the volatile southern region.

There is troubling news on this story. Johnathan and Stephanie went to visit their child today. Details are a bit sketchy at this point, but Cheyenne is reportedly losing consciousness, bleeding out of her private parts, and has not gained weight. Update from the Free Baby Cheyenne Facebook Group: “Pirra Milan EMERGENCY PROTEST AT CONCORD HOSPITAL AND DCYF’S OFFICES!!! JOHNATHAN AND STEPHANIE WERE AT A VISIT. BABY CHEYENNE WOULDN’T WAKE UP! THEY CHANGED HER DIAPER AND BLOOD WAS EVERYWHERE! SHE WAS RUSHED BY AMBULANCE TO THE HOSPITAL! THEY AREN’T ALLOWING THE PARENTS IN!!” Update (2:30 p.m.) Baby Cheyenne is currently...

In Chicago, WIND radio show host William Kelly was on a mission to get answers from current mayoral candidate and Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel. Despite the other reporters acting as a force to protect Rahm against Kelly’s tough questions over the stimulus bill and his residency, his persistence is highly entertaining.

When President Obama sits down for his MTV town hall this Thursday, the audience of young people who will ask him questions will have been gathered by a casting call. According to the casting call for the event from talent agency Backstage.com, first reported by National Review Online, the company requests applications for the event, asking what issues the person is “passionate about,” requiring a “short description of your political views,” and also asks for a recent photo.

Time magazine's news judgment is truly puzzling. With just weeks to go before a crucial midterm election, their cover story package is ten pages stuffed with “The Secret World of Extreme Militias.” Voters are poised to sweep a pile of Democrats out of office from coast to coast, and they're camped in Zanesville, Ohio with a right-wing militia that claims 300 members as the nation's number one news story? (Katie Couric tweeted on Wednesday that she was eagerly reading it.) Time editor Richard Stengel announced they gave new hire Barton Gellman six months in the field chasing the whisper of...

TOLEDO, Ohio — A report says a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Ohio dressed up in a German SS uniform to participate in Nazi reenactments. Excerpted per FR posting rules.

WE DID IT! - MILITARYCORRUPTION.COM CONFIRMS AIR FORCE ATTEMPT TO SLIP MAJ JILL METZGER BACK ON ACTIVE DUTY WITHOUT PUBLIC KNOWING ABOUT IT - PAMPERED AND PROTECTED POSTER GIRL WHO CLAIMED "KIDNAPPING" IN KYRGYZSTAN AND LATER SCORED LUCRATIVE TAX-FREE 100% "DISABILITY" PENSION, NOW ALLOWED TO RETURN TO FULL-TIME STATUS - WE FIND OUT SHE IS NAMED THE CHIEF OF COMMUNITY PROGRAMS BRANCH AT ANDREWS AFB - OSI AGENT HUBBY ALSO HAULING IN THE BIG BUCKS - MUST BE NICE TO BE SO WELL "CONNECTED" - COVER-UP IGNORES TWO FAILED POLYGRAPH TESTS - PHONY TALE OF "DERRING-DO" © 2010 MilitaryCorruption.com Once...

What is it with Hollywood personalities going to Venezuela and being swept off their feet by the thuggish dictator Hugo Chávez. They come back with these stories claiming he is just misconstrued by the media and that he’s really a great guy. On Oct. 7, at an appearance at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., CNBC “Power Lunch” co-host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, in an appearance promoting her book “You Know I'm Right: More Prosperity, Less Government,” explained how this could happen. She told an audience that Chávez has a very charismatic, seductive personality. “I was telling – my two most interesting...

Today the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Snyder v. Phelps, a case about the nature and scope of basic rights -- those of free speech vs. those of privacy. But this case is fundamentally about wrongs and the law's imperfect ability to redress them. The facts of the case are well known. Matthew Snyder, a Marine lance corporal from Westminster, Md., was killed in the line of duty in Iraq in 2006. The Rev. Fred Phelps and members of his Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church traveled more than 1,000 miles to Maryland to picket his funeral and draw attention...

I'm still in shock from reading this news on Stereogum about primitivist drummer and doll-voiced Velvet, Moe Tucker being a Tea Party fanatic. Say it ain't so Moe. It's like finding out that Henry Rollins has just been wearing a fake muscle suit all these years and he's really a skinny, mild-mannered pushover. Moe's strayed a long way off from being in a band at center of 1960's and 70's American counter culture. She's best known for her unrelenting, tribal drumming style of the time -- opting to take her bass drum, turn it upright and pound away on it...

A new poll released by Gallup shows that American distrust in the mass media has reached a record high. This is the fourth straight year that a majority of respondents have said that they have little or no trust in the media, but the 57% who say that this year is a new record for the poll. According to the poll, 48% of respondents say the media is too liberal, 15% say it is too conservative and 33% say it is “just right.” You can see how the responses have changed over the years here: (snip to picture of chart)...

I don't think I ever want to meet Steven Thrasher in person. Aside from the fact that the NPR and Village Voice contributor has an ominously violent last name, this dude is p!ssed. Despite this, I'll admit that while reading his recent Voice cover essay on the insanity of white America, I occasionally pictured myself giving Mr. Thrasher a hug. Don't worry, Steven, I'd whisper: Christine O'Donnell is down 15 percent in Delaware. The Islamic community center near Ground Zero will soon be a reality. A single tweet from Sarah Palin doesn't signal the end of white American sanity. (In fact, there is...

For the last several weeks there has been a debate raging over whether the grounds surrounding where the 9/11 attacks in Lower Manhattan are sacred and if it would be an appropriate place for an Islamic place of worship to be built. But if it isn’t appropriate, would it be an appropriate place for a Tea Party rally to be held? Possibly not. But whether that’s the case or not, Newsweek’s David A. Graham would have you believe there will be a so-called “Election Day Tea Party rally” held at Ground Zero, led by former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton,...

The Internet giant AOL libeled Free Republic as "hosting child pornography" in an article published Wednesday, September 22, 2010, at their Daily Finance news site. The site's masthead reads: Daily Finance An AOL Money & Finance Site.Authored by Daily Finance media columnist Jeff Bercovici, the article entitled Muzzled Reporter Says 'Maw of Yahoo' No Place for Journalism tells the story about John Cook's reasons for leaving Yahoo News and returning to his previous gig with Gawker. According to the article, Cook was the senior national affairs reporter for Yahoo's The Upshot news blog. Bercovici notes that he and Cook are...