Free Republic

Evidence is accumulating of a corrupt bureaucratic culture in many, if not all, federal agencies. Revelations of lavish meetings at fancy hotels, featuring stupid but expensive custom-made videos emerged in the last couple of years. But even worse, cases of bureaucrats stealing from taxpayers by taking time off while still being paid high salaries have been reported recently, with their supervisors knowingly turning a blind eye to the taxpayer rip-off. The EPA’s highest-paid employee pretended to be a CIA agent and defrauded the taxpayers of about $900,000 in salary and travel expenses (often first class airfare and five star hotels)....

Ever sit at home and watch the evening news or read the paper and see a story about some elected official who does something so incredibly stupid that it makes you mutter (or yell) to yourself, "How did that idiot get elected?" If so, you're not alone. So how did they get that job? The short answer is usually, "he (or she) showed up" – plus “apathy”. They went to the meetings nobody else wanted to go to.They volunteered to do the things nobody else would do.They were then asked to serve on some committee.Eventually they were put in charge...

<p>White people are products of their own whitewashed, sanitized environment. Black people have been systematically excluded from white neighborhoods. Black stories rarely surface in popular culture. The history of race in high school textbooks has been boiled down to a handful of bedtime stories about Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks. Try to tap into the average white person's feelings on race and you won't necessarily find feelings of hate and antipathy. You just won't find much of anything, no fully formed or well-considered thoughts about race of any kind. There's nothing really there. Even white people who want black friends don't know where to start.</p>

  School Molestation: Are We Civilized or Just Apathetic? David C. Stolinsky Feb. 6, 2012 On the evening of July 27, 1984 my wife and I were in Westwood, a few blocks from the UCLA campus. It was just before the Los Angeles Olympics, and the streets were crowded. Suddenly we heard many sirens. A man came into the store and announced that someone had driven his car onto the sidewalk on Westwood Boulevard and mowed down many pedestrians. It turned out that the driver had no connection to terrorism. Paramedics and firefighters were triaging the injured. There were...

The laziest lighting job in Christmas history. Sometimes extreme apathy can lead to extreme ingenuity. With one simple word and a miniscule fraction of the effort, the guy on the right is expressing the exact same level of Christmas spirit as his show-offy, bigger-budgeted neighbor. Plus that guy borrowed a rake from him like three years ago, so it all evens out.

Disapproval Rate for Congress at Record 82% After Debt Talks (Teaparty 40% Unfavorably) NYT Slimefest The debate over raising the debt ceiling, which brought the nation to the brink of default, has sent disapproval of Congress to its highest level on record and left most Americans saying that creating jobs should now take priority over cutting spending, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. A record 82 percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job — the most since The Times first began asking the question in 1977, and even more than after...

When jihad-bent American Muslims target American soldiers on American soil, why does America yawn? The Fort Hood massacre has faded from view. The ambush at an Army recruiting station in Little Rock barely registered on the national radar screen. And the arrest this week of a Baltimore-area bomb plotter, intent on blowing up a military center and murdering our troops in the name of Allah, was met with a collective shrug. It's pointless to rally citizens around "never forget" when their heads are in the sand. Civil-liberties absolutists are more outraged by the alleged "entrapment" of Muslim convert Muhammad Hussain...

With four weeks to go until Election Day, union leaders are cranking up their ground game to mobilize a dispirited rank-and-file and turn out votes for Democrats. ~ snip ~ "A few years ago we promised people change and a lot of them don't think this change has happened soon enough," said John Meyerson, a lead coordinator of union-member volunteer efforts in Southeastern Pennsylvania. ~ snip ~ "When it to comes to rank-and-file employees such as myself, we have our activists and those we can't mobilize," said Sylvia Pino, a Safeway grocery clerk who volunteered in the 2008 election. She...

Little Rock, Ark. (AP) -- Former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday it would be a mistake for voters to give in to "anger, apathy and amnesia" and deprive Arkansas of the Senate Agriculture chairmanship by defeating Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln. Clinton returned to his home state to rally support for Lincoln as she fights to save her Senate career and to help raise money for two Democratic congressional hopefuls. Most polls show Lincoln badly trailing her Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. John Boozman, though she has more money for the race. Clinton told a roomful of supporters at a downtown Little...

PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. — The smell of oil hangs heavy in the sea air. Children with plastic shovels scoop up clumps of goo in the waves. Beachcombers collect tarballs as if they were seashells. The oil has now reached the shores of four Gulf states — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Swimmers at Pensacola Beach rushed out of the water after wading into the mess, while other beachgoers inspected the clumps with fascination, some taking pictures. Children were seen playing with the globs as if they were Play-Doh. Randy Ivie, a charter boat captain, broke down in tears as tried...

Reader Larry G at Hot Air left this comment, saying that he's trying to pass it around. Well, Larry, I'm here to help. Think about this, America... Some people have the vocabulary to sum up things in a way you can understand them. This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. We have a lot of work to do. “The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama...

www.LibertyJuice.com (go to website for hyperlinks!) I recently attended my Senatorial Convention as a Delegate for the first time and couldn’t help but see the glaringly obvious. Most people were the age of my grandparents. I know many of these wonderful people have been involved in their local politics for decades. It’s a thankless effort on behalf of the rest of us who may vote if we feel like fitting it into our schedules and if nothing more important takes precedent on our calendars. These sage wise men and women don’t get paid to give of their time on behalf...

Don't look now, but Republican Scott Brown leads Democrat Martha Coakley by one point, 48 to 47 percent, in Public Policy Polling's new poll of the January 19 special Senate election in Massachusetts. Brown is benefiting from depressed Democratic interest in the election and a huge lead among independents for his surprisingly strong standing. Those planning to vote in the special election only report having voted for Barack Obama in 2008 by a 16 point margin, in contrast to his actual 26 point victory in the state.

Barack Obama was the Political Pied Piper of 2008. His campaign motivated millions of young people to finally come to the polls and pull the levers -- and not just for Obama but other party members down the ticket, yielding sweeping power for the Democrats in Congress. A year of Obama has come and gone and so have many of his youthful supporters. This does not bode well for 2010 and beyond. Obama owes his presidency to the ranks of 18-24 year olds who overwhelmingly supported him over John McCain (66-32 percent). He tapped into their idealistic yearnings with promises...

CHICAGO (AP) -- Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn says selling a prison in the state's rural northwest is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create jobs...

Good tidings from Virginia that may extend all the way across the nation. The coalition of voters that propelled Barack Obama to the White House is fragmenting and falling away, losing interest in Obama and unlikely to support other Democrats in future elections- at least if the Virginia gubernatorial election holds clues to the rest of the electorate. The anti-GOP wave has crested. From the Washington Post regarding a poll of Virginians focus on potentially critical shifts among Obama's coalition:

Scott Rasmussen's Daily Presidential Tracking Poll gets a lot of national attention -- as it should -- with the index balancing the strongly approve numbers versus the strongly disapprove numbers. Taken with the three day rolling average concept, an argument could be made that Rasmussen's poll and his index is the best snap shot of informed and engaged Americans at any given time. Certainly the fact that sometime around July 4th this poll crossed into negative territory and has stayed there is significant. Also important and telling is the fact that the strongly disapprove numbers have hovered around 40% for...

Voting rate dips as older whites stay home About 63.6 percent of the nation's eligible voters cast ballots in November WASHINGTON - For all the attention generated by Barack Obama's candidacy, the share of eligible voters who actually cast ballots in November declined for the first time in a dozen years. The reason: Older whites with little interest in backing either Barack Obama or John McCain stayed home. Census figures released Monday show about 63.6 percent of the nation's eligible voters, or 131.1 million people, voted last November. Although that represented an increase of 5 million voters — virtually all...

It might have been just a coincidence, but if it was, it was an awfully eerie one. Last week, 13-year-old Kayva Shivashankar won the 2009 National Spelling Bee by spelling the word "Laodicean." That word left a lot of Americans befuddled. Typically, the vast majority of Americans that are products of our nation's collective calamity known as the government schools have no clue how to spell or define the words used at the National Spelling Bee. "Laodicean" is certainly no different. The uninformed mainstream media did its typical best to keep Americans as uninformed as they are. Most of those...

This is my first post here in a long time. Since my last post, back in 2001, I have worked on a few campaigns for local conservative candidates, I've been a candidate, and I have been on my local Republican Executive Committee. I also publish a local elections blog in which I give all local candidates a username and password so they can blog with impunity at no cost in a local forum where people are looking for them. What has been so frustrating is seeing how conservatives will make a big show of outrage over some government wrongdoing, but...