Free Republic

I can’t remember exactly what I wrote that was so evil. So much to choose from. Was it that I refused to be freaked by this latest panic attack that global warming was blasting in and . . . Oh, my God, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

January 19, 2007 -- THE bloodbath at Time Inc. turned out to be worse than many had anticipated, with the final number of staff cuts swelling to 289 workers and Time, People and Sports Illustrated taking the heaviest hits.

Another of the problems plaguing the left is their love-hate affair with science. You see this all the time in the storied halls of academe - social scientists arguing about "black boxes", "causality", the "agent-structure problem", and how "chaos theory" may be usefully applied to international relations. They sound like macaques discussing Proust. People who confuse a passing familiarity with a few of the elements of scientific terminology, with a fundamental understanding of science, tend to come a cropper when they attempt to apply scientific precepts to unscientific areas or methods of inquiry. The problem, as it always is with...

Risky sexual behavior among Americans is putting the public’s health at risk, according to a new CDC study. Researchers found that the rates of early death and disability attributed to sexual behavior in the U.S. are triple those of any other industrialized country, and women bear the brunt of this public health burden.

Bold John sailed forth in his faux scow, Till the Swiftees fired across his bow; And legions of irate attorneys, Could not defend Cambodian journeys, Nor stories of his fabled hat, So voters sensed they smelled a rat. And while the networks denied them prime, The Swiftees surely got their time. While John screamed it was all a smear, O’Brien came across sincere, And forced Big John to duck the press, To run, to hide from his specious mess. But relentless those old Swiftee guys, They bit, hung on, exposed his lies. These brave old warriors once again Stood for...

Republicans win = skyrocketing homelessness. You know the MSM is conjuring and spinning the articles as we speak. I just thought I'd give y'all a preview of headlines to come.

It's getting close to the election and I've noticed that the phone polls are getting more and more frequent at the randog household. I'm on some "this guy doesn't hang up on pollsters" list and I get polls ranging from local to national elections. Like many of you, I've noticed that the national polls are all over the map. Last week we saw polls with a 10-point difference on the presidential race. There have been much discussion here at FR on the possible causes and I'd like to throw out my theory: the phone polls are being freeped just like...

Hare Brained By James Bowman Published 9/23/2004 12:06:46 AM American theater-goers may not yet be fully aware of it but the British playwright David Hare (Plenty, A Map of the World, Racing Demon etc.) has added his 2p worth to the outpouring of artistic protest against the American and British governments which took their countries into war in Iraq. Stuff Happens, which takes its title from a remark by Donald Rumsfeld about looting after the collapse of Saddam's army, dramatizes the whole decision-making process that led to war and by all accounts of it -- I have not had a...

ACT (Americans Coming Together) just called me for a phone survey. ACT is the outfit that hired ex-cons to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives until their covers were pulled.Anyway, this lady asked me who I was going to vote for, how strongly I felt about my choice, was there any chance in hell I would vote for Kerry, which national issue I thought was most pressing, etc. At the end of the conversation she thanked me and I told her to hold on, I had a question for her. I asked her if ACT was the organization that hired ex-cons...

SALT LAKE CITY — The focus on Mark Hacking's possible role in the disappearance of his wife tightened Monday with reports that police found a bloody knife in the couple's apartment and Lori Hacking got an upsetting phone call at work three days before she vanished.

Alicia Davis may be America's first state-funded defense attorney for parents accused of abuse by the same state's own child protective services. She assumes office this week as Utah's director of the Office of Child Welfare Parental Defense. The local press has already dubbed Davis "the Parent Czar," but skeptics wonder if she can effectively protect parental rights. Some wonder whether her position — apparently created as a last minute addition to a bill — is a compromise that won't work?

What would force a 46-year-old multi-millionaire pop icon to go on the road once again, especially if it meant risking health and taking time from her family? One would think Madonna is past all that, and I'm sure as she cancelled her Los Angeles show last night for the flu, and reading the negative reviews of opening night, she was thinking the same thing. But the pop queen must go on. In fact, Madonna needs to tour. People may wonder why she'd put herself through it all, and here's the simple answer: cold cash. Even with her vast wealth, investments,...

<p>The Legislature’s efforts to end Nevada’s record budget impasse halted abruptly Monday when a federal court issued a temporary restraining order on behalf of 24 Republican lawmakers, 23 citizens and four organizations.</p> <p>Earlier in the day, they filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Reno, claiming approval of a proposed package of $788 million in taxes would violate their civil and constitutional rights.</p>

<p>Congressman Jim Gibbon, R-Nev., launched a campaign Saturday for a voter initiative that would force the Legislature to fund public education before spending on other areas of state government could be considered.</p> <p>Gibbons unveiled his plan before a cheering crowd of more than 100 anti-tax hard-liners on the steps of the Supreme Court in Carson City. The former Washoe County assemblyman said he is opening the campaign because he is livid with the Supreme Court’s recent decision that strikes down the two-thirds vote requirement to raise taxes.</p>

<p>The Nevada Supreme Court ordered the state Legislature back to work Thursday, lifting the constitutional provision that has allowed Republicans to block a tax plan and public education funding for almost six months.</p> <p>By a 6-1 vote, the court said Nevada’s law that mandates a two-thirds vote to raise taxes must give way to a more entrenched provision that mandates the funding of education.</p>

<p>Daryl Feemster remembers what life was like 25 years ago for blacks in America, so he is certain that affirmative action will be necessary 25 years from now.</p> <p>“Absolutely,” said the 41-year-old black community activist from Reno. “If you’re talking about a society and a community that respects everyone and treats everyone fairly and the same, I don’t know if we’ll ever get there.”</p>

Ryan Spiegal: Blair incident sign of the times We have an epidemic on our hands, and I'm not talking about severe acute respiratory syndrome. The scourge of plagiarism seems to be everywhere these days. For me, the scandal exposed at The New York Times involving former university journalism student Jayson Blair, whom I knew from my days in College Park, is the straw that broke the camel's back. If the Times' allegations are true, and they appear to be, then Blair - former editor in chief of The Diamondback and darling of the journalism college - managed to con even...

Just in time for Easter, mathematicians have cracked the mystery of why a hard-boiled egg spun on a tabletop rises on one end and whirls like a top. The explanation, in an eggshell: Friction. Mathematicians from England and Japan spent six months filching eggs from their families' refrigerators and trying to explain the mysterious forces controlling this behavior. Their findings appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Keith Moffatt of the University of Cambridge in England and Yutaka Shimomura of Keio University in Japan believed that demonstrating how this effect works would be a simple, fun exercise. Instead, it...

Just got this in my e-mail and thought I'd share... ------------------------------------------ Little Johnny comes home from first grade and tells his father that they learned about the history of Valentine's Day. "Since Valentine's day is for a Christian saint and we're Jewish," he asks, "will God get mad at me for giving someone a valentine?" Johnny's father thinks a bit, then says "No, I don't think God would get mad. Who do you want to give a valentine to?" "Osama Bin Laden," Johnny says. "Why Osama Bin Laden," his father asks in shock. "Well," Johnny says, "I thought that if ...

<p>A fourth former member of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army, Sara Jane Olson, will be charged with first degree murder in the 27-year-old slaying of Myrna Opsahl in a Carmichael bank robbery, sources close to the investigation told The Sacramento Bee on Wednesday afternoon.</p>