Free Republic

When traveling in the corporate jet, the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch makes it clear that he has stringent requirements for his luxury travel. Those needs span 47 pages in a remarkable “Aircraft Standards” manual that covers everything from the underwear male cabin staffers must wear (boxer briefs) to the seating plan for the dogs of A&F chief Michael Jeffries, 68, and his boyfriend Matthew Smith, 49.

<p>FORT PIERCE, Florida — President Barack Obama reputedly loves nothing more than a good old campaign trail hug -- but he may have got more than he bargained for Sunday.</p> <p>Obama was lifted at least a foot in the air in an intense bear hug by hulking pizza shop owner Scott Van Duzer, during a bus tour of Florida.</p>

I think Paul Ryan is the perfect spec I didn't see it until Romney did it. I said -- Romney he'll make the right choice and I was right he made the right choice it's a beautiful synergy is the perfect combo platter there. And there were many -- predicting he'd go safe there's a bold -- to this decision here's a here's my take on us. He said. We're gonna take on your economic ideas your failed policies we're gonna offer a bold alternative. Video at link

Although Mitt Romney has virtually locked up the Republican presidential nomination and all of his serious challengers have conceded the race, presidential candidate Fred Karger is still out on the trail campaigning. Karger, a gay Republican running an issues-based campaign to change attitudes within the GOP about same-sex marriage, took his efforts last week to Utah, which holds the nation's last primary election, on June 26. Karger spent four days in the state, meeting with local Republican leaders and urging the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to stop funding efforts against gay marriage. (Prior to launching his presidential...

Well, it looks like we have a new Anthony Weiner in town. A Puerto Rican TV show called Dando Candela presented Republican Senator Roberto Arango with naked pictures found on the Internet that they claimed were of him. He wouldn’t deny the allegations, saying he had taken photos like that but only to document his weight loss. Of course, that doesn’t explain the fact that the pictures were found on Grindr, a hook up site for gay and bisexual men.

By popular demand, here is THE REAL HOUSEWIVES official chat thread on FreeRepublic.com. NETWORK: BRAVO TV. Check your local listings at www.bravotv.com THE REAL HOUSEWIVES ARE: ATLANTA ORANGE COUNTY NEW YORK NEW JERSEY D.C. BEVERLY HILLS D.C. IS CURRENTLY ON-AIR, THURSDAYS AT 9PM. ATLANTA'S NEW SEASON WILL GO ON-AIR STARTING ON OCT. 4TH. BEVERLY HILLS PREMIERE SEASON WILL GO ON-AIR STARTING ON OCT. 14TH.

Continuing his makeover from Republican to independent U.S. Senate candidate, Gov. Charlie Crist on Monday affirmed his support for civil unions, adoption by same-sex couples, and doing away with the military's ban on openly gay soldiers. Equality Florida, the state's leading gay rights group, called Crist's statement on a range of gay issues "the most comprehensive, pro-LGBT equality stand of a sitting governor in Florida's history." Crist's Democratic opponent for Senate, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, called it "too little too late." He and the Republican nominee, Marco Rubio, noted the governor had backed a 2008 amendment to the state constitution...

Ken Mehlman, George W. Bush's 2004 election campaign manager and a former Republican Party Chairman, has just revealed he is gay, according to Newsweek and a variety of other media outlets. His disclosure has angered some gay and lesbian same-sex marriage activists, upset by his tacit support and silence during the "values" political drive of 2004, when Republican strategists like Karl Rove pushed same-sex marriage bans across 13 states that year, as USA Today reported. Others are hailing his recent self-outing as being potentially helpful to the efforts to end Proposition 8 and the court case being driven, in part,...

An intra-conservative war broke out this week between Ann Coulter and WorldNetDaily after the site disinvited the well-known writer from a conference it was hosting after it learned that she had agreed to speak at a similar event sponsored by gay conservatives.Coulter had agreed to be a featured speaker at “Homocon 2010,” an event put together by GOProud, a group of conservatives and libertarians who are gay or support gay rights, a position which WorldNetDaily saw as improperly validating “a brand of materialistic libertrianism” according to the site’s editor Joseph Farah.“Ultimately, as a matter of principle, it would not make sense...

MIAMI – Conservative superstar Ann Coulter launched a verbal assault on WND Editor Joseph Farah today, calling the veteran journalist "swine" and a "publicity whore" after she was dismissed as a keynote speaker for the news site's upcoming "Taking America Back National Conference" here. "[F]arah is doing this for PUBLICITY and publicity alone," Coulter wrote in an e-mail to the Daily Caller, a political site founded by journalist Tucker Carlson.

News that conservative columnist Ann Coulter would speak at "HomoCon 2010," an event organized by the conservative gay group GOProud, prompted conservative outlet WorldNetDaily to drop her from speaking at one of its upcoming events. Coulter defended her decision to accept the invitation, saying, "They hired me to give a speech, so I'm giving a speech. . . . I speak to a lot of groups and do not endorse them. I speak at Harvard and I certainly don't endorse their views." But while she may have lost a WND speaking gig over it, most young conservatives I spoke to...

It's disappointing to see that conservative writer and speaker, Ann Coulter, has decided to accept a speaking gig next month for a so-called “conservative” homosexual group called GOProud at their New York conference, Homocon. Ms. Coulter had been scheduled in the lineup of speakers for WND's Taking America Back Convention in Miami on September 16th through 18th. But when it was revealed that she had agreed to headline the homosexual conference on September 25th, Joseph Farah of WND had a "gut-wrenching" choice to make: take her or leave her for the WND convention. He left her. Mr. Farah said the...

[I'll say up front I'm in disagreement with the "LID" on this one]: "World Net Daily has decided to drop conservative pundit and author, Ann Coulter as the keynote speaker for WND's "Taking America Back National Conference" next month. Because of her plan be the keynote speaker at "HOMOCON," an event put together by GOProud the first genuinely conservative group for gay Republicans." "WND Editor Joseph Farah reports this exchange with Ms Coulter: 'Asked by Farah why she was speaking to GOProud, Coulter said: "They hired me to give a speech, so I'm giving a speech. I do it all...

The right leaning, gay political action group, GOProud have launched their first annual meeting called Homocon 2010. Right Wing News is among many more conservative blogs and websites to sponsor the event, which features a striking poster and Ann Coulter as a keynote speaker. John Hawkins at Right Wing News announced the event this way: ...when GOProud split off from the Log Cabin Republicans because they wanted to create a genuinely conservative group for gay Republicans, I thought it was an extremely positive development. That doesn't mean I agree with GOProud on every issue, but as Ronald Reagan said, "My...

Friday August 13, 2010 First Rush, then Coulter, and Now Glenn Beck ... What’s Happening? Commentary by John-Henry Westen NEW YORK, August 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Appearing on The O’Reilly Factor yesterday, famed conservative Fox News host Glenn Beck may have shocked many Americans by noting that he was not very concerned about homosexual 'marriage.'O’Reilly asked Beck, “Do you believe that gay marriage is a threat to the country in any way?” Beck replied, “No, I don't,” adding sarcastically, “Will the gays come and get us?”  After being pressed again on the question, Beck said, “I believe -- I...

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 11, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- GOProud, which bills itself as the "only national organization representing gay conservatives," has announced that well-known conservative author Ann Coulter is headlining their first annual "Homocon." The announcement shocked both advocates of traditional family values and homosexualist advocates of "gay rights," who have previously attacked Coulter for her supposedly homophobic language and beliefs. Christopher Barron, Chairman of the Board of GOProud, said he could think of no "conservative more fun to headline our inaugural party then the self-professed ‘right-wing Judy Garland’--Ann Coulter." Judy Garland is an icon among homosexuals. “The gay left has...

There's been some confusion about this event next month called Homocon, sponsored by GOProud, which bills itself as a Republican and conservative "gay" group. At first glance, the group's platform may have some appeal to conservatives – and I have no doubt that some of the group's members actually vote Republican. "GOProud represents gay conservatives and their allies," claims a mission statement on the group's website. "GOProud is committed to a traditional conservative agenda that emphasizes limited government, individual liberty, free markets and a confident foreign policy. GOProud promotes our traditional conservative agenda by influencing politics and policy at the...

Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay. Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter's questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California's ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition...

The assertion of total power through unchecked violence - outside the Constitution, beyond the reach of the law (apart from legal memos from hired hacks instructed to retroactively redefine torture into 'legality') - will be seen in retrospect as the key defining theory of Bush conservatism. It ended with torture. Why? Because reality may differ from ideology; and when it does, it is vital to create reality to support ideology. And so torture creates reality by coercing "facts" from broken bodies and minds. This is how torture is always a fantastic temptation for those in power, even if they first...

The colorful brochure from Mitt Romney's presidential campaign looks like many of the political fliers flooding Iowa mail boxes this time of the year. But there is a difference. The piece is Romney's first to single out his rivals by name, a shift that shows him becoming more aggressive in the final weeks before the Jan. 3 caucuses. The mailing juxtaposes photos and quotes from Romney showing his support for a federal constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman with photos and quotes showing Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Fred Thompson all oppose...