Free Republic

CPAC has come and gone and all we have left are the memories. Interesting sights and sounds were everywhere. Just don’t tell Michelle Fields, who found numerous ways to make it all about her.

CLAIRTON, Pa. —A 17-year-old girl says she was beaten by police in Clairton after she and her friends were stopped for a curfew violation Wednesday night. Merceedez Wright admits she and her friends were out a few minutes after the city's 10 p.m. curfew, and that she both ran from officers and resisted them after being tackled, but she doesn't believe she deserves the injuries she suffered. "I didn't think cops would do that to me because I'm a girl. And I didn't have anything on me. I was just trying to walk away from the situation," Wright said from...

"I said over a year ago that this was going to be, this presidential race, Lawrence, was going to be the ugliest, the nastiest, the most divisive, and the most racist in the history of this Republic," PBS host Tavis Smiley said on MSNBC.

(Credit: CBS) Shirley Sherrod, who was forced to resign from the Department of Agriculture after an out-of-context video of remarks she made were published on a conservative website, is still considering the formal job offer she received from the USDA, she tells CBS News Producer Daniel Steinberger. The department has offered Sherrod a position titled Deputy Director of the office of advocacy and outreach at the USDA, she says. The offer was delivered in a draft that puts into writing what Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack offered her on the phone last week. Sherrod said she sat down to read...

Prosecutors have formally charged a victim of last week's Arizona shooting rampage with threatening a Tucson leader of the Tea Party political movement during the taping of an ABC News town hall-style television program. James Eric Fuller, 63, who was taking part in the televised forum, was involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation on Saturday after he grew agitated, stood up to snap a picture of Tucson Tea Party founder Trent Humphries and shouted, "You're dead," police said.

Incidents similar to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are occurring every day in the United States and around the world, but few people are doing anything about it. This was the overarching message presented by leading feminist Catharine MacKinnon during a provocative lecture yesterday that underscored the parallels between the ongoing war on terror and what she sees as a war on women. “A kind of war is being fought, but there is no name for this war in which men are the aggressors and women the victims,” she said. MacKinnon, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School,...

VANITY Well today it looks like the GOP will back SPECTER for Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Specter is to publicly announce (see related threads on FR) that he will not block a nomination based ona proposed Judge's stanc on abortion. No mention of Specter backing strict Constitutional Constructionists, not activists. IMHO, Specter will find another reason to Bork a proposed judge. Tom DeLay was given a pass by the GOP, today. (Check the news for specifics) The GOP is also in the process of knocking out the requirement to label foreign grown fruits, etc., as to country of...

Los Angeles, CA (June 5, 2004) – Screen Actors Guild (SAG) President Melissa Gilbert issued the following statement on the death of former President Ronald Reagan, who served as president of SAG from 1947 to 1952 and again from 1959 to 1960: "Ronald Reagan presided over Screen Actors Guild at one of the most challenging moments in our union's history, as the rise of television significantly impacted the compensation and working conditions for the nation's screen actors. Under his tenure, SAG grew significantly in size and influence as the Guild tackled issues ranging from runaway production, to fair compensation, to...

(Editor's note; What follows here is a copy of a story that appeared in the Hearst Corporation's San Francisco Chronicle on April 12, 2004. It is reprinted here in its entirety without permission or apology.) As the guy who wrote on the billboard at 24th and Valencia sometime in the night last week phrased it, before what he wrote in orange spray paint was papered over with a new canvas, "F -- 'The Alamo.' " To many Mexican Americans, there's no more succinct, if impolite, wording to get across how repulsed one of the biggest minority groups in the country...

Freeper needs advice on potential lawsuit...

ORANGE CITY, Fla. -- A woman reported "trampled" last Friday by Wal-Mart shoppers desperate for $29.87 DVD players has a long history of claiming injuries from Wal-Marts and other businesses where she worked or shopped. Patricia Vanlester, 41, was knocked unconscious and, her sister said, "trampled by a herd of elephants" by a stampede of shoppers reaching for DVD players that went on sale at 6 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving, according to Orange City police and the sister, Linda Ellzey. The story was picked up by the Associated Press and carried in newspapers and other media as far away...