Free Republic

The new round of national and state surveys this week generally showing President Obama clinging to a tenuous advantage over Republican Mitt Romney reinforce the conclusion that socially liberal, upscale white women may stand as the president's indispensable line of defense in his struggle for reelection. Both the national ABC/Washington Post survey released earlier this week, and the NBC/Marist Polls released Thursday in the battleground states of Ohio, Virginia and Florida show Obama retaining preponderant support among minority voters who were critical to his 2008 victory. Conversely, in almost all of the surveys, Obama faces a consistent pattern of erosion...

BAMAKO - Tuareg rebels and Islamist militants have joined forces in northern Mali and say they will create an independent Islamist state. The groups took advantage of a military coup in Bamako to seize control of the territory in early April. Resistance is growing in the north to the efforts to introduce Islamic law. In the northern Malian town of Gao, court is in session. Commissioner Abdoulaye Maiga begins by reading from the Quran in the roadside courtyard outside the former police station. Once an area businessman, Maiga is a member of the militant Islamist sect Ansar Dine that residents...

Fighting back tears, the parents of slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin stood beside the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. and relatives of Chicago area murder victims on Saturday to stress the need to end “senseless gun violence.” “We are the voice of Trayvon Martin,” Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton said. “He’s not here to speak for himself so we as his parents have decided instead of sitting back and not doing anything, this is what we have decided to do, to help our community and to help other parents.” As she spoke about her son, Fulton also detailed her family’s Justice for...

Some time ago, I joined the National Council for the Social Studies, the NCSS. I've since had that membership canceled -- I suspect because they read some of my pieces and realize I'm neither a social studies teacher nor a groupie. However, thanks to that fleeting association, I remain on several NCSS e-mailing lists, and every so often something very interesting drops into my laptop. The occasion was that the New York State Board of Regents (the body which oversees public school curricula) had scheduled discussion on "Alternative Pathways To Graduation." "Alternative to what?" one might in innocence ask --...

Loyal Consumerist readers and retail-watchers may remember the 2010 incident in which a 16-year-old took over the PA system of a New Jersey Walmart and announced, "Attention Walmart customers: all black people must leave the store." The prankster had done the same thing a few months before, and was charged with harassment and bias intimidation for each incident. Now, more than two years later, someone has filed a lawsuit against the store over the incident. He claims to have been in the store at the time of the prank, and that the incident led to "depression, anxiety, anger, loss of...

Rhode Island police have arrested a man they say escaped from a South Carolina prison on Christmas Day over 30 years ago... ...Christian had been living in Bristol. He was arrested and charged with escaping a correctional facility. A South Carolina prisons spokesman says Christian walked away from the now defunct Piedmont Work Center near Greenville on Christmas Day in 1980. He was sentenced to 11 months in prison in November 1980 for domestic non-payment of child support...

Part Two of catching up with my back log of missing AARs. As mentioned in Part One, a very good way to remember and honor our Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen and coasties who have given their lives over the past 2 centuries is by getting caught up on the AARs for Olney, MD’s Support the Troops Rallies during this Memorial Day Weekend. Part of the freedom we have is being able to stand on any corner in America and have the freedom to express ourselves. The patriots in Olney stand to give voice to our military against those who scorn...

Calls on Gillibrand to support rights for all New Yorkers New York, New York – U.S. Senate candidate Wendy Long stands with Cardinal Dolan, Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon, the University of Notre Dame, and all people of conscience to oppose the Obama administration’s attack on religious liberty, calling on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand to support the rights of all New Yorkers, not just some. While Sen. Gillibrand is relentless in her efforts to extend benefits to certain select groups, she has turned her back on the fundamental freedom of faith and conscience that is protected by the United States...

Apparently, the Obama reelection campaign is afraid the president might say or do something regrettable. More than 60 VIP donors who attended a fundraiser at the home Blackstone CEO Hamilton James on Monday night were told they had to place their phones in a plastic bag before being allowed admittance, ABC News reports. While one campaign aide called the move “standard operating procedure,” Zeke Miller of Buzzfeed reports that several campaign veterans (including aides to Hillary Clinton, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman) have never “heard of the practice, which is common in secure White House spaces where there are concerns...

On May 16 and 17 of 2012, Channel One Network, a national distributor of educational videos and newscasts viewed daily by over 8,000 middle and high schools, aired a two-part video series, titled "Young and Muslim in America" and "Islam in America." In "Young and Muslim in America: How being a part of Islam changed ten years ago, Part 1," students watch as Muhtasham Sifaat, 18, kneels on a prayer rug inside an empty classroom. His voiceover explains how he moved around a lot when he was younger, but Islam has given him stability. What is not revealed is that...

Last year New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman called for space aliens to invade earth so that the government would spend money to mount a defense thereby stimulating the economy. As aliens have yet to comply with Krugman's wishes, he advocated on HBO's Real Time Friday that scientists should get together and lie about an imminent attack to boost federal spending. PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: "This is hard to get people to do, much better, obviously, to build bridges and roads and healthcare clinics and schools. But my proposed, I actually have a serious proposal which...

Respect, a "newsletter about law and diversity," is a publication of the New Jersey State Bar Foundation. It is geared for middle- and high school students. The recent Spring 2012, Vol. 11, No. 3 article1 entitled "Fear Propels Religious Attacks" by Cheryl Baisden is of particular interest, because while it purports to have a fair-minded stance, the fact that CAIR, or the Council of American Islamic Relations, is cited as a credible source sheds serious doubt about the objectivity of the article. In fact, CAIR receives "financial support from foreign powers who have provided direct support to Osama bin Laden,...

HE is with us in all we do!! HE knows all!! We are all a work in progress!!

We owe a debt of gratitude to Rosa Koire for getting out a heads-up on this. She was approached by Huffpo “journalist”, Andrew Reinbach, who wanted an interview for a story he was doing about U.N. Agenda 21. The main thrust of the interview was his determination to blame the “vast rightwing conspiracy” aka John Birch Society for making an issue of the harmless little non-binding Agenda 21.

Author of The God Delusion says providing free Bibles to state schools is justified by its impact on the English language It sounds like one of the most unlikely alliances of recent years. Richard Dawkins, arch-atheist and scourge of the praying classes, has announced support for education secretary Michael Gove's plan to send free King James Bibles to every state school. The proposal aims to help pupils learn about the Bible's impact "on our history, language, literature and democracy" and will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the authorised version's publication, Gove said earlier this year. Church leaders have approved, but...

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has framed the June 5 Wisconsin recall election as a "dry run" for November's presidential contest. With Republican Governor Scott Walker ahead in every major poll, that doesn't bode well for President Obama's chances for re-election. Appearing this morning on CNN's "State of the Union, Ms. Wasserman Schultz said the campaign to recall Governor Walker has "given the Obama for America operation an opportunity to do the dry run we need of our massive, significant dynamic grassroots presidential campaign. " So what will it mean if that "massive, significant dynamic grassroots" effort fails...

“…mountain of evidence ……Obama was not born in Hawaii is a fake. Did you hear that snarky media people? Nobody over ten believes this phony twerp was born in Hawaii. Those who publicly say they believe Obama’s birth certificate and biography are real are simpletons who are hoping to have the liberal alligator eat someone else first. Their cowardice doesn’t make them people bad people, but their snarky swipes at those of us who understand that two and two has always been four and will never change makes them despicable. The truth is staring all of us in the face...

Even after “updating” a May 17 ‘Fact’ Check which this writer characterized as "taking three sentences from an hour-long May 1 Rick Hamada interview with Afghanistan combat veteran Rep. Charles Djou, twisting Djou's words into a pretzel and fact-checking statements Djou did not make", Civil Beat is still lying about Charles Djou’s Afghanistan combat record and his votes in Congress relating to that war. (See article below.) Shamed into retracting their “false” rating, Civil Beat on Friday shifted to a “half-true”. In spite of the shift, the “half-true” rating remains a lie which hangs on a single sentence of willful...

Seventeen men were ordained for service in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in London today. At the largest single ordination in the UK for many years, the men - all former Anglican clergy - were ordained as deacons at the request of Monsignor Keith Newton, the Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, by Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster and former Anglican, Bishop Alan Hopes. The celebration marks the second year of ordinations for the Ordinariate, which was established in 2011 to allow Anglicans to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church whilst...

MADISON — Someone, it appears, thinks Terry Moulton might lose, or at least is willing to commit $227,000 toward making that happen. The buzz for a while has been that Democrats’ best chance of winning one of the four Senate seats up for recall on June 5 is in Senate District 21, where Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, is trying to fend off a challenge from his Democratic predecessor, John Lehman. But spending this month — from liberals and conservatives alike — indicates they aren’t quite certain that Moulton, facing former Democratic Rep. Kristen Dexter, can hold onto the District 23...