Free Republic

[1]Anyone can get an honorary degree these days. Cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal has one of those from a California law school. Kermit the Frog got one. So did brutal dictator Robert Mugabe from Michigan State University.Now Sut Jhally is joining [2]their ranks (with apologies to Kermit, who doesn’t really deserve to be classed with Mumia, Mugabe and Jhally) as Simon Fraser University is giving him an honorary degree.Jhally is a nasty clown of the sort that usually finds a sinecure in academia, who has ranted that “The New Republican Party – American Terrorists.” Jhally also tweeted in 2013...

Similarities: Devoted online followings. Popularity. Both were opposed to TARP. Both want to legalize marijuana. Both have expressed views on foreign policy of less involvement. Both cautious of the country's surveillance apparatus. Both say police officers should scale back. Both okay with same-sex marriage. Differences: Basic beliefs about the role of government Sanders doesn't necessarily have a problem with the government getting involved in things — hence "socialist" — and Paul generally does — hence "libertarian." Conspiracy theories Paul has floated several conspiracy theories, including that 9/11 was an inside job and that the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was connected to Russia. Sanders isn't known for such...

Candidates from across the country are running against Washington these days but none so aggressively -- or effectively -- as ophthalmologist Rand Paul.Paul's latest anti-Washington volley comes in the form of an ad portraying the nation's capitol as a multi-armed monster seeking to consume private industry. (The cartoon image resembles nothing more than Doctor Octopus -- "Doc Ock" -- from the "Spiderman" series. And, yes, we are aware of how dorky making that comparison is.)"Big government is extending its grasp, scooping up Wall Street banks and business....our health care," says the ad's narrator.Anger directed at the federal government at the...

Ask Richard Gage how he came to become obsessed with what he calls the “truth” about 9/11, and you hear what sounds an awful lot like a story of religious conversion. It was March 2006, and the mild-mannered California architect was driving down the Pacific Coast Highway on his way to a construction meeting. Bored, he flipped on KPFA 94.1 FM, a listener-supported “free-speech” station out of Berkeley — “to hear what the communists were talking about,” as he later told me in a 2009 interview. Up to that point in his life, Gage had been a staunch “Ronald Reagan...

Elections are about choices, and in the GOP primary on May 18th the choice for republicans should be Rand Paul. Here are ten of the top reasons why: 1. Americans have grown justifiably weary of “politics as usual”. In 2008 an emerging sentiment in our nation helped propel a man into the Presidency in large part because he gave people hope that he would change the way things were going to be done in Washington DC. He didn't, and now Obama’s popularity has plummeted. Yet ever since his campaign ended, the cry for change has grown louder, and has spread...

It turns out that crackpot Ron Paul’s son Rand can understand why poor, innocent Iran might want nuclear weapons—they feel “threatened” by big, bad America (hat tip to Rand Paul: Too Kooky for Kentucky for the video): Watch it at NRB - sorry, can't embed videos here at FR.

KY-Sen: Rand Paul surgingby kos Fri Mar 19, 2010 at 09:16:03 AM PDT Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 3/15-17. Likely voters. MoE 4%, 5% for primary samples. (8/31-9/2/2009 results)Republican Senate primaryRand Paul (R) 40Trey Grayson (R) 28Democratic Senate primaryDaniel Mongiardo (D) 47Jack Conway (D) 31 On the Democratic side, Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo has significantly expanded his lead over Kentucky's Attorney General.For the GOP, Paul, son of Ron, has reversed the primary numbers in the last six months, running an outsider campaign that is pure teabagger with a dash of anti-war fervor. He is certainly giving the GOP establishment fits,...

Who listened to Debra Medina on Beck and came away disgusted. She basically admitted that she is a 911 Truther. Her run has ended

Carl Sagan is arguably science's biggest rockstar—the ultimate champion for logic and reason. Which makes it all the more painful to find out that his son is a vehement 9/11 truther. In a recent interview for a radio show called 9/11 Free Fall (already off to a great start), Jeremy Sagan—the younger son of Sagan senior and his first wife, fellow scientist Lynn Margulis—went off on all us closed-minded sheeple. In response to a prompt asking when he first "woke up," Sagan remarks:

On Monday, presidential hopeful Rand Paul had this to say to a group of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn: "All the way back to the Iraq War, I think it was a mistake to topple [Saddam] Hussein." The Kentucky senator continued: Hussein was the bulwark against Iran. The Sunnis didn't like the Shiites, now Iraq is a vassal state for Iran. I'm worried [Iran] is twice as strong as it was before the Iraq War. [Rand Paul] I'm no dove. But I must admit: Rand Paul has a point.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul is standing by his statement that most vaccinations should be "voluntary," telling CNBC that a parent's choice not to vaccinate a child is "an issue of freedom." In an interview with the network Monday, Paul said that vaccines are "a good thing" but that parents "should have some input" into whether or not their children must get them. And he gave credence to the idea - disputed by the majority of the scientific community - that vaccination can lead to mental disabilities. "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound...

If Ron Paul weren’t Ron Paul, I’d assume this denunciation was just a stunt orchestrated by him and Rand to put some foreign-policy distance between them before the primaries. Are you a mainstream conservative worried that President Rand would be too much like Ron in office? Well, here you go. Let your conscience be eased. The nation’s most famous isolationist thinks his boy’s a bit of a warmonger. But c’mon. With the possible exception of his vote for the Afghanistan AUMF in 2001, has Ron Paul ever endorsed a position that he didn’t sincerely hold? Of course he thinks the...

AUSTIN - Well, this could make for an awkward conversation at Thanksgiving dinner. Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Saturday dismissed as a "joke" the demand by U.S. senators of his party that they must approve a potential agreement over the Middle East country's nuclear capabilities. "I strongly disagree with the motivation of that statement made by so many members of Congress, especially in the Senate," Paul said at a conference on liberty at the University of Texas at Austin, presumably referring to an open letter senators sent to Iranian officials describing any deal not approved by them as...

Sen. Rand Paul’s campaign for the presidency is not more than a few days old and already his mercurial father, former Rep. Ron Paul, himself a former presidential candidate, is starting to make trouble for his son. According to a Saturday story in the Houston Chronicle, the elder Paul called the famous letter that 47 Republican senators, including the younger Paul, sent to the Iranian mullahs “a joke.” The letter informed the Iranian leadership that any agreement that they reached with President Obama concerning Iran’s nuclear bomb program would not outlast the Obama presidency lacking congressional ratification.

AUSTIN ...Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Saturday dismissed as a "joke" the demand by U.S. senators of his party that they must approve a potential agreement over the Middle East country's nuclear capabilities. "I strongly disagree with the motivation of that statement made by so many members of Congress, especially in the Senate," Paul said at a conference on liberty at the University of Texas at Austin, presumably referring to an open letter senators sent to Iranian officials describing any deal not approved by them as informal..... "They're out to stop peace," he said. "They're terrified that peace...

And now for a lighter moment from last night’s debate, or at least the weirdest moment. Jim Hoft calls this Ron Paul’s Checkpoint Charlie moment, but it’s really more like an apex of Paul’s paranoid band of libertarianism. In this exchange, Paul opposes building a border fence because he doesn’t believe it represents American values, which is a fair enough argument that one usually hears from Democrats. He then tips over into hilarity when he suggests that the US government might use it to stop Americans from fleeing to, er, Mexico:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO I immediately noted on...

Rep. Ron Paul has a problem with the idea of a U.S. border fence.“The people that want big fences and guns, sure, we could secure the border,” the congressman noted. “A barbed wire fence with machine guns, that would do the trick. I don’t believe that is what America is all about.” “Every time you think about this toughness on the border and ID cards and REAL IDs, think it’s a penalty against the American people too. I think this fence business is designed and may well be used against us and keep us in. In economic turmoil, the people...

The Anti-Defamation League condemned Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as the “leading anti-Semite in America” after a speech in which he blamed “Israelis and Zionist Jews” for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “At a time when anti-Semitic attitudes are at historic lows, Farrakhan’s unabashed promotion of anti-Semitism is a throwback to the intolerance of another era,” ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said in a statement issued Thursday. Farrakhan, who has a long history of anti-Semitic remarks, delivered his speech Sunday in Chicago as part of his Saviors Day 2015 sermon. “It is now becoming apparent that there...

Former Congressman Ron Paul said the US knows ‘more than it is telling’ about the Malaysian aircraft that crashed in eastern Ukraine last month, killing 298 people on board and seriously damaging US-Russian relations in the process. In an effort to inject some balance of opinion, not to mention pure sanity, into the ongoing debate over what happened to Malaysian Flight MH17, Ron Paul is convinced the US government is withholding information on the catastrophe. "The US government has grown strangely quiet on the accusation that it was Russia or her allies that brought down the Malaysian airliner with a...

Rand Paul does a lot of interviews -- a lot. This, from time to time, has gotten him in trouble. Rarely, though, has it gone as poorly as this. Speaking Monday afternoon with CNBC, Paul: 1) Reiterated his contention that vaccines should be voluntary. 2) Said this: "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines." (Michele Bachmann said something similar during the 2012 presidential campaign. It didn't go over well.) 3) Actually shushed the anchor when he thought she wasn't allowing him to answer her questions.