Free Republic

Through the John Adams Project, the ACLU and the NACDL assembled a team of trial counsel, mitigation specialists and investigators to work with the under-resourced military lawyers in their representation of Guantánamo detainees accused in connection with the 9/11 attacks and other cases. The John Adams Project attorneys brought years of experience in criminal defense law, including much needed expertise in capital cases, to the defense effort. The Project’s lawyers, who were formally admitted by the presiding judge as part of the civilian legal team, appeared before the military commissions on their clients’ behalf numerous times and filed over 80...

In the 19th century, Christopher Columbus was regarded as one of the most heroic and significant figures of his or any age. The "Admiral of the Ocean Seas" was celebrated throughout the Americas as a visionary who braved the unknown on a mission of discovery that created a New World. Our national capitol district was named in his honor because he opened the door to a new era of freedom that America represents.

I first became aware of politics, in the ordinary sense, during the presidential election of 1948. My parents and their friends belonged to the Democratic Party and had voted for Roosevelt. It was what they called their “mass work”—going to where the people were, in order to lead them to something better. This had been the Party line since the days of the Popular Front, when under orders from Moscow the comrades abandoned their “ultra left” position and stopped calling Roosevelt a fascist. “Communism is twentieth-century Americanism,” the Party leader Earl Browder had said, promoting the spirit of cooperation...

I want you to go to Constitutionally Speaking (CS) ... but not quite yet. As I have written numerous times, most members of Congress (past and present), knew that Obama was constitutionally ineligible for the office of President and remained silent. The names include Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Shelia Jackson Lee, Joe Scarborough, Ted Kennedy, Orrin Hatch .... the list is endless. This is the dirty little secret known to most everyone in Washington, in the MSM, and in the legal community. It was purposely kept from the general public. The CS series provides exhaustive details of Congress' extensive knowledge...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she didn't think it was necessary for Rep. Alan Grayson to apologize for his remarks on the House floor disparaging the GOP. From the Politico Nancy Pelosi is shrugging off GOP calls for a mea culpa from Alan "they want you to die quickly' Grayson.

WASHINGTON -- Reparation for the legacy of slavery and peonage may not come in the form of a check, but it must come, speakers said Friday at a forum sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Others said the apology for slavery that the House passed last year and the Senate passed this year were good first steps, and singled out U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who was on Friday's panel, for authoring the House resolution. "For him to stand up -- before even other people in the caucus stood up -- is remarkable," said Harvard Law School professor...

As read on “The Rush Limbaugh Show”: So far CNN has only reported on the breaking story on blatant ACORN CORRUPTION from angles that attempt to extricate the government funded “community organizing” enterprise from the extreme crime we caught on videotape. First CNN pushed the false ACORN line that “[t]his film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed.” To set that record straight please check the Washington D.C. tape we dropped today at BigGovernment.com, which is also being aired on your cable news competitor with curiously higher ratings. Now that ACORN lied to you, Jonathan Klein,...

<p>The Obama administration worked in recent days to prevent President Manuel Zelaya's ouster, said a senior U.S. official. The State Department, in particular, communicated to Honduran officials on the ground that President Barack Obama wouldn't support any nondemocratic transfer of power in the Central American country.</p>

Given the delicate state of relations between the new administrations in Washington and Jerusalem, an American statement last week about the need for Israel to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, or NPT, touched a raw nerve. The worst-case scenario is that it portends a "grand bargain" with Iran at Israel's expense. In this nightmare development, the American side will say to Tehran: Abandon your nuclear weapons program and we will lean on Israel to dismantle its alleged nuclear arsenal. Few Israeli officials believe it will come to that. However, there is genuine concern at the hint of a more subtle...

Pictures of anti-American loons. ]http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5415/p8160017yr4.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/7400/p8160016yt7.jpg[/IMG] p8160014uf2.jpg p8160013ld7.jpg 8160012tz8.jpg

Why would the New York Times divulge information that could prove harmful to the national security of the United States? Because, so consumed is the paper by its hatred of President Bush, that the Times actually wants America to lose. Such is the considered opinion Jim Pinkerton expressed on yesterday's Fox News Watch. The case in point was an article the Times published on June 30, 2008, Amid U.S. Policy Disputes, Qaeda Grows in Pakistan, which quoted from a "highly-classified Pentagon order" describing internal disputes at the Pentagon over plans to capture Osama Bin Laden and defeat al Qaeda. JIM...

A U.S. Army simulation game at Summerfest, shut down after complaints to festival officials, was replaced Wednesday by a modified version in which players shoot at still targets instead of virtual human beings. The decision to reopen “America’s Army” was announced late Wednesday afternoon in a joint news release from the Army and Summerfest faxed to the Journal Sentinel on Army stationery. --------------------- This is a followup to an earlier FR post at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2039585/posts

UPDATE: Army shuts down warfare game At the request of Summerfest officials, the U.S. Army on Tuesday removed a virtual urban warfare game that allowed fest-goers as young as 13 to hop into a Humvee simulator and fire machine guns at life-size people displayed on a computer screen. "We're determining it's probably not something that we want to have shown at Summerfest," said John Boler, vice president of sales and marketing, said before the decision was made to request removal of the game, called Virtual Army Experience. The game drew criticism from Peace Action Wisconsin, which called it "totally inappropriate...

Well, the PEW Research Center just completed its latest "Who Hates America Most" survey, and the results are predictable, according to the International Herald Tribune.

When some organizers for the Primary Campaign of Barak Obama in Oregon dropped several rented Porta-Potties in the middle of a memorial for fallen police officers, they made a statement. They deny this to the hilt, but I am convinced just as vehemently that these Porta-Potties didn’t get put where they were put as a result of unfortunate random number generation. Barak Obama’s political movement discourages the deep and profound disrespect for decency, patriotism and all accepted social norms. If this Porta-Potty incident were to have happened to Democratic Congressman Skelton of Missouri, who has been on the House Armed...

What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback and let me tell you something, For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I have seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues. It has made me proud."

"What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback and let me tell you something. For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I have seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues. It it's made me proud."

Memo to New York Times Public Ed itor Clark Hoyt: Your urgent atten tion is needed on the slanderous 7,000-word front-page article published last Sunday about homicides allegedly committed by US veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. We say "allegedly," because the article lumped those merely accused of a homicide with those who've already been convicted. But that was the least of the piece's problems. As our colleague Ralph Peters so adroitly demonstrated on these pages Tuesday, the article embraced the hoariest of overwrought clichés - the US combat vet as psychotic killer. But on what evidence? None at...

Under the heading “The end of a U.S.-centric world?” the PostGlobal section of The Washington Post website recently declared that “U.S. influence is in steep decline.” It was just the latest verse in a growing chorus of declinist doom-saying at home and abroad. In 2004, Pat Buchanan lamented “the decline and fall of the greatest industrial republic the world had ever seen.” In 2005, The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee concluded that Hurricane Katrina exposed “a hollow superpower.” In 2007, Pierre Hassner of the Paris-based National Foundation for Political Science declared, “It will not be the New American Century.” And the dirge...

After the Republican debate on Tuesday evening in Dearborn, Mich., a reporter from the Arab-American News asked Ron Paul what he thought of the term “Islamic fascism.” “It’s a false term to make people think we’re fighting Hitler,” Paul responded. “It’s war propaganda designed to generate fear so that the war has to be spread.” The call has gone out to all the Muslim Americans to hurry up and register to vote Republican so that they can vote in the Republican Primary to support Ron Paul, the anti-interventionist, non-isolationist candidate for President of the United States. Muslims are opening their...

NEW YORK - Hollywood director Brian De Palma has lashed out at what he calls the censorship of his new film about Iraq and the chilling effect of corporate America on the war. De Palma's film, "Redacted," is based on the true story of a group of U.S. soldiers who raped and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdered members of her family. It has stunned audiences for its shocking images and rattled American conservative commentators before its U.S. opening next month. But De Palma says he is upset that the documentary-style drama has been censored. The film's distributor, Magnolia...

The Republican Party, by almost universal disgruntled consent, is in every way a cause of concern for the limited government espoused in the articles adopted by the GOP membership. The Republican Party has become in governing what they've fear-mongered us for decades the Democratic party would be if, in fact, we elected Democrats to Washington. Let's be honest: The D.C. Republicans who've lied their way into leadership are little else than a rejected radical left wing of the Democratic party. Pre-emptive nuclear strikes? NAFTA, CAFTA? The Patriot Act? Enforcing U.N. resolutions? Lowering taxes a couple hundred dollars for the average...

When Americans evaluate today's political landscape, most feel something between impotence and disapproval. So, while citizens shake their heads or shrug at the mainstream media's “top tier” presidential candidates, it is extraordinary how many are becoming overjoyed about one lesser covered candidate. Tens-of-thousands have joined the appropriately named Ron Paul Revolution, joining Meetup.com groups, putting up signs, and crossing states to attend rallies. Congressman Ron Paul's genuine message and untarnished record of promoting individual liberty for everyone, a free-market economy of wealth and abundance, and a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace and free trade, has attracted vast support from diverse...

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power. National spirit can...

Last night I listened to the Presidential debate between Democratic candidates, and I got almost physically sick. They kept repeating their most vicious word, “we,” for two hours. Here’s some typical policies the Democrat-looter candidates suggested: “We” need to give health care to all people with a “non-profit” socialized-medicine system (the same system that wrecked medical care in England and Canada?, and paid for by whom?). “We” need to give all kids tuition money for a college education (a socialist, anti-American-values education presided over by Marxist professors?, and paid for by whom?). “We” need pre-school for all children from age...

Boston - No taxation without representation? Residents in Boston, New York, and other cities are reviving America's famous battle cry for political revolution. In the midst of a stormy national debate on immigration, they're challenging the idea of excluding noncitizens on a front that's less noticed but equally contentious. They want immigrants to vote. While that idea may seem outrageous to many, it's less radical than it sounds to its supporters. They want to limit such voting to local races and referendums and, in most areas, to legal immigrants. Supporters argue that noncitizens are long-term residents who care about the...

Miss USA gives Mexicans lesson in graciousness By Herald wire services Wednesday, May 30, 2007 Miss USA Rachel Smith gets up after falling during the Miss Universe pageant. (AP photo) MEXICO CITY - When Miss USA took the stage, there was nary a caballero in the crowd. The Mexican audience booed and hooted Rachel Smith repeatedly during the weekend’s Miss Universe competition. The music was too loud to tell how they reacted when the gringa took a tumble on stage. Smith was encountering what other Americans have before her. Mexican rudeness toward all things American. In 2004 and 2005, Mexican...

PEARL HARBOR (NNS) -- The Navy is disappointed with EarthJustice’s decision to pursue litigation against critical training activities in Hawaiian waters, the deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet said. “These fleet training activities are essential to the Navy’s ability to ensure our nation’s armed forces are fully combat ready and adequately trained according to established, time-tested standards,” said Rear Adm. John M. Bird. The suit, filed May 16 by EarthJustice on behalf of five non-government organizations, asks the court to prohibit naval sonar exercises near Hawaii, saying that sonar can have a negative impact on marine mammals. But such...

At the annual Cairo antiwar conference in Egypt, the hot panel discussion this year was “Bridge-Building Between the Left and Islam.” John Rees, a British Trotskyite, observed: “Where else can you sit down in a single evening and listen to senior people from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, people from the revolutionary left and the antiwar movement from around the globe?” Gosh, it sounds great. I’m just sorry I missed the rollicking game of Pictionary between the Castroites and the jihadis afterwards. Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, recently reported in the New York Sun...

For most Americans, the Iraq war is both distant and never ending. For Private Matthew Zeimer, it was neither. Shortly after midnight on Feb. 2, Zeimer had his first taste of combat as he scrambled to the roof of the 3rd Infantry Division's Combat Outpost Grant in central Ramadi. Under cover of darkness, Sunni insurgents were attacking his new post from nearby buildings. Amid the smoke, noise and confusion, a blast suddenly ripped through the 3-ft. concrete wall shielding Zeimer and a fellow soldier, killing them both. Zeimer had been in Iraq for a week. He had been at his...

Critics of Yale’s decision to admit former Taliban diplomat Rahmatullah Hashemi have suggested that the ensuing controversy was partially to blame for the decrease in applications to Yale this year... Applications to Yale for the class of 2011 decreased 9.7 percent ... While Yale administrators blamed the decline on last year’s record-low acceptance rate and natural year-to-year fluctuations, critics of the University have argued that high school students may have been disillusioned by Hashemi’s enrollment. Hashemi took classes at Yale through the Nondegree Students Program from the summer of 2005 through the end of the 2006 academic year, gaining national...

SAN FRANCISCO - Their hair, once a symbol of youthful rebellion, is mostly gray. Bodies that writhed with wild abandon when a guru invited them to "Turn on ... tune in ... drop out" now sport stiff knees and age spots. "How many of you are on acid right now?" rock critic Joel Selvin asked an audience of former hippies who turned out this past week to mark the 40th anniversary of the Human Be-in, the counterculture event that unofficially launched the Summer of Love. "How many of you are on antacid right now?" In many ways, the '60s as...

An American woman has been refused treatment by a doctor in Blekinge in southern Sweden because of her nationality. The woman's husband has now reported the incident to the Medical Responsibility Board. Valery Johansson, who lives in a small town just outside Nashville, Tennessee, was in Sweden to celebrate Christmas with her husband's family. On Christmas Day, worried that she may have contracted strep throat, she sought medical help. Her husband and niece made an appointment for her at a clinic in the town of Karlshamn. "We went up there and the nurses were really nice. They did some swab...

Sen. Arlen Specter, a 26-year Senate Republican, said he will visit Syria despite loud objections by the Bush administration, contending the situation in Iraq is so dire that it is time Congress step up to the plate and see what it can do. Specter, R-Pa., said in an interview late Friday that he is planning a trip to the Middle East that will include Israel and Syria. The senator said he and other Republicans are concerned that the administration's policies in the Middle East are not working and that other GOP members may follow in his footsteps. "I've talked to...

Last update - 21:44 12/12/2006 Report: Russia to start shipping nuclear fuel to Iran next March By The Associated Press MOSCOW - Russia in March will start delivering nuclear fuel for the plant it is building in Iran, the head of a state company in charge of the project said Monday, according to Russian news reports. Atomstroexport's head Sergei Shmatko said during a trip to Tehran that he and Iranian officials had discussed financial problems related to the completion of the nuclear plant in Iran's southern port of Bushehr, the ITAR-Tass, Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies reported. Shmatko said...

Violence erupted at a Michigan law school Thursday when protestors tried to block a speech by Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo. Police were called after protestors pulled a fire alarm prior to the speech on immigration policies. There were at least three violent incidents with protestors targeting student backers of the event, Tancredo, R-Littleton, said today. "One was spit on, one was kicked, and one was punched," Tancredo said in an e-mail. "Tires were also slashed."

Syracuse radio station WFBL reports that Lauren Maggi, 35, of Thurber Street was charged with harassment for spitting in a soldier's face at Hancock Airport. The incident happened over the Thanksgiving holiday. Maggi approached a soldier from the 10th Mountain Division, who apparently was not in uniform, and asked if he was a soldier. When he said yes, Maggi allegedly spit in his face. WFBL's news service is supplied by television station WTVH, which has nothing posted yet about the incident on its website. Syracuse.com carries this blurb: • Woman accused of spitting on soldier A Syracuse woman was charged...

An Islamic civil rights group wants a columnist removed from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council for criticizing Rep.-elect Keith Ellison's decision to use the Quran during his ceremonial swearing-in next month. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Monday that comments by Dennis Prager, a columnist and conservative talk radio host, displayed an intolerance toward Islam that makes him inappropriate to serve on the council, which oversees the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. President Bush appointed Prager in August to fill the remainder of a five-year term, which expires in January 2011. In his column last week, Prager wrote: "Insofar...

As she sees it now, she spent her 20s working too hard, never saying no to anything and succumbing to "the bad side of American psychology". "I love the English way, which is not as capitalistic as it is in America. People don't talk about work and money; they talk about interesting things at dinner parties. I like living here because I don't tap into the bad side of American psychology..."

Gwyneth Paltrow is "deeply upset" over stories claiming she made anti-American remarks, and tells PEOPLE exclusively that she never said anything against her native country. "First of all I feel so lucky to be American. When you look at the rest of the world, we're so lucky, and that's something my dad always instilled in me," Paltrow tells PEOPLE. "I feel so proud to be American." . . . "I felt so upset to be completely misconstrued and I never, ever would have said that," says the 34-year-old Oscar winner. "I definitely did not say that I think the British...

Ségolène Royal, the French presidential candidate, was embroiled in a damaging row on a visit to the Middle East yesterday after appearing to condone a Hezbollah MP who denounced US “insanity” and compared Israel to the Nazis.Ms Royal, the first woman with a realistic chance of winning the French presidency, was struggling to extricate herself from the controversy sparked by a meeting in Beirut with MPs, including Ali Ammar of Hezbollah. In a 20-minute tirade Mr Ammar attacked “unlimited American insanity” for sending troops into Afghanistan and Iraq. He then said that Israeli “Nazism” was no better than Hitler’s Third...

Hypocrisy, thy name is Europe. Criticizing the United States is perfectly acceptable — in fact, Americans have raised political self-criticism to the level of an institutional art form. For goodness sake, the dictator of Venezuela — which won its independence from a European colonial power — went before the United Nations to commend a book by an American academic condemning Yankee imperialist domination. If you're going to condemn the United States for all its failings, then, please, offer some meaningful alternative, some heightened vision, afforded by your long acquaintance with war, bigotry and its victims, along with your censure. The...

MEXICO CITY — In the wake of bombings, civil unrest and potential for further mayhem, the U.S. government is advising Americans to be careful anywhere in this country. Officials cautioned late Wednesday that while U.S. citizens aren't specifically being targeted, they should be aware of their surroundings, especially when near large political gatherings. "This is not a broad brush or anything that says do not go to Mexico; we are saying to be careful in Mexico due to the potential for violence," said a U.S. Embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The State Department issued a formal advisory that...

THE MOONBATS WILL BE MORE EMBOLDEN WITH THEIR PROTEST NOW THAT THE RATS HAVE CONTROL OF AT LEAST ONE HOUSE AS OF THIS THREAD POSTING.NOW MORE THAN EVER, WE MUST BE VIGILANT IN OUR SUPPORT OF OUR TROOPS.COLD WEATHER FREEPER iMacMan IS BACK!! After spending the Summer of 'O6 on the waters of the Mid-Atlantic Coast, iMacMan is back. His great trade mark pics of passing drivers waving is also back. Apparently over the summer, K-Mart has had the chance to replenish iMacMan's arrows. We out numbered the moonbats (even with the ex-freeper protesting with them) 10 to 9. Those...

French President Jacques Chirac on Thursday told his Iraqi counterpart Jalal Talabani that it was important to fix a prospect of foreign forces' withdrawal from Iraq, the French leader's spokesman Jerome Bonnafont told the press. "Regarding the international troop's presence in Iraq, he (President Chirac) said that in the eyes of France, it is important to fix a prospect of withdrawal," Bonnafont said. Whether to withdraw the 150,000 American troops from Iraq has recently triggered a fierce debate in the United States.

Karl Rove, a Cancer on American Politics? "Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is." Posted by: Clay Waters 11/3/2006 10:26:59 AM Columnist Tom Friedman really wants the Republicans to suffer next Tuesday, judging by his Friday column (Times Select required) "Insulting Our Troops, and Out Intelligence." "George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you’re stupid. Yes, they do. "They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and...

<p>Actor Alec Baldwin wants to be removed as narrator of an Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary called "Running with Arnold," saying filmmakers went too far by including images of Nazi rallies.</p> <p>Baldwin wrote in a posting on The Huffington Post Web site that he agreed to narrate the documentary about the actor-turned-governor's political rise based on a reading of the script. He said that when he saw the film as he recorded the tracks he was "somewhat dismayed by some of the images."</p>

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 /Standard Newswire/ -- The Republican National Committee (RNC) today released a new web ad entitled, “Apologize.” The ad focuses on the comments made by Senator John Kerry in California on Monday night and asks Senator Kerry to apologize to our troops. “Apologize” will be emailed to millions of Republican supporters, grassroots activists, and all state parties. The web ad is available for viewing now on www.gop.com.

Jane Fonda is stepping out into the 'antiwar' spotlight tomorrow night with a headline appearance at a fundraiser for Iraq war resistor Lt. Ehren Watada.Fonda has kept a low profile in the current 'antiwar' movement, having backed out of a vegetable oil powered bus tour last year.Details from the e-mail announcement from Code Pink:Fundraiser for Lt Ehren Watada! Join CODEPINK, Jane Fonda, and Bob Watada, father of war resister Lt. Ehren Watada, for a very special fundraiser. Lt. Watada was the first commisioned officer to publicly refuse deployment to the illegal war and occupation of Iraq. He is currently facing...