Free Republic

Pro-Darwin consensus doesn't rule out intelligent design --snip-- (CNN) -- While we officially celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on November 24, celebrations of Darwin's legacy have actually been building in intensity for several years. Darwin is not just an important 19th century scientific thinker. Increasingly, he is a cultural icon. Darwin is the subject of adulation that teeters on the edge of hero worship, expressed in everything from scholarly seminars and lecture series to best-selling new atheist tracts like those by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The atheists claim that...

November and winter is now upon us and it is almost frightening to realise it is almost a year ago that the election was held that made us realise that the previous 8 years of President George W Bush time as President was drawing to an end. Even though it has been about 9 months since George W Bush left office for many it seems another age so much seems to have changed and many things we hold dear now seem to mean nothing. We miss the class and character that George W Bush, his wife and of course his...

On November 9, 2009, the world will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Naturally, in Germany, there will be commemorations of the event, and the collapse of Communism in Europe. "snip" And given all of this, it is safe to say that Barack Obama will attend the 20th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Wall, right? Wrong. While Candidate Barack Obama was perfectly willing to go to Germany during the 2008 Presidential campaign, President Barack Obama has chosen to skip the 20th anniversary celebrations altogether. Needless to say, this has not elicited much outrage...

It's one of America's most haunting crime stories: four members of a Kansas family brutally murdered on Nov. 15, 1959, at their rural farmhouse. The slayings of the Clutters — chronicled in Truman Capote's book, "In Cold Blood" — have overshadowed the town of Holcomb for the past half century and the trial and execution of the culprits has brought little, if any, closure. For many townsfolk, the wounds have been slow to heal partly because of Capote's critically acclaimed, nonfiction novel that spawned a new literary genre. The book has been reviled in its birthplace by residents because of...

BERLIN (AFP) – World leaders joined more than 100,000 revellers Monday for emotional celebrations 20 years after the Berlin Wall's fall and called for a new transatlantic push against threats to global peace. Chancellor Angela Merkel joined luminaries past and present to mark the defining moment in the end of communist rule in Europe, when the crumbling East German state finally opened the despised concrete border on November 9, 1989. Merkel, who grew up in the Stalinist state, marched through the historic Brandenburg Gate with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, presidents Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Dmitry Medvedev of Russia,...

Noting tomorrow’s 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Sunday’s Today show, former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw claimed East Germans were “still adjusting to the harsh economic realities” of life after communism. But a recent poll of former East bloc countries by the Pew Research Center actually discovered that the people of what was East Germany are actually the biggest enthusiasts of the shift to capitalism, with 82% approving, higher than any other ex-communist country. Brokaw did note, however, that the current “center-right” Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, was “born and raised in East Germany,”...

BERLIN — Harald Jaeger was a loyal East German border guard — respected and trusted to command a crossing point to the west on Berlin's Bornholmer Strasse. So when his checkpoint was swarmed on the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, as East Germany announced the border was being opened after 28 years, Jaeger felt ashamed as he let the thousands pass through.

Years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were sitting in a backyard near Stanford, where Shultz was teaching. The two men discussed what they thought was the turning point in ending the Cold War. Gorbachev said it was two leaders — he and President Ronald Reagan — sitting in a room together, talking. Shultz said it was Reagan’s decision to show military might in 1983 by sending missiles to West Germany. “The strength we put on display was never used,” Shultz said. “Strength works hand in...

MADISON, Wis. (Reuters) - A year after his historic election, President Barack Obama sought to remind Americans on Wednesday the biggest problems he is grappling with -- from the economy to the war in Afghanistan -- are the legacy of his predecessor, George W. Bush. With his approval ratings down from once-lofty levels and Tuesday's Democratic election losses raising questions about his political clout, Obama held no special ceremony to mark the anniversary of his election as America's first black president. He instead traveled to Wisconsin to appear before a friendly audience in a school gymnasium and promote education as...

Keeping you updated. As mass pro-Democracy protests swept Iran today the protesters chanted "Obama, Obama you are either with the Iranian government or with us". Videos here

Obama: “wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran” Obama Administration on Anniversary of Embassy and Hostage Seizure in Iran: We're trying to be Friends! By Barry Rubin thelastcrusade.com Will Rogers, the great American comedian of the 1920s and 1930s, famously said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” The problem with the Obama Administration, at least so far, is that it has never met an enemy that it could identify as such.Of course, the story isn’t over yet. Indeed, one does see signs of change. But we are still...

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

Apparently, he only has time to go to Berlin when it's all about him!Rich Lowry points out that: In his first year in office, Barack Obama has visited more foreign countries than any other president. He’s touched ground in 16 countries, easily outpacing Bill Clinton (3) and George W. Bush(11). But there’s one stop Obama won’t make. He has begged off going to Berlin next week to attend ceremonies commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. His schedule is reportedly too crowded. Obama had time to fly all the way over to Copenhagen to plead for Chicago to get the...

It's Barack Obama's First Anniversary - But There's Precious Little To Celebrate The US President's performance has dismayed even his biggest admirers, writes Simon Heffer in New York Simon Heffer 03 Nov 2009 A year ago, almost to the minute, I was here in New York, watching television reports of the aftermath of the election of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States of America. I recall the sight of a lachrymose woman from the Midwest, standing outside her run-down house as the sun rose, giving thanks for her deliverance: not from George W Bush, but from the...

The source of anti-American Islamic Terrorism started today, Nov 4, 1979, in Tehran, Iran. Thank You Jimmy Carter, for abandoning the Shah

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Wednesday marks one year since Barack Obama was elected America's first black president swept to power on a promise of change, but it will be just another day for the US leader battling a deep recession and two wars. On November 4, 2008, Obama was feted by a joyous crowd during his victory speech in a Chicago park after beating Republican John McCain to the White House in an election that promised to reshape his nation. But 12 months on the administration has no plans to celebrate Obama's historic victory, perhaps sensing there is little appetite for...

Return to the Article November 03, 2009Twenty-five years after the Reagan landslideBy Bruce Walker Election Day, 1984 -- twenty five years ago -- many thought that the ideological battle of America was won. President Reagan, the disciple of "Mr. Conservative" Barry Goldwater ran against Walter Mondale, the disciple of "Mr. Liberal" Hubert Humphrey.  Reagan got into politics with "The Speech" endorsing Barry Goldwater.  Here is what Reagan said in 1964:  This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite...

Leaders of Iran's opposition movement are to make an unprecedented apology to the US on the 30th anniversary of the storming of the American embassy in Tehran. In a gesture likely to provoke fury among hardliners in the Tehran regime, they will apologise on Wednesday for the hostage crisis that gripped the world for 444 days and led to a decisive break between Iran and the US, which is now routinely denounced as "the Great Satan". Organisers of the Green Movement, the umbrella group that seeks to overturn the official result of the June presidential election, plan to use the...

A year on from a historic election, the spirit of popular goodwill that yielded America's first black president has retreated to tepid support for Barack Obama as he presses his change agenda. Since the November 4 poll, Obama's visage has been everywhere, conspicuously on the streets of the nation's capital where millions of foreign and domestic tourists have visited over the past year, many of them snatching up poignant souvenirs. SNIP "They stay in the truck," grumbled a vendor who identified himself as "Dick," as he pointed to a rusty vehicle behind him. "They don't sell anymore." Indeed, Obama's honeymoon...

Protests likely as Iran marks US embassy seizure (AFP) 2 November 2009 TEHRAN - Street protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are expected on Wednesday as Iran marks the 30th anniversary of the capture of US embassy at a time when it is engaged in high-profile nuclear dialogue backed by Washington. November 4 has emerged as an anti-US day in Iran, with thousands of Iranians, mostly students, gathering annually outside the US embassy building, dubbed the ‘Den of Spies’, to shout slogans such as “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” The event marks the capture of the embassy on November...

TUESDAY is Election Day 2009. Already, it has been a year since Barack Obama rode the "hope and change" bandwagon to victory in the 2008 presidential election. Today, we can look back over what Obama has brought to us in that year. In Lorain, Obama has brought ... well, maybe that's not such a good example. Not much change here, but we can hope for more jobs and business, eventually. Let's take a wider look at a checklist of big Obama & Company plans and their progress: "Get out of Iraq." — Not yet. "Fight the real war in Afghanistan."...

BERLIN (Reuters) – George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl paid their respects to the ordinary people who were behind the peaceful revolution of 1989 that brought down the Berlin Wall at an emotional ceremony in Berlin on Saturday. The three statesmen from the United States, Soviet Union and West Germany -- whose steady-handed leadership paved the way for the Wall's opening on November 9, 1989 -- recalled the heady events that led to the end of the Cold War at a ceremony attended by 1,800 people. "We Germans don't have very much in our history to be proud of,"...

Achtung, baby: U2 will play a free concert in Berlin to help the city celebrate 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Music network MTV said the Irish rockers will perform in front of the Brandenburg Gate on Nov. 5 during the MTV Europe Music Awards U2 manager Paul McGuinness said it would be exciting to be in Berlin, "20 years almost to the day since the wall came down."

Michael Barone finds it odd that Barack Obama can go to Oslo and Copenhagen for mainly personal reasons, but somehow can’t find the time to travel to Berlin to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — the climax of the Cold War and the West’s triumph. Given the key role played by the US in the collapse of Soviet Communism, people have good cause to wonder why the leader of the free world can find time to pick up an award for himself and pitch his hometown to the International Olympic Committee, but not to...

President Barack Obama declined to participate in a celebration of the 20th anniversary of fall of Communism in Europe, saying he has “mixed feelings” about the event and “too little time to spare.” “On the one hand, Communism did some brutal things,” Obama acknowledged. “On the other hand, they had some noble goals and made some important progress toward achieving them.” Among the noble goals achieved according to the President were “the provision of universal health care, free college education, and the elimination of capitalistic greed. We can only hope to do as well in our country.” The president cited...

Do you remember where you were 10 years ago when you heard the reports of an aircraft flying across the central U.S. without any communication with ground controllers? Later of couse before the plane crashed the passenger list was made public but you didn't want to believe it? Then at mid afternoon with the aircraft out of fuel the crash into a rural area of South Dakota?.........Do you remember........William Payne Stewart was born January 30, 1957 in Springfield, MO. Payne learned the game from his father Bill who was a golf pro at an area course.Payne went to SMU to...

Twenty-six years after a bombing in Lebanon stunned Jacksonville, Camp Lejeune and surrounding communities, veterans and their families still remember with sadness but are forging healing bonds. On Friday morning, the city and Camp Lejeune marked the anniversary of the 1983 suicide bombing that took the lives of 241 Marines, sailors and soldiers, most of whom were from the First Battalion, Eighth Marines, based at Jacksonville’s Camp Geiger. The service at the Beirut Memorial drew hundreds to the granite wall carrying a simple, eloquent inscription: “They Came in Peace.” Jacksonville Mayor Sammy Phillips recalled the grief stricken moments the community...

RAIN RAN in small rivers from the equipment and the faces of the men loading up to leave in the early hours of that morning. Although the day had barely gotten a running start, already Camp Lejeune Marines were packing their gear, tying it down, and prepping for deployment. On the faces of these men — young and shiny baby Marines, experienced men facing their first deployment, and experienced veterans who had already been there and done that — was a grim expectation of what they would face in a few hours when they reached their destination: Beirut, Lebanon. Their...

The community remembers the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit of 1983 as brave troops who suffered great losses in Beirut in one of the most devastating non-nuclear bombings of all time. Retired Marine Col. Timothy Geraghty remembers them as “my men.” Geraghty will be in Jacksonville today to commemorate the anniversary of the bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed nearly 300 peacekeeping troops, 241 of whom were Marines and sailors under his command. Twenty-six years after the event, he has told the story of Beirut in his own words.

[excepts] Did East Germans originate from apes? Impossible. Apes could never have survived on just two bananas a year. " The ubiquitous Trabant or Trabi, East Germany's legendary plastic car with its clattering two-stroke engine, was a favorite butt of jokes as well. Like this one: "A new Trabi has been launched with two exhaust pipes -- so you can use it as a wheelbarrow." The jokes gave insights into what ordinary East Germans were thinking about their regime and about current events. The Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 spawned a new proverb, for example: If the farmer falls off...

The defeat of communism 20 years ago was the most liberating moment in history. So why don't we talk about it more? On August 23, 1989, officials from the newly reformed and soon-to-be-renamed Communist Party of Hungary ceased policing the country's militarized border with Austria. Some 13,000 East Germans, many of whom had been vacationing at nearby Lake Balaton, fled across the frontier to the free world. It was the largest breach of the Iron Curtain in a generation, and it kicked off a remarkable chain of events that ended 11 weeks later with the righteous citizen dismantling of the...

Accuracy in Media (AIM), America's first independent watchdog of the news media, will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year at a conference held in Washington, DC, on Friday, October 23.

--snip-- It was 150 years ago today, Oct. 16, 1859. The long-haired, wild-eyed Brown was about to launch a raid that would hasten the Civil War and make him the most notorious man in America, a figure who still ignites controversy a century and a half later. Some see him as an Osama bin Laden; others, as a Christian soldier who gave his life to end human bondage. "You could ask 100 people about John Brown and still get 100 opinions," said Jeff Bowers, a ranger at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, which plans three days of activities this weekend...

Two Arrested at New York City Demonstration Marking 8th Anniversary of Afghan War By Alex Kane Two members of the New York City War Resisters League (WRL) were arrested this evening as part of an anti-Afghanistan War demonstration in Grand Central in Midtown Manhattan. 64-year-old Ed Hedemann and Eric Laursen were taken away in handcuffs by the New York Police Department during a protest marking the 8th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan.Hedemann was arrested and then picked up and brought downstairs by four officers after attempting to drop an anti-war banner in Grand Central, while Laursen was apprehended for...

There is so much competition for “best television show ever” that continuing the argument is probably pointless. Also, apples-to-apples comparisons are difficult to make. Is The Simpsons better than The Sopranos, or are they so different that, apart from both being shown on TV, they have nothing meaningful in common? “Most influential” is a little easier. And there can be no question that the top handful of contenders must include The Twilight Zone — first aired 50 years ago, on Oct. 2, 1959. It remains one of the best-loved shows of all time, and in the subsequent half-century, it has...

<p>Mao, the leader of China from the Chinese Revolutoon in 1949 until his death in 1976, has made a comeback in recent years. And it's not only in Laurence Brahm's trendy Beijing restaurant, the Red Capital Club.</p> <p>Ironically, Mao — who railed against capitalism — is now so popular that he has become a source of immense capital income across China. Mao's face is ever-present among souvenir vendors; he's on T-shirts, matches, even a revolutionary Mao alarm clock. And now, he's on the big screen.</p>

It was once Chairman Mao Zedong's very famous, very wide family limousine. Oddly enough, the car is now owned by American Laurence Brahm — lawyer, author, and collector of all things related to Mao. "It's not easy to brake history and it's not easy to brake a Red Flag limousine either," Brahm jokes as he navigates the rusty car through a narrow Beijing street. Mao, the leader of China from the Chinese Revolutoon in 1949 until his death in 1976, has made a comeback in recent years. And it's not only in Laurence Brahm's trendy Beijing restaurant, the Red Capital...

Remembering, with sadness, a great civilization BY DAVID WARREN, THE OTTAWA CITIZENOCTOBER 4, 2009 The 20th century was a disaster in the history of China, even before the Communists came to power in 1949. An ancient empire that was also an ancient civilization had already endured a massive collision with the civilization of Europe, in which Europe had prevailed. The latter was quite aggressive, the former by its circumstances mostly passive, and the conventional wisdom is that this alone explains the dissolution of the former.

I came across this in my surfings this morning. Here is the blurb that accompanies a video of celeb favorite Python moments: Monty Python was first aired on British television screens on October 5 1969. Famous for the ministry of silly walks and the dead parrot sketch, the legacy of the series lives on. The BBC spoke to Ricky Gervais, Justin Lee Collins, Jeremy Clarkson and Stephen Merchant to find out their favourite Monty Python moments. Click here to watch the video.

"Today, I was listening to the Glenn Beck program and heard about Rep. Paul Kanjorski’s comments on the financial crisis that took place on September 15th, 2008. According to Mr. Kanjorski: “On Thursday [September 15] , at roughly 11 AM The Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the USA to the tune of $550 Billion dollars in a matter of an hour or two. Money was being removed electronically. The treasury tried to help with $150 Billion, but could not stem the tide. It was an electronic run on the banks The treasury intervened...

Hard to believe, but Friday marks the 50th anniversary of “The Twilight Zone,” the twisty-turny, highly influential science-fiction anthology series. (Or does it? No, wait, it does.)

BEIJING — China celebrated its rise to a world power over 60 years of Communist rule Thursday, staging its biggest-ever parade of military hardware with over a hundred thousand marching masses in a display that stirred patriotism — and some unease. Police blocked off a wide area around central Beijing's Tiananmen Square for the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic. City residents were told to stay away and watch the events on television. President Hu Jintao, dressed in a gray Mao tunic instead of the business suit he usually wears, reviewed the thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks and...

Sept 27, 2009 — What would Darwin do? Just in time for the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species, his magnum opus has been reprinted with an introduction not by a scientist or historian, but by a Christian evangelist. He and a Christian movie actor are trying to get their special edition to students at major universities. Talk about brashness. Darwin’s defenders are stepping on themselves to condemn this – well, blasphemy...

Inflation was limited under Bush to the destructive price increases of oil and gasoline, which were created (deliberately) by Pelosi's energy policies to destroy the US economy in 2007 through summer 2008. By destroying the US transportation sectors by limiting oil exploration and oil markets - which threatened everything that moves, feeds, ships, or eats anything else - she created the housing and bank failures that we saw in late summer 2008. And those market crashes created the economic environment that allowed the democrat news media to give Obama the win. (Coupled, of course, with McCain's stpuid campaign and Bush's...

At 60th birthday, Chinese in nostalgia of "red" arts www.chinaview.cn 2009-09-26 20:40:19 Print by Zuo Yuanfeng BEIJING, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- On a rainy Saturday night, Kong Mingzhe rushed home from a private theater. His red Chairman Mao T-shirt was all wet. Tired from hours of rehearsal for "Godot finally came", a modern sequel inspired by Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", he turned on the DVD player. It was one episode of a period TV series about a Chinese double agent who collected information in the Kuomintang for the Communist Party of China (CPC). "I'm very curious about...

President Obama is making so many foreign-policy blunders that he is starting to make us yearn for the national-security acumen of the Carter administration. His official announcement scrapping the planned missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic was long expected but still landed with a thud. It is hard to remember a strategic choice that is so obviously wrong on so many levels.

A BBC production of the last days of Lehman Brothers is a must see. You have to read between the lines a bit, but the production shows how Treasury Secretary Paulson treated Lehman different from the way he handled others that had just as many problems as Lehman. In a nice touch, the BBC hints that Paulson tipped off former Goldman man, and then Merrill CEO, John Thain, of the trouble ahead----which was behind Merrill's sale to Bank of America. The dramatization does a nice job of showing Thain's style in landing an incredible $29 per share for Merrill from...

e can all remember the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Almost all of us can remember the second anniversary. The third, a lot less; the fourth, even less. Eventually, something happened: we forgot about 9/11. I began working at Hollywood Video, a movie rental store, in 2004 and saw this process happen. On September 11 of each year, I’d walk in and almost no one would mention the significance of the date, and the number of those that did steadily declined to zero by 2008, my final year there. Customers frequently asked the date, as they always did, not...

Just a message to the freepers from the author of "Geeks On Caffeine." Please share with your friends and especially with those whose memories of the 9/11 terrorist attacks have faded.

There are some wild rumors going around and lately I don´t trust anything about Obama and am getting a bit fidgety about what may turn out to be your wreckless conduct that can make Vietnam look like a picnic you were wanting. Today in Palmerola several planes from the US Air Force landed. What is significant about that is because of Hillary and Obama´s stance that what happened here was a coup and the supposed suspension of military cooperation. Tomorrow is Sept 11 and while most people think World Trade Center and 9-11-2001 Hondurans think 9-11-1919 when the US invaded...