Free Republic

We were having an 8 a.m. coffee with family in their home on the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam when the music started.Ringing through the morning, as happens every day here and on U.S. military bases around the world, was the melody of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”“O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,“What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming …”As the song plays, people strolling through the neighborhood freeze in their steps, cars pull to the side of the road, and even children stop playing and stand tall, exactly as they have been taught, to honor...

On this day in 1783, George Washington says his final goodbye to a group of officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York. washingtons-farewell-to-his-officersNew York had served as the British headquarters throughout the long years of the war. It was the last city to be evacuated when the war was over! On November 25, however, the British finally left, and George Washington entered the city. (See November 25 history post.) Despite the celebrations and elaborate dinners that ensued over the course of the next week, the British hadn’t entirely left the area. Some lingered on boats nearby. Others were still on...

On or around this day in 1861, Julia Ward Howe is inspired to write the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Did you know that this much-loved patriotic song has its roots in the Civil War years? Julia was the daughter of a Wall Street broker and a poet. She was well-educated and was able to speak fluently in several languages. Like her mother, she loved to write. She also became very interested in the abolitionist and suffragette causes. Samuel Howe was progressive in many ways, but he wasn’t too keen on expanding women’s rights. He thought Julia’s place was in...

It's an anniversary of sorts -- and should be something of a national holiday. Twenty years ago, Jim Robinson became FReeper #1 on this website, and we all are much the better for it. I found FreeRepublic.com via my news aggregator at the time, The Drudge Report. Quickly I lost interest in that site in favor of this my new home page. I found that Freerepublic is just not a news aggregator, but an intelligence aggregator. Thanks to the overwhelming diversity of interests amongst the FReeper community, we can go from the smallest subatomic particles to the vastness of inter-gallactic...

This November 2 is the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, sent from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community: "Dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing...

Wednesday, November 22, 2017 ..... Any FReepers notice how little was said about the anniversary this year of the Kennedy assassination ? I did not hear anything about it in the media till a night time talk show from San Antonio discussed it that night.

On this day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivers his famous Gettysburg address. Did you know that no one knows exactly where he gave the speech? And no one knows precisely what he said? Several different transcripts of the speech exist, each with slightly different phrasing. lincoln-11-19-3His speech wasn’t even supposed to be the main feature that day! Instead, a two-hour oration by a former Secretary of State, Edward Everett, was supposed to be the highlight. Lincoln’s two-minute speech would go down in history. Everett’s has been mostly forgotten. Perhaps Everett saw the writing on the wall? He wrote to the...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KATV) -- Bill and Hillary Clinton returned to their humble political beginnings in Little Rock, Arkansas on Saturday to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Bill Clinton’s presidential election victory and the 13th anniversary of the Clinton Presidential Center’s grand opening. The event brought together Clinton's campaign staff and the friends and family who played a role in the 1992 election. Sheila Bronfam is a long-time friend of Bill Clinton and had a hand in creating the Arkansas Travelers more than 25 years ago. The Travelers were a group of roughly 600 campaign volunteers who toured the United...

Seventy-five years ago this month, the Soviet Red Army surrounded --and would soon destroy -- a huge invading German army at Stalingrad on the Volga River. Nearly 300,000 of Germany's best soldiers would never return home. The epic 1942-43 battle for the city saw the complete annihilation of the attacking German 6th Army. It marked the turning point of World War II. Before Stalingrad, Adolf Hitler regularly boasted on German radio as his victorious forces pressed their offensives worldwide. After Stalingrad, Hitler went quiet, brooding in his various bunkers for the rest of the war. During the horrific Battle of...

I'm amused, but this is a serious question. On the one year anniversary of her TOTAL humiliation by Donald J Trump, what do you think she's up to tonight? Hiding and getting drunk? Watching videos and reliving the rage? Attending a BS candlelight vigil with other hideous leftard women?

President Trump marked the one-year anniversary of his election by thanking the “deplorables” who contributed to his “Electoral College landslide victory.”“Congratulations to all of the ‘DEPLORABLES’ and the millions of people who gave us a MASSIVE (304-227) Electoral College landslide victory!" Trump tweeted, along with a photo of him and his top aides aboard Air Force One flashing thumbs-up signs for the camera. Congratulations to all of the ”DEPLORABLES” and the millions of people who gave us a MASSIVE (304-227) Electoral College landslide victory! pic.twitter.com/7ifv5gT7Ur— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2017 Included in the photo with Trump are White...

Apologies to Gordon Proudfoot

I've been listening all day for the screams and wailing from the snowflakes, SJW's, and leftards in remembrance of the anniversary of the election of President Trump. The silence is deafening. Has anyone heard anything? Isn't this the day that was supposed to witness the gnashing of teeth, the tearing of hair, the rendering of flesh and screaming at the sky?

There are tens of millions of Americans right now who don’t feel helpless at all. In fact, they’ve never felt happier that they’ve finally got a guy in the White House who THEY believe stands up for THEM. They don’t share YOUR view of what it means to be an American. They share Trump’s view, because it’s THEIR view. That’s why he was elected President, and that’s why I am beginning to think he will be comfortably re-elected in 2020. For those who think I’ve gone completely mad, here is what I told British GQ magazine in September, 2015, when...

On November 7 the world will mark a grim anniversary: One hundred years since the small but devout faction of Marxists called the Bolsheviks lost a popular election. It was the last one Russia would see for 70 years. Instead of accepting the peopleÂ’s will, the Bolsheviks overthrew that countryÂ’s fledgling provisional government. That revolution unleashed a nightmare: a vicious civil war, the mass killing of clergy and religious believers, the slaughter of businessmen and landlords, and the building of concentration camps, 20 years before Hitler. In a single day, the Bolsheviks were known to boast, they killed more dissidents...

Barack and Michelle Obama celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on Tuesday. That's the silver anniversary. But the former president put some pink in his wife's cheeks with a lovey-dovey public ode to his beloved. In the morning, the former first lady posted a photo of herself as a bride on her wedding day with her groom. "A quarter of a century later, you're still my best friend & the most extraordinary man I know. I (heart) you," she wrote. Then the former president showed off some enviable husband skills when he surprised his wife during her appearance with TV...

The communists in the Antifa crowd are planning to begin a revolution in America on Saturday, November 4 — almost exactly 100 years after the Bolshevik Revolution that took Russia out of the frying pan of Tsarist rule and into the fire of communist totalitarianism. While some see Antifa activists as the modern heroes of anti-Fascism — fighting against racism, sexism, and a litany of other “isms” — and others see them merely as the snowflake crowd of spoiled brats demanding free everything, the reality is that Antifa is one tool in the communists' toolbox to bring America to her...

It’s been a long year. As stories of Hurricane Irma dominate the headlines today, it is fascinating to look back and see how far we’ve come since last year’s 9/11 headlines. On today’s date in 2016, the story on every TV station was about then candidate Hillary Clinton, who was videoed stumbling into a van after attending a 9/11 memorial service at Ground Zero. Questions over whether Clinton, who was seen at the time as the runaway to win the Presidency, was hiding some sort of illness, such as Parkinson’s, threatening to ruin her run. The Clinton campaign later put...

Septuagenerian rock singer Grace Slick of the group Jefferson Airplane wants to dose President Trump with the drug LSD. Slick, interviewed about the 50th anniversary of 1967's Summer of Love, offered the suggestion in an interview with Variety magazine:

Two decades ago today - Saturday August 30th 1997 - the ex-wife of the heir to the throne flew in to Paris with her new Egyptian boyfriend after a Mediterranean holiday on his yacht. They dined at his dad's showpiece, the Ritz, and shortly after midnight left via the rear entrance and got into a Mercedes driven by the hotel's deputy head of security. He was drunk, and in the underpass at the Place d'Alma he lost control of the car. Diana, Princess of Wales was pronounced dead at 4am on Sunday August 31st. She was 36. The clip below...