Free Republic

[Summary: To dumb down the public schools, our elite educators often rely on sophistry.] Disingenuous. Paradox. Counterintuitive. Sophistry. Counterproductive. These five words always fascinated me. They suggest unexpected warps in a common-sense grasp of the world. Something is out of kilter, weird, defective, or whacko. American public education in the 20th century--which has been characterized as “deliberate dumbing down”--is impossible to discuss without constant recourse to these quirky words. They point to deception, but done with art and flair. Rod Sterling captured the resulting sense of disorientation: “You unlock this door...Beyond it is another dimension....You’re moving into a land of...

Rush Limbaugh on his radio show discussed an article which stated that there is no respected voice in the national arena articulating conservatism. Such an advocate for conservatism is crucial to reversing the direction of America as Obama drives us toward socialism while low-info voters gleefully sing Kumbaya in the backseat. Well excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but we had an extraordinary advocate for conservatism, and look what happened to her. Judas on our side betrayed her -- sold her reputation for 30 seconds of fame and favor with the media. Even now, folks on our side are...

Republic of Korea: For the record. Pak Ku'n-hye (Park Geun-hye) of the New Frontier Party won South Korea's presidential election on 19 December, media reported. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee and the first woman elected to be president of the Republic of Korea. That should confound the North! North Korea-Iran: According to a Japanese news service, an Iranian lawmaker told the service that North Korea informed Iran in October of its plan to launch a satellite. The head of an Iranian parliamentary delegation to North Korea, Hamid Reza Taraghi, revealed talks took place mid-October with the North's delegates...

President Obama fired back at critics who have accused his administration of orchestrating a cover up over the September attacks in Libya. “I do take offense with some suggestion that in any way, we haven’t tried to make sure that the American people knew as the information was coming in what we believed," Obama told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" in an interview that aired Monday. (snip) “If we find out we that there was a big breakdown, and somebody didn’t do their job, they’ll be held accountable,” Obama said. “Ultimately, as commander-in-chief, I’m responsible, and I don’t shy away from that...

Reaching Out To Illegal Immigrants A Core Strategy For LAPD Chief LAPD Chief Charlie Beck's policies involving illegal immigrants have made him a lightning rod for criticism. He says his approach "makes absolute law enforcement sense. Any one of these things I’ve done is directly tied to public safety.” (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times / April 7, 2011) By Joel Rubin October 23, 2012 A decade ago, Charlie Beck watched as William J. Bratton arrived in Los Angeles and began rebuilding a department deeply tarnished by the Rodney King beating, riots and corruption scandals. Bratton made many changes as...

A new American Jewish Committee poll conducted in September found that Israel came in a distant fourth among issues that registered Jewish voters listed as "most important" to them, with 61.5% listing the economy, 16.1% listing health care, 4.7% listing abortion, and 4.5% listing US-Israel relations. Just 1.3% named Iran’s nuclear program as most important. It is shocking that for Jews in the US the right to an abortion, which is a 40 year old federally protected right ingrained in American society, is a more important issue than the Jewish state and the real existential threat Israel is facing from...

TREASON

Book Description Publication Date: July 12, 2012 The war on terror began as an admirable bipartisan commitment soon after the tragedy of 9/11 not only to punish those who attacked our country but also to interrupt planning for further attacks and try to stop the international spread of the Islamist violence. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party soon turned its back on a war it had authorized and did so at time when American troops were facing hostile enemy fire. The ultimate result of that betrayal was Barack Obama’s foreign policy. His abandonment of Iraq, Daniel Greenfield argues in The Great...

Bravo to the boys and girls in the military/intelligence community who have stood toe-to-to with Obama for jeopardizing the sources and methods that took out Osama bin Laden. While the liberal press tries to make hay out of the fact that the folks behind the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund Inc have…gotcha!...“Republican” ties, I’m thinking well thank God for Republicans in the military/intelligence community then. These are folks, well known to me, who have been at war since 2001, while the rest of America has been at the mall. And why aren’t heroes like, [cough, hack] John Kerry- largely a...

Pendleton captain killed by Afghan police SAN DIEGO - A captain based at Pendleton was one of three Marines killed Friday in Helmand province by an Afghan police officer with whom he had just shared a meal, it was reported Saturday. Matt Manoukian, 29, of Los Altos Hills, was killed after being invited by an Afghan police commander to a meeting in Sangin district, long a Taliban stronghold, to discuss security issues, The U-T San Diego reported. Before the meeting, Manoukian and the other two Marines killed shared a meal with their killer. The attack was the third of its...

Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) boldly asked in the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, "Who is protecting the people?" He passionately talked about Seal Team Six and the lack of integrity the Obama Administration displayed by outing the specific team that targeted Osama bin Laden. VIDEO

On Friday, while voters were still trying to digest the Supreme Court ruling upholding Obamacare, the House and Senate passed an omnibus spending bill. The storms that wrought so much damage in the Washington, DC metro area Friday night might very well have been a manifestation of divine displeasure over the betrayal of conservatives by the massive spending in the student loan, highway construction, and flood insurance bill. As John Hayward noted in Human Events, "Those three subjects have nothing to do with each other, but packaging them together made it far more difficult to vote against any specific portion...

During the summer of 2009, conservative activists turned up the heat on Democratic politicians to protest the innovation-destroying, liberty-usurping Obamacare mandate. In the summer of 2012, it’s squishy Republican politicians who deserve the grassroots flames.In case you hadn’t heard, even if the Supreme Court overturns the progressives’ federal health care juggernaut, prominent GOP leaders vow to preserve its most “popular” provisions. These big-government Republicans show appalling indifference to the dire market disruptions and culture of dependency that Obamacare schemes have wrought.GOP Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, vice chair of the Senate GOP Conference, told a St. Louis radio station two...

A furious Chris Matthews on Monday railed against Cory Booker for his "betrayal" and "sabotage" of fellow Democrat Barack Obama. A bewildered Matthews couldn't understand why the Newark mayor would "trash" the President. Howling over Booker's break from party loyalty, Matthews snarled, "... I think [this] was an act of sabotage. Whatever the intention was, [Booker] was trashing the entire Obama campaign of the summer." The Hardball host then played a clip of Obama "trying to defend himself against what looked like something like a betrayal." [MP3 audio here.] Talking to liberals David Corn and Howard Fineman, Matthews attempted to...

Here's a disturbing update to last week's amazing story about the U.S. mole who infiltrated al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and thwarted an airliner attack with a more sophisticated underwear bomb. Someone in Washington whose boss stood to gain from an election year story about alert intelligence operatives successfully protecting American voters at great personal risk leaked the heroic story to the Associated Press. The AP held the story until Obama administration sources said the CIA operative was safe. But, it turns out, the mole was not a CIA operative. The Obama administration had nothing to do with the...

Friday, May 04, 2012Saint Louis de Montfort's prophecy for our time Some years ago, Fr. Vincent Miceli warned that: "The West has divinized Security and Technocracy; the East, Science and Revolution. But in both camps atheistic humanism has become the State religion. And both of these systems of secular humanism eclipse the person, eliminate his freedom, deny his human-divine value and subject him to the tyranny of technological impersonalism. The alarming signs of the times testify to a fierce spirit of evil advancing everywhere. It is the spirit of rebellion against God and man. Hitherto the powers of government in...

It was inevitable. Mitt Romney is going to sell-out conservatives in his party in order to win the general. And if he wins, he'll sell them out again in order to be re-elected.* Zeke Miller and McKay Coppins reporting for Buzzfeed have found the first issue on which Romney is trying to put some distance between himself and the conservative wing of his party. Allahpundit, one of the most perceptive conservative bloggers, also detects the hint of conflict between the GOP candidate and the GOP Congress. Mitt Romney told reporters today that he supports efforts to extend low interest rates...

The conservative website Lucianne.com has removed a link to the Western Journalism Center where a challenge to Sen. John Kyl was posted regarding Barack Obama's eligibility to be president. According to Lucianne Goldberg the removal of the link was based on procedural rules not content. Conservative writer Floyd Brown, President of Western Journalism Center, does not buy Goldberg's' explanation, noting that Goldberg became famous opposing Bill Clinton, so why not Obama? "She was instrumental in bringing the Monica Lewinsky scandal to public attention," he wrote. But "she won't be accused of doing the same for President Obama." ("Eligibility vanishes from...

Iran's plan for a second Holocaust must be stopped John Bolton The Obama administration is leaking information to pressure Israel not to bomb Iran. Enemy in the White House. Not only is Obama an anti-semite, he is anti-American (anti-freedom.) His islamophiliac polcies compromises American security. Iran is clearly an American threat.They have been at war with us since '79. Israel was willing to do the heavy lifting because our reckless and feckless president was too weak, too compromised. But to betray an ally like this? 'Baku grants Israel use of its air bases' Senior US officials tell 'Foreign Policy' "Israelis...

The Hill is reporting on some tibdits from Arlen Specter's forthcoming new memoir, Life Among the Cannibals. Specter feels that Democratrs used him to pass health care reform and then didn't follow through on their promises to help him win his primary. "I realized that the president and his advisers were gun-shy about supporting my candidacy after being stung by Obama's failed rescue attempts for New Jersey governor Jon Corzine and Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley. They were reluctant to become victims of a trifecta," he writes.The snub was made all the more painful by Obama flying over Philadelphia en...