Free Republic

APPLETON, Wis. (AP) — The decades fall away as you open the front doors. It’s the late 1950s in the cramped little offices — or maybe the pre-hippie 1960s. It’s a place where army-style buzz cuts are still in fashion, communism remains the primary enemy and the decor is dominated by American flags and portraits of once-famous Cold Warriors. At the John Birch Society, they’ve been waging war for more than 60 years against what they're sure is a vast, diabolical conspiracy. As they tell it, it’s a plot with tentacles that reach from 19th-century railroad magnates to the Biden...

Researchers at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and colleagues in Germany have taken a closer look at the birch tar used to affix Neanderthal tools and found a much more complex technique for creating the adhesive than previously considered... the team compared different methods of creating birch tar to the chemical residues found on ancient Neanderthal tools....The birch tar used by Neanderthals predates any known adaptation by modern humans by 100,000 years. The sticky material was used as an adhesive backing to connect stone to bone and wood in tools and weapons, with the added benefit of being water-resistant...

The reports of the Bush dynasty’s collapse are greatly exaggerated; but now that Jeb’s disastrous campaign has finally reached its finale, it admittedly does feel like a distinct era of Republican Party politics is leaving the stage with him. (SNIP) The stump speech was for Rush Limbaugh; the budget was for the Chamber of Commerce. It worked for Poppy in ’88, and Dubya pulled it off twice. (SNIP) A sizable chunk of rank-and-file Republicans are wise to the bait and switch now; pandering to the Birchite wing of the Republican Party with dog-whistles won’t cut it. If you want to...

The John Birch Society describes itself as a constitutionalist organization, yet it is highly critical of a very important component of the Constitution. The JBS does not like Article V’s provision that allows the States to unilaterally propose and ratify amendments to the Constitution. George Mason demanded that this provision be included in Article V because he correctly forecast the situation we face today. He predicted that Washington, D.C. would violate its constitutional limitations and the States would need to make adjustments to the constitutional text in order to rein in the abuse of power by the federal government. Current...

A cancer is eating away at a once Grand Old Party, and if the party doesn't wake up and take precautions, it may wind up only a shadow of its better self -- a hollowed-out refuge for haters and paranoids and the kind of ideological parasites that can reduce a major party to a minor one. The historian Richard Hofstadter spoke of a "paranoid style in American politics," and noted its "sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy." He called it "an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life," one that it isn't confined to left or right....

Once mocked and derided -as conservatives are today- JBS warnings now appear to have been prescient... The John Birch Society was founded in 1958 by Robert Welch, a retired candy manufacturer who saw collectivism as the main threat to western civilization. What he feared and intended to fight on the home-front were useful-idiot-type liberals serving as what he called 'secret communist traitors'- these fellow Americans were providing cover for a move towards one-world socialist government (stuff that used to sound kind of crazy at most any point in time prior to the bizarre Obammunist era). The organization took its name from an...

50 years later,  history is proving them right- as it will soon enough the TEA Party The John Birch Society was founded in 1958 by Robert Welch, a retired candy manufacturer who saw collectivism as the main threat to Western Civilization, with useful-idiot-type liberals serving as "secret communist traitors" that provided cover for a move towards world socialist government   The organization took its name from an American Baptist missionary (and US intelligence officer) who was shot dead by Red Chinese forces in August 1945, therefore it was that John Birch was honored as 'first fatality of the Cold War'.  The agenda was...

The article focused on Perry’s comments at a Border Summit speech in south Texas (8-22-01), days before the 9-11 attacks, about bi-national health insurance — Texas-funded coverage for both U.S. and Mexican border residents. The governor’s statement favored a study, required by the Legislature, about "the feasibility of bi-national health insurance.” The DMN continued, "Katherine Cesinger, spokeswoman for Perry’s campaign, downplayed the topic of bi-national health insurance. 'A bill was passed by the Legislature that authorized a study to look into this issue, which ultimately concluded there were numerous barriers to accomplishing that idea, and the Legislature took no further...

An ancient mummified forest, complete with well-preserved logs, leaves, and seedpods, has been discovered deep in the Canadian Arctic... The dry, frigid site is now surrounded by glaciers and is completely treeless, except for a few bonsai-size dwarf trees... located on Ellesmere Island, one of the world's northernmost landmasses. The rangers had come across wood scattered on the ground from much larger trees than the few dwarfs currently in the area, including logs that were several feet long... When Barker and colleagues found where the scattered logs were coming from -- a slope that had been eroded by a river...

Industrialists who own private company with annual revenues of £62bn have channelled millions of dollars to rightwing causes It likes to present itself as a grassroots insurgency made up of hundreds of local groups intent on toppling the Washington elite. But the Tea Party movement, which is threatening to cause an upset in next month's midterm elections, would not be where it is today without the backing of that most traditional of US political supporters – Big Oil.

Do you know the difference between a conservative and a neoconservative, or neocon? This is not just a question of semantics. It’s far more important than that. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the future of our country depends on understanding the crucial differences between the two philosophies – and rejecting the latter. All of this was brought home to me most forcefully when a longtime friend sent me a copy of the speech he delivered at the Constitution Party’s annual convention in Missouri last week. I’ll tell you more about John F. McManus and the organization...

For the past few days, movement "conservatives" and GOP cheerleaders have been ecstatic that Fred Thompson, former senator from Tennessee, may form an exploratory committee to seek the GOP nomination for president. "Now we'll have a conservative in there," said one person, who, I assume, has no idea what a real conservative is. There already are two fine conservative candidates seeking the nomination: Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo. And Fred Thompson does not even come close measuring up to them. Fred Thompson is a neocon globalist. First and foremost, let's look at immigration. A third-world invasion of the USA is...

It is the belief of Donald McAlvany, who publishes the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, that the coup was a hoax. Only a minimal number of troops participated in the coup, the internal or international lines of communication were not cut, the press was not controlled, and the airports were not closed. A very strange "coup" indeed.

Who says time travel isn't possible? I got a bona fide '60s flashback last week when I attended a meeting of the John Birch Society. Remember them? Frankly, I was astonished to learn the Birch Society still exists. Shouldn't it have crumbled along with the Berlin Wall? For those too young to remember, the Birch Society was one of many groups fighting the global menace of communism. But of all the patriots standing foursquare against communism, the Birchers were always the ones in tin-foil hats. Or so it seemed. Bless their hearts, they were sort of the kooky cousins of...

The LDS Church, extremism and our leadership vacuum Utah Voices Jerold Willmore Jerold Willmore During the waning months of Eisenhower's presidency, I was in Washington, D.C., working for Sen. Frank Church during the day, pursuing a graduate degree at night and campaigning for JFK against Nixon on Saturdays. Sundays, I presided over the Sunday school in the LDS Washington Ward, attended by Secretary of Agriculture (and LDS Apostle) Ezra Taft Benson and his family. America was locked in the Cold War. Worse, the fires of nuclear fear were fanned by McCarthyist "red-baiters," none more rabid than Robert Welch, president of...

The Iraq War is an unconstitutional, unjustifiable conflict devouring innocent lives and abetting the growth of an increasingly lawless leviathan state. It must be ended -- now. Twenty-one-year-old Matthew Holley, born in Idaho and raised in Chula Vista, California, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq on November 15. A three-time AAU Karate champion and accomplished artist, Holley followed in his father's footsteps by enlisting in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne. "It made me very proud that he actually wanted to be like his dad," recalled Holley's father, John, at the young soldier's December 2 funeral. Matthew got...

RUSH: This judge, Stanley F. Birch, Jr. of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote the opinion yesterday that shut down all other appeals on the Schiavo case, and this opinion is arrogant beyond belief. (AP) "With time running out for Terri Schiavo, a federal appeals court Wednesday rejected her parents' latest attempt to get the brain-damaged woman's feeding tube reconnected. The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to consider an emergency bid by Bob and Mary Schindler for a new hearing in their case, raising a flicker of hope for the parents after a series of...

If you are law enforcement type you can probably stop reading now unless you like being reprimanded by a dumb old civilian. While everyone else is crowing how great the police and feds did in aprehending Brian G. Nichols in Duluth, GA, I am vomitting. I am disgusted. Let me share my thoughts and then see what you think. Exhibit A: Sheriff's Deputy Cynthia Hall, 51. Slammed up against a wall by Brian Nichols, weapon taken and shot in the face. Brilliant. Exhibit B: Her superiors. What were they thinking? Leaving someone who looks like she belongs tending day care...

The John Birch Society has long been our country's premier purveyor of conspiratorial interpretations of past history and current events. This posting is devoted to discussing some details from FBI files which speak to the unreliability and inaccuracy of JBS data and conclusions. In 1964, FBI Director Hoover stated that he "had little respect for Robert Welch" (founder and leader of the the Birch Society) because of Welch's defamatory comments about President Eisenhower, the Dulles brothers, Chief Justice Warren, and others. He referred to Welch and the Birch Society as "extremist" and "irresponsible". Also see Hoover's testimony (copied below) before...

In recent weeks, George W. Bush has started to come in for the first meaningful criticism from mainstream conservatives during his presidency. While nascent, it could become the only real barrier to his re-election next year unless dealt with quickly. To be sure, there are those on the right who have been critical of Bush since Day One. But at least since the World Trade Center attack, such criticism has been mostly confined to fringe publications and websites that do not represent the mainstream of conservative thought. Therefore, it is significant when people like Rush Limbaugh, George Will and William...