Free Republic

An Alabama mom has been accused of punishing her seven-year-old son by making him walk home from school before accidentally running him over with her car. Sarai Rachel James, 27, was charged with aggravated child abuse on February 8 over the cruel punishment, according to Marshall County Jail records. She picked her son up from school in Boaz, northern Alabama, around 3.30pm, when she learned he had got into trouble with the principal earlier that day. There were two women in the car along with the boy - James and an unnamed 53-year-old woman who has also been arrested, police...

FBI lovebird Peter Strzok has a special little cold spot for President Trump, and not just because he got fired for unprofessional behavior on while on the government's dime during Trump's term of office. He hates the guy insanely, enough to plot against him with his famous "insurance policy" as he told the FBI official he was having an affair with, and all one needs to do to see it now is to look through the convoluted logic of his Trump-hating tweets. His banner picture at the top of his Twitter account features legal indictment papers of Trump.So he tweeted...

An incredible class about the infamous lineage of King David. The Book of Ruth is read by Jews during the holiday of Shavuos (this year Saturday night the 11th.) How could Boaz have married Rus (Ruth) the Moavite? The Torah says explicitly not to marry Amonites and Moavites? Scholars-- feast your ears. Christian apologize-rs...come hear the majesty and secrets of the Torah. NOTE: The rabbi uses some Hebrew and Yiddish but translates everything at least once. PM me or consult your local Orthodox Jewish rabbi for clarification. Why does King David come from a seemingly illicit relationship and lineage? What...

Some Advice from Mother Church, as Pictured in the Book of Ruth By: Msgr. Charles PopeRecently I preached a retreat for a good number of women here in our Archdiocese. I based the retreat on the Book of Ruth, a beautiful love story that is a kind of allegory for Christ and the Church. More specifically it is an allegory of the individual’s salvation by Christ and in relationship to Him.The detailed background to the text is too lengthy to go into here, but a few points will help. The story features three main characters: Boaz, Ruth, and Naomi....

UNBELIEVABLE Class on the Scroll of Ruth and its Jewish commentaries-- from the simple meaning to the poetic, to the mystical/esoteric. Did you know that Arpah (Ruth's sister) was the mother of Goliath? That Ruth was a reincarnation of the daughter of Lot (of Sodom fame or infamy) Learn about the incredible tapestry of this scroll. Don't fear, non-Hebrew speakers, the rabbi translates everything and only the actual verse is read in Hebrew. The class is given in English...

WASHINGTON DC (C-FAM) -- At the United Nations (UN)-backed Women Deliver conference in Washington DC last week, abortion activists announced the achievement of a new international human right to maternal health just three years after launching a campaign to establish it. Advocates said that the new right requires nations to liberalize abortion laws and create numerous new bureaucracies, procedures and programs. n a paper entitled, “Preventing Maternal Mortality and Ensuring Safe Pregnancy," the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) asserted, “[W]omen’s rights to life, health, and non-discrimination entitle them” to maternal health and that “governments must ensure women’s access to high-quality,...

Conservatives have been very critical of the Golden Globe-winning film "Avatar" for its mystical melange of trite leftist themes. But what they have missed is that the essential conflict in the story is a battle over property rights. "Avatar," written and directed by James Cameron and set in 2154, is the story of young American Jake Sully, who joins a military mission to the distant moon Pandora, which has a supply of an expensive and almost impossible to obtain mineral (thus its name, "unobtainium"). Living among the tall, blue natives in the form of an "avatar" -- a lab-created body...

American voters have been demonstrating a lack of confidence in both parties lately. George W. Bush nearly destroyed the Republican Party, but Barack Obama is giving it a chance at resurrection. Karl Rove dreamed that he and Bush, like strategist Mark Hanna and President William McKinley in 1896, would create a generation of Republican dominance. Instead, he delivered both Congress and the presidency to the Democrats. Receive news alerts Sign Up David Boaz RealClearPolitics election 2010 Democratic Party Health care Republican Party Barack Obama [+] More Bush turned off libertarian-leaning moderates and independents with his profligate spending, his excessive social...

John McCain's campaign is under fire for his campaign manager's ties to Freddie Mac. Rick Davis's lobbying firm, it turns out, was still receiving monthly payments until very recently, despite previous assurances that the relationship had ended three years ago. Meanwhile, McCain is running television ads tying Sen. Barack Obama to Franklin Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who was forced out for misstating the company's earnings. Obama vigorously protests that Raines isn't really one of his advisers, though Raines had previously said that he advised the campaign. But McCain doesn't need to focus on Raines. Obama selected another Fannie...

Richard Just at the New Republic magazine is not impressed with Virginia senator Jim Webb as a running mate for Barack Obama. Webb is fundamentally illiberal, he writes, a misogynist and an ethnic nationalist and "something of an apologist for the Confederacy." So why do lots of liberals like Webb, Just asks. "In the years since he left the Republican party, Webb has found his way to certain policy stands that liberals correctly find attractive. He was right about Iraq, and, on economics, he is right to criticise the disparity between rich and poor." Just can't figure out how a...

Laissez-faire. It's a policy that made Starbucks vastly successful. But don't try to put that phrase on a customized Starbucks Card. The cards are supposed be personalized to reflect customers' tastes and uniqueness. They are available in a range of colors, often given as gifts and used by regular customers who prefer to prepay for their java.

On May 7, 1933, just two months after the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New York Times reporter Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote that the atmosphere in Washington was “strangely reminiscent of Rome in the first weeks after the march of the Blackshirts, of Moscow at the beginning of the Five-Year Plan.…America today literally asks for orders.” The Roosevelt administration, she added, “envisages a federation of industry, labor and government after the fashion of the corporative State as it exists in Italy.” That article isn’t quoted in Three New Deals, a fascinating study by the German cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch....

For the past few months most libertarians have been pleased to see Ron Paul achieving unexpected success with his presidential campaign’s message of ending the Iraq war, abolishing the federal income tax, establishing sound money, and restoring the Constitution. Sure, some of us didn’t like his talk about closing the borders and his conspiratorial view of a North-South highway. But the main themes of his campaign, the ones that generated the multi-million-dollar online fundraising spectaculars and the youthful “Ron Paul Revolution,” were classic libertarian issues. It was particularly gratifying to see a presidential candidate tie the antiwar position to a...

Cato Scholar Comments on Huckabee's Iowa Victory Friday, January 4, 2008David Boaz, executive vice president: Republicans looking for a presidential candidate to inspire them are now faced with a tax-and-spend religious rightist who would have the federal government regulate everything from restaurant menus to local schools. As Dorothy Parker would say, "What fresh hell is this?" Cato's executive vice president David Boaz has played a key role in the development of the Cato Institute and the libertarian movement. He is a provocative commentator and a leading authority on domestic issues such as education choice, drug legalization, the growth of government,...

Naomi Wolf, Second Amendment Sister? Naomi Wolf has an article in today’s Washington Post tied to her new book, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. The essay is actually a lot less leftist than the book. She deplores the civic illiteracy among young people that leaves them feeling ”depressed, cynical and powerless.” And she blames influences on both left and right: the Bush administration’s portrayal of “freedom and checks and balances as threats to national security,” of course, and also the No Child Left Behind Act’s emphasis on math and reading rather than civics...

Election video: Lesbian kiss Party supporting legalization of soft drugs hopes to revive sleepy elections campaign Moran Zelikovitch Two lesbians engaged in a passionate kiss, drug use at a pub, starving musicians, and a clean, green environment. No, this is not Amsterdam in the spring. These are Ale Yarok's (Hebrew for "Green Leaf") TV election campaign ads to be aired on Tuesday. A different kind of wedding – Ale Yarok campaign video In a press conference, the party presented its TV and radio broadcasts under the slogan: "We also have other aspirations". So what are those aspirations? Strict conservation of...

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20041124-095231-4832r.htm Not long ago a journalist asked me what freedoms we take for granted in America. I spend most of my time sounding the alarm about the freedoms we're losing, but this was a good opportunity to step back and consider how America is different from much of world history — and why immigrants still flock here. If we ask how life in the United States is different from life in most of the history of the world — and still different from much of the world — a few key elements come to mind

This is the new theme of the Republican Party that will be presented in the coming days of the Republican National Convention. As a registered Libertarian I am absolutely thrilled to see the Republican Party adopt important Libertarian values. Defining an Ownership Society By David Boaz President Bush says he wants America to be an “ownership society.” What does that mean? People have known for a long time that individuals take better care of things they own. Aristotle wrote, "What belongs in common to the most people is accorded the least care: they take thought for their own things above...

Hey, Big Spender: What Part of NO Don't You Understand? by David Boaz Oregon voters have resoundingly defeated their legislature's tax increase plan -- for the second time in a year, and by an even bigger margin. On Jan. 28, 2003, Oregonians voted to reject the legislature's proposed $313 million tax hike. All the Oregon politicians and the major media warned voters that if they turned down the tax, the legislature would be forced to cut spending. As The Washington Post summed up the stakes: "9,000 elderly people slated to lose spaces in long-term care facilities; thousands more slated to...