Free Republic

The first essay in this three-part series about Noah Feldman’s “The Three Lives of James Madison” discussed how Madison’s theory of war powers was focused heavily on internal dangers to liberty and republican governance from war or standing armies. The allocation of the declare war power to Congress played only a small role in his theory. More important were structural checks on national-level military establishments, especially constitutional provisions that preserved state militias as the primary source of military manpower and that required Congress to fund—and then keep funding—a national army. Without an army, the president couldn’t fight a war regardless...

Last week, PJ Media reported about Will Caligan, a conservative disabled veteran who lost his job after offending the Transgender Mafia with science. Caligan is a talented comics artist who found himself in a bigoted work environment run by people hostile toward anyone with conservative Christian views. Instead of tolerance, Caligan experienced public shaming, threats, a job loss, and colleagues turning their backs on him after he stated a man can not change his DNA based on wishes. Sane people everywhere were alarmed and dismayed that a person could lose his livelihood after one inconsequential exchange on social media. So...

Recently, I had the honor and privilege of reading “Equal Justice for Victims,” by Lester Jackson. It’s a great and fantastic book showing why capital punishment is urgently needed. I am a big fan of capital punishment; so this book is right up my alley. Something always has bothered me, as our legal system has become increasingly liberal: the lack of justice for victims of vicious criminals. Legalistic sympathies often lie more with those who have committed heinous crimes than the victims they have killed or damaged irreparably. This book addresses that issue in depth. Far too often, politician-judges decide...

It is a long way from the uneven streets of 1896 New York City to the well-heeled slopes of Park City, but TNT’s The Alienist will feel right at home at this year’s Sundance Film Festival among the top-notch films premiering over the next week. With a preview screening set for January 19 at the festival ahead of its January 22 premiere, the limited series starring Dakota Fanning, Daniel Brühl and Luke Evans based on Caleb Carr’s 1994 bestseller is a great yarn that has been deftly translated into a fine drama.

A school district in Wisconsin is mulling over whether to remove the classic Harper Lee novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” from its high school curriculum after a parental complaint. Parent Tujama Kameeta wants the Monona Grove School District in Monona, Wisconsin town to remove the novel due to the “48 racial slurs directed at African Americans in the book.”

Need a little help folks. A co author has joined the "Old Sergeant" team---Meet Gayle Rae! She has developed a new character and since the Old Sergeant was practically born on FR I wanted to give you first glimpse and also to get your reaction to her writing. Tell us what you think. And thank you.

He collaborated with co-founder Peter Hall on the influential 'The Wars of the Roses' in 1963 and directed 'Twelfth Night,' 'Much Ado About Nothing,' 'Love's Labour Lost' and others, working with Judi Dench, Donald Sinden, Patrick Stewart and other stalwart British actors. John Barton, co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, has died. He was 89. The company said on its website Thursday night that Barton had died earlier in the day.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ fac·to·tum fakˈtōdəm/ noun noun: factotum; plural noun: factotums an employee who does all kinds of work. "he was employed as the general factotum" synonyms: handyman, jack of all trades; More assistant, man Friday, gal/girl Friday; gofer; informalMr./Ms. Fix-It "back then, these wealthy college boys made sure their personal factotums were just a whistle away" Origin mid 16th century (originally in the phrases dominum (or magister ) factotum, translating roughly as ‘master of everything,’ and Johannes factotem ‘John do-it-all’ or ‘Jack of all trades’): from medieval Latin, from Latin fac! ‘do!’ (imperative of facere ) + totum ‘the whole...

The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January 1945, in huge, long columns, were an extraordinary mixture of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light field guns, and then a second echelon in horse-drawn carts. The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as great as that of their military equipment. There were freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there were idealistic, austere communists and members of the intelligentsia appalled by such behaviour. Beria and Stalin, back...

Ben Franklin is often quoted as having said, “Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.” But he was actually talking about wine. In a 1779 letter to French artist Francois Morellet, Franklin began by stating, “In vino veritas . . . Truth is in wine.” He then continued to wax lyrical: “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards. There it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” The new book, “Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin,” by...

The story On December 21, 1972, two members of a rugby team from Uruguay – who had been walking through the snow-capped Andes mountains in search of civilization – encountered a shepherd. They told him they had been in a plane crash and had been walking for ten days. They had no food and were weak. There were fourteen others still back on the plane. The shepherd rode on horseback for eight hours to contact police, who sent helicopters to find the crash site. It was over two months earlier, on October 13, 1972, when the chartered plane carrying the...

I got a hold of this far-left book, "The Emotional Politics of Racism". The author, as usual, using the same liberal talking points, attacking Aemrican middle class taxpayers for worrying about "welfare recipients", attacking "law and order as racist", etc. "Shaming the poor". "Shaming illegal immigrants". Is their goal really to keep people poor or to play political games? It's sickening and sad. http://www.cronistas.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/The-Emotional-Politics-of-RacismDr.Soc_.pdf

President Trump is taking heat from liberal media for — reportedly — referring to some countries as “s***holes” — but, when Obama publicly called Republican rival Mitt Romney a “bulls****er” in 2012, Rolling Stone sprang to his defense. In its “A Brief History of Presidential Profanity,” Rolling Stone began by mocking the outrage at Obama’s vulgarity:“When President Obama called Mitt Romney a "bulls****er" in the pages of Rolling Stone earlier this year, it set off a brief firestorm. Defenders of the Republican candidate were shocked — shocked! — that the man holding the highest office in the land would resort...

It seems that I am a "Bad Feminist." I can add that to the other things I've been accused of since 1972, such as climbing to fame up a pyramid of decapitated men's heads (a leftie journal), of being a dominatrix bent on the subjugation of men (a rightie one, complete with an illustration of me in leather boots and a whip) and of being an awful person who can annihilate – with her magic White Witch powers – anyone critical of her at Toronto dinner tables. I'm so scary! And now, it seems, I am conducting a War on...

"For Russians disillusioned with their initial experience of capitalism and democracy, alternative history offered a therapy in which the problems of today gave way to new images of past glory." In 2009, we wrote a book entitled Nationalist Imaginings of the Russian Past. Anatolii Fomenko and the Rise of Alternative History. Its focus was the explosion of 'alternative' history, a publishing phenomenon that emerged in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The leading light in this movement was, and remains, Anatolii Fomenko, a Sovietera mathematician who claimed that the standard historical chronology was hopelessly inaccurate and...

The Jason Katims drama is actually completely different from the book 'Drama High,' which served as inspiration for the high school theater series. NBC's Rise is not shying away from telling LGBTQ stories. Despite a wave of headlines suggesting otherwise since Rise creator Jason Katims appeared before press Jan. 9, the drama inspired by the book Drama High is telling its own story and is not "straight-washing" its lead character of Lou as has been suggested by multiple media outlets (many of whom were not present for the news conference). "The misinterpretation by some of what we've done with this...

Can you give me some suggestions for a good read (beside FreeRepublic)? I've always like Tom Clancy's books and Dean Koontz. I started using Kindle and thought I would ask you what you liked. Thanks for your help.

Many people use the phrases “sight-word” and “vocabulary word” interchangeably, when they are quite different. This confusion, I believe, serves a sinister purpose for our Education Establishment. A sight-word is a one-dimensional object. You know it visually, that’s all. When you see the graphic design, you are supposed to respond in an automatic or conditioned way. You say the sound represented by the design. The Education Establishment pretends this is “reading” but it’s not. On the other hand, a vocabulary word is a multi-dimensional object. Most importantly, you know it phonetically. You say the sounds represented by the letters. This...

In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides a deeply reported, bottom-up explanation of Russia's resurgence under Putin. By cleverly exploiting the memory of the Soviet victory over fascism in World War II, Putin's regime has made ordinary Russians feel that their country is great again. Shaun Walker provides new insight into contemporary Russia and its search for a new identity, telling the story through the country's troubled relationship with its Soviet past. Walker not only explains Vladimir Putin's goals and the government's official manipulations of history, but also focuses on ordinary Russians and their motivations. He charts how Putin raised...

By feeding his visions for the future to a well-regarded contemporary, the prolific inventor offered a peek into his brilliant mindThomas Edison’s Forgotten Sci-Fi Novel By feeding his visions for the future to a well-regarded contemporary, the prolific inventor offered a peek into his brilliant mind image: https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/SaK24N73uB4NZpv6UBgOTSg4_3M=/800x600/filters:no_upscale()/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/7e/68/7e68f98c-2edb-4b57-a412-f3a5202e1397/ggc17y.jpg Thomas Alva Edison thinking at his desk Thomas Edison’s ideas fed the story that would become In the Deep of Time. (RTRO / Alamy Stock Photo) By Greg Daugherty SMITHSONIAN.COM JANUARY 3, 2018 5373914744 When Thomas Edison died in 1931, he held more than 1,000 patents in the United States alone. He...