Free Republic

Congresswoman and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz challenges the nation to resolve tough issues for future generations.

I am building a list of books I can keep and/or recommend to others, especially those with kids. I need your help with books that are not the product of left leaning bias and/or were written in the past. I am a full time professional storyteller and public speaker and use such as source material for stories and to recommend to parents and adults when they ask for suggestions. The problem is that so many newer books portray our Founding Fathers and other American heroes poorly or have rewritten history to the point that I no longer recognize it. By...

Ye Olde Official Shakespearean Insult Kit Hello friends. Are you weary of giving voice to the same tired old invectives when boorish rubes intrude upon your serenity? Don't you wish you could inveigh your enemy with a genuinely classic put-down? Well, now you can. With this handy-dandy SHAKESPEAREAN INSULT KIT, you can have the spleen of The Bard at your disposal! The next time someone cuts you off in traffic, or a clerk behaves rudely, stun them with your lexicographical command of vituperation. Combine one selection from each of the four pull-down lists below, and impale your unsuspecting foe.

The last time I saw a first-run movie was in England, when we watched the final Harry Potter film. What this means is that I pay very little attention to news about upcoming movies. Since I’m not going to watch them, why pay attention?I was vaguely aware, though, that Hollywood was producing a Biblical epic about Noah, of Ark fame. Since it’s not a movie by a true believer — unlike The Passion of the Christ– I didn’t have high hopes for it, but I have to say that it apparently has succeeded in sinking below anybody’s lowest expectations.To understand...

NEW YORK – Reverend Al Sharpton’s new book, “The Rejected Stone: Al Sharpton and the Path to American Leadership” appears to be on an unshakable trajectory to success, according to its author. Since its release less than 30 days ago the revered civil rights leader’s long awaited memoir has already sold 18 copies. A spokesperson at Sharpton’s publisher, Simon and Schuster, said the company wasn’t the least bit surprised at the book’s sales numbers. Political activist and singer, Barbra Streisand, held a book release party for Sharpton at her Malibu estate over the weekend. Streisand gushed that Sharpton is “a...

A sixty-seven year old proud atheist friend of mine recently interjected the sweeping statement “all religion is irrational” into one of our conversations. I replied, not with a direct rebuttal but, instead, with the unexpected question, “who is Jesus Christ?” He replied, “I don’t know.” If I were to ask some of you why I pulled that question out of left field you might also reply with a bewildered “I don’t know.” So keep reading. Please. If you have never really pondered the question “who is Jesus Christ?” then you simply cannot consider yourself to be a committed intellectual –...

One of the things that makes science fiction so popular is that it means many things to many people. Some people will insist that they are not even reading science fiction when they read a Star Wars novel or a novel dealing with alternate history. That is what makes Sci-Fi so wonderful! It’s easy to love and difficult to define. What other genre has so many sub-genres? You have hard Sci-fi, often times written by people who actually were scientists. There’s Cyber Punk, adventurous Space Opera, Military Sci-Fi, Alternate History, Steam Punk, and even Space Westerns. Something for almost everybody!...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGDaOJAYHfo You might not know Kevin Kelley's name, but you know who Kevin Kelley is. You've read about him in Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, the New York Times, and on ESPN. If Grantland had existed in 2005 — when Kelley first implemented his bold new strategy at Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas — we undoubtedly would have toasted his budding cult celebrity status in our "Who's That Guy?" annals.Kelley is the coach who never punts and almost always onside kicks. And while he hasn't converted his high school success into a college gig like fellow prep sensations Gus Malzahn...

Our Lady Queen of Peace of Medjugorje’s December 2, 2013 Apparition and Message Given through Mirjana on the Day for Nonbelievers The following is the message Our Lady gave through Mirjana during her apparition: “Dear children, with a motherly love and a motherly patience I am looking at your ceaseless wandering and how lost you are. That is why I am with you. I desire to help you to first find and come to know yourself, so that, then, you would be able to recognize and to admit everything that does not permit you to get to know the love...

Rush Limbaugh's most recent book Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims is not political like his earlier endeavors. Rather, it is an attempt to shine a light on what at times appears to be the long lost history of America's founding—including the roles God and private private property played in that founding. In Rush Revere, Limbaugh takes on the role of a history teacher who is able to travel through time to various events during the Pilgrims' passage to the New World. To bring history to life for his students, he takes two of them—Tommy and a quiet but strong...

Not content with next-day delivery service through its Prime program, Amazon wants orders to land on people’s front porches in as little as half an hour. Just when you thought the technology industry couldn’t get any stranger, the latest idea from the retail giant is to offer an audacious delivery-by-drone service. …

The year’s notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. FICTION & POETRY THE ACCURSED. By Joyce Carol Oates. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Oates’s extravagantly horrifying, funny and prolix postmodern Gothic novel purports to be the definitive account of a curse that infected bucolic Princeton, N.J., in 1905 and 1906. ALL THAT IS. By James Salter. (Knopf, $26.95.) Salter’s first novel in more than 30 years, which follows the loves and losses of a World War II veteran, is an ambitious departure from his previous work and, at a stroke, demolishes any talk of...

When I saw "The Hunger Games," I was sure there was a strong anti-government message that seemed closely related to our current situation in the USA. The newest episode in the trilogy, "Catching Fire," sharpens that message even further. Jennifer Lawrence is headed for a position as one of those generation-defining actresses, much the way Katherine Hepburn, Raquel Welch, and Meryl Streep were. I'm not talking acting talent, although it's pretty clear Jenny can act. I'm talking about the actress who most quickly comes to mind when you talk of the early 21st century. She delivers another excellent performance as...

America Island is a tale of courage in the face of increasing government oppression. It follows a group of Working Wealthy Americans who recognize their liberties are being ripped away by a cabal of the Mega Wealthy and the Political Class. The Working Wealthy are American entrepreneurs and business people who work six and seven 10 and 12 hours days each week. They are worth a great deal but they work for every penny, but they are being slowly squeezed by the Mega wealthy who publicly demand higher taxes and unionization from their bought and paid for politicians. The Working...

When it comes to historical memory, the old saying that you can't choose your relatives is just plain wrong. Americans have chosen the Pilgrims as honorary ancestors, and we tend to see their story as inseparable from the story of our nation, "land of the Pilgrims' pride." We imagine these honorary founders as model immigrants, pacifists and pioneers in the democratic experiment. We have burdened them with values they wouldn't have recognized and shrouded their story with myth. The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. If you visit Plymouth today, you'll find a distinctive rock about the size of your living-room...

With great sadness and tribute I write to tell of the passing of Earl “One Lung” McClung, one of the original Band of Brothers. Earl died at his home in Pueblo West, Colorado, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 27, 2013. He was 90. - See more at: http://www.marcusbrotherton.com/honor-earl-mcclung-1923-2013/#sthash.RgXSnhr3.dpuf

Aside from being an essayist, novelist and screenwriter, Gore Vidal was a grade-one gossip, his published writings and private conversation stuffed with rumour and conspiratorial hints. But now, less than 18 months after Vidal passed into history, he is himself subject to the most reputation-destructive scuttlebutt there is: the suggestion that he may have been a paedophile. In connection with a new book about Vidal, his half-sister and a nephew have hinted that he may have had a secret passion for underage boys. And Vidal more or less admitted it himself, writing in his memoir Palimpsest that he was "attracted...

I went to a lecture recently presented by the Smithsonian. The subject of the talk was Jack Kerouac’s Francophone roots, and I was expecting lots of intellectual wanna-be Beatniks. Instead I was surrounded by a roomful of typical old lib academics. It felt as though I were living inside of NPR. You know the type: the women are skeletal from not eating meat and from biking too much and have salt and pepper hair which they cut when they decided they hated men and also decided to look like one. They prefer the unkempt, “natural” look to actually bothering to...

Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but the day also marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of famed authors C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley. Test your knowledge of these three historical giants with this quiz.

My new book, GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones, has just been published. It has gotten good reviews: “As an introduction to GPS, its history, uses, issues and concerns GPS Declassified can’t be beat.” http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/review/gps-declassified-smartbombs-smartphones “GPS Declassified is a carefully researched, well written, fast-paced, and thoroughly enjoyable book. It offers an excellent mix of science, technology, history and culture. Kudos to co-authors Richard Easton and Eric Frazier for their outstanding contribution to space history. This book is highly recommended.” http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2393/1 You can listen to the audio of our Space Show interview and review primary source materials at our website...

I recommend to all of you who are actively thinking about Obamacare the following Book. Written in 1974 by Alan E. Nourse is "The Blade Runner". http://www.amazon.com/Bladerunner-Prologue-Books-Alan-Nourse-ebook/dp/B00GTUYOV6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385295923&sr=1-1&keywords=bladerunner This book is was considered Juvenile Science Fiction and is nothing like the movie of the same name. It's about a future America where the Hospitals and Doctors ALL work for Uncle Sam and ALL healthcare is "free". Well it's "free" for a certain Price, once a person reaches a certain age, six or seven I think it was, if they got sick the price of treatment was sterilization. It was automatic, no...

I have a funny sort of personal connection to C.S. Lewis, who died 50 years ago today. It’s through my mother: she was born in London and is just old enough to remember the Blitz, and like the Pevensie children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, she was sent to the countryside to escape the bombing. Unlike them ...

Few can have failed to notice that this day marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis (1898-1963). Throughout the summer, Lewis has featured prominently in literary festivals across the length and breadth of England. His home church - Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry, Oxford - arranged a modest celebration of the anniversary in September, and found themselves swamped by the public interest. ...

Costco has apparently had a “Come-to-Jesus” epiphany. The national warehouse chain has apologized for labeling Bibles in a Simi Valley, Calif. store as fiction, calling it an error that they are working quickly to correct. “We deeply regret the mislabeling of the Bible and meant no offense to anyone,” the company wrote in an email received by several customers. “The buyer has let us know that this was an error and the books are being pulled off the shelves to be re-marked.”

What do the Bible, "The Hunger Games" and "Fifty Shades of Grey" have in common? All three are works of fiction, according to the booksellers at Costco. Pastor Caleb Kaltenbach made that shocking discovery last Friday as he was shopping for a present for his wife at a Costco in Simi Valley, Calif. “All the Bibles were labeled as fiction,” the pastor told me. “It seemed bizarre to me.” Kaltenbach is the lead pastor at Discovery Church, a non-denominational Christian congregation in southern California. He thought there must be some sort of mistake so he scoured the shelf for other...

What do the Bible, "The Hunger Games" and "Fifty Shades of Grey" have in common? All three are works of fiction, according to the booksellers at Costco. Pastor Caleb Kaltenbach made that shocking discovery last Friday as he was shopping for a present for his wife at a Costco in Simi Valley, Calif. “All the Bibles were labeled as fiction,” the pastor told me. “It seemed bizarre to me.” Kaltenbach is the lead pastor at Discovery Church, a non-denominational Christian congregation in southern California. He thought there must be some sort of mistake so he scoured the shelf for other...

Synopsis: An Amazon Original series: They work in the Senate. They live in the house - Alpha House. Created by Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury, Tanner '88).

British Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing has died aged 94. A statement from her publisher, Harper Collins, said she "passed away peacefully at her London home in the early hours of this morning". Her best-known works include The Golden Notebook, Memoirs of a Survivor and The Summer Before the Dark.

The Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department in Dubai has inaugurated the 4th session of Holy Qur’an recitation and memorisation contest at the licensed Holy Qur’an memorisation centres. Adel Juma Matar, Head of Islamic Institutions Department, stated that the contest is part of the department’s strategic plan, which aims to disseminate Islamic culture, raise the religious awareness, and take care of the Holy Qur’an and its sciences, in addition to enhancing the level of Holy Qur’an memorisation centres in Dubai. The contest is judged by specialised judges of the Holy Qur’an. Participation in the contest is obligatory for all centres...

Seven score and ten years ago, the forefathers of this media institution brought forth to its audience a judgment so flawed, so tainted by hubris, so lacking in the perspective history would bring, that it cannot remain unaddressed in our archives. We write today in reconsideration of “The Gettysburg Address,” delivered by then-President Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the greatest conflict seen on American soil. Our predecessors, perhaps under the influence of partisanship, or of strong drink, as was common in the profession at the time, called President Lincoln’s words “silly remarks,” deserving “a veil of oblivion,” apparently believing...

How evolutionary or Darwinian was Hitler’s Social Darwinism? Such a question has now been answered by Dr. Richard Weikart’s excellent book entitled, “Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress." Even though the answer to this question should have been easily settled long ago, too many scholars and academics committed to Darwinian evolution have obfuscated the clear historical facts on this disturbing truth ...

In 1870, Ma, Pa, Mary, and Laura Ingalls left their home in southeast Kansas, where they had lived for about a year, and headed back to Wisconsin. Their Kansas home was later the basis for Laura's book The Little House on the Prairie. That same year, a group of new families moved into the area. They were Spiritualists, a religion that was totally foreign to the homesteaders already in the new state. Two of the families moved away within a year. The others kept to themselves, with the exception of the Benders. John Bender, Sr., and his family settled in...

The word Hero is often used casually in modern American Society. Occasionally, however, someone comes along who truly fulfills the meaning of the word.~snip~ Joan of Arc, I am sure, never planned to be the heroine* of the 100 years war. And Emily Miller, on New Year’s Day, 2010, scared and angry, surely never gave thought to the notion that she would be soon hailed as a heroine of the gun rights and self defense community.

Who is John Galt?: A Navigational Guide to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is now available at Amazon. Click here for a link to the book. This book is the result of our first FReeper Book Club. In recent press articles and among the general public, there is a sense that Ayn Rand’s monumental Atlas Shrugged is a prophetic work, accurately predicting the Great Recession and the path on which America’s economy and society are set. But Atlas Shrugged is a difficult book to read. Many are daunted by its extreme length, Rand’s prose style, interminable speeches where the action stops...

For anyone interested in the politics of left and right -- and in political journalism as it is practiced at the highest level -- George Orwell's works are indispensable. This week, in the year marking the 110th anniversary of his birth, we present a personal list of his five greatest essays. The winner and still champ, Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" stands as the finest deconstruction of slovenly writing since Mark Twain's "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." Orwell's essay, published in 1946 in Cyril Connolly's literary review Horizon, is not as sarcastic or funny as Twain's, but unlike Twain, Orwell...

Our stories are changing. Wonder and Beauty slowly eke from our world, unnoticed and unmourned. I used to think it was a natural cessation from the Neverland of youth; a necessary immigration from the immature trappings of youthful imagination to the logical constraints of a moribund maturity. However I've found that this is not just my perspective, draining of imagination and wonder as I age. Our stories, our heroes are changing. Our children seem less prone to idealism, more immune to wonder; and this points to a tidal shift in the culture itself. If you watch or read any contemporary...

OK, after having searched the internets in vain for a balanced (i.e. not history rewritten by America-hating libtards) reading list on modern U.S. Military history, perhaps you can help. If you can personally recommend books covering the following, I'd greatly appreciate it: World War II Korean War Vietnam War Operation Desert Storm Operation Iraqi Freedom Operation Enduring Freedom others...?

The top editor of Guns & Ammo became the second employee of the venerable firearms magazine to lose his job after a column advocating gun control backfired, prompting rifle-toting readers to unload on the publication. In a statement posted Wednesday on the InterMedia Outdoors-owned magazine’s homepage, Jim Bequette apologized to “each and every reader” of the magazine for Dick Metcalf’s column that appeared in its December issue, which generated “unprecedented” controversy and left readers “hopping mad” in regards to the magazine’s commitment to the Second Amendment. ********** In his column entitled “Let’s Talk Limits: Do certain firearm regulations really constitute...

The results are finally in regarding the death of Nobel-Prize winning poet Pablo Neruda — he was not murdered. Friends of the poet launched an investigation based on the testimony of his former driver Manuel Arayas in 2011. According to Arayas, Neruda had been poisoned in September 1973 by agents of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship and the official documents, which claimed he died from cancer, were hiding the truth. Judge Mario Carroza picked up the case, ordering the exhumation of Pablo Neruda in April of this year. After a long list of tests and forensic procedures, including those conducted...

Kamala Khan isn’t your average New Jersey teenager battling a cultural identity crisis. She has superpowers. And she’s here to smash the stereotype of young Muslim-American women.Marvel has a comic book superhero named Kamala Khan, a Muslim teen from New Jersey. This idea is refreshing. It’s important. It reminds me of the late ‘60s film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. That was a revolutionary story about interracial marriage in America at a time when it was taboo. Like that film, Kamala will shatter taboos, too. Ms. Marvel (Kamala’s alter ego) will open the eyes of a new generation of comic...

Man, do I love that fun infomercial for three hours every day. The one for Rush's book.

IF YOU speak two or more languages fluently, you may be familiar with the feeling that you act differently in them. I tend to be more excitable in Spanish and ruder in Hebrew, for instance, than I am in English. Now a study by Shai Danziger of Ben-Gurion University and Robert Ward of Bangor University, published in Psychological Science, has confirmed that the language you're speaking can affect the way you think.

Last week, I read that a Texas teenager made $300,000 the old-fashioned way: Maya Van Wagenen wrote a memoir about her experiences following the advice from “Betty Cornell’s Teen-Age Popularity Guide” — an etiquette book published in 1958 — and then got a movie deal. Cornell’s book details all the essentials a girl needs to know to be popular in the 1950s — from diet to clothing to being a proper hostess. I was intrigued. Would a guide to becoming a popular teenager in mid-century America still be relevant to someone like myself — a 14-year-old high school freshman living...

James L. Swanson’s Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer was a New York Times bestseller, won the Edgar Award, and became mandatory reading for official Washington. Its fans included President George W. Bush, Speaker of the House John Boehner, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Now, for the 50th anniversary of the death of President John F. Kennedy, Swanson returns with End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, a gripping account of the murder and its aftermath. JFK’s trip to Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 set in motion a chain of...

I realize that delving into the world of assassination research and a belief in a conspiracy will lead some to brand me as an extremist or a nut, but the facts I have uncovered are so compelling that I must make the case that Lyndon Baines Johnson had John Fitzgerald Kennedy murdered in Dallas to become president himself and to avert the precipitous political and legal fall that was about to beset him. Snip When Lodge was in his eighties, he served vigorously as the chairman of Ronald Reagan’s campaign for President in Connecticut, a post I had recruited him...

Nick Cardy, a revered and influential comic book artist known best for his DC Comics work in the '50s, '60s and '70s, passed away Sunday at age 93, according to multiple industry reports... At DC Comics, Cardy worked on the first 43 issues of the original "Teen Titans" series as either a penciler or inker (or both), in a run lasting from 1966 to 1973. He also drew the first 39 issues of the initial "Aquaman" solo series, along with extensive cover illustrations on DC books including "Action Comics," "Batman" and "Justice League of America." Cardy wrote two issues of...

Never heard of Poyais? That's because you weren't living in Great Britain in the early 1820s, when newspaper advertisements, promotional brochures and the ubiquitous street singers broadcast the country's limitless opportunities to potential investors. There was a snake in the garden, though, writes David Sinclair in "The Land That Never Was," a striking and colorful history of Poyais. The glitch: Poyais was a fiction, the brainchild-turned-hell-spawn of Gregor MacGregor -- fantasist, confidence trickster, dandy and bon vivant with a taste for titles and palms itching for lucre. Mostly, MacGregor sat on his hands. When roused, he made tactical and logistical...

Historian Tony Horwitz tries to separate the truth from the myths that have been built up about the Jamestown “princess” Pocahontas is the most myth-encrusted figure in early America, a romantic “princess” who saves John Smith and the struggling Jamestown colony. But this fairy tale, familiar to millions today from storybook and film, bears little resemblance to the extraordinary young woman who crossed cultures and oceans in her brief and ultimately tragic life. The startling artwork (above), the oldest in the National Portrait Gallery collection, is the only image of Pocahontas taken from life. Made during her visit to London...

He will discuss his new book, Things That Matter, which is a collection of his writings. (click link above for webcast)