Free Republic

How should evolution be taught in schools? This being America, judges will decide HALF of all Americans either don't know or don't believe that living creatures evolved. And now a Pennsylvania school board is trying to keep its pupils ignorant. It is the kind of story about America that makes secular Europeans chortle smugly before turning to the horoscope page. Yet it is more complex than it appears. In Harrisburg a trial began last week that many are comparing to the Scopes “monkey” trial of 1925, when a Tennessee teacher was prosecuted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Now...

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Remember the "Planet of the Apes" with its fascinating sci-fi role-reversal: Humanoids are the dumb beasts. Apes and their relatives are the intelligent beings: That's right, Apes, Gorillas, Orangutans and Chimpanzees are running the world! Warning: This fantasy is becoming reality. In the world of economics and investing, evolution is rapidly reversing itself. Humanoids are being overpowered. The Apes are rapidly pushing us back down the food chain. In this new sci-fi drama, the cast of characters is divided very simply: Humanoids are America's 95 million naïve and passive investors. They are enslaved to the...

MUNCIE, Ind. Flags aren't allowed to be flown any longer at a city-run campground at Muncie -- including the U-S flag. W-I-P-D-T-V in Muncie reports that police today passed out notices at Prairie Creek Reservoir campground saying that all flags must come down. The U-S flag wasn't included in the city's original ban when it was imposed earlier this year. The city had banned Confederate flags and all others except U-S and P-O-W flags. The Indiana Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit against Muncie Mayor Dan Canan over the ban. Friday, Canan broadened the ban to include all flags....

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- Alberta Martin, the last widow of a Civil War veteran, died Monday, ending an unlikely ascent from poor sharecropper's daughter to the belle of 21st century Confederate history buffs who paraded her across the South. She was 97.

The last known living widow of a Civil War veteran suffered a heart attack and is unable to talk, her caretaker said Thursday. Alberta Martin, 97, has been in Enterprise Medical Center since suffering the heart attack May 7. She can open her eyes but can't talk, said the caretaker, Ken Chancey. "The prognosis is not good," he said, "but Mrs. Martin is a fighter." Martin, known for years as the last Confederate widow, became the last Civil War widow when the last known widow of a Union soldier, Gertrude Janeway, died early last year. "She's the end of an...

Dear Shucks, The other night I was checking out the new Walmart.com service in search of music to download for 88 cent a song. I have a about three hundred CD's in my collection, maybe twenty of which are albums that I can actually let play through from beginning to end. So, naturally being able to scan an entire album and choose the songs I actually wanted was the main attraction to their site. The first name I did a search on was Johnny Van Zant. I was just curious about his solo efforts before he took over his late...

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Presidential candidate Wesley Clark thinks all of his fellow Democrats should take a stand against the Confederate flag. "The Confederate flag undermines the values that Americans care deeply about - equality, diversity and inclusion," Matt Bennett, the retired general's campaign spokesman, said Sunday. "The general strongly believes that every Democratic candidate needs to condemn the divisiveness represented by the Confederate flag." The statement came after comments by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, also a Democratic presidential hopeful, that he wanted "to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks." In a telephone interview...

BENTONVILLE — Two of the most readily recognizable images associated with Bentonville cannot be used together to promote the Main Street Bentonville organization, according to a report presented to the Main Street board Monday. Board member Tom McCoy has been working on developing a new logo for Main Street Bentonville to be used on letterhead and other promotional documents, but hit a wall when two items that say "Bentonville" to most people were determined to be unusable together: The Wal-Mart Visitors’ Center on the Square and the Confederate memorial statue that stands guard on the center of that Square. "Wal-Mart...

A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs can cut several lines of a speech that is to be delivered by a Confederate group leader at a military cemetery. The agency objected to plans of Patrick J. Griffin III to include statements protesting the government's decision to fly the Confederate flag at a St. Mary's County site only during an annual memorial service.

Two years ago the Boston Housing authority suggested that the Shamrock was “offensive.” In December 2001, the town of Kensington, Maryland decided to ban Santa Claus from their “Holiday Tree” lighting ceremony because he was “too Christian.” Following the outpouring of patriotic fervor following the September 11th terrorist attacks, Amherst, Massachusetts attempted to ban the display of American flags. Recently a high school principal in Pennsylvania equated a pro-life T-shirt to a swastika. When it was proposed that the photograph of three New York firemen raising the flag at the World Trade Center be used as the model for a...

Ferrum won't be a member of the Dixie Conference next year. No, Ferrum isn't changing leagues. The 40-year-old Dixie Conference is changing its name to avoid any negative connotations of the word "Dixie." "Primarily it's due to sensitivity to ethnic groups and just making sure that 'Dixie' name is not offensive to anyone," Ferrum athletic director Ted Kinder said. "Although it hasn't been widespread, there does seem to be a negative association with 'Dixie,' and if it's offensive to anyone, the conference has decided it's probably best to change the name. "It's a positive, proactive step for the conference." The...

<p>A congressman from Virginia is urging the National Park Service to investigate the nonprofit status of a company that plans to put a statue of former President Abraham Lincoln in Richmond, then sell replicas for $900.</p> <p>"Will these statuettes represent history or the perpetuation of a fraud on unsuspecting donors around the United States?" Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., Virginia Republican, asked in a Jan. 15 letter to Fran Mainella, director of the National Park Service. The public outcry started in December when the Richmond-based U.S. Historical Society announced its plans to put a life-size bronze statue of Lincoln and son Tad at the Richmond National Battlefield Park Civil War Visitor Center.</p>

<p>With a slow, deliberate gait, H.K. Edgerton walked along U.S. 25 toward Greenville on Wednesday wearing a Confederate soldier's uniform and resting a Confederate flag on his right shoulder.</p> <p>Edgerton, who is black, is marching from Asheville, N.C., to Austin, Texas, to raise awareness and funds for Sons of the Confederate Veterans and the Southern Legal Resource Center, which advocates Southern heritage.</p>

I've got a hunch that after all the media announcements about the new CBS "Real Beverly Hillbillies" reality TV show make their rounds, there will be an even larger round of interesting editorials following. I've made a webpage that will try to keep up. Bookmark this page and add a link to your websites & blogs, etc;The Real Beverly Hillbillies

<p>LEESVILLE - After intercession from Shreveporters, a Vernon Parish committee has reversed itself and will allow the names of Confederates to appear on a memorial for the parish's war veterans.</p> <p>The memorial park committee had initially refused to include the names of Confederate Civil War veterans to appear on the memorial.</p>

H.K. Edgerton is a puzzle to many people. He is a black man and a former NAACP branch president who lends his voice to the national Confederate flag movement. Edgerton puzzled and angered black parents at a Jan. 15 Lawrence County Board of Education meeting. That night, he said Northern Reconstructionists caused more post-Civil War harm to blacks than white Southerners did. He also asked if he could teach students a class on tolerance for Confederate views. Always animated, Edgerton is hard to ignore. But that's what a civil rights advocate in Asheville, N.C., said people have learned to do....

Dear President Bush, Could I ask you for a little favor? Since you're already going to the trouble of ensuring the right of self-determination for Palestinians, could you please let the South in on the same deal? Here are the things you said in Monday's speech that you're going to do for the Palestinians. I've provided some helpful little comments beside your remarks that will make clear what we Southerners would like: "The Palestinian parliament should have the full authority of a legislative body. Local officials and government ministers need authority of their own and the independence to govern effectively."...

Abraham Lincoln should without a doubt be named America’s greatest war criminal. His war of invasion not only killed over 600,000 innocent Americans but it was obvious from his earlier speeches that he had previously advocated the prevalent constitutional right of democratic, state by state secession. Lincoln’s War also effectively overthrew the existing decentralized, limited federal government that had existed and governed well in the US since established by America’s founding fathers. Lincoln bastardized a respected federal government with limited powers into a dictatorial, uncontrollable Washington federal empire. Because of Lincoln, the former American constitutional republic fell from a dream...

KNOXVILLE – The annual Confederate Memorial Day Service, which is held at the Confederate Cemetery off of Dandridge Avenue was interrupted this past weekend by a federal attorney, who demanded that the ceremony be stopped and summoned Knoxville police to break up the event. United States Department of Interior attorney John Austin, who is with the Knoxville solicitor’s field office, was reportedly driving by the ceremony when he stopped and demanded that it be ended. The Memorial Day ceremony, which featured past Tennessee commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and Covington, TN mayor Russell Bailey as guest speaker as...

Was the Emancipation Proclamation a political gimmick? "A devastating critique of America's most famous president." - Joseph Sobran, commentator and nationally syndicated columnist Though Abraham Lincoln will forever be remembered for freeing the slaves, Thomas DiLorenzo, author of The Real Lincoln, says that was never one of his chief political aims. What was? According to DiLorenzo, Lincoln devoted his entire political career to revolutionizing the American form of government from one that was very limited in scope and highly decentralized (as the Founders intended) to a highly centralized, activist state. This was all achieved during his administration, and the Civil...