Free Republic

Many of our readers ask about U.S. flag rules and regulations. On June 22, 1942, Congress passed a joint resolution, later amended on December 22, 1942, that encompassed what has come to be known as the U.S. Flag Code. Here are highlights: ....The flag should be displayed on all days, especially on New Year’s Day, January 1 Inauguration Day, January 20....

Senior law enforcement official told The Daily Beast that Clinton looked pale when she arrived at the ceremony. She left the ceremony at about 9:30 a.m., according to pool reports. As she walked away from the ceremony, according to numerous law enforcement officials, she slumped and appeared to faint. Then, according to the sources, her detail put her into a waiting vehicle. “They threw her in like she was a side of beef,” a senior law enforcement official told The Daily Beast. Clinton reportedly went home to Chappaqua, New York, after leaving Chelsea's apartment. The incident prompted mass confusion this...

"Just as the Columbia County Fair was about to open, a top local Democratic official stated on Tuesday in the midst of a testy email exchange that the popular event “always attracts lowlife.” The wrangle began as a simple request from Ghent committee members Patti Matheney and Judy Rusk, urging the County Democrats to join others assisting the family of a local child who has been diagnosed with a very rare form of the disease. Matheney had been informed by the child’s parent at an August 29th meatball fundraiser at the Chatham firehouse that the County Republicans were planning to...

Vatican insiders today report what is an apparent "testing the water" move by the White House to suggest President Barack Obama as a possible replacement for retiring Pope Benedict XVI. Father Guido Sarducci, unofficial Vatican spokesman, confirmed that a "highly placed person" in the administration had floated the idea of naming Obama the Vicar of Christ on Earth when Pope Benedict steps down at the end of the month. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was quick to state that any talk of the President leaving his current office to assume the duties of the supreme pontiff was irresponsible. "We...

"Uphold the Constitution!" "What are the penalties?" "Time to form local militias."

At last night’s debate, Joe Biden said “we weren’t told” that the Benghazi consulate had requested additional security in the days leading up to the attack on the 9/11 anniversary. Today the White House is making sure everybody realizes that by “we,” Biden was referring only to the White House and not the administration as a whole. The ball of blame has been overhead smashed back to Hillary Clinton’s side of the court. “These kinds of issues are handled in the State Department by security officials,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said during Friday’s press briefing. Security matters “are decided...

ALBANY, NY — Sen. Roy McDonald will announce Thursday that he will not push forward with a third-party campaign, two people familiar with this campaign said. One source said McDonald, a two-term Republican incumbent who lost a GOP primary to Saratoga County Clerk Kathy Marchione, made his decision "for the good of the party." He has been largely silent since the Sept. 13 primary, as he weighed whether to push toward the November general election on the Independence Party line, which he secured over the summer. While she always maintained her platform was broader, Marchione's challenge to McDonald was shaped...

Hudson, NY - Kathy Marchione, who has been Saratoga County Clerk since 1997, decided to challenge state Sen. Roy McDonald in the Republican primary for the 43rd District seat in part due to his 2011 vote in favor of same sex marriage in the state. “I would not have voted for gay marriage,” Marchione said in a phone interview last week. “He actually told people he was voting no and then he voted yes. I won’t tell people something and do something else.” Marchione calls herself a “true conservative” and said her belief is that the definition of marriage is...

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 Hudson, NY Four Hudson teenagers allegedly made the jobs of Hudson Police easy after one posted a photo of the group stomping on a parked Hudson patrol car on Facebook. Tayron Alonzo Bryant, 19, of Route 9, Corey D. Wright, 19, of Town Hall Drive and Kevron T. Lee, 19 of State Street were arrested Tuesday and charged in relation to the alleged July 7 vandalism. A warrant is also out on a 16-year-old suspecting of being involved in the crime, who as of press time was not yet in police custody. According to police, one...

Hudson, NY The Bangladeshi national who killed a 73-year-old retired lunch lady in Hillsdale, N.Y., in November was sentenced to 20 years to life on Tuesday. During the sentencing hearing in Columbia County Court, Shafiqul Islam, 22, of Hudson, N.Y., told the family of the murder victim that if they could not forgive him he hoped God would. In May, Islam pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and other charges for the Nov. 20 strangulation killing of Lois Decker in her home in Hillsdale, which is located over the state line from Egremont. On Tuesday, several members of Decker’s family told...

General Motors is becoming China Motors. Forget the spin. The evidence is clear and convincing. Did U.S. taxpayers save GM for China? Listen to the candid comments of GM's CEO.

The environmental agenda has been infected by extremism—it's become an economic suicide pact. And we're here to challenge it.

<p>MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — Police in Georgia handcuffed a kindergartner after the girl threw a tantrum and the police chief defended the action.</p> <p>The girl's family demanded Tuesday that this central Georgia city change policy so that other children aren't treated the same way. They say the child was shaken up by being put in a cell at the police station.</p>

April 7, 1862 (Monday) Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee General Grant tried to sleep, first under a tree near his men and then in a cabin that he found already occupied with the wounded. Through the night, Union transports and reinforcements arrived at Pittsburg Landing, bringing 25,000 much-needed men. Grant was certain that his line could withstand a Confederate attack. In fact, he was so certain, that he wanted to go on the offensive. Meanwhile, General Beauregard, now the sole commander of the Confederate Army of Mississippi, slept in General Sherman’s tent, the former owner vacating it as the Rebels attacked the...

April 6, 1862 (Sunday) Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee. The Confederate Army of Mississippi was exhausted. After three treacherous days of marching through cold mud and rain, all 40,000 of them lay quiet, flat against the soaked ground waiting for dawn and the call to attack. As the dawn cast its first light slivers across the eastern horizon, Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard, first and second in command of the army, listened to the incipient tenors of battle developing cautiously in their front. Johnston sent word for a general advance and rode to lead his men. Beauregard remained to organize...

April 5, 1862 (Saturday) Yorktown, VA The previous day had been a good one for George Briton McClellan, commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. The Rebels to his front gave up ground quickly as he advanced two columns up the Virginia Peninsula. Though a division had been withheld from him a few days ago, he quickly recovered, taking less than two days to get his entire army of 66,700 on the road. As the dawn drove out the night, he must have felt a renewed optimism. He was certain that Confederate commander General John Magruder had left his...

So, I asked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in an interview the other night, what could keep the Democrats from retaking the House of Representatives in November? She pointed to a cup on the table between us. "When the Republican leadership tells its members, 'there is a blue cup on the table,' every Republican repeats, 'there is a blue cup on the table,'" she said. She sighed. "When I tell my fellow Democrats, 'there is a blue cup on the table,' one will say 'there is a blue cup on a round table.' Another will say, 'there is a blue...

Schenectady, NY - THE NEWS that Lord Monckton was to give his “Climate of Freedom” lecture at Union College in Schenectady, New York, had thrown the university’s environmentalists into a turmoil. The campus environmentalists set up a Facebook page announcing a counter-meeting of their own immediately following Monckton’s lecture. There is no debate about global warming, they announced. There is a consensus. The science is settled. Their meeting would be addressed by professors and PhDs, the “true” scientists, no less. Sparks, it seemed, were gonna fly. Traveling with Lord Monckton on the East Coast leg of his current whistle-stop tour...

Washington was replete with panic as word of the previous day’s destruction reached its doorstep. The ravaging and ruin wrought by the ironclad CSS Virginia (once the USS Merrimack) at Hampton Roads was utterly astonishing. After nightfall, as the USS Congress smoldered, fixing its thick black smoke to the Hampton Roads horizon, and as several other ships were run aground, General Wool at Fortress Monroe reported the travesty to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The note had to first travel to Baltimore before being telegraphed to Washington, leaving the citizens the entire night to be peacefully passed. But at 9:30am,...

(CBS/AP) The cruise ship captain under fire for abandoning his vessel while thousands of passengers scrambled for rescue has reportedly come up with an explanation for his flight - he accidentally tripped and fell into a lifeboat: Capt. Francesco Schettino stated: "I didn't even have a life jacket because I had given it to one of the passengers. I was trying to get people to get into the boats in an orderly fashion. Suddenly, since the ship was at a 60 to 70 degree angle, I tripped and I ended up in one of the boats. That's how I found...