Free Republic

Here’s a history lesson you’re unlikely to find in textbooks: California’s bear flag has links to white supremacy and pro-slavery. Here’s another: California entered the union as a “free” state, yet enslavement was widely condoned. As many as 1,500 enslaved African Americans lived in California in 1852. That completely contradicts what most of us learned in school.

Article I, section 5 of the United States Constitution provides that "Each House [of Congress] may determine the Rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member." Since 1789 the Senate has expelled only 15 members. Of that number, 14 were expelled during the Civil War for supporting the Confederacy. In several other cases, the Senate considered expulsion but either dropped those proceedings or failed to act before the member left office. In those cases, corruption was the primary cause of complaint. .... 15. The Committee on Ethics recommended that...

It was in this month, one hundred and fifty-seven years ago, that the Civil War ended. I have seen afficionados of both sides lament what happened, while they might argue over who was right, and what was lost. I am not an aficionado of the Lost Cause Theory. While some defenders of Dixie claim the issue was states’ rights, the chief underlying cause of the war was slavery. In his "Cornerstone Speech" of March 21, 1861, Confederate VP Alexander H. Stephens' stated bluntly that slavery was the very foundation of Southern society. Four states: Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina,...

The recently released book A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity, does what it says on the tin. Described as “a crucial account of the lived experiences of this hidden population”, its author Allyn Walker makes an argument for de-stigmatising adults who are sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children. Walker gives a resounding pat on the back to those Minor-Attracted People (MAPs) who choose to not rape children. They (because Walker identifies as transgender) said in one interview that it is important to say “MAP” out of respect for the terminology that “members of that group want...

Victims of abuse within France’s Catholic Church welcomed a historic turning point Tuesday after a new report estimated that 330,000 children in France were sexually abused over the past 70 years, providing the country’s first accounting of the worldwide phenomenon. The figure includes abuses committed by some 3,000 priests and an unknown number of other people involved in the church — wrongdoing that Catholic authorities covered up over decades in a “systemic manner,” according to the president of the commission that issued the report, Jean-Marc Sauvé.

TALBOT CO., Md. – After a long uphill battle, the Talbot Boys statue at the county’s courthouse will get a new home.The vote comes after the council met tonight with two resolutions up for discussion.[...] The resolution to move the statue passed with a vote of 3-2.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), continues to spread worldwide. To date, over 177.13 million cases have been reported, and over 3.8 million have lost their lives. Finding effective treatments that can mitigate severe disease remains a crucial area of scientific research. Drug repurposing for COVID-19 helps scientists identify potential drugs to treat COVID-19 without going through the rigorous process of formulation, clinical trials, and gaining regulatory body approval. Many of the drugs used for COVID-19 today were initially developed for other pathogens. Early-stage trials from scientists at the University of Pennsylvania,...

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s name has been removed from a historic warship in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor by the Living Classrooms Foundation. The foundation’s removal of Taney’s name from the ship serves as the latest in a series of gestures meant to acknowledge past wrongs and signal solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police. James Piper Bond, LCF president and CEO, said in a statement Wednesday that the organization was inspired to make the change, calling the court ruling “an abomination” and “great injustice”...

Statues and monuments related to the Confederacy have been vandalized and toppled in recent days across the country, and now a memorial has been destroyed in a church cemetery in Silver Spring, Maryland. The memorial marked the graves of 17 Confederate soldiers, many unidentified. It was spray painted earlier in the week and then toppled over Wednesday night by vandals at Grace Episcopal Church.

The scientist who cracked the 150-year-old mystery of the the sinking of the H.L. Hunley Confederate submarine has revealed the painstaking steps she took to demonstrate what killed its eight-man crew. Rachel Lance, a biomedical engineer and blast-injury specialist, describes her breakthrough in the forthcoming book In the Waves: My Quest to Solve The Mystery of A Civil War Submarine, due out April 7. The Hunley was the first combat submarine to sink an enemy warship, but as soon as it succeeded in its mission targeting the USS Housatonic in Charleston harbor in 1864, it mysteriously sank with all hands...

While many have began criticizing the dead former Confederate leader, in 1975 the Senate, which included freshman Democratic Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, unanimously approved the reinstatement of General Robert E. Lee’s citizenship to the U.S. ***** Lee died in 1870 without citizenship. Independent Virginia Sen. Harry F. Byrd spearheaded the push for reinstating Lee’s citizenship posthumously, and it passed through both chambers after the House, voting 407 to 10 in favor of the reinstatement on July 23, 1975.

I must apologize. I do not have the time to make individual apologies to each one of you who I have offended, hence the general post. I have learned a lot in the last several years. Some of the things I've learned: I USED TO vote the lesser of two evils. No longer. God is Sovereign in illumination, as He is in salvation. He doen't give the same light to everyone at the same time. If you're in the dark; blame God, or get wisdom. Lincoln was NOT a good president. One of the most evil, actually. The CSA were...

CNN hosted a town hall on Monday in Mississippi with presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) where she answered questions on a range of issues, including the Mississippi flag, which features in its field a Confederate symbol. “Mississippi’s the only state in the country that still has the Confederate battle emblem on the state flag — do you think Mississippi should adopt a new flag?” Jake Tapper, CNN anchor who moderated the town hall, asked Warren. “Warren replied with one word — ‘Yes’ — and was met with loud applause from the crowd,” CNN reported on its event....CNN also...

The first submarine to down an enemy ship was sunk itself after its crew failed to release an emergency weight to help it resurface. Crew aboard the Confederate vessel HL Hunley did not disconnect the 1,000lb keel blocks to help it rapidly resurface, resulting in the sub being trapped underwater and the men dying from lack of oxygen. Scientists who removed the corrosion, silt and shells from the boat found the levers all locked in their regular position, solving a mystery dating back to 1864. The blocks would typically keep the sub upright, but also could be released with three...

Officials say a potential threat has forced the closure of a central Michigan high school where students parked their pickup trucks adorned with Confederate flags outside for two days. Bay City Public Schools Superintendent Stephen Bigelow tells The Bay City Times he has canceled classes Thursday at Bay City Western High after being informed about rumors that people planned to confront students. WJRT-TV reports Bigelow said in a message to parents that the “unsubstantiated” rumors involved threats from outside the school district. Six trucks flying or painted with the Confederate battle flag parked outside of the school on Tuesday and...

SIERRA VISTA — It took a community effort to relocate the remains of soldiers — both union and confederate — to the Southern Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Sierra Vista. Starting in November 2006, a three-year effort together with the contributions of local civic groups and contractors helped create the “Historic Soldiers Section,” within the local state-run military cemetery. At the entrance to the one-acre, fenced section within the cemetery, are two small memorial tablets. To the north, a stone celebrating the service of union soldiers in the Grand Army of the Republic. To the south, a similarly-sized stone recognizing...

Earl J. Hess’s “Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy” is a thoughtful re-examination of a man who has become, unfortunately and unfairly, the South’s “chief whipping boy.”... Mr. Hess is a diligent old-school chronicler of battlefield history, producing a stream of studies of lesser-known battles, infantry tactics, and even small arms and field fortifications.... Mr. Hess does provide a fascinating glimpse of Bragg’s prewar friendship with another famously prickly officer, William Tecumseh Sherman.... Mr. Hess attributes Bragg’s execrable reputation to a number of factors: the benefit of historical hindsight; a host of scheming, incompetent subordinates; apocryphal stories...

At a Fort Pierce home owned by members of the Mateen family, Seddique Mateen — father of the Orlando massacre shooter Omar Mateen — said Omar's wife Noor Salman is "no longer here" and that she was no longer in the area. He would not say where she had gone.

A Confederate monument capped with a statue of Jefferson Davis will be removed from a spot near the University of Louisville campus where it has stood since 1895. The stone monument honoring Kentuckians who died for the Confederacy in the Civil War will be moved to another location, University President James Ramsey and Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said during a surprise announcement Friday.

For most Americans, today is the second day of work this week. But state employees in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia are just kicking off the work week: They had Monday off for Confederate Memorial Day. Last July, it seemed like the momentum against the Confederacy had turned definitively, the biggest reversal since July of 1863. After the massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina lowered the Confederate battle flag from the capitol grounds. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley ordered it removed in Montgomery, the former capital of the Confederacy, too. Cities and states began tearing down or quietly removing...