Free Republic

They must denounce exclusionary biases and embrace the vision. (Or else.) Do you believe in the American dream -- the idea that in this country, hardworking people of every race, color and creed can get ahead on their own merits? If so, that belief may soon bar you from getting a license to teach in Minnesota public schools -- at least if you plan to get your teaching degree at the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus. In a report compiled last summer, the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the U's College of Education and Human Development...

On September 12, 2001, Americans were nearly unanimous in their belief that terrorism was a very real and serious threat to our country. September 11, 2009, eight years later, after not only no new terrorist attacks on the United States, but some thwarted terrorist activities, we have grown complacent on terrorism, and we have adopted attitudes along the way that are so soft on terrorism that the likelihood of an attack inside the United States is as great today as it was in 2001. Since the eighth anniversary of 9-11 two months ago we may, in fact, have already experienced...

The truth is out. Illegal immigrants commit crimes at a much higher rate than Americans and legal immigrants. A new Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) report nails it. It proves the lies and smashes the myths of the “noble” illegal immigrant who only wants to “do the jobs Americans won’t do.” Using Freedom of Information Act requests to access otherwise embargoed government data on immigrant crime, the CIS establishes the fact that illegals commit “relatively high rates of crime.” The phony “academics” that’ve made careers of lying about the destructive impact of illegal aliens on our society are proved wrong....

On Wednesday, a Charlotte, NC man and woman -- illegally residing in the U.S. -- were charged in federal court with conspiracy to kidnap two children in Mecklenburg County, NC in 2009, according to reports obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. According to the indictment, Ruben Garcia-Rosario, 25, and Linda Gonzalez, 21, aided and abetted one another in the attempted kidnapping through the use of cellular telephones and a motor vehicle. Garcia-Rosario is also charged in three additional counts alleging possession of a firearm by...

It is amazing how a phrase can emerge seemingly out of nowhere to become the statement du jour -- used, overused and ultimately abused. Last year, there was "low-hanging fruit" everywhere. Today, everyone's being "thrown under the bus." Sometimes, it's just one word. "As a writer, you're always reaching for a more potent way to call somebody a jerk," Dan Harmon, the creator of the new NBC sitcom "Community" told The New York Times. In a surprisingly controversial front-page story Nov. 14, Times reporter Edward Wyatt tried to identify the zeitgeist by one hot "potent" word for jerk: "douche." In...

Nicole GelinasArguing the Economy A recent debate highlights the weaknesses of Obamanomics. 18 November 2009 “Obama’s economic policies are working effectively.” That was the motion that Intelligence Squared US put to its New York audience Monday night for a vote. One three-man team defended the president’s policies; another denounced them. Though the “anti” team ultimately lost the vote, it made the more compelling argument: the president’s economic-recovery policies are costly efforts to maintain a failed status quo, and the administration’s blueprint for financial-regulatory reform will only fund the same failed policies until that status quo collapses again. The pro-Obama...

With a tingle of course. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp7EOYRIVx0&feature=player_embedded

A group of young, Somali men posted a video of themselves attacking pedestrians and bicyclists in St. Paul. The suspects openly identify themselves in the video, and then attack unknowing victims. None of the victims have reported any of the attacks. St. Paul police is urging victims to step forward, if they recognize themselves in the video. The video, posted by YouTube user "madbi001," has since been removed from the website and the account has been closed. The Midtown Greenway Coalition reported an incident of assault on the Greenway on Sunday, Nov. 15. A bicyclist was riding along the Greenway...

Satchmo and the Jews Terry Teachout From issue: November 2009 In addition to being the greatest jazz musician of the 20th century, Louis Armstrong was also the most beloved. “I never met anybody that didn’t love him that ever saw him work or ever has encountered him, had any connection or any business with him,” said Bing Crosby. The secret of Armstrong’s charm lay in the straightforward openness of his character. Though his personality was more complex than his fans realized, his public and private sides were essentially identical. One of his friends described him as “down-to-earth, natural, completely...

Question Of the Month: What are practical ways to involve and teach your preschoolers during your family devotional times (ie: morning pray/read/sing) A Word of Warning First, let me say that I do not believe in ‘dumbing down’ family worship (or the worship of the church for that matter) for small children. We aim our family worship at Mom, Dad, and our older children (nineteen and sixteen), while recognizing the need to bring the younger children (five, two, one, and newborn) along. Our philosophy is simple; our younger children do not need to be entertained, they need to be taught....

United States Falls Down the Rabbit Hole Politics / US Politics Nov 16, 2009 - 03:19 AM By: LewRockwell Don Cooper weites: Will everyone please rise for the playing of the national anthem of the Unites States of America: One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother gives you don’t do anything at all. Go ask Alice, when she’s 10 feet tall…(White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane, 1969) As Morpheus said to Neo: “we live in an imaginary state.” A state in which people have been indoctrinated to such a degree that they are...

Far from taking over as the engine of growth from an exhausted West, China is making matters worse. Its "beggar-thy-neighbour" policies continue to play havoc with global trade and risk tipping the world into a second leg of the Great Recession. "The inherent problems of the international economic system have not been fully addressed," said China's president Hu Jintao. Indeed not. China is still exporting overcapacity to the rest of us on a grand scale, with deflationary consequences. While some fret about liquidity-driven inflation, Justin Lin, World Bank chief economist, said the greater danger is that record levels of idle...

I can't find an online news story on this or I would post it. Back in January, Australia awarded its first Victoria Cross - Australia and the Commonwealth of Nation's as a whole, highest award for valour in the face of the enemy - to Trooper Mark Donaldson of the Special Air Service. He was decorated by Her Excellency Quentin Bryce AC, Governor General of Australia, appointed by the Queen on the advice of Australia's Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and the first woman to hold the role as Australia's de facto Head of State as the Queen's representative. She...

Aaron Luke is only 7, but his father, Marcus Luke, is already coaching him on whom to marry when he grows up: a Native American. It's ironic advice from a man who married a white woman and still takes grief for it from relatives. But intermarriage has become so rampant, says Marcus Luke, that Natives are in danger of losing their culture. "It's a touchy issue. It's tough, really tough," says Luke, 38, who lives near the Umatilla Indian Reservation just outside Pendleton with his wife, Rachel, and their son. "Too much assimilation is what it comes down to. My...

How much do lefties dislike Glenn Beck? So much that the vitriol has bled over into low-rent, soon-to-be-obsolete publications like Playboy magazine. In the December 2009 issue of Playboy, Thomas Frank "takes down" the Fox News Channel host by analyzing the conservative movement and how Beck rose to prominence. Frank, with an obvious need to meet a high-word count in mind, attempts to dismantles Beck by attacking his Christmas book, "The Christmas Sweater" and his other books, his admiration for Thomas Paine, his fear the U.S. Constitution is being trampled upon and his activist efforts to curb this intrusion by...

The Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force just released a report which claims that due to tougher laws and a concerted effort by law enforcement, many illegal alien gangs are leaving Virginia for the safe havens of Maryland. The report said: "Many gang members from Northern Virginia are moving or driving to Prince George's and other Maryland counties, into the District of Columbia or further south and west into Virginia to avoid dealing with police departments that are unrelenting in their efforts to keep gangs under control.” The report also found that there are 5,000 gang members in Northern Va.,...

I’m supposed to be happy my room complaint is a growth experience for hotel staff? As readers may recall, a few weeks ago I was invited to testify at the House of Commons about the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission. While in Ottawa, I stayed at a certain local hostelry that shall be nameless (the Château Laurier). I don’t like to complain. Seriously. I do so much of it for a living that I resent giving it away for free in private. But my room was unsatisfactory in many basic respects, and, a few days after I drew them to the...

Veteran CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, whose populist views on the perils of immigration and his repeated questioning of President Barack Obama’s birthplace made him a controversial figure on a network that has traditionally eschewed opinion, announced Wednesday night that he is resigning. While Dobbs will continue his radio show, he gave no indication of whether he will stay in television—it’s been rumored that he could end up on Fox. Dobbs said on his show “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” that he’s now “considering a number of options and directions,” and that CNN president Jon Klein has released him from his contract, which...

One of the witnesses of last month's gang rape of a 15-year-old girl at her homecoming dance said that while he could have stopped the attack that he watched for 20 minutes he didn't feel accountable for what happened. I feel like I could have done something, but I don't feel like I have any responsibility for anything that happened," the unidentified 16-year-old witness told ABC's San Francisco affiliate KGO-TV. Two witnesses told the television station they didn't call police during the more than two-hour-long assault on the girl because they didn't want to be called a snitches. For the...

In The Long Emergency (2005, Atlantic Monthly Press), I said that we ought to expect the federal government to become increasingly impotent and ineffectual - that this would be a hallmark of the times. In fact, I said that any enterprise organized at the colossal scale would function poorly in years ahead, whether it was a government, a state university, a national chain retail company, or a giant midwestern farm. It is characteristic of the compressive contraction our society faces that giant hypercomplex systems will wobble and fail. We should expect this. It's tragic that the avatar of hopefulness himself,...

No one can deny his ratings, his influence, his tremendous book success, his ravenously loyal fans, and his impact - yet it's almost as though the rest of the Talk Radio Community doesn't know he exists. It seems like so many of the big names in talk are "pal-ing" around, referencing each others work, appearing on each others program, yet where is Dr. Savage? What could be causing this? It's not like they never mention him (just very rarely), yet when they do... I can almost sense a tone of "dissimal" - like he's not legitimate. Why? Is it just...

One reads and hears with increasing disbelief and anger that we don't know the motive or motives of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army major who fired over 100 shots at his fellow American soldiers in order to murder and maim as many as possible. Hasan ended up allegedly murdering 13 people, but government and Army spokesmen and the mainstream media claim they just can't figure out why he did this. They are, however, certain that it was not an act of terrorism. Sunday's New York Times "Week in Review" article about Nidal Hasan was titled "When Soldiers Snap." The gist...

Well, you’ve heard about Sham-Wow – here’s the Real Wow: Find God in Just 60 Days or we’ll return your meaningless existence with no obligation! My new Klavan on the Culture video with visuals once again by Justin Folk who actually personally decapitated Richard Dawkins to get that shot of his head floating in muck. Is that dedication or… what? Anyway, here’s the vid: Cannot embed here

12 American Soldiers are dead. But their deaths did not come at the hand of foreign fighters on some far-flung battlefield. They came on the American Homeland. But where is the outrage? Do we hear the clamor of the American “elites” from Hollywood or Washington or Wall Street? We hear nothing. We hear the deafening silence of those that still think 9/11 was some terrible hangover from the liberal idealism that they touted in the bars the night before.

MEAL

Proof of what can happen if a wife or girlfriend drags her husband or boyfriend along shopping This letter was actually sent by Tesco's Head Office to a customer in Oxford, UK : Dear Mrs. Murray, Whilst we would like to thank you for your valued custom and use of the Tesco Loyalty Card, the Manager of our store in Banbury is considering banning you and your family from shopping with us, unless your husband stops his antics. Below is a list of his actions over the past few months all verified by our surveillance cameras: 1. June 15: Took...

Ft. Hood "Malik Nadal Hasan in custody." bulldoze all mosques. ship every one of the pig molestors to yemen, somalia, or any other sharia law craphole!

Here it is!!!!!!!!!

China, finally, is ready to build a house for Mickey Mouse. Beijing has approved plans to build a Disney theme park in Shanghai, a major milestone in the more than decade-long effort by Walt Disney Co. to dramatically expand its reach into China. Disney and the Shanghai municipal government jointly submitted plans in January to build a $3.59-billion park to open as early as 2014. It would be the entertainment giant's fourth theme park outside the U.S., after Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong -- and the first in mainland China, the fastest-growing mass market in the world. The Chinese central...

For many months now, many of my posts have been, admittedly, overly lamenting the on “loss” of American culture. As a member of Generation X, perhaps I have often been very overly vitriolic in my opinion that life is just not as it once was in America. I recently watched my first few episodes of the series “Mad Men” on DVD. And the experience has been enlightening on my own view of American culture and cathartic of my own personal history. I must say, I am coming to grips with my own political views. And my watching a TV show...

Is there good without God? John Mark ReynoldsTheology 10.30.2009 Can people be good without God? How can people be good, in the moral and ethical sense, without being grounded in some sort of belief in a being which is greater than they are? Where do concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, come from if not from religion?Children often repeat ideas gained elsewhere as if they were their own profound insights. I remember in school “inventing” what I thought was a stunning new idea for propulsion only to be told that jet engines were, in fact, fairly common....

The Pope said this today upon receiving in audience Delia Cardenas Christie, the new ambassador of Panama to the Holy See. In his address he underlined the "irreplaceable elements that create a healthy social fabric and build a vigorous society." Specifically, he referred to the "defense of such primordial aspects as commitment to social justice, the struggle against corruption, the endeavor in favor of peace, the inviolability of the right to human life from the moment of conception to its natural death, as well as the safeguarding of the family based on marriage between a man and a woman."

A salute to our Kiwi cousins. Be proud of your heritage. I know this is tough these days. Have a good weekend, gents.

Police Probe Shot Fired at Home of CNN's Lou Dobbs Thursday , October 29, 2009 By Joshua Rhett Miller A gunshot was fired at the New Jersey home of CNN's Lou Dobbs after a series of threatening phone calls earlier this month, the host told listeners on his nationally syndicated radio show. Dobbs, a fervent proponent of U.S. border enforcement, told listeners of "The Lou Dobbs Show" on Monday that the incident is part of an ongoing assault against anyone who opposes amnesty or leniency toward illegal immigrants.

In a much publicized rant that sent chills up the legs of millions of liberals, oops, progressives, Janeane Garofalo emphatically exercised her opinion of the millions of 'tea-party' protestors: "This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism, straight up. Its is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks." Anyone who has read Thomas Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals, knows that Garofalo's statement is either demonstrably false, or just plain racist. Sowell, a fellow at The Hoover Institution and a prolific author (who happens to be black himself) actually documents the origins and evolution...