Free Republic

Tomorrow is our nation’s 232nd birthday. Two months ago Israel celebrated its 60th birthday. I feel that more honest arithmetic would have had the small beleaguered country actually celebrating its 3,320th birthday. What happened three millennia ago which brought the people of Israel into existence? Ancient Israel became a nation with an eternal destiny when it received its constitution, the Torah, from God on Mount Sinai and formally adopted it. “And (Moses) took the Book of the Covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said...

Cleavers to Lohans: The Downhill Slide of the American TV Family It used to be kids in TV families who caused the problems and the parents who solved them. In the brave new world of reality television, parents are the problem. June 2, 2008 - by Katherine Berry There was a time in American television when parents and children alike would gather in front of the TV to watch Leave it to Beaver or even The Cosby Show, programs that affirmed the importance of the family structure and reminded us that loving parents can guide their children through even the...

No denial. France of today is a magnificent nation. The almost perfect blend of shopping opportunities, beauty of architechture and landscape, nice freeways, marvelous food, well educated people and high-tech solutions are just about everywhere. Today, even a place like Paris or Monaco (not "de jure" French) has become poorer than Hamburg, Switzerland, Inner City London and Scandinavia, but Paris and Monaco still live up to their former reputation in many ways. Personally, I admire good old France. Just have a look at it: 25% study Sociology 25% are retired 25% are unemployed 25% are on strike Where does the...

LONDON: A Pakistan born senior bishop has warned that the decline of Christianity in Britain has paved the way for radical Islam to fill a moral vacuum, a comment that could create a row over the relationship between Islam and the West. The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, claimed the "social and sexual" revolution of the 1960s had led to a steep decline in the influence of Christianity over society. The bishop, who was born in Pakistan of Christian parents, said the decline of Christian values has created a "moral vacuum" which radical Islam is filling, the...

...For decades now, scholars have been writing about the invisibility of whiteness. To be white in America meant that you were a member of the default category that just isn't discussed. In 2000, journalists didn't incessantly mention that George W. Bush was seeking to become the 43rd white male president of the United States. No one even thinks in those terms. It's implied. It's one of the perks of dominance. We generally mention race when we speak of nonwhites. ...To mention whites as an interest group -- in the way we do minority groups -- hearkens back to segregation and...

Is America in Economic Decline?America in economic decline? Everyday, it seems there is a new economic statistic about a weakening US economy or a news report about the US$ dropping in value against other currencies. My answer is: NO. Maybe right now the dollar is at a low level and portions of the American economy could be better, but the overall economy is solid and the dollar weakness is temporary. If you read history, it seems to be a good rule to never underestimate the American people or our economy. In fact, i think some of the nation’s best economic...

House prices decline at record levels By Stephen Adams and Andrew Porter, Political Editor Last Updated: 2:08am BST 15/04/2008 House prices are experiencing their most widespread decline since records began because of the fallout from the credit crisis, a report released today shows. Halifax statistics showed house prices tumbled by 2.5 per cent from February to March, the biggest such fall since 1992 Almost four out of five chartered surveyors saw a fall in values in March, research by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has found. RICS disclosed that they were the worst figures since it started compiling such...

The number of people crossing into the United States at San Ysidro has fallen 21.4 percent from a peak three years ago, a precipitous drop that economists and others attribute to frustrating border waits, dwindling tourism and a struggling U.S. economy. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 10.3 million fewer people crossed at the San Ysidro point of entry, the busiest gateway in the country, than did so in 2004. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics also indicate that for all crossings between California and Mexico, the average drop-off was 14.2 percent, or 13 million people. The...

CINO Prep by: Malcolm A. Kline, March 07, 2008 Although Catholic schools look good when compared with their public counterparts, they don’t fare as well in contrast to the way they used to be. In the wake of Vatican II, “Radical reformers tore at every aspect of Catholic life, questioning time-honored practices and beliefs,” Phillip F. Lawler writes in The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture. “Catholic schools jettisoned their religious education programs; the old reliable Baltimore Catechism quickly became a collectors item.” “In parochial high schools, religion classes became freewheeling discussion sessions, with students encouraged to reflect...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sales of existing homes fell for the sixth straight month in January, dropping to the slowest sales pace on record. Median home prices were also down and many analysts predicted further price declines in the months ahead given high levels of unsold homes. The National Association of Realtors said Monday that sales of single-family homes and condominiums dropped by 0.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.89 million units. That was the slowest sales pace, going back to 1999, and was seen as evidence that the steepest slump in housing in a quarter-century...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2008 – U.S. troops found a diary belonging to an al Qaeda in Iraq leader that has Coalition forces believing the terrorist organization is “on its heels,” a senior military official in Baghdad said this morning. Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team on Nov. 3, 2007, captured a diary belonging to Abu Tariq, an al Qaeda emir in control of five battalions within two sectors, U.S. Air Force Col. Donald J. Bacon, a Multinational Force Iraq spokesman, told online journalists and “bloggers” during a conference call. The soldiers found the diary during...

Decline and Fall: Europe’s Slow Motion Suicide, by Bruce S. Thornton (Encounter Books, 300 pp., $21.95) It used to be said that when it came to worldviews, Americans were from Mars and Europeans were from Venus. But a new school of thought posits a different role for our continental counterparts. Europe, in this schema, is more like a dying star: a once-brilliant civilization whose best days lie behind it, that has lost the internal strength to endure, and that is headed toward oblivion. Bruce Thornton, a classics professor at California State University, is the latest to take up this thesis....

...Fifteen years ago, Japan ranked fourth among the world's countries in gross domestic product per capita. It now ranks 20th. In 1994, its share of the world's economy peaked at 18 percent; in 2006, the number was below 10 percent... ...Japan's slide relative to other major economies is not a tabloid tale of suddenly squandered riches. It is rather an insidious petering out of growth, productivity and innovation -- and of political will to stop the slippage. The slide has dovetailed with another quietly insidious crisis -- the petering out of the population. Japan has the world's highest proportion of...

For the first time in more than a century the standard of living in Britain is higher than in America, according to a new report. Analysts at the respected Oxford Economics consultancy say that increasing incomes, free healthcare and longer holidays make the average Briton better-off than his or her US counterpart. The GDP per head in the UK is expected to exceed that of the USA in 2008 They predict that gross domestic product (GDP) per head in the UK, an indicator of average incomes, will be £23,500 in 2008, compared with £23,250 in America, reflecting the strength of...

WASHINGTON - Crime dipped slightly for the first half of 2007, the FBI reported Monday, signaling a stop to a 2-year increase in violence nationwide. Violent crime — including murders, rapes and robberies — dropped by 1.8 percent between January and June last year, the FBI's preliminary data show. Property crimes also decreased, including a 7.4 percent drop in car thefts and arsons by nearly 10 percent. But violent crime appears to be rising, if slightly, in small cities and rural areas, the data show. The FBI data, compiled from local and state police departments around the nation, offer a...

If you’re looking for a two-word motto for hip-hop in 2007, you could do worse than that: “Keep grinding.” This was the year when the gleaming hip-hop machine — the one that minted a long string of big-name stars, from Snoop Dogg to OutKast — finally broke down, leaving rappers no alternative but to work harder, and for fewer rewards. Newcomers arrived with big singles and bigger hopes, only to fall off the charts after selling a few hundred thousand copies, if that. Hip-pop hybrids dominated the radio, but rappers themselves seemed like underground figures, for the first time in...

Sun-Times Planning Job Cuts As Budget Tightens Could Latest Round Of Cutbacks Lead To End Of Newspaper? CHICAGO (CBS) ― Morale among employees at the Chicago Sun-Times is taking another slip. Company e-mails on Friday notified workers of drastic budget cuts that will lead to lost jobs. As CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports, the Sun-Times was devastated by owners David Radler, sentenced Monday to two years in jail; and Conrad Black, who last week got six years for stealing millions. Some say the tailspin the paper is taking could be fatal. "One person I know in the newsroom...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States reduced greenhouse gas emissions in 2006 after four years of increases, the government said Wednesday ahead of a key United Nations meeting next week on climate change. The Department of Energy (DoE) said greenhouse gas emissions in the world's biggest polluter fell by 1.5 percent in 2006, the first decline since 2001. Measured against US economic growth of 2.9 percent last year, the department said greenhouse gas intensity fell by 4.2 percent, the largest yearly decline since 1990, its base year. President George W. Bush welcomed the DoE report as confirmation of his administration's...

SINGAPORE, Oct. 22 — Renewed concerns about the health of the American economy sent Asian stocks sharply lower today, and European stocks also registered declines in early trading. Following a dramatic decline by stock prices in the United States on Friday — the 20th anniversary of the 1987 “Black Monday” stock market crash — investors in Asia sold off stocks on worries that the United States mortgage crisis would crimp demand among American consumers for Asia’s exports. Hong Kong’s benchmark index of share prices fell by almost 3.3 percent, while in Japan the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average dropped by...

Here is my case for why a weaker dollar hurts America. First, a weaker dollar translates into a cut in the real spending power of American consumers--in effect, a reduction in real income. Second, a weaker dollar weakens the role of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. Why should investors and central banks around the world invest in US assets when their value is steadily declining? Third, the chances of a weaker dollar leading to a sharp reduction in America's trade deficit is highly unlikely since 40% of the current balance is due to oil imports that are...

It’s been a few weeks since September 12th, so if your early-pregnancy test colors positive, go claim your car, fridge or computer. Russia ’s imploding population has birthed schemes to nudge couples to conceive. September 12th was proclaimed the Day of Conception in the Ulyanovsk region of Russia . Pairs who “give birth to a patriot” nine months later on June 12th, Russia Day, win cash, cars, and other goodies. Prizes to procreate - how grim. One would think making babies would be reward enough. But Russia’s population dearth reflects negative 21st Century attitudes toward children. Between poverty, immorality, avarice...

In 1961, only one half of 1% of Canadians told census takers they were not attached to any religious body. The figure rose to 4.3 % in 1971 and 16.2% in 2001. After the Second World War, 67% of Canadians told Gallup they had been in a church or synagogue over the previous seven days. By 1990 this figure had fallen by nearly two thirds to 23%. Gallup says it's now less than 20%. In 1961, 90% of Quebecers said they had been to church in the last seven days, and the Catholic church had one priest for every 500-700...

The ethnic origins of General David Petraeus are apparently Dutch, which is a shame because there’s something sonorously classical about the family name of the commander of the US forces in Iraq. When you discover that his father was christened Sixtus, the fantasy really takes flight. Somewhere in the recesses of the brain, where memory mingles hazily with imagination, I fancy I can recall toiling through a schoolboy Latin textbook that documented the progress of one Petraeus Sixtus as he triumphantly extended the imperium romanum across some dusty plain in Asia Minor. The fantasy is not wholly inapt, of course....

For at least the last twenty years the cultural and political elites of the United States have championed the cause of multiculturalism by claiming that diversity was something that made all of us better. Little effort was ever made to define precisely just what was meant by diversity, difference or most crucially "better." Nor was there any significant research that provided empirical support for the claim that multiculturalism and diversity translated into better people, better communities, better organizations and businesses or a better country. But now a considerable amount of solid evidence about multiculturalism is in, and it suggests that...

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. I finally saw a column on the Internet that said what I told you in my May 11th column ("The Pluses of the Dollar Decline"). A lower dollar ain't all that bad!! And from no less than Bloomberg News!! Well, let's talk about that just a bit more. In an article dated July 23rd, Bloomberg finally became the most prominent member of the small club of analysts and financial writers that point out the most obvious fact out there: the dollar is in the rifle sights of just about every other country...

It's August. It's hot — very hot! It's supposed to be a quiet time in politics. But this year, because of the ridiculously advanced and compressed primary and caucus schedule next winter, the campaign season is already upon us - even though it's August. Some recent developments: 1) This Saturday's Iowa Straw Ballot: Rudy and McCain long ago dropped out of the event. Romney has spent millions to win it, including months of statewide TV ads. He is leading in the polls in Iowa and should also win this event, which is a small test of organizational skill. The key?...

It is 1am and there is a man in my tent. He is lying on his back waving his legs in the air. "Excuse me," I say. "But this is my tent." Instead of apologising, he giggles. He shows no sign of departing. Instead he replies: "Nice one, babe! Come on in and we'll have some fun together." Fun!? It is raining, I am covered in mud and my temper is about to snap like an over-stretched rubber band. ~~~snip~~~

America has been slowly but systematically and certainly redefined to the point that current generations struggle to understand what America is now. They can’t decide if it’s friend or foe, a beacon of light or a symbol of evil. America has lost its collective soul, but not by accident. America has been redefined. I’m not just talking about the overt re-writing of history, changing facts to accommodate the agenda or dropping out entire lessons from the past, so that we’ll be doomed to repeat the same mistakes again soon. I’m talking about the conscious agenda to “redefine” nearly everything we...

Decline and fall of the Washington hawks By Toby Harnden Last Updated: 1:20am BST 25/05/2007 The hawks have flown the nest. Across the Bush administration, the uncompromising intellectuals determined to use American power to revolutionise foreign affairs and confront dictators are departing, exhausted and disillusioned. Robert Joseph resigned quietly, reportedly because he could not accept the six-party deal with N Korea Now, the dovish career diplomats who viewed the hawks as unwelcome ideological interlopers have reasserted control and rule the roost. President George W Bush, many of the hawks fear, has been so undermined by the spectre of defeat in...

An article in The Wall Street Journal (April 12) breathlessly informs us of the latest fad on the Incredible Shrinking Continent -- "As Religious Strife Grows, Europe's Atheists Seize Pulpit: Islam's Rise Gives Boost To Militant Unbelievers; The Celebrity Hedonist," the headline teases. The "Celebrity Hedonist," isn't geriatric frat-boy Hugh Hefner, but Michel Onfray, a 48-year-old author dubbed "France's high-priest of atheism" in the Journal piece. Reporter Andrew Higgins describes the doyen of disbelief -- commander of the faith-less -- strutting onto the stage of Caen's 500-seat Alexis de Tocqueville auditorium, dressed in black from head to toe, to deliver...

Britain Was Once Great Britain By Dennis Prager Tuesday, April 10, 2007 It is painful to see the decline of Great Britain. Greatness in individuals is rare; in countries it is almost unique. And Great Britain was great. It used to be said that "The sun never sets on the British empire." That is how vast Britain's influence was. And that influence, on balance, was far more positive than negative. Ask the Indians -- or the Americans, for that matter. The British colonies learned about individual rights, parliamentary government, civil service and courts of justice, to name of few of...

The number of applications to Yale declined 9.7 percent from the class of 2010 to the class of 2011, while the number of minority applications declined 7 percent.

Date of the inversion David Warren, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Sunday, April 01, 2007 The question, at what precise moment did Western Civilization capsize, continues to interest me. (It is still floating, but upside down in the water.) I've brought it up before. Once, for instance, I called attention to a fine book by the historian John Lukacs, A Thread of Years, in which, through a series of anecdotes, one for each year from 1901 to 1969, he reviews the decline, fall and final extinction of "the idea of a gentleman." Note the terminal year. For long I've mentioned...

INVESTORS will be scrambling for safety this morning with another fall on the local share market expected after Wall Street ended a horror week with a 120 point drop on Friday. Equities are struggling for traction amid the global sell-down in stocks triggered by last Tuesday's plunge on the Shenzhen and Shanghai markets, pushing investors away from volatile investments and into cash and bonds. The March S&P/ASX 200 futures contracts is pointing to a 1 per cent fall on the local share index, and markets are expected to be volatile from the opening. The equity market volatility comes amid a...

BERLIN -- Germany's population fell for a fourth consecutive year in 2006 and recorded the biggest drop since the country's reunification in 1990, the government said Friday, days after launching financial incentives designed to stall falling birth rates. The number of births, meanwhile, was the lowest since World War II. At the end of 2006, the number of people living in Germany stood at an estimated 82.31 million, 130,000 below the total at the end of 2005, the Federal Statistics Office said. Germany's population grew in 2001 and 2002. But since then, a birth rate among the lowest in Europe...

Population peaked in Dec. 2004 at 128 mil. The Yomiuri Shimbun The nation's population peaked in December 2004 at 127.838 million, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said Wednesday, citing its revision of monthly population estimate reports. The revision was made based on the the national census of October 2005. The estimated population for October 2005 was 127.768 million, while in October 2004 it was 127.787 million, meaning the population shrank 19,000 in a year. The population includes foreigners who stay in Japan for three months or more. According to the ministry, the population rose and fell in 2004, peaking...

When the "corporate prayer" movement first started in 1996, few people in Holland took any notice. Why should they have done so? After all, Holland's manifest destiny was to become a fully secularized country, in which prayer was considered at best an irrational but harmless pastime. That was then. Cue forward to 2006, when prayer in the workplace is fast becoming a universally accepted phenomenon. More than 100 companies participate... ...The idea that secularization is the irreversible wave of the future is still the conventional wisdom in intellectual circles here. They would be bemused, to say the least, at a...

Link to story [Bloomberg is link only, per FR posting policy]

The sagging dollar fell Thursday to its lowest level against the pound in 14 years amid a rise in U.K. house prices and a seasonal rally in the British currency. The dollar also declined against the euro and yen. In morning trading in London, the pound hit $1.9562, up from $1.9462 late Wednesday in New York -- its strongest showing against the dollar since September 1992, before Britain was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. The pound last reached the $2 level on Sept. 8, 1992

No one, of course, wants to see the dollar in a free fall. And no question, it has retreated against some currencies. But worried? We aren’t. The dollar isn’t weak at all. Indeed, it’s trading 19% above its level in the mid-1990s, smack in the middle of the Internet boom. True, it’s come off the highs it set in early 2002, when foreign investors still spooked after 9/11 were desperate to invest in a safe haven with sound markets, the rule of law, low interest rates and fast economic growth. That pushed the buck up sharply. ...The other is that,...

<p>USA Today does not allow us to excerpt or post their articles. Usually, there is little of interest in this liberal rag, but this morning, they are reporting a tidbit of good news.</p> <p>According to the article, Medicaid spending is down 1.4 percent for the first nine months of the year -- 5.4 percent after adjusting for health care inflation. This is the first decrease since the program was created as part of LBJ's Great Society in 1965.</p>

AMERICA IS FINISHED as a great power. Not because it no longer possesses the resources, but because it has lost the will. That was brought home to me on both ends of a recent trip through London's Heathrow airport en route to Phoenix. * No great power permits its citizens to be discriminated against. Yet just keep your eyes open as you go through security at Heathrow (or any other international airport). Off goes your jacket. Off comes your wife's jacket, like yours, to be deposited in a heap in a plastic bin headed through a machine designed to detect...

Those who enjoy the mordant pessimism implicit with studying and understanding thermodynamics are well aware that all things born are doomed to die. It all goes to pieces; it sucks and then you die; all we are is dust in the wind. In the end it is entropy that reigns supreme. Perhaps that's the force of nature that Wallace Stevens crowned The Emperor of Ice Cream. Eventually, it all breaks down, regardless of the advertised Mean Time Between Failures. We can easily figure this stuff out for mechanical systems. You draw the fishbone, isolate the failure mode and build the...

Greenspan sounds optimistic note on housing: report By John Shinal, MarketWatch Last Update: 12:49 PM ET Oct 7, 2006 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that last week's rise in weekly mortgage applications could signal that the ``worst may well be over'' for the U.S. housing industry, according to a report of a speech Greenspan gave in Canada on Friday. Greenspan was referring to an Oc.t 4 report from the Mortgage Bankers Association which showed that mortgage applications rose a seasonally-adjusted 11.9% for the week ending Sept. 29, the largest increase in more than a...

Germans are getting used to a new kind of immigrant. In 1998, a pack of wolves crossed the shallow Neisse River on the Polish-German border. In the empty landscape of Eastern Saxony, speckled with abandoned strip mines and declining villages, the wolves found plenty of deer and rarely encountered humans. ..Wolves returning to the heart of Europe? A hundred years ago, a burgeoning, land-hungry population killed off the last of Germany's wolves. Today, it's the local humans whose numbers are under threat.. Home to 22 of the world's 25 lowest-birthrate countries, Europe will lose 41 million people by 2030 even...

A Los Angeles Times editor, hoping to give his journalists a break from reporting the often grim news in America's second-largest city, offered an unusual morale booster Monday: pony rides. Managing Editor Doug Frantz ..."I hope it boosted morale..." Like many major U.S. newspapers, the Times, forced to compete with news Web sites on the Internet, has seen circulation decline.

A once-great American political party has become a pesthole for socialist radicalism. The whining of its principals, people without princples, is now incessant. Take the so-called "outing" of a CIA employee, for example ...(snip) This fall, I think, all their rhetoric, all their lies, contrary to the pronouncements of their propaganda arm, the mainstream media, will come home to haunt them. All the claims of impending victory for them, including a retaking of the House, the Senate or both, may turn out to be so much whistling in the wind....(snip)

Wearing work boots and carrying flashlights on a spring day last year, a band of architects and developers picked their way through the dim interior of the American Brewery. They looked like archaeologists combing through an ancient ruin, which, in some ways, is exactly what the brewery is. Built in the 1800s, the American Brewery has stood empty these past 33 years, a ghostly reminder of a distant past when the city's manufacturing muscle was on display in working-class neighborhoods such as this one in East Baltimore. Rain drips from a hole in the roof and puddles on the floor....

June 5, 2006 Vol. 7 No. 23 Gun Sales Rise as Crime, Accident Rates Fall U.S. Statistics Source Last Year* Trend Firearm & Ammunition Sales U.S. Dept. of the Treasury Up 2.6% to $2.1 billion Up 27.7% since 1998 Firearms Produced for Retail Sale Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) 2,947,008 22.8 million total since 1998 Firearms Imported for Retail Sale U.S. Census Bureau 1,845,366 10.7 million total since 1998 Right to Carry Laws National Rifle Association (NRA) Passed in 2 more states Now in 40 states; 9 added since 1998 Firearm Crimes Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)...

Are future national park trips for America’s youth likely to be on-line virtual experiences rather than the real thing? A University of Illinois at Chicago ecologist says there may be cause for concern. Oliver Pergams, research assistant professor in biological sciences at UIC, reports in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Environmental Management that a rise in at-home entertainment activity, such as playing video games and surfing the Internet, corresponds with a decline, in per capita terms, in visits to U.S. national parks. Rising oil prices showed a strong association as well. The turnaround began in 1988 after a...