Free Republic

There hasn't been much news about it in the U.S. but an American citizen has been arrested by Cuban authorities and has been placed in one of Cuba's most secure facilities; El Morro Castle, Havana. Cuba has yet to announce what charges they are leveling against the man but he was arrested after he gave out laptop computers, cellphones and other communication equipment to Cuba's beleaguered citizens. The Cuban government claims these items are against the law for its citizens to own because it "subverts" government authority. The American was a contractor for Development Alternatives, Inc. a company that has...

A month ago, Gen. Muhammad-Ali Aziz Jaafari, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, vowed to stop further antiregime demonstrations in Iran and break what he termed "this chain of conspiracies." But this week the "chain" appeared to be as strong as ever: Students across the nation defied the general and his political masters by organizing numerous demonstrations on and off campus. The various opposition groups that constitute the pro-democracy movement have already called for another series of demonstrations on Dec. 27, a holy day on the Muslim Shiite calendar. Meanwhile, the official calendar of the Islamic Republic includes 22 days...

The solution to the crisis with Iran was visible on December 7, Students Day in that country, which marks the anniversary of 1953 anti-American protests when Vice President Nixon visited after the coup that removed Mossadegh from power. The Iranian people continued their strategy of hijacking pro-regime holidays to express their opposition and demand democratic change. On the days when the regime is supposed to appear strongest, it instead appears weakest. Liberal Middle East expert Juan Cole marveled at how widespread the anti-government demonstrations were. He described them as being larger than the previous November 4 rallies and only being...

According to an Associated Press report, “Obama declared that the United States still considers Manuel Zelaya to be the president of Honduras and assailed the coup that forced him into exile as ‘not legal.’ ” So the question arises, why would Obama refer to Zelaya’s ouster as an “illegal coup?” As the AP reminds us, “The term ‘coup’ is defined as ‘a sudden, decisive exercise of power whereby the existing government is subverted without the consent of the people.’ When a country’s legally and democratically elected government ‘removes’ an individual, using the processes outlined in its Constitution, it is not...

As an avid follower of and writer on political and legal subjects for almost fifty years, I’ve gotten on many mailing lists from all parts of the political spectrum. This week I received the “2009 Scorecard on Campaign Reform” from an outfit named North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections. Sounds like God, flag, and Mom’s apple pie, doesn’t it? I had never heard of this organization before. But there is a standard process I use to smoke out the bias, if any, in any new organization I hear about. My knowledge was new; the organization is, apparently, ten years old....

The Obama administration messed up when it decided to back the aspiring Chavezian thug Zelaya in Honduras. Zelaya had attempted to illegaly change the constitution to remain in power. For this he was legally ousted from office. Everyone who spent more than five minutes looking into this topic understood that the people who ousted Zelaya, while not perfect, were certainly on the side of the angels on this one. Everyone, that is, except Obama and his State Department.

Public buildings will provide prayer rooms for Muslim prayers just as a local athletic building in New Jersey has done so for Muslim sports figures there.

Sometimes the smallest ideas can have the biggest impact. And so it may be in helping to push change in Iran. Almost without notice, a small initiative to help democratic reformers in Iran is moving through the U.S. Congress. The notion is disarmingly simple: With a small investment of money, the U.S. government can help Iranian citizens get around efforts by the Iranian regime to block their use of the Internet to communicate with each other and the outside world. The power of this idea became apparent amid the widespread anger in Iran over the country's disputed presidential election this...

Obama walks on eggshells in Shanghai Venkatesan Vembu / DNA It was a wet and windy Monday in Shanghai, but for Houston Wu it wasn’t the weather that rendered United States president Barack Obama’s ground-breaking townhall-style interaction with “China’s future leaders” a “colossal damp squib”. It was, he says, Obama’s “needless, excessive caution” about offending official Chinese sensitivities, which reduced him to “a mere shadow of his inspirational, lyrical self.” Everything about the meeting, says Wu, had a “surreal quality” to it: From the fact that the student audience was made up of handpicked Communist Youth League cadres, to their...

Control: The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a "climate emergency." As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the "trigger" placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee. As Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation points...

New democracies that embraced the free market are facing their deepest crisis after years of rapid growth

Today our leaders have no ethical grounding. If there are no witnesses, no one can prove who chopped down the cherry tree, why make life difficult? Plausible deniability, a well-crafted excuse and a good lawyer help one move beyond the occasional indiscretion. The word “truth” is passé, a quaint notion in which the proletariat finds comfort. “Truth” does not carry the nuance or flexibility one must use to speak ideology to power. The postmodern nihilism Harvard instills in our elites keeps them ethically limber. If there are no moral absolutes then one cannot suffer pangs of guilt when they are...

One aspect of life that is particularly galling to seniors is the evidence that our schools are not teaching our young people about our form of government and the reasons steeped in history that make it so precious. We are afraid that their ignorance will result in its loss - never to be recovered. Everyone should find a way to have a young person view this video. It is a short explanation of the different forms of governing, and why our Founding Fathers risked so much to create a republic - and not a democracy.

(NaturalNews) Given that the massive health care reform bill just passed by the House was one of the largest pieces of legislation in U.S. history, you might wonder why you didn't get to vote on it. When it comes to federal legislation, your vote doesn't count in America, didn't you know? You are dictated to by a small band of the political elite who may or may not represent your interests (or even the interests of your fellow citizens). Those people are called members of Congress. And as you'll read here, they are essentially obsolete. Society no longer has any...

Muslims take full advantage of America’s freedom of speech to broadcast the Revolution Muslim cultic line per their own street vendors’ open season.

Last week, I had the opportunity to address over forty members of the United States Congress with the goal to encourage their recognition of the importance of engaging the Iranian people and their ongoing struggle for human rights and democracy. I began my remarks by asking, "If the U.S. is to continue to assert engagement as the path forward in the case of Iran, whom precisely should the engagement be with?" The answer: the "Green Movement" of the Iranian people. If the U.S. supports the Iranian people in their struggle for democracy -- for human rights and liberties -- it...

Democracy vs. Terrorism - Congress, UN Vote On Goldstone Israel Gaza Report Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem ---- November 3, 2009 ..... There was never an easier vote to decide upon. Today the US House of Representatives is expected to vote on a resolution requesting US President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton “to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’.” What has become known as the UN Goldstone Report, a biased, one sided investigation that refers to the internationally recognized terror group Hamas as...

India shows the world how to stand firm with China. As President Obama prepares for his trip to Beijing next month, he'd be wise to cast an eye toward New Delhi, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is showing the rest of the world how to deal with Beijing when it gets into a bullying mood. At issue is the Dalai Lama's proposed trip next month to visit Tibetan Buddhist believers in Arunachal Pradesh, a province governed by India but claimed by China since the 1962 border war. Chinese spokesperson Ma Zhaoxu said last week the trip "further exposed the anti-China...

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thirty years ago, Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran from exile to found a totalitarian theocracy -- the likes of which we have not seen for hundreds of years, perhaps even since medieval Europe. Thirty years ago, Iranian militants took American embassy workers hostage. Thirty years ago was the last time I saw Iran. To this day, I have not been able to return. In 1979, the new Iranian clerical regime promised the Iranian people a republic. By definition, a "republic" is a state in which the supreme power...

Although democracy now comes closer than anything else to serving as a world religion, it has never lacked critics. For millennia those critics, such as Aristotle, had large followings among political thinkers and practicing politicians. Even as late as 1787, when a group of prominent men met in Philadelphia to compose the U.S. Constitution, democracy was viewed with trepidation, and the framers created an apparatus of government in which democracy was hemmed in on all sides, lest the country fall into the much-dreaded condition of “mob rule.” Nowadays, democracy’s defects are more likely to be seen as relatively benign ―...

Corporate CEO salaries have been a target of criticism for a long time, and that criticism increased during the mortgage banking collapse, when bank CEOs also became targeted for doing a lousy job. The heads of large companies do make huge salaries, as shown by this sample from the 2008 AFL-CIO CEO Pay Database: Robert A. Iger, The Walt Disney Company, $51 million; Lloyd C. Blankfein, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., $42.9 million; Mark V. Hurd, Hewlett-Packard Company, $34 million; and Rex W. Tillerson, Exxon-Mobil Corporation, $32 million. There are a few reasons for this criticism, including envy and not...

As a doctor and psychiatrist, I spent an awful lot of my professional life trying to change individuals in a direction that I thought appropriate and beneficial for them. I am not under any illusions about how far I succeeded. I think I succeeded very little. At the best, I implanted the seeds of change rather than caused change itself. It was often the case that my patients had adopted grossly self-destructive paths in life, that viewed dispassionately and with a minimum of common sense could lead to nothing but misery, despair and chaos. Indeed, my patients often acknowledged this...

Very few Americans understand our form of Government. All too often citizens think majority rules or that we live in a democracy. Some advocate no Government at all. But our Founding Fathers had something a little different in mind. Choosing to avoid the entrapments inherent in Monarchy's and Dictatorships, while protecting State's rights, they settled on a Republic.

After visiting Tegucigalpa last week and meeting with a cross section of leaders from Honduras's government, business community, and civil society, I can report there is no chaos there. There is, however, chaos to spare in the Obama administration's policy toward our poor and loyal allies in Honduras. In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya's ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.

The military junta of Burma is working hard at oppressing the country’s people and is following in North Korea’s footsteps in becoming a rogue state. At this time when the U.S. is most strategically and morally obligated to support the country’s democracy movement, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has begun engaging the junta, drawing the ire of today’s Martin Luther Kings and George Washingtons in Burma. Senator Webb became the first member of Congress to visit Burma on August 15, and granted the leader of the junta, General Than Shwe, his first visit from a senior American policy-maker. Webb also...

The Iran Human Rights Watch Documentation Center can be excused for thinking that this year might make them more indispensable than ever. After all, the Iranian mullahcracy rigged a presidential election and brutally suppressed widespread protests and demonstrations against the ruling elite. Their Basiji irregulars murdered and maimed people in the street. The State Department’s agency for documenting such human-rights abuses in that country would have to work overtime in the next several weeks just to catch up on all of the data they need to review from the last eleven weeks. Instead, they’re going to pack their bags and...

    It is clear that we are experiencing today a period of intense and critical struggle in the advancement of the culture of life in our nation. The administration of our federal government openly and aggressively follows a secularist agenda. While it may employ religious language and even invoke the name of God, in fact, it proposes programs and policies for our people without respect for God and His Law. In the words of the Servant of God Pope John Paul II, it proceeds "as if God did not exist" (Pope John Paul II, Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles...

As President Obama was addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations, just before Libya's dictator Moammar Kadhafi called for the demise of the Security Council and followed later by Ahmadinejad’s challenge of international law as we know it, my conclusion has become clear: Indeed the United Nations must reform, and significantly, and here is why: Qaddafi, whom many Arab leaders called the Fata alk Majnun (the crazy man) ranted for one hour and a half in front of the General Assembly accusing the organization of being unfair and intervening against some aggressors and not all perpetrators of human rights...

Change Comes to Japan by: Brittany Fortier, September 24, 2009 Change has come to Japan, according to a panel hosted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on September 2, 2009. On August 30, 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was elected to an overwhelming margin, giving them 308 out of 480 seats in the Japanese House of Representatives. The DPJ and its allies, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the People’s New Party (PNP) have a combined total of 318 out of 480 seats, giving them a solid two-thirds majority in the House. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) now...

Video at link explaining the different forms of government and why we are a Republic and not a Democracy.

[ed note: Found! Beneath a pile of New York Times junk bonds in a 43rd Street dumpster: first draft of Tom Friedman's latest OpEd tour de force]by Thomas L. FriedmanContinued

America and its allies in the past 20 years have assumed that the best way to stabilize the developing world is to export democracy. As a result, the ballot box has become a stand-in for substantive political reforms, resulting in chronic instability or – worse yet – elected autocracies.By Gerard DeGroot Anastasio Somoza, the notorious Nicaraguan dictator deposed in 1979, was no great believer in democracy. "I would like nothing better than to give Nicaraguans the same kind of freedom as that of the United States," he once remarked. "But, it is like what you do with a baby. First...

Madonna Rocks Israel With Messages Of Love, Peace, Freedom By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Tel Aviv, Israel ---- September 3, 2009 ..... It had become a magical Odyssey for both Madonna and the Israel public. A much awaited "show" (Madonna does not like to use the term concert) to take place in HaYarkon Park, Tel Aviv in September 2009. At first, the Madonna appearance in Israel was not scheduled in the "Sticky & Sweet" world tour. A global production which started in the summer of 2008 and according to Madonna production company Live Nation and her associates at Warner...

Health-care reform is said to be in trouble partly because of those raucous August town-hall meetings in which Democratic members of Congress were besieged by shouters opposed to change. But what if our media-created impression of the meetings is wrong? What if the highly publicized screamers represented only a fraction of public opinion? What if most of the town halls were populated by citizens who respectfully but firmly expressed a mixture of support, concern and doubt? There is an overwhelming case that the electronic media went out of their way to cover the noise and ignored the calmer (and from...

16-point manifesto for the new 'Lobbyist Nation of America' ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Democracy dead? Lobbyists ruling America? Lobbyists the new "Unseen Hand" of capitalism? Sadly yes.And here's why: Ask any neuroeconomist, behavioral-finance quant, investment psychologist or other practitioner of the mysterious "science of irrationality" and they'll tell you that Americans have two self-sabotaging mental biases that killed democracy from within: "Denial" and "Magical Thinking" make us easy targets. Our brains are being manipulated by clandestine forces beyond our control. We can't see them or resist. Yet we refuse to believe in this new Orwellian America. We prefer the...

If the Obama administration were a flotilla of ships, it might be sending out an SOS right about now. ObamaCare has hit the political equivalent of an iceberg. And last week the president’s international prestige was broadsided by the Scots, who set free the Lockerbie bomber without the least consideration of American concerns. Mr. Obama’s campaign promise of restoring common sense to budget management is sleeping with the fishes. This administration needs a win. Or more accurately, it can't bear another loss right now. Most especially it can't afford to be defeated by the government of a puny Central American...

[Excerpts] Decentralization enforces pragmatism. In a competitive economy markets test firms. Decentralization creates competition and so the possibility of failure. Without failure there is no pragmatism, for experiments fail more often than they succeed. Centralization presupposes the ability of the rational mind to solve problems. It denigrates or neglects experimentation, even as it uses the rhetoric of science as its rationale. Without trial and error there is no science and no reason. There is no such thing as a priori expertise. Progressivism claims to be a movement of experts, but its claims are self contradictory. Progressivism forestalls experimentation by centralizing...

In a battle of "democracy over bureaucracy", monks and residents on a tiny Welsh holy island are fighting to protect an ancient right to independence amid fears they could become part of Tenby. Under local government proposals Caldey Island, a religious retreat for more than 1,000 years and with an electorate of 28, will come under the seaside town's local council. But the islanders, which include the semi-trappist brothers of the Reformed Cistercian Order, say the move could cost them £55 a year each in council precept for no additional benefit. With only a few hundred yards of road,...

"We just can't afford it!" Not long ago, every American child heard that, at one time or another, in the home in which he or she was raised. "We just can't afford it!" It may have been a new car, or two weeks at the beach, or the new flat-panel TV screen. Every family knew there were times you had to do without. Every father and mother has had to disappoint their kids with those words. Why is it that what parents do many times a year politicians seem incapable of doing: saying no? How many times in the last...

EVERY AMERICAN MUST TAKE TEN SHORT MINUTES OUT OF THEIR TIME AND WATCH THIS VIDEO!!! It is imperative that all Americans understand the difference between the different forms of of government, why we are a Republic, and why we must fight to maintain it.

I frequently hear the claim, often by modern day politicians from both parties, that our nation is a democracy.

By Paul BoergerRepublican Congressman Wally Herger of northern California denounced president Obama’s health care plan at an Aug. 18, 2009 town hall meeting in Redding, Calif. Republican Congressman Wally Herger held a health care town hall meeting Aug. 18 at Simpson University in Redding, where a partisan crowd of over 2,000 people loudly cheered Herger’s position that a public option was “unacceptable.” -snip-“Our democracy has never been threatened as much as it is today,” Herger said to a loud standing ovation. -snip-After denouncing the Obama plan to wild cheering, Herger offered a few solutions of his own including opening...

Berkeley may take great pride as a champion of free speech and civil rights, but an unusual campaign has been under way - led by most of the city's top elected officials - to stop residents from signing a citizen's petition. Opposing a petition, in this case asking for a public vote on a controversial downtown development plan, might not be unusual in many cities. But in Berkeley, which promotes extensive citizen involvement in city affairs, the campaign has provoked some unusual arguments. "Sometimes democracy can go too far," Councilwoman Susan Wengraf, one of the six council members opposing the...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is trying to restore Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak as the U.S. ace-in-the-hole in its decades-long effort to forge an elusive peace among Israel and the Arabs. After a serious falling out over Bush administration pressure on human rights and democracy in Egypt, Mubarak is back in the U.S. capital for the first time in more than five years to meet with Obama on Tuesday. The relationship is far from healed, despite Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton having eased back on those touchy issues and Egypt showing greater willingness to help with the...

As the true plans of the Forces of Evil and their political puppets in Washington begin to become clear, the average American appears to finally be getting it. The recent spectacle of our betters in Congress being shouted at by the rabble over the proposed Obamacare bill seems to have lit a fire under the body politic. Democracy in action, they say -- as if that were a good thing. But even though I am adamantly opposed to the federal government's proposed takeover of my most intimate affairs, I'd like to state for the record that even though the rabble...

Venezuela’s Assault on Freedom by: Anthony Kang, August 10, 2009 The nomination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 1998 was directly attributable to his campaign of change and a “third way,” the central tenets of which were two major promises: to fight poverty and social exclusion, and to eliminate corruption. While tax revenues and total income in Venezuela during Chavez’s presidency have totaled roughly $700 billion, it is nowhere to be seen in terms of public works, health care and education programs. Moreover, during the tenure of Chavez, Venezuela’s national debt has increased from $22 billion to about $70 billion....

War is nevertheless an occurrence to which all nations are subject, democratic nations as well as others. Whatever taste they may have for peace, they must hold themselves in readiness to repel aggression, or, in other words, they must have an army. … In democratic armies all the soldiers may become officers, which makes the desire of promotion general and immeasurably extends the bounds of military ambition. The officer, on his part, sees nothing that naturally and necessarily stops him at one grade more than at another; and each grade has immense importance in his eyes because his rank in...

As Winston Churchill once put it, "Democracy is a terrible system, but it is the best we got!" In spite of its myriad flaws, no other political system has yet been devised that can even equal it. Look at the failure of every other recent "ism" from Mussolini's fascism in Italy, to Hitler's Nazism in Germany, to Russia's communism they have all miserably, desastrously failed! In fact, Russia itself is now fiercely capitalist.

A few weekends ago, I watched a movie with my son called “Tigger & Pooh and a Musical Too.” It’s a very cute show—my son loves Tigger, and Disney is still making family-friendly movies, so I was on board. The movie starts off with a song about friendship, where all of the residents of the Hundred Acre Wood are having a picnic organized by Rabbit. Rabbit did such a wonderful job organizing the picnic that he was immediately appointed mayor of the Hundred Acre Wood. Upon Rabbit’s inauguration, he breaks into song to tell the citizens what he will do...

(Probably Part I of II) From previous posts, such as this one, you can tell I am somewhat sympathetic towards Lee Myung Bak. He seems to be the wrong president at the wrong time, but anyways I just read this article and every single time I read something like this, the political situation in Korea boggles the mind (But on a side note, I'd also argue that South Korea is one of just two East Asian countries with democratic institutions - Taiwan being the other one. And Japan, well, we'll see). That is, how on earth can people care so...