Free Republic

In an ironic twist, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals also treats its employees like so much meat. And it doesn’t even pay them for the privilege. A recent story in the Style section of The Washington Post described life for a PETA intern in the nation’s capital. Sometimes it merely involves dressing up in a chicken suit -- perhaps one left over from a presidential campaign (“I’ll debate my opponent anywhere, unless he’s chicken…”). But life also involves crass displays of exhibitionism, such as the day a pair of “PETA beauties” shared an outdoor shower on Pennsylvania Ave....

The plan to attack the Fort Dix Army Base in New Jersey this year, they wanted to "kill as many soldiers as possible!" Five Muslim immigrants accused of scheming to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix were convicted of conspiracy Monday in a case that tested the FBI's post-Sept. 11 strategy of infiltrating and breaking up terrorist plots in their earliest stages. The men could get life in prison when they are sentenced in April. The five, who lived in and around Philadelphia for years, were found guilty of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel. But they were acquitted of...

Neither Barack Obama nor Nancy Pelosi can be as clueless as they want us to think they are. The White House said the president was so uninterested in the results on election night that he watched a documentary on the '08 presidential campaign, no doubt eager to see who won. Mzz Pelosi, as oblivious of the scoreboard as a ditzy cheerleader unaware of which team has the ball, insists her side won the night. Mr. Obama continues to campaign for the job the rest of us thought we gave him a year ago. The day after the Republicans sent wake-up...

Any judgment of Barack Obama’s presidency based on a handful of off-year races is overstating the case. Trying to decipher the real meaning is something like reading tea leaves, and just as reliable. Still, they are clues and warnings, at least, for the national parties. My reading of the leaves: independents flexed their muscle and gave Obama a warning, passing health care reform is going to be a little harder but still in the cards, and New York voters deepened the Republican identity crisis. You could say this was in a part the opening blow of Obama vs. Sarah Palin...

How does one take a president seriously who preaches about a new era of transparency while sealing his complete birth certificate, college records, and passports? Why talk about transparency while hiding bare minimum information that past politicians have readily turned over? That’s not a new era of transparency; it’s a new era of secrecy. Why talk about transparency while rushing through thousand of pages of unread and un-analyzed law that will allow government control of health decisions? A 72-hour Internet posting is ridiculously insufficient in context of the mammoth power grab the federal government wishes to pull off. A person’s...

President Obama says "we cannot fully know" what led Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to kill 13 people and wound 38 others at Fort Hood, Texas Thursday. Hasan reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before the killings, wrote Internet postings justifying Muslim suicide bombings, considered U.S. forces the enemy, and opposed American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars on Islam. His rampage at Ft. Hood has the markings of an act of Islamic terrorism. But in his weekly address, Obama says, "We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing."

To this day I remain baffled and somewhat dumbstruck by the complacency of the public, the mainstream media, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court for their willingness to dismiss challenges to President Barack Obama's (aka Barry Soetoro) natural born U.S. citizen status. Yes, the election is over, and yes, I acknowledge that nothing likely will ever come of this, but it astounds me that we are in month nine of Obama, yet his eligibility to serve as president remains unresolved. The majority of challenges to Obama's natural-born status revolve around the fact he has refused to release his original, long-form,...

Every Veterans Day presents an opportunity to commemorate those who served in some faraway place long ago, many of whom paid that ultimate sacrifice. World War II offers its share of remembrances: Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941; Normandy, June 6, 1944; the Battle of the Bulge, December 16, 1944; to name a few. Sadly, however, one series of battles continues to be ignored. On June 3, 1942, the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor, located at the Aleutian Islands, west of the Alaskan peninsula. Three days later, they landed on the islands of Kiska and Attu, culminating in the only battles of...

In recent months, at least three major newspapers have carried columns attempting to push Chief Justice John Roberts into voting to uphold a grossly unconstitutional federal law. But their cheap distortions and Chicken Little yammering will fail. The chief justice will do his job, and the country will be better off for it. On Sept. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court reheard arguments in the landmark campaign finance and free speech case, Citizens United v. FEC. At issue in this case is whether the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) could ban documentaries about candidates when Election Day is approaching. This...

The health care reform bill unveiled by House Democrats last week looks increasingly like one of the most expensive pieces of legislation in history. When Democrats announced the bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed the bill cost only-only!-$894 billion over the next ten years. But outside analysts, including the Congressional Budget Office, suggest that the real cost will be far, far higher. The CBO, for example, points out that the bill would actually increase government spending by slightly more than $1 trillion. Democrats reported a lower "net" number by subtracting revenues from penalties paid by individuals and businesses that fail...

I just can't keep it in. I know I shouldn't boast but, well, as a Roman Catholic I simply have to. We've won. I mean, we actually have won. The church founded by Christ has become the one and only institution hated by assorted Marxists, maniacs and misanthropes. In the space of a single week, we had the following: The Washington Post ran achingly predictable self-promoter and professional atheist, Richard Dawkins, writing that the Catholic Church was "surely up there among the leaders" as "the greatest force for evil in the world." He described the eucharist as a "cannibal feast"...

As I listen to the Reagan Presidential Library program, “Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Wall: Reflections from Yesterday, Lessons for Today,” my mind wanders to the killing rampage at Fort Hood, the worst mass shooting on a U.S. military base in history. As we approach Veterans Day, you wonder what possesses an Army psychiatrist to take the lives of so many? As a soldier, you know you could loose your life in combat, but you never expect to die at the hands of a fellow soldier supposedly committed to supporting your mental health. Major Nidal Malik Hasan put...

It makes no sense to see Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as represented in at least one family account, as the victim of "harassment" by fellow soldiers (and therefore a candidate for "understanding"?) He's an officer. Soldiers don't harass officers. It makes no sense to suggest he'd been traumatized by narratives he had heard concerning the awfulness of combat in Iraq and therefore resisted the idea of deployment there. He's an Army psychiatrist, not a rifleman. Since when, anyway -- read "The Iliad" for confirmation -- has combat been other than awful? It makes sense to ponder deeply -- I...

I know you’re not going to believe this, but remember that recently released partial list of White House visitors? SEIU’s Andy Stern at 22 visits must have moved into the Lincoln Bedroom. Movie stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt (if this were still the Clinton White House, it would have been Jennifer Anniston and Angie Jolie); Oprah; GE and NBC’s Jeff Imelt; phony anti-capitalist capitalist, Michael Moore; patriot short-seller and Israel-hater and what many think is to Obama what Cheney was to Bush, George Soros. My phone rang at 3 a.m. Wednesday. Groggily answering, I heard Hillary’s scratchy voice. She...

A familiar definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. So in the wake of yesterday's report that the national jobless rate climbed to 10.2% in October, we suppose we can expect the political class to demand another "stimulus." Maybe if Congress spends another $787 billion in the name of job creation, it can get the jobless rate up to 12% or 13%. It's hard to imagine a more complete repudiation of Keynesian stimulus than the evidence of the last year's job market. We've now had two examples of such stimulus—President Bush's $160 billion...

Where is the loyalty of the RINOs?  Arlen Specter joins the Democrats.  Colin Powell endorses the Democrat.  Dierdre Scozzafava endorses the Democrat.  I'm not opposed to the Democratic Party out of some sense of style or family history.  I'm opposed to the Democrats because I think they are wrong.  I think the Democrats are wrong in their basic view on the role of government and my place in society as a citizen.  The government isn't there to solve all my problems. I changed my political affiliation to independent ten years ago.  Not because the Republican Party was too far to...

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was declared "not a terrorist" before the facts were out - even before officials were sure whether the attacker was alive or dead. Failing to honestly name a terrorist attack despite the evidence is as destructive and dishonest as leaping to call an attack terrorism without the facts to support that. Apparently, the claim was based largely on the fact that Maj. Hasan appears to have been a lone gunman. However, terrorism is defined not by the number of people involved, but by the motivations and intentions of the attacker. If reports about him are true,...

Hours after the Fort Hood massacre, a grieving nation looked to the president for consolation and leadership. Instead, it got light banter and a "shout-out" before President Obama read a perfunctory statement. The president has always had a reputation for coolness, but in this case, he was utterly detached. He can't blame the scriptwriter for his astonishing lack of empathy.

Tuesday night the plans of Barack Obama and the democrat/communist party took some severe blows in New Jersey and Virginia. A strong message was sent by the American people that we are not pleased with Obama’s perverted vision for America. That he and his democrat/communist party are on the wrong track. So who is the focus of White House greaseball David Axelrod? Sarah Palin! That’s right, Palin; the so-called supposed insignificant, washed up “quitter.” I mean that’s what the democrat/communists and their lap dogs in the media shout all day every day. For such an insignificant woman, Sarah sure does...

Democrats have some thinking to do after Tuesday's elections, but Republicans don't have time to think. They're too busy trying to survive the party's internal purge and avoid being shipped off to political Siberia. Will loyal members inform on others for harboring suspiciously moderate views? Will anyone judged guilty have to wear a sign saying "Republican In Name Only" as penance? Will there be re-education camps? Will deviationists face the Enhanced Interrogation Technique of being forced to listen to the wit and wisdom of Glenn Beck, at ear-splitting volume, for days on end? Or worse: When Sarah Palin's memoir, "Going...

They listen to tales of life's worst moments, but they can't go home and tell their spouses about what they've heard. Sometimes no amount of schooling is enough to shield them from taking on some of their patients' suffering. Those who counsel trauma victims -- whether they be psychiatrists, social workers or advocates -- can experience an emotional toll after intensive exposure to patients' stories of horror. Experts call this phenomenon "vicarious trauma." The impact of trauma on those who help the traumatized has become a subject of discussion as investigators try to piece together why Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan,...

While a slight improvement over last month's numbers, today's employment update from the Bureau of Labor Statistics presents a dismal picture for American workers. As policy makers search for the best remedies to strengthen our economic performance, they can't afford to overlook new firms and young firms. Unfortunately, in troubled economic times the language of recovery is too often tilted toward large, established companies or to "small businesses," a broad term that traditionally applies to businesses with fewer than 500 employees. The conventional wisdom is that such businesses account for half of the labor force and are therefore the engine...

Comparing the relative strengths of India and China is a time-honoured parlour game. Which nation can grow faster? Which will be the more important power in the 21st century? Which one has a better model for growth? After China’s dramatic Olympic showcase and its ability to get its economy growing quickly after the global financial downturn, many have wondered if China has the jump on India today. But courtesy of an innovative London-based think tank, we have a comprehensive way of comparing India and China—one that is far more useful and comprehensive than anything that has come before it—and the...

Rising productivity is usually one of the best things you can hope for in an economy. It means people are producing more for each hour they work. That's the path to higher living standards. But the huge burst in productivity that the U.S. economy experienced in the third quarter is not entirely good. In fact, it's a sign that the U.S. economy is still in a sickly condition—a conclusion that is likely to be driven home by the latest job-loss figures release on Nov. 6. Economists who cheered the productivity number are ignoring the dark side of its sudden growth....

With the "re-election" of President Hamid Karzai, if that's the right word for a process that featured fraudulent balloting and a canceled runoff, the United States now confronts the hardest puzzle of all about Afghanistan: How to improve governance there — which most experts agree is essential to defeat the Taliban — without taking even more control from Afghan officials? President Obama took the first step out on this tightrope last Monday, with a congratulatory phone call to Karzai that was at the same time a backhanded slap. He urged the Afghan president to launch "a much more serious effort...

Thirteen dead and 31 wounded would be a bad day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a "tragedy" (as too many people called it), but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since 9/11, the "war on terror." Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America's enemy abroad were killed...

The Job Report: Another month, another drop in payrolls. Will it ever occur to our leaders in Washington that what they're doing isn't working — and may actually be damaging our economy? News that the unemployment rate jumped to 10.2% in October, its highest level since 1983, as the economy shed 190,000 nonfarm jobs, underscores the spectacular failure of the so-called fiscal stimulus to stimulate anything other than economic misery. Since the $787 billion stimulus was passed in February, the economy has lost 2.9 million jobs — for a total of 4.3 million since the end of 2008. The silver...

Regulation: Washington is quietly preparing a hostile takeover of Wall Street with a new bill that would put regulators in control of managing asset prices. While all eyes are fixed on the cobra poised to strike the health care industry, a python is wending its way through Hill banking panels that would squeeze the life from the whole economy. By Christmas, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank hopes to pass legislation that would create an uber-regulatory body called the Financial Services Oversight Council. It would give the Treasury secretary power to pick which large finance firms are "systemically critical,"...

Mideast: Iran tests an advanced warhead design as it gets caught shipping weapons to Hezbollah. Syria is reported to give the group operational control over Scud missiles. It's five minutes to midnight. Tyranny abhors a vacuum. While the U.S. and the West dither in Hamlet-like fashion over whatever we shall do in places such as Afghanistan and Iran, the Axis of Evil is in full swing in its plans to destroy Israel and threaten Europe and America. Israel last week seized what it said was the largest arms cache ever intercepted in the region. Israeli navy commandos boarded the Francop,...

War On Terror: The Fort Hood terrorist is being portrayed as an "anomaly," an "aberration," a "lone wolf." Sadly, he's just one of many examples of jihadist traitors in the ranks of the military. Together they form a dangerous Fifth Column, and the Pentagon — thanks to institutionalized political correctness — is doing next to nothing to root them out . Instead, brass are actively recruiting Muslim soldiers — whose ranks have swelled to more than 15,000 — and catering to their faith by erecting mosques even at Marine headquarters in Quantico, Va. More, they're hiring Muslim chaplains endorsed by...

Twenty years ago, late on a Thursday evening in Berlin, the cement and concertina-wire symbol of the Cold War was breached, inadvertently opened by a botched answer of a flustered East German Communist Party apparatchik. Announcing a loosening in border-crossing policy, he was peppered with questions on when the change would take effect. "Immediately," he said, shuffling his notes. "Without delay." "Also in Berlin?" presses a reporter. "Yes, yes," comes the response. Reporters rush to file; word is broadcast over Western media stations on the channels no East German is allowed to watch, but everyone does. The streets fill as...

A Muslim fanatic with an Internet site praising Islamic suicide bombers as defenders of their comrades is a Major in the U.S. Army with access to military intelligence and lethal weaponry. And it’s not as though the army didn’t know that he was a Muslim fanatic and supporter of the Islamic jihad against the West. He was under investigation for six months because of his anti-American, jihadist rantings. He did not want to be deployed. He wanted to be discharged. But despite his identification with America’s enemies, the army kept him in its officer corps. How in God’s name was...

This is the last installment in a nine-part series excerpting the chapter on medical care from the latest version of economist Thomas Sowell's "Applied Economics." The entire series can be read at IBDeditorials.com.A number of confusions plague discussions of the economics of medical care. A confusion between prices and costs has allowed politicians in various countries to be able to claim to be able to bring down the cost of health care, when in fact they only bring down the individual patient's out-of-pocket costs paid to doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies. The costs themselves are not reduced in the slightest when...

The voters be damned: That seems to be Speaker Nancy Pelosi's attitude in the wake of big Democratic losses on Tuesday. "House Democratic leaders, undeterred by delays in the Senate or this week's Republican electoral triumphs, plan to call a vote Saturday on the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. health-care policy in four decades," Bloomberg reports: The House will move on the $1.05 trillion legislation that would cover 36 million uninsured people and create a government plan to compete with private insurers even after the election of Republican governors in New Jersey and Virginia. President Barack Obama will go to...

Liberals and conservatives each have their own intellectual food chains. They have their own think tanks to provide arguments, politicians and pundits to amplify them, and news media outlets to deliver streams of prejudice-affirming stories. Independents, who are the largest group in the electorate, don’t have any of this... --snip-- The most telling races this year were the suburban rebellions across the country. For example, in Westchester and Nassau counties in New York, Republican candidates came from nowhere to defeat entrenched Democratic county officials. In blue Pennsylvania, the G.O.P. won six out of seven statewide offices... --snip-- The percentage of...

In 2000, I was asked by the Israel Defense Forces to join a group of philosophers, lawyers, and generals for the purpose of drafting the army's ethics code. Since then, I have been deeply involved in the analysis of the moral issues that Israel faces in its war on terrorism. I have spent many hours in discussions with soldiers and officers in order to better grasp the dilemmas that they tackle in the field, and in an attempt to help facilitate the internalization of the code of ethics in war. It was no wonder that, when the Goldstone Report on...

A picture of Nidal Malik Hasan is emerging from the slaughter he carried out Thursday during a ceremony at a Fort Hood readiness center, leaving 13 people dead and another 30 wounded. Born in Virginia, sent to medical school by the U.S. Army, the psychiatrist was chastised for proselytizing to his patients about Islam. Asked his nationality, he didn't identify himself as an American but as a Palestinian. He appeared pleased by the shooting death of a Little Rock Army recruiter in June and reportedly was heard saying "maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Times Square."...

"Overseas, you are ready for it. But here, you can't even defend yourself," said Jerry Richard, a Fort Hood solider who was nearby when Major Nidal Hasan went on his shooting rampage. What do the Pentagon bureaucrats have to say about that? If soliders on this base had been allowed to carry the weapons they use overseas, the service weapons they train with, Hasan would have been able to shoot perhaps one or two people, not 41. (As of this writing, 13 are dead, 28 wounded.) "It's a tragedy to lose soldiers overseas and even more horrifying when they come...

Gorbachev and his ilk call for ‘new thinking,’ but really mean new ways to dictate how people should live This week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the U.S. Congress that inaction on climate change amounted to a new “Berlin Wall” of “short- sighted self-interest.” Ms. Merkel’s claim was upside down. There is indeed a new threat to freedom in the offing, but it is the Green Wall that she is recommending. It will span the globe, and there will be no escape. What collapsed twenty years ago was Communism. What didn’t collapse was anti-capitalism, which remains the principle driver of...

When it comes to the controversial mixing of religion and politics in the LDS world, much of the discussion has focused on national campaigns and high-profile ballot initiatives. But perhaps we should be more concerned by how some in our church may be using their membership to influence local elections. This problem only recently came to my attention when I heard about a vicious e-mail circulating around a Utah County town, attacking one of the mayoral candidates there. I obtained a copy of the e-mail -- which, of course, was written anonymously -- and the more I read, the more...

A Muslim soldier, Nidal Hasan, shot dead 12 soldiers and a civilian at Fort Hood yesterday, shouting the Muslim expression "Allahu Akbar." But in an absurd display of political correctness, media reports barely mentioned the religion angle, choosing instead to highlight the fact that the killer was an "army psychiatrist" or the false claim that he was a veteran with PTSD (which he wasn't: he never even served overseas). Oh, those violent psychiatrists! Now, we read that he had previously said that Muslims should rise up against the military, "repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers," and engaged in hate-speech against...

Not a week goes by that someone on the right isn't longing for the "Reaganomics" of the '80s. These people are either being dishonest, have selective amnesia, or are just ignorant of the facts. During Ronald Reagan's eight-year tenure, the budget grew by 69 percent, from $678 billion, to $2.3 trillion. ... The deficit rose from $79 billion to $212 billion and he added $1.9 trillion to the federal deficit. His response to this? "I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself." In his second year in office, he presided over the...

The Lesson of Bob McDonnellby Charlie SpieringA week before the election, Virginia candidate for governor Bob McDonnell was asked in a radio interview if he would veto state funding for Planned Parenthood.“We shouldn't be doing that (funding Planned Parenthood) in Virginia,” answered O’Donnell. “That's common sense I think, and that will be part of what we get done.”Pro-choice activists were furious and quick to condemn his remarks. To them it was one more reason why McDonnell was “out of step and out of touch with voters.” But McDonnell, with his common sense approach to politics, proved that you can still...

...If I were trying to develop a strategy to pass a bill that most Americans oppose, I would consciously plan for exactly what happened during the banking bailout bill in 2008. I would let them scream, let them march, let them carry signs and write letters, and even let the bill fail to pass. And once the citizenry was sufficiently exhausted or had turned their attention to something else, I would put it up for another vote. Personally, I would be surprised if this were truly a conscious strategy by most of our representatives, although I am sure that the...

<p>Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in yesterday's Fort Hood shootings that killed 13 and wounded 30, identifies as a Muslim.</p> <p>Much has and will be made of his religion from people too ignorant to read a Qur'an, or too isolated to talk to a Muslim, or too stubborn to educate themselves. Even the Washington Post calls him a "devout Muslim." But can a "devout Muslim" commit such acts? No more than a "devout Christian" can, no.</p>

Up to one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reported as saved by federal stimulus money in California probably never were in danger, a Bee review has found. California State University officials reported late last week that they saved more jobs with stimulus money than the number of jobs saved in Texas – and in 44 other states. In a required state report to the federal government, the university system said the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees. That total represents more than half of CSU's statewide work force. However, university officials confirmed...

A New Grassroots Political Organization Makes Its Mark by Deal W. Hudson    11/06/09 The election results of November 2 were not merely the spontaneous reaction of Republicans to the bad economy and liberal excesses of the Obama administration. The four pro-life, conservative GOP candidates in Virginia and New Jersey were elected in a groundswell of religious and social conservatives, many of them independent voters who had voted for Obama only a year ago. A new grassroots organization played a major role in getting these voters to the polls -- the Faith & Freedom Coalition was founded by Ralph...

It's all so terribly sad. To listen to liberals and the White House spin election results, you'd think all was well with the world. Barack Obama is still personally popular! The evil right-wing extremists lost in New York's 23rd congressional district and a Democrat (who was arguably more conservative than the Republican nominee) won. Virginia was always a red state (no matter what we all said about it turning blue with Obama's victory), and the election hinged on local issues. Defeated New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine was personally unpopular (let's all forget that the White House tried to turn the...

This week marked the 30th anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy in Teheran by followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. To celebrate the 444-day-long violation which came to personify the regime's sanctimonious thuggery and disdain for international norms, the mullahs organized yet more "Death to…" mass demonstrations. Astoundingly, tens of thousands of anti-regime marchers piggy-backed on these rallies in Teheran, Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz - not to chant insults at America, but to plead: "Obama, Obama - either you're with them or you're with us." The "them" is the syndicate dominated by capo di tutti capi Ali Khamenei,...

In the earliest days of television, shows were often supported entirely by one sponsor. There was the "Texaco Star Theater" with Milton Berle. Remember "General Electric Theater" with Ronald Reagan? The corporate patron was held responsible for the content within the program. More to the point, the corporate patron wanted the association with the show it was sponsoring. Perhaps the best branding of them all was and is Hallmark, with its Hallmark Hall of Fame movies. When that movie airs, you just know it's a quality movie because that's all Hallmark will produce. On today's TV shows, it's all changed....