Free Republic

The famed Oxford Union in England has invited talk-radio host Michael Savage to participate in a debate on whether or not fugitive National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden should be called a hero. There’s only one hitch, as Savage pointed out in his reply to the invitation from the Oxford Union’s Charles Vaughn. The popular, nationally syndicated San Francisco-based talk host was banned in 2009 from entering the United Kingdom by Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government along with Muslim extremists and leaders of racist groups for “seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred.” The government, however,...

A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by social workers. Essex social services obtained a High Court order against the woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb. The council said it was acting in the best interests of the woman, an Italian who was in Britain on a work trip, because she had suffered a mental breakdown. The baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who are refusing to give her back to the mother, even though she...

Asked, early in his presidency, whether he believed in American exceptionalism, Barack Obama gave a telling reply. "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." The first part of that answer is fascinating (we'll come back to the Greeks in a bit). Most Brits do indeed believe in British exceptionalism. But here's the thing: They define it in almost exactly the same way that Americans do. British exceptionalism, like its American cousin, has traditionally been held to reside in a series of values and institutions: personal...

The Express reports that 89-year-old Albert “Dusty” Miller has served as the grand marshal for nearly 40 years in the Royal British Legion’s annual Remembrance Day parade. The reason? Officials say Miller is “too old to be insured.” “They came up to me and said, 'I've got a bit of bad news for you,’” Miller told the paper. "At first I thought somebody had died and it was going to be another funeral. Then they told me HQ insisted I had to stand down as parade marshal.” ,,,

When London videographer Anthony Aurelius sent newlyweds Stan and Claudia Gocman unedited footage from their wedding, he didn’t realize that the video was littered with his anti-Semitic remarks. The Jewish couple haven’t accepted his sniveling, handwritten apology.A wedding videographer revealed just how vile he could be when a Jewish couple caught him making anti-Semitic remarks on their wedding video. The racist camerman, Anthony Aurelius, didn’t realize he’d kept the tape rolling while chatting with his assistant during a central London wedding shoot last year. “Mental, Israeli dancing, isn’t it? There’s a real feeling of like, they’re better than everybody else....

Stories like this one from the British publication, The Mirror, are guaranteed to drive our benighted opposition crazy. Not that they’d judge the decision of businesswoman Trudy Perry (right) to abort five babies. It’s only does she have to splash it all over the tabloids? You can read Angela Carless’s story here. You will be horrified and be able to comment probably better than I could. So this will be brief. In a nutshell all these abortions came about (as part of the headline suggests) “because timing wasn’t right.” Relationships came and went; babies came and went. Perry could never...

Tesco Sorry Over 'Gay Best Friend' Doll  The retailer's website said the inflatable doll would "tell you if your bum looks big" and was a suitable gift for young children.     Tesco has withdrawn an inflatable figure labelled "gay best friend" and apologised for selling it. It comes a day after the retailer was forced to remove a Halloween costume called "Psycho Ward" from its shelves after it sparked widespread criticism. On its website Tesco said "The Inflatable g*y Best Friend" was suitable for children aged three to four and was an "amusing gift". "If SEX in the City and Will...

The English Lose Their Capital City I wrote the following to my English Member of Parliament. On Sunday evening I walked along the South Bank of the Thames, almost opposite the House of Commons. The area was populated almost entirely by non ethnically English people. Perhaps you and your fellow Members of Parliament would care to take the time to see for yourself that example of an area of London that has been occupied by foreign people? According to the 2011 Census the English population of London is now a minority 40%. I thought it had been British policy to...

Drivers have been stuck in huge queues after the M25 Dartford Crossing between Kent and Essex was closed in both directions because of a security alert. Police ordered the closure when a pedestrian was arrested after being spotted behaving unusually, at about 16:00 BST. The Queen Elizabeth II Bridge was shut at 17:00 BST, with both tunnels shut 20 minutes later. Kent Police said officers found a suspicious item, forcing the closures. There were reportedly nine-mile tailbacks in both Kent, on the anti-clockwise M25, and in Essex, on the clockwise stretch. Ten-mile tailbacks on the A102 Blackwall Tunnel northbound in...

A mother in England is filing suit against a hospital where doctors told her she should have an abortion of her supposedly “brain dead” unborn baby. Sarah Hagan is now suing City Hospitals Sunderland after giving birth to a healthy child. Hagan says that, after a 24-week ultrasound scan of her unborn baby, doctors told her that her son Aaron was “brain dead,” had just one eye and no chance of survival. The mother of two says physicians adviser her to take an abortion drug, even though the mifepristone abortion pill is only authorized to be used to destroy the...

Aimi Leggett, 25, and civil partner Victoria, 22, had planned to have one-year-old son Alfie christened at St Mary's Church, Gosport, Hants, in two weeks. However, when both women asked to be listed as the mother in a meeting with Reverend George Gebauer he said the church baptism register would not allow it. He suggested one be registered as the mother while the other be put down as the Godmother instead. He said he had to be sure the child had not been “pinched” as it was “impossible” that Alfie was a child of both the women. Aimi and Victoria...

Queen Mary ascended the throne of England in 1553. In subsequent years, she had at least two hundred people put to death (often by fire) for their religious convictions. To history she became known as "Bloody Mary," although, in truth, she killed far fewer people per year than her brutal father. The godliness of many of her victims made them stand out. Mary's father, King Henry VIII had separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic church, but he had not reformed the church's practices or doctrines. On Henry's death, his young son Edward became King. Many of Edward's...

British Prime Minister David Cameron lost a preliminary vote on Syria, an early sign of the pushback Western governments may face as they prepare to launch an attack. Thursday evening's vote was nonbinding, but in practice the rejection of military strikes means Mr. Cameron's hands are tied. In a terse statement to Parliament, Mr. Cameron said it was clear to him that the British people did not want to see military action.

One of the Queen's swans has been found killed and barbecued on the riverbank near to Windsor Castle. The cooked swan's carcass was dumped near Baths Water, and was discovered by Wendy Hermon, 46, a volunteer for charity Swan Lifeline, which cares for sick and injured birds. She described the scene as 'sickening', and admitted she would have been distraught if her young son was with her when she made the grisly discovery after being called out by a council warden last Sunday.

Great Britain on Monday sent warships to the Mediterranean and weighed legal action against Spain in a territorial dispute over the Gibraltar peninsula, as Madrid threatened to join with Argentina in a U.N. effort to strip Britain of the last remnants of its empire. In London, Ministry of Defense officials told the BBC that the Royal Navy deployments are part of a long-planned military exercise and not connected to the three-centuries old dispute over the Gibraltar enclave. The feud between the European allies has erupted anew in recent weeks amid Spanish protests over an effort to create an artificial reef...

Readers of First Things probably know this already, but here’s a follow up on a story from earlier this year. In February, archaeologists confirmed that they had discovered the remains of King Richard III beneath a parking lot in Leicester. Richard died in battle at Bosworth Field in August 1485; the Tudor victors gave him a rather unceremonious burial in what was then a local abbey. Richard will now be re-interred in Leicester’s Anglican cathedral, most likely next May. Back in February, some Catholics objected that Richard, who was Catholic, should by rights be buried in a Catholic ceremony in...

Fees have not risen for more than a decade and there is a shortfall of £19 million each year for police forces to process certificates. Chief Constable Andy Marsh, the association’s spokesman on firearms licensing, also called on the Treasury to plug the financial hole. Sporting gun users immediately said they feared the move was a backdoor attempt to cut the number of gun owners in the country. A five-year firearms or shotgun certificate currently costs £50, yet police forces estimate they cost around £200 each to process the paperwork and ensure the guns are being stored safely.

Fifty years ago, it was the Summer of Profumo in London, commencing with a ministerial resignation that brought down a Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, and eventually his successor, Lord Home, too. Half-a-century on, it remains Britain's most famous sex scandal, and sufficiently potent that later this year Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black and Christopher Hampton will unveil their West End musical on the subject. Here's what I had to say, with a personal reminiscence of the lady involved, in my obituary of John Profumo. This essay appears in my book Mark Steyn's Passing Parade:

A new secret justice row broke out last night after The Mail on Sunday discovered that hundreds of thousands of convicted criminals are having their identities protected by police. More than half of forces in England and Wales refuse to publish mugshots of offenders unless they have been jailed—in defiance of national guidelines. Some insist on sentences of more than three years before they release a custody photo to the press, citing concerns about data protection and the criminals’ human rights. …