Free Republic

Renowned expert on Communism, the man who knew everything, Herbert Romerstein would always focus attention of his young friends trying to understand the logic of the current Russia's regime into its Bolshevik and Soviet history. He would teach the correct approach to the black and white Moscow's propaganda and encourage to study diligently the NKVD files in its full historical context. Despite the fact that Cold War ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Empire in 1991, there have been persistent efforts to reuse the USSR's intelligence and the military tactics by the post-Soviet, Russian politicians to restore the power...

After hearing Dr. Kent Brantly publicly thank God for healing him from the deadly Ebola virus, atheist Sam de Brito posted a scathing article at the Sydney Morning Herald that questions Brantly as a true man of medicine. The article entitled: “Science, Not God, Saved Him from Ebola,” takes issue with Brantly crediting God for his healing. Brantly, a Samaritan’s Purse doctor received experimental Ebola treatments at Emory University Hospital after his emergency evacuation from Liberia. He was released from the hospital on August 21, saying, “I am forever thankful to God for sparing my life.” While de Brito's perspective...

Call it the Ebola of Journalism. And its spreading -- to Time and CNN. The cover of the September 1, 2014 issue of Time could not be more explicit. Showing a dramatic image of a black man on his knees, hands raised with the cover bearing the title "The Tragedy of Ferguson," it was written by David Von Drehle and Alex Altman in the tones of the standard liberal “I-told-you-so” thinking on race . It included the line: “We’ve been here before—and failed to learn the lessons.” When it came to the mess that is ObamaCare? There was this Time...

   Happy Labor Day! September 1, 2014        HISTORY Labor Day is a national legal holiday that is over 100 years old. Over the years, it has evolved from a purely labor union celebration into a general "last fling of summer" festival. It grew out of a celebration and parade in honor of the working class by the Knights of Labor in 1882 in New York. In 1884, the Knights held a large parade in New York City celebrating the working class. The parade was held on the first Monday in September. The Knights passed a resolution to...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Members of a Libyan militia have taken over an abandoned annex of the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli but have not broken into the main compound where the United States evacuated all of its staff last month, U.S. officials said on Sunday. A YouTube video showed the breach of the diplomatic facility by what was believed to be a militia group mostly from the northwestern city of Misrata. Dozens of men, some armed, were seen gleefully crowded onto the patio of a swimming pool, with some diving in from the balcony of a nearby building. Libya has been...

You might think that militant Islamists would have a firm grip on at least one thing: Islam. Think again. (This story is based on a radio interview. Listen to the full interview.) In 2013, 22-year-old Britons Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed were preparing to leave the UK and join extremist groups in Syria. But first, they bought some reading material from Amazon. One of those books was "The Koran for Dummies." “Even though they may have ordered it, I don't think they read it,” says Sohaib Nazeer Sultan, who's the author of the book and Princeton University's first campus imam....

Spring Valley resident Douglas McCain may fit some of the profilePeople living in the margins. Youths smarting from brushes with the law. Religious converts who, despite their fervor, lack a deep understanding of bedrock teachings. This is the profile of people drawn to extremist Islamic groups, scholars said. And while there are still many question marks about 33-year-old Douglas Authur McCain — who last weekend became the first American to die while fighting for the jihadist group Islamic State — some of this profile may be a match. Friends called him “Toothless.” This March 23, 2008 photo provided by the...

Former IAF Chief Maj. Gen. (res.) David Ivry says, in a new article, that Israel needs to rethink the concepts of ‘deterrence’ and ‘decisive victory’, which are less relevant in today's assymetrical battlefields. “Limited-scale, asymmetrical conflicts have become the norm. All-out wars between states where both parties invest all of their national resources in an attempt to achieve a decisive victory have become less relevant,” writes Ivry, who is now President of Boeing Israel, in a paper for the BESA Center. “David Ben-Gurion’s conceptual trinity of ‘deterrence’, ‘early warning’ and ‘decisive victory’ is no longer fully valid,” he explains. “These...

alestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas is livid over the decision by the government earlier Sunday to assign about 4,000 dunams (988 acres) of land in Judea and Samaria as state land. Most of the land involved is in the Gush Etzion region. The decision opens the possibility of further construction in the region. The decision is one of Israel's responses to the kidnapping and murder of Israeli teens Eyal Yifrah, Naftali Frenkel, and Gilad Sha'ar. The three were kidnapped in Gush Etzion and their bodies were found several weeks later in a field near Hevron. Speaking Sunday evening, Abbas spokesperson...

Watching history repeat itself in Europe is truly unsettling. Just as occurred not once but twice with Germany, Europe is now allowing Russia to go wilding across the continent scant years after having done the same with the USSR. Will these people ever learn? Within the past few days, two events neatly capture the bloodthirsty Russian bear in action. First, Europe found Russia repeatedly violating the airspace of Finland – not just flying attack aircraft near the border, as Russia has repeatedly done, for example, with Norway, but actually crossing it in a naked act of intimidation and war. Then,...

Cops have charged a 20-year-old black man with hate crimes after he fired a pellet gun at two white joggers in Central Park, authorities said. --snip-- He faces charges of assault and reckless endangerment as hate crimes and weapons possession.

Earlier this year, CBS News spotlighted a growing shortage of .22-caliber ammunition. "One of the most popular and common" -- and cheapest -- calibers of ammo for hunters and target shooters alike, CBS reports that .22 shells are in short supply these days. Interviewing one supplier, CBS reported that while as recently as two years ago it was still possible to buy .22-caliber ammunition "by the pallet-load... now they're putting restrictions on how much you can get and how you get that ammo." Retailers are shooting blanks This is a problem from ammunition retailers -- and for gun owners as...

WASHINGTON — With their Senate majority imperiled, Democrats are trying to mobilize African-Americans outraged by the shooting in Ferguson, Mo., to help them retain control of at least one chamber of Congress for President Obama’s final two years in office. In black churches and on black talk radio, African-American civic leaders have begun invoking the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, along with conservative calls to impeach Mr. Obama, as they urge black voters to channel their anger by voting Democratic in the midterm elections, in which minority turnout is typically lower.

As part of a legal settlement that will allow some illegal immigrants who deported themselves from Southern California to return to the United States, the federal government has agreed to advertise the settlement on various Mexican and Spanish-language media outlets. The ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit last year on behalf of eleven illegal immigrants who deported themselves. The settlement reached on Wednesday will only cover "longtime California residents with relatives who are U.S. citizens and... young migrants whose parents brought them into the country illegally" who deported themselves between 2009 and 2013. An ACLU official has indicated that there were...

Drivers in another state will soon be able to obtain official license tags featuring the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag that has been adopted by the tea party movement. Alabama is poised to join Virginia, Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas in allowing residents to choose a license tag with the Gadsden flag. In Alabama, a Christian conservative group founded by Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is encouraging supporters to pre-order the tags. According to the Associated Press, the “state Revenue Department requires 1,000 pre-orders before it will manufacture a specialty tag like the one sought by the foundation.”

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Many Ukrainians welcomed U.S. and EU support during the protests against a corrupt, pro-Russia government, when many Western politicians joined them on the main protest square in Kiev. But the West has tread cautiously since then in dealing with the aftermath, which has seen Russia invade and annex Crimea and support a rebellion in the country's east.

Sir Paul McCartney has become the latest celebrity to call for Scotland to stay as part of the UK before the country's vote on independence next month. The ex-Beatle made the declaration as the Let's Stay Together campaign sought support in Liverpool on Saturday.

When facing new cultural challenges like “transgender” students at Catholic schools, educators must remember that “values are an integral, indivisible part of all that they are,” writes clinical psychologist Dr. Frank Moncher in an analysis published collaboratively by The Cardinal Newman Society and the Culture of Life Foundation. Dr. Moncher, senior fellow of social sciences at the Foundation, analyzes two legal cases in which religious colleges have been granted exceptions to carry out their faith-based missions with regard to “transgendered” students. The first case deals with a female student who applied to California Baptist University (CBU), but later revealed “that...