Free Republic

Hillary gets it. Hillary Clinton says she's against illegal immigration. And she would fine employers who hire illegal aliens. Pundits say the New York Democrat is using this hot-button issue to position herself for the 2008 presidential election. It's a way to hit Republicans from the right. Polls show huge majorities of both Republicans and Democrats oppose illegal immigration -- and are frustrated that President Bush won't do a thing to stop it. But this issue does not belong to the right. Or it shouldn't. Illegal immigration hurts most liberal causes. It depresses wages, crushes unions and kills all hope...

MEXICO CITY - Mexico will send a diplomatic letter to the United States protesting the extension of a wall along the U.S.-California border, officials said Friday. Ruben Aguilar, a spokesman for President Vicente Fox, said the president would also continue to pressure the U.S. government to approve a migration accord that would allow more migrants to work legally north of the border. President Bush proposed a temporary work program last year, but it has stalled amid opposition in Congress. Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said Thursday that Fox had instructed him to send the diplomatic letter with the message...

Out here in Southern California, a local Spanish-language TV station caused a stink recently by putting up several billboards reaching out to potential viewers in Los Angeles, Mexico. Predictably, as soon as outraged Americans complained, they were accused of being racists. How is it, I keep asking myself, that it's only the biggest racists in America who are given carte blanche to condemn others for being what they are themselves? Who but a racist would conclude that America's sovereignty is merely a minor inconvenience they are free to ignore for no other reason than that they are members of la...

I'm going to tell you a story that I've never told any reporter," stated Sean Treglia, a former program officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts, during a March 2004 conference at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. "Now that I'm several months away from Pew and we have campaign finance reform, I can tell this story." Speaking to an audience of the initiated, Treglia described how the crusade for campaign finance reform was “an immense scam perpetrated on the American people by a cadre of left-wing foundations and disguised as a ‘mass movement,’” wrote New...

For the past three years, an annual conference called the World Social Forum has been the biggest international gathering of radicals on earth, attended by all the leaders of the world left. Labor unions, Communist parties, non-governmental organizations, anti-globalization activists, anti-American 'peace' groups, multiple heads of state, and the representatives of armed guerilla insurgencies all gather yearly at Porto Alegre, Brazil, to make new connections and plan for the future. While the organizers of the World Social Forum claim the event is a "open meeting place" for those interested in building "a planetary society centered on the human person,"...

No sooner was George W. Bush declared the winner of a hard-fought presidential election than National Council of Churches General Secretary, Rev. Robert Edgar, proffered the following counsel: “This election confirmed that we are a divided nation, not only politically but in terms of our interpretations of God’s will.” That Edgar’s message was reminiscent of a concession speech was no coincidence. After all, had God’s will been more congenial to the famously left-wing NCC, John Kerry would be president of the United States. Yet Edgar declined to own up to the NCC’s sectarian role in the nation’s political divide. Animated by...

“Never make judgments.” That’s what scientist Alfred Kinsey tells his research assistant very early in the new film about his life. Kinsey, as you know, was all about nonjudgmentalism. Throughout his career researching the sexual habits of Americans, his goal was to free society from the constraints of what the movie calls “morality disguised as fact.” And like its subject, the film attempts to be nonjudgmental—or, at least, that’s the ploy. Three scenes exemplify the supposed nonjudgmentalism. In the first, Kinsey tells his wife, nicknamed “Mac,” that he’s had sex with one of his male researchers. Though she’s devastated, he...

A federal judge in Tucson on Tuesday temporarily barred the state from implementing a ballot initiative aimed at cutting illegal immigrants off from public benefits.

The Ford and Rockefeller foundations hand out millions of dollars each year to a variety of organizations. We may or may not agree with the activities of a given group that gets some portion of that money, but both foundations have properly drawn a line against their money supporting terrorism or other violence. The Ford Foundation says funding recipients must agree not to engage in activity that "promotes violence, terrorism, bigotry, or the destruction of any state." News reports say this rule was put in place because some Ford money previously had wound up in the hands of radicals who...

http://www.illinoisleader.com IL MEDIA UNSPUN: Kinsey & Ebert, At the Movies Friday, November 19, 2004 By Arlen Williams, media critic (arlen.williams@unspun.info) Alfred Kinsey's life is featured in a new film, "Kinsey," released this weekend.   The Chicago Sun Times' film critic Roger Ebert is a native of Downstate Urbana. Warning: This column is not suitable for children, nor some adults. OPINION -- A movie is now being shown that promotes one of the most evil and destructive figures in the 20th Century. The setting: not Berlin, nor Moscow, nor Peking . . . but Bloomington, Indiana. People of informed conscience...

The unending 50-year war over Alfred Kinsey and his sex research is about to flare up once again, thanks to the new movie Kinsey. The film manages to be fairly faithful to the biographies of Kinsey while sliding by or simply omitting a lot of negative material that might interfere with a heroic view of the man.

In a bizarre week as polarized as the national elections, Kinsey, a movie about sex, is a masterpiece, while The Polar Express and Finding Neverland, a couple of Christmas trifles for children, are so full of sugar they could rot your teeth. If this is what they mean by "moral values," drop me off in Sodom and Gomorrah. More about Kinsey, the stunning, exhilarating and phenomenal biography of legendary, earth-shattering, scientific sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, down below. First, the G-rated family fluff: With all the talk about the revolutionary cinematic technology with which director Robert Zemeckis "created" The Polar Express,"manufactured"...

The unending 50-year war over Alfred Kinsey and his sex research is about to flare up once again, thanks to the new movie Kinsey. The film manages to be fairly faithful to the biographies of Kinsey while sliding by or simply omitting a lot of negative material that might interfere with a heroic view of the man. Kinsey was a highly intelligent, fearless man and an unusually skilled interviewer whose question-and-answer techniques heavily influenced the way polls and surveys are done today. Conservatives seem quaint when they argue that Kinsey’s two reports, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and...

Alfred Kinsey has been dead for 48 years, and he still makes people mad. "Kinsey," a movie inspired by the life of the sex researcher, hasn't even opened, and here is an AP story about "indignant conservative groups" who think it is propaganda for the sexual revolution. ----------------------------------------------------- BY ROGER EBERT Sun-Times Film Critic / Nov 14, 2004 Alfred Kinsey has been dead for 48 years, and he still makes people mad. "Kinsey," a movie inspired by the life of the sex researcher, hasn't even opened, and here is an AP story about "indignant conservative groups" who think it is...

Funded-by-Americans, former Soviet Union Leader Mikhail Gorbachev thumbs his nose at American authority. On Wednesday, Gorbachev will award a prize, through the international foundation he founded and operates, to a man expelled from the United States only last September. The singer once known as Cat Stevens, now Yusuf Islam, was nabbed and expelled from the U.S. after authorities diverted his London-to-Washington flight to Maine to remove him, on suspicion of ties to terrorism. On Wednesday, Islam, who converted to Islam in the 1970s, will be handed the Man for Peace award in Rome, where he’ll be feted by Gorbachev and...

Fox Searchlight's first-run feature film on the controversial "father of the sexual revolution" opens in select "blue state" theaters today to the protests of traditional-family defenders who regard the late Indiana University professor Alfred Kinsey as a fradulent scientist who, more than anyone else, bears responsibility for bringing acceptance of promiscuity into the mainstream. Liam Neeson in "Kinsey" (Courtesy Fox Searchlight) On the latter point, the star of "Kinsey: Let's Talk about Sex" agrees. "Kinsey did release the genie from the bottle -- and you can't put the genie back in the bottle," Liam Neeson told Variety magazine. The film...

"It has been sad," writes Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn in the foreword to his new book, The Perestroika Deception, "to observe the jubilation of American and West European conservatives who have been cheering 'perestroika' without realizing that it is intended to bring about their own political and physical demise. Liberal support for 'perestroika' is understandable, but conservative support came as a surprise to me." For one who studied and worked within the inner sanctum of Soviet intelligence and who risked his life to warn the West about the Kremlin's program of strategic deception, it must be sad indeed, and maddening,...

The ACLU's decision to reject $1 million from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations was the right thing to do -- but for the wrong reason. At issue is the foundations' caveat that grant recipients not "promote or engage in violence, terrorism, bigotry, or the destruction of any state." "Bigotry"? That's not even speech; it's thought. Protecting bigotry is how the ACLU made its name. Remember the Nazis in Skokie? But the current ACLU leadership, bowing to political correctness, barely raises an eyebrow at the restriction against bigotry. Instead, they point to the prohibition against terrorism, which it characterized as "vague"...

The American Civil Liberties Union has rejected $1.15 million from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, saying their effort to ensure that none of their money inadvertently underwrites terrorism or other unacceptable activities is a threat to civil liberties. The organization has also returned to Ford $68,000 that it accepted in April and that was governed by the same restrictions as those on the two grants the board decided to decline at a contentious meeting on Sunday. Anthony D. Romero, the A.C.L.U.'s executive director, said the language of the contracts governing the Ford and Rockefeller grants was broad and ambiguous, leaving...

"Charitable" Foundations: ATMs for the Left "Charitable" Foundations: ATMs for the Left By Ben Johnson FrontPageMagazine.com | March 2, 2004 One of the unlamented developments of this election year is the Democratic Party’s retreat to the Left. Although the media claim the party's voters have learned their lesson by settling for the “electable” John F. Kerry, a cursory examination of the Democrats shows they remain animated by anti-Bush furor. The party rank-and-file may have decided they prefer the sing-song cadences of John Kerry or the charming drawl of John Edwards to the red-faced shrieks of Howard Dean, but the message...