Free Republic

Two Irish groups regularly fly the Confederate flag and one of the flags was seen on television on Sunday at a major sporting event despite the weekend deaths in Charlottesville and the white supremacist supporters widely waving the Confederate flag. It also flew Sunday at Dublin’s premier sporting grounds in Croke Park in Dublin. Supporters of the Cork team, which played Waterford in the All-Ireland hurling semifinal before over 72,000 people in Croke Park, were seen flying the flag during television coverage of Sunday’s game. The Cork hurling and football teams are known as “The Rebels” and have long used...

The president of Ireland’s Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) has implored fans of the County Cork teams to stop waving the Confederate flag during games. Fans of Cork (“the Rebel County”), whose colors are red and white, are known for flying a range of flags from around the world emblazoned with those colors. Some fans have a preference for the US Confederate flag because of the red and the white and because of the “rebel” connotations. This allegiance has been a source of controversy in the past, with activist groups in Ireland calling for a ban on the use of the...

(AP) A House committee on Wednesday voted to more than triple spending for a global AIDS program that has proven to be one of the Bush administration's most successful and popular foreign policy initiatives. The Foreign Affairs Committee's voice vote on the plan to approve spending of an average $10 billion annually over the next five years came hours after lawmakers and the White House reached a compromise on some of the policy issues, including spending on abstinence programs, that had held up action on the legislation. The bill extends the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which authorized spending...