Free Republic

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A member of the Alaska Legislature has apologized for saying Nazi experimentation on prisoners “produced results.” State Rep. Sara Hannan, a Democrat from Juneau, made the comment Saturday when House minority Republicans were attempting a vote on whether the Nuremberg Code — ethics principles for human experimentation written after the Nazi atrocities of World War II were discovered — was still valid, the Juneau Empire reported. “I apologize for the words that I used on the House Floor yesterday,” Hannan said Sunday on social media. “I did not mean to imply any support for NAZIs nor...

I once shared a car to the airport with a French MEP, a member of the Front National (FN). He spoke that very correct French which, across the Channel, serves in place of accent as a social signifier. He casually mentioned that the Holocaust couldn’t have happened, at least not on the scale claimed: the volume of the ovens, he creepily explained, was insufficient. The European Parliament has always had its fair share of extremists, eccentrics and outright, drooling loons. With the FN then polling at 6 per cent, there seemed no need to treat any of its MEPs seriously,...

Conservatives, while often gloomy in their political outlook, tend to be warm and merry in their personality. I’ve just spent the weekend in Oxford with 120 young activists from around Europe, and found myself lifted by their optimism. They came from across the continent, from Iceland and the Faroe Islands to Turkey and Moldova. There were delegates, too, from our Anglosphere allies: Young Republicans from the US, Young Liberals from Australia, a Francophone Tory from Quebec. Some were libertarians, others conservatives. A few wanted to become MPs, but most were simply interested in advancing their ideas. They were fizzing with...

..........The British have never been especially keen on enthusiasm, either in its modern sense, or in the older meaning of ‘seized by religious fervour’. Americans – ideological descendants, in many ways, of those regicides – differ from us perhaps more in this than in any other regard. .....One after another, friends and colleagues of Mitt Romney lined up to tell us about the many acts of kindness which he had performed unremarked. Parents choked back their tears as they recalled the time he had spent with their dying children. Former employees spoke of his humility, his industriousness, his quiet charity....

American pollsters will tell you that the presidential candidate who is in the lead going into the party conventions usually wins. Four polls last week showed a tiny lead for Barack Obama, two for Mitt Romney and one was level; all seven were well within the margin of error. Another rule is that the Gallup poll taken 100 days before the poll foretells the winner. Only once in the past 60 years – the Bush-Dukakis race of 1988 – did that predictor fail. So, what did Gallup show on the date in question? A dead heat, with both candidates on...

It looks like denial. Greeks want the euro, but not the austerity it requires. Germans want the euro but not the tax-rises it demands. The euro crisis is becoming surreal In fact, what we're seeing is a form of cognitive dissonance. From the first, the euro was aggressively promoted as a way to boost growth. Indeed, the most surreal thing about all this talk of a 'growth strategy' in Brussels is that we're dealing with the consequences of the last 'growth strategy' – monetary union. None the less, two decades of propaganda have left their mark. People are not quite...

Is it possible for a Right-wing government to freeze spending and cut the deficit while remaining popular? As they say in New Zealand, ‘yih’. I’ve remarked before that, while no country is physically further from Britain, none is temperamentally closer. Yet there is a difference when it comes to public expenditure. A slowing of the rate of increase in the UK – there have, as yet, been no net cuts – is howled down as an assault on the poor directed by a clique of ancien régime aristocrats. In New Zealand, by contrast, ‘zero budgets’ are seen as prudent and...

RUSH: Daniel Hannan, member of the British parliament, spoke Saturday CPAC. From what I understand it was not televised. You had to get it streaming. That's what Cookie told me. I told her this morning, "Get me some Daniel Hannan." She looked and the only place she could find it was streaming. We got it, doesn't matter. But we have three bites, and his focus was the importance of the congressional elections. He wanted everybody at CPAC to know that, you could have the best president in the world, you guys can elect the best Republican conservative in the world,...

Please DO NOT MISS that speech. PHENOMENAL!!! http://www.therightscoop.com/full-speech-daniel-hannan-at-cpac-2012/

Chatting to some Occupy protesters this morning, I was struck by how wide of the mark were the beliefs they attributed to me as a Right-winger. In the interests of deeper understanding, here are ten things which – trust me – most of the Tory scum I hang around with think. Obviously, I don’t expect to turn my Leftie readers in a single post; still, they might get a clearer idea of what we actually believe.

A friend once referred to the late New Orleans Archbishop Philip M. Hannan as the “Forrest Gump of Catholicism.” Just like the Tom Hanks’ character, Archbishop Hannan always seemed to be at the right place at the right time – making history as much as witnessing it. Just consider some of the roles the native Washingtonian so ably filled in his 98 years: paratroop chaplain during the Second World War, Catholic newspaper editor, counselor to President John F. Kennedy, Civil Rights and pro-life advocate, attendee of all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council, shepherd to the New Orleans archdiocese...

Archbishop Philip Hannan, whose 23 years as influential leader of the Archdiocese of New Orleans capped a career which included time spent as a World War II combat chaplain and confidant to political leaders such as John F. Kennedy, has died.  He was 98.Hannan died shortly after 3 a.m."Archbishop Philip Hannan peacefully died in his sleep, he was called home to the Lord," said current Archbishop Gregory Aymond. "At 98, he lived a full life dedicated to God and his church. We will miss him. We commend him to the Lord." The Archdiocese of New Orleans confirmed Hannan will be...

I’ve blogged before about why I admire Ronald Reagan; why, indeed, I see him as the greatest of all 44 US presidents. Here, in his centenary year, is a reminder of his greatest domestic achievement: he managed to bring spending down as a percentage of GDP. He did so in the only way possible in a modern democracy, not by slashing expenditure in absolute terms, but by allowing the private sector to grow faster than the public sector. Never forget the central message of Reagan’s inauguration speech: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government...

This should be required viewing in every Civics class.

Daniel Hannan could be the ultimate tea-party candidate, waving his pocket Constitution, citing the Founders, and warning that we are in danger of losing America itself. Hannan even holds public office. Just not in America. He’s a Brit — and a member of the European Parliament — with a love for the Red, White, and Blue. It’s out of that love that he’s written The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America. He talks about it with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: “The United States is becoming just another country.” How far along...

Thanks to everyone who came to the Brighton Tea Party, and apologies to those who couldn’t get it. We opened and filled an adjoining room, but it was still quite a squash. The hotel manager told me afterwards that there had been more than 300 people present, not counting those who had had to be turned away. Not bad for a meeting organised with two days’ notice. If you can run a tea-party in Brighton Pavilion – the constituency which the Greens are most hopeful of winning – you can run one anywhere. You don’t have to be a small-government...

The inaugural British Tea Party will take place on Saturday in my home town of Brighton, and I’ll be speaking. Do try to come: here are the details. Labour has raised more than a trillion pounds in additional taxation since 1997. Yet, unbelievably, Gordon Brown has still managed to run up a deficit of 12.6 per cent of GDP (Greece’s is 12.7 per cent). A far lower level of taxation brought Americans out in spontaneous protest last year.

Simon Jenkins raises a question that has been nagging at me for some time. Why is there no British Tea Party? Where are the crowds of revenue slaves flocking to London to demand redress for the squandering of their money? Marginal tax is rising to 50%, VAT to 17.5% and state spending towards half the national product. The Treasury has lost control of public finance. So why no furious blue-rinses, bail-out ­haters, bonus-bleaters and embittered VAT victims storming Parliament? Yeah: why? Some of my US readers believe that anti-tax rebellions are an American speciality, but we’ve had plenty of them...

It's just plain odd, but funny and telling all at the same time. Apparently the Brits are going to have their own tea party to protest their own plight of over taxation. Accordingly, Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan is sponsoring a Brighton Tea Party to be held on February 27. Hannan thinks that Brits have had enough of being raked over the coals as their government wastes tax money at a rate even higher than that of America's profligate government... Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...

Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP, has resigned as European legal spokesman only two months after taking up the post in protest at his party's stance on the Lisbon Treaty. Mr Hannan, a leading Eurosceptic, became the Tory spokesman on legal affairs in the European Parliament in September. But last night on his Telegraph blog, Mr Hannan, the Conservative MEP for South East England, said he would be returning to the back benches in order to campaign for direct democracy that will see power in the hands of individual citizens.