Free Republic

Almost a year to the day before the Republican National Convention began, members of a self-described anarchist group gathered to talk about ways to disrupt it, including kidnapping delegates, sabotaging air vents at the Xcel Energy Center, blocking bridges and "capturing federal buildings" in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Unbeknown to the RNC Welcoming Committee, two police informants and an undercover investigator had infiltrated their ranks, according to an affidavit and search warrant application filed Tuesday.

'Taking Woodstock' set to start Emile Hirsch, Demetri Martin to star in Ang Lee pic By MICHAEL FLEMING Focus Features will begin production late this month on "Taking Woodstock," scripted by James Schamus and to be directed by Ang Lee. Lee's ensemble cast includes Emile Hirsch, Imelda Staunton and Liev Schreiber. Pic is an adaptation of the memoir of Elliot Tiber, who played a role in helping the historic 1969 music fest unfold on his neighbor's farm (Daily Variety, April 22). Less than a month ago, Focus had been thinking about postponing the start of production over concerns that a...

As Diseases Make Comeback, Why Aren't All Kids Vaccinated? The measles, whooping cough and even polio have returned. Why? Because of a new breed of vaccine deniers who are ignoring campaigns for awareness, and ultimately might live shorter—not longer—lives. By Glenn Harlan Reynolds Illustration by Koren Shadmi Published in the August 2008 issue. Progress is easy to take for granted. When I was a child in the ’60s, polio was history, measles was on the way out, and diphtheria and whooping cough were maladies out of old movies. Now these contagious diseases are making a comeback. Take measles, for instance....

The Twin Cities and Denver will face a common challenge for the next five weeks. As host cities for the Republican and Democratic national conventions, both are girding for battle with "sleeping dragons" and other tools of mass disorder. There's one significant difference. Denver's City Council is considering an ordinance to defang the dragons. Minneapolis and St. Paul are biding their time. Denver City Council's public safety committee will vote today on an ordinance that would bar protesters from carrying items such as weighted PVC pipes, carabiners and quick-drying concrete. These are the raw materials of the sleeping dragon --...

Video. Yeah, the left supports the (Rapist) troops all right. They also support (Fascist) America, and George W. (Hang Him) Bush. If you can muscle through and keep lunch down, the last minute will make you feel better.

The hippie generation taught us to laugh at the parents and grandparents who defeated America's enemies, bought us our first car and paid for our college. The hippies brought us social acceptance of drug use which spawned death and wrecked families; sexual freedom that imprisons human dignity; a sneering condescension for the squirrel that hoards his nuts against a hard winter. The hippie generation has defied the wisdom of the ages by redefining family, gender, and marriage. They even tried killing off God! How stupid is all of mankind that came before them! We are now suffering the rotten fruits...

Five members of the “Rainbow Family” — a loose-knit band of hippies that preaches love, tolerance and peace and is best known for its large gatherings every July — were arrested Tuesday night by Boulder County sheriff’s deputies after a violent brawl broke out at the group’s campsite near Ward. at a fight had broken out among a group of a dozen people camping out in the area of Ruby Gulch, located on state Forest Service property ... When deputies arrived, witnesses reported that one man, a Nederland resident aged 34 or 35, was hit in the back of the...

What if you threw a party and nobody came? Would you feel bad? Alone? Rejected? Like nobody liked you and it wouldn’t matter if you fell off the Earth? Well, that’s how hardcore moonbats are feeling right now. Since their heyday in 2005, they’ve had dwindling turnout at their increasingly freaky protests. Times are tough for folks who think papier-mâché images of Bush as a devil are the height of political expression. Despite having lots of money from George Soros and the love of Hollywood, the blame-America-first crowd doesn’t have much to show for itself except for a few preachy...

That photo of 11 weirdos in '70s clothes you may have seen on the Internet really is the original Microsoft team, snapped Dec. 7, 1978, on the eve of the company's move from Albuquerque, N.M., to Seattle. Almost 30 years later, a few weeks before Bill Gates's departure from Microsoft, the group (looking better) reconvened. Bob Greenberg (center of old photo, in red sweater), then a programmer and now a tech and financial consultant, had won a photo portrait in a contest and used it to commemorate the soon-to-be disrupted group. The picture was shot in a shopping mall. ...

<p>As the sun rose at 0458, a cheer went up from the brave crowds who had taken up their positions overnight at the stone circle on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.</p> <p>Clad in ponchos, black cloaks and makeshift waterproof jackets made from bin-bags, revellers gathered at the Heel stone....</p>

The tree-sit that has been going on for more than 18 months in the oak grove near Memorial Stadium may have reached its end now that UCPD officers are attempting to take the sitters out. In the latest of several developments, an arborist harnessed on the end of a crane was mobilized onto one of the trees where he was attempting to cut down a structure in the tree when a tree-sitter began hitting him with a plastic bottle. The workman was pulled out of the tree by the crane. Two cherry pickers are also on the site, one of...

June 12, 2008Berkeley, California This gas thing is getting ridiculous, and I decided I wasn't going to sit idly by while the big oil companies and George Bush sucked every last cent out of my welfare checks. I called my friend and assistant, Scooter, over to discuss a plan to strike a blow against Big Oil. Scooter showed up with a bag of mushrooms and two bottles of Bailey's for what promised to be a marathon strategy session.In order to come up with an action plan (AP), we first needed to determine what our end objective (EO) was to be. Scooter and I were in...

Beware of the Brown Note. That's the word among some political activists as the Democratic National Convention nears. As legend has it, the Brown Note is an infrasonic frequency believed to resonate through human body parts and cause a loss of bowel control. Some protesters are convinced that Denver police will amplify such low frequencies to subdue them in August. "They'll bring out all the technologies they can get their hands on," says activist Ben Yager. "I wouldn't put anything past police in terms of crowd control." Sounds paranoid? Maybe. But Mayor John Hickenlooper's administration is only fueling conspiracy theories...

Immediate Alert for Saturday Morning, Waterbury Connecticut, June 7, 2008 IN an e-mail alert from the Patriot Guard, there is supposed to be a presence of antiwar types at the FUNERAL of a fallen Marine from Waterbury TOMORROW morning early! If you can attend, be there before 9 AM maps to the location of the cemetery below, the presence of the antiwar types is supposed to be north of this location http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&dq=Riverside+cemetery+loc:+Waterbury,+CT&daddr=496+Riverside+St,+Waterbury,+CT+06708&geocode=15632629214542374654,41.548818,-73.046660&ll=41.548818,-73.046660&iwstate1=dir:to&iwloc=A&f=d The original Patriot Guard posting is here: http://www.patriotguard.org/Forums/tabid/61/postid/886371/view/topic/Default.aspx The Obituary for this Marine is located here: http://www.rep-am.com/Obituaries/346098.txt If you will not fight for right when you can easily...

Like many other young couples, Aimee and Jeff Harris spent the first years of their marriage eagerly accumulating stuff: cars, furniture, clothes, appliances and, after a son and a daughter came along, toys, toys, toys. Now they are trying to get rid of it all, down to their fancy wedding bands. Chasing a utopian vision of a self-sustaining life on the land as partisans of a movement some call voluntary simplicity, they are donating virtually all their possessions to charity and hitting the road at the end of May. “It’s amazing the amount of things a family can acquire,” said...

A group of demonstrators protesting the war in Iraq will be allowed to parade as close as 300 feet from the Xcel Energy Center on the first day of the Republican National Convention, police said Wednesday. But protesters - who plan to march from the state Capitol to the site of the convention and back again - say that's not good enough. The authorized route released Wednesday will allow marchers near the Xcel Energy Center at the corner of West 7th Street and West 5th Street - an intersection kitty-corner and across the street from the auditorium. The route is...

Even though I’m embarrassed to have been a Democrat for so many years, I’m proud that even in my 20’s, I thought the 60’s was the worst decade in America’s history. Because I was born in 1940, I was at UCLA for some of those years and had a bird’s eye view of my fellow college students. It was not a pretty sight. What makes that time the source of so much nostalgia for so many people of my age -- the incessant folk songs, the tie-dyed shirts and blouses, the granny glasses, the bongs, the infantile anti-establishment content that...

(image below edited by me) (image below edited by me) (image below edited by me) Ending on a high note...

Cindy Sheehan barely fits into her "campaign limo," her sister's blue Hyundai Tiburon. She ducks low to avoid hitting her head on the way in, and her knees are nearly at her chest when she sits, even with the seat rolled all the way back. Traveling over the Oakland Bay Bridge, her campaign manager at the wheel--steering with one hand and scrolling through e-mails with the other--the 6-foot-tall antiwar activist turned congressional hopeful tries in vain to stretch out in the passenger seat. It's raining when they pull into a parking spot near Berkeley City College, where Sheehan is about...

Before checking your iPhone in line at the locally owned coffee shop was thought cool, long before counter culture became pop culture, and before the People’s Republic of Berkeley became the quintessential role model of liberal college students, hippie disgruntlement was a bloody affair. Unbeknownst to the present generation of Prius owners, in the 1970s the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a group of militants, defined the anti-establishment attitude for which Berkeley has a reputation. A far cry from today’s idea of sticking it to the man by petitioning the Olympic committee to add Ultimate Frisbee as an official event, it...

A few months ago, a day before one of the occasional marches the Capital sees demanding an end to the Iraq War, I began the descent into the Metro stop near my office, looked up, and saw a number of representatives of Code Pink standing at the railing overlooking the escalator. Or rather, I heard them first. They were screaming at the parade of commuters, at the top of their lungs and in a tone somewhere between simple frustration and righteous anger, "End the war!!!" Well, I thought, that ought to take care of things. Good work, hippies! I kid...

What is the “peace movement” doing wrong? It failed to prevent the war in Afghanistan.It failed to prevent the war in Iraq.It failed to change power in the executive branch.It failed to end the war in Iraq.It was duped by Democrats in 2006 who promised “A New Direction In Iraq” without ever having even formed a committee to brainstorm ideas until 2 months after being elected.It failed to prevent The Surge offensive.It failed to stop cannibals in the Congo [and was silent while 4-6million died as UN peacekeepers raped and sold children en masse].It failed to stop the bloodshed in...

TORONTO In from the cold they come, gangly young men and graying grandfathers alike, filling a downtown church with the kind of polite anticipation more befitting an afternoon wedding than an antiwar rally. ...Across Canada, the remnants of a lost counterculture are rising up again as hundreds of aging draft dodgers reluctantly leave the quiet comforts of their anonymous lives to help an estimated 200 Iraq war deserters who fled north with no promise of asylum...."You're being stop-lossed!"Phil McDowell tried to absorb his wife's frantic news in June 2006 that the Army was rescinding his discharge. Iraq had left him...

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. Capitol Police arrested 10 war protesters who began shouting in the Senate gallery Wednesday. The protesters were quickly hustled into a hallway and out of the view of reporters. They had chanted, "The war is immoral! Stop funding the war!"—as police officers grabbed them and physically removed them from a visitors gallery overlooking the Senate floor. The demonstrators wore gauze shrouds over their heads and black shirts that read, "We will not be silent." One member said they represented the "National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance." Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas was speaking during debate on...

SAN FRANCISCO, Actor Sean Penn and Peace Activist Cindy Sheehan will headline "Iraq: 5 Years Too Many", an event marking the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Also featured will be Reverend Gregory Stewart, Senior Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church; Matt Gonzalez, former President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; and Justin Raimondo, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com. The program will begin at 5pm on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 1187 Franklin Street (near Geary) in San Francisco. After the speakers finish, attendees will march to the War Memorial Auditorium on Van Ness...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution," local media reported. The nonbinding, symbolic measure, passed in Brattleboro and Marlboro in a state known for taking liberal positions on national issues, instructs town police to "extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them." Vermont, home to maple syrup and picture-postcard views, is known for its liberal politics. State lawmakers have passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and impeach...

Freeloading hippie Mark Boyles, 28, decided to demonstrate his contempt for the modern world, materialism, and a bunch of other really terrific things by walking to Gandhi's birthplace in Porbander, India. Boyles is an acolyte of the "Freeconomy" movement, a method of living that, according to the group, "allows people to make the transition from a money based communityless (sic) society to more of a community based moneyless society." In other words, he's a middle class beggar. On the first day of his trip, according to this BBC report, he scored two free meals in the English town of Glastonbury....

Lots of internal links! http://www.recreate68.org DO IT IN DENVER! SEE YOU THERE! Welcome to the "Re-create 68" website, your virtual activists' Convergence Center for the Denver Democratic National Convention of 2008. This website was created for all the grassroots people who are tired of being sold out by the Democratic Party. R-68 agrees with the proposition, POTESTAS IN POPULO, "all power comes from the people." What stands between the people and power are the party machines. The parties were devised as a means to represent the people. Today they represent nobody, not even party members, but only party bureaucracy. The...

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio (AP) -- Antioch College, known for inspiring quirky academic programs that produce students with a passion for free thinking and social activism, has no choice but to close for the 2008-2009 academic year, trustees of the parent Antioch University said yesterday. Operations will be suspended June 30. Antioch and Yellow Springs, tie-dyed and liberal-leaning, fed off each other. Students were encouraged to create their own programs for learning. Famous alumni included Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, Coretta Scott King and evolutionary scientist Stephen Jay Gould. After two days of meetings in Los Angeles, trustees reaffirmed their June...

One day when I was but a young boy, I was walking down the street with my dad to the hardware store. He suddenly stopped, crossed the street and punched a man. When he returned, I ask, "Father, why did you punch that man?" He turned to me and said, "That's a stupid question." Then he punched me. "After punching a hippie, do you take the time to explain to those around you why you punched the hippie?" It was a stupid question, because who my dad punched was a hippie. Back then, everyone knew that you punched hippies, but...

YORBA LINDA – The first Amendment was alive and well today, Presidents' Day, as demonstrators for and against the war in Iraq displayed signs along Yorba Linda Boulevard, in front of the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum. The larger group, a dozen strong, set up on a corner waiving signs criticizing the war and handing out slices of "Bring Them Home-made Pie" to passersby. A man driving a yellow Hummer honked at the group and gave it a thumbs up. They responded in kind. One of the demonstrators, Pat Alviso, waved a sign with a picture of her son. "He...

BERKELEY, Calif. (KCBS) -- Protesters have returned to the Berkeley Marines recruiting center just a day after a showdown between anti-war and pro-military demonstrators before the Berkeley City Council. This time, several dozen members of the peace group CodePink urged people to make love, not war. The Berkeley demonstration is one of 20 “Kiss Don’t Enlist” protests across the country. ”Polls show that the majority of Americans are opposed to the war, and this has given people a chance to really come out and show that. And it’s kind of fun to make out, instead of making war, right?” said...

Some Berkeley business owners say they have received such a negative response from the recent City Council resolutions against the Marine Corps recruiting center in Downtown Berkeley that they may withhold city taxes in protest. Last week the council declared that the center was "unwelcome" in Berkeley and sought to aide Code Pink, a group that organizes regular protests outside the center, by reserving a parking space for the group in front of the center, among other actions. Since then, the resolutions have elicited a nationwide response. Last Thursday, United States Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said he would attempt to...

Society for years has endured the freakish antics of Berkeley dwellers. Naked people streaking in the streets; smelly hippies begging for money as they sing drunken renditions of '60s anti-war songs; adults sitting in trees like a bad zoo exhibit. But the Berkeley City Council and instigators from the extreme left have crossed the line this time. The council Tuesday night passed two anti-military, anti-American resolutions and agreed to send a letter to the city's only Marine recruiting office saying the military are "uninvited intruders." This is treasonous, hateful behavior that steals the First Amendment rights of the Marines, the...

One morning last August in San Francisco, six women in pink sweaters marched up a hilly boulevard towing pink roller bags full of shoes. They unzipped the bags in front of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's house, dumped the shoes on her lawn, and went on to arrange loafers, pumps, and pink glittery sandals like hawkers at a yard sale. Anchoring their display was a pair of combat boots, placed on Pelosi's doorstep. The boots, like the other shoes, had been pulled from a dead body in Iraq—the body of Casey Sheehan, in fact, whose mother, Cindy, is running as an Independent...

Brattleboro Town Officials Harassed Over Bush-Cheney Arrest Petition BRATTLEBORO, Vt. -- Town officials in Brattleboro are being inundated with complaints from across the country about a decision to let voters decide whether arrest warrants should be issued for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Town Clerk Annette Cappy said the "nastiness" of the calls prompted the town office to stop answering its phones Monday. One message from a Minnesota man said he'd like to see terrorists cut off the heads of some Brattleboro officials. Brattleboro police said they will prosecute anyone whose messages cross the line and...

Adam Gadahn was just another Riverside County devotee of death metal, but then he turned up on an FBI terror list If the radical right wanted to paint a portrait of a terrorist, they couldn’t do much better than Yahiye Adam Gadahn. In fact, the FBI’s announcement last May that it was actively seeking Gadahn for questioning regarding his possible ties to Al Qaeda energized conservatives in ways they could not have imagined – helping to not only whip up fears of Islamic radicalism but also to fuel the deepening “culture war.” The 25-year-old former Orange County resident had a...

Today, Iowa is the center of the political universe, but for only a day. Right here in Minnesota is where the next president will be chosen. I know the conventional wisdom: Candidates who hope to capture their party's nomination must make an early splash in Iowa or New Hampshire, or at least in Florida's primary on Jan. 29. As a result, it's thought, the GOP convention in the Twin Cities later this year will merely anoint a nominee chosen months earlier, in the sort of anticlimactic, scripted coronation we've seen for decades. This year, I predict, things will be different....

Gupta the swastika salesman arrives at sunset, fires a kerosene lantern and displays his gold- painted trinkets on an Indian beach filled with hundreds of young Israelis dancing in a fog of hashish. Draped in garlands strung with jasmine blossoms, the pulsating Israelis are freshly decommissioned from the military and seeking a cheap retreat to unwind from their obligatory two- to-three years of safeguarding the Jewish state. The conscripts find sanctuary in the thousands of dilapidated wicker seaside shacks and dozens of isolated jungle ghettos that weave along a 78-mile coast and snake up treacherous dirt tracks into the impoverished...

Virtually ignored by the establishment media, the famous antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan officially kicked off her campaign to unseat Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the opening of her campaign headquarters yesterday in San Francisco. The date of her headquarters opening coincided with the date John Lennon was assassinated in New York 27 years ago. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, hoped his passing would be remembered by people everywhere imagining a world of Peace and Love. Former Board President Matt Gonzalez, former Union Local 10 Secretary-Treasurer Clarence Thomas and former mayoral candidate Ahimsa Sumchai attended the campaign kickoff event. Note the “former” status...

I had to look up the word "conniption." I wasn't sure how to spell it, but I'm sure that the likes of Code Pink, MoveOn, and other far left anti-war groups had a collective conniption fit last week. One of their poster boys, John Murtha, quit toeing their line. Surely what followed were the same fits of rage I've seen them have before. In September at a Washington D.C. rally as Senator Joe Lieberman began to address a group of pro-mission vets and Gold Star Families, several members of the anti-war groups charged toward the stage with seemingly unrestricted fury,...

Oak Grove Tree-Sit Anniversary ProtestBirthday party celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Memorial Oak Grove occupationBerkeley, December 2, 2007 In 2006, the University of California announced plans to build an athletic training center next to Memorial Stadium on the U.C. Berkeley campus. But the construction of the new building would entail the removal of several trees currently occupying the proposed site. A cry to "Save the trees!" spread throughout the local activist community, and a small protest movement quickly arose to stop the training center. Although everything the university does elicits some kind of protest, this one, as trivial as...

Like noxious bugs swarming over a crumbling tenement, followers of Ron Paul have invaded the blogosphere. Their target is anyone who dares to criticize their hero. Bloggers have dealt with them in various ways. Some have tried banning them outright. Others allow readers to engage them in back-and-forth debates that can easily take a thread to several hundred responses. I used to find the Paulites annoying, but recently I had a revelation: Far from being scorned, Paul’s rabid fans should be welcomed and encouraged. We should do everything we can to make certain they keep pushing their man, sending him...

Apparently, America's greatest patriot was on Loonwaffle/Trooferville's favorite radio show today with the King Nutbar himself, although I'm not sure if anyone grabbed audio. If you want to listen to the rebroadcast stream, go here. I don't feel like it. Have fun.

State field director predicts second, even first in Iowa It seems like when we're young, we like to break a few rules.  Staying out a little too late, sneaking a drink before that official legal age, or backing a candidate who's outside the established mold (YEEEEEAH!) Several of those dynamics were on display Saturday at Olive Court, a notoriously wild tailgate spot three blocks from Iowa City's Kinnick Stadium.  It was here, just a year ago, that John Kerry was infamously photographed with a beer bong.  And into the anarchy marched the Ron Paul revolution. Ron Paul wasn't imbibing...

One issue voters. Confused, emotional one issue voters. And they come from all stripes of politics. Let's have a look. The Neo nazi groups/conspiracy theorists - Ron says he will end aid to Israel. They've latched on to that one. Most of them don't want the government to function, good or bad because it keeps them in check. Not quite anarchists, but close. The Leftie Anti war crowd, not really pacifists, but bohemian cowards promoting anarchy. Paul says he'll end the war and be nice to everyone no matter how they've tried to kill us. The Conservative who really would...

MINNEAPOLIS - Shrouded in black, with a bandanna masking her face, a self-proclaimed anarchist slips into her combat boots and dashes through town, tossing a Molotov cocktail here, launching a bowling ball there. The YouTube video is more parody than threat: The flaming cocktail ignites a charcoal grill, and the bowling ball knocks down pins instead of crashing through a Navy recruiting office window. But as the video fades to black, the message on-screen is clear: "We're getting ready. What are you doing?" With less than 10 months to go before the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St.Paul, activists are already...

t-shirt reads: "Our new weapon in the war against terrorism" - a peace sign(!)Sweatshirt reads "War is not the answer". (I guess, by the looks of it, Krispy Kremes are?)

Zombie: Moronic Convergence in San FranciscoFri, Nov 2, 2007 at 3:15:32 pm PDT Last weekend in San Francisco, the moonbats, antisemites, and terror supporters turned out for another extended temper tantrum, and the indefatigable Zombie was there with a camera: San Francisco Anti-War Rally, October 27, 2007. They were supporting the troops in their own special way again. Here we see a couple of foreign policy experts displaying their treatise on war and the 9/11 attacks.

If the "peace" movement holds a protest and no one in the press covers it, does it still exist? If Americans are sick of the war, they're also sick of the "antiwar." Even the media have grown antiwar-weary. Rallies on Oct. 27 drew only perfunctory news mentions. The peaceniks have become a bipartisan political problem, now that the Democrats who control Congress haven't dared to placate the radicals by cutting off money for the troops. Cindy Sheehan is threatening to run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But suddenly -- surprise, surprise -- the media aren't interested in Sheehan's new crusade....