Free Republic

...media elites are obsessed with sexual abuse testimonies when the Catholic Church is in the firing line. But, when children and adults are abused by powerful secular priests, watch them tiptoe away, or downplay events. There are numerous examples: I have to ask, where’s the loud, moral outrage surrounding the late Jimmy Savile’s five decades of abuse against vulnerable minors and women? After all, it’s understood that the child-abusing BBC presenter even sexually assaulted ill children in their hospital beds. I have to ask, where’s the media interest in serious allegations surrounding two male executives and the abuse of young...

Interesting article on the website of Middle East and Islam scholar Raymond Ibrahim, written by Ralph H. Sidway, Orthodox Christian researcher and writer, author of the book Facing Islam: What the Ancient Church has to say about the Religion of Muhammad. The piece is important because it examines, among other things, the Orthodox Church clergy's little-discussed role in the liberation of Greece from Ottoman rule, and because it may help to reduce the gap among the different Christian Churches and denominations that can be an obstacle to a unified Christian response to persecution and common enemies. The article, alliteratively entitled Assassination Plot Points...

Wednesday, May 22, 2013 Partisan Nation Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The use of the IRS to target conservative groups should be the least surprising development in years. Not only does that sort of thing date back to Clinton and JFK, both of whom unleashed the IRS on their enemies, not to mention Nixon who never managed to pull off the things that JFK grinned, did and got away with, but there was no reason for not to do it. The two reasons not to sic the IRS on your enemies are decency and the law....

The Tsarnaev brothers’ brutal attack in Boston sparked renewed interest in terrorism in Eurasia. The subsequent disclosure that two students from Kazakhstan allegedly tried to hide incriminating evidence against Djokhar Tsarnaev has only heightened that interest. The not-guilty plea of Fazliddin Kurbanov, the alleged Uzbek terrorist in Idaho, underscores the new threat. And that’s a good thing. Understanding what was and is happening in Eurasia can help us better fight terrorism and prevent future attacks rooted in that region. Chechens and Uzbeks fought in Afghanistan with the Taliban, and fighters from the North Caucasus are involved in Syria on the...

MOSCOW — "Russia is like a tub full of dough. You push your hand all the way to the bottom, pull it out, and right before your eyes, the hole disappears, and again, it is a tub full of dough," Nikita Khrushchev once said, assessing the country he ruled. The former premier -- my great grandfather -- who 60 years ago denounced Joseph Stalin and his pervasive security apparatus, must be turning in his grave. Russia's legal institutions are still run along the lines of Stalin's "show trials." Following the politically motivated prosecutions of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and...

Four Armed Colorado River Tea Party Members Exercise Their Rights About 50 people showed up at high noon in Yuma to exercise their First and Second Amendment rights. A common theme among the Tea Party members was that using the machinery of government to suppress dissent and political opposition is the very essence of tyranny. Signs varied from "Shut Down the IRS" to "We will not be Intimidated" to "Obama IRS Tyrant!" to "Congress disregards the Constitution it's up to us to do something" About 50 Protesters Showed up. I counted nearly 40, and several joined the group over...

Islam is a supremacist doctrine that affirms not only Muslim superiority over non-Muslims, but also Arab superiority over other ethnic groups and races. Both Islam's holy texts - the Quran and the Hadith, namely Muhammad's official biography - and scholars are testament to that. Muhammad himself bought, sold and kept African slaves. Historically, Muslims' slave trade of black Africans has been by far the world's greatest numerically and the most long-lasting, spanning over 1400 years (watch the video "The Arab Muslim Slave Trade Of Africans, The Untold Story", by clicking on the link just below this post title). Arab Muslims...

No political campaign ever justifies obstructing justice, or harassing individuals, or compromising those great agencies of Government that should and must he above politics. To the extent that these things were done in the 1972 campaign, they were serious abuses, and I deplore them. As we look at Watergate in a longer perspective, we can see that its abuses resulted from the assumption by those involved that their cause placed them beyond the reach of those rules that apply to other persons and that hold a free society. It became fashionable as individuals and groups increasingly asserted the tight to...

The Battle of Athens (sometimes called the McMinn County War) was a rebellion led by citizens in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the local government in August 1946. The citizens, including some World War II veterans, accused the local officials of political corruption and voter intimidation. Here is what happened: Following World War II in 1946, violence erupted when returning American soldiers discovered their Tennessee county had been taken over by political corruption. Their plan to take it back involved bullets—lots of bullets—and dynamite. Why Athens in McMinn County, Tennessee became a battleground was due to Paul Cantrell,...

After enjoying mass capitulation over unrecognizing Halloween (now ‘Black & Orange day’), St. Patrick’s Day (‘Wear Green’ day, which I find particularly offensive), and the outright denial of Christmas (Happy Holidays my ass), those who wish to change or erase historical dates have set their sights on nailing the leftovers.

Remember Enron? Remember Kenneth Lay? How about the tens of billions that were lost in that scandal? It was a series of events that will be talked about for decades to come, yet history seems to be repeating itself in 2013. Not in the private sector, but in the Federal government. For those who may not know or need a refresher in history, Enron was once one of the largest companies in the world. Its business was primarily in the energy sector. Unfortunately, accounting fraud and corruption led to its ultimate downfall, one of the largest bankruptcies in history, and...

Sunday, May 19, 2013 Radicals, Moderates and Islamists Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 0 Comments The radical-moderate continuum that has defined the dialogue on Islam in the War on Terror is not an authentic perspective, it is an observer perspective. To the Western observer, a suicide bomber is radical, a Muslim Imam willing to perform gay weddings is moderate and the Muslim Brotherhood leader who supports some acts of terror, but not others, is moderately radical or radically moderate. These descriptions tell us nothing about Islam or about what Muslims believe, but do tell us a...

On the evening of 23 March, 1983, Ronald Reagan delivered a televised address about defence and national security. "Let me share with you a vision of the future," the president began in what was a last-minute addition to the half-hour speech. In Reagan's vision, we would "embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive." It was the first mention of Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), the plan to change America's nuclear posture from offensive to defensive. His goal was to render the Soviet nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." Reagan's admirers praised SDI...

A friend of the court brief by Lucas Daniel Smith appears on line as having just been filed with the Alabama Supreme Court in an appeals case seeking to reinstate the challenge of President Obama’s eligibility to serve as US President. The online link shows the fully notarized Amicus Curiae (1) which Smith sent to Chief Justice Roy Moore and ten other authorities and includes a copy of the Mombasa certificate of live birth of Barack Hussein Obama II. Other exhibits include passport photos of Obama, Sr. and a postal mailing of the Senate Publication dealing with the Natural Born...

Even in Vietnam, we Marines could depend upon close air support which was miraculously accurate - shooting down individual buildings, people and vehicles from the skies. I cannot remember one time in Vietnam when my squadron would not respond to a call for help from fellow Marines and others, who were in a "hot zone," needing immediate firepower from the skies. Tip Of The Hat to those Marine, Air Force, Army, and Navy jet and helicopter pilots. jc From Various Sources. . .    Lt Colonel Dan Hampton  May 15 2013U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Dan Hampton flew...

The Three Whistleblowers at the Benghazi hearing spoke softly, but with the emotional wallop of The Three Tenors. They told the truth, and it blasted like thunder through Obama's tissue palace of lies... Obama stands center stage in this tragic opera of America's downfall, cheapening, endangering, and destroying the lives of the best among us. The pile of corpses grows ever higher, and the lies more noxious. Let's pay tribute to some of his many victims, and vow to honor their memory by holding him to account. BENGHAZI: Ambassador Chris Stevens, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Tyrone Woods. BOSTON MARATHON...

"Morris was worried that a terrorist act could expose that underbelly in the months leading up to the November election. In June and July of that year the White House had to deal with "three attacks" in what Morris referred to as 'the terror summer of 1996.'"

Nahor the Elder was Abraham's grandfather. Abraham's mother and father had the same father but different mothers, as shown in the diagram below. Nahor was the royal title of Abraham's older brother. He ruled in the territory of his maternal grandfather and of his father Terah in the region of Aram Na-haraim, between the western Tigris and the Euphrates. This territory was established by Nimrod, one of Nahor's ancestors (Gen. 10:8-12) Na-Haraim means "dedicated to Horus." This was Horite territory. Nahor the Elder was a descendant of Nimrod, the great Kushite kingdom builder. Erech (Uruk), Accad and Calneh were shrine...

Auto theft is rampant in South Africa. If they catch you, justice is swift and sure. Police vehicle POV.

Carry permits for concealed weapons are soaring all across the country. Part of the reason for this is uncertainty about the future. No one knows what is going to happen with tax rates, inflation, Obamacare, and the stock market. This uncertainty has translated into uncertainty about public safety, both from ordinary criminals and from the possibility of a breakdown of public order. A comment writer in Lane County, Oregon expresses the motives for and results of obtaining a concealed carry permit well: After many years of no guns in the home (grandchildren, after all), we made the decision to resume...

President Obama's Press Secretary Jay Carney bristled at the suggestion the Administration is embroiled in three major scandals. “What scandals?” Carney demanded to know. “The President has been giving his utmost to this country and now people are trying to package a run of bad luck into a series of scandals? It's unfair.” The “run of bad luck,” as Carney sees it, is “a media that is paying undue attention to relatively minor screw-ups by low level employees. Rather than being lauded for his efforts to employ a broader range of the 'differently- abled,' the President is now pilloried for...

Friday, May 17, 2013 Friday Afternoon Roundup - Take a Penny, Take a Country Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 0 Comments From Maksim at the People's Cube PINING FOR THE OASES Two years ago, Obama had declared that he was the defender of Benghazi, protecting it against a massacre that was never going to happen. And once Benghazi was liberated to be under Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood rule, the man who had sent in the air force to protect Benghazi Islamist militias against Gaddafi, couldn’t be bothered to send in the planes to protect his...

Raymond Ibrahim, a scholar of Islam and Islamic history who has a particular focus on Muslim persecution of Christians, has on his website - for which I also write - a new article, Islamic Forced Conversions — Past and Present, highlighting the astonishing similarities of past atrocities, which many people in the West believe to have been consigned to distant history (belief largely due to the mainstream media's "carpet non-coverage" and total neglect of these everyday slaughters, massacres, beheadings, torture and discrimination), to current ones. His piece was inspired by last Sunday’s canonization by Pope Francis I of the 813...

I visited the Soviet Union twice back in the eighties. Fascinating place. … And, because I was on cultural exchanges, I met brilliant people like Yevgeny Yevtushenko and a dozen or so other well known Soviet writers and filmmakers. Funnily enough, most of them would eventually take me aside and ask me if I could help them get out of there. I couldn’t, unfortunately, but I could well understand why they wanted to leave. At the end of both of my trips of about two weeks each, I desperately wanted to get the Hell out myself. I hated the place....

In the book "Drift and Mastery" by Walter Lippmann, there are some surprisingly honest pieces of information. The way progressives abuse the language can be truely frustrating, but once you develop the capability to parse it it becomes incredibly easy to deal with. I'll demonstrate this. On page 285, after quoting from Santayana, Lippmann writes the following: For the discipline of science is the only one which gives any assurance that from the same set of facts men will come approximately to the same conclusion. And as the modern world can be civilized only by the effort of innumerable people...

SNIPPET: "A genuinely inspiring issue of AQAP's flagship English language publication. This is what pages 1, 2, & 3 look like:" SNIPPET: "The remaining pages were rendered intentionally blank by person or persons unknown."

The recent wave of left-wing discussion panels calling for the Redskins to change their name seems to have died off, but not everyone has given up hope. Paul Woody of the Richmond Times-Dispatch identifies himself as someone who would like to see it change. To bolster his case, he went to speak to leaders from three different Virginia tribes of Native Americans. Give Woody credit for bringing back the results, because none of the Native Americans he spoke to are offended by it.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013 #FreeJahar and the Media's #FreeJihad Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 0 Comments The media, in one of its bursts of manufactured moral panic, has turned its eye on the teenage girls tweeting and tumblring away in support of Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Serial killers have always had their fan clubs. Before the Boston Marathon bombings spawned the #FreeJahar crowd, there were the Holmies, who adored James Holmes, who murdered 12 people at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises. Even if Adam Lanza hadn't committed suicide, it's doubtful that he would...

You won't believe how much has changed since then. Notice anything peculiar (other than the fashions) in some of these photos? (Many photos at link)

Author, with a Kassnar .22 AR lookalike (complete with homemade folding stock). Photo ©2013 by Dean Weingarten. The Arizona state legislature recently passed a law requiring cities to sell guns they collect in gun buy-backs, rather than destroy them, as is typically done. The law has been passed but not yet gone into effect – so the city of Phoenix and the a group called Arizonans for Gun Safety set up a series of three buybacks to be held before the law took effect.AFGS provided $100,000 of private money, and they partnered with the local grocery chain Bashas to give...

Can you smell that? That’s the pungent stank of sweltering scandal bubbling from every orifice of Barack Obama’s shadow government. Shall we count just a few of the ways this administration has defied the rule of law and betrayed the trust of the American people? The IRS abuses its power by investigating conservative groups, businesses, and candidates who oppose big government and/or educate the public on the Constitution; the Department of Justice taps over 20 phone lines of the Associated Press to illegally monitor communications and manipulate reporters; Operation “Fast And Furious” results in the death of an American agent,...

The Justice Department’s monitoring of the AP’s phone records is one of the most bone headed moves of this administration. And to announce it on the heels of two major scandals seems to defy logic. But does it? The only thing standing in the way of a torrent of whistle blowers, purloined emails and first hand testimony has been the pliant and fawning media. They have ignored blatant falsehoods, obvious phony cover stories and have not followed through on potentially explosive stories such as Fast and Furious. With few exceptions, the established media has been an effective shield protecting those...

“A Dude From The Rainy Left Coast” asks if I would prefer to live in a world with no gun controls or one with reasonable gun controls, and why. We had a world with no gun controls, once. A world in which you could hop a coastwise trader in New Orleans, and get off in any port north of Guyana. With your life preserver hanging on your belt, and without as much as a raised eyebrow from anyone. A world where wide areas of the world had four or five murders a year for every million population. Most as a...

Reporters covering the investigation of the major al Qaeda victory at Benghazi should ask themselves: "what would Walter Cronkite do" if he were covering the story. Let's consider the facts. Most people familiar with the War on Terror knew in September, 2012, that there was a heightened risk of an al Qaeda attack in the U.S. or at American installations outside the U.S. on or about the anniversary of the original 9/11 attack. The danger was particularly high at American facilities in Libya because of the very unstable situation there and the presence of al Qaeda personnel who were trying...

Sunday, May 12, 2013 Put Not Your Trust in Politicians Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 4 Comments The most obvious lessons of the defeat of gun control and the push for illegal alien amnesty is that politicians don't matter. People do. The Tea Party invested its energy into electing the right people, but as Rick Scott and Marco Rubio showed us, there may be no such thing as the right people. Politicians are in the business of selling out. The difference between Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist was that Rubio hadn't really been tested. But that...

Judge Jeanine Pirro: Benghazi whistle-blowers changed everything!If someone lies once you're free to assume they'll lie again! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ40cxD8H_U

This post is based in large part on an article titled Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally IllIs there a current tendency to consider those who cherish and seek to preserve our rights, including those under the First and Second Amendments, mentally ill for that reason? Interesting for the focused question it poses directly, the article should raise broader but similar questions about the current nature of academia in general. I have had no direct contact with academia since my years in undergraduate school (1959 - 63) and in law school (1963 - 66). "Back in the good old days," we were encouraged...

Saturday, May 11, 2013 With Blood on Their Hands Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Lady Macbeth may have been one of literature's most famous villains, but at least she had the guilty conscience to eventually try and wash the blood off her hands. Even if by then it was much too late. via American Digest It is doubtful that Hillary Rodham Clinton will start hallucinating bloody spots on her palms during the book tour for her upcoming 14-million-dollar book or compulsively washing her hands during the 2016 campaign. If she does make it into the White...

Likely WWII war trophy. This Luger came in with an Original Holster The holster is in the lower left, just three guns to the left of what appears to be a Model 97 Winchester shotun I arrived at the gun turn in at a little after 9 am on Saturday morning. I had a couple of inexpensive .22 rifles to test the system with. I promptly got in the line of vehicles to enter the area for the turn in. The line was a couple of hundred yards long when I entered itThis woman was one of many that offered...

Here is an excellent YouTube video by Bill Whittle of PJTV Afterburner.[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7BSgwtNNS8?feature=player_detailpage] video linkMr. Whittle makes quite valid points and we -- as well as the Grand Obsolete Party (GOP) -- should take them (and him) seriously. Will the GOP do so, or simply continue doing more of what hasn't worked and won't work again? I expect the latter but would very much like to be pleasantly surprised. Tip of the hat to Geneb527.

Michael Scott Speicher was a United States Naval Aviator and the first combat casualty of the Gulf War. He was declared missing in action as there was no rescue attempt at the time he was shot down. There was much speculation surrounding anecdotal evidence about the aviator having survived, along with some reports that LCDR Speicher was being held prisoner in Iraq. But attempts to find the flyer were unsuccessful. In 2009, an Iraqi came forward and led US Marines to the location where Speicher had been buried in 1991. Speicher’s remains were...

Nor did the White House even suggest that any changes be made. Indeed, the White House never even read any talking points. Suggestions to the contrary by the partisan Republican obstructionists are damaging our very nation. I just watched a YouTube video of Press Secretary Carney's highly incendiary illuminating one hour long press briefing of May 10th. Instead of repeating himself interminably, shifting, dodging, dancing around -- and in many cases stepping into -- traps maliciously attempted to be laid by the faux media, he should have responded to all questions about White House involvement as follows: I want to make it absolutely clear...

A camera hidden inside of a coat jacket, controlled by a hand held mechanism. A wrist–gun that is attached to a glove, can be hidden under a sleeve. A special listening device. A 4.5mm gun hidden inside of a lipstick. A gun hidden inside of a tobacco pipe. A camera hidden inside of a pen. This gun fires a dual cyanide charge that can kill almost instantly. Cufflinks with recessions to hide things An ancient coin that has a recess in it to hide things. A jacket button that can be turned into a compass. A transmitting device inside of...

Friday, May 10, 2013 Friday Afternoon Roundup - Hearts and Minds Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 0 Comments HEARTS AND MINDS The Benghazi hearings sucked most of the oxygen in the room on the right, which is why the press conference on the next day by SEAL families and military experts on the Seal Team Six attack got little attention from the conservative media. Those that did write about it focused mainly on the Muslim prayer, but not on the bigger issues involving the Rules of Engagement. And those issues, believe it or not, are bigger...

Painting of Kaiser Wilhelm II by Max Koner 1890 Aleksandra's Note: It never ceases to amaze me how decades, and in this case an entire century, of cataclysmic change can run its course through the world and the history of its nations and peoples, but some things truly don't change. For the Serbs, "Deja Vu" has become a constant common denominator in the course of their history. This important bit of history from a 100 years ago should serve as a reminder to the Serbs that the passage of time, even a full century of time, really means nothing when...

If verification is not seriously attempted, lies will go unnoticed. More lies will follow. That's one difference Benghazi makes now. What difference does it make? On May 5th, President Obama delivered an address to the graduating class at Ohio State University. The following was included in his remarks. Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works.  They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. ...

“It is customary to define psychiatry as a medical specialty concerned with the study, diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses.” But according to prominent psychiatrist and academic Thomas Szasz MD (1920-2012) “…this is a worthless and misleading definition.” “Mental illness is a myth. Psychiatrists are not concerned with mental illnesses and their treatments. In actual practice they deal with personal, social, and ethical problems in living.” (1) Szasz write that “…the notion of a person ‘having a mental illness’ is scientifically crippling. It provides professional assent to a popular rationalization—namely that problems in living experienced and expressed in terms of...

Stonewall Jackson was shot by one of his own men at about 9:00 p.m. on the evening of May 2, 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville. After Jackson’s accidental wounding, his body servant and friend, Jim Lewis was one of his constant companions and comforters as he faced his final enemy. By 2:00 a.m., May 3, Jackson was . . .

Biden: Amnesty for 11 Million Illegals is ‘Granting Them the Dignity & Respect They Deserve’. What does breaking the law – those identical to international regulations Americans are jailed for in Mexico and abroad – have to do with dignity and respect? If anything, these trespassers showed no respect for America or her citizens: both natural born or naturalized. In what other country are criminals, non-citizens at that, rewarded for breaking the law? The real problem is that a simple ...issue, applying for and obtaining citizenship, has been muddled and shamelessly exploited by unscrupulous politicians trying to maximize power. If...

The DEFCAD site shows the following:DEFCAD files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information. Link to DEFCAD site here We do not know if this is real or not. There was a similar spoof done on April 1st. Link to April 1st spoof story "Breaking: Defense Distributed website seized, Cody Wilson arrested on conspiracy charges!" We will learn more in the next few hours. This may be real. ©2013 by Dean Weingarten Permission to share granted as long...