Free Republic

The authoritarian clowns running our government get more like the villains in a James Bond spoof with every passing trespass against our freedom and privacy. The latest: The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office launched a new spy satellite Thursday evening on mission NROL-39 — and the new logo and tagline are quite an eye opener.The new logo features a giant, world-dominating octopus, its sucker-covered tentacles encircling the planet while it looks on with determination, a steely glint in its enormous eye. The logo carries a five-word tagline: “Nothing is beyond our reach.” What exactly is NROL-39 all about? Our rulers aren’t...

Monday, December 09, 2013 The Inevitable Hillary Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Hardly a week goes by without Hillary Clinton receiving another award. Last month she was named a "Global Champion" by the International Medical Corps at a gala Beverly Hills event crowded with celebrities, received the American Patriot Award at the National Defense University Foundation in the Ronald Reagan Building and the Hermandad Award from the Mexican American Leadership Initiative. Considering that Hillary Clinton is as much of an American patriot as is she is a Mexican-American leader... both awards seem equally deserved. Hillary was...

The memorial service for Nelson Mandela is a big deal. "We're now on 91 Heads of State & Gov confirmed plus 10 former Heads of State, 86 Heads of delegations & 75 Eminent Persons," tweeted South African government spokesman Clayson Monyela on Monday. Among those leaders attending are the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and French President Francois Hollande -- plus, of course, President Obama and former Presidents Carter, Clinton, and George W. Bush. Dozens of lesser leaders, plus celebrities like Bono and Oprah Winfrey, will also be there. From the United States Congress, House...

President Obama on Monday urged the citizens of the Central African Republic to “choose a different path” amid the latest round of sectarian violence gripping the nation. “We know from the bitter experience of other countries what happens when societies descend into violence and retribution,” Obama said in an audio message taped as Air Force One refueled in Dakar, Senegal. “Today, my message to you is simple: it doesn’t have to be this way.” Fighting between Christians and Muslims has lead to more than 400 deaths over the past two days, according to the Associated Press. Obama noted that religious...

Everyone laughed when Texas A&M went and bought itself a law school. Now the joke really is on conservative Aggies, with word that the dean selection committee includes a professor who says the Second Amendment should be repealed and tells students that the U.S. Constitution is outdated. One can only wonder what prominent, pro-gun, pro-constitution conservative Aggie officials like Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General-hopeful Barry Smitherman, Lieutenant Governor-hopefuls Jerry Patterson and Todd Staples have to say about the decidedly out-there views of Professor Mary Margaret “Meg” Penrose. Or even about the circumstances that allowed her to be among those deciding...

By now, if you are not living under a rock, you have heard about the intemperate (to say the least) and frankly stupid political article in an Esquire blog by one LTC Robert Bateman. In it, Bateman calls for all kinds of gun bans, and fantasizes (there is no other word) about them being enforced at bayonet point by a politicized Army. “We will pry your gun from your cold, dead, fingers,” he writes. You can almost hear him fapping to the thought of it.Good luck with that, Bob.Rather predictably,Thegun cultureonthenetwentbatguanoinsane.We only linked the resposible stuff (actually, we read every one of...

Iran is threatening to walk away from nuclear talks if Congress approves new sanctions against Tehran. In an interview with Time, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that “the entire deal is dead” if Congress passes new sanctions, regardless of whether they would only be triggered by the failure of the talks. “We do not like to negotiate under duress,” Zarif said. “And if Congress adopts sanctions, it shows lack of seriousness and lack of a desire to achieve a resolution on the part of the United States.” Lawmakers angry about the six-month deal struck with Iran have said...

On December 7th (also still remembered by some as Pearl Harbor Day) President Obama was interviewed at Saban Forum concerning Iran's "peaceful" nuclear program and Israel's Palestinian "partner for peace." Iran and President Obama President Obama spoke about the P5+1 deal, so here is the full text in PDF form. It would be interesting to read, or perhaps to re-read, it. Has President Obama read it? If so, His comprehension appears to be dubious at best. Another remote possibility is that He is sometimes less than candid, but who could accept that? During the Saban Forum session, President Obama said,...

Here are a few quotes made famous by the person who said them. See if you can remember who said them. “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care for human beings.” Who said it; A) Barack Obama B) Michael Moore C) Jesse Jackson D) Nelson Mandela? “Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and...

President Obama is sending two of his top diplomats to Capitol Hill next week in a final bid to stop new sanctions on Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry and his lead Iran negotiator, Under Secretary Wendy Sherman, will testify in public before House and Senate panels about the preliminary deal reached last month in Geneva. Their goal: Convince skeptical lawmakers that levying new punishments on Iran could derail the sensitive nuclear negotiations. “Passing any new sanctions right now will undermine our efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution to this issue by giving the Iranians an excuse to push the...

The sinister surprise attack against the naval base at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Imperial Military is recognized by historians as one of the most successful sneak attacks in military history. While many Americans initially thought the Empire of Japan intended to attack the United States mainland – Californians along the coastal areas felt especially vulnerable – the real targets were in Southeast Asia: Hong Kong, Siam, Malaya, Thailand, and the Philippines, as the first of many. The attack upon the naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, shocked America and the world. While Americans were still reeling,...

Naval Base Bombed, Shinto Worshipers Fear Backlash - New York Times - December 8 1941 ------------------- A day after planes passed over their peaceful village on the way to attack the Naval Station at Pearl Harbor, local fishermen are still picking up the pieces. "I don't know what any of this is about," a man who would only give his name as Paji said, holding the remains of a net which he had used to earn a living. "All I know is that the killing has to stop." In Washington, government officials urged the public to stay calm and not...

Saturday, December 07, 2013 A Date That Will Live Forever in Infamy Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Naval Base Bombed, Shinto Worshipers Fear Backlash - New York Times - December 8 1941 A day after planes passed over their peaceful village on the way to attack the Naval Station at Pearl Harbor, local fishermen are still picking up the pieces. "I don't know what any of this is about," a man who would only give his name as Paji said, holding the remains of a net which he had used to earn a living. "All I...

Naval Base Bombed, Shinto Worshipers Fear Backlash - New York Times - December 8 1941A day after planes passed over their peaceful village on the way to attack the Naval Station at Pearl Harbor, local fishermen are still picking up the pieces. "I don't know what any of this is about," a man who would only give his name as Paji said, holding the remains of a net which he had used to earn a living. "All I know is that the killing has to stop." In Washington, government officials urged the public to stay calm and not to jump...

With plummeting temperatures, the threat and promise of snow, and the turning of pages of the calendar, we are fully into the Christmas season. We hear Christmas hymns and other holiday songs on the radio, in TV commercials, at school and church pageants. But I wonder if we are all sufficiently aware of some of the deep historical meanings behind some of our favorite carols. For example: The Top Five Christmas Songs Associated with Major Historical Events 1: During the long, cold winter of 1979-1980, the Hunt Brothers famously attempted to corner a precious metals market. Remember those days? And...

Contrary to what the media is telling you, Nelson Mandela wasn’t jailed merely for opposing the apartheid government of South Africa. He was jailed to stop him from carrying out wide-scale terrorism on behalf of the global-communism-seeking Soviet Union. As Peter Wright points out in his article, Mandela–Mass Murderer Turned Into Saint by Media, “Mandela was imprisoned for conspiring and supporting acts of terrorism, mainly the blowing up of infrastructure (power lines) plotting to place bombs in public places (railway stations, etc.) and stockpiling weapons and explosives to carry out terrorist attacks.” The American Free Press reports that at the...

President Obama has an ambitious timetable for wrapping up a Middle East peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Obama said that an outline of a deal could be agreed to the 60-year standoff early next year. "I think it is possible over the next several months to arrive at a framework," he said at a Brooking Institution event. "We are now at a place where we can achieve a two-state solution." Obama said that retired U.S. General John Allen has conducted a security study and concluded that Israel can live securely alongside a new Palestine. He noted that Allen...

On the morning of December 7, 1941 American forces were surprised by a sneak attack launched by the Imperial Japanese Navy. This attack killed 2,402 Americans. The attack was an attempt to shut down the U.S. Navy to prevent it from interfering with the Empire’s plan to invade South East Asia and Western held territories. There were simultaneous Japanese attacks on the Philippine Islands and on British forces in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. This was, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt described it, “a date which will live in infamy.” Historians have blamed this attack on the failure of America’s...

In his 1908 book "Constitutional Government in the United States", Woodrow Wilson uses a line that could be easy to overlook, but it is a crucial point. On page 69, Wilson writes the following: The Presidents who have not made themselves leaders have lived no more truly on that account in the spirit of the Constitution than those whose force has told in the determination of law and policy. No doubt Andrew Jackson overstepped the bounds meant to be set to the authority of his office. It was certainly in direct contravention of the spirit of the Constitution that he...

The city of Heracleion was engulfed underwater 1500 years ago. This grand city had been mentioned by the Greek writer Herodotus, the 5th-century BC historian. He had told a wonderful tale of Helen of Troy, who traveled to Heracleion, then a port of 'great wealth', with her Trojan lover, Paris. When French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio stumbled upon some relics, it led them to one of the greatest finds of the 21st century; a city underwater. The discovery took place when Goddio had been in search of Napoleon’s warships from the 1798 Battle of the Nile, when he had been...

   Miller, of U.S. v Miller, photograph from Brian Frye In 2008, Brian L. Frye published the seminal paper on the history of United States v. Miller, the single most important second amendment case before U.S. V. Heller.   While Miller no longer holds as much significance in second amendment cases as it used to, the way in which the government manipulated the case in order to deprive American citizens of their second amendment rights deserves detailed study.  In  "THE PECULIAR STORY OF UNITED STATES V. MILLER", Professor Frye's meticulous scholarship shows that much of what went on behind the scenes...

Friday, December 06, 2013 Friday Afternoon Roundup - Reunited Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog REUNITED   SOON TO BE REUNITED? SOUTH OF HELL Even as the mourning for Mandela goes on, one child is raped every three minutes in South Africa and three children are murdered every day. If there is anything that the world ought to mourn, not only today, but every day, it is a horrifying reality in which a South African woman is more likely to be raped than to learn to read, a quarter of the men admit to having raped and...

Curse or blessing? You decide, but results may differ in California and Texas.I hadn't intended to post a second article today, but then I watched this Bill Whittle video and couldn't resist. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CDFxeB7Y-s&w=640&h=360] Video linkMy wife, Jeanie, was raised in California and remembers well a time when at least Northern California was not as Mr. Whittle describes the State now. Living briefly in Los Angeles in the early 1970's, when she was a Pan Am flight attendant on international flights originating at LAX, she experienced and understood the trend which has now engulfed the rest of the State. She moved...

Since I posted my brief article on the original Maxim silencers, I’ve had more than a few people contact me saying that they have found one among the possessions of a deceased parent or grandparent. These folks are curious what the value of a Maxim silencer is, and are looking to sell it or learn more about the history behind them. Well, from the number of contacts I’ve had along these lines, it is clearly something that needs to be better addressed. I expect many of my regular readers are going to know what I’m about to explain, but I...

As noted by Mark Levin on his radio show yesterday, Nelson Mandela could have easily become a dictator-for-life in South Africa... yet he ultimately resisted, unlike what you hear from the American left re. Obama 3rd term (Heaven forbid). Mandela seemed to have understood the value of a (another) smooth transition of power, making clear he was 'no messiah'... He also didn't get into the heavy redistributionist themes seen in other socialist basket cases throughout sub-Saharan Africa, as well as from the ANC commie morons that proceeded Mandela in Pretoria (and who have driven the country into the ground).  According...

I come not to bury Mr. Mandela in the mire that he was involved in much earlier in his career that was destined to transform South Africa from an apartheid state into what it is today - one of the most violent and disease ridden countries on earth. Without him things could have been worse, but I am not sure how much. And, that cannot be entirely blamed on Nelson Mandela, because he was in his latter years more of a peacenik than rabble-rouser. In the end he became a more gracious, kinder and gentler man, even while his...

Towards the end of the last millennium, when the year 2000 was near, many people were asked what was in their view the most important invention of those thousand years. The majority gave answers like the television, or the computer, or the internet. The Italian philosopher Umberto Eco answered: the cultivation of the bean, whose introduction in the Middle Ages freed the European peoples from the spectre of hunger. In an essay translated and published in the English newspaper The Guardian, he argued in favour of the "humble bean", this highly-proteic, wholesomely-nutritious vegetable. He explained how it's easy to...

Thursday, December 05, 2013 Civilization and the Knockout Game Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The Jewish part of Crown Heights is a narrow island a handful of blocks in length and width. The names; Empire Boulevard, President Street, Eastern Parkway, Montgomery Street; reflect an old vanished grandeur. Like Constantinople after the sack, there are still traces of the old empire, but the faint images of men in top hats and tails walking up the brownstone steps, slightly tipsy after a party, have given way to car alarms and broken glass. There is no longer any romance...

It's not lost on me that I find myself just a stone's throw from Boston Harbor where the greatest of wars -- the fight for freedom and individual rights -- broke out here in 1774. Nowhere, at no time, has there been a more righteous of cause in the history of humankind. Then, as today, an out-of-control government took outrageous and egregious actions against our most basic individual rights -- and in this case, the most precious of all freedoms, the freedom of speech. Today Robert Spencer and I went to court in Boston. David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise represented...

Wednesday, December 04, 2013 The Liberal God Dies Again Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The god of liberalism is an idea and ideas are notoriously fragile things. They fall apart once they make the transition from the ivory tower of the mind to the mud and dross of reality. Every writer and artist has had the experience of holding a perfect ideal in his mind only to lose it as he struggles to set it down on canvas or paper. The creative process is that recognition that the ideal cannot be made real. Liberalism, progressivism and...

Robert Redford and Oprah Winfrey recently became the latest in a long line of celebrities, Democrats and others who have publicly stated that those of us who oppose Obama’s policies do so only because he is black. I have ignored or denied this charge for five years. After careful self-reflection and honest soul searching, however, I now wish to confess and admit the truth: the reason, and the only reason, I oppose Obama’s policies is because he is black.

Image from newsobserver.com In 2011, the North Carolina legislature passed a law to address some of the problems of local governments suppressing the bearing of arms with a hodgepodge of ordinances.  A citizen could be cited for crossing a street without knowing that they were violating a local ordinance.  The 2011 law removed parks from the list of places where cities could ban firearms, along with a number of other reforms.   However, a loophole was left in the law: cities could ban guns from "recreational facilities", which were defined loosely enough that cities banned carry in entire parks that...

Chevy-Davidson...? Check out the details, like hood ornament worked into the front fender, exhaust routed out '57 Chevy rear bumper outlet, chrome bullet in front of engine, headlight bezel '57...

Monday, December 02, 2013 The Democratic Party vs. Barack Obama Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog When Obama decided to turn his campaign into a permanent Super PAC; he was stabbing the Democratic Party in the back. But he was doing it to them, before they did it to him. Organizing for America gave him an independent source of power and influence at the expense of the Democratic Party. Obama was carelessly draining money and energy out of his own party because whatever common interests he had with a political party, that for all its leftward swing...

There was a time in America when a physician had just two or three young adult patients with sexually transmitted diseases. In 2013 that number has become two or three dozen and is increasing as “hooking up” turns out to be a deadly sexual game.

The clip linked below is really something else- dimbulbs interviewed on the street, asking for their reaction to Martin Luther King's being hit by a car this morning in Washington, DC. I know we always say it, but it IS really hard to fathom such shocking stupidity... what exactly ARE they teaching kids in California high schools? And if unaware that MLK was killed 45 years ago by a gunshot in Memphis, do these people even KNOW who Reagan was? None noticed they had school off on MLK Day...? This one's somehow even worse than the 'Obama voter' clips of...

Unexpected? President Obama is accustomed to the unexpected and He will deal with it!Peace-loving IranHere is a link to an article posted at Israeli News on December 1st. It concludes with this pearl: The deal is designed to halt any further advances in Iran’s nuclear campaign and to buy time for negotiations on a final settlement aimed at ensuring Tehran’s nuclear activity is wholly peaceful in nature. Iran rejects suspicions that it has sought covertly to develop the capacity to produce nuclear weapons, saying it is enriching uranium solely for civilian energy purposes. [Emphasis added.] Any such suspicions seem to...

Friday, November 29, 2013 Friday Afternoon Roundup - Happy Chanukah and Thanksgiving Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog GREEN IS THE NEW BLACK Soon an entire expert class was profitably employed predicting doomsday and teaching corporations to Greenwash their products. These were the Green versions of the leftist sociologists who had predicted race wars if economic inequity went on and the radical Black activists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who had monetized their instant racism into sensitivity consulting firms and national organizations. Once again, Green followed Black. J.P. Morgan had received hundreds of millions in state...

Saturday, November 30, 2013 Manufacturing Intolerance Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog By now everyone knows that Dayna Morales, the lesbian waitress who claimed to have been denied a tip over her sexual orientation, was lying. It's not the first politically correct receipt hoax and it won't be the last. These hoaxes happen because leftist activists promote them and the media picks them up. The world is full of liars and con artists, but it's revealing to see which of their lies and cons succeed. Morales' hoax is a blip in the larger pattern of faked hate...

We are the generation that changed everything. Of all the eras and epochs of Americans, ours is the one that made the biggest impression—on ourselves. That's an important accomplishment, because we're the generation that created the self, made the firmament of the self, divided the light of the self from the darkness of the self, and said, "Let there be self." If you were born between 1946 and 1964, you may have noticed this yourself. That's not to say we're a selfish generation. Selfish means "too concerned with the self," and we're not. Self isn't something we're just, you know,...

“WeaponsMan,” we can hear you thinking. “Dey already done dat.” Well, not exactly. Sure, they printed a gun before, but this time they did something pretty amazing: they printed all 34 non-spring parts in a single go (see the photo of the parts below, fresh from the laser-sintering machine with only the unused powder removed yet). And they printed it of Inconel 625, which you’ve probably never used in a gun before (but if you’ve ever flown in a jet airplane, it was probably the turbofan engine’s hot-section shaft and several other critical parts.Inconel is fairly expensive and is normally...

Amidst concerns that the US may have yielded too much in order to reach an agreement with Iran, US Secretary of State John Kerry stridently defended his achievement saying “we drove a hard bargain.” “First, let me point out that this is the first agreement this country has reached with Iran since the Shah was overthrown in 1979,” Kerry boasted. “This is more than the five Administrations between then and the current Obama Administration have been able to accomplish.” “Second, the amount that we have to pay Iran to refrain from developing a nuclear weapon is very reasonable,” Kerry argued....

In Louisiana, a court case is headed to the Supreme Court, based on the right to keep and bear arms amendment that was overwhelmingly approved by voters last year.   The case is one of those that people point at as showing the insanity of the law.  Rico Webb, a 22 year old man with no criminal record, was in his girl friend's car when it was stopped for a broken taillight.   He had possession of a legal handgun, and he told police that he had a "blunt" (small cigar with marijuana filler) in his backpack.   Possession of the marijuana...

Do you think Obama is the first radical to give someone in the media a thrill up their leg? No, not really. I recently uploaded an article lifted out of The Metropolitan, titled "Understanding Woodrow Wilson". I first referenced this article over a year ago, but I need it for a future article I am writing and I noticed that the article is not searchable via a search engine. Well, was. Now that problem is solved. Anyways, If you read the article you cannot help but notice how big of a puff piece it is. Being as I am normally...

Results of an intrusive national registration scheme These guns and air rifles are being haled as a find of a massive cache of private guns in Moonford, Australia, a tiny farming community with virtually no crime.  That is, there was no crime there before the National Australian government created it with the intrusive "gun control" law they passed, taking advantage of the act of a madman and the emotional response pushed by their national media.  All guns must be registered.  All guns must be locked up.  All guns are subject to inspection at virtually any time.  When I considered...

Senator Feinstein has said that she wants to ban guns more than once There are many people who advocate for bans on guns, but most of them are smart enough to know that the way to obtain such bans is incrementally, as has been done for the last 75 years.   Why can't you walk down to the corner hardware store and buy a gun muffler for your pistol or rifle, like they do in Finland?  A gun ban passed in 1934.   Why can't you order military surplus rifles mail order, and have them delivered to your door, even though they...

Thursday, November 28, 2013 The Obama who Stole Thanksgiving Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 1 Comments Thanksgiving used to be about being thankful. Now it’s about talking points. Progressives have already tried to ruin Thanksgiving by condemning it as a genocidal holiday commemorating European colonialism or by giving snippy little speeches about consumerism. But they didn’t have a way to actually get into living rooms to ruin the holiday until now.   Not content that the price of a whole frozen turkey went up 37% under his economic policies, Obama decided to completely ruin Thanksgiving dinner...

In spite of the mess the Obama Administration has made of our lives today is still a day for pausing to remember how blessed we are to be here in America the greatest country under the watchful eye of God. Think of your advantages; love your family and let this day renew your resolve to fight to keep the blessings our Founding Fathers gave us. While things are as dark and dreary as they have been in our lifetime, there is room for gratitude to God for what we have. Our prayers for deliverance from the cabal that has taken...

Investigators in Connecticut released a report yesterday concerning the December 2011 murders in Newtown. It says the shooter was "obsessed" with mass murders. From the Wall Street Journal: During their search of the (redacted) home, law-enforcement officials found a spreadsheet that tracked mass murders over the years, including the names of the assailants and information about each incident. They also found a "large amount of materials relating to Columbine shootings" as well as a "computer game titled 'School Shooting' where the player controls a character who enters a school and shoots at students" and "commercial movies depicting mass shootings," the...