Free Republic

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within”, stated Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero continued, “the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men …He rots the soul of a nation”. Cicero’s statement to the Roman Senate in 58...

Love to see Netanyahu somehow reprise the drama in the first few minutes of MacArthur's Farewell speech after having been fired by Truman. Listen (mp3 at link) to the first few minutes of a great speech by a man who knew how to give them.

Supporters of slaughtered Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov march in Moscow yesterday, Sunday 01 March 2015 (twitter) There is no need to discuss whether Vladimir Putin personally gave the order to kill Boris Nemtsov, or whether it was given by someone else in the Kremlin - either to make the boss happy or, conversely, to put yet another stain on his long-besmirched reputation. Or whether Nemtsov was shot by some "patriotic" right-wing ghoul, acting on his own. As deputy head of the Kremlin administration Vyacheslav Volodin declared last October, speaking at the Valdai discussion forum in Sochi: "Russia will endure only...

   A St. Louis Judge has ruled that Missouri's tough new protection of the right to keep and bear arms is not just a paper tiger.  In the first ruling of its kind, the court ruled that a person cannot be prohibited from the right to keep and bear arms under Missouri statutes, for a non-violent felony.  From stltoday.com: St. Louis Circuit Judge Robert Dierker ruled that the Missouri law prohibiting felons from possessing guns is unconstitutional as applied in the case of Raymond Robinson, in part because it fails to differentiate between violent and non-violent felons.The amendment declares...

A bill  pushed by Everytown for Gun Sense, a Mike Bloomberg funded operation, has floundered against intense grassroots opposition in Vermont. Vermont has some of the least infringements on second amendment rights in the country.  Vermont always had constitutional carry, with no permit required, for its entire history.  Vermont has always had one of the lowest crime rates in the country.   From burlingtonfreepress.com, a Gannet company: Supporters of the bill faced strong headwinds, including the opposition of Gov. Peter Shumlin and pushback from Vermont's hunters and police chiefs. The most controversial provision would have required almost all private gun...

President Obama announced that "we have expanded my authorities," and bragged that "my enemies are powerless to stop me from going forward with what is right for America." One of the "enemies" the President cited with scorn "is that Texas judge who thinks a court order can prevail against me. If President Jackson could defy the Supreme Court why should I have to heed a mere district judge? I am Commander-in-Chief of the world's most powerful army. The nation's largest police force—the FBI—works for me. What resources does Judge Hanen control?" Obama warned that "those who contradict my directives must...

General Draza Mihailovich on Ravna Gora in Serbia 1943THE LAST FRIDAY IN FEBRUARY - REHABILITATION REDUXAnd so it continues...In anticipation of the Mihailovich Rehabilitation hearing that took place in Belgrade on Friday February 27, 2015, the last Friday in February, I was asked to write a letter to be sent to Belgrade. This was a letter about "hopes and dreams" with the intention to speak for the thousands of people around the world who want Serbian General Draza Mihailovich officially vindicated of the manufactured guilt that provided the false pretense to have him executed in July of 1946. I gladly...

Friday, February 27, 2015 Our Crucial Choice of the War on Terror Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog There are two models for fighting terrorism. We can see the terrorists as an external invading force that has to be destroyed or as an internal element in our society to be managed. In the War on Terror, Bush saw terrorists as an external force that had to be fought while Obama sees them as an internal element to be managed. And while both men signed off on some of the same tactics, their view of the conflict at...

Arizona state Senator, Dr. Kelli Ward, added an amendment to a bill on restoration of civil rights.  The amendment would remove several obsolete and arcane weapons bans.  The bill, SB 1460, would add second amendment rights to civil rights that are restored when a person who had been convicted of a felony petitions a court for restoration of their rights.  From havasunews.com: Her amendment to SB 1460 legalizes devices "made or adapted to muzzle the report of a firearm.'' Also gone would be prohibitions against any rifle or shotgun with an overall length of less than 26 inches, with...

I was either in, or worked for, the U.S. Army for over 30 years.  During that time I had some experience with what guards were issued for ammunition.   My brother brought my attention to a video done about F-15s in Bitburg, Germany, in 1981, at the height of the cold war, only a few year before NATO won.  It is titled "The Wing".  In the video you can see the Tech Sergeant being issued magazines.  He is issued four magazines, all have rounds in them.  He makes sure his chamber is clear, and inserts one magazine.  In the screen-shot...

...Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned. Baghdadi has spoken on camera only once. But his address, and the Islamic State’s countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself...

"The Last Valley" stars Michael Caine and Omar Sharif, it's set in Germany in the 1640s during the Thirty Years War.I stumbled upon this forgotten masterpiece from 1971 a few days ago when I obtained some old VHS tapes from a friend. Just update the story line 400 years, change it to Christians vs Muslims, give everybody an AK-47, and this may be what the future is going to bring. The movie flopped at the box office for a number of reasons unrelated to its quality. The John Barry soundtrack alone is stunning. "The Last Valley" is now on Youtube...

"Everybody tells me that I should be more pessimistic — that the “friends of China,” what I call the “cheerleaders for China” — are too strong, too well-entrenched, and they know that if someone like me comes along, they just have to demonize that person, or try to undercut their arguments. That’s why the book ["The Hundred-Year Marathon"] has 70 pages of footnotes. I’m trying to show the actual documents. But I am slightly pessimistic I would say, that our country historically wakes up with a Pearl Harbor attack, or some kind of huge disaster takes place. Then in the...

Many have speculated on the reason for the hand inside the coat pose of officers during Civil War photographs.   Perhaps it was to render access to a concealed weapon.  These, after all, were military officers. Is that the bulge of a Smith & Wesson #1 under his left arm?  It is about the right size.   The number one was one of the first easily concealable cartridge pistols.  It was first produced in 1857 and was in great demand by officers in the Civil War. As a .22 short, we might not think of it as having much stopping power. ...

Interesting discussion by Mark of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Starts at 26 minutes, 5 seconds. The List: (from The Best of Beck) Saul Alinsky’s 12 Rules for Radicals Here is the complete list from Alinsky. * RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with...

In late 18th century New York, with a revolt against tea in place and plain water mostly undrinkable, coffee’s popularity surged.And the city’s love affair with coffee beans began.Coffee houses soon sprang up. Unlike the cafes of today, these were more like taverns, where the city’s political and merchant elite met to exchange ideas and do business while nursing a cup of joe (and probably stronger drinks as well).One coffee house on the bustling corner of Wall and Water Streets, the Tontine (the second building on the left, above), bore witness to some of the events and the development of...

Rudy Giuliani had the unmitigated gall last week to question President Obama’s love of country. This has been a standing question about Obama since he ran for President in 2008. How can you love a country that you believe needs to be fundamentally transformed? It’s not like Obama wants to fundamentally transform the United States into some romanticized version of the past. He wants to fundamentally transform the country into his own image. In many ways he’s been successful. We have a large number of Americans who believe court orders are mere suggestions to be ignored and that the executive...

Sunday, February 22, 2015 We Can Kill Our Way to Victory Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog “We can not win this war by killing them,” Marie Harf said on MSNBC.  Reversing thousands of years of battlefield experience in which wars were won by “killing them”, the State Department spokeswoman argued that you can’t defeat ISIS by killing its fighters. "We can not kill our way out of this war,” she said. “We need in the medium and longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it is lack...

Obama should really pick up a history book sometime, and read about how one of his predecessors, and one of our nation’s Founding Fathers, handled the threat posed by radical Islamic jihadists, way back in 1801. (Read about how Thomas Jefferson responded to radical Islamic kidnappings, beheadings, and extortion)

Our next President will have to commit to destroying ISIS. There is no alternative. That is history’s primary lesson We begin with the reality that the United States and many other nations are at war with militant Islamists. They are a growing army of religious zealots murdering Christians, Jews, others who are not Muslim, and even other Muslims. In my youth America knew how to win wars. In Europe it bombed Germany into submission, leading its allies in an invasion that left Germany divided for decades until the Soviet Union collapsed. In Asia Truman dropped two atomic bombs on Japan...

Saddle up our high horses and gallop to America's rescue Take advantage of the enemy’s unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions.—Sun Tzu (circa 544-496 BC) The Art of War From the halls of Montezuma To the shores of Tripoli; We fight our country’s battles In the air, on land and sea…. —USMC Hymn Nearly a thousand years after Islamists attacked Rome and desecrated the Tomb of St. Peter (846 AD) America got its turn at bat against Muslims during the 1st Barbary War (1801-1805). Fighting Muslims overseas no doubt helped to build...

"We invite you to criticize our institutions without reserve. One is not insulted by being informed of something amiss, but rather gets an opportunity for amendment, if the information is taken in good part, without resentment.” – Plato, Laws, Bk. 1, 635a In a post which may be found here, Terry McDermott writes, "We live in a litigious society. People sue for every and any reason: finding something gross in their fast food, slipping on an ice-covered driveway, getting one’s feelings hurt. In media, lawsuits abound: copyright infringement and stealing someone else’s work is illegal. When we post an image...

Let's say a man was elected to the highest office in the land who had been mentored, during his childhood, by an avowed communist who was identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (card number 47544) by the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii, accused by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as being active in several communist-front organizations, and had a thick FBI file. Let us further say that this man's guardian, his grandfather, had chosen this mentor for him, indicating that he was likely sympathetic to the mentor's beliefs. Now,...

[VIDEO] One of the many controversial aspects of American Sniper was Chris Kyle’s father’s brief speech about sheep (people living their lives in a state of vulnerability), wolves (those who prey on the vulnerable), and sheepdogs (those who protect the vulnerable). For Kyle’s father, and for many of us, the question goes to one of core identity. How do you choose to live? I first heard the “sheepdog” speech almost 20 years ago, when my mentor in the practice of law (a Marine captain) told it to me over lunch when I was barely out of law school. I thought...

Rand Paul chided Rudy Giuliani for comments the former New York City mayor made about Barack Obama's love for his country. In a television interview with local Louisville station WAVE, Paul said, “it's one thing to disagree on policy” but “it’s a mistake to question people’s motives.”It's an admirable principle. But it’s one that Paul routinely abandons when he talks about hawks in his own party.On at least two separate occasions, Paul accused Dick Cheney of taking the country to war to enhance Halliburton’s profits. At a campaign appearance in Montana on behalf of his father in 2008, Paul noted...

1. U.S. sovereign debt downgrade: first in American history 2. Federal spending (25% of GDP): highest since WWII 3. Budget deficit (10% of GDP): highest since WWII 4. Federal debt (67% of GDP): highest since just after WWII 5. Employment (58.1% of population working: lowest since 1983 6. Long-term unemployment (45.9% of total: highest since 1930s 7. Increase in non farm payroll employment (0.5%) since recovery began over 26 months ago: slowest job growth 26 months after a severe recession since WWII 8. Homeownership rate (59.7%): lowest since 1965 9. Percentage of taxpayers paying income tax (49%): lowest in modern...

ISIS has released a videotape of the public beheading of twenty-one Coptic Christians somewhere along the coast of Libya. I hate to admit it, but I didn’t even know what a Coptic Christian was. So I looked it up. “Coptic” means “Egyptian” and Christians living in Egypt identify themselves as Coptic Christians. Pretty simple. Copts were organized between A.D. 42 – A.D. 62 and consider John Mark, the author of the Gospel of Mark, to be their founder. Over the years, Egypt fell under the colonial rule of Italy which demanded loyalty to Roman rulers. The Copts refused to show...

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Judge Andrew Hanen’s ruling against the Obama Administration’s unilateral rewriting of the nation’s immigration laws has Democrats incensed. Hanen demolished the Administration’s contention that President Obama’s actions were within his “prosecutorial discretion.” “It is within the President’s discretion not to prosecute individuals who have broken our laws,” the Judge said. “It is not within his discretion to create new laws without Congressional legislation.” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson vowed to press ahead regardless of the ruling. “The opinion of a single judge in Texas can’t overturn the decision of the President...

Why the Left Loves Islam Both socialism and Islam are parasitical fascist systems where the elite bosses feed as vampires upon the productive citizenry under their control. Under totalitarian Islamic Sharia Law, productive “people of the book” (Christians and Jews) are tolerated as “dhimmis” (officially subjugated 2nd class citizens) to the degree that the local emirs and sultans decree they should be tolerated. This allows the Muslim bosses to ease their grip or tighten it at will. In socialism this relationship finds many parallels. For example, Lenin himself, during the disastrous “war Communism” period following the revolution and civil war,...

Should have let him rot there... Cuban prisons are lovely. Remember recently when Obama was attempting to snuggle-up to the vile Castro regime? And how they laughed at our lil' useful idiot -took whatever they could- then asked for much, much more?  While offering us nothing of any significance whatsoever -not even a meager apology for almost bringing the world to the cusp of WWIII in the 1962's Cuban Missile Crisis...? Oh, except they released Alan Gross, the US government contractor working with USAID who smuggled computer equipment and satellite dishes to Cuba's small Jewish community on four separate occasions--...

After reading and listening to all the upset coming from the Left over Rudy's assessment of the President of the United States, it struck me - how different things would be if Barack Hussein Obama had been America's Mayor instead of Rudy. Rudy Giuliani is still on the job, serving as America's Mayor. Below is a quote about Mayor Giuliani and his actions after 9-11 (written in the NYT - in an otherwise typical NYT's hit piece) on September 21, 2007: "Political leadership is an uncertain alchemy, an admixture of the symbolic and substantive and the visceral. In times of...

I cannot tell a lie: I am an extremist. As an amateur actor, I have certain beliefs that I hold dear. I detest drama and tragedy; I really only like comedy, both musical and non-musical. I believe the stage is for laughter and song, for tap dances and pratfalls. I won’t spend my money buying tickets to see a sad show, and I certainly don’t like to waste eight weeks of my life rehearsing to perform in one. Many would call these views extreme. As a trade compliance manager, I have spent my career – my “day job,” if you...

Perhaps we can try another once he's in Kiev... or Riga As previously noted here, thinking all at the table are negotiating in good-faith (when dealing with serially-dishonest former KGB agents who want to take things from you) is probably not a very good idea- when what we ought to be doing is arming the Ukrainians to the teeth and putting troops in Poland to exhibit (residual) NATO resolve. The Russians' completely ignoring the latest Minsk accord and continuing to slaughter Ukrainian citizens in the name of 'Novorossiya' without pause should be all the evidence any thinking person would need to...

<p>The idea of Chinese people worshipping wax mangoes because some Pakistani minister didn’t have time to have a proper gift made for his visit to China is indeed quite startling. Of course some people will instantly run into the old stereotype of those perfid Orientals slaves, who have been forever worshipping their tyrants as Gods on Earth. But that’s bullshit. The Chinese have always been a fairly unruly bunch, and the Emperor was never worshipped as a God, unlike the Roman Emperors of our humanistic West.</p>

Thursday, February 19, 2015 European Colonialism is the Only Thing That Modernized Islam Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Like math and the Midwest, ISIS confuses progressives. It’s not hard to confuse a group of people who never figured out that if you borrow 18 trillion dollars, you’re going to have to pay it back. But ISIS is especially confusing to a demographic whose entire ideology is being on the right side of history. Raised to believe that history inevitably trended toward diversity in catalog models, fusion restaurants and gay marriage, the Arab Spring led them...

A group of 23 liberal House Democrats urged Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday to delay Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress next month. In the letter spearheaded by Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the lawmakers argued that Netanyahu was being used as a "political tool" against President Obama. "As members of Congress who support Israel, we share concern that it appears that you are using a foreign leader as a political tool against the president," they wrote. Netanyahu's March 3 address will be just two weeks before the Israeli elections and...

Now that a senior FBI official has admitted openly that it is 'virtually impossible' to screen out terrorists that could be hiding among the thousands of Syrian 'refugees' (heading soon to American cities), maybe we need to be asking why the US is absorbing ANY of these people, when ISIS have said themselves they plan to infiltrate Europe/US disguised as refugees?  What about the other 200 frickin' countries in this world- like an Muslim one! Wouldn't that make a lot more sense? Send them to Turkey, so they can return to Syria/Iraq once ISIS is fully neutralized...The U.S. simply...

Seventy years ago today the United States Marine Corp sent waves of teenaged men onto the black foreboding beaches on a Japanese held island called Iwo Jima. Capturing Iwo Jima was essential to the American war against Japan as it offered a place for battered bombers to safely land and save the lives of hundreds of airmen returning from sorties over Japan in barely flyable planes. The average age of these men was just under nineteen. They knew what was at stake and charged up Iwo’s beaches sometimes straight into enemy machine gun fire that would have stopped lesser soldiers....

seriously, what is wrong with this guy? This recent, bizarre snuggling with the incoming Defense Secretary's wife is beyond belief- yet hardly something new, actually should be something like 'the last straw' if there's any sense or justice left in this country.  But Uncle Joe doesn't age discriminate, he'll fondle any from 8-80... if the photos floating around out there are any indicator. And WHERE the hell are the feminists...? How old is Coons' daughter, anyway? Looks like maybe 12... and he was all-over every little girl they made the mistake of standing him next to on Biden's (utterly useless) China trip,...

A very well written comment in the Economist refers to the Gun Watch article on the comparison of European Murder rates to those in the United States.   It is so well done that I will quote it in its entirety.  From the Economist comments section, kudos to guest-sosaoel: I'll give the author credit for trying to be reasonable as well as thanks for having the integrity to try shooting for himself. However I must correct a number of glaring errors. We oppose gun control because it has never been credibly demonstrated to work. Ever. Yes, there have been some...

This'll mean nothing to anyone except those familiar with the drum corps' of days pastPart of my '62 - '65 heritage

Making an example of the so-called 'Islamic State' by promptly killing as many as we can find (at least in Iraq and Syria) would stop the movement in it's bloody tracks -while serving as an example to would-be jihadis and their backers worldwide, for years to come. And almost everybody else on Earth would be far better off without them. Pacifism and half-measures have not gotten the job done, nor has hiding from the threat of radical Islam in general, and ISIS in particular- they just keep getting closer, and closer, and closer...When I see these pictures of them marching...

With each new extra-constitutional action taken by President Obama (they’re slowly becoming too numerous to count) a chorus of impeachment talk inevitably rises then just as inevitably fades. Conventional wisdom is that hardline establishment Republicans or Tea Party-backed hyper-partisans would be the ones to lead the impeachment charge. But in this case, conventional wisdom is flawed. The ones who ought to be doing any and everything within their power to impeach and remove this president are our nation’s Democrats! Barack Obama is doing damage to the Democrat Party that, while not irreparable, may well take decades if not longer to...

Friends don't let friends vote RINO... I don't give a damn how much moolah Jeb Bush is currently shaking out of people with more money than sense... it's impossible to picture this charmless Gee-Oh-Pee establishment tool in the White House: not only does the Republican base despise him, but no Bush is going to beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.  I actually consider her a more flawed candidate than most do, but you can't run a clown who's practically family with the Clintons and expect him to take the requisite fight to Shrillary by discussing her serial scandals/failure.  And the Clinton...

This is a story that must be told. But to post the details of this blog post as it appears would facilitate a great disservice to Free Republic that is just too inflammatory to be posted here directly. From the title of the post itself, which I chose to change to make it less repulsive, to an image that EVEN the blog itself blocks out, the extreme revulsion of what is revealed about Margaret Sanger and the objectives of Planned Parenthood must be made known, publicized as far and wide as possible. There are two images from the post, that...

Monday, February 16, 2015 A Revisionist Muslim History of America Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blogTurkish President Erdogan’s claim that Columbus encountered a mosque in Cuba (the explorer actually saw a rock whose shape he compared to the dome of a mosque) and a Saudi Imam claiming that Columbus had sailed to America to attack Muslims are typical of an emerging genre of Muslim revisionist history that lays claim to America based on an imaginary earlier Muslim presence here. While these examples may be laughable, Muslim historical revisionism has taken root in academia. It can be found...

Reflections on the United States’ Commander-In-Chief, on Presidents’ Day… During the summer of 1787, the member states of the United States of America sent delegates to Philadelphia, hoping that in this new convention, they could right the errors made in the construction of the Articles of Confederation. The nation was in an economic depression that had not ended with the peace signed in 1783, as many had expected. On the contrary, our currency was worthless, our borders were porous, our cargo was in jeopardy on the high seas, and our veterans were destitute at home. The delegates to the Constitutional...

Media and potential opponents are scandalized that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is considering a run for president even though he didn’t graduate from college. But if Walker (who dropped out of Marquette University in his senior year) won in 2016, he would be joining an exalted group that includes the two presidents most frequently named as the favorites of the American people. Eleven presidents — exactly 25 percent — were not college graduates. Most prominent on that list are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who make up half of Mt. Rushmore’s foursome and are in the top three or top...

February 16, 2015 by Daniel Greenfield Dan Uzan died at the gate keeping a Muslim terrorist out of the Jewish Hall behind the Great Synagogue of Copenhagen. In the hall, a young girl was coming of age surrounded by eighty guests. They did not hear the gunshots over the music. They did not hear the 6’5 basketball player guarding them die.The gates of the Great Synagogue are more modest than the Gates of Vienna, where the Ottoman Empire was prevented from overrunning Europe, but Dan held them anyway so that a young girl could survive her birthday. And it may...

I want my Boy’s Life Magazine life returned to me. It was like this: I’m eight. I can go out and play unescorted by armed guards. There are no, “social drugs,” mass-murderers, drive-by shootings, open obscenity, or backpacking “folks from other lands.” I can play unsupervised all day and into the night without fear of monsters among us. My neighbors watch over me. What we have now—is that progress? No. It’s the designed collapse of a Nation and it’s mores, images, ethics, heroes, and guiding compasses—and the parasitic rise of ugly, many-tentacled Liberalism. I want my U.S. Constitution back. I...