Free Republic

Author David Petrusza discusses the pivotal 1924 election for president, won by "Silent Cal Coolidge."

It will make for a confrontational final two years of his term, a very bumpy ride for America Despite his horrible treatment of women, perjury and serious moral lapses, Bill Clinton was a very good politician. He was at heart a liberal Democrat who adjusted his principles to the shifting political winds. In the red state of Arkansas, Clinton was elected five times as Governor. He flopped giving the keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, but returned four years later as the nominee and eventual President. After losing badly in the 1994 mid-term elections, Clinton moved to the...

Unfortunately I'll have to skip tomorrow's London Forum meeting. But I wish to write about the topic of one of the announced speeches, by Richard Edmonds: "Bad Nenndorf – a Nuremberg Trial for Allied War Criminals". The subject is described as "the tragedy of Bad Nenndorf where in the aftermath of WWII British torturers, many of them later emigrating to Israel, killed dozens of National Socialist sympathisers including girls belonging to the BDSM." Richard Edmonds is a British nationalist who is capable of criticising his country when necessary, who rightly doesn't believe that patriotism means defending the indefensible. I'd never...

As mothers in black urban areas learn that they have the right to be armed, and to protect their children and themselves, the support for gun control will continue to drop.   It was only a few years ago that police would simply confiscate any gun that they came across in a black urban area.  I heard of this practice from students and former police officers.  Many commentators have noted that the original purpose of gun control was to disarm blacks.   Building on this disregard for the second amendment, property rights, and the rule of law, "progressive" politicians pushed to...

Dear Freerepublicans, I came across your great Free Republic website about four years ago when I was googling the internet looking for information that can help us deciding on a formal name for our newly born daughter. Fourteenth November is celebrated as children’s day in India. 150 years ago, India’s first prime minister was born this day. Today, let me extend a long overdue ‘Thank You’ to this useful website and its inspiring members for the help that I received without you not even knowing about it. In the West, every formal name has an associated predictable child hood name....

Thursday, November 13, 2014 Super-Amnesty Will Turn Every City into Detroit Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog After another bloody weekend in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel branded the shootings unacceptable and the city’s top cop demanded more gun control laws. Chicago’s murder rate has actually dropped since concealed carry became legal. Emanuel’s lawsuits over his illegal gun control laws have left the already struggling city deep in the hole and forced to cover the NRA’s million dollars in legal bills. Concealed carry paid off over that bloody weekend when a vet carrying a gun returned fire stopping...

Using the Nazi analogy to discredit political opponents is a popular game that seems to work best as a substitute for honest criticism. Although such comparisons usually do little more than expose one’s ignorance of the actual history of the Third Reich, it doesn’t mean that valid comparisons don’t exist. Within the right context, similarities can be drawn, Godwin's Law be damned. Actually, there’s only one good reason why the subject should ever be brought up in the first place. Nazi Germany was a fundamental transformation of a parliamentary democracy that became a one party dictatorship. Just as important, it...

Peruta is the seminal right to carry outside the home case that was decided on February of 2014.   The case was decided against Sheriff Gore of San Diego County, and San Diego County.   The Sheriff and the County declined to appeal to the full Ninth Circuit for an en banc hearing.   The AG for California, applied to be granted the ability to intervene for the state, to ask for a en banc hearing. Today, 12 November, 2014, the Ninth Circuit denied the motions to intervene, thus denying requests for an en banc hearing for the decision.   Therefore, Peruta stands...

Is the movie 'Song of the South' racist...of course not!...Have a Zippy Doo Dah Day! Is censorship of Hollywood motion pictures a thing of the past, or… Is it still alive and well in the movie industry today against movies that are not politically correct? There are many who find some ‘R’ rated Hollywood movies of today equally offensive but I don’t think Hollywood is listening. Why would an old wonderful family motion picture offend anyone starring an African-American man whose stories fascinate both Black and White children? Some call Walt Disney’s 1946 family classic ‘Song of the South’ racist....

Tuesday, November 11, 2014 The Price of Restraint is Death Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Yesterday afternoon a young woman stood by the side of a road holding up a sign. It read “Gush Etzion”. Those two words summon up spittle-flecked rants about Zionist settlements from the anti-Israel left. But for Dalia, it was just home. And then it wasn’t. Dalia caught a ride to a bus stop on the way home from her job as a children’s occupational therapist. Her next stop was a shift at Yad Sarah, a volunteer organization for the elderly and...

The American soldier is the backbone of our liberties; the rock upon which tyranny must break. Without their sacrifice, their unwavering commitment to this nation and the ideals it espouses, this republic not only would have fallen but its beacon of hope would have been extinguished long ago beneath the smoke-ridden battlefields of Lexington, Bunker Hill, or Yorktown. Tragically, despite the fact millions of Americans bask in the opportunity and affluence of their God-given rights, those procured by the unassuming few, the struggles of our veterans often goes unappreciated or unnoticed; especially by those who have the most blessings or...

The last Navajo Code Talker, Chester Nez, USMC died on 10 November 2014, the 239th birthday of the Corps. They played a vital role during WWII.From Source Marine veteran Michael Smith wept Wednesday when he heard about the death of Chester Nez, the last of the original Navajo Code Talkers.Smith, from Window Rock, who had met Nez several times, described him as a “quiet, humble” Navajo Marine.Smith said that the passing of Nez — the last of the first 29 Navajo men who created a code from their language that stumped the Japanese in World War II — marked the...

Saint Michael the Archangel: "Defend us in battle" and "be our protection" against wickedness It’s Veterans Day in America, yet there are progressively fewer to venerate. Most of the World War II generation is gone and even the older Vietnam vets are reaching average life expectancy. Relatively few Americans have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, and most of them never saw battle. Yet even as explaining combat to a civilian is like describing the sky to somebody blind from birth, we “brave few,” as Shakespeare famously put it in Henry V, feel compelled to try anyway. Ask a veteran what...

Lawley In most states, the legislators and courts have ruled that defense of property is not sufficient justification, by itself, for the use of deadly force. This does not mean that you have to allow criminals to steal your property at will.   It means that you may not immediately use deadly force to prevent a theft, though there are exceptions.   Texas, for example, allows the use of deadly force to prevent theft on one's property at night. The way that deadly force is legally employed in the protection of property is indirect, allowed for with an escalation of force.  ...

Like millions of other Americans, I voted last Tuesday. I did not face long lines and there were no barriers to my entry to the polling station. Everyone was quite friendly, and it was a pleasant experience. They were so friendly, in fact, that they even offered a service to voters, advertised by a sign on the wall: Voters, presumably those who would have difficulty walking into the polling station due to disability, could wait in their idling cars, honk their horns and have someone aid them in voting curbside. At the time, I did not think much of this....

This is kinda interesting, seeing the English repel repeated assaults,  then the Prussians came-in from the east and hit the French flank: 'Every puppy has his day, everybody has to pay...' (click pic to play Stonewall Jackson) BritishBattles.com   Reddit   YouTube

Russian President Vladimir Putin said November 4 that he sees nothing wrong with the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact that the Soviet Union made with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany just days before World War ii broke out. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a promise of non-belligerence by either party toward the other. Just a week after it was signed, Germany invaded Poland, officially igniting World War ii. “Serious research must show that those were the foreign policy methods then,” Putin said to a group of young historians in Moscow. “The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty with Germany. People say: ‘Ach, that’s bad.’...

Sunday, November 09, 2014 The Democratic Party’s Civil War is Here Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog There are really two Democratic parties. One is the old corrupt party of thieves and crooks. Its politicians, black and white, are the products of political machines. They believe in absolutely nothing. They can go from being Dixiecrats to crying racism, from running on family values to pushing gay marriage and the War on Women. They will say absolutely anything to get elected. Cunning, but not bright, they are able campaigners. Reformers underestimate them at their own peril because they...

Photo by Dave Workman I-594 in Washington State is a horribly written initiative.   It consists of 18 page of legalese that seems more intent on trapping legal gun owners than on reducing violent crime.  Yet, it passed with almost 60% of the vote.  How did this happen?   I-594 (pdf) link.  Here is an analysis of the initiative by David Kopel. There is a long history of disarmist initiatives that have started with strong majority support in the polling, that find on election day the support has evaporated and they lose by large margins.   I had some hope that this...