Free Republic

RedState's own Leon Wolf did a great job exposing the Politico story about Ben Carson and West Point as a lie. Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel is also churning out great information on Twitter regarding the story. I want to focus on what Donald Trump is doing with the story, however. Yesterday, November 5, Donald Trump had this to say about Politico: Look, Politico is so dishonest in so many different things. This Politico website or whatever the hell they call it, I mean, they write about me. We don't deal with them anymore because the level of dishonesty is...

Mulberry Street, where New York's "Little Italy" is centered, c. 1909.  (Photo: Library of Congress)“Don’t eat gabagool, Grandma,” says Meadow Soprano on an early episode of The Sopranos, perhaps the most famous depiction of Jersey Italian culture in the past few decades. “It’s nothing but fat and nitrates.” The pronunciation of “gabagool,” a mutation of the word "capicola," might surprise a casual viewer, although it and words like it should be familiar to viewers of other New Jersey-based shows like the now-defunct Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of New Jersey, where food often drives conversation. The casts are heavily Italian-American, but...

  Certainly no lack of historical curiosity in my noggin, but this one's new on me. Hard to imagine how I missed it, because it's a delightful folk art form to be sure- pure Americana. Due to the relative cheapness, softness, portability, and (adequate) thickness for sculpturing, the US 5-cent coin proved perfect for carving into highly-creative works that can be carried around in your pocket.  Alterations of coins had occurred in Europe, S. Africa, and the US in the 18th and 19th century -in cruder forms- but introduction of the 'Buffalo' nickel in 1913 brought about a surge in popularity of...

President George H. W. Bush lost his bid for reelection in 1992. And it hurt. Until now, however, we didn't know how much. But with the special Fox News Reporting - Destiny and Power – The Private Diaries of George Herbert Walker Bush, we take a deep look at the man, actually hearing his own thoughts and feelings through the audio diary he kept while in the White House. It will be the first time this material has been released to the public. You can see this new special Friday, Nov. 6 at 10 p.m. ET on The Fox News...

One of the benefits of being 91 is you don’t have to hold back anymore—you can say what you want. And in a new biography, former President George H.W. Bush tells Jon Meacham just what he thinks about Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld’s work in his son’s administration, as reported by Fox News and The New York Times. “He just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with,” the elder Bush said of the man who served as his secretary of defense. “Just iron-ass. His seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys...

Wednesday, November 04, 2015 Violating the Muslim Status Quo Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The Secretary of State of the United States traveled to the Muslim country of Jordan to assure its Foreign Minister that Jews would not be praying any more at the holiest site in Judaism. As Kerry put it, “It is Muslims who pray on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and non-Muslims who visit.” Israel is often accused of apartheid and segregation, but here was the Secretary of State championing both, as long as it was Muslim segregation aimed at Jews. The Temple Mount...

I was on Security detail at my church again.  They keep the temperature cool, so I was wearing a jacket.  One of the difficulties of open carry is that it becomes awkward when you are wearing clothes to keep warm.  So I was carrying casually concealed. Glocks are popular I did not mind the temperature.  I am acclimated to warmer temps; but it is easier to for me to put on a jacket than it is for someone who likes it a bit cooler to remove their skin. I noticed five open carriers, and at least one other concealed...

Let me explain what you're not seeing reported about the European situation right here, right now. There are millions of immigrants coming into the EU. Germany alone has apparently taken in close to 800,000. The story being sold to the population is that these are just people from a war-ravaged part of the world seeking a better life. The first part may be true, the rest is bunk. There are, on some weekends, over ten thousand migrants coming over one border (Hungary) alone and virtually none have an interest in remaining there. They are all concentrating in the places where...

Joshua Prince, Esq. and Allen Thompson, Esq., have written an important article about natural law and the right of self defense in the St. Thomas Law Review.  A tip of the hat to Dave Hardy for a link to the article (pdf).   The article is well written and impeccably footnoted.  I found many references of which I was unaware, including an excellent history of how the idea of "retreat" as a necessity became included in some state's law, relatively recently.  Here is the introduction: In 1776, Thomas Jefferson stated what American political and legal thinkers took to be "self-evident":...

As American involvement in the Vietnam War began, the A-1 Skyraider was still the medium attack aircraft in many carrier air wings, although it was planned to be replaced by the A-6A Intruder as part of the general switch to jet aircraft. Skyraiders from Constellation andTiconderoga participated in the first U.S. Navy strikes against North Vietnam on 5 August 1964 as part of Operation Pierce Arrow in response to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, striking against fuel depots at Vinh, with one Skyraider from Ticonderoga damaged by anti-aircraft fire, and a second from Constellation shot down, killing its pilot. In...

What happened yesterday was not the end of the RNC’s poisonous hold on the Republican Party, but it was certainly the beginning of the end. This revolution is beginning to look like the first one. It was around this time in 1781 when reality came crashing in on British Commander Lord Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown Virginia. He was beaten and embarrassed by American patriots he considered rabble and was forced to watch his world being turned upside down. Yesterday, just 160 miles away in Alexandria Virginia, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, another enemy who considers America’s patriots rabble, was forced to...

Hyper-lame Jeb Bush is reportedly re-launching his presidential primary campaign with a corny 'Jeb Can Fix It' theme which is sure to have the others quaking-in-their-boots (lol). He's also planning to release a new e-book in conjunction with the new messaging that highlights Jeb's time as governor of Florida... Trouble is Jeb still doesn't seem to understand that this is an election where 'experience' in government is largely seen as a negative... and only Ted Cruz seems able to project the desirable 'outsider' image while still actually a politician. Nobody is going to give a damn about some drivel re. what...

CNBC's Bias Loses the Republican Debate Republican candidates team up against CNBC's biased moderators. October 29, 2015 Daniel Greenfield 139 Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. There’s no consensus on who won the latest Republican debate, but there was no question that CNBC was the big loser. The Republican debate on CNBC was supposed to be about the economy; instead it became a debate about media bias as candidates fought moderators over dishonest questions and cynical attacks.  Instead of discussing the economic worries of a nation impoverished...

Friday, October 30, 2015 The Death of the American Welfare State Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog In 1935, the year that FDR signed the Social Security Act into law, the birth rate was 18.7 per 1,000. In 1940, when the first monthly check was issued, it had gone up to 19.4. By 1954, when Disability had been added, the birth rate at the heart of the Baby Boom stood at 25.3. In a nation of 163 million people, 4 million babies were being born each year. By 1965, when Medicare was plugged in, the birth rate...

With millions of Muslim migrants pouring into Europe, some experts are warning the continent faces a future of revolution, civil war or surrender to Islamic rule. Author, WND columnist and anti-Shariah campaigner Pamela Geller thinks it is already too late. Asked if she thought it would come to civil war in Europe, Geller told WND, “Yes, I do.” She’s not alone. “If the European political establishment maintains its stranglehold on power, it seems unavoidable that Islam will continue to build a political presence that will ultimately lead to Muslim uprisings and a European reaction outside of accepted political channels,” said...

The exterior of the Hollywood Tower Apartments, the inspiration for the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride. (Photo: Loren Javier/flickr)In Hollywood horror, things rarely are what they appear to be. Filmmakers often build their haunted locations in the privacy of studio back lots or remote locations. However, the streets and neighborhoods of Los Angeles have provided a wealth of locations for horror films and TV shows, even inspiring a theme park attraction. These locations range from architectural masterpieces and landmark buildings to single family homes and hotels. But no matter their exteriors, each house shares a unique trait: a film location scout has...

After re-watching the disastrous debacle of the Republican Debate from CNBC, I decided to spend time on youtube to watch old debates. Specifically, historical ones. The first observation is that the moderator stays completely out of the way. They allowed each candidate enough time to explain their positions. They did not interrupt in an attempt to debate the debater. They did not insert their opinion on what was just said. The bottom line, today's news media is so drunk on themselves and their importance and their bias that they completely have turned debates into a sports spectacle instead of something...

At the end of the seventeenth century approximately 200,000 people inhabited the British colonies in North America. The following century saw an explosion in numbers with the population doubling about every 25 years. The majority of these new immigrants were Scotch-Irish, Germans or African slaves. Between 1700 and the beginning of the American Revolution, approximately 250,000 Africans, 210,000 Europeans and 50,000 convicts had reached the colonial shores. The passage to America was treacherous by any standard. Many of the immigrants were too poor to pay for the journey and therefore indentured themselves to wealthier colonialists - selling their services for...

In his book entitled An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society, the once avid progressive Walter Lippmann wrote, “Although the partisans who are now fighting for the mastery of the modern world wear shirts of different colors, their weapons are drawn from the same armory, their doctrines are variations of the same theme, and they go forth to battle singing the same tune with slightly different words. Their weapons are the coercive direction of the life and labor of mankind. Their doctrine is that disorder and misery can be overcome only by more and more compulsory organization. Their...

First thing everybody's talking about is how Cruz put a snarky CNBC drone against the wall and schooled his punk #%$. Pollster Frank Luntz claimed Cruz's lightning counter-attack on snotty, effeminate hack Carl Quintanilla (and MSM liberal bias in presidential primary debates in-general) scored a stunning 98%... 'That's the highest score we've ever measured. EVER'...  Hannity remarked in his post-game wrap-up that Cruz's retort  'changed the trajectory of the entire debate'. Furthermore, Senator Cruz -despite suffering from an apparent dry throat- got through the CNBC smokescreen impressively well, getting more time and appearing sharper in illustrating his arguments than in previous debates. They still tried...