Free Republic

On this day in 1965, in his State of the Union address, President Lyndon Baines Johnson lays out for Congress a laundry list of legislation needed to achieve his plan for a Great Society. On the heels of John F. Kennedy’s tragic death, Americans had elected Johnson, his vice president, to the presidency by the largest popular vote in the nation’s history. Johnson used this mandate to push for improvements he believed would better Americans’ quality of life. Following Johnson’s lead, Congress enacted sweeping legislation in the areas of civil rights, health care, education and the environment. The 1965 State...

---snip--- About Ashcroft's selection, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said, "It is outrageous for President-elect Bush to select someone who has consistently opposed civil rights and affirmative action to be responsible for enforcing the nation's laws. Ashcroft has one of the Senate's most negative voting records on civil rights. He received a grade of 'F' on each of the last three NAACP report cards because of his anti-progressive voting record, having voted to approve only three of 15 legislative issues supported by the NAACP and other civil rights groups."

t. Gen. Ben Hodges, the U.S. Army’s top commander in Europe, recently slammed the Russian military campaign in Syria, branding it a “live-fire training opportunity” for Moscow that shows clear “disregard for civilian casualties.” Hodges statement coincided with the Russia’s confirmation that its troops had indeed fired more than 150 weapons from its arsenal in combat.

Why Japan Refuses Immigration and Multiculturalism

An essential element of the “unorthodox” doctrines, advanced both by all socialists and by all interventionists, is that the recurrence of depressions is a phenomenon inherent in the very operation, of the market economy. But while the socialists contend that only the substitution of socialism for capitalism can eradicate the evil, the interventionists ascribe to the government the power to correct the operation of the market economy in such a way as to bring about what they call “economic stability.” These interventionists would be right if their antidepression plans were to aim at a radical abandonment of credit expansion policies....

RONALD REAGAN was intensely interested in the fate of individuals in trouble. He wanted to do everything in his power to help them. His harsh judgment of the Soviet leaders was based, more than any other single factor, not on the ideology he talked about so much, but on his perception of the way they treated their own people. When I first met him in November I981, I had just come from several months in Moscow in charge of our embassy and was on my way to Prague as U.S. ambassador. My family and I were invited to join the...

The Army is creating a new, lightweight version of its iconic .50-cal machine gun designed to better enable Soldiers to destroy enemies, protect convoys, mount weapons on vehicles, attack targets on the move and transport between missions. The new weapon, engineered to be 20-to-30 percent lighter than the existing M2, will be made of durable, but lighter weight titanium, Army officials said.

In reference to the horrendous number of homicides in Chicago and President Barack Obama’s practice of dividing people by race, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said Black Lives Matter never marches in Chicago and Obama, for eight years, has been rubbing “white people’s nose in the stain of slavery” because he cannot let the issue go, and wants America to wallow in racial division. […] “He’s about 150 years removed from slavery,” said the sheriff. “Nobody said ‘forget about it’, but you have to be able to move on at some point. And he will not allow America to do...

I came across this while doing some historical research and it echoed my own thoughts in a way that nothing else has in many years. I hope you enjoy. The American's Creed "I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon. I seek opportunity to develop whatever talents God gave me - not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to...

I tell you, Lippmann's book Public Opinion is the gift that keeps on giving. This little narrative from his book is incredible, it explains so much in regard to the symbiosis that exists between progressive journalists and their masters at city hall. On page 338, Lippmann describes an important aspect of how journalists "collect news": Newspapers do not try to keep an eye on all mankind. They have watchers stationed at certain places, like Police Headquarters, the Coroner's Office, the County Clerk's Office, City Hall, the White House, the Senate, House of Representatives, and so forth. They watch, or rather...

President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.

Istanbul nightclub attack: We don't know who was responsible, says Turkey's PM after gunman 'dressed as Santa' kills 39 at New Year's Eve Party gunman reportedly dressed in a Santa costume killed at least 39 people, including 16 foreigners, at a famous nightclub in Istanbul during New Year's Eve celebrations. Armed with a long-barrelled weapon, the attacker shot a police officer before storming the elite Reina club in the Ortakoy area of the city at about 1.45am. The Israeli foreign ministry says an Israeli woman is among those who were killed. She was named as Leanne Nasser, 19. She was reportedly in the club with...

The sinking of the largest ship ever built, the Titanic, may owe as much to a enormous fire onboard as it did to a gigantic iceberg, it has been claimed... ...fresh evidence that the Titanic’s hull may have been crippled by a massive blaze that burned unchecked for almost three weeks immediately behind the spot where it was later pierced.

THE EUROPEAN Union is starting to take on the hated traits of the old Soviet Union, according to a controversial advertising guru currently splitting opinion in Germany and Switzerland Advertising guru Alexander Segert said the EU elite were operating like the old Soviet politburo imposing centralized one-size-fits-all rules and values on everyone in the community. He added: “They are trying to bring different mentalities and cultures under one roof and level them. And people don’t like that.” The rest of the story

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25 years ago George Bush Sr. was still in office, and so was Saddam Hussein. The European Union didn't exist and neither did China's economic powerhouse. The Berlin wall had just come down and Germany had finally reunited. Hillary Clinton was a little-known mouthy First Lady of Arkansas and the media gleefully predicted that Donald Trump would never climb back to the top after his Atlantic City fiasco. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, the Eastern bloc was in shambles, but the USSR was still standing with Mikhail Gorbachev at the helm. Vladimir Putin dabbled in minor corruption...

Happy New Year! I hope you enjoy this as much I did. And yes, it was recorded 37 years ago.One of the most underrated bands of the 20th century.

Reviewing the year in 2016 politics, there are many epic campaign moments. Here’s a few of the more memorable – in no particular order: Donald Trump’s airplane had it’s own soundtrack:

PENCE: We're going to rebuild our military. And let me -- let me -- this whole Putin thing. Look, America is stronger than Russia. Our economy is 16 times larger than the Russian economy. America's political system is superior to the crony, corrupt capitalist system in Russia in every way. When Donald Trump and I observe that, as I've said in Syria, in Iran, in Ukraine, that the small and bullying leader of Russia has been stronger on the world stage than this administration, that's stating painful facts. That's not an endorsement of Vladimir Putin. That's an indictment of the...

Have you ever read Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose party platform? You should. In Chapter 3 of his book "The Art of War", Sun Tzu writes: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. That quote has been in the right side bar of the progressingamerica blog since day one, and will never change. We need to know progressives...