Free Republic

As I read it, Obungacare is en route to collapse from its own dead weight. They're basically talking about illegals actually buying those policies and the typical American family spending 20,000 usd which doesn't exist in the world, i.e. they're talking about mandating a physical impossibility. The first and best story about anybody mandating something which was physically impossible involved King Canute. Unlike Obunga, Canute's motivation was entirely decent and honorable, i.e. to demonstrate to the sycophants and idiots of his own time the realities of the universe and the limitations which those realities placed on ALL men, including kings...

You won't believe how much has changed since then. Notice anything peculiar (other than the fashions) in some of these photos? (Many photos at link)

“A Dude From The Rainy Left Coast” asks if I would prefer to live in a world with no gun controls or one with reasonable gun controls, and why. We had a world with no gun controls, once. A world in which you could hop a coastwise trader in New Orleans, and get off in any port north of Guyana. With your life preserver hanging on your belt, and without as much as a raised eyebrow from anyone. A world where wide areas of the world had four or five murders a year for every million population. Most as a...

Watch the clip below and judge for yourself. This film is a few years old, but the issue remains. There are a lot of theories about it. Some think it's a fake, but perhaps it's not. Lots of disturbed kids out there who will one day try and take over the World..

Virtual tour of Herculaneum, documenting the site, and the work of the Herculaneum Conservation Project. Click on the node-markers to view an interactive 360-degree panorama (in a new window). The plan above shows the locations of panoramas made mainly in 2001 (a few are from 1999), where the aim was to provide an overview of the site (as it was then), along with tours of a few selected houses. The menu of houses and other areas at left accesses additional, more recent coverage (including revisits to some houses and other structures) made from 2003 onward.

Painting of Kaiser Wilhelm II by Max Koner 1890 Aleksandra's Note: It never ceases to amaze me how decades, and in this case an entire century, of cataclysmic change can run its course through the world and the history of its nations and peoples, but some things truly don't change. For the Serbs, "Deja Vu" has become a constant common denominator in the course of their history. This important bit of history from a 100 years ago should serve as a reminder to the Serbs that the passage of time, even a full century of time, really means nothing when...

The Philadelphia murder trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, an abortion provider accused of cutting the spinal cords of infants delivered alive during abortion procedures, has exposed not only the grisly details of his practice, but also the negligence of several Pennsylvania governmental agencies. The case is causing some to question whether abortion clinics are appropriately monitored across the country, including in Maryland, where the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) introduced new regulations for the state’s surgical abortion facilities last year. Maryland has one of the highest abortion rates in the country, according to data from the New York-based...

Back in the days when we had an economy and the living was almost easy, when I was hunting and shooting and building rifles, and still had some color in my beard, I would not have considered not having a Dixie Gun Works catalog around.Almost 700 pages, everything from tomahawks and gunlocks to snake oil. There are tools, gun flints and chunks of wood for fancy knife handles.Well, the other day I ordered myself another one.5 bucks, and for another 2 bucks they ship it UPS!You can read a Dixie catalog for hours, even if you don't need any gun...

GOVERNMENT BY JOURNALISMGOVERNMENT by kings went out of fashion in this country when Charles Stuart lost his head. Government by the House of Lords perished with Gatton and Old Sarum. Is it possible that government by the House of Commons may equally become out of date? Without venturing into the dim and hazardous region of prophecy, it is enough to note that the trend of events is in that direction. Government tends ever downward. Nations become more and more impatient of intermediaries between themselves and the exercise of power. The people are converting government by representatives to government by delegates....

SAVANNAH, Ga. May 5, 2013 (AP) Less than two months after British forces captured Savannah in December 1778, patriot militiamen scored a rare Revolutionary War victory in Georgia after a short but violent gunbattle forced British loyalists to abandon a small fort built on a frontiersman's cattle farm. More than 234 years later, archaeologists say they've pinpointed the location of Carr's Fort in northeastern Georgia after a search with metal detectors covering more than 4 square miles turned up musket balls and rifle parts as well as horse shoes and old frying pans. The February 1779 shootout at Carr's Fort...

Newly discovered human bones prove the first permanent English settlers in North America turned to cannibalism over the cruel winter of 1609-10, US researchers have said. Scientists found unusual cuts consistent with butchering for meat on human bones dumped in a rubbish pit. The four-century-old skull and tibia of a teenage girl in James Fort, Virginia, were excavated from the dump last year. James Fort, founded in 1607, was the earliest part of the Jamestown colony.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did.

California lawmakers don’t simply like labor unions. They love them. So much, in fact, that they recently eliminated Labor History Week from the state law books and replaced it with Labor History Month, with the first scheduled for this May. That means starting tomorrow, Californians (particularly school children) will be getting a steady diet of pro-labor propaganda, displaying the history of the union movement in only the most flattering light. That’s where EAGnews comes in. We believe it’s necessary to balance that stream of happy history with the rest of the story. So starting Wednesday (which ironically is the socialist...

The storied New York Stock Exchange in Manhattan's Financial District is rich with history.  That history has been kept alive, in part, because the organization has kept thorough archives since 1792.How many companies can say they do that?We recently took an exclusive tour of all the cool things in the NYSE's archive collection. We've included our tour highlights in the slides that follow. The archives date all the way back to the founding document, the Buttonwood Agreement from 1792. It's located the NYSE heritage gallery on the 7th floor of the stock exchange building. If you've wondered where the term 'seat on...

Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations. (Genesis 10:1-5)We come to the “Table of Nations”, which has been described even by unbelieving “higher...

DALLAS—As former President George W. Bush prepares to officially open his presidential library on Thursday, a question arises as it has for his predecessors: How objective will it be about his time in the White House? Bush left office five years ago as one of the most unpopular presidents in history, his poll numbers weighed down by public discontent over his handling of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and worries about the economy. But the former president wanted to take the controversies about his presidency head-on, say several former aides who worked closely with him on the library.

"Wow," exclaims the visitor from New Zealand, a place, after all, with a human history shorter than most. For from a wooden walkway we’re gazing down at an archaeological site of giddying age. Built about 9000 BC, it’s more than twice as old as Stonehenge or the Pyramids, predating the discovery of metals, pottery or even the wheel. This is Göbekli Tepe in south-eastern Turkey, generally reckoned the most exciting and historically significant archaeological dig currently under way anywhere in the world, and there are neither queues nor tickets to get in. Wow for a number of reasons, then, though...

There are probably many people in history who have received more credit than they deserved. Excluding any US Presidents in the past century (that would be too easy), what three historic figures do you think are the most overrated?

Once you understand that the media is a soulless left-wing propaganda machine determined to marginalize the right, everything they do makes sense. Those of you asking, "How can the media make the same mistakes over and over again?", fail to understand that falsely speculating that the right is behind or at fault for mass murder is not a mistake on the media's part, it is a political tactic. Our craven corrupt media see tragedy -- be it dead schoolchildren or theatre-goers -- as a partisan political opportunity, not a time to come together and mourn until all the facts are...

We still don't have all the facts about yesterday's horrific Boston Marathon bombing. At the time this column is being written, it's being reported that 3 people died and more than 100 were injured in the attack. While bombings are not a common occurrence in America, there have been more of them than most people realize. 10) The World Trade Center Bombing (February 26, 1993): A van filled with explosives went off in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center. Almost unbelievably, although over a thousand people were wounded, only six were killed. It could have been much...

'We'll have to see what the Howard students thought,' Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul shouted from an elevator Wednesday afternoon, answering MailOnline's question about whether his foray into winning the hearts and minds of black youths was successful. Paul, a Republican darling who is already laying the groundwork for a 2016 presidential run with a coming appearance in New Hampshire, had just wrapped up a two-hour appearance at the Howard University School of Business.

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on Tuesday said he doesn't understand why gun owners fear the registration of their firearms. "I don't get the fear of registration," Steele said on MSNBC. "I don't get the, the concern about trafficking. Are we saying that we want criminals to, you know, make … back-alley sales out of the trunks of their cars?" Steele was part of a panel on MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown," during which former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) said that responsible gun owners insure their guns, which means they're registered. "I mean, I don't understand," she said. MSNBC...

Who is the most beautiful woman ever having existed? Cleopatra? Beyoncé? Greta Garbo? People keep saying a star like Garbo is the most beautiful woman ever, but even though I - definitely - am one of the most patriotic sons ever being produced by Scandinavia, I beg to differ. Garbo indeed was very pretty, but stroll down the street of Kungsportsavenyn, central Gothenburg, in summertime or visit a place like Tylösand, Halmstad, where you'll see tens of thousands of Nordic beauties wearing barely anything the right time of year and you'll rethink. I don't wish to disrespect good ol' Greta,...

After almost four months of difficult negotiations, the United States and North Korea signed an agreement today to end their dispute over North Korea's nuclear program but kept secret many details of how the accord will be put into effect. --SNIP-- Under the broad agreement concluded here late Monday, North Korea will freeze its nuclear activities, renounce any ambition to become a nuclear power and open up two secret military sites to inspection by international experts so they can determine whether Pyongyang already has nuclear capability. In exchange, an international consortium will replace North Korea's current graphite nuclear reactors with...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: From the Wall Street Journal last Friday, April 5th. I missed it Friday. I was informed about this on Saturday afternoon. It's a piece by David Feith. David Feith is assistant editorial features editor at the Wall Street Journal. "It sounds like the setup for a bad joke: What did the Wall Street type say to the college president on the golf course? Well, we don't know exactly -- but it has launched a saga with weighty implications for American intellectual and civic life. Here's what we do know: "One day in the summer of 2010, Barry...

When Judaism demanded that all sexual activity be channeled into marriage, it changed the world. The Torah's prohibition of non-marital sex quite simply made the creation of Western civilization possible. Notice to Reader: "The Boards of both CERC Canada and CERC USA are aware that the topic of homosexuality is a controversial one that deeply affects the personal lives of many North Americans. Both Boards strongly reiterate the Catechism's teaching that people who self-identify as gays and lesbians must be treated with 'respect, compassion, and sensitivity' (CCC #2358). The Boards also support the Church's right to speak to aspects of...

Hello Brothers and Sisters – There’s an insidious heresy going around the Body of Christ. It sounds something like this: “[Because of the license given by the LORD Jesus to believers in Luke 22:36-38 to carry and use deadly weapons, I say, “Better the death of Masada than the death of Dachau when the government illegally violates the 2nd amendment, and lawlessly comes to confiscate my gun(s)]�. Before we begin, let’s remember that Scripture has no contradictions per John 10:35, and per 2 Timothy 2:15 there is a right and wrong way to interpret scripture. It is even possible per...

The right to own weapons in America is under ever-increasing scrutiny and pressure, with constant demands for a blockade against such an antiquated notion.

"...Greek scientific thought had been in the world for a long time before it reached the Arabs, and during that period it had already spread abroad in various directions. So it is not surprising that it reached the Arabs by more than one route. It came first and in the plainest line through Christian Syriac writers, scholars, and scientists. Then the Arabs applied themselves directly to the original Greek sources and learned over again all they had already learned, correcting and verifying their earlier knowledge. Then there came a second channel of transmission indirectly through India, mathematical and astronomical work,...

The History Channel's "The Bible" miniseries once again raked in the ratings this past weekend, drawing in 10.8 million total viewers for its second episode, thus making it the most popular program in all of television on Sunday night. Although the historical miniseries was down 18 percent in total viewership from its premiere on March 3, it still managed to attract 3.2 million adults, ages 18-49, and 3.8 million adults, ages 25-54, according to Deadline. These high numbers made the new miniseries the most watched television program on Sunday from 8 p.m.-10 p.m. According to Channel Guide Magazine, over 50...

Up until now, the year’s big cable-ratings story has been the ever-growing success of zombie drama The Walking Dead on AMC. Sunday night, though, History channel had the highest-rated scripted drama on cable for the year, for the beginning of a story in which only one main character rises from the dead, and that not until nearly the end. The first two hours of History’s Mark Burnett miniseries adaptation of The Bible scored 13.1 million viewers, more than any fiction cable show of the year–and, as the New York Times notes, dwarfing anything on NBC for the past month. (The...

I'm looking for a Freeper in the Washington DC area who can get some documents from the National Archives for me. What I want appears to not be available online.

Someone did an excellent job of annotating our homicide rate chart from 1885 to 2011. Since every thing here is intended to be taken for use against the gun control nuts, I am glad they left a link so I could enjoy their good work. Here is the same chart, with just a bit greater detail than dropping keywords on the graphic allow. The easiest way to do this is to put key numbers referencing the notes, below: 1.) The SodbustersThe United States was pretty well settled by 1885, with homicide rates that generally reflected the country of origin of...

'The Bible' miniseries produced by the History Channel is a disappointment for any family hoping for a new way to share the Bible's stories with their children. 'The Bible' miniseries, not altogether surprising given the History Channel's relentless ratings focus, sensationalizes the Bible's stories. Angel ninjas? Really? The Bible, in addition to being the basis for various religious beliefs, is a fascinating historical conglomeration of stories that can teach us about the customs, times, travails, and conditions of the ancient Middle East that create a social context for modern day news, like the plague of locusts currently hitting Egypt. However...

I’ve been an avid reader since childhood, and probably several thousand books have come and gone from my shelves over the decades. As with many other accumulated belongings, I’m getting to the age where the end is in sight, even if these perilous times pass, and society does get back on track. And so, last weekend I loaded many boxes of books into my pickup, and took them to sell for in-house credit at a local used book store. The money/credit was not that important to me - I mostly wanted to circulate the books back to people who might...

THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe. The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

I am undecided about it.

For years, most Americans' vision of history has been shaped by the New Deal historians. Writing soon after Franklin Roosevelt's death, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and others celebrated his accomplishments and denigrated his opponents. They were gifted writers, and many of their books were bestsellers. And they have persuaded many Americans -- Barack Obama definitely included -- that progress means an ever bigger government In their view, the prosperous 1920s were a binge of mindless frivolity. The Depression of the 1930s was the inevitable hangover, for which FDR administered the cure. That's one way to see it. But there are others,...

In 1946, the United States conducted a series of nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in what’s known as Operation Crossroads. A total of two bombs were detonated to test the effects nuclear blasts had on naval warships. The second, named Baker, was the world’s first nuke to be detonated underwater. Due to the unique properties of underwater explosions, the Baker test produced a number of unique photographs that the world had never seen before.

For example, one will virtually never hear that the Palmer Raids, Prohibition, or American eugenics were thoroughly progressive phenomena. These are sins America itself must atone for. Meanwhile, real or alleged “conservative” misdeeds — say McCarthyism — are always the exclusive fault of conservatives and a sign of the policies they would repeat if given power. The only culpable mistake that liberals make is failing to fight “hard enough” for their principles. Liberals are never responsible for historic misdeeds because they feel no compulsion to defend the inherent goodness of America. Conservatives, meanwhile, not only take the blame for events...

The Worst Blizzards in United States History From the Blizzard of 1888 to the Present Day Read the newspapers/watch TV/Listen to Radio and you will hear them ALL going on and on and on about how his historical this snow storm is. History IS NOT restricted to that which you lived through.THEREFOR CONSIDER. A winter storm must meet certain qualifications to be characterized as an official blizzard. In a blizzard, visibility is reduced to a quarter of a mile or less from falling OR blowing snow, and the wind speed is at least thirty-five miles an hour for no less...

In his second inaugural address, Barack Obama challenged us to live out the meaning of our creed as stated in the Declaration of Independence. But he then redefined those ideals to suit his political aims. Change is necessary, he said, because “when times change, so must we.” To preserve liberty, we must defend our principles, not change them. And doing so requires an understanding of their origin. To truly live out the meaning of our creed, we must first recognize what defined our founding as a nation. So let us objectively look at that beginning. Colonial America was never home...

The National Association of Scholars (NAS): @ UT Austin & Texas A&M . “We found that all too often the course readings gave strong emphasis to race, class, or gender (RCG) social history, an emphasis so strong that it diminished the attention given to other subjects in American history (such as military, diplomatic, religious, intellectual history),” the NAS concluded. “The result is that these institutions frequently offered students a less-than-comprehensive picture of U.S. history.” “Despite its denunciation of ‘ideologically partisan approaches,’ the report itself is based on an idiosyncratic and ideologically driven taxonomy of the books, articles, and syllabi of...

Somehow my list of sites I've visited disappeared. Any suggestions on how I can get a list back?

Excavation work during construction of a new subway network in Greece's second largest city has discovered an ancient wreath made of gold that was buried with a woman some 2,300 years ago. Archaeologists say Friday's find in Thessaloniki occurred on the site of an ancient cemetery in the west of the northern port city. A total 23,000 ancient and medieval artifacts have been found during archaeological excavations connected with the construction since 2006. Archaeologist Vassiliki Misailidou said the olive branch wreath made of gold was buried in a simple, box-shaped woman's grave. It dates to the late 4th or early...

Searching Google Books for Poor Richard's has become somewhat of an exercise in frustration for me. Typically, what you will find are compilations. Authors who have looked at Franklins' works and decided what should be considered "greatest hits" quotations. Consider me uninterested. So I finally got my hands on a copy from the library which contained the original constructs of Poor Richards' as Franklin wrote them, that way I would know what to search for. Below, you will see where to find all of them online, in their original context. 1733, 1734, 1735, 1736, 1737 ,1738, 17391740 ,1741, 1742, 1743,...

In January 1863, Abraham Lincoln made a remarkable confession. He was, he told a senator, more worried about “the fire in the rear” than he was about the Confederates to his front... Disgusted Republicans termed them “Copperheads,” after the poisonous snake... By January 1863, their assaults on Lincoln, combined with the poor performance of the armies, were taking a toll on civilian morale. Midwesterners spoke openly about seceding and establishing another new country or aligning with the Confederate States of America. Lincoln’s critics were harsh, uncompromising and relentless. They said Lincoln was a tyrant, bent on amassing power and ruining...

It's a perilous proposition to insist that a long-dead historical figure would share your politics. It's doubly so when your documentary evidence is thin and you are twisting the proper meaning of the words in that supposed evidence. Take the case of MSNBC.com's Nick Ramsey, who insists that Abraham Lincoln would strongly disagreed with Justice Antonin Scalia that the U.S. Constitution is a dead document rather than a living constitution that can evolve outside the constitutionally-provided mechanism for such evolution: the amendment processes described in Article VII. "This is an issue that constitutional experts have debated for years and years,...

The preservationists of Timbuktu’s centuries-old artifacts have been holding their breath for weeks, waiting for the moment when the French military would seize back Mali’s ancient northern capital from the Islamic militants who have occupied it for 10 months. At stake were the city’s most precious treasures: tens of thousands of centuries-old, priceless calligraphed manuscripts, whose fate under the jihadists’ rule was deeply uncertain. In interviews with TIME on Monday, preservationists said that in a large-scale rescue operation early last year, shortly before the militants seized control of Timbuktu, thousands of manuscripts were hauled out of the Ahmed Baba Institute...

Go to the link for this captivating interpretaton of the history of music.