Free Republic

All this week we are asking questions; I may not have the answers, but power left unchecked can turn very ugly, very rapidly. So it's vital that we all question with boldness, hold to the truth and speak without fear. You need to start asking questions: Day 3 - Why does the FCC have a diversity "czar"? - Who is Mark Lloyd and how does he plan to "balance" the airwaves? - Will he bring back the Fairness Doctrine or worse? - Cass Sunstein once said he wants to balance the Internet; is that next? - Will broadcasters who leave...

Imagine that you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world — for the elegiacs of Ovid and the odes of Horace, the sinewy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, the strategic niceties of the Punic Wars, the generalship of Julius Caesar and the voluptuous excesses of the later emperors. That’s a big undertaking and it takes time, concentration, dedication. Yet you find your precious time continually preyed upon, and your class’s attention distracted, by a baying pack of ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar...

It turns out Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) made more waves at the Netroots Nation conference on Saturday, accusing Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) of "treason" for saying that health reform would result in doctors "pulling the plug on grandma." "I mean what Grassley said the other day was an act of treason. I'm sorry. It's not being called on," the outspoken Democrat said to a group of liberal activists. The Senate Finance Committee ranking member made his claims about the end-of-life provisions in the House healthcare bill last Wednesday, but retracted his claims later in the week. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.)...

"To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds." Photo caption of Michelle Obama speaking to her daughter Malia posted on The Free Republic. Disclaimer on The Free Republic: "Free Republic does not advocate or condone racism, violence, rebellion, secession, or an overthrow of the government. " For those of you who have argued vociferously with me that we are living in a "post-racial America" rather than an America in which Jim Crow is on steroids, you apparently have not read the daily diet of racism that the readers and bloggers on this site consume and then regurgitate....

What does it mean when a country that likes to proclaim itself a defender of freedom plays a song about liberation to people it is torturing? When the architects of torture assert that enhanced interrogation is strictly “by the book,” it turns out that they mean this in a more literal sense than we might have imagined: the Bible, it turns out, was used as a form of torture at Abu Ghraib. Iraqi POW Haj Ali Shalal (“the man behind the hood”) has reported that he was forced to listen to loud and constant repetitions of Psalm 137—in the jaunty,...

Last January, then-candidate Barack Obama caused quite a stir among his fellow Democrats when he defended remarks he'd made to the Reno, Nev. Gazette-Journal: I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path, because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like, you know, with all the excesses of the '60s and the '70s, you know, government had grown and grown, but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms...

Every so often, history serves up an analogy that’s uncomfortable, a little distracting and yet still very relevant. In the summer of 1933, just as they will do on Thursday, heads of government and their finance ministers met in London to talk about a global economic crisis. They accomplished little and went home to battle the crisis in their own ways. More than any other country, Germany — Nazi Germany — then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to...

Remember Mitch Snyder? For those of you who don't, he was a tireless advocate of the homeless who had his 15 minutes in the '80's for going on hunger strikes to raise the national level of attention to the plight of the homeless. He ran the Community for Creative Non-Violence, which operated a shelter that catered to the needs of a great number of homeless persons in the District of Columbia. For a time, he was very popular for the principled stand that he took on behalf of the homeless. Unfortunately, that's not the only thing he was known for....

Yes, we're going through tough times, but President Obama has repeatedly invoked the Great Depression and it's scaring the heck out of consumers. Who's going to go buy anything if we're headed for an economic catastrophe? People will horde every penny they get and businesses will suffer and things will only get worse. In a well-written op-ed piece in Friday's Wall Street Journal, University of Nevada-Reno economics professor Bradley R. Schiller takes Obama to task for spreading fear itself to win votes for his stimulus package. In his article titled, "Obama's rhetoric is the real 'catastrophe,' " Schiller points out...

WESTERN CIVILISATION at the present day is passing through a crisis which is essentially different from anything that has been previously experienced. Other societies in the past have changed their social institutions or their religious beliefs under the influence of external forces or the slow development of internal growth. But none, like our own, has ever consciously faced the prospect of a fundamental alteration of the beliefs and institutions on which the whole fabric of social life rests. . . .Civilisation is being uprooted from its foundations in nature and tradition and is being reconstituted in a new organisation which...

National security team nominees are prepared to meet today's challenges and tomorrow's emerging threats, U.S. Vice President-elect Joe Biden said Monday. "I hope and believe that the American people will come to feel as I do that we brought together one of the most talented national security teams ever assembled," Biden said at a news conference in Chicago, during which President-elect Barack Obama introduced his national security team. "A team prepared to meet the serious challenges we face today and the emerging threats that will confront us tomorrow."Obama designated Sen. Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state and said he...

Joe Biden's denunciation of his own campaign's ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by. He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis. "When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed," Biden told Couric. "He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'" As Reason's Jesse Walker footnotes it: "And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, 'Who is that...

Sarah Palin is going to shake the Democratic leftist-liberal house to its foundation, and then bring it down...in fact, she's already doing so. She, her family, their faith, their values, and their story represent the absolute refutation of all the tired old liberal mantras and victimology that they malignantly use to mentally, psychologically, and financially enslave whole classes of people. From women's rights, to family values, to gun rights, to abortion, to energy policy, to taxation, to envrionmentalism, to fundamental governing principal, to U.S. soveriegnty and independence, and on and on...she is a wrecking ball to the leftist, libneral, socialist...

Uncontacted" Amazon Tribe Actually Known for DecadesKelly Hearn for National Geographic NewsJune 19, 2008 Recent photos of an uncontacted tribe firing arrows at a plane briefly made these Amazon Indians the world's least understood media darlings. Contrary to many news stories, the isolated group has actually been monitored from a distance for decades, past and current Brazilian government officials say. No one, however, is known to have had a face-to-face meeting with the nomadic tribe, which lives along the Peru-Brazil border. And no one knows how much, if anything, these rain forest people know about the outside world. The tribe—whose...

" Have you ever thought that you stand a better chance to woo a girl by going green? Well, a recent study conducted by US car maker General Motors has revealed that nearly 88 per cent of women surveyed would chat to a guy who owns a green car than a sports car. Quite an award for going green! "

BET founder Bob Johnson, despite his consistent support of Hillary CObama’s election as President during a segment on Wednesday’s "American Morning." "I believe that if Senator Obama leads this country the way he ran the primary, it will become a historic event for African-Americans, probably greater than the Emancipation Proclamation, which was signed in 1863."linton, placed an unequivocal importance on Barack

Finally, after nearly a year we get to the bottom of the story. Last spring, you were held up as a parody of environmental correctness when you proposed restricting the use of toilet paper to one square per bathroom visit. What was that about? I think it’s a fantastic and eye-opening example of how the media is operated by political figures, of how Karl Rove was humiliated in the media and how, within 24 hours, he was able to humiliate me and take any sort of credibility away from me. What are you saying? You think Karl Rove leaked the...

President Clinton has been touting his wife's commitment to Africa on the campaign trail by telling interested voters that "Hillary was the first U.S. Senator to call Darfur genocide." He used that exact line with voters in Aiken, S.C., yesterday, and it has been pointed out more than once over the course of this campaign. The usually shy Chelsea also touted her mother's record on Darfur, telling a group at Stanford University earlier this month that she was "really proud that my mom was the first Democratic senator to call it genocide in May of 2004 and put a lot...

On a May night in 2005, Debra Bolton, a lawyer and single mom from the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, was leaving the Café Milano in Georgetown after socializing with some friends. She had driven her SUV only a few hundred yards before she was pulled over by D.C. police for driving with the headlights off. She told the officer the parking attendant at Café Milano probably had turned off her vehicle's automatic light feature. Not mollified, the officer asked Bolton to step out of the car, walk in a straight line, recite the alphabet, stand on one foot, and...

Ms Rabbit wanted to know what "hyperbole" meant. (She thought it was pronounced "hyper-bowl".

No one alive at the close of the 19th century could have missed the "scramble for Africa". A motley collection of robber barons, imperialist ideologues, explorers, rogues and adventurers - the likes of Cecil Rhodes and the appalling Leopold II, King of the Belgians - carved up the continent in the name of five European powers. Today, few appear to have noticed that a second "scramble for Africa" is under way. This time, only one giant country is involved, but its ambitions are every bit as momentous as those of Rhodes and company. With every day that passes, China's economic...

Your immediate help is essential as Planned Parenthood responds to the disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decision issued just hours ago. It's a dark day for women's health and safety. With Bush appointees John Roberts and Samuel Alito leading the way, a 5-4 majority turned its back on more than 30 years of Supreme Court decisions that protected women's health from dangerous laws that restrict abortion. In the cases of Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood and Gonzales v. Carhart, the court has now made the Bush abortion ban the law of the land. There is no way we will let this stand....

The Bush Administration has indicated it wants doctors, clinics, and hospitals to provide flu immunizations to illegal immigrants. In an interview with KFOX-TV, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt was asked if the federal government has any safeguards to prevent illegal immigrants from catching the flu. Leavitt responded by saying doctors should give flu shots to "every person."..............

DELHI -- The discovery of a backpack stuffed with three loaded guns and an assault rifle prompted a lockdown at Delhi High School and Delhi Middle School on Monday. A man searching for aluminum cans found the backpack at 9 a.m. near a trash can on the western edge of the Delhi Educational Park, the campus that houses the middle school and high school. Inside the backpack was a loaded .357 magnum, a 40-caliber automatic pistol, a 380 semi-automatic pistol and an SKS assault rifle with a 30-round banana clip stocked with ammunition, said Sheriff Mark Pazin. "There's nothing more...

I’ve spent much of the past week trying to get a letter to the editor published in The New York Times in response to the recent Tom Friedman rant (subscription required) against GM (see “Hyperbole and Defamation at The New York Times,” June 1). I failed. This is my story. For those of you who haven’t read it already, Mr. Friedman spent 800 words on the Times op/ed page to accuse GM of supporting terrorists, buying votes in Congress and being a corporate “crack dealer” that posed a serious threat to America’s future. He suggested the nation would be better...

A northwest suburban high school board member seeks to ban seven books from classroom use because she thinks the profanity, depiction of graphic sex, and drug and abortion references in the literature are inappropriate for teenagers. Leslie Pinney admits she only read passages of the controversial selections, including Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Toni Morrison's Beloved, which were on the American Library Association's 100 most challenged books list between 1990 and 2000. But Pinney said perusing the questionable parts of the books made it clear they weren't suitable for children and should be taken off Township High School District 214's proposed...

President Bush accuses those of us who want to secure America's borders and fully enforce our immigration laws of lacking "compassion." Huh. Well, I have yet to hear an ounce of compassion from President Bush for America's countless casualties of lax immigration enforcement. Where's the sympathy for innocent, law-abiding citizens who have lost their lives at the hands of illegal aliens and their open-borders enablers? Nope, we haven't heard a word about the victims as the White House pours on its unadulterated pro-illegal alien rhetoric and "undocumented workers do the jobs Americans won't do" propaganda -- all in support of...

MSNBC's talk show host Chris Matthews is a man who obviously: (1) Believes he is the smartest man on television; (2) Enjoys bullying women such as Michelle Malkin; (3) Enjoys bullying senior citizens who may not be as quick with the mouth as he is; (4) Is irrelevent except for a few of his fellow moonbats who actually believe he's a mental giant; (5) Is of the opinion that he's really competition for Fox News Channel's lineup. During a speech he gave in Canada at the University of Toronto, Matthews did what most American liberals do when in a foreign...

It's hard to imagine that The New York Times' editorial page could misconstrue an issue involving guns, seeing as how the writers of the Gray Lady's editorials are so open-minded about the Second Amendment. (That, dear readers, would be sarcasm.) An offering last week about legislation before the U.S. House that would protect gun manufacturers from nuisance lawsuits posited: "This extraordinary shield, written to the diktat of the National Rifle Association, is so sweeping that it would have barred the D.C. sniper settlement and other valid negligence claims." Hmm. Sounds like an editorial written to the diktat of the Brady...

Many feared George W. Bush would nominate a Supreme Court justice in the mold of David Souter, Anthony Kenney or Sandra Day O'Connor – Republicans in name only, with no real principles or convictions, the kind of people who would be swept up by the Beltway culture to become, at best, unpredictable votes in future rulings. It appears that fear has been unfounded. In fact, in nominating Harriet Miers, Bush, who pledged to seek out candidates in the mold of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, has found someone with more in common with the likes of activist Ruth Bader Ginsburg....

hereby officially pronounce the conservative movement dead. May it rest in peace. It was killed by its faith in men, not principles – men like George W. Bush. The appointments of John Roberts as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and Harriet Miers as associate justice serve as the epitaphs for the political movement. But even before these betrayals, conservatism was on life support. It could not have survived the irresponsible spending by the Republican Congress, approved by the president during the last five years. The conservative movement, in the best of times, represented a defensive effort to slow...

Make no bones about it: I am a liberal who believes that guns in themselves are not evil. Are you shocked? You shouldn’t be. Some conservatives like to present the cliché counterargument that “guns don’t kill people; people kill people in debates about gun control. However, the question still remains: Exactly what argument do they think they are countering? It is not the “liberal stance” that guns in themselves have the ability to kill people and are evil. In fact, anyone who believes this nonsense, liberal or conservative, is just plain dumb. In fact, I – and most intelligent people...

This past weekend I did some personal undercover work at a local CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) fundraiser. I made off with a pocket handbook containing some deeply disturbing instructions to their members. I would like everyone to read it. It will only be available at this link until the end of the week so I suggest downloading it and distributing it to all who are concerned:http://www.unitedamericancommittee.org/cairguide.gif-JP United American Committeehttp://www.UnitedAmericanCommittee.org info@unitedamericancommittee.org

A 17-year-old youth walked into an Italian restaurant in Burlington, N.J., to order two large pizzas. Emblazoned on his white T-shirt was a large yellow smiley face with the tip of a cat's tail protruding from of the smiley's mouth. Beneath the design was an explicitly depraved, three-word sentence that would offend almost any woman. "I will not take your order so long as you are wearing that shirt," the counter woman told the customer. "Get your mind out of the gutter," the youth shouted at her. "Get that shirt out of my store," the woman yelled. "Does your mother...

Last week, the Senate approved a bill that would make the average citizen less safe. The gun-industry immunity bill passed 65-31 by the Senate on Friday and virtually assured passage in the House would shield gun manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits by people hurt by firearms. At a time when the country is on perpetual high alert because of the terrorist threat, the bill is dangerous for any number of reasons. Instead of making it more difficult for criminals to obtain guns, this bill would make it easier. Manufacturers and dealers whose negligent business practices let weapons fall into the...

Would you favor it if the government suddenly quit feeding and giving liquids to the political detainees being held at Guantánamo Bay, because they had become an expensive nuisance? Or would you take to the streets to protest against the viciousness of it? Would you be in favor if one of our state governments decided to starve to death its prisoners because they had become too expensive to house? Or would you be demonstrating at prison gates or in front of the Capitol -- objecting to the inhumanity of it? If you believe it would be inhumane and vicious to...

A leading Catholic priest who visited Terri Schiavo on two separate occasions in the hours before her death says Terri was in a weakened medical condition from 13 days of starvation but was responsive until her death. The disabled woman even prayed with her family. "Last night, I spent about two hours with her until past midnight, together with Bobby Schindler and Suzanne, and then again this morning for about an hour and a half, and then right up until about ten minutes before she died," Father Frank Pavone said. Pavone, the director of Priests for Life, said most of...

President Bush will make remarks on the death of Terri Schindler (Schiavo) at 11:40 am EST.

For over a decade I’ve tried to convince people in the pro-life movement that leaving the Republican Party wasn’t a good move. The past few days has changed my mind, and I started to write this article when the news broke that Terri died. Florida has shown us that the best that the GOP has to offer is a losing strategy. For decades abortion has remained “legal” due to the same problems which were present in Florida: an arrogant judiciary and an unwilling executive branch. The call for Jeb to refuse to enforce the illicit orders of Judge Greer went...

SIMPLY PUT: Terri Schiavo is on day 13 of her marathon thus showing she is hardly suicidal and has no problem with being on a feeding tube. That she loves life./ The suicidals and weaklings are on the pro death side. Anemic punks such as George Felos and half blind judge Greer That weaker specimen punk lawyer George Felos. This runt was the last boy picked for a baseball game. Demented death angel Corrupt liar lawyer judge he's done it all. Death angel

US tells India, drop dead March 28, 2005 A friend, usually upbeat about India-US relations, sent me an angry mail over the weekend after President George Bush called up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the evening of March 25 to inform him that the US had decided to supply F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an interview to The Washington Post, "dismissed concerns" about the fallout of the American decision. The mail reads: "lovely easter gift to india from the us. moral: proliferate nukes, threaten us interests everywhere, be terror hub, and get rewarded...

The methods used for mass extermination in the Nazi death camps originated and were perfected in earlier use against people with physical, emotional, and intellectual disabilities. This article describes the historical context of attitudes toward people with disabilities in Germany and how this context produced mass murder of people with disabilities prior to and during the early years of-World War II. Several key marker variables, the manipulation of which allowed a highly sophisticated Western society to officially sanction the murder of people with disabilities, are examined. Important implications must continually be drawn from these sad events as we work with...

Norm Olsen, pastor of a right to life church in Wolverine, Michigan and senior adivser to the Michigan Militia, said Tuesday that he had put together an unarmed coalition of state militias that were prepared to storm the Florida hospice where Terri Schiavo has been left to die, and take her to a safe house. Olsen said he only needed the OK from Schiavo's father, either directly or indirectly through his attorney David Gibbs, to put the plan, called 'Operation Resurrection,' into action on Easter Sunday.But Olsen said Gibbs called the FBI (to report the plans) instead of passing his...

“Misery can only be removed from the world by painless extermination of the miserable.” —a Nazi writer quoted by Robert J. Lifton in The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide The case of Terri Schiavo has been framed by the media as the battle between the “right to die” and pro-life groups, with the latter often referred to as “right-wing Christians.” Little attention has been paid to the more than twenty major disability rights organizations firmly supporting Schiavo’s right to nutrition and hydration. Terri Schindler-Schiavo, a severely disabled woman, is being starved and dehydrated to death in...

Posted: March 29, 2005 11:44 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com The Florida state constitution declares unequivocally that in the state of Florida "the supreme executive power shall be vested in a governor … ." The word supreme means highest in authority. There can be no executive authority in the state of Florida higher than the governor. No state law can create an executive authority higher than highest in the Florida constitution. Therefore no court order based upon such a law can constitutionally create such an authority. If the governor tells the local police in Pinellas County to step aside, they...

I am convinced God uses trials like the Terri Schiavo case to test men. Pinellas County Circuit Court Judge George Greer was tested – and found wanting. He had seven years to consider this case and got it wrong every time. I don't know Greer personally, but I know many people like him. They go to church on Sunday and then between Monday and Friday lead lives with no seeming connection to what they hear preached in the pulpit, what they read in the Bible, what they claim to believe of the Christian faith. This may be the biggest single...

Judge Greer has accomplished a coup: He commandeered local cops to repel a state agency (Family and Children Services) and Jeb's state police. And what happens to him for usurping extra-judicial authority? nothing. He's allowed to continue the killing process, with a bizarre zeal to see Terri Schiavo die. Michael will be rid of her, and recipient, likely of book and TV movie deals, from a Hollywood that is pushing assisted suicide as the cause du jour. Greer thumbs nose at Congress; what happens? Nothing. The man shows signs of lunacy - - - is he fiddling with metal balls,...

In his landmark novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley conveys the vision of a technological nightmare in which man is forced, through conditioning and eugenics, to happily serve as a cog in an utopian socialist machine. Those things which we see as important - family, close friendships, love, individualism, faith - are removed from the individual through brainwashing techniques, so as to create hollow vessels better suited to a life of consumerism and service to the State. Motherhood is abolished in favor of factory production of children, and the elderly and disabled are “taken care of.” The euthanasia practices in...

Dehydration death seen as peaceful "This is the way many, many people died over all of the millenniums," a doctor from Penn said. By Stacey Burling and Michael Vitez Inquirer Staff Writers Terri Schiavo is dying now as many aged and sick people have for eons. Though some people see letting her die of dehydration as inhumane, doctors say it is a surprisingly gentle process. [snip] "It's a very painless and very compassionate way of dying," he said. [snip] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------