Free Republic

Glenn Beck, Fox News' deranged media personality, has been telling a national television audience that the Obama administration might be setting up secret "concentration camps" to lock up conservatives. The president, Beck believes, may be using FEMA in this conspiratorial drive towards "a totalitarian state." Beck, who has already voiced his affinity for the John Birch Society, is also distributing Birchers' literature to his audiences. If he were just some random right-wing blogger, it would be easier to laugh this off.

Governor Mark Sanford (R) of South Carolina has been a vocal critic of President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan and in the process has become one of the most prominent fiscal conservatives in the country. Recently, he made national news when he announced his plan to accept the stimulus funds but sought a waiver from the President to use 25 percent of it to pay down state debt rather than spend it on suggested programs (the other 75 percent is determined by formulas). If Obama doesn’t grant the waiver, Sanford has said he will reject it. Before Sanford was governor, Sanford...

What began early last year as a "credit crunch" and an "economic downturn" is now being characterized as a "long, severe recession." Once upon a time, such a crisis was known as a "depression" before Americans became squeamish about such stark language. As with our reluctant semantic retreat from "credit crunch" to "recession," the reality of another Great Depression will probably not be acknowledged until years after the fact. But America and the rest of the modern world, by doggedly pursuing the same mistaken policies of the 1920s and '30s, have made a full-blown depression — lasting years, not months,...

Yesterday, January 22, saw a veritable army of pro-lifers participate in the 35th annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. This demonstration of public sentiment was first held in 1974 to mark the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. In that decision, of course, the Supreme Court ruled that all state laws prohibiting abortion were unconstitutional. Since then, an estimated 50,000,000 babies have been killed in the womb in the United States. As we observed yesterday, ever since the Roe v. Wade (and the less publicized Doe v. Bolton) decision, the primary strategy among pro-life people...

President Barack Obama opened his presidency with an inaugural address laced with glittering generalities designed to get heads nodding in agreement, but outlined no specific agenda anywhere in the speech. What is he for? The speech outlined a complete catalogue of things he wants to accomplish as president. He wants to ...•    reaffirm our enduring spirit•    carry forward … the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness•    pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America•    create new jobs•    lay a...

A report released this month by the U.S. Joint Forces Command is warning of the potential for “rapid and sudden collapse” of the Mexican government due to the corrupting influence of criminal gangs and drug cartels. The Joint Operating Environment 2008 document (pdf) also lists Pakistan as the other of two large and important states that “bear consideration,” explaining that these would be “worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world."“The Mexican possibility may seem less likely [than the possibility that Pakistan's government collapsing], but the [Mexican] government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained...

Don't pay any attention to your frozen thermometer. Never mind that your city is shivering under a record-setting cold wave, paralyzed by another record-setting snowfall. Do not think twice about your mounting heating bill, electricity blackouts, or reports that heating oil deliveries for your area are not available. Even if your teeth are chattering, concentrate only on one thing: global warming, Global Warming, GLOBAL WARMING. Just wrap yourself in a blanket and re-watch Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. And remember, be very, very afraid ... of global warming.That seems to be the message coming from much of the overheated "mainstream"...

This topic reminds me of the story about the national politician who campaigned on a party platform promoting the Welfare State. His stump speech was filled with promises of all the government services that he would fight for, if the voters would just elect him to Congress. He promised to meet all of the people’s needs relating to childcare, education, nutrition, housing, transportation, healthcare, pensions, and good-paying jobs for every citizen. Finally, at one town hall meeting, a boy raised his hand and asked, “Why would we need jobs?”  Yes, just as when we were children, everyone wants to ride...

Neoconservatives are elated with Obama's appointments, recognizing that the new guard is very much like the old.  Some traditional conservatives were hoping that with Bush leaving office and Obama coming in, the neocons would be put out of power, but sadly, they're not going away that easily. Contrary to the public's perception of President-elect Obama as the peace candidate, he has been extremely hawkish in his appointments. The selection of Joe Biden as a running mate was a sign that the globalist and hawkish wing of the Democratic Party (where the neocons originally hailed from) was going to be strongly...

On January 5, the nation's new media learned that President-elect Barack Obama would nominate former congressman and Clinton administration official Leon Panetta as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Obama's choice reportedly caught some veteran Democratic senators who had not been briefed of the decision off-guard, and some voiced their skepticism that that Bill Clinton's former chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget possessed sufficient experience in the intelligence field to handle the job. The New York Times reported on January 7: "Mr. Panetta's lack of experience had drawn the sharpest criticism on...

The rise of the neoconservatives within the GOP has not only discredited the Grand Old Party but tarnished the image of conservatism. The Republican party suffered an overwhelming electoral defeat this past November. The establishment media were all too quick to proclaim that conservatism is dead and we're now at the dawn of a liberal age. Peter Beinart, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), wrote in Time magazine that we are facing the dawn of a "new liberal order." In making this proclamation, Beinart overlooks the fact that the public was not voting...

“And now for a world government.” That is the title of an important op-ed by Gideon Rachman that appeared in the Financial Times of London — important both for the showcase in which it appeared and the smug admissions it makes.  The Financial Times (FT) is notable not only for the distinctive salmon-colored paper on which it is printed, but for who reads it. It is the main competitor of the Wall Street Journal for the position of top “must read” daily economic newspaper for global business, financial, and political elites. “I have never believed that there is a secret...

President-elect Barack Obama's "Blueprint for Change" calls for "affordable, accessible health care for all." After a quote from a speech he gave in Iowa City explaining that we have an "obligation" to "turn the page on the failed politics of yesterday's health care debates," he outlines his plans "at a glance." According to the brief summary, 45.5 million people aren't covered, costs have doubled over the last eight years, and not enough money is spent on preventative care. The legislation Obama plans to sign into law by the end of his first term would somehow reduce the cost of healthcare...

Good old-fashioned communism, once discredited, is now finding new adherents among those too young to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. [snip] . . . In Japan, for instance, economic stagnation, depressed wages, and a workforce that is 44 percent part-time only has created fertile ground for the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), now the nation’s fourth largest political party. Treating this at Telegraph.co.uk, Danielle Demetriou writes: New recruits [for the JCP] are signing up at the rate of 1,000 a month, swelling its ranks to more than 415,000. Meanwhile a classic proletarian novel is at the top of the...

Monday, 10 November 2008 06:32 "Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration." That was the lead sentence in an article entitled, "Dems Target Private Retirement Accounts," published in the Carolina Journal on November 4th. With those alarming openers, the article has gone viral over the last week — at least among those who advocate less government interference in their economic lives. Unfortunately, the Carolina Journal is only telling half of the story —...

About 150 Muslim workers have been fired from a Grand Island meatpacking plant in a dispute over prayer... Plant officials at the JBS Swift meatpacking plant are bringing in Cuban workers to replace them...

Madison - Former Republican presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas will keynote Saturday's session of the 50th anniversary of the Appleton-based John Birch Society. Paul will be one of three speakers at the 8 p.m. Saturday event at the Best Western Bridgewood Resort Hotel in Neenah, according to spokesman Bill Hahn. Also speaking at that event will be Hilliard Welch, son of Society founder Robert Welch, and Society chief executive Arthur Thompson. A physician and an icon among some conservatives, Paul calls himself "America's No. 1 defender of liberty." He did not win any Republican presidential primaries, however....

In a picture supplied by Sarah Palin's family to the Associated Press, Palin appears with some rather odd reading matter: The magazine of the ultraconservative John Birch Society. The picture, dating to 1995, when Palin was a member of the Wasilla City Council, ran beside a profile of Palin in Saturday's New York Times. The magazine, The New American, is sitting on top of her calendar on her desk, unopened....

H.R. 3221*, the American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, was passed by the House 272-152 on Wednesday, July 23, 2008. (*The government website may not yet be updated following yesterday’s vote.) The Senate is expected to vote on the housing bill on July 25th or 26th. Enactment of this legislation would be a victory for socialism and big government, but a travesty for U.S. taxpayers and limited government. This one-time energy bill was transformed into a vehicle for mortgage foreclosure prevention, then very recently revised again to include plans for preventing the failure of Fannie Mae and...

In 1943, when Germany had virtually no sources of petroleum to fuel its Luftwaffe, U-boats, and Tiger tanks, its scientists (arguably among the best in the world at that time) didn’t turn to solar and wind power. Evil does not equate to naïveté. Hitler’s technical advisers turned to another energy source to keep their Wehrmacht running steadily for several years without petroleum. They used the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert coal into diesel fuel and employed the Bergius hydrogenation (or liquefaction) process to convert coal into aviation gasoline and high-quality truck and automobile gasoline.