Free Republic

To toil at National Review is to know what it’s like to read “Buckley must be spinning in his grave!” at the beginning of umpteen letters, e-mails, blog posts, and tweets from less-than-gruntled critics supremely assured of their originality. The beauty of this evergreen — and its cheap presumptions about a great man — is that it can be wielded with equal convenience by trolls of every political persuasion and in response to any number of detected heresies.But, with the whiff of bigotry and malice that so many smell in popular politics since the tranquil days when the last Bush...

When James Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, looks at the Tea Party today, he flashes back to 1964 and sees the John Birch Society. "The Tea Party, these right wingers are basically the modern-day John Birch Society," he told U.S. News. "They are being extremists." The John Birch Society gained traction in the earl 60s with its vehemently anti-communist rhetoric and distrust in government. Hoffa says just like in the early 60s when the John Birch Society pushed for Barry Goldwater, who was the more conservative candidate, to be the Republican presidential nominee, the Tea Party has...

I received the link to this video clip in a recent email and I don’t know what to make of it. Years ago I remember my Dad (God rest his soul) contributing to the John Birch Society whenever possible. They seem to be pro-conservative and pro-Constitutional. Pardon me if I am among the last to learn all the information contained in this video. I find it quite disconcerting. I’m one of the ones who just loved (and prayed nightly) for Sarah Palin and thought for sure she was going to run. When that didn’t happen, I then looked to Bachmann,...

John F. McManus anaylzes the voting record and actions of former Congressman Newt Gingrich, revealing that Gingrich is not the conservative he portrays himself to be.

Welch was right! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZU0c8DAIU4&feature=related

Last week the unthinkable happened.  While you were distracted by the banal and only marginally important presidential primaries, the lion, Harvard Law School, publicly lay down with the lamb, the Tea Party Patriots.  The long-term political implications are, potentially, far more potent than a mere presidency. The SuperElite and the SuperPopulists convened at Harvard for a “Conference for a Constitutional Convention.”  It was co-hosted by Lawrence Lessig, from Harvard, and by Mark Meckler, co-founder of the 850,000 member Tea Party Patriots. Lessig is a leading figure on the social democratic left, the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for...

The article focused on Perry’s comments at a Border Summit speech in south Texas (8-22-01), days before the 9-11 attacks, about bi-national health insurance — Texas-funded coverage for both U.S. and Mexican border residents. The governor’s statement favored a study, required by the Legislature, about "the feasibility of bi-national health insurance.” The DMN continued, "Katherine Cesinger, spokeswoman for Perry’s campaign, downplayed the topic of bi-national health insurance. 'A bill was passed by the Legislature that authorized a study to look into this issue, which ultimately concluded there were numerous barriers to accomplishing that idea, and the Legislature took no further...

As early as January of 2005, high-ranking officials were discussing the best way to sell the idea of North American “integration” to the public and policymakers while getting around national constitutions. The prospect of creating a monetary unit to replace national currencies was a hot topic as well. Some details of the schemes were exposed in a secret 2005 U.S. embassy cable from Ottawa signed by then-Ambassador Paul Cellucci. The document was released by WikiLeaks on April 28. But so far, it has barely attracted any attention in the United States, Canada, or Mexico beyond a few mentions in some...

US Pacific Command’s Adm William Fallon says the group wasn’t conducting anti-sub operations, but the fact remains that the submarine did slip past the group’s security screen undetected and popped up within firing range of the Kitty Hawk.

This Matthew Continetti  cover story — on Glenn Beck, Rick Santelli, and the Tea Party — from the latest Weekly Standard has recently been the locus of a bit of internecine warfare on the right.One of Beck's producers called it "intentionally misleading," a "collection of lies," and "a hit piece barely worthy of Media Matters." He also provided a toll-free number readers could use to cancel their subscriptions to TWS (while bizarrely claiming that he didn't support boycotts).Now, Beck and his associates have been known to avail themselves of the full emotive power of the English language to press home...

Things that are going on today with the economy, and how the goverenmet is handling all of it, was specifically predicted back in 1958 by Robert Welch.

On March 19, 2010, Jerome Corsi’s weekly financial strategies newsletter, "RedAlert," reported that Canada‘s Manitoba province is devoting a portion of its website to promoting Canada’s portion of the NAFTA Superhighway system, the Mid-Continent Trade Corridor. While interested parties, especially the State of Texas and many national publications, have downplayed or denied that plans even exist to build Superhighways from Mexico through Canada, our northern neighbors have gone full steam ahead with their plans to augment this system. The website displays a map showing the connection of the Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor with the much-vilified American NAFTA Superhighway (IH-35)...

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) has introduced a bill that would allow the President to imprison an unlimited number of American citizens (as well as foreigners) indefinitely without trial. Known as The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, or S. 3081, the bill authorizes the President to deny a detainee a trial by jury simply by designating that person an “enemy belligerent.” The bill, which has eight cosponsors, explicitly names U.S. citizens as among those who can be detained indefinitely without trial: An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent...

Watching my fellow members of the media try to dissect the tea party movement is endlessly amusing. They tend to seize on the first thing they encounter and then employ it to describe the rest. The effect is that of a man approaching a smorgasbord, picking out the boiled potatoes, and then deciding Swedes must be vegetarians. As a connoisseur of conservatism, I like to sample from all the plates. So when the tea partiers congregated on the steps of the Statehouse Thursday, I gravitated to the John Birch Society table. Like the tea partiers, the Birch Society is something...

There are many frightening aspects of the new healthcare law hidden around every corner of its legislative labyrinth, camouflaged behind dense impenetrable briars of legalese. But, like the purloined letter of literature, there plenty of the law’s detestable provisions hiding in plain sight. Any document that runs over 2,000 pages (unless it is a young adult book about angst-ridden vampires) discourages even the most cursory of readings. Even skimming such a tome would likely precipitate carpal tunnel syndrome. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law last week by President Obama is no exception. As House Minority Leader...

What became quickly obvious while watching President Obama’s recent interview about healthcare reform with Bret Baier on FOX is that we’re still not getting straight answers about the proposed reforms — and this after a year of healthcare being the No. 1 priority at the Obama White House. On something even as elementary as making the exact legislation available to the public and to legislators in a timely manner prior to voting, we got more hype than candor from Mr. Obama. Said Obama, regarding the timing of the vote on restructuring one-sixth of the U.S. economy, “I hope it’s going...

"...G. Vance Smith, a committed Mormon, now leads the Society. Vance Smith is systematically removing people from leadership positions within the John Birch Society and replacing them with Mormons. One gathers that Smith does not feel that he is accountable to the membership concerning his reasons for the replacement of longtime leadership. There seems to be no accountability factor. Longtime Birchers are leaving the Society en masse. There seems to be a major concern that the Society is fast becoming a puppet for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One document that I received suggests that Smith's course...

...Romney’s argument with the Iowa talk-radio host starts with the two discussing their shared affinity for W. Cleon Skousen. “You and I share a common affection for the late Cleon Skousen,” the radio host says. The former governor agrees, affirming Skousen was his professor." Who is Cleon Skousen you might ask? In answering that question, it’s hard to even know where to begin. Skousen was by turns an FBI employee, the police chief of Salt Lake City, a Brigham Young University professor, consigliore to former secretary of agriculture and Mormon president Ezra Taft Benson and, well, all-around nutjob. Skousen was...

The John Birch Society Announces CPAC 2010 Cosponsorship JBS to provide leadership, educational presence at nation's top conservative gathering APPLETON, WIS.—December 15, 2009—The John Birch Society announces it is cosponsoring the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2010, to be held in Washington DC, Feb. 18-20. JBS will have a double booth with half dedicated to offering educational and promotional materials and the other half housing a TV studio that will stream live video from the booth and broadcast onto JBS LibertyNewsNetwork.tv, a website that will feature archived JBS video and live video streams. Last year, more than 8,000 attendees were...

The founder of the website "Free Republic", Jim Robinson, has joined a growing boycott of the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) due to a homosexual activist group sponsoring the event. GOProud, a group that advocates same-sex "marriage," a repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and "expanding access to domestic partner benefits" for homosexuals, is listed as a sponsor of the event at CPAC's website. Mr. Robinson has joined a number of conservative activists including Liberty University Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr., Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver, and Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of...