Free Republic

Oh, it’s fun to pick on celebrities who don’t know much about the issues on which they’re asked to pontificate — and at least James Taylor has the honesty to preface his answer to The Daily Caller’s Nicholas Ballasy with an admission of ignorance. In fact, he does so twice, when Nicholas asks him about Obama’s continuation of George Bush’s drone policy and on the “executive orders” Obama promised on gun control (actually executive actions, most or all of which don’t require actual EOs). At some point, it’s easy to feel a little sympathy for Taylor, who must be thinking...

“Room for smarm in your latte?” Isn’t there something creepy about Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz having [in Politico's words] “asked his Washington-area employees to write ‘Come Together’ on each customer cup today, tomorrow and Friday, as a gesture to urge leaders to resolve the fiscal cliff”? Did Schultz take a poll of his employees–sorry, “partners,” he calls them–before ordering pressuring asking them to join in this lobbying effort? What if he were, say, the CEO of Chick-fil-A and he “asked” his “partners” to write “Preserve the Family” on the outside of cups and containers.

This column was co-authored by Bob MorrisonSen. John Kerry has a long and dubious record in foreign policy. In the 1970's, he testified against his fellow Vietnam War veterans before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He charged that they were violating the Geneva Conventions every day in Vietnam. Some POWs were outraged at Kerry's disloyal statements. They said they had been tortured by their Communist captors trying to force them to make such untrue statements. Worse, Kerry went to Paris in 1971. There, he met with North Vietnamese Communists. We need to see all his notes from those meetings....

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda operatives slaughtered nearly 3,000 Americans in an operation that marked the second major attack by violent jihadists against the World Trade Center. There wasn’t much mystery about who had carried out these atrocities — unless you were Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Marayati warned Americans not to conclude that the suicide hijacking attacks were the work of Muslim terrorists. “If we are going to look at suspects,” he told a Los Angeles radio station, “we should look at groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I...

A pair of local TV news anchors had a surprise for viewers at the end of their 6 p.m. newscast on Tuesday: They're quitting. Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio, anchors for ABC's WVII affiliate in Bangor, Maine, announced their joint resignations, citing a dispute with management over journalistic practices. "And finally tonight, this will be Tony and my final show together right here on ABC 7," Michaels told viewers. "The last six years have been an interesting and enjoyable time for us as we have been the longest-running news team in Bangor." "On behalf of Cindy and me, we have...

According to the World English Dictionary, the French term coup d'état means “a sudden violent or illegal seizure of government.” The federal government of the United States of America has been seized by enemy forces from within our nation. Although not overtly violent at this point, this seizure has been illegal from top to bottom. Since the likely ineligible candidate Barack Obama (or whatever his name is) was installed in our presidency back in January 2009, this takeover has rapidly infected every area of our government and military. It is being run by a Communist-Islamist axis of like-minded, anti-American subversives....

By the midterm elections in 2014, Julián Castro's memoir will be on bookshelves nationwide. New York-based Little, Brown and Co. will announce today that it has acquired the rights to publish Castro's yet-to-be-written book in English and Spanish as well as an audio version. The memoir will be published in 2014, the publishing house says. Since delivering the keynote address on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, Castro has become a national figure, and widely discussed as a future president. “We think Julián has a very universal story, filled with drama, struggle and achievement and it will appeal...

Look out. Hollywood is having a Republican crisis. Once America’s most dependable bastion of liberal blather, the land of make believe has gone rogue. Each week, the new movie season brings another defection to Camp Romney, a place where taxes are less punishing, foreign policy is reliably pro-Israel, and stupid movies like “Innocence of Muslims’’ are not blamed for costing American lives It’s the terrorists, stupid. The land that once loved Obama is not stupid when it comes to selling tickets. The unexpected hit of the summer was Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary, “2016: Obama’s America.’’ The stinging big-screen indictment of Obama’s...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A Hollywood actress who is more famous for her traffic mishaps and run-ins with the law may have cast herself in her most challenging role yet: a Mitt Romney supporter. Lohan voiced her support for the Republican candidate and former Massachusetts governor last Friday, reportedly telling Fox News that “I think unemployment is very important for now, so as of now I think [my vote] is for Mitt Romney.” She added, “It’s a long story, but you’re going to have to wait for that.” Her apparent change of heart comes after voting for President Barack Obama...

As the administration’s false narrative about the events leading up to the sacking of our consulate in Benghazi and the killing of our ambassador continues to unravel, a sordid detail has come to light. The leader of the the attack is believed to be an alumnus of Guantanamo Bay who was released from custody via an anti-American left wing group headed by an Obama donor. First, the terrorist: Abu Sufian bin Qumu. Bin Qumu, according to his Guantanamo file, was picked up in Pakistan in early 2002 after being identified by the Libyan government (that would be the same government...

. . When store employees in the red shirts realize what’s happening, they block the doors to stop the young thieves from leaving. But the kids physically struggle to get out and even appear to hit the store manager who then swings back. After the brief altercation, many kids dash out the door. . . After reviewing the surveillance video, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s office opted not to pursue criminal charges in the case saying not every conflict warrants them. . . A bill to toughen the punishments for this kind of crime failed to pass in Maryland’s last...

Walking home this morning, I saw a frizzy-haired mother with a lefty vibe and Savonarola expression. Her young son ran in front of her, chasing pigeons. I listened, awestruck, as she admonished him thusly: "In your next life, I hope you come back as a pigeon, so you know what that feels like." Confused, the boy said, "What?" She repeated her wisdom in sterner tones. I'm dazzled by her genius at packing several soul-crushing blows into one sentence: 1) You're going to be reincarnated as punishment 2) Your mother eagerly awaits your eternal punishment 3) Walk robotically by my side...

It was all Occupy Wall Street all the time in Sunday's New York Times, with no less than four favorable references to the left-wing sit-in scattered throughout the paper. The Tea Party movement certainly hasn't permeated the pages of the Times in such friendly fashion. Meanwhile, the paper continues to downplay or ignore violence committed by the Occupy movement. The Times did not cover the riot by Occupy LA the night of July 12, where four officers were injured and 17 protesters arrested after protesters tried to transform a monthly "Artwalk" event into a "Chalk Walk" protest and begin hurling...

The Bombing of Sterling HallText and photos copyright © 2000 Leemark Communications The doors to the old part of Sterling Hall, as seen from Charter Street. Early on August 24th, 1970, a van loaded with six barrels of explosives blew up just outside the East Wing of Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison. The bombing was carried out by four men in protest of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombing was directed against the Mathematics Research Center, a U.S.-Army-funded facility, which was located in the East Wing of Sterling Hall along with the...

Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, after raising suspicions at a Killeen, Texas, gun shop where he purchased six pounds of gunpowder and several boxes of shotgun shells, was in police custody in Killeen on Thursday, accused of plotting to kill fellow soldiers in a frightening reprise of the November 2009 massacre at Fort Hood. Abdo, 21, who grew up in Garland outside of Dallas, was close to pulling off a "terror plot" in which the intended target was troops based at Fort Hood, said Killeen Police Chief Dennis Baldwin. "We would probably be here today giving you a different briefing had...

CONCORD, Mass. -- Concord became the first town in the country to ban the sale of single-serving PET bottled water on Wednesday night, our news partner Wicked Local/Concord reported. After close to two hours of debate, Warrant Article 32, the Drinking Water in Single-Serving PET Bottles Bylaw, narrowly passed by 39 votes during Wednesday’s session of Town Meeting. The official teller count showed 403 voting in favor, and 364 opposed. The bottled water bylaw passed at this year’s Town Meeting bans the sale of non-sparkling, unflavored drinking water in single-serving polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles of 1 liter (34 ounces) or...

Religion is very good at telling you what to do and how to live. Your leisure time, if you so choose, can be completely absorbed in matters of ritual, practice and belief. Nobody stops you. I’m biased, but I believe the Jewish faith has a particular genius for this. There are morning prayers and evening prayers, complex dietary laws, 613 commandments direct from God covering every aspect of life, plus an ancient language to master, enormous books of commentary to study and debate. You do get to sleep, however. Don’t get me wrong; other faiths will keep you busy, too....

Boston Phoenix writer Chris Faraone wants to make one thing very clear: He didn’t want Andrew Breitbart dead, although the two exchanged some very ugly words just days before the conservative attack dog was felled by a heart attack. “Hell, no,” the author of “99 Nights with the 99 Percent: Dispatches from the First Three Months of the Occupy Revolution” told the Track. “I won’t miss Breitbart’s rhetoric, but I’m also not dumb enough to think that it will end with him. If anything, I found his hustle inspirational.” A few days before his death yesterday, Breitbart, 43, a rabid...

A succession of high profile left wing decisions and initiatives of recent weeks drive home the extent to which the left is changing the face of America. Notable among these are the decision of a federal appeals court in California to uphold a prior court decision finding California’s Proposition 8, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, unconstitutional; the reversal of a decision, due to a tsunami of left wing pressure, of the Susan G. Komen Foundation to withdraw its funding to Planned Parenthood; and the Obama administration rulemaking refusing to grant a religious exemption from the new...

‘The Western world no longer aspires, as did the Western Europe of Dante’s day, to be a place of a single faith,” A.N. Wilson writes confidently in his recent book, Dante in Love. Really? It doesn’t? Has Western society given up that dream? Because many in the United States’ particular corner of civilization seem not to have gotten the memo. Maybe it’s the scientist in me, but I’m always looking for what Einstein called the “Theory of Everything” — one formula that explains the world, and clinging to the hope that society will someday be populated entirely by your co-religionists...