Free Republic

One of the oldest rules in psychology and economics is that if you reward a behavior, you can expect to see it more often. In America, we reward victimhood. That makes us feel good about ourselves and in some cases, it helps improve the lives of the people who've been victimized, but there's a dark side to it as well. It creates perverse incentives for people, it helps legitimize a victimhood mentality, and it also encourages people to fake hate crimes. Under normal circumstances, that would seldom happen. However, in a society where we celebrate victimhood and savagely attack people...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - The Bothersome, Annoying TruthPosted By Caroline Glick On October 17, 2013 @ 12:40 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Ilan Pappe A controversy is raging in the Washington, DC, Jewish community involving the local JCC (DCJCC) and its in-house Theater J. While a local tale, it is a distressing encapsulation of Israel’s predicament.Israel’s rights and justness are grounded in truth. But today truth isn’t worth as much as it used to be. Those who fight for it find themselves routinely maligned as close-minded extremists. Those who trounce it are congratulated for being open-minded and...

<p>Whenever I write anything to be published on the Internet or email, I assume that it could be made public at any time.   I caution readers to do the same.  While Internet anonymity is possible, it takes careful preparation and significant effort.</p>

<p>While speaking Saturday night with Trayvon Martin‘s family attorney, shortly before the verdict was read for George Zimmerman‘s acquittal, HLN host Nancy Grace said “fucking coons” live on-the-air while railing against what she considers to have been the defendant’s undeniable “hatred” for the teenager he shot.</p>

George Zimmerman's not guilty verdict adds a new wrinkle to a separate legal case in the Florida courts: His defamation suit against NBC. In December, Zimmerman sued NBC, reporter Ron Allen and two other news personnel on claims that the network's edits of his 911 call to police were manipulated to make it sound like he was a racist. The Florida judge in Zimmerman's case, Debra Nelson, put the defamation case on hold pending the result of the criminal trial. Jody Armour, professor at USC's Gould School of Law, said that although it is "possible" that Zimmerman's claim against the...

-snip- The problem for gun-toting game critics comes when they reach level 30 and get a free content update for the game. According to SimpsonsWiki.net, level 30 is at present the highest level players can reach. At level 30, a storyline involving Herman's Military Antiques store evolves that contains some fairly clear commentary on gun laws in the U.S. and takes some cheap shots at the organization. SimpsonsWiki.net pulled some quotes from the level that has the NRA gunning for the game. 'You’re the perfect gun owner! Step inside!' says Herman to Grandpa Simpson who has just told him how...

MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell made the case this evening that the National Rifle Association is to blame for the slow investigation into the Boston bombings: Video here"There are new developments tonight in the bombing investigation here in Boston," said O'Donnell. "But that investigation could be moving faster were it not for the successful lobbying efforts of the National Rifle Association. The NRA's efforts to guarantee that American mass murderers are the best-equipped mass murders in the world is not limited to murderers who use assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The NRA is also in the business of helping bombers get...

Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governours: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, suttle and sinewy to discours, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.* * *Those words were penned by John Milton in 1644, when he wrote, in “Areopagitica,” his plea for unlicensed printing. Where is the Mighty Milton now that England’s monarch, Elizabeth II, is getting set to establish by royal charter a new body, cooked up...

Some politically correct colleges in America and Western Europe observe something they call “Israel Apartheid Week.” It’s another opportunity to libel Israel for building a defensive perimeter to keep out Arab suicide bombers. These misguided young people who libel the only democracy in the Mideast look to former President Jimmy Carter for their inspiration. Carter was the most prominent person in the world to apply the hated term apartheid to Israel’s purely defensive barrier. Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, has served as a text for the libelers of Israel. The French have an apt expression for what Israel is...

Actress Daryl Hannah says she suffers for her hard-left activism. The Splash star, talking up her appearance in the new assault on climate change skeptics dubbed Greedy Lying Bastards, says being outspoken in Hollywood comes with a price. CM: Do you think that your acting career has suffered in any way — or that you’ve lost any roles — because of your outspoken activism? DH: I know that’s been the case in some instances, for sure. But that’s OK. The truth is, I’m a human being above all. I love life. And I’d love to see life go on on...

NBC doesn’t want to deal with George Zimmerman’s libel suit. In a Feb. 20 filing in the case, NBC Universal Media LLC asks a Florida circuit court to stay the case until the conclusion of Zimmerman’s June trial for second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin. --snip-- To recap Zimmerman’s case against NBC News: On the night that he shot Martin, Zimmerman called 911 and narrated his pursuit of the teenager in his gated community in Sanford, Fla. A March 27 edition of the “Today” show abridged the 911 tape, as follows: Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good....

The publication last week of the Irish government's McAleese Report on the Magdalene laundries has proved kind of awkward for Catholic-bashers. For the thorough, 1,000-page study found not a single incident of sexual abuse by a nun. Not one. Also, the vast majority of its interviewees said they were never physically punished in the laundries. As one woman said, "It has shocked me to read in papers that we were beat and our heads shaved and that we were badly treated by the nuns… I was not touched by any nun and I never saw anyone touched." The authors seem...

An animal rights group and six members were convicted Thursday of inciting violence against a company that tests drugs and household products on animals. The group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, maintained its actions were protected under the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. The government charged that SHAC waged a five-year campaign of threats, harassment and vandalism against Huntingdon Life Sciences and posted information on the SHAC Web site about the lab's employees and those who do business with Huntingdon. Many of those targeted saw their homes vandalized, and they and their families received threatening e-mails, faxes and phone...

Special prosecutor Angela Corey just released more than 120 recorded phone calls that murder suspect George Zimmerman made from the Seminole County Jail... Also released is the statement of "Witness 9," a woman who says Zimmerman is prejudiced against blacks and that he molested her when she was a child.

Unbelievable. The Democrats are looking down the barrel of a humiliating defeat in Wisconsin’s recall election on Tuesday, so today they played their last card: they started a rumor that Scott Walker fathered an illegitimate child 24 years ago. The “scoop” comes from something called the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op. The “Co-op” attributes the story to a woman named Bernadette Gillick, who teaches physical therapy at the University of Minnesota. Ms. Gillick claims to have known Walker’s girlfriend when they were students at Marquette. The “Co-op” says it has “not been able to independently verify Bernadette’s account.” No surprise there.

An Anaheim technology company and its top executive have won $1.56 million in an Internet defamation case that illustrates the potential seriousness of false information put online. Such cases may be a backlash to people who like to vent online., hitting such online commenters in the wallet if they can’t prove their rants.

Thanks to HonestReporting, you can easily speak your mind to the UN and sign the "We demand the dismissal of Khulood Badawi" petition (click on this link or below). Remember that this UN "media official," one Khulood Badawi, paid by U.S. and European taxpayers, had blatantly spread lies about Israel. This "official" tried to pawn off a photo on Twitter which showed a poor Palestinian girl allegedly injured in an Israeli airstrike, while in reality, the girl was hurt "by falling off a swing." Here's the petition text: Dear Head of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),...

A UN "media official," one Khulood Badawi, paid by U.S. and European taxpayers, has blatantly spread lies about Israel. This "official" (liar and inciter of violence) tried to pawn off a photo on Twitter which showed a poor Palestinian girl allegedly injured in an Israeli airstrike, while in reality, the girl was hurt "by falling off a swing." This picture, taken in 2006 by Reuters, had already been used to smear Israel, but Reuters retracted and apologized for this misinformation. The facts were uncovered by HonestReporting (here and here). Her UN agency's, "own website espouses that 'humanitarian actors must not...

Several critics, most of them conservatives, have complained that Game Change, the new HBO movie made from the best-selling 2008 presidential campaign book, portrays Sarah Palin as profoundly stupid. And it does. Those critics have also complained that the picture sometimes portrays John McCain and his top advisers as deeply craven. It does that, too. And then there's the fact that Game Change, the movie, focuses on a negative portrayal of Palin while ignoring the dramatic and divisive primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that made up the biggest part of the book. So there's a lot of...

I hemmed and hawed over this error in the Charleston Gazette’s editorial on Monday, because we all make mistakes. Besides, I am not the Gazette editorial reviewer. I write editorials for the Charleston Daily Mail, which obviously shows I have a prejudice. Still the mistake in the editorial bothered me. Maybe if the editorial board of the Charleston Gazette were not so vicious, mean-spirited and perhaps even anti-Catholic in its editorial against Rick Santorum, I might have overlooked it. Here is the error: "When Santorum’s wife miscarried, he and she brought the dead fetus home “to cuddle and sing to...