Free Republic

One of the best ways to influence students, colleagues, and the citizenry at large is to hire, promote, and tenure only those people who agree with you. It's August 1968. Anti-Vietnam War demonstrators have just wrecked the Democratic national convention in Chicago and ruined Hubert Humphrey's chances to become president. So what did these Marxists and their cohorts elsewhere do next? They stayed in college. They sought out the easiest professors and the easiest courses. And they stayed in the top half of their class. This effectively deferred them from the military draft, a draft that discriminated against young men...

Barbara Walters: Syrian Dictator 'Charming,' 'Intelligent' By Justin McCarthy | July 7, 2008 - 15:31 Surprise! Barbara Walters visits an anti-American dictator and returns with very nice remarks about him. Returning from the week long break on "The View" July 7, Barbara Walters described how she spent America’s birthday, and the celebration of a document denouncing tyranny, with an anti-American tyrant.While most Americans celebrated Independence Day with fireworks and barbeques, Barbara Walters spent the occasion dining with Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad, whom Walters described as "intelligent" and "charming" who wants "very much to have good relations with us." Perhaps...

The “God Not Guns” coalition is predictably upset about the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning the Washington, D.C., handgun ban. “It will embolden adherents of GUNdamentalism in their belief in the inerrancy of the 2nd Amendment,” intoned the Rev. Nancy Smith, coalition founder and chief. “Gundamentalism is a religious movement without spiritual grounding. Rather, it is rooted in the sale and promotion of violence.”

A photograph of a nude six-year-old girl on the front cover of an Australian art magazine has re-ignited a row over the depiction of children. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said children could not choose for themselves if they wanted to be portrayed naked, adding: "I can't stand this stuff." The photo is on the cover of the July issue of Art Monthly Australia. Its editor said the cover was to protest against the closing of a recent photo exhibition of naked children. Mr Rudd said: "A little child cannot answer for themselves about whether they wish to be depicted in...

An Expat’s Guide to Participatory Democracy Rupert Pupkin One of the dangers of living abroad is that one may eventually slip into a disconnected state in which paying taxes and other rights and responsibilities of citizenship are displaced by a rootless enthusiasm for foot massages. The nation seems to be getting on quite well without his input, the expat reasons, it’s still somewhat powerful and wealthy, so perhaps the best thing he can do to ensure its perpetuation is to keep out of internal debates and contribute to its greatness through neglect. If a bad guy gets to be president,...

WASHINGTON - When San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi ascended to speaker of the House 18 months ago, liberals cheered. Now some jeer, calling her a traitor to her principles. In just the past two weeks, this former opponent of the Iraq war negotiated a deal to fund it for one more year. Then, this longtime defender of civil liberties compromised on a surveillance bill critics say covers up illegal wiretapping by the Bush administration and telecom companies. "You'd have to really think your constituents were stone-cold stupid to count that a victory," fumed liberal blogger Michael Lazzaro, known as Hunter...

Democrats are getting desperate. Even with all their pomp and circumstance and rhetoric about their dominance of the political arena, they are taking the steps of a desperate party. Case in point, their leveraging of relationships with nefarious characters and out-of-touch liberals to raise money for fledgling Democrat Senate campaigns across the country. Last week Politico reported that, “Los Angeles’ top liberal female activists are planning the political fundraiser for Sept. 27 at a private home.” According to the article, “The idea started with alums of the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee, a Reagan-era power PAC that included Jane Fonda, Kate...

I would love to wake up one morning and hear on Fox & Friends that the cops found a wannabe child molester dead in the woods rather than the kid he was about to rape. Is that too harsh? Okay, how about finding the perv bleeding badly from an 8mm wide crack in his skull, with a punctured lung, a shattered knee cap, a penectomy performed with a shard of dirty glass as he teeters on the verge of death in a patch of poison ivy smack dab in the big middle of grizzly bear country? How’s that? I hope...

Nearly 2,000 firefighters made a stand Saturday on Highway 1, near famous inns and spas bereft of tourists on this holiday weekend, as crews sought to beat back the out-of-control Basin Complex wildfire in Big Sur in advance of a heat wave expected to start rolling into the area today.

No, ignore that photograph, and its possible implications, and look further down the piece at this fellow (pictured at right; click to enlarge). Look closely at his medals. As any American veteran can tell you, it's as easy to spot the fact that those aren't American medals as it is to tell the difference between, say, an M4 and an AK-47. In particular, take a look at the top right medal in the gentleman's array. Then, take a look at the image below at left. See a resemblance? The medal is the "Order of the Patriotic War" -- "an Order...

You would think that this story is right out of science fiction. But the facts appear to be that the US Democrat-controlled Congress intends to destroy the Republican middle class with $11 per gallon gasoline. The Democrats’ base -- wealthy white “limousine liberals”, and very poor people -- won’t be harmed, but the families who live in suburbia will be devastated. The multi-millionaires like billionaire Senators John Kerry & Jay Rockefeller, financial speculator George Soros, filmmaker Michael Moore, and actors George Clooney & Meg Ryan can easily pay for their auto and private jet fuel. Poor people are forced to...

How does the pro-terrorist group Code Pink infiltrate closed events where the U.S. Secret Service is in charge of security? One way is with fake press credentials made by a diarist at the Daily Kos.Code Pink has made a habit of infiltrating events and getting close to officials under the protection of the U.S. Secret Service.Yesterday Code Pink member Desiree Farooz rushed the stage and came dangerously close to President Bush at Monticello. The weekend before she rushed John McCain. Last fall she got close enough to Condoleeza Rice to place her hands around the Secrtary of State's head.At the...

More ties to the radical left have surfaced in Barack Obama's past. The latest stem from his involvement with the activist group, ACORN... ACORN...is the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities. Obama was a member of ACORN and taught leadership conferences for the group while working for Miner, Barnhill & Galland... Obama actively sought and received the endorsement by ACORN for his local campaigns. He has now done the same in his bid for the USA presidency... So what is ACORN all about? In a Spring 2003 article for...

Ah yes, the compassionate agents of Hope and Change. "The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday. And today is my favorite Fourth of July ever, because the United States got an AWESOME [emphasis in original] birthday present: Jesse Helms finally died." More . . .

Although the Fourth of July is a great day to be alive for most Americans, it causes the bile to boil in moonbats' veins, so that it seeps out through their pores in the most hideous displays. The appalling Chris Satullo is hardly the only example. Below are some lowlights from a seasonal piece at The Progressive: "It's July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out. Spare me the puerile parades. Don't play that martial music, white boy. And don't befoul nature's sky with your F-16s. […]" "For when you stop to think about it,...

July 4, 2008San Francisco, California Wow, even days later, I am still so giddy I can hardly type!Have you ever taken a bong hit that melts away the worries of this world in a euphoric wave of Zen-like contentment? How about the intense pleasure of listening to your favorite Grateful Dead song while enjoying the aforementioned bodacious botanicals, followed by the exquisite pleasure of biting into a chewy, warm brownie right from the oven? While most enlightened liberals would consider these things life's ultimate pleasures, they pale in comparison to sitting at the feet of The Master and drinking in the sweet nectar of hope!Senator Barack Obama's San Francisco campaign stop...

Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears. The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos,...

Should be a no-brainer, but just in case, here’s a recommendation for Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person In The World Award tonight. Husam Taysir Dwayat. He’s the terrorist who killed three people and wounded 66 during his bulldozer rampage in Jerusalem today. Certainly that’s the caliber of person Olbermann’s award is designed to recognize?

The Philadelphia Inquirer's former editor, Chris Satullo, says we should not celebrate Independence Day because we sinned as a nation. I respond to his arrogant holier-than-thou screed by pointing out his hypocrisy, among other things. Here is the link or click on the Bulletin link near the title http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19826547&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

A few minutes after ten on the morning of June 26, the Supreme Court gave every conservative a reason to get excited, charged up, fired up, yes, even, if need be, a little wild-eyed about the coming election. Yes, with its decision in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, the Court has completely and irreversibly extinguished the hope burning in the hearts of Democrats and their Liberal allies that Right of Center voters won’t overcome the malaise affecting them.

LIBERALS LIVID AT OBAMA'S RIGHT TURN WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's recent rightward lurch on key issues is causing a revolt among left-wing bloggers and activists, who had been his earliest and most ardent supporters. "Obama's not just moving to the center for the general [election], he's practically denouncing and rejecting every progressive voice in the country," fumes Danner Kline, who blogs in Alabama for his Web site, 9Numbers.com. Over the past several weeks, Obama has shifted from his liberal positions on gun rights, capital punishment and terrorist surveillance. And he walked away from his pledge to work within the confines...

Obama’s useful idiot minions on college campuses across America may have no clue what types of change Obama has in store for America. But every Marxist, Socialist and Communist around the globe, knows all too well… “We support Barack Obama because he knows what is best for the people!” (snip) I took this quote from a group on Obama’s official campaign web site, calling themselves, Marxists, Socialists and Communists for Obama” (snip) How can so many Americans be so easily duped into rallying behind the most unqualified man to ever seek the Oval Office, who also clearly represents the will...

Scalia's selective historyBy Jack RakoveAppeals to the evidence of history figured prominently in last week's Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller, striking down a sweeping ban on handguns and affirming that the 2nd Amendment protects a fundamentally individual right "to keep and bear arms." Yet read the two main opinions by Justices Antonin Scalia (for the conservative majority) and John Paul Stevens (in dissent), and you will see that different ways of defining and reading what counts as historical evidence expose a fault line between them.One would have to be terribly naive to think that how these...

Is it because Dick Morris never leaves the building? Last week or so the papers (NY Times) reported that Fox News, while still number one, was losing ground to its rivals, like CNN. I was not astonished. The news at Fox is straight, the anchors are terrific and the hosts are equally good, but, so far as guests, why do they all have to be Dick Morris? Dick Morris for breakfast, lunch and dinner and often for a late-night snack. This is no knock on that man, he is smart, but is that all we have in this country? Surely...

Fox News was the top rated cable news network during Q2 prime time, finishing in sixth place (Live+SD). CNN was 21st and MSNBC 27th. In total day, FNC ranked #9, with CNN and MSNBC at #22 and #28. Fox News Channel had nine of the top 10 cable news programs during Q2 in Total Viewers, with The O'Reilly Factor #1. The top CNN program in Total Viewers was Larry King Live, in sixth place, and the top MSNBC program was Countdown with Keith Olbermann in 20th place. In the A25-54 demo, Fox News had six of the top 10 programs,...

RUSH: From the Associated Press, ladies and gentlemen: "Four-dollar gasoline has stolen a beach vacation from Julie Jacobs' family... exotic bath washes from Angela Crawford... Phil English has had to sell his beloved but fuel-guzzling red pickup. Like a plague that hits every economic class, race and age, soaring [gasoline] prices are inflicting pain throughout the US. Nine in 10 people are expecting the ballooning costs to squeeze them financially over the next half-year, says an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released" today. But here's the money quote from the story: "As a political issue in the presidential campaign, gas prices...

Correction Appended Years ago, when William Miller talked about being in the Vietnam War — if he talked about being in the Vietnam War — he would tell people he served on a Swift boat. At least now they have heard of it. But not in the way he would like. “I was proud of what I did, and all the guys I was with,” Mr. Miller said. “Now somebody says ‘Swift boat’ and it’s a whole different meaning. They don’t associate it with the guys we lost. That’s a shame.” “Swift boat” has become the synonym for the nastiest...

Last Friday afternoon, the guests taking part in Sunday's roundtable discussion on This Week had a pre-show call with George Stephanopoulos. One of the topics he raised was Obama's perceived move to the center, and what it means. Thus began my weekend obsession. If you were within shouting distance of me, odds are we talked about it. I talked about it over lunch with HuffPost's DC team, over dinner with friends, with the doorman at the hotel, and the driver on the way to the airport. As part of this process, I looked at the Obama campaign not through the...

Sen. Barack Obama gave a speech about patriotism yesterday entitled “The America We Love.” After listening to the rhetoric coming from his campaign, I assume the big question at Obama HQ was “Who you calling ‘we?’ ” Just hours before Obama’s pledge to “never question the patriotism of others in this campaign,” Gen. Wesley Clark was on CBS, demeaning Sen. John McCain’s military service. Claiming that McCain is “untested and untried” in foreign policy, Clark - the Grady Little of modern U.S. warfare - said, “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification...

A heated debate is raging in Sweden after an eight-year-old boy's failure to invite two classmates to his birthday party resulted in a complaint filed with parliament. Nearly 200 outraged comments have been posted on the website of the local southern Swedish daily Sydsvenskan, just days after the paper reported on the unlikely string of events that followed a young boy's decision to invite all of his classmates to his birthday party except two. The policy at the boy's school in the southern town of Lund was that all children (or all the boys or all the girls) had to...

<p>I got a real kick out of this and I thought I'd share. So far, Daily Kos has been a bastion of cheerleading for Obama. These are the sort of people from whom he's been able to raise the kind of money he has. If this is a sign of things to come, we have much to be thankful for.</p>

The White House press corps is having a crisis. It may not interest the rest of the country much, but the problems in the Fourth Estate will, in due time, impact the nature and the completeness of White House coverage. The ostensible trigger to the current crisis involves the so-called pool reports by members of the print media traveling with the president. But there are deeper problems with the way the presidency is covered by the media.

THE facts about your security are being torn to shreds by activist liars. And they think that you're too stupid to know the difference. Let's lay out the worst current examples of media make-believe and election-year truth-trashing: Whopper No. 1: America is less safe today than it was on Sept. 10, 2001. ....

The Supreme Court ruling on gun laws last Thursday created media frenzy. Editorials, columnists, anchors and pundits predicted it would result in an American Armageddon. According to the major media outlets in the nation, innocent lives will be lost, the Supreme Court justices have joined forces with city criminals and life as we’ve known it is over. Who knew upholding the Constitution would have such disastrous effects?

With cities' options limited, lawmakers need to face up to limiting the gun trade - A sharply divided Supreme Court has settled the issue for now. The Second Amendment to the Constitution does confer upon individuals the right to bear arms.In the wake of the ruling, big-city mayors across the country are expressing alarm that their gun-control ordinances will be set aside, unleashing a new wave of urban gun violence. That may be an exaggeration. Local gun ordinances have had limited impact. As crime statistics show, gun violence is often most prevalent in cities with the most restrictive gun laws.That's...

You see, the problem is McCain really doesn’t like us. To a large degree he’s bought into the moonbat caricature of conservatives, thinking we’re bigots and yahoos who lack hearts. But he’s figured out a way to deal with us. He’s going to throw us some red meat during the campaign; he’ll give us some lip service when he has to and once he placates us enough that we vote him into office, he’s stubbornly going to go right back to what he wants to do. You can do that sort of thing and keep a clear conscience when you’re...

Liberals, who hate guns almost as much as they hate cars, got a well-deserved lesson in Second Amendment rights when the Supreme Court spit in their face by ruling that the Constitution really does guarantee the right of Americans to own guns. The ruling, which struck down the District of Columbia’s laws almost totally restricting handgun ownership, affirmed the traditional view that the Second Amendment means exactly what it says when it guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Another example of direct economic loss to the airline and tourism industries and a loss of enjoyment of life by actual people, all for a hoax. Keep in mind, the government will never be able to prove that the tax money had ANY effect on global warming whatsoever. More . . .

Beckwith responds to The Washington Post. The first thing I have to say about "An Attack That Came Out of the Ether," published by The Washington Post on June 28th, is that at NO time was I ever contacted by this woman, Danielle Allen.  I spoke to two male Post reporters, who spoke to me over the phone for a period of months.  The first contact was in the fall of 2007.  They told me they were trying to track down the source of emails they considered negative to the Obamamessiah. Allen obsesses about the "Muslim" Obama stories, but steers...

The Bush administration has launched a "significant escalation" of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country's nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic's government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

This year, about 12,000 Americans will be shot to death. It's a staggering figure, and even though lawmakers have continued to pass gun-control laws to try to bring the number down, they have not significantly reduced the murder rate. Indeed, for the last decade, guns have steadily remained the cause of about two-thirds of all homicides. Gun manufacturers insist that these deaths are not their fault, preferring to pin the blame on criminals and irresponsible dealers. They have fiercely resisted even minimal restrictions on sales and have simultaneously washed their hands of responsibility for this "collateral damage." On Thursday, the...

Repeal the 2nd Amendment June 27, 2008 No, we don't suppose that's going to happen any time soon. But it should. The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is evidence that, while the founding fathers were brilliant men, they could have used an editor. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Once you've watched liberals long enough to understand how they think -- scratch that, how they feel -- they become extraordinarily predictable. To begin with, the liberal agenda is, in many respects, the same as it was in the thirties. Whether you call it communism, fascism, socialism, liberalism, or progressivism, the only real difference is how much they believe they can get away with, the way they sell it to people, and the latest trendy name for what they believe. So, once the liberals pick a policy from their stale program to push, the next step is to get it...

The balloons are a problem. Though billed as biodegradable, they’ve sat in a steaming compost heap in Denver with nary a sign of breaking down. But even Andrea Robinson, the first-ever director of greening for the Democratic National Convention, concedes it would be going too far to ban them. Balloons, after all, are an all-but-mandatory backdrop for crowning a party’s presidential nominee in the television age.

I like satire as much as the next person, having engaged in a bit of it at the expense of publicity-hungry nitwits. Yet, I don’t remember using satire to denigrate public employees as are some citizens in San Francisco. Here’s what happened. Members of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco, a merry band of political pranksters, were downing some brews when they came up with the idea to rename their city’s award-winning Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant in honor of George W. Bush. They want the name change to take effect Jan. 20, 2009, which is Inauguration Day. Supporters...

Once you've watched liberals long enough to understand how they think -- scratch that, how they feel -- they become extraordinarily predictable. To begin with, the liberal agenda is, in many respects, the same as it was in the thirties. Whether you call it communism, fascism, socialism, liberalism, or progressivism, the only real difference is how much they believe they can get away with, the way they sell it to people, and the latest trendy name for what they believe. So, once the liberals pick a policy from their stale program to push, the next step is to get it...

"It's one thing when Obama, the Democrats' standard bearer to be, is identified as the most liberal senator. It is something else, something quite extreme, when Obama is recognized as the darling of the Communist Party USA. "

At NRO, Victor Davis Hanson diagnoses our society as being in a chronic state of hesitation, a nation of “Jittery Hamlets:” The causes of this paralysis are clear. Action entails risks and consequences. Mere thinking doesn’t. In our litigious society, as soon as someone finally does something, someone else can become wealthy by finding some fault in it. Meanwhile, a less fussy and more confident world abroad drills and builds nuclear plants, refineries, dams, and canals to feed and fuel millions who want what we take for granted. There is an inverse side to all this dithering: the rush to...

All that is needed to stop the violence is to legalize drugs. How often do you hear this canard repeated by libertarians, George Soros' Open Society Institute acolytes, communists, and others who want to legalize marijuana and related substances? They would have you believe that the reason people are killing each other is not because they are mean-spirited, evil, ruthless, greedy people; no, they reserve such adjectives for oil company executives. They would have you believe that what causes the violence is that drugs are illegal. This is just sophistry. It is usually the type of speciousness one finds emanating...

The Greenest Show on Earth: Democrats Gear Up for Denver From Organic Fanny Packs to 'Pure' Trash, Party Planners Face Logistical Nightmare By STEPHANIE SIMON June 25, 2008; Page A1 DENVER -- As the Mile High City gears up to host a Democratic bash for 50,000, organizers are discovering the perils of trying to stage a political spectacle that's also politically correct. Consider the fanny packs.