Free Republic

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Supporters of seven people charged Sunday with breaking into an unoccupied building in downtown Chapel Hill on Monday denied the allegations of a break-in. Police said more than 70 attendees from an anarchist book fair broke into the former Yates Motor Co. building, at 419 W. Franklin St., on Saturday. Police monitored the group until the crowd reached a more manageable size, and then a tactical team moved in late Sunday and arrested seven people.

The union that represents Twin Rivers School District Police Officers is apologizing tonight for putting something on a T-shirt that puts the department in a bad light. The shirt shows a terrified child, behind bars, and bears the caption : “U Raise ‘em, We Cage ‘em. [sic]” Mean-spirited at best, and at worst, well... the ramifications are unsettling. The T-shirt, put out by the Twin Rivers Police Officer's Association, has been rejected by even those who made it. "We agree that it wasn't sending the right message, and it certainly doesn't represent the views and opinions of the men...

Over the weekend, a convention of political scientists met in Seattle. The idiots. The last weekend of summer, all of America celebrating a holiday, and they schedule a meeting. At which, it seems, their prime purpose was to provide political fodder against the tea party. A genuine social phenomenon occurs in our day, it impacts American elections, and those who presumably study such things are so wedded to partisan objective that they don’t study it, they propagandize against it. They are an echo of so-called weather scientists who, living through a global warming cycle, do not study it, but seek...

Two weeks ago, when billionaire Warren Buffett called for higher taxes on rich people like him, the liberal media predictably gushed and fawned. Yet when Americans for Better Government revealed last week that Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway has been in an almost decade-long dispute with the IRS over how much taxes it owes, these same press members couldn't care less: According to Berkshire Hathaway’s own annual report — see Note 15 on pp. 54-56 — the company has been in a years-long dispute over its federal tax bills. According to the report, “We anticipate that we will resolve all adjustments...

I’ve written before about the crisis of inequality in the United States and about the quasi-religious abhorrence of “wealth redistribution” that causes many Americans to oppose tax increases, even on the ultra rich. The conviction that taxation is intrinsically evil has achieved a sadomasochistic fervor in conservative circles—producing the Tea Party, their Republican zombies, and increasingly terrifying failures of governance. Happily, not all billionaires are content to hoard their money in silence. Earlier this week, Warren Buffett published an op-ed in the New York Times in which he criticized our current approach to raising revenue. As he has lamented many...

Rising greenhouse emissions may tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report for Nasa It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim. Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain. This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by scientists at Nasa and Pennsylvania State...

Pop quiz. Who uttered the famous maxim, 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs?' A) Karl Marx B) Papa Smurf C) Both A and B The correct answer is “C” ...More evidence: The Smurfs replace everyday nouns and verbs with [a]...thought-controlling Newspeak lexicon to rival that of the totalitarian state in George Orwell’s “1984.” Papa Smurf wears red...

Some refreshing words from the Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner this morning on Meet the Press. He had this to say: (15:20 into this clip) Note: An 8 second clip of Tim's words: Link We don’t have the ability (because of the overhang in housing and the problems in the financial sector) to engineer artificially a stronger recovery. Imagine that! Geithner acknowledges what I (and many others) have felt all along. The structural issues in the economy trump the government’s ability to engineer a recovery. The Fed has taken extraordinary measures on the monetary front. Since 2009 we have had $1.2...

The president’s failure to demand a reckoning from the moneyed interests who brought the economy down has cursed his first term, and could prevent a second. fter 9/11, Rudy Giuliani went on Saturday Night Live to give New Yorkers permission to laugh again. But Mayor Bloomberg never did tell us when we could resume conspicuous consumption after the crash of 2008. And so, as we stumble through the second year of the official “recovery,” it’s been an improvisational return to high-end carousing in Manhattan. A case in point was the late-May celebration of the centennial rededication of the New York...

When Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., quit the (no longer) bipartisan deficit-reduction talks last week, it was not exactly a "Profiles in Courage" moment. Serious deficit reduction can't be — and shouldn't be — accomplished without tax increases and broad elimination of tax expenditures, which would have the effect of raising taxes. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform last year acknowledged that. But tax increases, in whatever guise, fail the current Republican purity laws. Mr. Cantor, who will be running for reelection next year, understands that very well. So does Mr. Kyl,...

This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. The radical Marxist-progressives (communists) took control of the democrat party some time ago. They’ve only become more emboldened with the election of Barack Obama, who was raised as a communist from birth. With their new found leader, Barack Obama, the Socialist Party of America felt secure enough to announce the names of 70 democrats in Congress that belong to their caucus. This was recently posted on Scribd.com:

"Several protesters in zombie makeup injected themselves into a Special Olympics ceremony in Wisconsin this week when they walked in front of Gov. Scott Walker and stood between him and the group of athletes he was paying tribute to in front of the state Capitol," FoxNews.com reports. The MacIver Institute has video of the episode, in which the zombies barge in front of the Special Olympians to block their view of the governor as he speaks. The explanation for the zombie garb is that "in their eyes they are 'dead' to Scott Walker." There are conflicting reports as to who...

There was never any chance that in America income would be distributed like it was supposedly done in the Soviet Union – to each according to his ability and his needs. If capitalism is the key to the rise of the US economy, then the concept that some people can be richer than others is near the heart of the system. Americans worship self-made billionaires such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett because they believe that it’s possible for them to be that wealthy too. Unfortunately, there are far more poor people than wealthy ones. America is the world’s most...

I posted this earlier on the Blog page but thought Vets and active duty military personnel and just other Americans would find this of interest. Mr. Barnett needs a lot of communications to shake his smug universe. The Lew Rockwell site is disliked ,correctly, for a number of reasons here. However, I have found that many of the posters such as Tom Wood are gentlemen and will discuss substantive disagreements in a civil and even friendly fashion. But there are those whose combination of abuseness and vulgarity particularly towards the armed forces merit slamming. One such is Mr Gary Barnett,...

Came across this while on youtube yesterday. HILLARIOUS! Shows the mindset of Democrats. Here is the about page of a typical Obama supporter in Bolshevik redTo all conservatives suffering from me-ism. The price of living in great societies like America is "progressive" taxation. You "individuals" all enjoy the services made possible by a collective society such as the Internet you are enjoying now. The leaders of these said societies are elected to disperse the revenues gained through taxation for the well-being of the "society" not the "individual". It's called "socialism" and without it, there can be no society. Without a...

The principal of a public school in Brookline, Mass., is asking parents to fill out permission slips before their children can participate in a weekly recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Gerardo Martinez, the principal of The Devotion School, informed parents that the school would begin reciting the pledge in January over the public address system. Attached to the letter was a form that asked parents to check either: "Yes, my child will participate in the weekly Pledge of Allegiance" or "No, my child will not participate in the weekly Pledge of Allegiance." "I urge you to have a conversation...

Atheist Christmas. Sounds like a misnomer, perhaps. Well, not if you follow the thinking of the “Atheist Christmas Coloring Book” which has been creaed for families “who want to enjoy a Christmas holiday free from religion.” So says a news release from Mindposts.com, described as a place for rational parents, students and teachers to learn and share. “There is no shame in celebrating Christmas as a time of love and joy,” the news release states.

What he had said was too volitile and I felt that his statement, which I won't repeat, seems wrong to me because Muhammad Ali is a Muslim. Is he responsible? Is that what you're saying, Bill, that it was him or Kareem Abdul Jabar? You mean they did that?

  The actress told a French magazine that the tradition of British decency is in decline. "I'm under the impression that this notion is disappearing from our society, where conflicts are made worse on cinema and on television, where people are nasty and cruel on the internet and where, in general terms, everybody seems to me to be very angry. "This causes me a lot of pain," she said. She singled out British comedy as an example. "I prefer the finesse of French humour. English humour is harsher, more scathing, more cruel and more surreal too, as illustrated by Monty...

In the wake of NPR's firing of contributor Juan Williams over comments about Muslims, Mike Huckabee is calling on the next Congress to cut the radio network's funding when it convenes next year. "NPR has discredited itself as a forum for free speech and a protection of the First Amendment rights of all and has solidified itself as the purveyor of politically correct pabulum and protector of views that lean left," Huckabee said in a statement provided to CNN. Williams told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Monday that he gets "worried" and "nervous" on flights when he sees people...