Free Republic

In case you didn’t have time to watch, yesterday’s Spring Sphere Roll was awesome! Big Guy improved his stats over 100% compared to last year’s hoops performance ( 2-for-9 - or 22.2%  - vs. 2-for-22 or 9.1% last year)! Although there was “a moment” as the press pool reported, when the basketball “very lightly hit POTUS in the face when he was standing under the basket catching rebounds.” As anyone around here can tell you, hitting Big Guy upside the head is still the best way to get his attention.Incoming!Basketballs weren’t the only incoming projectiles at the festivities; somebody forgot to...

Nebraska state Sen. Ernie Chambers told fellow lawmakers on the floor Wednesday afternoon that he wouldn't apologize for statements he made during a debate over a gun bill last Friday. "I will continue to condemn the police when they are wrong and, in my community they are always wrong," Chambers said. The initial comments came during a hearing on an amendment to a concealed carry law that would allow off-duty officers to bring concealed weapons onto school property. "My ISIS is the police," Chambers said. KFOR radio talk show host Coby Mach broadcast some of Chamber's comments on his show....

“With malice toward none; with charity for all…” It was a civic gesture as unexpected then as it is needed now. One hundred and fifty years ago today, Abraham Lincoln stood on the eastern portico of the U.S. Capitol and delivered a few words—703, to be precise—at his Second Inaugural. The speech remains the most celebrated inaugural address in our history. Fredrick Douglass, not always an admirer of Lincoln, called it a “sacred effort.” Lincoln himself acknowledged it was filled with “lots of wisdom” and predicted it would “wear as well as—perhaps even better than—any thing I have produced.” From...

The 2015 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize will go to winner Harold Holzer of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for "Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion" (Simon & Schuster). The Prize is awarded by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Holzer was chosen from 114 nominations as the 2015 recipient. He will receive $50,000 and a bronze replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens' life-size bust “Lincoln the Man” in a ceremony April 23 in New York City. The Prize was co-founded in 1990 by businessmen and philanthropists Richard Gilder and...

LANSING, MI -- Today is the 206th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, one of the greatest U.S. presidents. There's a lot to be thankful to Lincoln for: guiding the country through the Civil War and helping end slavery. But residents of Michigan have something special to thank the 16th president for. He coined the term many of us use to describe ourselves: Michigander. There is an ongoing debate about if Michigan citizens should be described as Michiganians or Michiganders. Lincoln coined the term Michigander when he was in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1848, Lincoln gave a speech against...

After failing probation, Charlie Rogers didn’t show up for her 90-day jail sentence Thursday. Rogers, 36, was sentenced to a week in jail and two years’ probation in April 2013 for faking an anti-gay hate crime that stunned Lincoln and captured the country’s attention the summer before. Rogers, a lesbian and former Nebraska basketball star, lied to police when she told them three men broke into her house on July 22, 2012, tied her up, carved anti-gay slurs into her skin and tried to light the house on fire. Lancaster County Court Judge Gale Pokorny, who has since retired, made...

Harry Jaffa has died. I remember, in order of increasing importance: 1. The character. Harry was a handful. Early in the Reagan years I got an excited phone call from him (was there ever a calm one?) about the fight over who should head the NEH. The frontrunner was M.E. Bradford, a learned English prof with a sideline in Confederate history. Irving Kristol then pushed Bill Bennett, for his manifest talent, and to avoid re-fighting the Civil War in a Senate confirmation hearing. This was one of the opening shots in the paleocon/neocon fight. (Like many great struggles, it began...

Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this. Isaiah 9:7 While the world was caught up in a cheesy movie and the race war, there was a major event happening in Salt Lake City. No it was not the declaration of Romney's 10th run at the presidency, there was a convention of Western States discussing how to finally get their land turned...

LINCOLN — Christmas carols and prayers — and no protests or obvious objections — marked possibly the first-ever Nativity scene at the State Capitol on Thursday.  The small display, a cedar manger about 6 feet across and 4 feet high, was made possible by a Catholic-associated attorneys association that is seeking to place Nativity scenes in state capitols and other public places across the country. "We want to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas," said Omaha attorney Christine Delgado, who heads the Omaha branch of the Thomas More Society.  While Nebraska’s display hasn't been controversial so far, efforts to...

In the midst of the American Civil War, Lincoln noted that the country’s industry and population was still growing. In the document officially instituting Thanksgiving as a national holiday, he explicitly credited this to nothing else but God’s grace: "No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy." He then asked everyone in the country “to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of...

The Gettysburg Address November 19, 1863 Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether...

The areas to which President Barack Obama is open to legitimate and scathing criticism are almost endless, but the host of the 4th most-listened to radio show in the country bypasses the obvious for the unbelievable.“What worries me, Jamie, in regards to what you just said, is that one of President Obama’s mentors was Abraham Lincoln,” Savage told The Daily Caller earlier this month in an interview about his new book, calmly named, “Stop The Coming Civil War.”“He imprisoned 20,000 political opponents, including journalists, who opposed the Civil War. People don’t know that about Lincoln. And 20,000 people in the...

On Oct. 12, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln must have breathed a bit easier. Not because the war was over — it would last another six months. Not because he had been re-elected — the election remained nearly a month away. And not because Gen. William T. Sherman had begun his decisive march through Georgia — the general was still holding Atlanta. While much remained unsettled, Lincoln’s achievements as president seemed more secure that autumn day because the president learned that his old nemesis Roger B. Taney, the Maryland-born chief justice of the Supreme Court, had died. Ever since Taney had...

In an effort to make classrooms more gender-inclusive, teachers at a middle school in Lincoln, Nebraska were given teaching guidelines advising them not to use "gendered expressions" by calling students "boys and girls." The Lincoln Journal Star reports that the teachers have been advised to use more gender-neutral expressions like campers, readers, athletes or even purple penguins. The teaching handout called "12 easy steps on the way to gender inclusiveness" advised teachers to avoid separating students by gender, but instead by birth dates or preferences. For example, they could ask students whether they prefer skateboards or bikes, milk or juice,...

Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 92: When President Abraham Lincoln met with free black leaders in 1862, what did he propose? Today marks the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s “shot heard ’round the world.” I’m referring, of course, to the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation he fired off from the White House on...

In war, the first battle is to define the conflict; the second is to control the narrative. President Obama won the first battle when he defined the ensuing conflict as a “sustained counterterrorism operation,” but experienced a Waterloo moment when his administration surrendered that narrative in the days after. Secretary of State John Kerry, in particular, delivered mixed messages. From “war is the wrong terminology,” to “yes, we are at war with ISIL,” and finally arriving at, “I think it's a waste of time to focus on [what terminology is used],” Kerry covered the spectrum of available responses. Nevertheless, the...

1970 Lincoln Continental Sedan Commerical

The Metropolitan Opera, despite vigorous opposition from many parts of the Jewish Community, is forging ahead with its plans to present the opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer,” during its Fall 2014 season. After a campaign of letter writing, demonstrations, and articles in the Jewish press, the Met has refused to remove the opera from its schedule, offering only to “compromise” by cancelling its worldwide HD simulcast programs, but not the production at the Metropolitan Opera House itself. This opera presents the takeover of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 by Palestinian terrorists, and their murder of 69 year old,...

Insiders say that President Obama will use President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as the model for his anticipated Executive Order granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. In 1862 Lincoln declared that all slaves in territory held by the Rebels were "forever free." He justified it as a wartime necessity. Those close to Obama say he views the parallels as "striking." "As he sees it," says an off-the-record source, "the vast majority of the illegal immigrants reside in states that are hostile to the Administration?at war with his efforts to transform the nation. Thus, as Commander-in-Chief he believes it is his...