Free Republic

The world’s first scientific renaissance took place not in Italy, but in the Arab world. The period between the 9th and 11th centuries AD, when Islam took hold of a band of territory strategy from Spain in the West through to what is now Pakistan, saw an extraordinary intellectual flowering. Scientists in the Arab world during this period made important advances in fields as varied as astronomy, mathematics, medicine and optics – advances that fed into and stimulated the later European Renaissance. Which makes it all the stranger that modern Islamic nations have such a lamentable record in science. Where...

Which is obvious to anyone not intentionally misreading it. The real news here is not that Antonin Scalia said this, but that it’s the slightest bit controversial. But that’s not something that happened overnight. The secular left and their media servants have spent decades pushing the idea that the establishment clause is about protecting the non-religious from maniacal Jesus freaks - especially the nightmare scenario in which the Jesus freaks get a job with any public entity and are guided in any decision by biblical principles. Scalia is a man who actually knows about the founding of the nation and...

Just heard Newt on Hannity calmly predict Romney 53-47, 300+ EV and Republicans will win the senate.

Partisans on both sides have been making claims of a lead in the polls — the Republicans cite the national polls and the Democrats the state. I’m not a partisan or a Romney supporter, but I feel compelled to argue that the poll models are flawed and underestimating Romney’s lead. As far as modeling in these polls, the example of Marist and Mason-Dixon in Florida is illustrative of skewing. Marist tends to report big Obama leads, and M-D has reported decent Romney results. From the Tampa Bay Herald: “Mason-Dixon, which has been polling in Florida for 28 years, uses a...

With just a few days left until the election, the left’s out-of-control fringe has taken control – blaming Mitt Romney for deadly meningitis or even warning that his presidency will lead to the slow killing of gays. And when they aren’t doing that, they are calling, well, somewhat tongue in cheek, for a complete halt to sex with Republicans. Maybe it is true about someone putting drugs in Halloween candy. This close to Election Day, it’s getting harder to rank the liberal arguments on a scale of 1-10 (1 being sane and 10 being bonkers.) Perhaps they need the speakers...

NBC announced on Thursday that it would show a one-hour telethon and concert Friday night entitled "Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together" to benefit Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, with money raised going to the American Red Cross. "Today" co-host Matt Lauer will host the event, to be held at NBC's Rockefeller Plaza, and consist of performances by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Jon Bon Jovi, Sting and Christina Aguilera, in addition to appearances from NBC news host Brian Williams and "Late Night" comedian Jimmy Fallon. But with the Presidential election just days away, and the notion that a number of...

Over the weekend, Facebook took down a message by the Special Operations Speaks PAC (SOS) which highlighted the fact that Obama denied backup to the forces being overrun in Benghazi. The message was contained in a meme which demonstrated how Obama had relied on the SEALS when he was ready to let them get Osama bin Laden, and how he had turned around and denied them when they called for backup on Sept 11. I spoke with Larry Ward, president of Political Media, Inc -- the media company that handles SOS postings and media production. Ward was the one who...

This one is really hard to believe, even for the most biased so-called "news network" in the nation. MSNBC on Tuesday totally trashed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for collecting food and supplies at a storm rally event in Ohio to be sent to victims of Hurricane Sandy (video follows with transcript and commentary):Link to Video at Source After introducing his Obama-supporting guests Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and Lehigh professor James Peterson, host Martin Bashir played a clip of the President speaking at the Red Cross headquarters in Washington Tuesday. When the clip concluded, Bashir said, “Mayor Reed, so the...

We wish Tina Fey would weigh in on politics more often! The 30 Rock creator, who rocked the 2008 Presidential election with her dead-on SNL impression of Sarah Palin, hasn't been so vocal about this year's race. But at a Wednesday night benefit for women's health, the comedian had some withering remarks for Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin... "Todd Akin claims that women can't really get pregnant from a legitimate rape because the body secretes hormones," Fey told the audience. "Now I can't even finish this sentence without getting dumber; it's making me dumber when I say it -- but...

Count former New York Times writer Virginia Heffernan as one of the media feminists who wanted to hit Mitt Romney with a binder for about a week. From her digital macrame rug on Yahoo News, Heffernan wrote an entire column insisting "The remark did not accomplish what he’d hoped. In fact, it tipped the hand of Romney’s women panic so thoroughly that it’s likely his court-the-undecided-females’ game is now thrown." "Plus, it misses the mark of normalcy so absolutely that he comes off as comical," she guessed. "No wonder it became a meme on Twitter and other social media sites....

Victims of the Nov. 2009 Ft. Hood shooting are being denied benefits commensurate with combat injuries because the Obama administration refuses to label the attack an act of terrorism. Instead, the shooting Maj. Nidal Hasan carried out after screaming "Allahu Akbar" it is still being labeled "workplace violence." The difference between labeling the incident "workplace violence" and "terrorism" is not only the rightful recognition 13 of our troops deserve for being killed in service to their country on Nov. 5, 2009, but also ongoing benefits that would help survivors pay for the physical therapy, and other medical and psychological treatments...

The White House scrambled late Saturday to deny a New York Times report claiming Iran has agreed to meet directly with U.S. officials to discuss its nuclear program, sending New York Times editors rushing to quietly but substantially revise their initial reporting on a key foreign policy issue for the second time in as many months. According to the Times, which anonymously quoted senior administration officials, Iran told diplomats it wanted to wait until after the November presidential election to put plans for the meeting in motion. (VIEW THE ORIGINAL NYT STORY)“It has the potential to help Mr. Obama make...

A CNN critique published Wednesday about GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s assertions on Operation Fast and Furious in the last presidential debate being “imprecise” is not only guilty of the same charge as well, but demonstrably wrong in places, with corrections provided to them ignored and suppressed by the news website’s comment moderators. Taking issue with Romney’s response that the gunwalking scheme had been “investigated to a degree,” CNN’s Terry Frieden concluded “that appeared to shortchange the 471-page report by the Justice Department inspector general last month… “It also suggested Romney gave an ‘incomplete’ to the extensive series of...

video at link:.... "She committed an act of journalistic terror or malpractice last night. If there were any journalistic standards, what she did last night would have been the equivalent of blowing up her career like a suicide bomber." So said conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh Wednesday regarding Candy Crowley's shameful behavior during the previous night's presidential debate (video follows courtesy Daily Rushbo with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

In the baseball playoffs, the tie goes to the runner. In debates, ties are decided by the moderator and that’s what happened during the Tuesday night presidential debate at Hofstra University in New York. CNN’s Candy Crowley made her presence felt as a moderator in a major way on two points, but none larger than the issue of Libya. The terrorist attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and four others in Benghazi has become a sore point for Obama, but Crowley made sure she called Romney out before Obama could tag him. When Romney said Obama had not called...

Time for your daily reminder that State didn’t merely stick Chris Stevens with “average” security despite him living and working in one of the jihadi-est places on earth. The security they provided him was actively, inexplicably, inexcusably bad. And before you read any further, let me remind you that the ominous chat-room message posted by Sean Smith the day he died about a Libyan guard taking photos of the compound still hasn’t been addressed by anyone in the government that I’ve seen. Did Stevens’s security break down to the point that his killers actually had someone on the inside?More red...

On NBC, DEM Rep. --former . Gov Jennifer Granholm (D-MI)-- again repeated VP Biden's line that that was the info we got from the intel, at the time of the attack, and that it was the REP. that cut the defense, thus(as a result) it affected (somehow) the security around the embassy... My question is, why is it that liberals can not stop hammering us on Iraq and refuse to take the truthful answer that we all thought that Saddam Hussein had WMD according to our intel at the time? -- BTW The DEM Mayor Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta) kept spinning...

Asked directly on Wednesday evening if Tuesday's deadly violence in Libya was "linked to a terror attack" – possibly al-Qaeda – a State Department official demurred: "Frankly, we are not in a position to speak any further to the perpetrators of this attack. It was clearly a complex attack...

In my estimation, last night’s debate was a draw. Both men did what they needed to do for the debate, but neither had enough of a breakout performance to make much of a difference in the race. I’d expect to see very little impact to the Mitt-mentum that developed after the first debate, for reasons which I’ll address in a moment.That wasn’t the conclusion reached by Frank Luntz’ focus group of former Barack Obama voters, and now undecideds, in Nevada. That panel overwhelmingly chose Mitt Romney as the winner, with observations about Romney’s presidential mien and Obama’s defensiveness and lack...

The State Department has released a transcript of a briefing that two high-ranking department officials gave to a number of reporters via conference call on October 9 (Tuesday). I am not certain about this, but I believe the transcript was only made public today. You should read it in its entirety; it is the most detailed description I have seen of the events in Benghazi on September 11. While this is by no means clear, it appears that the State Department may have released the transcript as part of the escalating conflict between Barack Obama and Joe Biden and the...