Free Republic

While interviewing people on the streets of L.A. and N.Y. for our documentary about the legacy of the Civil War, we came to the staggering realization of how many allegedly well-educated people assumed that Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat fighting slave-owning Republicans in the South.

The supposed vision surprised locals who have come in their hundreds to pray and light candles in the grounds of Holy Mary Parish church. While some believe the willow should be preserved and covered in glass, others think the believers are just barking up the wrong tree. Noel White, Rathkeale Community Council Graveyard Committee chairman, said workmen sprucing up the church land saw the image when they cut the tree. "One of the lads said look, our Blessed Lady in the tree," Mr White said. "One of the other lads looked over and actually knelt down and blessed himself, he...

Below, release from Kirk.... McCain to Endorse Kirk at Veterans Gathering in Glenview McCain: "The people of Illinois deserve a Senator who will restore honest government, strengthen our national security, fight for veterans and bring fiscal discipline to Washington. Mark Kirk has my strongest endorsement." Who: Congressman Mark Kirk Senator John McCain When: 4:00 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 30 Where: Glenview Park Center, Lakeview A Room 2400 Chestnut Ave. Glenview, IL What: Senator John McCain will endorse Congressman Mark Kirk for U.S. Senate at a veterans gathering in Glenview on Sunday afternoon. Kirk, an early supporter of McCain's presidential bid during...

Paul's Reaganite cheerleader Doug Wead continues his early bird crusade to get "Dr. No" in front of the nation's voters one more time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeGMQBe7_OU

JOE BIDEN: HAIR WE CAN BELIEVE INAugust 27, 2008 Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden's speech at the Democratic National Convention was great. As I write, he hasn't given it yet, but these are my favorite parts: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all...

After the Des Moines Register Republican presidential debate ended here Wednesday afternoon, Susan Patterson Plank, the paper’s vice president of marketing, was a little defensive. Reporters wanted to know how Alan Keyes, the former ambassador running a nearly nonexistent campaign, qualified for the debate. Standing beside the established Republican candidates on the stage at the Iowa Public Television headquarters, Keyes used his considerable rhetorical skills to wander all over the lot, deliver sermons, avoid questions, grow increasingly irritable, and in general lead viewers to ask what in the h*** he was doing on stage.

VATICAN CITY — With his conservative pronouncements on issues of sexuality, liturgy and interfaith dialogue, Pope Benedict XVI has frustrated many Roman Catholics in the church’s progressive wing. Benedict’s views on economics, as expounded in an expected papal document, should be a lot more to liberals’ liking. Benedict’s encyclical — anticipated in the next several months, along with one on the theological virtues of “hope” — promises to be a provocative contribution to the debate on globalization and its social consequences. Though he adamantly rejects attempts to associate Catholic teaching with Marxism, the pope has signaled that he supports intervention...

WASHINGTON — A "dangerous cycle of debt" is trapping too many credit-card holders, making it increasingly difficult to protect their financial security, according to a report. About one-third of cardholders pay interest rates in excess of 20 percent, according to a report from New York-based think tank Demos. Also, borrowers with one slip-up can incur a "cascade" of penalties and end up in a "trap" of high-cost debt, the report said. "The excuse of risk-based pricing is used to justify everything. These prices go far beyond pricing for risk. Some of these interest rates and payment fees seem to not...

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., said during a presidential campaign stop Sunday that he isn't against immigration. However, Tancredo is against illegal immigration - and its cost to taxpayers. "Amnesty is coming down the pike," Tancredo said a group of about 20 people at a home in Davenport. "But its a slap in the face to all the people who did it the right way, and to those who are patiently waiting in line to legally get in." Tancredo, who announced that he would seek the Republican presidential nomination on a Des Moines-area radio show in April, has gained prominence in...

Colorado Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo, an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, will announce his bid for president on Monday.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Colorado Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo, an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, will announce his bid for president on Monday. Tancredo will kick off campaign with an announcement in Iowa, where political caucuses start whose the presidential nominating season, an official close to the congressman said. Tancredo has flirted with a presidential bid for more than a year and began raising money for the effort in January. After taking in more than $1 million in two months, he has decided to make his run official, said the official, who asked not to be named ahead of Tancredo's official...

Tancredo, a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, said in a statement Tuesday that he doesn't believe that Gonzales' handling of the prosecutors' firings alone warrants his dismissal. But "his total mishandling of the affair is simply the latest latest in a series of leadership failures at the Justice Department," chiefly his handling of illegal immigration prosecutions, Tancredo said. "Gonzales' legacy at the DOJ has been one of misplaced priorities, political miscalculation, and a failure to enforce the laws which he's sworn to uphold." Tancredo faulted several Justice Department decisions dealing with border crimes, including the prosecution of two Border...

Tom Tancredo Set To Form Exploratory Committee. Just on Fox News

WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom Tancredo is headed back to Miami a month after sparking a tense exchange with Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by likening the city to a "Third World country." The Colorado Republican, who vocally opposes illegal immigration - and who has never shied away from a chance to talk about it - plans a speech next week to the Miami Rotary Club titled, "Renewing America: The Need for Assimilation." The speech will include more details about his thoughts on how to address "problems" in Miami, his spokesman Carlos Espinosa said. Alia Faraj, Bush's communications director, said Tancredo is...

According to a 2005 Pew Research Center poll, 70 percent of evangelical Christians believe that living beings have always existed in their present form, compared with 32 percent of Protestants and 31 percent of Catholics. Politically, 60 percent of Republicans are creationists, whereas only 11 percent accept evolution, compared with 29 percent of Democrats who are creationists and 44 percent who accept evolution. A 2005 Harris Poll found that 63 percent of liberals but only 37 percent of conservatives believe that humans and apes have a common ancestry. What these figures confirm for us is that there are religious and...

You are invited to An Evening with Best-Selling Authors Stephen King John Grisham Jim Webb To support Democratic Candidate for U.S. Senate Jim Webb Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 7 pm The Paramount Theatre, The Downtown Mall Charlottesville, Virginia Please respond by the attached card Inquiries to Bert Colley at 434-245-5900 bertcolley@yahoo.com $2100 Includes wine and cheese reception with the authors and priority seating $500 Includes preferred seating $ 100 General admission ticket

Mobile Genes Found to Pressure Species Formation. Biologists at the University of Rochester have discovered that an old and relatively unpopular theory about how a single species can split in two turns out to be accurate after all, and acting in nature.The finding, reported in today's issue of Science, reveals that scientists must reassess the processes involved in the origin of species. The beginnings of speciation, suggests the paper, can be triggered by genes that change their locations in a genome. "In the 1930s there was speculation that parts of chromosomes that switch from one location to another might cause...

Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna said he thought Darwin's theories on evolution deserve to be studied in schools, along with the scientific question marks that remain. It is right to teach "the science of Darwin, not ideological Darwinism," Cardinal Schonborn said Aug. 23. He spoke at a meeting in Rimini sponsored by the Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation, and his remarks were reported by Italian newspapers. In 2005, Cardinal Schonborn helped fuel the debate over evolution and intelligent design when he wrote in The New York Times that science offers "overwhelming evidence for design in biology." He later...

Former Seattle police Chief Norm Stamper doesn't have dreadlocks, a Zig-Zag T-shirt or a single Phish album. He just sounds like it. "It's laughable when people say we are winning the drug war," said Stamper, who had just finished a main-stage speech to the crowd gathered Sunday at the Seattle Hempfest in Myrtle Edwards Park. "The people who are prosecuting the drug war are invested psychically and financially. It's a holy war for them. "We should legalize all drugs." While the comments might be unusual for most law enforcement careerists, they are nothing new for Stamper, who was Seattle's top...

• Q2 jumps by 67 percent year over year • Buyers done in by ‘creative mortgages’ according to figures released Monday by Foreclosures.com, a Central Valley-based real estate investment advisory firm and publisher of foreclosure property information. "Year over year at the end of the second quarter of 2006, foreclosure activity in California has increased more than 67 percent," says Alexis McGee, president of Fair Oaks-based ForeclosureS.com. The once hot housing markets in Las Vegas and Phoenix are cooling off rapidly and defaults there are on the rise as well, she says. "Both Las Vegas and Phoenix were impacted by...

God and Charles Darwin were not on the primary ballot in Kansas on Tuesday, but once again a contentious schools election has religion and science at odds in a state that has restaged a three- quarter-century-old battle over the teaching of evolution. Less than a year after a conservative Republican majority on the State Board of Education adopted the most far- reaching standards in the United States defining science education in ways that challenge Darwin's theory of evolution, moderate Republicans and Democrats are mounting a fierce counterattack to retake power and switch the standards back to what they call conventional...

Darwin won. Moderate Kansas State Board of Education candidates pulled off a victory Tuesday, gathering enough might to topple the board’s 6-4 conservative majority. A victory by incumbent Janet Waugh, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Lawrence, and wins by Republican moderates in two districts previously represented by conservatives left the tables turned heading into the Nov. 7 general election. “If we change the board around, we’ll be able to make decisions that we think are right for our students,” Lawrence school board member Craig Grant said. Grant had worked to defeat the conservatives who attracted international attention and...

Ten years ago, an international team of scientists reported evidence, in a controversial cover story in the journal Nature, that life on Earth began more than 3.8 billion years ago—400 million years earlier than previously thought. A UCLA professor who was not part of that team and two of the original authors will report in late July that the evidence is stronger than ever. Craig E. Manning, lead author of the new study and a professor of geology and geochemistry in the UCLA Department of Earth and Space Sciences, painstakingly mapped an area on Akilia Island in West Greenland where...

An interview by Jamie Glazov with Larry Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois University, about his new book Darwinian Conservatism. Glazov: Larry Arnhart, thanks for taking the time out to talk about your new book. Arnhart: It’s a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Glazov: Tell us briefly what your book is about and your main argument. Arnhart: I am trying to persuade conservatives that they need Charles Darwin. Conservatives need to see that a Darwinian science of human nature supports their realist view of human imperfectability, and it refutes the utopian view of the Left that...

The ability to spot venomous snakes may have played a major role in the evolution of monkeys, apes and humans, according to a new hypothesis by Lynne Isbell, professor of anthropology at UC Davis. The work is published in the July issue of the Journal of Human Evolution. Primates have good vision, enlarged brains, and grasping hands and feet, and use their vision to guide reaching and grasping. Scientists have thought that these characteristics evolved together as early primates used their hands and eyes to grab insects and other small prey, or to handle and examine fruit and other foods....

Plans are being drawn up to build a £3.3m working replica of the boat that took Charles Darwin around the world at Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire. Fundraising for the project, which would mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth in 2009, is under way. The aim is to built a seaworthy vessel identical to the HMS Beagle on the outside, but with a modern interior. Darwin, who showed how natural selection could explain evolution, sailed on the Beagle between 1831-36. Sitting opposite him on the expedition was mate and surveyor John Lort Stokes. One of Stokes' descendents, Pembrokeshire farmer David...

A Nashville judge is calling the state's tax on illegal drugs "unconstitutional". The levy took effect in 2005 and applies to substances like cocaine, crack, methamphetamine and marijuana. Chancellor Richard Dinkins says the tax violates the defendants' right against self incrimination and to due process and is levied long before the accused stands trial. The ruling stopped the state from collecting more than one million dollars from Jeremy Robbins, who is one of at least eight people accused of moving two tons of marijuana from Arizona to East Tennessee. The ruling applies only to the Robbins case; legal experts say...

A Seattle-based research group that advocates intelligent design said today it will campaign to educate Kansans that the science standards approved by the State Board of Education are sound. “Kansas citizens need to have accurate information about what the science standards do,” said John West, associate director of the Center for Science & Culture for Discovery Institute. West said the group will start an information campaign over the Internet immediately and possibly start a radio campaign. He declined to say how much the center would spend. The decision puts the Discovery Institute in the center of hotly-contested State Board of...

I have been speaking to diverse small groups about science and religion in the context of the ongoing national debate about the teaching of evolution in our public schools. The response to my talks has been almost uniformly positive. It would be useful for other physicists to do as I have been doing. My audiences have been service clubs such as Rotary, high-school and college students of science and science journalism, a school-based community event, a League of Women Voters chapter, a Unitarian church, and a microscopy club. They have ranged from a dozen to some 60 or 70 people....

A new La Crosse County ordinance would send criminal charges up in smoke for low-risk offenders busted with under 25 grams — a little less than an ounce — of marijuana. At a Thursday meeting, the county board voted 15-12 to pass the ordinance, which would send first-time offenders away with a citation and fine instead of a misdemeanor charge. The vote followed nearly two hours of debate that included testimony from the district attorney, a judge and the county sheriff — and a few moments of levity that would please Cheech and Chong. District Attorney Scott Horne argued against...

A new poll from Rasmussen Reports has some bad news for Republicans—well, almost all Republicans. If you’re Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.), the news couldn’t be better. While a generic Republican candidate trails a generic Democrat by 12 percentage points, according to the poll, a third-party candidate who runs on a get-tough-on-immigration platform not only beats the Republican, but also actually runs even with the Democrat. Here’s an excerpt: The survey also asked respondents how they would vote if "a third party candidate ran in 2008 and promised to build a barrier along the Mexican border and make enforcement of immigration...

Does Kelly Maddy have a point, or is it just a case of reefer madness? Maddy, a local advocate for reforming marijuana laws, believes pot should be decriminalized. The drug is harmless, he says, and prohibition destroys the lives of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens. Nuts, says Joplin police Chief Kevin Lindsey. Marijuana is a gateway drug, he said, and compared the consequences to those of a much harder substance, methamphetamine: Those who indulge aren't just harming themselves; they're hurting their families and the community. Also, Lindsey noted, marijuana is illegal. Possession of single joint is punishable by up to...

Gov. Jeb Bush said it's not fair to punish the children of illegal immigrants if they're trying to build a better life through education. The governor supports a controversial bill that would let illegal immigrants' children pay in-state college tuition rates, but the bill still faces an uphill battle in the current political climate, WESH 2 News reported. Florida requires children of illegal immigrants to pay out-of-state tuition rates at colleges and universities. That means a college education would cost at least $60,000 more for the son or daughter of an undocumented worker. Bush said that's not fair to teens...

Illegal immigrants in this country are threatening a massive boycott on May 1, purportedly to demonstrate they are so essential that the U.S. economy would shut down without their labor. On the contrary, such a boycott will expose the lie expressed by President George W. Bush in Cancun, Mexico, that they are "doing work that Americans will not do." According to the Pew Hispanic Center, illegal immigrants make up less than 5 percent of the U.S. labor force. If every one of the 20 million illegal aliens in our country plays hooky from his job on May 1, the overwhelming...

Do higher house prices make a country richer? The answer is simply “no”. If the market value of the stock is raised, those who own it are made better off by as much as those who will buy their houses from them are made worse off. Higher prices merely redistribute income among residents, principally from the young to the old. So why do fast-growing economies tend to have soaring house prices and slow-growing ones the opposite? The answer is not that higher house prices make a country richer, but the opposite: the wealthier the country, the more expensive its housing....

Gold and silver on a tear overseas. Also, oil seems to be breaking $70 a barrel. Anticipating problems tomorrow or just commodities on an upswing?

Darwin predicted that the "missing links" of evolution—gaps in the fossil record between related species—would come to haunt his theory. He was right: even today, they're a major theme in the effort to discredit evolution with the public. Which is why there was such a stir about a paper in the journal Nature last week describing a 375 million-year-old creature dug from rocks in the Canadian Arctic. [snip] Given the Inuit name Tiktaalik, the specimen neatly splits the gap between fossil fish that lived about 385 million years ago and the four-legged amphibians that came 20 million years later. [snip]...

Left’s Utopia Totalitarian Hell on Earth Lurking within the twisted corridors of the left’s collective mind dwells the seductive image of a glorious utopia. Leftists are certain that with their Promethean genius they could build an earthly utopia if they could but acquire total control over the world, its wealth, resources, and every human person. The infuriating stumbling block is Americans who hold traditional values. These Americans refuse to worship the ''new gods''…the Promethean Left… and vigorously cling to their individuality and inalienable rights. For these reasons, the left—driven by malignant envy and seething rage—has been waging an all-out ''slash...

To Bruce Mirken, denying people in need of marijuana is absurd -if they need it for medical reasons, he believes they should have it. Mirken, the director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, may see this vision become a reality if the Illinois medical marijuana bill is passed through the General Assembly. The bill, which was passed by the Senate's Health and Human Services Committee by a 6-4 vote last week, would legalize the use of medical marijuana. "It's simply crazy that we threaten patients with cancer, multiple sclerosis or AIDS with arrest or jail for something that may...

Setting up a conflict with the Romney administration, lawmakers on Monday advanced a longstanding Beacon Hill proposal to decriminalize the possession of enough marijuana for teens to roll dozens of joints. Approved 6-1 by the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Committee, the proposal would change the penalty for possessing marijuana to a $250 civil fine for anyone caught with less than an ounce of the drug, regardless of age. In addition, parents of those 18 years and younger would be notified of the infraction. Currently, someone convicted of such an offense can be sent to jail for up to six...

[...] Organizers blasted the federal Drug Enforcement Administration for targeting businesses that are legal under Proposition 215, a California law that permits marijuana use for medical treatment. Demonstrators said the action would restrict access to regulated pot shops for seriously ill patients. [...] "They didn't do any arrests, just took drugs and computers," said Paula "Cookey" Brown. "It just seems like a straight armed robbery." [...]

The price of gold has continued to rise in Asian trading, climbing to its highest level since 1981. Gains came despite concerns that the market may be set for a correction and some analysts are now predicting that prices have even higher to go. Precious metals have been given a boost as investors look to protect themselves against higher inflation and weakening currencies such as the Japanese yen. Gold climbed as high as $522.70 an ounce, before falling back. It was hovering around the $521 mark during afternoon trading in Asia. 'Dizzy high' "There's some profit-taking now, but look at...

Professor focused on intelligent design as theology, not science, at Dover trial Friday. HARRISBURG — If there is a God, then he could have made the monkey and the human with similar genetic material. In the fifth day of Dover Area School District’s trial over intelligent design, John Haught, a Georgetown University theology professor, agreed that was true. So, the idea that “we came from some monkey or ape is conjecture at this point?” Dover’s lead attorney Richard Thompson asked Haught under cross-examination. Haught disagreed. In a First Amendment battle in U.S. Middle District Court in Harrisburg, the Dover district...

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- The concept of "intelligent design" is a form of creationism and is not based on scientific method, a professor testified Wednesday in a trial over whether the idea should be taught in public schools. Robert T. Pennock, a professor of science and philosophy at Michigan State University, testified on behalf of families who sued the Dover Area School District. He said supporters of intelligent design don't offer evidence to support their idea. "As scientists go about their business, they follow a method," Pennock said. "Intelligent design wants to reject that and so it doesn't really fall...

Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, the first witness called Monday by lawyers suing the Dover Area School District for exposing its students to the controversial theory, sprinkled his testimony with references to DNA, red blood cells and viruses, and he occasionally referred to complex charts on a projection screen.Even U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III was a little overwhelmed."I guess I should say, 'Class dismissed,'" Jones mused before recessing for lunch.Dover is believed to be the nation's first school system to mandate students be exposed to the intelligent design concept. Its policy requires school administrators to read a brief...

The trial in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the first legal challenge to the constitutionality of teaching "intelligent design" in the public schools, is scheduled to begin in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on September 26, 2005, and the media are already focusing attention on the case. As the York Dispatch (September 23, 2005) reports, journalists from The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and National Public Radio have already reserved space in the courtroom; Court TV sought but was denied permission to televise the trial. Paula Knudsen of the ACLU remarked, "It's the first time ["intelligent design"] has ever been in...

Police are losing the war against pot and it’s time to make it legal and regulate the cultivation and use of it, says Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa University criminology teacher who co-founded the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy. Police say the number and size of local marijuana operations they’re discovering is increasing. In the last several weeks, police have laid charges after discovering more than $43-million worth of marijuana, mostly from four big busts. Monday West Grey police discovered another $1.3-million worth of marijuana growing south of Flesherton. The biggest of recent busts have often involved young, Asia men. Police...

The governor is being disingenuous. At this point the only honest reason to oppose giving licenses to illegal immigrants is because the state should not be giving its blessing to illegal behavior. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that position. Maybe the governor should try it on for size.

Atheist activist Michael Newdow, known for his attempt to remove "under God" from the Pledge, has petitioned a federal court to prevent the Bush administration from "engaging in Christian religious acts" related to the president's upcoming inauguration. Pointing out that two ministers, Rev. Franklin Graham and the Rev.Kirbyjon Caldwell, prayed at Bush's first inaugural ceremony in 2001, Newdow says the Inaugural '05 website indicates the president will chose a minister to "deliver an invocation" before he takes the oath of office Jan. 20. Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition says it's "appalling that Christians are being...

In today's Los Angeles, when a police officer sees a gang member on the street who is in our nation illegally, a 1979 city directive prevents him from apprehending that illegal alien because of his immigration status alone - even if he has knowledge that the subject has been previously deported because of a violent crime. And even though it is a felony to re-enter the U.S. after deportation. Manhattan Institute fellow Heather MacDonald reports that in Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide are for illegal aliens and as of January 2004, there were more than...