Free Republic

Socialism has come to “Downton Abbey.”The year is 1924 and Ramsey McDonald has just been elected as prime minister. With the Labor Party’s antipathy toward the cosseted likes of the Crawley family, Sir Robert (Hugh Bonneville) is having the upper-crust equivalent of a meltdown in Sunday night’s fifth-season premiere of the Julian Fellowes drama.Wearing a zip-up sweatshirt and corduroys, a very jolly Bonneville sits down at the Lamb’s Club in midtown to discuss the momentous changes that await the Crawleys, as the world clock brings them closer to the Great Depression of 1929.

All of the hallmarks of National Public Radio – the cosmopolitanism and the sexual progressivism – come together in the subject of abortions worldwide. On New Year’s Eve, NPR.org posted a photographer’s record celebrating an abortion clinic in a primitive part of eastern India, titled “A Haven In A Land Of Unsafe Abortions.” NPR sent documentary photographer Poulomi Basu to spend time at the clinic in Khunti for a window into the world of legal and safe abortion in this remote part of India. Palo Khoya agreed to be photographed during her visit. It may be hard for a Westerner...

After the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, it didnt take long for environmentalists to cry gloom and doom and for the media to hype those claims. From caribou dying to earthquakes to all hell breaking loose, there was no shortage of catastrophic predictions though the Alaska pipeline now boasts great success roughly 30 years later.      Construction on the pipeline began in 1975, and oil first moved through it on June 20, 1977. Former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton summed up its success in 2003 that Today the pipeline produces 17 percent of our domestic petroleum. It...

According to NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen, Russia’s myriad intelligence agencies, which now include the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the military intelligence directorate, or GRU, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), and the Federal Protective Service (FSO) are working directly with European environmental groups to fund anti-fracking campaigns. Putin is doing this to slow the spread of the U.S. shale revolution across the Atlantic so Russia can hold on to its monopoly of the European natural gas market. Europe’s energy insecurity – its dependence on Russian gas – has proven to be Putin’s favorite tool of geopolitical...

Hate to shill for anything PBS, but apparently a group of libertarian organizations put together this special on the life, times, and thinking of Dr. Walter E, Williams which is making the rounds on PBS and I actually caught tonight in prime time on the Philly outlet. Following Williams from his youth in Philadelphia through his time in the army in the late fifties, the program details his introduction to racial discrimination in the military. He was appalled when he discovered that blacks in the army were given only menial assignments; when his lieutenant ordered him to paint a truck...

Friday on PBS's "News Hour," syndicated columnist Mark Shields pointed out, "among young Republicans, 61 percent of Republicans -- young Republicans under the age of 30 are in favor of same sex marriage." New York Times columnist David Brooks "applauded," the GOP for "doing absolutely the right thing in withdrawing" and letting the country have its way. Brooks said "I sort of applaud the minimalism here. Sometimes you let the country have its way and you don't try to determine the shape of the country, you sort of modestly step back and let the country figure out what it believes....

My seventh-grade son recently wrote a U.S. History paper extolling the virtues of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. “It ended the Great Depression,” he wrote with great certainty. He’s only 12 and parroting what the history texts and his teachers told him. That’s his excuse. What’s Ken Burns’? Mr. Burns’ docudrama on the Roosevelts — for those who weren’t bored to tears — repeats nearly all the worn-out fairy tales of the FDR presidency, including what I call the most enduring myth of the 20th century, which is that FDR’s avalanche of alphabet-soup government programs ended the Great Depression. Shouldn’t...

Let’s start with the end. When it’s over — when you make it through the marathon that is Ken Burns’s beautiful, seven-part documentary “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History,” which begins Sunday night on PBS — you may find yourself with a lingering, nebulous grief. You’re sorry it’s over. You’re sorry they’re over. You’re sorry a certain expression of American ideals is, or often appears to be, completely over. My study habits haven’t improved since college; like an idiot, I put off watching all 14 hours of “The Roosevelts” until I absolutely had to watch them on a deadline binge this...

Tomorrow evening begins the first of Ken Burns' 14 hour documentary on PBS, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. The good news about this documentary is that we can be sure it will be free of any political advocacy since Burns has no bias and..... Huh? Am I kidding? Of course I am. The fact is despite Burns' laughable denials, he is a bitterly partisan Democrat to the extent that he gave a speech  in 1998 in which he declared himself to be a "Yellow Dog Democrat." The speech was also chock full of scathing attacks upon Republicans which makes his...

PBS, who operates partly on the dime of the U.S. taxpayer, just ran a one-hour special on the terror-sponsoring dictator who shrieked that “war with the U.S. is my true destiny!” and who came within a hair of nuking millions of PBS’ involuntary donors during the gravest military threat against the United States in modern history.PBS, who bills itself as America’s “most-trusted source for news and public affairs programs,” aimed their documentary on the “turbulent life” of the “controversial Cuban leader” at a U.S. audience and titled it, The Fidel Castro Tapes. But PBS pulled off its documentary without mentioningthe...

Over the objections of plenty of taxpayers, PBS – a publicly funded channel – aired “After Tiller” on Labor Day. “After Tiller” is a documentary glorifying the work of four late-term abortionists in the U.S. Day after day, these abortionists willingly take the lives of viable babies, some of them nearly full-term. And often, despite what “After Tiller” shows, the only reason for the murder of these innocents is their inconvenience. People who’ve seen “After Tiller” need to know another side to the story of late term abortion. Here, for starters, are five things you need to know: 1) Carhart’s...

Millions of pro-life people may be up in arms about a pro-abortion film PBS will air this evening that “humanizes” late-term abortions, but the taxpayer-funded network doesn’t seem to care. Instead, it’s announced it is hosting a live video chat with the producers of the film, “After Tiller,” that glorifies late-term abortion practitioners. PBS posted a promotional for the chat on Saturday. Some pro-life groups are already encouraging pro-life advocates to be involved so the chat is not a one-sided affair in favor of abortion. RSVP and join the conversation on Google+ » pbsOn Tuesday, September 2, 2014, from 1...

This is quite the bold move. As a third rate, tax subsidized broadcasting outfit with a viewership in the single digits, I’d expect you’d try your best to fly under the radar. There is, after all, no conceivable reason for you to exist, nor is there a solid justification for spending tax money to keep afloat an irrelevant television channel that has long since drowned amid a sea of a million other channels. Sure, you “only” bring in about 40 million dollars a year in tax money, but why draw attention to the scam? It might be a good 460...

Looking for something to do on Labor Day? The taxpayer-funded PBS has an answer for you: a move that “humanizes” late-term abortionists who kill unborn children in the third-trimester. “After Tiller” profiles Warren Hern, Shelley Sella, LeRoy Carhart, and Susan Robinson, some of the last third-trimester abortionists left in the United States. warrenhearnOn September 1, PBS will be showing the pro-abortion propaganda film “After Tiller” that seeks to sanitize the practice of killing unborn children after viability in late-term abortions. The station also provides resources for people to host an at-home viewing party. That may sound sick to you, but...

There are many terrible children's programs through which parents must suffer during their child's young life. For every Sesame Street, there is an annoying Caillou or an acid-trippy Yo Gabba Gabba. But Thomas and Friends is – or was – the one show with enough subversive messages to make me turn it off for good. My son, now three-and-a-half years old, thankfully never never went through a manic train fascination like so many other children. But once in a while, he'd get a bug in his brain to watch Thomas, and every time I sat and watched with him, I...

by Gina Cassini | Top Right NewsIt's all about race.Everything, that is. Just when you think it's ok for your child to enjoy an innocent, wholesome cartoon that has been thrilling little tikes for seven decades, you find out that it's -- what else? -- RACIST! That is, according to the ridiculous screed of Tracy van Slyke, of The Guardian, which is so stupid it just must be a joke. Right? Wrong! She's serious. Check out what she said about the evil Thomas the Tank Engine: For the record, all the “villains” on Thomas and Friends are the dirty diesel engines. I’d like to...

We’ve grown accustomed to senseless liberal logic insinuating that anything that has to do with the color spectrum is somehow racist or racially charged, however; the most recent attack by The Guardian filth-spiller, Tracy van Slyke, is so stupid it just made me chuckle. Check out what she said about the demonic Thomas the Tank Engine. From The Guardian: For the record, all the “villains” on Thomas and Friends are the dirty diesel engines. I’d like to think there was a good environmental message in there, but when the good engines pump out white smoke and the bad engines pump...

On Friday's broadcast of PBS's "NewsHour" New York Times columnist David Brooks and Creators Syndicate columnist Mark Shields took on the House Speaker John Boehner's lawsuit against the Obama administration, which alleges oversteps in executive authority by the Obama White House. Both acknowledged Boehner's gripe with the Obama administration had merit, but were skeptical of the lawsuit's chances. However, they both also took on the alternative offered by former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), which was to impeach President Barack Obama. Both dismissed that course of action as well, with Brooks calling it "cloud cuckoo land."

Obama says he’s a “caged bear” on the loose. And he IS almost exactly like a caged bear on the loose. Nothing good will come of it, just blood and gore. Usually they euthanize animals after such an incident. And I would suggest to the Democrats that at the least they should consider castration. I mean if Michelle will let them have the parts for a while. Here’s an example: “A bear kept in captivity in a recreation center in the Rostov Region attacked a five-year-old girl,” writes RT.com, “biting off her hand. The girl is being treated in hospital,...

With reports indicating that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad are gaining ground in that country’s brutal civil war, moderate Syrian rebels have told a visiting journalist that the United States is arranging their training in Qatar. In a documentary to be aired Tuesday night, the rebels describe their clandestine journey from the Syrian battlefield to meet with their American handlers in Turkey and then travel on to Qatar, where they say they received training in the use of sophisticated weapons and fighting techniques, including, one rebel said, “how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush.” The...