Free Republic

Lawfare Blog: Following an American special forces raid on the compound of Islamic State operative Abu Sayyaf, U.S. interrogators, who are part of the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, have flown to Iraq in order to question Umm Sayyaf, the wife of Abu Sayyaf, who was taken during the operation. Umm Sayyaf was allegedly involved in the workings of the Islamic State and could possibly have played a role in “the enslavement of women in Iraq and Syria.” U.S. interrogators plan to talk to Umm Sayyaf about U.S. hostages held by the militant group. However, according to the Washington Post,...

The Wall Street Journal reported on the Stephanopoulos scandal on Friday, and found another national TV anchor in the database. “Judy Woodruff, the co-anchor and managing editor of PBS NewsHour, gave $250 in 2010 to the foundation’s aid efforts for victims of the Haiti earthquake.” She was a senior correspondent then, before Jim Lehrer retired. Woodruff initially recalled the donation as being for $1,000, but based the $250 amount as the one on her 2010 tax return. Woodruff tried to make it sound bipartisan: “I made the gift in response to an urgent joint appeal from former President Clinton and...

Wolf Hall, the BBC adaptation of Hillary Mantel’s novel about early Tudor England, began airing on PBS’s “Masterpiece Theater” Easter Sunday night. It’s brilliant television. It’s also a serious distortion of history. And it proves, yet again, that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable bigotry in elite circles in the Anglosphere. The distortions and bias are not surprising, considering the source. Hillary Mantel is a very talented, very bitter ex-Catholic who’s said that the Church today is “not an institution for respectable people” (so much for the English hierarchy’s decades-long wheedling for social acceptance). As she freely concedes, Mantel’s aim in...

Ben Affleck went searching for his roots and ended up finding more than he bargained for. And he admits it. "After an exhaustive search of my ancestry for Finding Your Roots, it was discovered that one of my distant relatives was an owner of slaves," Affleck wrote on Facebook Tuesday, breaking his silence on the controversy kicked up by a leaked Sony email that revealed the actor specifically requested that that limb of his family tree be left out of his episode of the PBS series Finding Your Roots. "I didn't want any television show about my family to include...

Ben Affleck persuaded the producers of Finding Your Roots to edit out details of how his ancestors were slave owners even though it was a breach of PBS editorial rules. The new Batman star, who supports a number of liberal causes, objected to the ancestry TV show airing how his distant relations were racist, leaked Sony emails reveal. Instead viewers were shown heartwarming stories of how his third grandfather was a mystic in the Civil War and how his sixth grandfather was a patriot who fought in the American Revolution. Daily Mail Online has reviewed a transcript of the show...

The Left is bereft of ideas. They have run dry as everything they are trying to force on us has flopped. They have nothing to offer America because they are hollow greedy people that don’t really care how they get what they want. We have been reminded of this yet again by Mychal Smith who writes for PBS’s “Race Today.” Smith told us that equal opportunity between Americans is racist. George Orwell’s Big Brother would be proud. Smith is obviously a victim of the Left’s latest attack of Tourette’s syndrome which compels its sufferers to uncontrollably repeat a catch phrase...

The doors to Downton Abbey are finally closing. Carnival Films and ITV have announced that there will be no return to the famous home of the Crawley family after the sixth season airs, as they want to end on a high. Downton Abbey has been a huge international success, selling to broadcasters around the world, but its ratings in Britain had started flagging. NBC Universal, which owns the production company behind the show, said in an internal note to staff that the long-running drama was ‘approaching its natural conclusion’. The internal note, seen by the Daily Mail, said: ‘Whilst we...

"Downton Abbey" is losing its Dowager Countess. Maggie Smith, who plays the sharp-tongued Violet on the beloved PBS drama, told the Times of London Sunday that the upcoming sixth season will be her last. Perhaps more alarming to fans, if that’s possible, was Smith’s broad hint that this could also be the finale for the show itself. "They say this is the last one, and I can't see how it could go on," Smith told the Times. “I mean, I certainly can't keep going ... To my knowledge, I must be 110 by now. We're into the late 1920s."

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) JUDY WOODRUFF, PBS NEWSHOUR: At one of the Scott Walker events this week, former New York Mayor, David, Rudy Giuliani made a statement that has gotten a lot of attention. He basically — he talked about President Obama and said, “He wasn’t raised like we were,” talking to the group. He said, “He doesn’t love this country as we do.” It’s gotten a lot of attention. Do we — how big a deal is it? DAVID BROOKS: Well, it’s — you know, it’s unacceptable. You can’t say that. He doesn’t know that. It’s not true. It’s self-destructive. There’s sort...

Monday, February 16, 2015 A Revisionist Muslim History of America Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blogTurkish President Erdogan’s claim that Columbus encountered a mosque in Cuba (the explorer actually saw a rock whose shape he compared to the dome of a mosque) and a Saudi Imam claiming that Columbus had sailed to America to attack Muslims are typical of an emerging genre of Muslim revisionist history that lays claim to America based on an imaginary earlier Muslim presence here. While these examples may be laughable, Muslim historical revisionism has taken root in academia. It can be found...

PBS may also be charged with having broadcast religious propaganda in place of balanced educational, instructional, and public information material, despite elaborate claims to the contrary. The Muslim Brotherhood, in a 1991 memoir, spoke of its "work in America as a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within." The role played by radical individuals in a PBS broadcast and website raises many serious questions, not just for the trustees of PBS, but for national agencies responsible for accuracy in the U.S. media. If PBS does not publicly correct this confusion and revoke its association...

During the past billion years, the Earth's climate has fluctuated between warm periods—sometimes even completely ice-free—and cold periods, when glaciers scour the continents. In this article, climate scientist Kirk Maasch offers perspective on these historic changes, including the likely causes of the last great ice age—which contrary to common knowledge, we are still in the midst of... ...The globally averaged surface temperature for the Earth is approximately 15 degrees Celsius, and this is due largely to the greenhouse effect. Solar radiation entering earth's atmosphere is predominantly short wave, while heat radiated from the Earth's surface is long wave. Water vapor,...

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having just one kid or a large family. Many families, after having their first child, decide not to have anymore because of countless reasons. Sometimes it’s because of finances, the mother’s health or other family issues; and sometimes it’s simply because they feel content and that their family is complete. Others decide to have a large family because they love children, consider children a blessing, or it comports to their faith — and there’s nothing wrong with that either. However, deciding to have just one child and telling people that’s the better way...

"Klansville U.S.A." which was broadcast nationally last night is a PBS American Experience production by WGBH in Boston based on a book of that title by David Cunningham. It is an interesting look at the rise and fall of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s. A very good historical documentary marred by the jarring flaw of taking a cheap shot at Republicans. It was almost as if the producer and director, Callie T. Wiser, just couldn't restrain herself from taking a shot at Republicans. The documentary stuck to the facts until just a couple of minutes before...

I’ve been plowing through season five of “Downton Abbey,” the saga of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in early 20th-century Britain, which premieres on Sunday, Jan. 4, on PBS’ “Masterpiece Classic,” and a few thoughts have come to mind. They’re not particularly organized, but here goes (warning, if you want to remain utterly spoiler-free, you may want to stop now. I don’t tell, but I do hint).Creator and writer Julian Fellowes is a Catholic, and while not born to British aristocracy, he married into it (meeting his wife while having an affair with someone else’s), and has become...

The December 30, 2014 episode of "Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler" took PBS viewers on a pilgrimage to southwestern Nigeria with three African-American college graduates as they made pilgrimages to their ancestral roots to become priestesses in the Yoruba religion. The amiable Mr. Feiler has had six consecutive New York Times non-fiction best-sellers in the last decade, including travelogues about journeys to significant sites of different religions. Mr. Feiler appears to represent the progressive-humanist view that all religions are equally respectable cultural aggregations offering differing perspectives on the ultimately unknowable spiritual mysteries. Mr. Feiler does not approach these journeys from...

What do abortionists truly believe about the humanity of preborn children, and what do they admit about the violent late-term abortion procedures they perform when they do not realize the cameras are rolling? Live Action‘s “What is Human?” undercover investigation probes America’s late-term abortion industry, and reveals chilling admissions from abortionists on the humanity of children in the womb. The video, which has garnered millions of views on Facebook and over 60,000 views on YouTube, exposes the violent and inhumane nature of late-term abortion procedures that occur daily in abortion facilities. “What is Human?” details the willingness of abortionists to...

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...