Free Republic

With credit markets in New York in crisis last week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent an extraordinary letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asking for $7 billion. Although the governor has since withdrawn that request, it testifies to the dire state of his budget. Yet days before penning his note, the governor told an audience at the Commonwealth Club of California not to worry about the state's budget crunch and to approve $9.95 billion in new debt on the November ballot to build a bullet train to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco: "Just because we have a problem with...

A mini asteroid collided safely with Sudan this week, but mega disaster looms with nearly 1000 hazardous near-Earth objects roaming our universe—plus even more dangerous ones we haven't spotted yet. With no response plan for the worst-case scenario in place anywhere on Earth, four-time shuttle astronaut Thomas D. Jones offers a call to arms against the coming cosmic storm. Early last Monday, Richard Kowalski, a University of Arizona astronomer at the Catalina Sky Survey team's 60-in. search telescope atop Mt. Lemmon near Tucson, flashed word to NASA of the discovery of a new Near Earth Object (NEO). The small asteroid,...

[I]t's not just residents of the Last Frontier who favor breaking away from the Union. According to a Zogby poll conducted in July, more than 20% of U.S. adults -- one in five, about the same number of American Colonists who supported revolt against England in 1775 -- agreed that "any state or region has the right to peaceably secede from the United States and become an independent republic." Some 18% "would support a secessionist effort in my state." The motivation of these quiet revolutionaries? As many as 44% of those polled agreed that "the United States' system is broken...

Floridians, when you cast your ballot on the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment this year, look at Massachusetts, California – and now Connecticut. Contrary to claims of the liars attempting to scare Floridians into voting against the marriage amendment because of the false assertions that the measure is about everything other than marriage, the Connecticut Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling today legalizing “gay marriage” is the latest reminder of why we need Amendment 2. This is not an academic, esoteric debate. The Florida Marriage Protection Amendment (also known as Amendment 2) is Floridians’ chance to settle the definition of marriage in our...

Los Angeles - Emphasizing the urgency of California’s Proposition 8--ProtectMarriage.com, today the Connecticut Supreme Court legalized gay marriage by a narrow margin, 4-3. Close votes also defined gay marriage in the states of Massachusetts and California. The State of Iowa was also scheduled this week to hear arguments on same sex marriage. In answer to today’s decision, the Protect Marriage Coalition and its volunteers are stepping up efforts and continuing their unprecedented grassroots campaign across the state of California. This weekend hundreds of thousands of lawn signs will appear on lawns in every community. Church services in some African American...

The two largest threats to the United States of America in 2008 are: 1) The resurgence of Communist States (China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, et al), and 2) Islamic terror states (Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria, Jordan) who have already demostrated their hatred of the US... Let's think about this... Barack Hussein Obama (a.k.a Barry Soetero) is a Communist Muslim...the sworn enemy of American values. How can one candidate have every one of America's enemies in his resume? Do you understand why Hamas endorses him, along with Hugo Chavez? He needs to be stopped. Call, put out...

Humanist Comedian Bill Maher’s New Movie Is Full of Falsehoods, Bigotry, Ignorance, Arrogance, and Hypocrisy By Dr. Ted Baehr, Publisher, and Dr. Tom Snyder, Editor Religulous, comedian Bill Maher’s attack on Christianity and religion, is full of lies, half-truths, false assumptions, logical contradictions and fallacies, distortions, intolerance, prejudice, bigotry, arrogance, ignorance, and hypocrisy. It’s a pathetic propaganda piece that will warp the hearts and minds of the gullible and the ignorant. It is also very poorly researched and argued. Maher’s diatribe starts out innocently enough. He tells the viewer how he was raised a Roman Catholic, even though his mother...

This week the McCain-Palin team raked in a bonanza of endorsements. According to conventional wisdom endorsements don't matter that much in politics, but at least one of the multiple nods announced over the past two days for the GOP's ticket could make a big difference. NRA-PVF, the National Rifle Association's Political Victory Fund, put the gun rights organization's stamp of approval on the Republican Party's presidential and vice presidential candidates, and that endorsement carries a load of clout. NRA doesn't always made a presidential endorsement in an election year, and it has not been overly enthusiastic about McCain. Jim Geraghty...

This video is now going to be airing in commercials in Michigan and PA as of October 1st. Arrogance and stupidity...along with 4 + Million views. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FCNKwHRCQM

Beautiful fall weather has come to Northeastern Massachusetts, the kind of calm, golden, balmy day when I would, not too long ago, have gone out joyously to play golf. With my right shoulder gone -- no more rotator cuff at all, the joint grinding bone on bone -- I can no longer swing a golf club

And now, America, we introduce the Great Obama! The world's most gifted political magician! A thing of wonder. A thing of awe. Just watch him defy politics, economics, even gravity! (And hold your applause until the end, please.) To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don't pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he "cut" zero? Abracadabra! It's called a "refundable tax credit." It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing...

Conservatives know by now that the dominant liberal media is not just out to criticize Gov. Sarah Palin. They are on a drive to destroy her. But conservatives are missing the reason why. It's not really about defeating John McCain. Running mates do not decide a presidential election. The real reason is the future. Never again will the Left media (New York Times; Washington Post; the networks; Hollywood) allow a young politician to ascend to the leadership of a national conservative movement -- at least not without all-out character assassination. The media have learned their lesson. They generally tolerated the...

Found this interesting. The jerks have had this planned... Plekhanov stressed that Russia must pass through genuine capitalistic development, in order for the conditions and tools to be built to enable a Socialist revolution to occur... http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/p/l.htm#plekhanov

Reasons Why No One Should Vote for Obama Except His Family and Friends! Don Boys, Ph.D. Every person has a right to his own opinions but no one has a right to his own facts. The Obama facts that follow should limit those voting for him to his immediate family, a few friends, and of course all committed racists and socialists. Like all sane citizens, I want the best candidate to win the office of President. After all, we are all in the same boat and if one end goes down, we all go down. After a thorough examination of...

I realized something after Tuesday night's debate: If (big if) Barack Obama is not elected president next month, it will not be John McCain who defeats him. McCain may be Obama's official opponent, but he isn't making the core case against him: namely, the case against Obama's deep roots in radicalism, which the Democratic nominee has never pulled up and grown away from. This is why if Obama loses on Election Day, it won't be McCain who defeats him. Like a flashy third-party candidate who ends up drawing just enough support from one candidate to put the other over the...

To listen to the Obama spin-masters you’d think that the McCain campaign’s questioning of their candidate’s association with unrepentant terrorist bomber Bill Ayers is a smear tactic falsely elevating a casual relationship between the two men into one where they worked together in promoting Ayers’ far-left goals. Their reaction to the continuing revelations that disprove that claim is one of sheer panic -- and they have a good reason to be scared witless that any in-depth probe of what went on between the two comrades will reveal Obama’s true colors -- all of them dark red! If the truth becomes...

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Denver, Oct 9, 2008 / 01:01 pm (CNA).- Archbishop of Denver Charles J. Chaput and Denver’s Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley have issued a statement insisting that Catholic teaching holds that human life is sacred from the moment of fertilization, calling claims insisting otherwise, reportedly made by the governor of Colorado, “bad theology and bad public policy.” Governor Bill Ritter, who is Catholic, on Tuesday commented on the Colorado ballot measure Amendment 48, which would define personhood as beginning at conception. He reportedly said: “My understanding is that there are things about calling a fertilized egg a person that do...

The thesis of this book is very simple. It is that Communists are Communists. I intend to show that they are exactly what they say they are; they believe what they say they believe; their objective is the objective they have repeatedly proclaimed to all the world; their organization is the organization they have described in minute detail; and their moral code is the one they have announced without shame. Once we accept the fact that Communists are Communists, and understand the laws of their thought and conduct, all the mystery disappears, and we are confronted with a movement which...

There is a report today (I think first offered in the Huffington Post) that David Brooks, the gifted New York Times columnist, has described Sarah Palin as a "fatal cancer" and part of a larger pernicious conservative trend: But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices. Brooks then praised the logorrhea of Joe Biden in his interview with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg as the proper antidote to Palin: "[Biden] can't...

Video clips of fiery sermons given by Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor, in Obama's former church, set off a firestorm of controversy in March during the Democratic primaries. "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Wright sermonized after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are...

Quotes: Machiavelli – CONCERNING LIBERALITY AND MEANNESSNote the distinction between the terms; either you are liberal or you are mean. This is according to the view of the citizen; either you give to them, or you do not.Some politicians have gone to great lengths to portray the rich as another type of citizen, almost an enemy of the people. In doing so, they now have the masses believing that taking from the rich is a noble cause; especially if they are to receiveservices from this legal plunder. START EXCERPT COMMENCING then with the first of the above-named characteristics, I say...

In an office on the ground floor of the Louvre, cluttered with books and papers, Henri Loyrette is rolling his eyes in exasperation. The museum's director has been denying accusations by detractors of cultural prostitution, populism and debasing the ideals of this most august of institutions. Now he is focused on his latest project: the Louvre's participation in a Picasso exhibition that opened in Paris yesterday. Picasso and the Masters is set to be the blockbuster of the season in Europe, setting the Spanish painter alongside the works of the classical artists such as Goya, Velázquez and Delacroix, who influenced...

New York Senator Charles Schumer is suggesting the U.S. follow the British government's lead and start buying sizable pieces of banks in an effort to contain the global financial crisis. Schumer's suggestion came after the British Treasury say it would invest as much as $90 billion in exchange for preferred shares in 8 of the country's largest banks and building societies.

WASHINGTON—Esquire is backing Democrat Barack Obama for president -- its first endorsement in the magazine's 75-year history. The Illinois senator is "the only possible choice to lead the country," editors wrote in the November issue, on newsstands Oct. 14. They also encouraged people to vote for Obama because the next president will influence the direction of the Supreme Court. "The best argument for the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States is written quite clearly in the peaks and squiggles of John Paul Stevens' EKG," they wrote of the 88-year-old justice. Republican presidential nominee John McCain has...

RUSH: This series of post-debate comments of people on CNN is interesting, 'cause, you know, you look at the polls here today, it's very odd, I thought this was all over, I coulda sworn it was. Everybody keeps telling me it's over. You'd think Obama had a 15 to ten-point lead. But he doesn't. What's going on here frankly is the American people are, as I said yesterday, focusing on Obama, and they are not comfortable with him. They are not comfortable with his massive government approaches to everything; not comfortable with his Mr. Cool attitude and his growing cockiness;...

If you couldn't tell from my post below, I think the McCain housing plan is a disaster. It's Dodd-Frank on steroids. I didn't get the chance to ask any questions in the conference call earlier, but here is what was one my mind: 1. Why are you replicating the Dodd-Frank legislation bailout in your plan? Their plan gave $300 billion to FHA to guarantee failed mortgages. It passed in July. Shouldn't we give that some time to work? 2. Why does your plan empower the Treasury Secretary to buy up these failed mortgages and renegotiate them? Shouldn't that power be...

10/08/2008 Story and video: Murtha challenged By Patty Yauger , Herald-Standard Republican congressional candidate Bill Russell answers questions from the Herald-Standard editorial board. Robert Esquivel/Herald-Standard A retired U.S. Army war veteran is challenging the current 12th Congressional District legislative incumbent for his seat in the U.S. Congress. Republican candidate Bill Russell, who served 28 years in the military, will square-off in the Nov. 4 general election against Democratic U.S. Rep. John Murtha, who has served 34 years in the House, after his active military career. Both men reside in the Johnstown area. Russell recently met with the Herald-Standard Editorial...

An American Carol, David Zucker’s unabashedly pro-American, anti-left comedy, came out Friday without being screened for critics. But movie critics pounced anyway, just a day later than normal. Some critics used turns of phrase they’d never utter in describing, say, a Michael Moore opus. Check out the Miami Herald’s Rene Rodriguez, who calls the film one of the worst movies of all time: “It is the movie’s underlying tone — its relentless hammering on its pro-war, anti-dissent, anti-liberal message — that makes watching it such a sour experience.”...

What Is a Leader? by Rev. James V. Schall, SJ 10/06/08 The verb "to lead" means to be out in front. But it also has the implication of knowing where the group that one leads is to go. The image of the lead mountain climber mistakenly guiding the troupe over a cliff comes to mind. The leader is supposed to know the way and to know when he doesn't. We look for political leaders who know the way -- to what? They seek to limit evils and to promote the reasonable flourishing of citizens to be sufficiently prosperous and humanly...

There are three problems with Bill Maher's new movie mocking faith: It misunderstands religion, misconceives God and gets human nature all wrong. I have a fantasy of a counter-movie. I would travel around the world and interview every scientist with a crackpot theory or a quack cure. I'd find researchers who were venal, eccentric, foolish or cruel, throwing in a few responsible scientists for credibility. Call it, say, "Scientifictious." Of course, that would be no more convincing than "Religulous." Religion is not univocal; there are lots of varieties and personalities. There is no shortage of strange beliefs and practices. There...

A public school's decision to fold over a portion of a kindergartner's poster to hide an image of Jesus did not violate the youngster's right to free speech, a federal judge has determined. Antonio Peck's teacher and school principal had "legitimate pedagogical concerns" when deciding to edit the boy's poster for a school display promoting environmental awareness, Northern District of New York Judge Norman A. Mordue ruled in Peck v. Baldwinsville Central School District, 99-cv-1847. Those valid concerns of Antonio's teacher, Susan Weichert, and the principal, Robert Creme, were that parents at the Catherine McNamara Elementary School in Baldwinsville, outside...

While I'm NOT advocating Civil War, or that our beloved country is close to any such conflict, I was reminded of Lincoln's words at a low point in the conflict...and how they seem to "fit" the current situation between the two political parties of the US. "The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present (civil war)... it is quite possible that God's purpose is...

America, we just got suckered. We fell for the biggest money grab in modern politics, possibly in the history of the nation. No wonder Nancy Pelosi is beaming and her familiars, Harry Reid and Chris Dodd, are giggling behind their hands; they now have piles of money and they succeeded in pegging the Republicans for a problem they manufactured and are getting away with Scot-free. More importantly, they may have handed the election to Obama, and in so doing, they have set America up for the worst possible leader in a perilous time, not a bad day's work for our...

Now this might seem churlish when the UK bank bailout scheme is being hailed as a bold attempt to backstop the UK financial system, but let's spend a moment thinking about the bigger consequences. Unlike the US TARP which will relieve the banks of toxic assets on their balance sheets, this UK plan will put the government in the boardroom of every participating bank (figuratively if not literally). Can anyone tell me now what really separates the banks from the government? Our liberal, equity-owning democracy has taken a major blow. With this precedent what incentive is there now for me...

If this video doesn't stop Senator Obama's campaign in it's tracks, there is something wrong with this country.

The Dem governor of TN was just interviewed in advance of tonight's second presidential debate. Folks, the word they will hammer home tonight is "erratic," as in "John McCain's erratic behavior makes him dangerous to the country." Perhaps we'll hear, "Who knows what could have happened to his mind as a POW?" Also heard: McCain will remain a gentleman and respond mildly to any attacks. The McCain team apparently still believes that moderation will gather the most "independents," whom Rush Limbaugh correctly describes as spineless wastes of electoral time. Also comes news that Obama will rip into McCain, blaming him...

In a recent post I referred to a speech unrepentant domestic terrorist and Obama associate Bill Ayers delivered in Caracas, Venezuela, to the 2006 World Education Forum, sponsored by UNESCO. His text is full of Marxist rhetoric, but that's just Marxist Ayers being Ayers. He's also a professor of education, and there's nothing unusual about his presence at a global forum on education sponsored by an arm of the United Nations. But dig down below the topsoil, and you will discover that the ties between Ayers and Chavez run deeper than his appearance at an academic forum which just happened...

The Sarah Palin political phenomenon is spilling over the border and into Canada. Not because she hunts moose — a favorite pastime of many Canadians, the present author included — but because she offers principled leadership on life and family issues. In short, she inspires Canadians concerned with these issues to demand better from politicians.Americans are not the only ones going to the polls this fall. In Canada, voters will elect a new government come Oct. 14. Yet, Catholics on this side of the border face a difficult choice: How to choose between five officially pro-abortion political parties?Prime Minister Stephen...

Madrid, Oct 7, 2008 / 06:35 am (CNA).- Father Joan Manuel Serra, a priest of the Diocese of Sant Feliu de Llobregat, has asked King Juan Carlos of Spain not to sign a royal decree that would modify mortuary policies and would make it legal to use “baby crushing machines” that would be used on the remains of babies aborted up to the seventh month of pregnancy in abortion clinics. In an open letter, Father Serra recalled that current policy “obliges abortion ‘clinics’ to consider the remains of an abortion as cadavers, when they are human remains ‘of a sufficient...

A Christian financial expert says America's current financial liquidity problem can't be solved by a government bailout or the policy of a new elected official, but only if people take responsibility for their sin. Chuck Bentley is the CEO of Crown Financial Ministries and host of the "Money Life" radio program. He says the $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill signed into law by President Bush contained "the good, the bad, and the ugly." Bentley likes the controversial provision that gives the Treasury secretary funding to remove the bad mortgage assets off the books of banks, as well as the...

Human evolution is grinding to a halt because of a shortage of older fathers in the West, according to a leading genetics expert. Fathers over the age of 35 are more likely to pass on mutations, according to Professor Steve Jones of University College London. Speaking Tuesday at a UCL lecture entitled "Human Evolution Is Over," Professor Jones will argue that there were three components to evolution — natural selection, mutation and random change. "Quite unexpectedly, we have dropped the human mutation rate because of a change in reproductive patterns," Professor Jones told The Times. "Human social change often changes...

Back in the early eighties, in an interview with David Horowitz and Peter Collier, Bill Ayers remembered his reaction upon learning that he would not be prosecuted by the government for his bombing spree as a member of the Weather Underground. “Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country,” he exulted. Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer. (If you find the metaphor strained, consider that Walter Duranty, the infamous New York Times reporter covering the Soviet Union in the 1930s, did, in fact, depict Stalin as a...

Dr. Deal Hudson of "Inside Catholic" reports that Dr. Nicholas P. Cafardi, noted legal scholar, former Dean of Duquesne University Law School and now prominent Catholic supporter of the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama has just resigned from his position as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Deal reports that the President of the University, Fr. Terrence Henry, TOR,received a letter of resignation from the former Dean on Monday, October 6, 2008. Cafardi was once hailed, along with fellow legal scholar Doug Kmiec, as a leading Pro-Life voice among Catholic academics.

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A Jewish cleric has addressed a worldwide gathering of Roman Catholic Bishops for the first time.Shear-Yashuv Cohen, chief rabbi of the Israeli city of Haifa, explained to the Pope and his bishops the importance of the Bible to Jewish believers. He also used the occasion to denounce the Iranian president for his comments about Israel at the UN last month. The first day of the Vatican Synod saw some strong opinions expressed, the BBC's David Willey in Rome says. Not only did the bishops cover the role of the Bible in the modern world - the official theme of the...

Five years ago, I wrote that the civilized world would benefit from the dissolution of the United Nations, already then a dysfunctional assembly of nations dominated by tyrannies and dictatorships. Since then, despite the welcome replacement of secretary-general Kofi Annan by Ban Ki-Moon and aside from a few symbolic meetings in New York condemning anti-Semitism, the situation has dramatically worsened. The newly created UN Human Rights Commission, intended to be more balanced than its predecessor, shamelessly promotes medieval anti-Semitic blood libels and demonization of Israel at levels unprecedented even by UN standards. Many of the Israel-speeches dominating the agenda could...

Just as Charlie Gibson did in his interview with Sarah Palin, Katie Couric set out to humiliate the Republican vice-presidential candidate with a series of "gotcha" questions. This tactic -- rarely employed with major liberal candidates -- could be used equally effectively against Couric, or most any other liberal member of the television news media. It would be highly instructive to have Couric asked questions in the same way in which she (and Gibson) asked questions of Palin. For example: Q: Critics of the war in Iraq argue that prior to the invasion of Iraq, America had never attacked a...

Who says you just can't make stuff up? Well, Barack Obama does, actually. "You can't just make stuff up," has become one of his favorite stump speech lines. But as we all know, you can just make stuff up, and not just in politics, either. Making stuff up is taught in creative writing classes in college, and those authors who are accomplished at making stuff up are well rewarded for their efforts. British writer Mary Shelley, when she was just 18 years of age, made up a fantastic yarn about a scientist who used parts of corpses to make what...

In an interview with this reporter, Cindy Sheehan (for the first time to press) reveals intentions in forming a new political party, and reflects on her chances in unseating Nancy Pelosi in her race for Congress. Anti War activist and challenger for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Congressional Seat (CD 8, California), Cindy Sheehan has indicated her intention to launch a National political party after the U.S. Election of Nov. 4 Inspired in part by Mark Twain's involvement in The American Anti Imperialist League in reaction to the annexation of the Philippines by the United States in the late 19th Century,...