Free Republic

With all the bad press the TSA has received recently, we can't be sure if the acronym stands for Transportation Security Administration, Touches Sensitive Areas, or Truly Scandalous Attention. But, for sure, its pat-downs and sci-fi radiation screeners give many of us another good reason to avoid the increasingly unfriendly skies. Yet while the TSA right now has supplanted the IRS as the bureaucracy we most love to hate, its policies are merely part of a longstanding cultural trend: the failure to recognize that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. It's the same reason why...

Ok, so the government wants to "search" everybody, very intrusively (backscatter Xray, "feeling up" pat downs), INSTEAD of searching the PROFILE of the sort of people who are the terrorists. So, if you are looking for example for fish, why would you search on the land? It would be unreasonable....Yes, fish can be found out of water, but most of them are swimming in water as we speak......So it would NOT be reasonable to put as much emphasis on looking on land as you do water. So THIS is the DEFINITION of UNREASONABLE search - it's not reasonable to search...

Political Correctness and the Thought Police A look at the origins of the movement to expunge words and thoughts from modern life. November 1, 2010 - by Gary Wickert It’s hard to define political correctness, but like pornography, you know it when you see it. Some say it is a social philosophy that strives to ensure nobody will ever be offended by anything, ever. Wikipedia defines it as a term which “denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, disability, and age-related contexts.” Merriam-Webster defines it...

If I weren't getting so used to the inequity of political correctness, I would be stunned at this: http://www.blackpeoplemeet.com/index.cfm The Fresh Prince happened to be on TV while I was surfing the Internet and of course, the commercials are aimed toward the largest audience for such programming, black people. For a moment my jaw dropped as I watched the commercial that caught my attention as soon as I heard "black people meet" in the background. To be sure, I checked http://www.whitepeoplemeet.com/ and was redirected to a dating site for Generation X'ers that never once mentioned race. I don't know why...

Let’s get something straight this campaign season. There are no “undecideds.” Or at least there shouldn’t be. If there are, they should be banned from voting. As Dean Wormer said in Animal House, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.” And if you’re truly undecided, that’s exactly what you’re doing. So for those wannabes who think it’s desirable and politically correct to seem overly “deliberative” during a poll, do us all a favor: pick a side. The choices have never been clearer.

Our 9/11 war dead are not “shaheeds”October 27, 2010 3:40 P.M. By Andy McCarthy   Out of respect for our men and women in harm’s way, I have tried, since an exchange late last year with Pete Hegseth, to pipe down about our increasingly dubious overseas contingency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. I have often enough repeated my reservations about them, and my purpose is not to belabor that here. Nevertheless, I am constrained to react to a post by Max Boot at Contentions.Mr. Boot wrote to dispute Fouad Ajami’s Wall Street Journal essay, which expresses deep misgivings about about the...

...this is not just about Christian persecution but about the right to choose with whom you share the living space that you are renting out. So, now to the politically correct-pop culture guide to writing a want ad for a roommate. It is to read something like this: Seeking non-faith specific, non-gender specific, not specifically anything in particular generic personage to share a living space.

FORT HOOD, Texas – A soldier who recorded the terror of last year's deadly shooting rampage in Fort Hood using his cell phone was ordered by an officer to delete both videos, a military court heard Friday. Under cross examination, Pfc. Lance Aviles told an Article 32 hearing that his noncommissioned officer ordered him to destroy the two videos on Nov. 5, the same day that a gunman unleashed a volley of bullets inside a processing center at the Texas Army post. The footage could have been vital evidence at the military hearing to decide if Maj. Nidal Hasan should...

Many critics argue that Christopher Columbus gave us a devil's bargain. In October 1492 that Italian explorer, working for Spain, opened America to his fellow Europeans. The result: we got a prosperous New World by impoverishing, enslaving and murdering the natives who were already here. But this view fails to distinguish between two types of exploitation—one over other humans and the other over nature: the former which should be expunged from our moral codes and civilized society, the latter which is the essence of morality and civilization. The former form of exploitation was suffered especially by the tens of millions...

Richmond will have a "Christmas" parade after all. The nonprofit group that organizes the annual event on Broad Street announced today that it would again include "Christmas" in its name. Last week, organizers said they had decided to drop "Christmas" in favor of "holiday" in an effort to make non-Christians feel more welcome. The decision prompted an angry outpouring from many people in the community and some political action groups that showed no signs of lessening, said Robert Kelly, chairman of the parade and president of Richmond Parade Inc. "It just backfired on us," he said. "We made a mistake."

A New Jersey train conductor who burned pages from the Quran outside the planned location of a mosque near ground zero has been fired by the New Jersey Transit, but he is arguing that his First Amendment rights were violated. Mat Staver, founder and president of Liberty Counsel, believes the action is simply a sign of political correctness gone awry. He recognizes that there are strong feelings nationwide, but he goes on to suggest that America is not the first nation to have to deal with this type of situation. "There are many places around the world where these giant...

<p>WELLESLEY — Wellesley’s school superintendent apologized today for allowing middle school students to participate in a prayer service during a field trip to a Roxbury mosque last spring. The apology to parents came after a group critical of the Islamic Society of Boston Community Center — New England’s largest mosque and Muslim cultural center — released a 10-minute long video featuring footage of Wellesley students bowing their heads during a prayer service.</p>

In 1935 Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here, a novel about the rise of tyranny in America, whose message was that it indeed can happen here. Just to remind us that in fact it “can happen here”, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer used the occasion of his appearance on noted legal forum, Good Morning America, to suggest that there may not be any First Amendment protection for burning the Koran. “Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” Breyer told me. “Well, what is it? Why? Because people will be trampled to death. And...

Recently, my family and I went to Disneyland in California. In the California Adventure Park, we watched the otherwise splendid Alladin musical. What disturbed me was that in the chorus was a disabled actress in an electric wheelchair. She had no speaking roles and while her counterparts danced to the music she simply rolled her cart in circles. Having an autistic child, I am happy to see the handicapped perform. However ( and perhaps I am sensitive) I fid it distasteful to have someone one stage just to have gratuitous , politically correct window dressing. Obviously she couldn't play Jasmine...

(AP) MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) - Microsoft Corp. and the chief rules enforcer for Xbox Live are apologizing to a small West Virginia town and a 26-year-old gamer accused of violating the online gaming service's code of conduct by publicly declaring he's from Fort Gay - a name the company considered offensive. The town's name is real. But when Josh Moore tried to tell Seattle-based Microsoft and the enforcement team at Xbox Live, they wouldn't take his word for it. Or Google it. Or check the U.S. Postal Service website for a ZIP code.

South Carolina adopted a perfectly reasonable method to stop the spread of HIV and AIDS in its prison  population: isolating those with the disease from the rest of the prison  population. Unsurprisingly, the demented P.C. crowd at the Department of Justice want to put a halt to that. J. Christian Adams writes in the Washington Examiner: Two unpleasant topics of conversation most of us avoid are the epidemic of HIV/AIDS among prison inmates and a variety of sometimes violent events resulting in transmission of the disease. Some states long ago implemented policies to protect the uninfected part of the prison...

CNN has an interesting roundtable on the case of Jennifer Keeton, who has sued Augusta State University to keep from getting expelled for not repudiating her statements about homosexuality. Keeton expressed her biblical perspective on the subject in and out of class while working toward a degree in counseling, and the school mandated a “remediation plan” that appears to have required her to renounce her Christian doctrine in order to gain a diploma from the school. The school has responded that a bias against homosexuality would disqualify Keeton from certification, a position that would put most Christians in Keeton’s position.Does...

An invitation to a local high school reunion has caused the fur to fly in Marin. The invite for a class reunion for Tamalpais High School class of 1980, contains images that are offensive-- or at the very least-- insensitive. The invitation in question has a graphic of the now-banned former school name and mascot, the Tamalpais High Indians. In addition, an old image of a flirty Indian maid is also pictured. The mascot was changed to the Red Tailed Hawks in 1990. The Pacific Sun's Nikki Silverstein mentioned the invite in her Hero and Zero column chastising the senders...

div class="article_body"> Straight off the heels of the McChrystal-debacle, further conflict between the Obama administration and military officials appears to loom on the horizon - involving none other than newly appointed Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan, General David H. Petraeus. Of the countless characteristics which define liberals, Democrats, and refusal to accept reality and to call a spade a spade. Exhibit 9,999,999,999: the new White House policy to disassociate all mentions of Islam when describing terrorists. The Washington Times' Rowan Scarborough foresees just one tiny problem with the administration's official policy however: John O. Brennan, President Obama's chief national...

At first glance Carline Felts didn't think anything about a flyer that was left on her door, but after a closer look she says she's offended. "That's not acceptable!" she said sternly. "I haven't seen White Trash around here." The "White Trash Party" was to be hosted by the Zen Restaurant and Bar in the Austin Ranch apartment community in The Colony, just off of the North Dallas Tollway. On one side of the flyer there's a scantily clad woman and a picture of Britney Spears on the bottom. The other side of the flyer has a shot of a...