Free Republic

David Frum is a writer who, in 1997, engaged in a spirited online debate with homosexual writer Andrew Sullivan over the topic of homosexual "marriage." In over 5,500 words of text, Frum was articulate, cogent, and compelling in his opposition to radically redefining marriage, saying that "this request isn't just misplaced, but is actually logically impossible." Now, however, Frum has changed his mind. In a short CNN op-ed last week, he wrote that "the case against same-sex marriage has been tested against reality. The case has not passed its test." Tested? Only five out of the fifty states (soon to...

The Houston National Cemetery has told veterans and volunteers alike that they can no longer use the word "God,""God bless," or "Jesus" at any and all funerals or condolence cards. The word has been deemed 'offensive.' That is according to local volunteer and veterans groups that work at the cemetery. They are now suing the Cemetery in federal court so that they can use the word God. To cite one specific example given in the suit, the director of the cemetery, Arleen Ocasio commanded volunteers never to use "God bless you" and "God bless" ever again at the cemetery. Cheryl...

The Austin Parks Foundation has canceled tonight’s showing of Napoleon Dynamite at Republic Square because of complaints about an offensive word in the movie. According to an email the foundation sent out: “The Austin Parks Foundation is canceling tonight’s (Wed, 5/25) showing of Napoleon Dynamite at Republic Square. A new movie will be shown next month. A number of people contacted us objecting to a word used by actors in the movie. We didn’t recall that this word was used and we did not mean to offend anyone. Our apologies for this as well as for the last minute cancellation.”...

Pastor Scott Rainey planned to deliver a prayer at a Memorial Day ceremony yesterday. There was only one problem: that prayer mentioned Jesus. To the vast majority of Americans, saying the name Jesus during a prayer would not only be all right, but almost required. However, the Dept. of Veterans Affairs and the Houston National Cemetery, and cemetery director Arleen Ocasio, found the name offensive and moved quickly. “Our national cemeteries are places for all veterans of all beliefs,” Ocasio wrote in a letter to Mr. Rainey. “We cannot be exclusive at a ceremony meant to be inclusive for all...

PLACERVILLE, Calif. - Supervisors in a Northern California county voted Tuesday to replace 36 gravestones that bear the N-word, giving the green light to state, county and community officials to design an alternative. The graves hold the remains of pioneers of various races from a Gold Rush settlement called Negro Hill. The federal government moved the bodies from the mining town in 1954 to make way for a dam, and in the process, erected concrete headstones that said the settlers came from N-word Hill....

"Geronimo—ekia." With this coded message, sent on May 1, a U.S. Navy SEALs commando squad signaled the death of Osama bin Laden, the "enemy killed in action." The mission was pulled off without a hitch, but in the week since then, debate has raged in some circles about the code name. The administration hasn't explained why the operation targeting Bin Laden used the name of one of the nation's best-known Native Americans, saying the selection process of names for such missions is confidential. But the use of Geronimo's name speaks to the powerful, if unexamined, hold that the nation's "Indian...

For weeks, Maurice Hudson's family had been wondering what happened to the 25-year-old after he disappeared from their lives. On Jan. 31, the family filed a missing persons report, according to Chicago police officials. His father, Asa Hubbard, said Hudson had been acting strange, sometimes laughing to himself for no apparent reason. On Saturday, the family learned Hudson had been arrested and charged with murder after briefly leaving the country. "I had no idea," Hubbard said, when contacted by the Tribune. Telling his family he was going to London for a vacation, Hudson, who was formerly in the Navy, left...

So what are the odds insurers playing fair on the EU ruling and equalising costs for men and women drivers? I’d put the chance at somewhere between extremely slim and not going to happen. You would presume that the eurocrats who have outlawed gender based risk pricing on insurance would have realised this, but then perhaps they just don’t care. Because it seems that in their world enforced equality trumps fact. It’s rare that I find myself having any desire whatsoever to defend the insurance industry and its pricing, but there is an entire shadowy counter culture of actuaries out...

Over the last several decades the nations of Europe were not good role models for self-reliance and good judgment, embracing crazy ideas that led some to financial catastrophe and caused serious problems for others. Today, however, we see that at least on one subject the Europeans finally have seen the light and the error of their ways. Last Thursday French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared that multiculturalism had failed. And he is not alone; other European leaders like British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Spanish ex-premier Jose Maria Aznar also say that multicultural policies have not successfully integrated...

The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a Congressional inquiry. The government commission that investigated the financial crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors, and risky bets on securities backed by the loans. < snip > ..... Many of the findings have been widely described, but its synthesis of interviews, documents and testimony,...

In the early 1990s, the biggest names in the mortgage industry hatched a plan for a new electronic clearinghouse that would transform the home loan business - and unlock billions of dollars of new investments and profits. At the time, mortgage documents were moved almost exclusively by hand and mail, a throwback to an era in which people kept stock certificates, too. That made it hard for banks to buy and sell packages of home loans to investors. By contrast, a central electronic clearinghouse would allow the companies to transfer thousands of mortgages instantaneously, greasing the wheels of a system...

I enjoy making up politically correct versions of Christmas carols. But today many young people are unfamiliar with the carols we knew so well. This year I listened to radio and watched TV in the weeks before Christmas. Unless I tuned to a religious station, carols were few and far between. Even mall music included fewer carols than in the past. My favorite carol is “Good King Wenceslas.” It expresses the essence of religion: not dogma but treating our fellow humans with kindness. But I haven’t heard it on TV or radio for years. Kids used to grow up hearing...

President Obama's repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is already damaging the U.S. military. An Army lieutenant colonel has asked to be relieved of command rather than order his troops to go through pro-homosexual indoctrination following the repeal of the policy, which required homosexuals to keep silent about their sexual preference. Currently the commander of a battalion-sized unit in the Army National Guard, the officer also has threatened to resign his commission rather than undergo "behavior modification" training intended to counter his religious convictions about homosexuality.

The Society for Professional Journalists (SPJ)’s Diversity Committee has announced that it will be launching a year-long campaign to educate journalists about the hurtfulness of phrases like “illegal immigrant,” which is the term currently preferred by the influential AP Stylebook. The label “remains offensive to Latinos, and especially Mexicans, and to the fundamentals of American jurisprudence,” wrote Leo E. Laurence, a member of the SPJ Diversity Committee and the editor the San Diego News Service (which appears to be this blog that was last updated in August, 2009. Seeing as most Latinos in the U.S. are not illegal immigrants –...

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...