Free Republic

A raging mob in Tbilisi chased away a downtown rally designed to commemorate the May 17 International Day against Homophobia. “Kill them! Tear them to pieces!” yelled the agitated crowd as police struggled to evacuate a handful of gay-rights supporters from the Georgian capital's central Freedom Square. It was a scene of medieval mob violence, as thousands of Georgians -- mostly young men, but also robed priests and women in headscarves -- stormed through a police cordon and went pursuing the activists. “Where are they? Don’t let them leave alive!” screamed frenzied men, as they took over the square, outnumbering...

Jon Feere is the Legal Policy Analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) appears in a new television advertisement designed to promote the immigration amnesty bill currently being debated in Congress. The minute-long advertisement calls the proposal "conservative immigration reform" and attempts to make amnesty appealing to Republican voters. Partisan politics aside, the amnesty ad is misleading on a number of counts, outlined below.The ad was produced by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg who created the floundering FWD.us, an advocacy group aimed at promoting amnesty. One of the group's offshoots is something called "Americans for a Conservative Direction",...

When it’s “public health,” lead by meddling doctors: To pediatricians, gun control is a public health issue, not a political one. But they’re treading a fine line, and they know it.The American Academy of Pediatrics has begun a renewed push to try to get Congress to pass gun control measures, sending more than 100 pediatricians to Capitol Hill earlier this month. Gun control is always political. Doctors should focus on healing patience, not butting their noses in where they don’t belong. Miller’s done research on gun deaths using what CDC data he could get — dating from before Congress cut its funding.He divided...

The public paid limited attention to last week’s congressional hearings on Benghazi. Fewer than half (44%) of Americans say they are following the hearings very or fairly closely, virtually unchanged from late January when Hillary Clinton testified. Last October, 61% said they were following the early stages of the investigation at least fairly closely. The national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted May 9-12 among 1,000 adults, finds that Americans are deeply split over how both the administration and congressional Republicans are handling the situation. Four-in-ten (40%) say the Obama administration has generally been dishonest when it comes to...

CBS News’ Scott Pelley, speaking at Quinnipiac University Friday, admitted that big news agencies are “wrong, over and over again,” so now would be a good time for them to start getting it right. Ask the tough questions of the gun prohibition lobby, and anti-gun media personalities, now that the Bureau of Justice Statistics and Pew Research Center have both released reports loaded with strong evidence that gun grabbers have been wrong on firearms and crime for the past 20 years. This has anti-gunners feverishly spinning the news.Firearm-related homicides have declined dramatically during a period when gun sales have climbed...

Kirsten Powers hit back hard against those who are trying to make this Benghazi story about it being politicized by Republicans, saying that if nobody can cover it because it’s being politicized, then nothing in Washington can ever be covered.

One of the mainstream media journalists whose pursuit of the truth has been truly tenacious and nonpartisan is CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson. Her tough reporting has made life difficult for everyone from Hillary Clinton to the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans. She's also been relentless on the Obama administration's Fast & Furious gun-running scandal -- and, of course, Benghazi. As we mentioned this week, Attkisson's tough investigative journalism is starting to bother unnamed CBS News executives. Here's Politico's scoop, in case you missed it: But from where Attkisson is sitting, there are actually two Goliaths, one of which is almost...

Barack Obama held a campaign stop at Manor Technical High School in Austin, Texas today. He used the high school kids as props for his speech. Obama also told the high schoolers that he will need their help to push his agenda. “Every once in a while I’m going to need your help to lean on your elected representatives…” (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Here’s the transcript via the White House website: Now, there are three things that we’ve got to focus on to create more jobs and opportunity for the middle class. First of all, we’ve got to make America a magnet for...

The European Union (EU) is pouring millions of pounds into organizations that advocate state control of the press. For many, the funding—uncovered recently by Telegraph journalist Andrew Gilligan—is yet further evidence of the EU’s increasingly Orwellian, authoritarian nature. The Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has for years referred to the organization as the EUSSR. … This is not the first time the EU has sought to control freedom of expression. In 2001, the European Court of Justice ruled that the EU was allowed to suppress political criticism of its institutions and of leading figures. The court ruled that the EU was...

On Wednesday, Mother Jones ran an article making a shocking claim: more Americans have been killed by conservative terrorists than by Islamic terrorists since September 11, 2001. “While America has been fixated on the threat of Islamic terrorism for more than a decade, all but a few domestic terror plots have failed,” the article explained. “Between September 11, 2001, and the end of 2012, there were no successful bomb plots by jihadist terrorists in the United States …. [R]ight-wing extremists killed 29 people during those 11 years.”But is it true?The Mother Jones piece is based on a study by the...

People are an asset, not a liability. The United States is the most immigrant-friendly nation in the world and the richest country in the world. This is not a coincidence. Those voices that would make us less immigrant-friendly would make us less successful, less prosperous, and certainly less American. Today, some 11 million "undocumented workers" live in the shadows in the United States. Sixty percent of them crossed the Mexican border or the Canadian border without government approval and 40% arrived by plane and overstayed their visas. The 844-page immigration reform bill submitted to the Senate by the "Gang of...

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday the U.S. intelligence community believes the Syrian regime used the chemical weapon sarin, a revelation that immediately raised the question of whether a "red line" had been crossed in the country's civil war. Hagel confirmed the intelligence assessment, which was detailed in a letter to select members of Congress, while speaking to reporters on a visit to Abu Dhabi. The administration swiftly released those letters, which said U.S. intelligence determined with varying degrees of confidence that "the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin."...

This was a BLAST! Such a good cause! The Move Your Body and Let's Move campaigns (both supported by the First Lady herself, Michelle Obama!) want you to help all the kids out there to move and stay healthy ! Michelle has done an amazing job, but she doesn't want to do it alone knowing others out there would be more than happy to help! So what does she do?? She enlists the likes of The Wanted, Jessica Sanchez, Carly Rae Jepsen, and PEREZ — among others!! All together we teamed up with the WAT-AAH! Foundation, an organization aimed at...

Obama's sales pitch is coming - and you're paying for it. The Obama administration has inked an $8 million public relations contract to promote the health insurance exchange, which Sen. Max Baucus calls "the single most important provision of the ACA." According to an HHS official, PR firm Weber Shandwick will use "a range of communications tactics, with a emphasis on paid media and digital outreach" to raise public awareness of the exchanges. Politico says they'll be targeting "the young and healthy" for enrollment. HHS spent even more last year. In 2012, HHS signed a $3.1 million contract with the...

WASHINGTON -- CNN's John King says he is embarrassed after wrongly reporting last week that a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was arrested, calling the mistake a "double kick in the head" because he's a Boston native. "When you do something like this, it's embarrassing," King, the network's chief national correspondent, told WTOP on Tuesday. "The one thing you have to do is look straight in the camera and say, 'We were wrong.'"

Department of Health and Human Services has just handed out a $3.1 million PR contract to improve the public image of Obamacare. Advertising Age reports that the firm Weber Shandwick will help “roll out a campaign to convince skeptical — or simply confused — Americans the Affordable Care Act is good for them and convince them to enroll in a health plan.” Obama officials insist the ads won’t be political, but critics recall that just before the 2010 midterm election, HHS spent $3.2 million on “educational” TV ads praising Obamacare. The spots featured the late actor Andy Griffith, a favorite...

“Most voters still get their news from television,” a Rasmussen survey sadly reported before dropping the big bomb. “[They] consider the news reported by the media generally trustworthy.” Any serious student of media and propaganda rapidly comes to the conclusion that if one strives to be misinformed, they must watch the evening news. This is nothing new (and hence not news). Long ago a wag opined “Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's St. Matthew's Passion on a ukulele.” Little changed when news quit being produced with ink and started...

President Obama would make a terrible stand-up comedian. He would need a teleprompter to deliver his jokes. And he would need a traveling caravan of smiling children to serve as live props. Sen. Rand Paul was right to say that Obama effectively uses children as ‘props’ to promote his anti-2nd Amendment gun control agenda. On December 14, 2012 a mentally unstable young man named Adam Lanza took the lives of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. Last Wednesday, Obama rallied several family members of the 20 children who died in the Newtown tragedy to...

Durbin: Immigration bill ‘will make us safer’ after Boston attack By Ben Goad - 04/21/13 12:15 PM ET Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) proclaimed Sunday that newly unveiled legislationto overhaul the nation’s immigration system would strengthen national security in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon attack. Appearing on Meet the Press, Durbin (D-Ill.) said last week’s Boston bombings revealed a need for bolstered federal resources to prevent future attacks. But he said the contentious 844-page immigration bill would make strides toward greater national security. “Immigration reform will make us safer, and I hope that those that are critical...

Lax marijuana laws may soon become a reality in the United States. ... National support is rising for this cause.[5] Cohen’s proposal comes as a bipartisan coalition of House representatives have sponsored the Respect Marijuana Laws Act.[6] It would exempt businesses that comply with state marijuana laws from federal prosecution.[7] Moreover, Kentucky senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul recently supported the passage of a regulatory framework allowing industrial hemp in their state.[8][9] McConnell is a figurehead for the GOP establishment. Paul represents the rising libertarian caucus. Ergo, the Republican Party may soon change its position on pot.

We already knew that opponents of immigration reform had no good arguments in favor of preserving the status quo. Now we know they have no shame. Some of them are deliberately mixing apples and oranges and trying to use the tragedy of the Boston Marathon bombing to scuttle efforts in Washington to achieve immigration reform. All last week, my friends in the immigration reform community held their collective breath and hoped that -- when investigators finally zeroed in on a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing -- that person would NOT turn out to be foreign-born. Immigrants are blamed for...

The seeds of nihilism are sown... I have a suggestion for militant atheist cum zoologist Richard Dawkins about a British (although it has now got to America as well) TV program to watch, that is bound to lift his spirit: The Jeremy Kyle Show. There he can see exactly the kind of society he is trying to promote and propagate. People who appear on the show have been living the sort of life which was advertised for £140,000 on billboards all over buses and underground trains across England, Scotland and Wales, in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, York, Leeds,...

Mark Potok, a fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center, appeared on MSNBC to discuss the rise of right-wing militias over the course of the Obama presidency in connection with the bombing of the Boston Marathon on Monday. He said that foreign nations view Americans as being “insane” for allowing hate speech to continue to be protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Alex Wagner said that it remains unclear whether the attack on the Boston Marathon was perpetrated by foreign or domestic elements. “But the mere fact that both are being treated with the same amount of suspicion...

The Democrat Comic-Strip Narrative Series present: TALES FROM THE WAR ON WOMEN™ By the DNC-Media Complex SYNOPSIS It's the beginning of the 21st century. The US economy is crumbling because of George Bush. The Republicans prevent young President Obama from fixing it because they get rich off the people's suffering. To distract from the economic issues, the Republicans begin an unprovoked War on Women with a surprise attack on a young attractive activist, who has quickly become a sex symbol for all American men and a role model for all women - except Republicans. The narrative is still being created,...

On ABC's This Week Sunday, George Will made a comment about the need for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants that is likely to raise eyebrows on both sides of the aisle. "As the baby boomers retire, and as the birthrate declines, we need something to replenish the workforce to sustain the welfare state" (video follows with transcript and commentary):*NOTE: Video at link* JONATHAN KARL, SUBSTITUTE HOST: George, right to you. You heard a debate among Republicans on immigration. Which side should the Republican Party come down on? GEORGE WILL: Every conservative sympathizes with what Jeff Sessions was saying...

A St. Louis County police records clerk was stumped when a concealed-carry permit applicant presented a certificate showing he had received the required eight hours of firearms training that very day. She looked at her watch. It was about 1:30 p.m. March 5. She asked exactly when he took the class. It started at 10 a.m., he said. She alerted supervisors.

Scientist claims to invent 'time machine' to see into the future with 98 per cent accuracy • He says his device can detail any individual’s life between five and eight years in advance after taking readings from the user's touch An Iranian scientist claims he has invented a time machine that allows you to predict the future with 98 per cent accuracy. Ali Razeghi says his device can produce a print-out detailing any individual’s life between five and eight years in advance after taking readings from the user's touch. He claims the Iranian government, whose nuclear programme has caused concern...

‘I Am Willing to Give Up Some of My Constitutional Rights…to Be Safer’ The words are written in crayon, in the haphazard bumpiness of a child's scrawl. "I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure." They're the words that Florida father Aaron Harvey was stunned to find his fourth-grade son had written, after a lesson in school about the Constitution. Florida 4th Grader Brings Home Paper That Says, I Am Willing to Give Up Some of My Constitutional Rights in Order to Be Safer...paper Aaron Harvey's son wrote as...

The Southern Poverty Law Center has released its annual report on "The Year in Hate and Extremism," in which the organization estimates the size of the "extremist" threat. Since its count of hate groups has dropped since last year—the number went down from 1,018 to 1,007—the center is hyping a 7 percent increase in another category: what it calls "conspiracy-minded antigovernment 'Patriot' groups." The SPLC's definition of "Patriot" is pretty broad: The list ranges from the conservative websites WorldNetDaily and FreeRepublic.com to the Moorish Science Temple and its offshoots. The Moors, a black militant movement, are presumably included because they...

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White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer complained that the Drudge Report (a prominent website for news headlines) is “hurting our message.” “If it were only Drudge we had to contend with we’d be okay,” Pfeiffer said. “The problem is other media are picking up his content and demanding to know our response. This flies in the face of the protocol we have striven to establish. We feel that the media should be getting their main thrust from us. They should not be badgering the Administration with notions originating from outside.” Thus far, Pfeiffer’s approach toward combating this threat has been...

This video looks like a Saturday Night Live spoof. If only it were.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A photo of the Obamas hugging that was released on Election Day 2012 has become the world’s most popular tweet on Twitter. A dressed-up version of Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech, packed with charts and graphs, is huge on YouTube. A playful picture of the president cavorting with a 3-year-old in a Spiderman costume is a favorite online.

So I just noticed today that a few of my "Facebook friends" more like 2 people I haven't spoken to in twenty years, had those stupid gay marriage red equality signs up. I defriended them all, anyone else have the same thing happen?

Election enraged man who posted Facebook pic of son with rifle. After a bit of introductory warm-up about the police raid on a New Jersey gun owner to “check his guns,” philly.com gets to it: the slurs and innuendos contained in the Carneys Point police report (not provided thank you very much). According the po-po, “Shawn Moore [above] was ‘ranting and waiving,’ ‘aggressive’ and acting ‘arrogantly’ when he rushed home from the restaurant March 14 to find [the cops] there, asking to look at his firearms because of an anonymous call they had received about his children’s safety. Moore later...

The latest theme of those who oppose guns seems to be suicide (e.g. here). All those naughty guns lying around makes people pop themselves off, apparently. So the USA with all its guns must be the leading country for suicides? Far from it. The USA is well down on the list. It comes in at no. 34 on the list of suicides per head. If you indulged in the sort of shallow reasoning that Leftists use, you could in fact conclude that having guns around generates a PROTECTIVE effect against suicide.

Media: The left has been trying to paint the new Pope Francis as someone with a dark past dating to Argentina's dirty war. One problem: Their allegations are falling apart. So now it's all about endlessly repeated innuendo. Tell a lie often enough, and it becomes truth. That seems to be the premise for the constant references to "persistent doubts," "raising questions," "alleged charges" and other weasel-word qualifiers the press uses about the new pope. They can be found in the likes of the New York Times, the Daily Beast, the BBC, Der Spiegel and others. The idea seems to...

When I heard Clinton was picked by the Obama administration to serve as the Secretary of State, I was curious if anyone in the Senate confirmation hearings would bring up her political ties with Ram Ranjan.And since her confirmation, Clinton has now put blame on Sri Lanka for the death of civilians. For those who don't know who Ram Ranjan is, he was involved with a political fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. Ram Ranjan is a supporter of the Tamil Tigers. The Tamil Tigers are considered a terrorist group. In the above hyper link you will find the following: Update II:...

Bangkok, Thailand - Over two months after the bloody finale of Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war, a lingering row over civilian casualties continues to roil a fractured society. Sri Lankan authorities have insisted that their final military push against Tamil Tiger rebels didn't target hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped behind enemy lines. But aid workers, church officials, and government doctors reported that heavy shelling had caused mass casualties. A preliminary United Nations report estimated that 7,000 had died between January and May. On Wednesday, however, a group of doctors who had provided dramatic firsthand accounts of civilian suffering in...

At first glance, Spec Ops: The Line looks like nothing more than a straight-ahead military shooter. Its story tells of some future date when the desert-bound high-tech city of Dubai is being blasted by incredibly deadly sandstorms. These biblically proportioned tempests are leaving luxury hotels and skyscrapers buried beneath shifting dunes and swirling debris. Dubai's wealthy elite initially downplay the situation before evacuating in secret, leaving countless "lesser" citizens behind. And so, the United States steps up to help evacuate the populace with an infantry battalion led by American hero Col. John Konrad. By the time gamers are inserted into...

The Los Angeles Times ran a Thursday editorial by Middlebury College Professor Bill McKibben arguing that allowing millions of illegal immigrants into America will reduce global warming. “I feel it's urgent that we get real immigration reform, allowing millions to step out of the shadows and on to a broad path toward citizenship,” wrote McKibben. “It will help, not hurt, our environmental efforts, and potentially in deep and powerful ways.” McKibben says that while the average American has a larger carbon footprint than a person living in the developing world, bringing more immigrants to America would likely reduce their tendency...

"I live in Buenos Aires. Bergoglio has destroyed the archdioceses, persecuting every single orthodox priest.

There's something odd with a Sunday New York Times report on gun ownership in America.  They claim the number of Americans owning guns are at its lowest since the 1970s.  They attribute it to a reduction in violent crime, which contradicts the media narrative that we need more gun control, and the increased rates of Americans settling in urban areas.  The problem is two years ago; the number of Americans owning guns was at 47 percent. Now, it's 35 percent.  So, there was a twelve-point drop in two years, and a little over three months after Sandy Hook.  How could...

North Korea tells its people how Americans live today. We were told by Mao that life in the West was so miserable that they were waiting for us to liberate. (Love the translator's Northern English accent. ;-))

Barack Obama did not bring us to this first circle of hell on his own. He was aided and abetted by 1) an education system with a relentless propaganda agenda, 2) a media oligopoly that has completely abrogated its First Amendment responsibility and 3) a celebrity dominated culture that is largely a product of the first two. We begin today with a look at: I. The Education System In a previous post I covered how the public education system fell under the thrall of postmodernism – simply a new name for all the old socialist/communist/relativist claptrap. Some of the...

The Saudi Cultural Attaché in Japan has published a book written in Japanese for primary school children in the country to learn about life in Saudi Arabia. The book, “Our Friends in Saudi Arabia”, was written with the support and supervision of the Ministry of Higher Education, and will give children the opportunity to learn about the Saudi people, culture, customs and traditions, tourist attractions and moral values. It also discusses the Kingdom’s role in spreading the message of Islam

Being the outdated and unnecessary entities that they are, unions continue to fortify the establishments and institutions that have kept us in shackles. Unions were designed to protect the rights of workers from the predatory practices of corporations and industrialists. Today, unions are nothing more than the stitches that keep the fabric of the status quo together. In this case, the status quo consists of incompetence, grossly inflated salaries, recycled myths, and the endless expansion of government and bureaucracy. The status quo feeds off of attitudes, trends, and values. The place that controls these things, and ensures the status quo...

But along with many who stood in the cold waiting their turn, he was skeptical that the program would get guns out of the hands of criminals. “This is a little bit of a farce,’’ he said, as he pointed out that all of the dozen or so people in line were older, including two men who were wearing retired Navy caps. “Look at us,” he said. “There’s not a criminal here. We’re all nice guys turning in guns we don’t want.” Barry Weiner, the head of the city’s Water & Water Pollution Control Authority, was there to turn in...

We would know what works and doesn’t in terms of “gun control” if only the National Rifle Association hadn’t employed “a tactic of fear” and killed Congressional funding for research. That’s the message Dr. Mark Rosenberg, former director of the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control put forth, and that ProPublica’s Joaquin Sapien accepted without question (let alone challenge). His Feb. 25 Q&A with Rosenberg, presented as “ongoing” investigative journalism, reads more like a fake infomercial “interview” to anyone who’s been watching the debate and has seen old tricks before. Absent from Sapien’s fawning setups...

OS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. first lady Michelle Obama made a surprise and unprecedented appearance on Sunday's Oscars telecast when she presented the award for Best Picture, the first time a president or first lady has ever presented an Academy Award. Appearing live on screen from the White House in Washington, almost 3,000 miles from the Oscars ceremony in Hollywood, Obama praised the work of the movie industry before announcing the Iran hostage drama "Argo" the Best Picture winner. Wearing a silver evening dress, Obama said this year's nominated films had "made us laugh, made us weep and grip our...