Free Republic

The Democratic Party needs an intervention and then it needs to be sent to rehab. The lunacy behind the thinking of many traditional Democrats that any Democrat in Congress is better than no Democrat at all needs to be exposed and treated for the infectious disease that it is. The absence of democracy in a congress whose votes are bought, sold, and traded like pork bellies by big corporations in exchange for highly profitable votes and amendments on bills is a bi-partisan infection. The fact that 20 to 25 percent of Americans support policies and politicians that are bat s@@t...

I have just noticed that YouTube has pulled several Obama videos that I had saved in my playlist. For example...(from the remaining data that was left with the video pulled) Sen. Barack Hussein Obama attacks small-town Americans during a fundraiser in left-wing San Fransisco. We'll analyze his offensive remarks. (This is where he is calling us bitter, gun/religion clingers, etc.) Audio of Michelle Obama using the term "My Baby's Daddy" Barack Obama. This was in 2004 when Barack was running for Senator. ...and others that were not parodies but actual audio/video of his remarks... So this prompts me to ask...is...

Leesburg, Virginia: Looks like the traditional Loudoun County Courthouse Christmas displays will be absent this year. For almost 50 years the Rotary Club of Leesburg has placed a Christmas tree on the courthouse grounds, Leesburg Today reported. For 20 years, Dennis and Debbie Welch has set up the courthouse nativity scene. But a new policy from the Facilities and Grounds Committee of the Loudoun County Courthouse prohibits any displays, according to Leesburg Today. Phil Rusciolelli has spearheaded the Rotary Club's Christmas tree initiative the past five years.

N. Korea: Rational Pollution Advice Causes Devastation By Moon Sung Hwee, from Jagang in 2006 [2009-11-24 18:08 ] The Soil Research Institute at Hamheung Chemical Engineering University has been dissolved and all researchers and cadres associated with it dismissed. The action was apparently taken because they submitted a paper which spoke negatively of the actual condition of polluted soil in the country and measures to deal with it to the Central Committee of the Party. A source from South Hamkyung Province revealed the news to the Daily NK last Saturday in a telephone interview, saying, “The Soil Research Institute sent...

Ogabe to purge Republicans from the civil serviceZhang Fei 11/12/2009 1:59:38 PM Republicans appointed to the civil service from the ranks of political appointees in the last 5 years, that is: Via Instapundit comes word that the federal government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intends to purge the federal government of Republican civil servants all in the name of purify the federal bureaucracy. You can read the OPM memo here. It is a typical Washington process that many political appointees are able to take jobs within the civil service once their political appointment expires usually at the conclusion of one...

The Office of Personnel Management will be reviewing political appointees who have "burrowed in" to federal career jobs over the past five years, according a memo issued by Director John Berry to all government agencies and executive departments. "Burrowing in" is what Beltway insiders call it when someone who was appointed by say, President George W. Bush, leaves an appointed position to take a career job inside the government. "While political appointees may not be excluded from consideration for federal jobs because of their political affiliation, they must not be given preference or special advantages," Mr. Berry said in his...

Via Instapundit comes word that the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intends to purge the federal government of Republican civil servants all in the name of purify the federal bureaucracy.

Remember how the Democrats reacted when the Bush Administration started replacing U.S. Attorneys? At least they were actually political appointees employed at the will and whim of the President.

Early Saturday morning, 7Online.com, the website for ABC's New York affiliate WABC-TV, reported the previous night's arrest of Jason Shih, an alleged campaign worker for Governor Jon Corzine (D-NJ) charged with "possession of a controlled narcotic and paraphernalia that is used for distribution." For some reason, although the headline "Corzine campaign worker arrested" shows up in a Google News search, the page is no longer available: "We are sorry, but the URL you requested could not be found. The page you are looking for may have been renamed, moved, or deleted." A search of "Jason Shih" and "Corzine" at 7Online.com...

<p>Atheists asked the Macomb County Road Commission to rescind their order removing a privately maintained Nativity scene set at the crossroads of the city.</p> <p>The Christmas culture wars for 2009 have begun and ground zero is the Detroit suburb of Warren, which for 63 years has hosted a privately maintained Nativity scene set at the crossroads of the city.</p>

John Satawa's family has displayed a nativity scene on a street median in Warren, Mich., virtually every Christmas season since 1945, but following an intimidating letter sent by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Satawa's county has put stop to the 63-year-old tradition. The Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation proclaims its purpose in the letter to the Road Commission of Macomb County was to "protect the fundamental constitutional principle of separation of church and state." But Satawa contends there's nothing unconstitutional about his privately owned and maintained Christmas display. With the help of the Thomas More Law Center, Satawa has filed...

Not sure if anyone has picked this up yet, but the editors at the Huffington Post have pulled the fake Limbaugh "slavery" quotes from a 2006 Jack Huberman article. Huberman's book was one of the original sources for the fake quotes, apparently picking them up from the wikipedia entry where they first appeared. A note at the beginning of the article now states: Editor's Note: An earlier version of this post contained quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh, which Limbaugh has since denied making. As is our policy when a fact in a blog post is called into question, we gave...

ALBANY, Ore. - At the Oaks Apartments in Albany, the management can fly their own flag advertising one and two bedroom apartments - but residents have been told they can't fly any flags at all. Jim Clausen flies the American flag from the back of his motorcycle. He has a son in the military heading back to Iraq, and the flag - he said - is his way of showing support. "This flag stands for all those people," said Clausen, an Oaks Apartment resident. "It stands for the people that can no longer stand - who died in wars. That's...

The British paper The Guardian – which one would just dismiss as an irrelevant left-wing rag, except that it is the overwhelming paper of choice for British teachers and for news staff at the BBC, the world’s largest broadcasting network, who are “inspired” by Guardian stories on a daily basis in their broadcasts – is no friend of Israel and the Jews, as I have noted before. But now it has wiped Israel off the Nobel Prize map, much as Iranian despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like to wipe Israel off the real map. To accompany their story about Barack Obama...

Please help us get this information into the hands of as many people as possible by forwarding it to your entire e-mail list of family and friends. God returns to the Capitol Visitors Center Congressman says YOU and your AFA made the difference! October 6, 2009 When the $621 million Capitol Visitors Center opened last year, somebody was conspicuously absent at the opening ceremony: God. Virtually all references to the role that faith in God played in the founding and development of the United States had been scrubbed from displays. The secular fundamentalists who designed the exhibits even mistakenly said...

Keeping quiet about an apparent extortion attempt against David Letterman and “The Late Show,” CBS worked over the weekend to stamp out unauthorized copies of the late-night host’s televised explanation. The network did not post official copies of the segment on CBS.com or on YouTube, proving that while media companies are now generally eager to distribute their material on the Web, there are still some TV moments they would rather not spread widely. In a remarkable 10-minute segment Thursday night, Mr. Letterman told viewers of a Connecticut man’s suspected $2 million extortion attempt, predicated on evidence of Mr. Letterman’s sexual...

<p>Those who read the New York Times's coverage of the unsuccessful results of Barack and Michelle Obama's attempt to seal the 2016 Summer Olympics bid for Chicago on Friday afternoon ('For Obama, an Unsuccessful Campaign") might want to read it again.</p>

The Alliance Defense Fund sent a letter to Governor Brewer and other officials saying that it goes against the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. By KFYI News (KFYI News) Federal and Arizona officials, including Governor Brewer, were sent a letter by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) to stop enforcing a requirement banning kids from creating ornaments with religious themes for the 2009 Capitol Christmas Tree. Click here to read the entire letter. Arizona was given the honor of providing Washington D.C. their annual Christmas tree and having schoolchildren from around the state decorate the tree with some 4,000 ornaments....

The paper, Women in Power: Milestones, listed 28 of the most significant events between 1907 and 2008 involving women on the political stage. The milestones included the election of the first female Head of Government – Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka in 1960 and Britain's first woman councillor Reina Emily Lawrence in 1907. The document, produced by the Equality Office which is run by Miss Harman, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, highlights the role of Nancy Astor who was the first woman to take her seat in parliament in 1919, the election of Dianne Abbott...

To purge or not to purge: Controversy brews over voter rolls Controversy brews over process striking registered voters off rollsBy Michael Kelley (Contact), Memphis Commercial Appeal Sunday, September 20, 2009 The Republican-controlled Shelby County Election Commission has been aggressively purging the voter registration roll this year following a registration binge by Democrats last fall. If there is any relationship it's tenuous, though, and the commission has been carefully following federal law as it has pared the list of Shelby County voters to about 600,000.****Snip****Voters who identify themselves as white comprise 53 percent of those purged this year, while they make...

Soldiers fight for desert cross By Bill Hess Published/Last Modified on Sunday SIERRA VISTA — “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,” goes the opening of an old hymn. But for Sgt. Zachary Thomson, a cross on a hill in California’s Mojave Desert has a different meaning. It’s not a religious symbol to the 26-year-old Sierra Vista resident, who is serving with a Military Police unit at Fort Polk, La. It’s a war memorial, put up in 1934 by veterans of World War I, to honor Americans who died in that conflict. But now the memorial is...

WASHINGTON — A California Republican congressman wants to do a little writing on the walls of Washington's newest federal building. If Rep. Dan Lungren gets his way, Congress will spend nearly $100,000 to engrave the words "In God We Trust " and the Pledge of Allegiance in prominent spots at the Capitol Visitor Center . Lungren's proposal drew only a whimper of opposition last week when the House of Representatives voted 410-8 to approve it. Now, however, Lungren finds himself tussling with a national atheists and agnostics group. The Wisconsin -based Freedom From Religion Foundation Inc. sued this week to...

Arguments are scheduled Monday in the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on a school district's decision to censor Christmas carols – even holiday melodies without words. Attorneys with the Thomas More Law Center say they will argue to reverse a lower court ruling affirming a policy in the South Orange-Maplewood School District that banned the music after someone complained. The law firm says the school's ban was specifically aimed at preventing Christmas music, including simple instrumentals without words, during holiday concernts. The district had allowed the performance of traditional Christmas music for more than 60 years but...

Many prominent young bloggers say its time conservatives altered their fortunes and cast off those intellectual dead weights who stir up irrational fear. Time to throw off those whose intellectual bankruptcy has left the conservative movement with no credibility in the eyes of the American people. No, they’re not calling for the removal of those writers and political leaders who told us that if we didn’t give the Treasury $700 billion to distribute to corporate America, the world as we know it would end, thus undermining free-market economics. Rather, the talk from young political guns Patrick Ruffini and Jon Henke...

One of the "Most Commented" stories on the Houston Chronicle was the story about Joe Wilson shouting "You lie!" during Obama's speech. The story appears as a "Most Commented" story in the right hand column on the website. Upon clicking on that link, the story is "Access forbidden" and is not found. Interesting.

JERUSALEM – How is this for a quick clean up job? Last week, WND reported the official communist-oriented manifesto of a radical group founded by Obama's environmental adviser, Van Jones, was published in full on the Internet. Just hours later, the manifesto was removed and the entire website was taken down. It is, however, still available in web archives. As WND previously reported, Van Jones, special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is an admitted black nationalist and radical communist. Jones was the leader and founder of a radical group, the...

At Wednesday’s Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Board meeting, chairman H.R. Crawford – a former District Council member and Marion Barry confidante – told fellow Board members that he has heard talk on Capitol Hill about yanking former President Ronald Reagan’s name off the local airport and returning it to its previous generic moniker: National Airport. “It was just a discussion. We’re not aware of anything specific,” MWAA spokeswoman Tara Hamilton later told The Examiner. It’s clear that the current crop of congressional leaders want no part of Reagan’s grand conservative vision for America, but erasing all trace of his memory...

Considering that top Christian leaders in the UK actually backed the opening of the Sharia Courts there, I guess that this should come as no surprise. The slow suicide continues. CROSS BAN FOR CHURCH SCHOOLGIRL Young Lauren banned from wearing her necklace By Emily Fox A CHURCH of England school has ordered a pupil to remove her necklace with a cross even though children of other faiths can wear religious jewellery.

Moscow.- Russia's Ministry of Justice has adopted a ruling by the Supreme Court that flags with crosses will be considered symbols of extremism, and their display will be banned. The ruling effectively outlaws the flags of Georgia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Dominican Republic and Jamaica, as well as those of 15 states within the Russian Federation.

So, on Saturday night, James Cameron's 1997 movie "TITANIC", with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, came on at 7 p.m. I own the original on DVD and have seen that version close to 40 or 50 times. My young son is obsessed with anything that has to do with Titanic, so we've seen it a lot, and I know all of the scenes and most of the dialogue. As usual, when a movie is shown on TV, any foul language will be deleted, or replaced with other less offensive words. But in this version, I also noticed that when a...

The popular photo sharing website Flickr has taken down the original version of the now famous Obama Joker poster that’s been sweeping the nation. Apparently, management is concerned about a copyright infringement issue due to the appearance of the Time magazine logo in Firas Alkhateeb’s parody that ended up being reprinted with the word “Socialism” at the bottom. Oddly, a quick search of Flickr identified a number of Bush parodies with Time’s logo present (vulgarity alert below the fold).

It's rarely a good PR move when a social Web site decides to remove a politically-charged image--the InterWebs get angry. One such case came to light today: A Photoshop mockup of President Obama as the Joker from The Dark Knight, superimposed on the cover of Time magazine, has been removed from Flickr. The 20-year-old Chicagoan who made the photo got an email from Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo!, saying the it had been removed due to copyright concerns. Plenty of tech pundits are saying Flickr was strong-armed by Time, Inc., which didn't like its brand associated with something so...

New York, NY, August 4, 2009 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called on the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a "sham transaction" and prohibit a prominent religious display on public land. In an amicus brief submitted to the Court in Salazar v. Buono, ADL and a coalition of civil rights groups also emphasized the importance of allowing Americans access to courts to challenge violations of the First Amendment. Marvin D. Nathan, ADL Civil Rights Committee Chair, issued the following statement:

CLEARWATER — The Clearwater City Council plans to discuss the removal of several American flags, an act that has drawn widespread ire, during a work session this morning. Kevin Dunbar, Clearwater's parks and recreation director, ordered the removal of 13 flagpoles from across the city last week. He said budget cuts made it impossible to properly care for the flags. So Dunbar had city workers pull the poles out of the ground. The last flagpoles were removed Friday. City Council members and Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard were never consulted before the removal. Public reaction to news of the flag removal...

ATLANTA, GA - While U.S. airports often have chapels, many of them no longer display crosses or other symbols that would make them specific to a particular faith. The chapel at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport features a silhouette of a person kneeling and a generic stained-glass window. It also has a library stocking everything from Gideon Bibles to Jewish mystical texts, and a large floor mat provides a cushiony spot to kneel for prayer. A large compass on the chapel floor helps guide Muslims who pray toward Mecca.

CLEARWATER (Bay News 9) -- Money is so tight in Clearwater that the city can no longer afford to fly the American flag. The city's parks and recreation director ordered the removal of more than a dozen flagpoles from across the city this week, saying that budget cuts make it impossible to properly care for the flags. According to Bay News 9's partner paper, the St. Petersburg Times, the city says lighting flags at night and removing them if they are damaged are tasks the city cannot afford to worry about anymore.

CLEARWATER — Here's probably the most bizarre casualty of shrinking government budgets you'll hear. The city of Clearwater can no longer afford to fly the American flag. Clearwater's parks and recreation director ordered the removal of 13 flagpoles from across the city this week saying budget cuts have made it impossible to properly care for the flags. "Over the last three years, the parks and recreation staff has been reduced by 25 percent,'' explained director Kevin Dunbar. "When you have a flagpole, you have certain responsibilities. The flag has to be lit at night, if a flag has a rip...

(UPDATE: The Boston Globe has now posted what it calls a redacted revised docket although it is described as a "police report" on its site. And redacted it certainly is since it has redacted out almost the entire narrative section of the original report. To read the full highly revealing narrative, check out the original police report.)

A little tip for anyone who gets stopped by a police officer for a possible traffic violation. Be polite. Very polite. Even if you think you were wrongly stopped, do not under any circumstances start yelling at the police officer. Follow this advice and your chances of being given a traffic ticket, instead of just a warning, go way down. The same applies for any encounter with a police officer because the surest way to get yourself arrested is to act act arrogantly and aggressively when questioned. Whatever you do, do not act like the arrestee in the Henry Louis...

I'm a fighter for the freedoms of speech and religion. They are our constitutional rights -- what the First Amendment is all about. But those freedoms don't give atheists the entitlement to eliminate or revise America's religious heritage in the new $621 million taxpayer-provided Capitol Visitor Center in Washington. This month, the House and Senate passed identical resolutions approving the engravings of the national motto ("In God We Trust") and the Pledge of Allegiance in prominent places in the Capitol Visitor Center -- a 580,000-square-foot facility under the Capitol -- where 15,500 guests visit each day. Spearheading the measures were...

Owners of Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader have received a nasty surprise, after discovering that copies of books by George Orwell had been deleted from their gadgets without their knowledge. The books - downloaded from Amazon.com by American Kindle users - were remotely deleted after what the US company says was a request by the publisher, MobileReference.com. Amazon refunded the cost of the books, but told affected customers they could no longer read the books and that the titles were "no longer available for purchase". "Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store," a...

The nation's largest group of atheists and agnostics filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block an architect from engraving "In God We Trust"...

The nation's largest group of atheists and agnostics filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block an architect from engraving "In God We Trust" and the Pledge of Allegiance at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington. The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in western Wisconsin, claims the taxpayer-funded engravings would be an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The House and Senate passed identical resolutions this month directing the Architect of the Capitol to engrave "In God We Trust" and the pledge in prominent places at the entrance for 3 million tourists who visit the Capitol each...

Gerry Stoltzfoos is a man of faith -- but not the type who preaches constantly with in-your-face theology. Even the Gettysburg-area church where he serves as lead pastor is designed more as a gathering hall than as a shrine full of religious imagery. But when it comes to prayer, Stoltzfoos is steadfast in his approach of speaking directly to and addressing by name the Christian God he worships. "I think prayer is talking to God, so when I pray, I try to talk to him," said Stoltzfoos, the pastor of Freedom Valley Worship Center in Straban Township, Adams County. However,...

As recent AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin tells the story, when a White House aide called him on June 10, Walpin thought the administration was calling him to enlist his support - as a prominent Republican member of the New York bar - for the confirmation of Sonya Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, Special Counsel to the President Norm Eisen informed Walpin that President Obama wanted Walpin out of his job. Walpin's defenders believe Obama fired him because Walpin was a successful whistle-blower, who blew the whistle on the president's friends and pet causes. In 2008, the Corporation...

PBS to Begin Phasing Out Religious Programming From Airwaves PBS board members have decided to enforce a rule barring religious broadcasts in a move that spells the beginning of the end for most spiritual shows like Catholic Masses and Mormon devotionals on public television. By Joseph Abrams FOXNews.com Tuesday, June 16, 2009 Former AmeriCorps Official Says Obama Removed Him for 'Doing My Job' PBS board members, who for 25 years have turned a blind eye to religious programming at some of their member stations' religious programing, have decided to enforce a rule banning the broadcasts -- a move that spells...

http://cancelthebee.blogspot.com/2009/06/cbs-airbrushes-lettermans-willow-palin.html CBS airbrushes Letterman's Willow Palin rape joke out of transcript Interesting -- the censors at CBS airbrushed Letterman's rape joke out of the transcript it sent to the media: The remark was aired live, but CBS removed it from the transcript it makes available to media, including the New York Times, which publishes Letterman’s opening monologue on its blog site.

Purges Expected in N. Korea`s Succession Process JUNE 05, 2009 08:06 North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has purged his political opponents several times while consolidating power. Examples include the purges of “side branches” in 1974 and “Simhwajo” in the late 1990s after the death of his father, Kim Il Sung. Shortly after his designation as the heir in 1974, Kim Jong Il branded his stepmother Kim Song Ae and half brothers as “side branches” and forced them out of the political scene. Moreover, he demoted his uncle Kim Yong Ju, who was then the North’s second-in-command as organizing secretary...

This simple but powerfully symbolic Cross is in the Mojave Desert. It's been there for 75 years. That is, until some guy from Oregon decided that he didn't like it there since it's on Federal land. That person called the ACLU. The ACLU has managed to legally cover the Cross. The Veterans want it back - out in the open. Watch the Video here. Fortunately, there's a great Legal Team on the side of the Vets. We can only hope for the best. 

"When McLucas came to work Friday, her boss told her another supervisor had found her flag offensive. "I was just totally speechless. I was like, 'You're kidding me,'" McLucas said." (snip) "Wednesday morning, however, our story received nationwide attention. We have received hundreds of emails and comments from people who had something to say about it. Among the supporters was a combat medic in Iraq: Debbie McLucas' daughter, Lillian McLucas Dressig. "My mom is a true hero in my book," she said."