Free Republic

Women like Germaine Greer who want to age disgracefully forget why we need moral laws, writes Miranda Devine. Like Ken Park's director, Larry Clark, Germaine Greer deliberately provokes controversy with the cheapest trick. If there's a taboo left, she'll break it, and since one of the few remaining taboos in Western liberal democracies is pedophilia, that's the arena she's most recently entered. Her upcoming glossy book, The Boy, full of pictures of "ravishing" pre-adult boys with hairless chests, wide-apart legs and slim waists, is an "art book", Greer, 64, told this newspaper last week. She wouldn't say exactly how young...

Keywords A "Keyword" search is the best search engine option on FReerepublic.com. Newcomers to FR and longtime users frequently ask for help finding favorite threads or information on a specific topic. When properly "keyworded", an article can be easily retrieved using the "Keyword" search. Keyword searches can be bookmarked for future reference and to monitor current topics. Logged-in users can add keywords to new and existing threads. Performing a "Keyword" search: At the top of the latest articles page, there is a search form. Use the pulldown menu to select "keyword". Type in the search criteria and press the...

July 19, 2006 - Imagine the Internet as a college campus. Amazon.com is the bookstore. Wikipedia is the library. Facebook is the snazzy new dorm. Friendster is the dreary old one. And the classroom? That just may be a newcomer, Essembly.com. Essembly, designed last year by Joe Green, 23, a friend and former Harvard classmate of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is the emerging online social network of the serious-minded. Like Facebook and MySpace, the site is free and lets users browse friends' photos and personal information. But unlike more organic networks, it actively promotes intellectual discussion. In the spirit of...

I am proud that the Senators from Texas did not vote for this. I do believe that the other Senators should be voted out of office. I am surprise at some of the one who voted for it and other not so shocked at all!! Lynn Richards Make sure everyone is informed and that they vote. This should really get your knickers in a knot!! Below is a list of U.S. Senators who just voted to give illegal aliens Social Security benefits; in essence, your FICA monies. Money to people who are here illegally. They'll now share in an account...

Democrats rip GOP on Social Security planBy MIKE WILSON, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 21 minutes ago DES MOINES, Iowa - The Republican plan to privatize Social Security could cause huge debt for decades, a Democratic candidate seeking a House seat in Iowa, a state with a high concentration of elderly residents, said Saturday. "If the Republican plan is allowed to pass, future generations both here and across the country will be saddled with decades of debt and no guaranteed retirement security," Bruce Braley said in the Democrats' weekly radio address. Braley, 48, a lawyer from Waterloo, faces Republican Mike...

Back from the DeadMARIE COCCO June 27, 2006 WASHINGTON -- The corpse will be revived. Plans to resuscitate President Bush's stone-cold proposal to turn Social Security from a guaranteed insurance program into a patchwork of private savings accounts already are in the works. All it will take, says Grover Norquist, conservative strategist extraordinaire, is the election of another five conservative Republican senators -- enough to surmount procedural roadblocks by Democrats or those tremulous Republican moderates who would try to preserve the nation's most successful and best-loved government program. ``I believe that when there are 60 Republican senators we will move...

Sailors' Social Security nos. on Web siteBy LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer 55 minutes ago Sailors man the rails as the amphibious transport dock USS Nashville (LPD 13), an element of the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG), departs Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Virginia, June 6, 2006. Personal data on 28,000 U.S. sailors and their families appeared on a public Web site this week, the Navy said on Friday, marking the latest in a string of data breaches involving American military personnel. (Matthew Bookwalter/U.S. Navy/Handout/Reuters) WASHINGTON - The Navy has begun a criminal investigation...

Court: Father Can't Raise Child Despite Mother's Deception Woman Lied, Saying Baby DiedPOSTED: 7:06 am EDT June 21, 2006 RALEIGH, N.C. -- A biological father should lose his parental rights because he did not establish himself as a caregiver, even though the mother deceived the man by claiming she had a miscarriage, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday. Pernell Ingram argued that he had provided sufficient care to the mother to qualify as the legal father of a child born out of wedlock. The Newton Grove man said he had provided "consistent care" by frequently caring for the mother's...

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. He promised: 1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary, 2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program, 3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year, 4.) That the money the participants put into the independent "Trust Fund" rather than into the General operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no...

JUNE 7, 2006 | We recently got hired by a credit union to assess the security of its network. The client asked that we really push hard on the social engineering button. In the past, they'd had problems with employees sharing passwords and giving up information easily. Leveraging our effort in the report was a way to drive the message home to the employees. The client also indicated that USB drives were a concern, since they were an easy way for employees to steal information, as well as bring in potential vulnerabilities such as viruses and Trojans. Several other clients...

Nationwide Rally to Stop Illegal Immigration on Saturday, July 1st, at noon, at every City HallOn May 1st - Million of Illegal Aliens Marched in our StreetsTwelve million illegal aliens demonstrated their political power, and declared May 1st to be A Day Without Undocumented Workers ( illegal aliens ). They boycotted the USA, all US businesses and institutions. Millions of them marched in our streets, carried Mexican flags, shouted "Si se puede!", and demanded new laws from our Congress. On July 1st - U.S. Citizens Nationwide Rally and BoycottRally to stop the invasion by millions of illegal aliens. 1-Day boycott...

The term "anchor baby" is unfamiliar to most Americans, but it nicely describes one of the more troubling aspects of American immigration policy. Put simply, an anchor baby is the offspring of an illegal immigrant who, under current legal interpretation, becomes a U.S. citizen at birth and, in turn, is the means by which parents and relatives can also obtain citizenship for themselves by using the family reunification features of immigration law. It's estimated there may be as many as 200,000 anchor babies born each year in the U.S. No single agency keeps track, but there is abundant, if fragmented,...

What's the role of labor in Marx's concept of individual and social existence? if labor is not the source of wealth, what is?

The CHEEBA Club's celebration of marijuana is 'part entertainment (free food and dodge ball), but it's also about social justice.' So, like, check this out. These dudes at Macalester College are throwing this righteous party Thursday. They're calling it CHEEBAdanza — "the Twin Cities premier marijuana festival." Says so right on the green flier. This isn't one of those mediocre pot fests — it's A-grade all the way. Excellent. First of all, OK, you have the date, right? Thursday, April 20. That's 4/20. And you know the party starts at 4:20 p.m. That's the legendary tokin' hour, my friends. So...

Candidates for Congress get questionnaires from many organizations. Most encourage us to file our answers on line. All but one have assured us that our “answers will not be edited” or censored. There was one, glaring exception, the North Carolina “Edukashun” Association. This group keeps their answers private, sharing them only with their state leaders and their “member-convenors” who interview us in district to see if we’re really toeing the party line. Answers are never shared with union members. Okay, let’s break the embargo. Here are some of my answers, and I welcome responses from teachers who agree, or disagree,...

Answer To Last Month's "Full House For Disaster" Four Of A Kind: Foundations For An American Future March, 2006 Feature--Return Of The Gods Web Site SynopsisThe four foundation blocks for a Conservative American Future, one that returns to the wisdom of the Founders: Integrity, Identity, Responsibility & Respect. Last month we discussed a metaphorical "poker hand from Hell," reviewing a "full house" of egregious errors in addressing social goals and in understanding the causation for social phenomena. In a discussion of error in addressing societal goals, we described serious mistakes in assigning responsibility in the approach to Public School...

A Crunchy Con Manifesto 1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly. 2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character. 3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government. 4. Culture is more important than politics and economics. 5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative. 6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big,...

It is official. On the 15th of next I become OLD.Were I a car instead I would become a 'classic'. Maybe a '41' Buick, DeSoto, Kaiser-Frazier or Studebaker.But I'm not so I'll just be an old man with clogged pipes, sludge in the oil, a stiff differential and worn out joints. A man with less income and no medical insurance approachingdecision time inundated by mountains of conflicting information.(Like trying to process a program that would stretch a super-computer with only an 8 bit processor, 32k of unreliable RAM and a cranky CPU.)Freeperstan being the repository of the greatest minds still...

A Full House For Disaster There is an old saying that "the Devil is in the details." Here, we suspect, the Devil was the dealer. SynopsisThree kindred errors in understanding or assigning Responsibility: Education, Public Safety & Welfare. Two kindred errors in the comprehension of Causation: Denial of nature as cause for success or failure & observed aspects of comparative group dynamics; & a trivialization of human sexuality. A Poker Hand From Hell There have probably been no truly new ideas in the field of human group dynamics in the past thousand years. Social "innovation" consists largely in a rephrasing...

Are children reared by two individuals of the same gender as well adjusted as children reared in families with a mother and a father? Until recently the unequivocal answer to this question was "no." Policymakers, social scientists, the media, and even physician organizations1, however, are now asserting that prohibitions on parenting by homosexual couples should be lifted. In making such far-reaching, generation-changing assertions, any responsible advocate would rely upon supporting evidence that is comprehensive and conclusive. Not only is this not the situation, but also there is sound evidence that children exposed to the homosexual lifestyle may be at increased...

I never read or hear about the drain SSDI is upon the economy. Many people, especially 50 year old boomers, are applying to "white man's welfare" and nary a peep from the press. Many 20 and 30 year olds apply, particulaly when they have a bad back or mental disability. Of course the health care system has made itself bulletproof by requiring employees to sign non-disclosure contracts (didn't know that, did you) and by implementing the HIPPA act, which does more that just give you another paper to clutter up your act. Why? Because HIPPA not only protects information but...

Western Muslims' Racist Rape Spree By Sharon Lapkin FrontPageMagazine.com | December 27, 2005 In Australia, Norway, Sweden and other Western nations, there is a distinct race-based crime in motion being ignored by the diversity police: Islamic men are raping Western women for ethnic reasons. We know this because the rapists have openly declared their sectarian motivations. When a number of teenage Australian girls were subjected to hours of sexual degradation during a spate of gang rapes in Sydney that occurred between 1998 and 2002, the perpetrators of these assaults framed their rationale in ethnic terms. The young victims were informed...

I'm presently setting up something I had in mind for a long time, a blog exposing le Modèle-social-français-que-le-monde-entier-nous-envie (the-French-social-model-the-whole-world-is-jealous-of) in picture. I've recently been offered a new cell phone w/ camera and I started shooting at homeless people: poor guys, most of them starving because of one and only one thing: socialism. In all countries there are tramps, but lots of them choose to live that way. French tramps are mostly victims of that criminal socialism, 25% of them (officially) do have a job, 75%are choked and alienated by Nanny State. I've been hesitating, wondering if I could do that....

GOVERNMENT BY THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED In 1998, the people of Arizona approved public funding of state political campaigns as a means to reduce the influence of special interest money in our electoral process. A Citizens Clean Elections Commission was created to regulate this public funding program with the power to levy fines and in certain circumstances to require participating candidates to forfeit office for violating commission rules. The Citizens Clean Elections Commission has determined that David Burnell Smith, a participating candidate elected by the voters of his district to the Arizona House of Representatives, has violated commission rules...

One of the overlooked stories of President Bush's Budget is what the President's focus is in the near-term future by his budget projection out to the year 2010. When President Bush submitted his Budget this year for Fiscal Year 2006, he also was required to submit projections four years out. It is the trend of the major categories (called "Superfunctions") which is both the most important and also the most shocking. "Human Resources" is the broadest measure of social welfare. It is also the largest expense in the USA's budget. For Fiscal Year 2006, the projection is 65.3 cents of...

The storm-tossed and rudderless Republican Party should particularly ponder the vote last week in Dover, Pa., where all eight members of the school board seeking re-election were defeated. This expressed the community’s wholesome exasperation with the board’s campaign to insinuate religion, in the guise of “intelligent design” theory, into high school biology classes, beginning with a required proclamation that evolution “is not a fact.” But it is. And President Bush’s straddle on that subject — “both sides” should be taught — although intended to be anodyne, probably was inflammatory, emboldening social conservatives. Dover’s insurrection occurred as Kansas’ Board of Education,...

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave her strongest rebuke yet yesterday to the renewed hard-line Islamic leadership of Iran, saying that “no civilised nation” can call for the annihilation of another. Rice was referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s remark last month that Israel is a ”disgraceful blot” that should be “wiped off the map.” Her remarks drew applause from politicians, diplomats and others gathered for a US-Israeli symposium. “No civilised nation should have a leader who wishes or hopes or desires or considers it a matter of policy to express that ... another country should be pushed into...

Tehran, 26 Oct. (AKI) - A self-styled Islamic Army in Iran has said it would like to elminate 210 journalists in the country. The list, recently circulated in Tehran, includes almost all the independent journalists who have not been recognised by the new government of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the few lines preceding the long list of dissident journalists, the authorities promise "to liberate the Islamic revolution" of Ayatollah Khomeini, which has been "taken hostage by the hacks who are in the service of the enemies of Islam." Anyone mentioned in the list "is worthy of death as much...

The Nordic model mixes welfare and economic success, but Sweden's social democrats are at risk from a loss of confidence. The prime minister has been in power nine years and the people are tired of him. They say their not well-liked leader should have made way for someone else by now. A new conservative challenger to this long-standing government of the left is a young dynamic moderate, uniting the fractious forces of the right. So a social democratic government risks losing to that most lethal human instinct - boredom. The age-old "time for a change" impulse may replace a successful...

More than 3,000 satellite dishes have been confiscated in Iran as the government cracks down on what they're calling "trouble makers" in the country's capital city. More than 12,000 "social polluters" have been arrested and hundreds have been sentenced in recent days. While it's illegal to have satellite dishes in Iran, many people have them, allowing Iranians a glimpse at the outside world. SAT-7, Christian satellite television for the Middle East and North Africa, is concerned about the most recent crackdown. SAT-7's Debbie Brink says, "They're trying to prevent sources of information coming into the country that the government considers...

New research from the University of Alberta reveals just how self-conscious and easily influenced consumers can be. Through a series of carefully controlled experiments at a campus bookstore, researchers learned that consumers will, in every case studied, spend more money to buy a brand name item when someone they don't know is standing near them at the time they choose their purchase. Consumers also tend to spend more money when a group of people is standing near them but are more inclined to buy cheaper items when no one is near.

In The New Organon Francis Bacon states that “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” In the realm of the physical sciences, this maxim is broadly accepted from the most difficult, to the easiest procedures and experiments. For example, in order to boil water, we first obey the fact that it boils at 100 degrees Celsius, and in turn we place it on the stovetop in order to command it, i.e. make it serve our purpose. But in the realm of politics, or the branch of philosophy that deals with the science of proper government and how men should be...

Hello FreeperNation! There are some new articles at The Perspective: A Tenneager Who Gets It True Social Security Also, The Perspective is now set up for RSS feeds. If you have a RSS reader, you can pop in this link to get The Perspective whenever articles are posted: http://therobb7.blogspot.com/atom.xml

DEMOCRATIC National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, in Concord for a fundraiser on Wednesday, accused the Republican Party of being the party of fiscal irresponsibility. He has said that before, but this time the timing could not have been better. It was a day after President Bush signed a $286 billion transportation bill that was $30 billion higher than the amount he had pledged to veto. "This bill is by far the most expensive, wasteful highway bill in the nation's history," Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, told The Washington Times. "It is filled to the brim with...

U.S. Democrats demand conditions on Social Security Sat Aug 13,11:46 AM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - On the eve of Social Security's 70th anniversary, Democrats said on Saturday they are ready to move toward revamping the financially troubled retirement program but warned against stripping away benefits to retirees and relying on private accounts for funding. "We have a moral obligation to stand up and protect Social Security for the next 70 years and beyond -- that means stopping privatization and dropping partisan demands for private accounts," said Rep. John Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, in his response to President George W. Bush's...

When American bombs were raining down on what is left of Afghanistan, fellow Muslims in the neighbouring Islamic republic of Iran took out to the Streets. Contrary to our expectations in the West, they did not rally to denounce the 'Great Satan' - the name given to America by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Instead, ordinary Iranians, in one of the most extraordinary shifts in the geopolitical landscape since September 11, challenged their own hard-line Islamic clerics who swept Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi from power in 1979. Tens of thousands of men and women also demonstrated, in several cities, after World...

The VAWA is much more than a huge federal distribution of funds used to help prevent violence against women. Those who commit violent acts, no matter whether in the context of an intimate relationship or against strangers, deserve to be severely punished and must be stopped from offending again. The Violence Against Women Act, however, does far more than this and is in reality the taxpayer funding of a nationwide movement of radical individuals who do everything in their power to attack American fatherhood. Don't believe those in power who speak of wholesale numbers of fathers who don't want to...

AS IF IT weren't bad enough to see the image of ''senior citizens" transformed into ''greedy geezers," now they're morphing into ''lazy geezers." It seems that Social Security recipients are gradually being redefined as members of the leisure class. Alerts The plan to reform Social Security by partially privatizing accounts is going nowhere, but another idea is creeping into the public consciousness: Raise the age of retirement. This notion recently came up in the Senate, where the average age is 60 and heavy lifting consists of dialing for dollars. The 71-year-old chairman of the Finance Committee, Charles Grassley, talked about...

Rep. Wasserman Schultz to Hold Online “e-Town Hall Meeting” About Proposed Social Security Private Accounts YOU can participate live, or submit questions in advance by CLICKING HERE June 21, 2005 (Washington, DC) -- Rep. Wasserman Schultz, knowing that Republicans have not given up in their effort to pass at least a partial privatization of Social Security, will host an online e-Town Hall Meeting to address the lingering questions and concerns that people have about President Bush’s Social Security privatization plan. To promote this meeting, Rep. Wasserman Schultz sent out an e-mail to thousands of her constituents in the twentieth Congressional...

I was wandering the Web and came across this.....anyone else seen this? Can anyone debunk or certify it as correct? http://democrats.senate.gov/ss/calc.html Try it out.....you put in your salary, and then it calculates what you'd get under the President's Plan.

Nearly all Americans over 65 collect benefits. The Social Security Administration says that about a third depend on Social Security for more than 90 percent of their income; another third get half to 90 percent of their money from the program; and a third rely on it for less than half. About 13 million would fall below the poverty line without Social Security unless they found other sources.

Geraldo Rivera's mustache is safe. The television personality had pledged to shave it off if Michael Jackson had been found guilty of child molestation. Geraldo had nothing to fear. A California jury acquitted O.J. Simpson of murder, so why should it hold Michael Jackson accountable for molesting children? Maybe Michael can now help O.J. search for the "real killer." Cable TV went berserk. The predictions were mostly wrong and the analysis was idiotic. One of O.J. Simpson's attorneys, Robert Shapiro, predicted on CNN that the jury would convict Jackson. Legal analyst Wendy Murphy confidently prophesied to Fox's Shepard Smith, "I...

In his new book, Porn Generation, Ben Shapiro mocks the absurdity of some common liberal solutions to society’s ills. He exposes the outrageous advice of liberal celebrities and media figures, detailing how liberals have transformed the overthrow of traditional values into an art: by methodically watering down religion, undermining parental authority, and giving all views equal legitimacy, they’ve produced the cultural crisis that we see today. This approach has left my generation plagued with moral relativism, narcissism, and many other unintended consequences that the hippie generation is unwilling to take responsibility for and which the aging leftists that now control...

<p>Go read the article. I can not post an excerpt from USA TOday.</p>

Social Security's Sham Guarantee by Michael D. Tanner May 29, 2005 Michael Tanner is director of the Cato Institute's Project on Social Security Choice. How many times during the recent debate over Social Security reform have you heard someone refer to Social Security's "guaranteed benefit"? The AARP says "Social Security is the guaranteed part of your retirement plan." Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, touts the system's "guaranteed retirement benefit." The liberal activist group ProtectYourCheck.org, headed by former Clinton chief of staff Harold Ickes, is running ads calling Social Security "a guarantee you earned." But Social Security benefits...

Panama General strike to defend social security By Jorge Martín On Tuesday September 23 a 24-hour warning general strike called by the National Front brought Panama to a standstill. It was called in protest against attacks on welfare. The National Front is an umbrella organisation that brings together the main trade unions and social organisations in the country, including the National Independent United Trade Union Confederation (CoNUSI), the National Council of Organised Workers (CoNATO), and the unions of building workers (SUNTRACS), social security workers, teachers and others. This latest warning general strike was the highest point in the mass movement...

House GOP tries to pass Social Security overhaul by 'super-sizing' bill 05/18/2005 WASHINGTON (AP) - House Republicans are moving to super-size President Bush's Social Security overhaul with measures aimed at breaking Democrats' united front against it - such as bolstering private pension plans and improving non-retiree benefits for widows, children and the disabled. Democrats say they will not be tempted by what one member has labeled "artificial sweeteners" as long as any bill includes the private investment accounts Bush is pushing. "They're trying to get the goods through Customs that way," Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., a member of the House...

Democrat to Offer Social Security Plan By GLEN JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer 42 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Breaking with party leaders, a Democratic congressman plans to introduce Social Security legislation, saying his first commitment is to his constituents. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., said Friday: "I have the largest amount of Social Security recipients of any Democrat anywhere in the country. My allegiance to seniors is greater than my allegiance to the Democratic Party." While Wexler is proposing tax increases that would clash with President Bush's pledge not to expand the existing payroll tax, his legislation was heralded by the White...

Milking the Scared Cow By William John Hagan May 11, 2005 What is the one thing that the Democratic Party, the AARP, and the AFL-CIO all have in common? They all delight in scaring the hell out of old people. Al Gore may not have created the Internet but he certainly created the left-wing’s strategy opposing Social Security reform. Al’s idea was to create an imaginary “lock box” for the money withheld for Social Security; our government would neither invest this money nor lend it out. What went into Social Security would stay in Social Security. The only small problem...

While most Americans were riveted to the hotly contested Democratic National Primary in June of 2004 and the national media speculated on Howard Dean or John Kerry, the Commissioner of the U.S. Social Security Administration (Jo Anne Barnhart) and her Mexican counterpart concluded the U.S.-Mexican Totalization Agreement. This agreement had to be in place prior to the administration's second term and it's all-out offensive for Social Security reform. What would be the potential effects of this totalization agreement with Mexico, should the president choose to move it forward? Unauthorized illegal aliens working in the U.S. could qualify for Social Security...