Free Republic

Two news reports point to the clear and present danger the deteriorating situation in Mexico poses to our nation and our citizens. The first article, "U.S. Plans Border ‘Surge’ Against Any Drug Wars" appears in today's edition of the New York Times, while the second article, "Obama faces Mexican drug war" was published in the Washington Times last week, on January 2nd. In my judgement, the deteriorating situation in Mexico can be traced back to the relative ease with which the drug cartels were able to move people and narcotics into the United States because our nation's "leaders" have been...

<p>NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Snow is falling in the New Orleans area.</p> <p>The National Weather Service says a mixture of sleet and snow is falling Thursday morning from Baton Rouge east across much of southeastern Louisiana.</p> <p>The winter weather closed some schools and created hazardous driving conditions.</p>

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - December 8, 2008 (OWSweather.com) Rare 50 year Arctic Blast Sets Sights On Southern California. With a week away, and a sure sign of things to come, OWSweather.com is making preparations on the server to handle the traffic from this next event. UJEAS is in line with the majority if not all the other models in keeping a near historical arctic air mass into the Southern California region. With a warm November, Southern California is finally ready for cold storms to make their way in. Resort level snow will be likely next week, and in pretty hefty amounts...

DACULA - As the famous twang of Hank Williams Jr. blasted from an SUV stereo Friday afternoon, about 30 folks socialized, sipped soda and puffed on cigarettes. No, this wasn't a Fourth of July backyard barbecue. It was the run-up to a wedding. In a Waffle House parking lot. The lucky couple, George "Bubba" Mathis and Pamela Christian - both 23 and employees at the Dacula diner located at the Ga. Highway 316/U.S. Highway 29 interchange - wouldn't have it any other way. "I don't know, it's something different," Mathis said while fixing his tie prior to the ceremony. For...

“All the illegal border crossings are down. It looks like the border patrol is doing their job. There’s really no need for a wall like that,” said Mark Abeyta from east El Paso. The El Paso sector has reported that they have apprehended 25,500 illegal border crossers during the first nine months of this fiscal year. This is the lowest since 2000, and it was made possible because of more barriers, increased agents and the zero-tolerance policies. Currently the Department of Homeland Security has completed around 300 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing and they expect to have a total...

At the outbreak of the War Between the States, a group of young men who were students at Washington College formed a military company that eventually would become part of the legendary "Stonewall Brigade."

The song is rich with rural, Southern themes. The upbeat melody combined with the sawing fiddles sets the song's mood perfectly. For those of us who grew up in the South, attached to a local church, a close-knit family whose connection to the land is generational, while immersed in the region's hard-core patriotism, it would be hard to imagine a song better suited to voice these sentiments: "Son of a farmer", - "daddy's daddy", - "working on the land", - "married up and settled down", - "pretty daughters", - "a house built with his own hands", - "keep his family...

All I want for Christmas is for Christians to listen to what Mike Huckabee says, rather than what the media say about him. The mainstream media keep flogging Huckabee for being a Christian, apparently unaware that this "God" fellow is testing through the roof in focus groups.

Bobby Jindal won tonight. I may live in Georgia now, but I'm Louisianian through and through. This is historic. No one has ever won a gubernatorial primary outright in Louisiana until tonight. I cannot really express what this means to me. It's like how the exiled English felt when Mary I died and Elizabeth was crowned. It was safe to go home again. If you don't live in Louisiana, you have no clue what it is like. You may think you do, but you don't. You make think your state sucks, but it doesn't really compared to Louisiana. Louisiana sucks...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Wednesday the Senate should apologize for slavery and segregation, calling them “dark chapters in our history.” McCain said he would support a planned resolution by fellow Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, who is also seeking the presidency, to apologize for racist laws, some of which ended more than a century ago. “They were federal policies,” Brownback told the Boston Globe on Monday. “They were wrong. The only way for us to move forward . . . is at the end of the day acknowledging those, taking ownership for it, and asking for forgiveness.” McCain agreed...

2007 ANNUAL MEETING October 17-19, 2007 The Cornhusker Marriott Lincoln, Nebraska The General Session will be held on Thursday, October 18th in Ballroom DEF1 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. MORRIS DEES is this year's featured speaker. In 1967, lawyer Morris Dees had achieved extraordinary business and financial success with his book publishing company. The son of an Alabama farmer, he witnessed firsthand the painful consequences of prejudice and racial injustice. He sympathized with the Civil Rights Movement but had not become actively involved. A night of soul searching at a snowed-in Cincinnati airport changed his life, inspiring Dees to leave...

KISSIMMEE -- Nelson Winbush rotates a miniature flag holder he keeps on his mantel, imagining how the banners would appear in a Civil War battle. The Stars and Bars, he explains, looked too much like the Union flag to prevent friendly fire. The Confederacy responded by fashioning the distinctive Southern Cross -- better known as the rebel flag. Winbush, 78, is a retired assistant principal with a master's degree, a thoughtful man whose world view developed from listening to his grandfather's stories about serving the South in the "War Between the States." His grandfather's casket was draped with a Confederate...

AMERICANA, Brazil Now well past 90, Judith MacKnight Jones is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the illness that robbed her of all of her memory, her most precious asset. She has been lying here for the past 11 years, covered by a patchwork blanket, made from pieces her great-grandmother brought from the United States between 1865 and 1885, after the Confederacy lost the Civil War. Unable to speak or remember now, her book "Soldado Descanso" ("Rest Soldier") is written in Portuguese, but soon will be translated into English, as the publisher thinks Americans should know about the proud history of Confederate...

Few parts of the world are as loved and loathed with the intensity that is felt for the American South. Thanks to a long line of contributions to the popular culture from Gone with the Wind to Borat, via Deliverance, Dixie, the great muggy swath of the southeastern United States, from Washington DC to Texas, has a firm grip on the imagination of Americans and foreigners alike. To its detractors it is a terrifying and contemptible land full of racist rednecks, Bible-toting hypocrites and downtrodden blacks. To those of a more romantic disposition, and certainly to most of its inhabitants,...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary offers coursework in Greek and Hebrew, in archaeology, in the philosophy of religion and _ starting this fall _ in how to cook and sew. One of the nation's largest Southern Baptist seminaries, the school is introducing a new, women-only academic program in homemaking _ a 23-hour concentration that counts toward a bachelor of arts degree in humanities. The program is aimed at helping establish what Southwestern's president calls biblical family and gender roles. Coursework will include seven hours of nutrition and meal preparation, seven hours of textile design and "clothing...

More than 140 years after the Civil War ended, a Mason-Dixon line of sorts still persists when it comes to iced tea. Order an iced tea at a restaurant in the Deep South or Texas, and the frosty beverage set before you likely will be a world away from what you’d be served in New York or Chicago. Sweet tea, as Southerners call their iced tea, is named for its two key ingredients – tea and lots of sugar. There’s no such thing as an unsweetened sweet tea. And unlike its summer-loving Northern counterpart, sweet tea is consumed year-round. “About...

US in thrall to southern drawl By Alex Spillius in Washington Last Updated: 2:21am BST 11/06/2007 To British ears, an American southern accent carries connotations of cowboys and country singers, but in the US it signals something quite different: political success. Ronald Reagan was not southern but possessed home-baked charm Four of the last five US presidents have been southerners, and the only exception, Ronald Reagan, possessed the demonstrably southern virtues of straight talking and home-baked charm. But in the early stages of the competition to succeed George W Bush neither the Republican nor Democrat parties boast a bona fide...

Jesse Rae Beard is one of the 'Jena Six' students on trial This World investigates the rise of discrimination in America's deep south as six black youths are charged with an alleged attack on a white student, which could see them jailed for up to 50 years. Three rope nooses hanging from a tree in the courtyard of a school in a small Southern town in Louisiana have sparked fears of a new kind of "stealth" racism spreading through America's deep south. Although this sinister episode happened last August, the repercussions have been extensive and today the town of...

A local woman thought getting a cake decorated would be simple. However, she ran into some problems she didn't expect, when she approached different bakeries. Connie Ansley is part of the Daughters of the Confederacy. She wanted a cake with the Confederate emblem on it, for the opening of a new memorial museum. Ansley says several big chain stores refused to decorate a cake with a confederate flag on it. They told her it was because of the emblem, which some consider a symbol of racism and slavery. "It's a constant battle we fight every day to keep our heritage,"...

For a taste of the old South, you can attend a Civil War battle re-enactment. Or you can visit Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. This fundamentalist school - catchphrase: "Brains are no substitute for God" - forbade interracial dating among its students until 2000. The place is easy to mock, and people often do. The Bob Jones rulebook bans all the things that other students think make college fun: booze, cigarettes, fornication. Mark Lopez, one of the 4,200 smartly dressed and unfailingly polite students at Bob Jones, says he applied there because he wanted to study "conservative Christian music":...