Free Republic

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- U.S. stocks sold off sharply Tuesday after Greece's prime minister called for an unexpected public vote to approve Europe's debt deal. Investors fear the referendum will jeopardize the deal, since it includes austerity cuts that have not been popular with the Greek public. At midday, the Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) was down 302 points, or 2.5%, the S&P 500 (SPX) sank 36 points, or 2.9%, and the Nasdaq (COMP) lost 83 points, or 3.1%. Bank stocks were hit especially hard, with shares of Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) down more than 9% and Citigroup (C,...

On Monday, U.S. stocks racked up their best month in 20 years in October. Greek Premier George Papandreou said he will put Greece's bailout deal through a referendum, potentially undoing a long-awaited agreement struck just last week and sending European stocks down 4.4 percent. The region's bank shares fell 7.9 percent to $16.25. Greek opposition parties said the referendum was putting Greece's European Union membership at risk and instead called for a snap election. U.S. bank shares were expected to follow European lenders lower. The Financial Select Sector SPDR fell 4 percent with Bank of America down 5.9 percent and...

Less than two months ago, on the day after the 10th anniversary of September 11th, the Obama Administration suspended the most successful alien-interdiction program on the northern border. Border Patrol agents based in Rochester and Buffalo, who had taken thousands of illegal aliens into custody, were ordered to stand down. Specifically, a highly successful long-term monitoring of interstate buses and Amtrak trains was ordered to stop. Rochester and Buffalo became, for all intents and purposes, free-transit zones for illegal aliens. From the best enforcement in the northern tier of states, to no enforcement at all – in response to orders...

Race debate over Silicon Valley documentary heats up on Twitter By Emi Kolawole “For whatever reason, African Americans tend to be consumers of technology and not really creators of technology,” said Angela Benton, founder of Cued, which she has since put on hold, and founder of the NewME Accelerator program at the center of the documentary. ... “So, how many black, female programmers do you know,” O’Brien asks PencilYou.In founder Tiffani Bell. “So, before I went to Howard [University], I would say none.” “Some of these founders show up in a hoodie,” said Uzamere, “We don’t have that luxury to...

From now on, parents who plan to send their children abroad to study in a foreign nation should sit them down in front of the TV set and watch replays of the Amanda Knox saga. It has all the elements of a true-to-life lesson in the dangers of turning young men and women barely out of their teens into innocents abroad. Youngsters -- and many parents -- are clueless when it comes to the customs and laws in other countries that lack many of the safeguards which we Americans take for granted. They should study the Amanda Knox case. It...

Earlier this week, the journal Proceeedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a study on climate change that is at the same time scary, comforting, insightful and a statement of the obvious.To be more accurate, I should probably say that the paper is capable of being interpreted in all of those ways, rather than risk implying that the authors intended to do more than run the numbers and see what popped up. What they're talking about is climate change in Europe, specifically between 1500 and 1800 AD - a period that encompasses the so-called Little Ice Age. It...

I’m a Jersey boy. I was born there, went to high school and college there, and assumed I’d spend the rest of my life there. But though I loved the people and food, the Jersey Shore summers, and short rides through the Lincoln Tunnel to Broadway shows and Madison Square Garden, I gave it all up and moved south. Very far south. I’m not alone. According to the latest Census figures, and stories in USA Today, the Associated Press, and elsewhere, the South was the fastest growing region in America over the last decade, up 14 percent. “The center of...

General Lee died at his home at Lexington, Virginia at 9:30 AM on Wednesday, October 12, 1870.

"The fact that it is acceptable to put a Confederate flag on a car *bumper and to portray Confederates as brave and gallant defenders of states’ rights rather than as traitors and defenders of slavery is a testament to 150 years of history written by the losers." - Ohio State Professer Steven Conn in a recent piece at History News Network (No, I'll not difnigy his bitterness by providing a link) This sounds like sour grapes to me. Were it not for the "losers" . . .

It was 150 years ago today that Florida declared itself sovereign from the United States. Some Southern states have marked the anniversaries of secession with celebrations; in South Carolina, a secession gala was met with protests and controversy. In Florida, a reenactment was quietly held by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Tallahassee on Saturday, where about 40 volunteers dressed in period attire performed a condensed version of the convention. It was at that convention where a 62-7 vote led to secession in 1861, making Florida the third state to leave and later join the Confederate States of America.

When he mentions that his daddy fought for the Confederacy, H.V. Booth gets more than a few raised eyebrows. “Really? Really?” Booth says, mimicking people’s incredulity. “They just can’t believe it.” His father, Isham Johnson Booth, a country boy from north of Athens, played a bit part in the Civil War. But it was a grim role, the memory of which never left him and was something he rarely spoke about. He was a guard at Andersonville, the prisoner-of-war camp in south-central Georgia that has become synonymous with suffering. Booth, who turns 92 this month, is the end of a...

For Democrats in the South, the most ominous part of a disastrous year may not be what happened on Election Day but what has happened in the weeks since. After suffering a historic rout — in which nearly every white Deep South Democrat in the U.S. House was defeated and Republicans took over or gained seats in legislatures across the region — the party’s ranks in Dixie have thinned even further. In Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama, Democratic state legislators have become Republicans, concluding that there is no future in the party that once dominated the so-called Solid South. That the...

(LEAD) Military: artillery sound from within North's territory, no shells land in southern waters SEOUL, Nov. 26 (Yonhap) -- The series of explosion sounds heard Friday on the border island attacked by North Korea earlier this week appear related to training within the North's territory, military officials said. No shells landed in waters on either side of the Koreas' Yellow Sea border or near Yeonpyeong Island, said Col. Lee Bung-woo, a spokesman at the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff. "The firing was not aimed at us, and we believe the sounds were heard as North Korea conducted its routine training...

I'd like to hear from any Freepers down in Dixie on a societal question. I'd like to know if the old southern virtues survive, or if mass-media culture has erased or eroded them. I'm talking about the basic manners, and in particular, the relationship of young people to adults. Allow me a moment to explain. I was born and raised in New Jersey. I was in many respects NOT raised right. EXCEPT, I was fortunate enough to spend extended periods down in Alabama with my grandmother. I attended public school for a short time in Alabama as well. This was...

The Midterm Election That Restored AmericaWarning to Republicans hoping to take control of Congress: A single ill-considered law can undo much of the good you will do. It’s not often that a midterm election changes the direction of the United States. Signs are that next Tuesday’s will. Sixty-eight years ago, one certainly did. On November 3, 1942, voters went to the polls to hand FDR and the Democrats a defeat so resounding that it halted the country’s decade-long leftward shift, while their GOP rivals found a clear mandate to reverse the biggest expansion of government in American history, the New...

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn.—The Republican Party is poised in the coming election to remove the vestiges of Democratic control from state governments in the heart of the South. In Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, the GOP appears likely to win every state elected office as well as take or strengthen control over legislatures. Republican sweeps in these states would give the party control over the redrawing of congressional districts after the 2010 census, and enhance its ability to raise funds and campaign for Republican candidates in the 2012 races. White conservative voters in the South have been turning to the GOP...

KING, N.C. – The Christian flag is everywhere in the small city of King: flying in front of barbecue joints and hair salons, stuck to the bumpers of trucks, hanging in windows and emblazoned on T-shirts. The relatively obscure emblem has become omnipresent because of one place it can't appear: flying above a war memorial in a public park. The city council decided last month to remove the flag from above the monument in Central Park after a resident complained, and after city leaders got letters from the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church...

When it comes to Christian art and culture, it's sometimes embarrassing to admit how far we've drifted over these past few decades from our age-old emphasis on "timelessness" and "organic development." Nevertheless, in an effort to find the silver lining in the dark cloud that passes (in some aging circles) for "relevance", we here at Southern-fried Catholicism hang our heads low and would like to take this opportunity to highlight some ridiculously low points in Christian art, architecture and culture in a new series we're calling "Christian Cheese." We hope you enjoy forehead smackingly sad examples of Christians trying their...

Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell's recent proclamation of Confederate History Month provoked a firestorm of criticism, with many accusing him and those who commemorate their Southern ancestors' bravery of ignoring or even defending slavery. But the cruel and evil institution of slavery was not the sole or even primary reason for the South's secession from the Union, nor was it a significant motivating factor for individual Confederate soldiers. Yet many of us in the South, including those descended from old Jewish families of the Confederacy, still struggle to expose the truth about why Southern soldiers fought, the courage they showed...

The unusually cool summer continued in Southern California, where several new record-low temperatures were recorded on Wednesday. The 68-degree low at Los Angeles International Airport broke the old record low for the day, which was 70 degrees in 1991. Santa Barbara (68) and San Luis Obispo (69) broke records as well. The temperature at USC, 75, tied the record low set in 1999. UCLA also set a record, 56 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. While the region saw a heat wave a few weeks ago, temperatures have been gradually going down again as July comes to an end....