Free Republic

LEE COUNTY, Fla.- The Suncoast Gun Show in North Fort Myers is attracting huge crowds this weekend. "It's definitely one of the most crowded ones I've been in," said Robert Supon. Ray Nadaeu says there's a reason for the crowds...President-elect Barack Obama. "I think they're scared. I think they are scared their gun rights are going to be taken away from them and they should be," said Nadaeu. "We have to buy these before the new regime possibly gets in," said Greg Thorn, a Civil War gun collector. He stopped by the show to pick up ammunition. But, the President-elect...

HOODED youths firebombed a police station next to the Exarchia district where locals held a silent vigil for a teenager who was killed a week ago. Police fired tear gas and were in hot pursuit of a group of about 100 youths who had congregated there - with similar numbers in Thessaloniki also vandalising a gymnasium before holing up in university premises. The fresh outbreak of hostilities ...

So now, in the waning days of the campaign, here is the alleged storyline: Those polls that show Barack Obama leading in the race against John McCain for president? Even widening his lead? Those polls are warped. According to some, among the millions of Americans who are telling pollsters that they could vote for Mr. Obama, there are (thousands of? millions of?) closeted racists who will not vote -- who never would vote -- for a black candidate under any circumstances. Their votes could tip the election to Mr. McCain. In politically obsessed circles, this supposed phenomenon is known as...

""There’s a huge concern among conservative talk radio hosts that reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all-but destroy the industry due to equal time constraints. But speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.” FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell raised that as a possibility after talking with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. McDowell spoke about a recent FCC vote to bar Comcast from engaging in certain Internet practices – expanding the federal agency’s oversight of Internet networks. "

There’s a huge concern among conservative talk radio hosts that reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all-but destroy the industry due to equal time constraints. But speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.” FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell raised that as a possibility after talking with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. McDowell spoke about a recent FCC vote to bar Comcast from engaging in certain Internet practices – expanding the federal agency’s oversight of Internet networks. The commissioner, a 2006 President Bush appointee, told...

Jon Voight intended to turn heads with the “very strong points” in his Washington Times op-ed last week (titled: Voight: My Concerns For America ~ Obama sowing socialist seeds in young people). But he probably didn’t expect so many of them to reside in Hollywood. In a sign of the growing interest in politics this election year, bloggers who normally focus on the entertainment industry are expanding their presence in one of the Internet’s other spheres of influence. Voight’s piece slammed Democratic candidate Barack Obama, praised GOP contender John McCain, and even repudiated his own Vietnam War protests as the...

The New York branch of the revolutionary youth organization FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) first held a Marxist discussion on the role of the Dalai Lama and his entanglements with the CIA and then turned the talk into action.

-By Warner Todd Huston Congressional Democrats announced early in May that they wanted to make "military propaganda" illegal. To achieve this goal they passed new legislation that strengthened previous legislation that is supposed to ban the Pentagon from indulging in "propaganda" for the military. This bill is supposed to stop the military from sending "any form of communication in support of national objectives designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes or behavior of the people of the United States in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly." In other words, the military is not allowed to talk to...

The deniers of global warming are about to latch on to a new argument. The world is cooling. And they are right - well, slightly. Globally, this year is likely to be the coolest for some time - back to the average of the early 90s, according to some unpublished forecasts. This is no refutation of man-made global warming. It is the inevitable consequence of one of nature's climatic cycles. The La Niña, the cold phase of the El Niño cycle in the Pacific, has sent average global temperatures plunging this year. And there is more. Longer term climate cycles...

After 50 years, an American state secret has been revealed, about the arrest of 12,000 people because of Hoover’s “red” paranoia. The former director of the FBI, Edgar Hoover made plans for the arrest of 12,000 American citizens which he considered to be threats to national security – documents reveals that no longer bear the status of state secret. Hoover sent this request to the president at the time Harry Truman at the beginning of the Korean war during the 50s. He justified the move as necessary for protection from “treason, spies and sabotage”. For now there is no evidence...

It is hard to imagine a sadder group of people than the children of Americans who spied for the Soviet Union. I am thinking of the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the son of Alger Hiss, and now Harry Dexter White’s two daughters, who in a recent letter to the New York Times Book Review rebuke a reviewer for referring to their father, a high-ranking Treasury official under Roosevelt and Truman, as a Soviet agent. What a tragedy the end of the Cold War has been for the kids and grandkids of the spies. How do they talk...

Leftist Brown Shirts Shut Down Horowitz Speech at Emory   By Ruth Malhotra and Orit SklarFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, October 26, 2007 On Wednesday evening, the Emory University Chapter of the College Republicans hosted acclaimed author and activist David Horowitz for a lecture on radical Islam as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. From the beginning of Horowitz’s speech, rowdy protesters continually interrupted him and less than half an hour into the event, the crowd became so disruptive that police were called in and Horowitz had to be escorted off stage.  The event was part of the Terrorism Awareness Project, a...

Democrats on both coasts have authored official resolutions condemning Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh this week, turning partisan disagreements over content and style into a matter of public record and raising potential questions about First Amendment rights.

Newspapers like to play gotcha games with presidential candidates and their stump speeches. Most of the time, the fact-checking sessions focus on number-juggling on tax proposals and spending policy, and they find plenty of daylight between claims and reality. However, when the Washington Post attempts to fact-check Fred Thompson on historical references, they reveal more of their bias than of Fred's. They try to take apart Fred's claim that Americans "have shed more blood for other people's liberty than any other combination of nations in the history of the world", and manage to completely miss the point: The number of...

NEW YORK: In a year voters say they crave fundamental political change, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton is taking a gamble: arguing that her years of experience working within the political system make her the best candidate to change the system. But does her career — eight years as White House first lady, seven as senator from New York, and 12 as Arkansas first lady — offer evidence to support that claim? And will her message resonate with Democratic primary voters, who may not embrace a candidate so willing to seek accommodation? “If she’s already declaring her intent to compromise, it’s...

Last Friday, I inadvertently found myself in the midst of the opening salvo of a battle to turn the Twin Cities upside down next year. I was driving home at rush hour from downtown Minneapolis, when several hundred bicyclists blocked the street leading to Interstate 394. My fellow motorists and I sat obligingly for several minutes, missing green light after green light. Finally, folks began angrily honking their horns. If two police cars hadn't moved the riders along, people might have leaped from their cars to take on the bicyclists themselves. Later, the protest ride turned ugly. Two officers tried...

The Last Crusade: Spain 1936By Warren Carroll(Christendom Press/ISI Books, 240 pages, $15) WHEN THE HEROICS of the Spanish Civil War come up -- Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, Hemingway's fictions or the effusions of various poets -- there is a very large and usually unremarked elephant in the room: Orwell, who actually fought, and Hemingway who wrote about fighting, were on the wrong side. The strategic point is simple: had the Stalinists won war, then during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact from 1939 to mid-1941, they would have allowed Hitler to cross Spain and seize Gibraltar. Had this happened, the...

NEW YORK (AP) - Liberal activists are stepping up their campaign against Fox News Channel by pressuring advertisers not to patronize the network. MoveOn.org, the Campaign for America's Future and liberal blogs like DailyKos.com are asking thousands of supporters to monitor who is advertising on the network. Once a database is gathered, an organized phone-calling campaign will begin, said Jim Gilliam, vice president of media strategy for Brave New Films, a company that has made anti-Fox videos. The groups have successfully pressured Democratic presidential candidates not to appear at any debate sponsored by Fox, and are also trying to...

When Gareth Groves brought home his massive new Hummer, he knew his environmentally friendly neighbors disapproved. But he didn't expect what happened next. The sport utility vehicle was parked for five days on the street before two masked men smashed the windows, slashed the tires and scratched into the body: "FOR THE ENVIRON." "The thought of somebody vandalizing it never crossed my mind," said Gareth Groves, who lives near American University in Northwest Washington. "I've kind of been in shock." Police said they see small acts of vandalism in the area from time to time, but they have not seen...

BERLIN (Reuters Life!) - Visitors to the German capital who are disappointed by the scant remains of the Berlin Wall can get a taste of the old days at a new communist-style hotel which revives the atmosphere of East Germany. In a multi-storey concrete block near the city's eastern train station, former communist leader Erich Honecker, wearing his trademark thick black glasses, stares down at guests from the walls of each of the 39 rooms. Garish orange patterned curtains and retro brown sofas clash with lime green walls. Plastic plants and old-style lamps stand by windows overlooking more concrete blocks...