Free Republic

White House Unveils Free Preventative ServicesBY JANET ADAMY JULY 15, 2010 WASHINGTON—Treatments for the prevention of alcohol abuse, depression and obesity are among the services that will be free to consumers with new insurance plans starting in September. As part of the new health law, the Obama administration on Wednesday released rules specifying which preventive health services insurers must provide to consumers at no additional cost. Democrats hope the change will be one of the most popular early pieces of the sweeping legislation. "Services like these will go a long way in preventing chronic illness," First Lady Michelle Obama said...

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression By Stephane Courtois, Mark Kramer (Translator), Jonathan Murphy (Translator), Karel Bartosek, Andrzej Paczkowski, Jean-Louis Panne, Jean-Louis Margolin (Contributors); Introduction to the U.S. edition by Martin Malia Published by Harvard University Press, 1999 Originally published in France, 1997 Reviewed by Claire Wolfe Examining the photos and reading their captions in The Black Book of Communism, you might expect the surrounding 700+ pages to contain a wail of outrage. The photos, though few, are as graphic and heart-rending as the worst from Nazi Germany. But the text is no impassioned partisan cry. It's something...

San Francisco is generous, good-hearted and socially conscious. It is eager to help the disadvantaged and the poor. There's just one flaw in our civic personality. Tough choices. We'd rather not make them. On Monday, a parade of hundreds of service organizations appeared before the Board of Supervisors, pleading for funding for their programs. These aren't bad people and their programs to help the young, the drug-ravaged, and the homeless are well-intentioned. But the hard truth is there are far too many service providers for this relatively small city. They duplicate efforts, they don't have enough oversight, and they spend...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Imagine no cars - or fewer, anyway. In New York, a two-mile stretch of the FDR Drive parkway is torn down to open lower Manhattan for parks and plazas, and bicyclists are given their own lane on the Brooklyn Bridge. An elevated highway in Guangzhou, China, is transformed into a pedestrian promenade, and rooftops are linked by raised walkways and bikeways. In Jakarta, Indonesia, traditional bike taxis called becaks are re-engineered to be lighter and easier to steer. --snip--

Calif. Pol Touts 'Pedophile Island' for Sex Offenders (May 21) -- California gubernatorial candidate Douglas Hughes has made quite a name for himself in recent weeks -- not so much by surging ahead in the polls, but rather by promising, if elected, to create a "Pedophile Island" for convicted sex offenders. "I read the newspapers, and always somewhere buried in the paper somebody has [been] raped, tortured, kidnapped and so forth," Hughes told AOL News. "We are not getting anywhere [by] putting them back in the neighborhood. ... It's like any alcoholic, sex or drug addict -- have it around...

A Nightmare for the European Dream A commentary by Christoph Schwennicke Political unity, a common currency, border-free travel and lasting peace. The European Union was to have become a kind of eternal utopia. Instead, no one has dared to further develop Europe since the days of Helmut Kohl. Now, the EU is looking decidedly mortal. /snip I am one of those people. I am one of those idealists who have always believed in the European idea and will continue to do so. It was and still is incredible how this continent has bundled together its economic, political and military forces,...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Swastikas, nooses, a KKK hood, graffiti, epithets and jeers. An ugly spate of bias incidents has crossed several University of California campuses over the past month, causing consternation, outcry and fear that bigotry is alive among the young and educated. Students have protested and administrators have condemned, but the question remains of what lies behind the sudden parade of prejudice — a growing climate of insensitivity on campuses or a bunch of immature kids yearning for peer acceptance and attention. "My guess is some of all of those things," said interim UC Provost Lawrence H. Pitts....

“Avatar” is wowing audiences with its groundbreaking 3-D technology (too bad the characters are one-dimensional). But in another way it’s ordinary: a science-fiction film that plays to leftist fantasies about capitalism and the military. Yet many sci-fi fans are on the political right. So why are sci-fi films and TV shows typically liberal? Hollywood films tend to be liberal, sure. But science fiction in particular lends itself to utopian visions that the world’s problems can be solved once and for all.

I stumbled across this 1948 cartoon video (below) entitled, "Make Mine Freedom", and for some reason took a few minutes to watch it. I'm so glad that I did! I'm not alone because over 2,000,000 have also tuned in. This cartoon, over sixty years old, is eerily timely and applicable to the state of our government and country. Don't cheat yourself. Watch the entire video because it saves the best for last. What's so incredibly, amazingly eye-popping about it is that it exposes the EXACT SAME LIBERAL LIES that are being repeated today ad nauseum. They recycle the same old...

I was struck by the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson’s opinion piece today entitled The Biggest Disappointment of the Obama Presidency. In it he berates Obama for giving short shrift to New Orleans when he visited Thursday. Of all the Post’s writers, Robinson has been the most supportive of Obama, seldom finding fault, but this time he skewers him. "President Obama's brief display of drive-by compassion Thursday in New Orleans was, for me, by far the worst outing of his presidency thus far -- and the biggest disappointment..." "So it was strange and disheartening that Obama would wait nine months to...

Afterburner with Bill Whittle  A Tale of Two Revolutions: The War of Ideas & the Tragedy of the Unconstrained Vision Sep 9 / Afterburner with Bill Whittle   10min Bill Maher, Barack Obama and the Truth About American Exceptionalism Aug 31 / Afterburner with Bill Whittle   15min MSNBC & The Great Liberal Narrative: The Truth About The Tyranny of Political Correctness Aug 24 / Afterburner with Bill Whittle   13min The Power & Danger of Iconography: The Resistance Steals Obama's Weapons Aug 14 / Afterburner with Bill Whittle   8min Beyond the Angry Mobs: Only You Can Bring Congress...

If we had children they would be snarky and fabulous. They would also be staying home from school on September 8th because there’s no way in Hell we’d allow them to be indoctrinated by Dr. Utopia on his “National Give Me Your Children Day”. We didn’t think anything could be worse than the whole “Report Your Neighbors Program” the White House pushed, where citizens were encouraged to report their friends, family, and neighbors if any of them were overheard disagreeing with liberal Democrats and their push for socialized medicine. But, forcing school children to listen to Dr. Utopia…in a speech...

Everyone wants heaven on Earth. It would be nice if people simply lent their abilities to society in accordance with the needs of others. Nicer still if people satisfied their needs mindful of others’ ability to accommodate them. But things simply don’t work out that way. Human nature won’t allow it. For many years I’ve used my classroom to teach students about more than just our system of justice, law and order. I’ve used it to teach important life lessons which, if properly understood and applied, will spare my students no small measure of discomfort in life. This semester I...

"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to erode away, while we are mindlessly repeating the catchwords of the hour, whether "change," "universal health care" or "social justice." If we can be so easily stampeded by rhetoric that neither the public nor the Congress can be bothered to read, much less analyze, bills making massive changes in medical...

What do the following places have in common: Trumbull Phalanx in Ohio, Modern Times in New York, Brook Farm in Massachusetts, New Harmony in Indiana, United Order in Utah, Amana Colonies in Iowa, Oneida Community in New York, a kibbutz in Israel, and the Pilgrim’s Plymouth Plantation? Each was an attempt to establish a form of heaven on earth, or put another way, to establish through socialism a utopian community by (1) abolishing private property and (2) eradicating self-interested acquisitiveness. There are basically three forms of socialism: utopian (Robert Owen, Saint-Simon, and Francois Fourier), revolutionary (Marxism-Leninism), and fascism (Fabian, Social...

Uto·pia Pronunciation: \yu̇-ˈtō-pē-ə\ Function: noun Etymology: Utopia, imaginary and ideal country in Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More, from Greek ou not, no + topos place Date: 1597 1: an imaginary and indefinitely remote place. 2 often capitalized : a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions. 3: an impractical scheme for social improvement Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible. (Mark 10:27)

Here is a Sky News video report on one of Russia's richest men who is building a housing complex on the outskirts of Moscow that is designed to be "Utopia," a Russian "Paradise." It is only for Russia's richest and most exclusive people - "no poor people allowed." Some of the other rules - no dogs or bodyguards! . . . . (Watch Video)

As Franklin Roosevelt understood, Americans will postpone immediate gratification and endure hard sacrifices--if they must--so long as they are convinced the future can be better than the past. But we face a far more difficult problem at our moment in history. What do you promise people who have been told they can have anything they want, who are repeatedly congratulated for living in the best of all possible circumstances? How do you tell them "the good times," as we have known them, are not coming back? Americans need a new vision that helps them deal with reality, a promising story...

First lady Michelle Obama says everyone should have what she has: a chief of staff and a personal assistant. Speaking Thursday in support of sick days with pay and flexible work schedules, Mrs. Obama said that, as challenging as her new life may sometimes seem, hers is a "very blessed situation, because I have what most families don't have" -- support from her mother and a staff. "Everyone should have a chief of staff and a set of personal assistants," she said at a meeting of Corporate Voices for Working Families, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works to develop and...

My son and I went to AT&T Park today to watch the Giants play the Colorado Rockies. It was pretty rainy driving up and I thought the game might be cancelled which would a pretty rare event for San Francisco in May. As we entered the park, we received free ball caps to commemorate "Solar Day," sponsored by PG&E. Before the game started, PG&E ran a commercial on huge TV screen extolling the virtues of solar and how wonderful the PG&E company is because of their efforts to build a solar-powered baseball park, a solar powered utility and a solar...