Free Republic

Are we Rome? Is America like the Roman Empire - you know, Declining and Falling, and all that? No less than the comptroller general of the United States, David Walker, answers yes, citing "striking similarities" between America today and Rome then. And while it's tempting - at a time of falling bridges, faltering currencies and failing foreign wars - to spot ominous parallels, one huge difference exists, which happily is still in our power to control. Walker, head of the federal-watchdogging Government Accountability Office, has been warning for years against unsustainable financial deficits. But he went much further this month...

Poland's Solidarity Hero Lech Walesa has compared the behavior Poland's President and Prime Minister to the Polish Communist Party crackdown on Solidarity Activists in 1981, as one more was arrested and another is being hunted in matters related to what is now being referred to locally as the Polish Watergate.

The UK’s Liberal Democrats party has outlined a plan for making Britain carbon neutral by 2050. The measures will be debated at the party’s conference in Brighton next month. The party’s proposed mitigation policy outlined in the paper ‘Zero Carbon Britain - Taking a Global Lead’ has three key elements: pricing carbon through trading, tax or regulation; encouraging development, demonstration and deployment to bring forward a range of low carbon technologies; and encouraging long-term behavioral changes. Road Transportation. The plan outlines a number of actions to promote low-carbon transport technologies, including: * An increase in the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation...

I was invited to attend a Duncan Hunter fundraising event in Houston yesterday.  Pat Gray from KSEV Radio was the emcee, and did a great job.  I was fortunate, and honored, to meet Congressman Hunter before the event started.  Someone in the small group I was standing in asked him about New Orleans and the re-building efforts there.  The Congressman had just finished a trip to New Orleans along with Clinton and Edwards.  One phrase that stuck out at me was, “I honestly believe in the people of New Orleans helping the people of New Orleans.”  It’s times like that you...

The cultivated inside-the-Beltway paper suggests we ship all the Cubans back to Fidel. The Washington Post specializes in detecting racism that is undetectable even by the most vigilant Politically Correct Policeman -- then self-righteously denouncing its alleged perpetrator. Let a sports team owner defend his team's name (Redskins) and the Post pounces: "Redskins is not a term fashioned by American Indians." Let Bill Bennet, who has spent a lifetime idolizing Martin Luther King Jr., make an oblique reference to black crime rates and a Post editorial promptly brands him "the poster child for racism." A WaPo editorial even sniffed out:"Yellow-peril...

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation has delayed plans to open the border to long-haul Mexican trucks until at least Thursday, after earlier reports that it could happen over Labor Day weekend. In a filing yesterday in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, government attorneys said the agency expects to get the OK from its inspector general on Wednesday that would allow it to begin the controversial cross border trucking experiment.

  LABOR DAY WEEKEND IS UPON US "Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation." Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the...

Is this what my grand party has come to?  Ron Paul is insulting, incompetent, and now I am sure he is an outright nut.  What I am posting here stupefied me after I read it.  I could not believe I was reading about a Republican... in Congress for 20 YEARS NO LESS!  I've posted the statement from Eric Dondero in its entirety; emphasis mine.  I suggest you take the time to read the whole thing.  It is a sad and pathetic story.  Read my previous post on this so-called Republican and after you do that, read this: ________________________________________My name is Eric Dondero Rittberg.  For 12 years I worked...

I’m about to ruin your weekend if you are a Warm-earther, one who believes in the theory of Global warming in rejection of all scientific evidence that man and CO2 emissions are not the primary cause of Global warming.

"My Joy . . . Your Joy" " These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full" —John 15:11 What was the joy that Jesus had? Joy should not be confused with happiness. In fact, it is an insult to Jesus Christ to use the word happiness in connection with Him. The joy of Jesus was His absolute self-surrender and self-sacrifice to His Father— the joy of doing that which the Father sent Him to do— ". . . who for the joy that was set before...

Every so often I hear from a self-anointed right-wing commissar that I'm not really a conservative simply because he's disagreed with something I wrote. The most annoying aspect of being called on the carpet is that it serves to remind me that some of those on the right can be every bit as dogmatic and self-righteous as the pinheads on the left. So, I will now list my core beliefs and you can all decide for yourselves whether when I claim to be a conservative, I'm guilty of misrepresentation. For openers, I'm in favor of capital punishment. The sixth commandment,...

Residents south of Gouldsboro are used to the sound of gunfire from the public shooting range on State Game Lands 127. So when residents there say there was a big explosion and automatic gunfire, there's a good chance they're not crying wolf. The shooting range was used earlier this year by six men now dubbed the Fort Dix Six for a half-baked terrorism plot they are accused of concocting, involving an attack on that New Jersey military base. The incident occurred Wednesday, Aug. 15. The remains of a small crater, apparently from the explosion, are still visible but aren't much...

A star of Ireland's Gaelic football league was exposed Thursday as a director of an illegal dog-fighting club, an underground gambling activity that has wrecked the reputation and career of Atlanta Falcons football player Michael Vick. The 17-month undercover investigation by BBC Northern Ireland's “Spotlight” program, broadcast Thursday night, found evidence of 15 illegal dog-fighting operations in the British territory of 1.7 million people.

When Congress comes back from its August recess in September, one of the quiet controversies lurking in the wings will move to center stage as Democrats resume their campaign to slash funding for the Office of Labor Management Standards in the Department of Labor. While this may sound like typical Washington insiders baseball, the function and operations of OLMS are anything but inconsequential — monitoring the financial disclosure compliance of labor unions. Because OLMS has been the Bush administration's chief tool for ramping up union financial accountability standards, it appeared in the Democrats' crosshairs even before their new majority in...

In the wake of the Larry Craig "Bathroomgate" story, some intrepid free-market-oriented bloggers came up with a novel solution to the problem of closeted gay conservatives indulging their carnal desires on the side. Gay sex offsets. The same market-based approach is used by environmentally crapulent liberal celebrities all the time. They use private jets, drive around with big entourages and own numerous energy-sucking homes. To make amends, they purchase an indulgence in the form of "carbon offsets" - a contract whereby the equivalent amount of greenhouse gases are soaked up by newly planted trees and the like. So why not...

According to news reports, "The Rev. Tracey Lind, dean of Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, has accepted a nomination to become the next bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago because she wants to follow God's call. Lind, a lesbian priest who lives in Cleveland Heights with her partner, Emily Ingalls, is one of five candidates for the bishop's seat. If elected, she will become the second openly gay bishop consecrated in the denomination." Tracy is gay but states, "I believe that accepting this nomination is what God is asking of me, and I, in turn, ask your prayers for me...

-- Some of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction have been found in New York - in the offices of the U.N. inspectors who went to Iraq looking for them more than a decade ago. The ensuing chemical-weapons scare yesterday emptied out the sixth floor of 866 U.N. Plaza, not far from the world body's headquarters. But the tiny vials of potentially deadly phosgene posed no serious threat, authorities insisted. U.N. workers archiving the files of UNMOVIC, whose inspectors searched for chemical weapons in Iraq, found the vials last Friday, authorities said. After finding the chemicals, U.N. workers sealed them...

Spurgeon's Morning & Evening - August 31 -------------------------------- Morning Devotional "On mine arm shall they trust." - Isaiah 51:5 In seasons of severe trial, the Christian has nothing on earth that he can trust to, and is therefore compelled to cast himself on his God alone. When his vessel is on its beam-ends, and no human deliverance can avail, he must simply and entirely trust himself to the providence and care of God. Happy storm that wrecks a man on such a rock as this! O blessed hurricane that drives the soul to God and God alone! There is no...

VIDEO: Lord of the Rings Film Star Ian McKellen Admits to Ripping Out Hotel Bible Sections Against Homosexuality By John-Henry Westen AUKLAND, NZ, August 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - British Actor Ian McKellen who has used the mega-stardom he achieved playing Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings films to promote homosexuality, has admitted to ripping out pages of hotel bibles that refer to homosexuality. In an August 10 interview on New Zealand's TV1 Close Up program McKellen was confronted by the interviewer questioning the truth of the rumour "He's the one, that when he stays in hotels rips the part...

Nokia has launched a special-edition cell phone for Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa that features "a unique portfolio of pre-loaded applications including a collection of Azkars for the morning and the evening, an Islamic Organizer with audible alarms for the five daily prayers, a Qibla direction indicator and a Hijri calendar," according to a press release. "The launch coincides with the Holy month of Ramadan and the offer includes a full range of applications, carefully tailored to meet the needs of consumers in the Arab world."The Stiletto is willing to bet that the Nokia N73 Special Edition...