Free Republic

Kosovo is a Sacred Serbian Land“620 years since the fateful Battle of Kosovo, we have gathered here to honor our glorious ancestors who have laid down their lives so we can live in Kosovo and Metohija today. They knew why the Kosovo Battle was fought, they knew what were they defending and whom were they defending. “We today also know why have we gathered here: to pray to the Lord and to say that Kosovo is a sacred Serbian land, drenched in blood, tears and sweat of our forefathers. Kosovo was, is and will be the heart of Serbia, just...

From a freedom-loving perspective, it appears President Obama has the economic sense of a six-year-old child. Obama and his faithful administration are taking heat as of late due to their mismanagement of the American economy. This brings up their latest scheme, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which imposes a tax on farts. Numerous absurdities are included in this gargantuan 1000+ page bill, including a bovine flatulent tax. Translation: farmers will be charged when their cows engage in chemical warfare. The cow farting problem and the way it contributes to pollution is no secret, but people generally laugh it...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- On a sunny June morning in downtown Manhattan, the kids at the Columbus Park playground had to share their swings, slides and benches with photographers, reporters, cameramen and the people they had come to see: Bernie Madoff victims. There is not enough room on the sidewalk in front of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse on Pearl Street to contain the Cirque de Madoff. When Bernie the Smirk is making his way inside -- as he was Monday to receive his 150-year jail sentence -- the crowd is so large it must expand across the...

I published yesterday concerning post-Waxman, that the vitriolic wunderkind of a narcissist presently exhaling greenhouse gases in the Oval Office actually lost a point in his "net-stronglys." I was somewhat surprised in light of the adoring press coverage. Well, seems I was wrong. His bump wasn't losing a point - he lost four points. Here' the chart:

Michael Jackson in 1999. (CNS/Reuters) The Catholic News Service blog spotted this article Michael Jackson wrote for Beliefnet about his upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness and his spiritual beliefs as an adult. In the article, entitled “My Childhood, My Sabbath, My Freedom,” Jackson wrote: When people see the television appearances I made when I was a little boy—8 or 9 years old and just starting off my lifelong music career—they see a little boy with a big smile. They assume that this little boy is smiling because he is joyous, that he is singing his heart out because he is...

Did anyone see the report this morning about EPA stopping a report that slams global warming

When Governor Mitt Romney instituted a universal healthcare plan for Massachusetts in 2006 he proclaimed it a conservative idea. "It's a conservative idea insisting that individuals have responsibility for their own health care,” he said. “I think it appeals to people on both sides of the aisle: insurance for everyone without a tax increase." The plan passed and was put into practice. But has it worked? Has it been successful? For a time, many thought it might but cracks in the system are already being seen. These cracks are instructive as a lesson on how Obamacare will crash and burn...

The culture of death continues to claim victims, this time abortionist George Tiller. The tragedy of his murder is compounded by the obvious contradiction of someone killing him in the name of life. Perhaps it should not surprise that murder is seen as the answer in a society which devalues life. Protecting life is the foundation for a republic such as our own. Indeed, the most fundamental liberty is to life itself. Tiller's murder obviously violates both a commitment to life and the rule of law. No free society can survive if its members believe themselves authorized to mete out...

Barack Obama is vowing to sign climate change legislation and overhauls in health care and financial regulations this year and is dismissing his critics as naysayers. Obama warned more than 400 of the Democratic Party's top fundraisers Monday evening that winning policy fights will become more difficult. Obama ran through a list of successful administration initiatives, including a $787 billion economic stimulus, a budget resolution, a fair-pay bill and a reversal on a ban on federal funding of stem cell research.

Arguably the Episcopal and Methodist Churches have been America's historically most influential. Numerous American elites, including many of the Founders, were and are Episcopalian, making it often the de facto "established" church. And Methodism became America's largest church in the 19th century, creating the evangelical populist ethos that robustly survives today, if now mostly among other denominations. Like other Mainline denominations, Episcopal and Methodist seminaries succumbed to theological liberalism early in the 20th century, reaching radical crescendos in the 1960s, when both churches began numerically to decline, a decline that continues until this day. But the two denominations now seem...

FP: How radical is Obama’s political agenda and what are the consequences if he fully implements it? Morris: He will divide America into two classes: the tax eaters and the taxpayers. The former group will be about 60% of the nation that realizes a net profit on their dealings with the IRS. April 15th is a great day on their calendars. The latter group will be about 20% that pays all the taxes. With this arithmetic, he can raise taxes with political impunity. But the most dramatic consequences are economic. The budget deficit is so big and the borrowing so...

Soon the Senate will take up the cause of President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. In the news this week, one of her decisions that appeared before the current court was reversed. With Sotomayor in the news, then, it is time to look her over once again. It must be said, though, that any close scrutiny finds her wanting. To begin with, it's shocking that President Obma has nominated for a spot on the Supreme Court a judge whose decisions have been reversed or rejected in five out of the six times her cases...

The Congressional Budget Office has put out its latest calculation of the loss taxpayers will take on the TARP bailout. CBO estimates that the subsidy cost of the transactions (broadly speaking, the difference between what the Treasury paid for the investments or lent to the businesses and the market value of those transactions, including repurchases of preferred stock) amounts to $159 billion. The automobile bailouts look particularly grim. Of the $55 billion that went out the door, CBO expects $40 billion will never be returned. Table 1 has a full breakdown. These numbers obviously have some caveats. No one knows...

We Americans saw what a fuss Al Gore made in our 2000 Presidential election (after he promised not to challenge), and we witnessed how Floridians could not accurately punch ballots, all the while Al Gore's people pushed our people through weeks of court wrangling not unlike his partner in crime, Bill Clinton, during the Lewinsky affair. That was so long ago that we had no idea what crooks and cheats inhabited Obama's ACORN. Now we see Iran going through a similar, yet more deadly dust up, involving the more conservative, religious and military backed badman Ahmdinejab vs the more Progressive...

The Harlequin ladybird is putting over 1,000 species in the UK in peril, scientists have warned. "The rate of spread is dramatic and unprecedented," said Dr Helen Roy of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. The ladybird has spread to most parts of the UK in just four years, preying on many other insects. However, research outlined at the Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition suggests local ladybird parasites are adapting to prey on the interloper. To help that process along, scientists are suggesting introducing a mite that renders the ladybirds infertile. Originally from Asia, the harlequin preys on a wide...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 31% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. That matches the lowest level yet recorded (see trends).

What a guy!

As the summer begins, White House watchers have spotted a new look by President Obama: The Evil Eye! Staffers have joked about the menacing glance, which comes when the president meets with world leaders who are not aligned with his progressive view. White House photographers have captured the "evil eye" in recent weeks, during sessions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Colombia's Alvaro Uribev. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi got hit with the commander's malocchio last week in the Oval office. And at least one White House reporter has been on the receiving end of the daggers during a press...

The news that Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was removed from his post and spirited out of the country by the Honduran military has elicited official condemnations from the governments of France, Ecuador, Chile, Spain, and Argentina; as well as protests from the Organization of American States and the United Nations. The U.S. State Department called the events an "attempted coup," and demanded that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power in order to facilitate the "restoration of democratic order." Hold on. There was an attempted coup in Honduras, but it was Zelaya who initiated it, not his opponents. As the invaluable...

Prologue WHEN a nation's money is no longer a source of security, and when inflation has become the concern of an entire people, it is natural to turn for information and guidance to the history of other societies who have already undergone this most tragic and upsetting of human experiences. Yet to survey the great array of literature of all kinds — economic, military, social, historic, political, and biographical — which deals with the fortunes of the defeated Central Powers after the First World War is to discover one particular shortage. Either the economic analyses of the times (for reasons...