Free Republic

Good-humored, illuminating and without cant, Oliver Stone's documentary "South of the Border" is a rebuttal of what he views as the fulminations and lies of right-wing media at home and abroad regarding the socialist democracies of South America. Featuring interviews with seven national leaders who all express great affection for their neighbors to the north if not for historical U.S. foreign policy, the film suggests a clear way forward for a continent that has largely shaken off the grip of imperialism and what Stone calls predatory capitalism as opposed to benign capitalism. Greeted with extended applause at its Venice press...

The "resignation" shortly after midnight on Sunday morning of President Obama's "green jobs czar" Van Jones has generally been seen as a convenient holiday weekend move. By Friday, after White House Secretary Robert Gibbs would only say that he still was a part of the administration, it was obvious that Jones's resignation was only a matter of time. The 9/11 truther and other evidence accumulated by Glenn Beck, Gateway Pundit, and others was simply overwhelming. But it seems to me that it would have been more convenient had the White House waited until early Sunday afternoon to announce Jones's resignation....

WHEATON, Minn., Sept. 5 (UPI) -- An altercation over a washer and dryer at a church in Wheaton, Minn., left a 14-month-old girl dead, authorities say. The Traverse County Sheriff's Office alleges David E. Collins and Darryl G. Kennedy confronted the girl's father, Claude Hankins, at Thy Kingdom Come Church regarding household appliances Hankins received from the church's pastor, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Friday. The sheriff's office said Collins allegedly was armed with a baseball bat during Thursday night's incident and while confronting Hankins, the bat struck Hankins' infant daughter. After Collins and Kennedy left the scene, the unidentified...

Joliet, Illinois (CNN) – Organizers of the Tea Party Express bus tour arriving in Washington later this week planned their route to go though Democratic congressional districts they consider vulnerable. "What we did was take a map of the United States and then we went head and pin pointed the members of congress that merited our attention and then we looked at those that might be politically vulnerable," said Joe Wierzbicki, a strategist with the conservative PAC Our Country Deserves Better, who are organizing the cross country Tea Party Express tour. Topping the group's target list in the Senate is...

In a classic "damned if they did, damned if they didn't" situation developing with respect to White House hiring practices of disgraced and resigned White House Green Jobs Czar VAN JONES, through the magic and wonder of the internet and its archiving functions, the White House today has been caught in either a BIG LIE or a major scandal regarding the actual status of it's hiring practices--in contradiction to it's stated policy initially indicated in President-elect Obama's post-election days and through the transition.The webpage link to apply official was HERE. This was at the transition team change.gov website. From...

Democrats return to Washington this week for a last-ditch effort to salvage health care reform, looking to President Obama's joint-session speech Wednesday to avert a political and legislative train wreck. It is an astonishing reversal of fortunes for a party that started the year with triumphant control of Congress and the presidency, confident in its ambitions to retool the nation's economy, not only with health care but also climate change and a New Deal-style economic stimulus. Democrats instead return bloodied by a terrible August of plummeting public support, raucous town-hall meetings, a re-energized GOP and an impasse in their own...

Democrats return to Washington this week for a last-ditch effort to salvage health care reform, looking to President Obama's joint-session speech Wednesday to avert a political and legislative train wreck. It is an astonishing reversal of fortunes for a party that started the year with triumphant control of Congress and the presidency, confident in its ambitions to retool the nation's economy, not only with health care but also climate change and a New Deal-style economic stimulus. Democrats instead return bloodied by a terrible August of plummeting public support, raucous town-hall meetings, a re-energized GOP and an impasse in their own...

American revolution About 5,000 rally against high taxes, big government as tea party express stops in New Lenox NEW LENOX -- Not long after 10 a.m. Monday, the Tea Party Express inched its way toward the enormous crowd. There literally were thousands of people jammed inside the open-air pavilion in front of New Lenox Village Hall. Because so many were waving protest signs and chanting their opposition to powerful Democrats, they didn't see the approach of the big bus. But dozens of others did. They split off from the bigger group, surrounding the vehicle. "God bless you!" called one woman,...

http://www.jokeroo.com/video/extreme/badass-homeowner-shoots-home-invaders.html

The latest American Tea Party Express attracted thousands of residents Monday as they descended upon New Lenox Labor Day morning. The unexpectedly large crowd caused traffic to be backed up a quarter-mile on Interstate 80 as well as forcing some participants to park one-half mile away from the Commons Performing Arts Pavilion in New Lenox. Police indicated a crowd of 8,000 to 10,000 people showed for the event, far more than they were prepared for or anticipated. Despite the snarled traffic, the event went smoothly with little problems for an event of this size. It was obvious this event had...

It seems that a decades-old battle for the soul of the Democratic Party has reemerged in the Obama administration.  The media likes to talk about splinters and fault lines among the Republicans, but these have a far shorter history than the intra-party war that seems to be fought ever few decades among Democrats because of that party's tendency to drift to the far left.   Ron Radosh notes the interesting background of a group Van Jones founded, The Ella Baker Freedom Center. Most people have referred to the late Baker as simply a civil rights activist.... in my book, Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic...

September 7, 2009 Rifqa Bary Facebook threat: "We need to kill her" Pamela discovered the Facebook threat and took numerous screencaps of the page; one is above, and the others are here. But as soon as she posted about this threat, the Facebook page was taken down.

A BID to build the world's largest solar power station in Victoria is in doubt after the company involved was placed in receivership. The $420 million project, planned by Solar Systems, was to have produced power for about 45,000 houses and has provided work for 150 people, Fairfax reported. Administrator Stephen Longley of PricewaterhouseCoopers said he hoped to have news for the workers by the end of the week. "We are assessing Solar Systems' operational and financial position with a view to continuing operations on a reduced scale over the next three months in order to provide us with sufficient...

....[T]he agenda has been the same now for over 60 years regarding the agenda of the Democrat party. Their agenda doesn’t change. Nothing changes. Just their selling points do. The Democrat party calls itself progressive, yet they are pushing the same thing now that it pushed for, and was rejected 60, 40, and even 15 years ago. It is the same old thing that has been pushed for 60 years, and now, we are going through another round. The only thing is different this time, is that it is a little more fierce in that now death (via euthanasia, and...

September 7, 2009 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- Critics of the government are hitting the road on the Tea Party Express, a national bus tour headed to Washington, D.C. An enthusiastic crowd greeted the caravan of buses in southwestern suburban New Lenox on Monday. The caravan of buses is scheduled to arrive on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Saturday for a rally and protest. On Monday, the patriotic chants were frequent, the signs plentiful and the crowd was big and fired up. "We are here to encourage all of you to tell the government to get their hands out of...

A cab driver shot and killed a would-be robber around 10 p.m. Sunday at Carowinds Boulevard and South Tryon Street, Charlotte Mecklenburg Police said. The cab had been dispatched to the Colonial Village apartments at the intersection where he picked up a fare, said Capt. Allan Rutledge, of the Steele Creek Division of Charlotte Mecklenburg Police. The cab driver told authorities that the man he picked up pulled a gun, at which point the driver pulled his own handgun and shot and killed the man, Rutledge said. The driver then called 911. Two handguns were found at the scene and...

Don't know if this is the correct way to post a video... but check it out!

Signs of the times in Obama's home state. Joliet area Tea Party attenders brought hundreds of signs to New Lenox's Tea Party Express rally Labor Day, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/v/mH9ehRRnO6A

BARACK Obama's ambitious push for a government-run health insurance scheme to cover many millions of uninsured Americans looks dead in the water. The US President's chief promoters have been signalling a significant retreat from the key domestic policy of his first term, just days before Mr Obama addresses a joint session of the US congress tomorrow to argue his case for reform. After weeks of contention about where Mr Obama stands, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declared yesterday: "I'm sure he will draw some lines in the sand." But the sand lines will be unmistakably several steps back from...

George Will has thrown down the gauntlet.  While a few conservatives have always been reluctant about our efforts in Afghanistan, Will’s September 1, column advocating withdrawal has opened a rift on the American right with conservatives taking sides.  George Will says it’s time to quit Afghanistan.  As a soldier who was in Afghanistan for most of 2008 I say unequivocally George Will is wrong; Afghanistan matters. Will has surprising allies including former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy here. They say we can’t win, though we’ve managed to achieve success in Iraq.  They claim that our struggle is against al-Qaeda not the Taliban. ...