Free Republic

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) From questions about democracy to positives coming from conflict, social scientists offer different takes. The protests in Ferguson, Missouri, have been described as a mirror into contemporary America, but they are also something else: A crystal ball. Look past the headlines -- the debates over race and police militarization that have surfaced after the killing of an unarmed black youth by a white police officer -- and one can glimpse America's future, some historians and political scientists say. No one is talking about an impending race war or a police state, but something more subtle. Unless Americans re-examine some...

The science is settled. General Electric Vox is now widely recognized as a tedious Web laughingstock. I could Voxsplain it to you with a whole bunch of annoying and condescending Voxcards but others have already done so including James Taranto last month in the American Spectator. However, while his criticism and that of others might be Voxsplained away by founder Ezra Klein as just having a political axe to grind, now even the liberal Politico has written Vox off as mostly hype and little substance as you can see in the article by Dylan Byers:

Barack Obama must have thought ISIS was a DC comics superhero. He had to. It's the only explanation. We truly have an imbecile for a President. Oh sure, he's great at siccing the IRS on conservatives and spying on innocent Americans but when it comes to foreign policy, he sucks. He was really good at apologizing for America but he is God awful when the 3 am phone rings. Remember when ISIS was the jayvee? In the 2012 campaign, Obama spoke not only of killing Osama bin Laden; he also said that Al Qaeda had been “decimated.” I pointed out...

LOS ANGELES -- There's only one place to correctly start this column and that's with the scene because it was, honestly, something to be seen. Steve Ballmer officially arrived here Monday -- showing up several weeks after his reputation did, Ballmer's reputation being that, as a public speaker, he's passionate, motivating and spirited. Or, said another way, he's as outrageous as someone who has had one too many drinks or one too few meds.

Where does all this stuff that you’ve heard about this morning – the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it – where does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic. We call it “Political Correctness.” The name originated as something of a joke,...

As conservatives, we seek to build on past successes wherever we can rather than start anew. Fortunately, when we look at the question of education, the next conservatism quickly finds a lot to build on. The existing conservative movement has done some things right in this area. The most important achievement is the home schooling movement. Today, over a million American children are getting real educations at home instead of being propagandized in the public schools. Unfortunately, a new problem has cropped up which the next conservatism needs to take on now, before it gets bigger. Political Correctness, which is...

Hostess Brands LLC announced on Aug. 20 that the Illinois bakery where Twinkies were first invented will close this fall. More than 400 workers will be affected by the shuttering of the company’s Schiller Park location in October. Sadly, this isn’t surprising. In 2012, Hostess closed three bakeries nationwide after a massive union strike, high labor costs and increased competition turned up the heat on the baked-goods company. It’s hard to believe that some variation of these factors didn’t cause Hostess to sever its ties with Illinois. About 280 of the company’s workers in Schiller Park voted to unionize in...

(D)escriptions, written by Twin Cities area high school teachers, of how their schools teach literature classes. This one comes from Edina High School, which was once known as an excellent institution: Acceptance and inter-cultural understanding can be fostered through the use of powerful texts, discussion, analysis, and exploration in the classroom. An English curriculum grounded in social justice rests on a belief based in equity—that each person should have access to resources regardless of race, gender, ability, age, socio-economic status, or sexual orientation.

Saturday on Fox News Channel's "America's News HQ," network military analyst Ret. Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney told host Uma Pemmaraju that in oder to address the current threat ISIS posses, the Untied States should "go to DEFCON 1, our highest state of readiness and be prepared as we lead up to 9/11," because he warned "we may even see a 9/11/14."

Muslims on Twitter Defend Beheading of Foley Islam expert David Wood at AnsweringMuslims.com has compiled some of the English language tweets from Muslims defending and celebrating the murder of American journalist James Foley.As Wood put it, "there are plenty of Westernized Muslims who condemn the beheading of James Wright Foley. Unfortunately, Islam isn't defined by Westernized Muslims."A Muslim told me a few days ago that the killers from the Islamic State are "criminals, not Muslims!"But the killers believe they are being good Muslims. Some are helping distribute Qurans when they're not massacring innocent non-Muslims. And Muslims justify the beheading of...

Trayvon Martin Redux, A.K.A. Michael Brown I’ve had about all I can take, folks. Is there a word for the cliché becoming a cliché of the cliché? This week there was a shooting death in Ferguson, Missouri which has “transfixed the nation”. All the expected players were there: Sleazeball Sharpton, Jerk Jackson, Paris S. Lewis of the New Black Panther Party (who calls himself Malik Zulu Shabazz, excuse me while I laugh myself silly), a dead teenaged Negro, a Caucasian policeman, an orgasmic, drooling media, and a riotous crowd of local and imported Negro looters and pillagers. I can’t help...

Tropical depression perhaps turning into storm in southern east coast, looks likely to veer out to sea. September forecast. Dry from Texas to New England in September. Cool in west prairie states. PDO and AMO influence on weather systems long term (long rant).

Col. Rob Maness Qualifies for Ballot, Calls on LA Secretary of State to Investigate Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Residency Qualifications.... Baton Rouge, LA - This morning, while officially qualifying for the November ballot, Col. Rob Maness (R-Louisiana) today delivered in-person, a letter to Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler, calling on him to open an investigation examining the validity of Sen. Mary Landrieu's (D-LA) residency status. "It appears that there are significant inconsistencies that warrant an investigation regarding the residency status of one of the candidates who has filed for United States Senate," Maness' letter says. "On Wednesday, August 20, 2014,...

By this point, you have made up your own mind, as so many of us have. You are from one of two camps. One is the "hasn't Pete suffered enough? The other is the "Pete got exactly what he deserved" I occupy the former.

The militant group called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria seemed to surprise many American and Iraqi officials with the recent gains it made in its violent campaign to create a new religious state. But the victories achieved in the past few weeks were built on months of maneuvering along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which define a region known as the cradle of civilization.

Why has a federal civil-rights murder investigation arisen out of the tumult in a St. Louis exurb? There is only one plausible reason: Eric Holder is guilty of racial profiling. To be clear, we are not talking here about whether there was justification for the shooting of a young black man, 18-year-old Michael Brown, by a young white police officer, 28-year-old Darren Wilson. Was the shooting a legitimate exercise in self-defense by an officer under attack? Was it an overreaction for which Officer Wilson should suffer serious civil and criminal consequences? Such questions can only be answered by a thorough...

The leader of the Democrat Party, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is at it again. This time in an interview with Jorge Ramos of Fusion she decides to call House Republicans bigots. The conversation is about illegal immigration, and Wasserman Schultz knows exactly where she’s at… so she panders. She calls illegal immigrants the “backbone of our economy” and says that House Republicans decision to stand against illegal immigration is basically because they are horrible racists. “This isn’t about politics at all. It’s not about politics for the president, nor is it about politics for any of us who care… They [illegals]...

'UnFair: Exposing the IRS' screenings will feature a Q&A with Mike Huckabee A version of this story first appeared in the Aug. 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Right-wing heroes are hitting the big screen, at least for one night. UnFair: Exposing the IRS will screen in 674 movie theaters Oct. 14, followed by a panel discussion with Mike Huckabee, one of the documentary's stars. The film features interviews with members of Tea Party groups and others who were allegedly abused by IRS officials. "The IRS shakes down innocent people, harasses them out of business, and does so without...

In the summer of 1683, 300,000 warriors of the Ottoman Empire began the siege of Vienna. The fall of the city would have opened the way to conquer Europe. On September 11. was the main battle between the Polish cavalry and the Turks.

I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip – he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD watches over you – the LORD is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. (Psalm 121:1-6)