Free Republic

The improvised explosive device went off at approximately 3:45 a.m., shattering glass and twisting the building's metal frame. Some will dismiss this as just another attack on our troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. But, the attack didn't take place in the Middle East – the attack against our troops took place here on American soil. The bombing of the military recruiting center located at Times Square in New York City is still under investigation. Police report a hooded individual leaving the scene on a bike just prior to the bomb's explosion. Eight Democratic politicians received letters providing a warning of...

BERKELEY - People who are angry at city leaders for their anti-military stance are taking it out on businesses - canceling hotel rooms, restaurant reservations and theater tickets. They are writing letters to the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce outlining their plans to boycott the city. And they are steering clear of downtown shops because of the weekly anti-war protests that in recent weeks have become increasingly volatile. Two weeks after the Berkeley City Council refused to apologize to the U.S. Marine Corps for calling them "uninvited and unwelcome intruders," Berkeley businesses are feeling the backlash from people who don't want...

A coalition of anti-war groups is vowing to protest this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Denver under the rubric “Re-create ’68,” prompting criticism from some on the left who are loath to revisit what they see as a disastrous time for both the anti-war movement and the Democratic Party. Capping a year that saw the assassinations of both the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, the 1968 Democratic National Convention erupted in violence as thousands of Chicago police officers, supported by U.S. Army troops and National Guardsmen, battled in the streets with activists protesting the Vietnam...

he brouhaha sparked by the Berkeley City Council these past couple of weeks demonstrates again that you can be within shouting distance of one of the world's great educational institutions and still be terminally stupid. The council, as almost everybody not in a deep trance must know, voted to send a letter telling the U.S. Marine Corps to, in effect, get the hell out of town. The particular target was a Marine recruiting office on Shattuck Square. Predictably, that got the right-wing bloggers knee-jerking right back, sending them into paroxysms of righteous indignation. It also – and justifiably – upset...

Since the Marine Recruiting Center in downtown Berkeley was locked Friday morning when the World Can’t Wait protesters arrived around 7:30 a.m. aiming to shut it down and risk arrest, the group and its allies from Code Pink and ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and Racism) went to Plan B. They held a press conference, demonstrated and called out to passing motorists with chants such as, “murder, rape, torture war, that’s what they’re recruiting for.” They chanted beyond the time that their 2 p.m. sound permit ran out, as noted in a press release sent out by the Berkeley...

The City of Berkeley, California HATES the military - all branches and they have absolutely no respect for anyone wearing a military uniform. Mayor Tom Bates and the Berkeley City Council have officially taken that stance. There is no other way to look at it. They can deny it all they want to, but there is no hiding from the public record. Here is the proof. On 29 January 2008, the Berkeley City Council voted to tell the U.S. Marines that its Shattuck Avenue recruiting station "is not welcome in the city, and if recruiters choose to stay, they do...

Founded in June 2005 by Charles Clark Kissinger, a longtime leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, World Can't Wait (WCW) is a direct action movement seeking to organize "people living in the United States to take responsibility to stop the whole disastrous course led by the Bush administration." The organization asserts that removing President Bush from office "will be like removing a forty-pound tumor from your gut." WCW vows "to send Bush, Cheney and the rest of those fascists packing. ... After that, there are people in 'World Can't Wait' who are working for everything from reforming the Democratic party,...

Brattleboro Town Officials Harassed Over Bush-Cheney Arrest Petition BRATTLEBORO, Vt. -- Town officials in Brattleboro are being inundated with complaints from across the country about a decision to let voters decide whether arrest warrants should be issued for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Town Clerk Annette Cappy said the "nastiness" of the calls prompted the town office to stop answering its phones Monday. One message from a Minnesota man said he'd like to see terrorists cut off the heads of some Brattleboro officials. Brattleboro police said they will prosecute anyone whose messages cross the line and...

Gathering of Eagles web site has announced that ANSWER and their ilk have cancelled their planned March 15,2008 protest. They are instead planning to protest during General Petraeus’ April testimony on Capitol Hill. At least it will be warmer in April!

Government case collapses during trial -- judge dismisses all charges An important victory was won today in the case of 11 defendants who were arrested at the Sept. 15 March on the Capitol, which drew 100,000 anti-war protestors to Washington, DC. Judge Henry Greene of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia dismissed all charges against the defendants, who were accused of crossing a police line. The government's case collapsed in the early stages of the trial during the the testimony of a witness from the Capitol Police. The protestors asserted that the government and the Capitol Police had...

Virtually ignored by the establishment media, the famous antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan officially kicked off her campaign to unseat Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the opening of her campaign headquarters yesterday in San Francisco. The date of her headquarters opening coincided with the date John Lennon was assassinated in New York 27 years ago. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, hoped his passing would be remembered by people everywhere imagining a world of Peace and Love. Former Board President Matt Gonzalez, former Union Local 10 Secretary-Treasurer Clarence Thomas and former mayoral candidate Ahimsa Sumchai attended the campaign kickoff event. Note the “former” status...

I had to look up the word "conniption." I wasn't sure how to spell it, but I'm sure that the likes of Code Pink, MoveOn, and other far left anti-war groups had a collective conniption fit last week. One of their poster boys, John Murtha, quit toeing their line. Surely what followed were the same fits of rage I've seen them have before. In September at a Washington D.C. rally as Senator Joe Lieberman began to address a group of pro-mission vets and Gold Star Families, several members of the anti-war groups charged toward the stage with seemingly unrestricted fury,...

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 29 (OneWorld) - U.S. war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have announced they're planning to descend on Washington, DC this March to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in Iraq. "The war in Iraq is not covered to its potential because of how dangerous it is for reporters to cover it," said Liam Madden, a former Marine and member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. "That's left a lot of misconceptions in the minds of the American public about what the true nature of military occupation looks like." Iraq Veterans Against the...

There is quite a lot of interesting, but wild, speculation running around the blog-o-sphere, progressive circles and just plain dinner conversation these days about whether BushCo will allow a peaceful and constitutional transfer of Executive power in the ’08 elections. Unless or until George Bush appears on our TV boxes one night, wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt and red tie with his hands sweatily clasped in a desperate death grip on top of his desk in the Oval Office, telling us that some catastrophic event, whether man-made or natural, has just occurred somewhere, and he must, for the...

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was awarded the 2007 Thomas Merton Award last night for her work within the peace and justice community. Sheehan was unable to attend the ceremony at the Sheraton at Station Square, but accepted the award in absentia. Sheehan began her career in activism after her son, 25-year-old Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed during a mission in Iraq on April 4, 2004. Since that date, Sheehan has called for the country's leaders to end the war, recall U.S. troops and hold themselves accountable for the decisions that sent the troops to Iraq. Sheehan was forced to cancel...

ANALYSIS: Protesters took to the streets in past conflicts; today their presence may be strongest online. In May, saddened that she had failed to stop the war in Iraq that took her son's life and made her the face of opposition, Cindy Sheehan tearfully quit the anti-war movement. She had concluded that her son Casey, a 24-year-old Army specialist killed in an April 2004 battle in Baghdad, had "died for nothing." "Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next 'American Idol' than how many people will be killed in the next few months," Sheehan...

MINNEAPOLIS - Shrouded in black, with a bandanna masking her face, a self-proclaimed anarchist slips into her combat boots and dashes through town, tossing a Molotov cocktail here, launching a bowling ball there. The YouTube video is more parody than threat: The flaming cocktail ignites a charcoal grill, and the bowling ball knocks down pins instead of crashing through a Navy recruiting office window. But as the video fades to black, the message on-screen is clear: "We're getting ready. What are you doing?" With less than 10 months to go before the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St.Paul, activists are already...

No, I'm NOT exaggerating. These are actual communists from the A.N.S.W.E.R. group. Or at least many of them are. The first guy interviewed is merely a useful fool. He is so clueless that he has no idea of the organization listed on his sign. They gave him the sign and all he knows it is against the EVIL Bush Regime so it is okay with him even if they are communists which he isn't sure about. The second guy interviewed, in the green shirt, knows the score but doesn't mind being associated with the communists. However, the BEST part...

If the "peace" movement holds a protest and no one in the press covers it, does it still exist? If Americans are sick of the war, they're also sick of the "antiwar." Even the media have grown antiwar-weary. Rallies on Oct. 27 drew only perfunctory news mentions. The peaceniks have become a bipartisan political problem, now that the Democrats who control Congress haven't dared to placate the radicals by cutting off money for the troops. Cindy Sheehan is threatening to run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But suddenly -- surprise, surprise -- the media aren't interested in Sheehan's new crusade....

Stephanie Burns and Ben Parkinson strolled down sun-drenched Fillmore Street with political thievery on their minds. Both are grass-roots volunteers for Republican presidential contender Ron Paul, a Texas congressman whose libertarian views might seem to make him a tough sell in this legendarily left-wing city. But Burns, Parkinson and other Paul supporters have been spending their weekends marching, staffing tables and knocking on doors in an improbable quest: picking up some of California's 173 convention delegates in the Feb. 5 primary. On the surface, the plan seems quixotic given general assumptions about California: that the state is too big for...