Free Republic

It would be wrong to say that some vital information is ‘lost’ in the barrage of feel-sad stories the main stream media throws our way each night when it come to the ongoing struggle in Afghanistan. The term ‘lost’ would imply something was actually there to begin with. That doesn’t apply here.

Today former President Jimmy Carter met with several Palestinian leaders, including a member of Hamas. Following a brief and yet cordial embrace between the two men Hamas issued a press statement describing the meeting. “It was our pleasure to exchange mutual embraces of goodwill between ourselves and President Jimmy Carter. As most people around the world now know President Carter was the man truly elected in Florida, and unlike the criminal Bush, who has killed so many Palestinians and Iraqis, President Carter is the man who best represents the will of the American people. Like so many life-long Democrats President...

A central contention of those who insist that neoconservatism explains the Iraq War is that the doctrine is not only new but outside the foreign policy traditions that have guided the United States throughout its history. Where, for instance, did the idea of promoting democracy come from? To find an answer, Packer, along with many others, feels he must follow a winding intellectual path back to Leo Strauss, or to Leon Trotsky, or to the Jewish experience after the Holocaust. The point is that the “neoconservative” foreign policy of the Bush years needs to be understood as an alien presence...

On 9/11: Ralph Nader, the consumer activist and independent presidential candidate, seems to think that the report of the commission assigned to investigate the events of 9-11 should not be the last word. “There are unanswered questions in the 9-11 investigation, and they should be answered,” Nader said at a recent address at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. “How do you go from plausibility to evidence? You have a more independent inquiry.” On the morning of September 11, 2001, airliners collided with each of the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center, after which they and a...

For those who have been paying close attention to the gap between the rhetoric of Obama during the incipient stages of his campaign and the trickling evidence of his core political beliefs, based on his actual record as a legislator and as expressed in the recent controversies that increasingly are defining his candidacy, it was only a matter of time before the mythologizing started to wear off. As an obscure state senator from Illinois with a limited political pedigree, in Obama’s own words, the entire justification for his candidacy was that given his mixed racial ancestry, he alone was capable...

In a recent editorial, writer Jesse Patrilla somewhat sarcastically commented on the consequences of a proposed economic boycott of China. "No large U.S. retailer is willing (read: stupid enough) to not carry Chinese products, " he wrote. "In the year following their 2004 joining of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and consequent release from quotas, the volume of Chinese clothing exports increased over 500 percent, and prices dropped almost 50 percent. If that’s just numbers to you, do this experiment: Check the perimeter to see if your boss is out of the way, duck in your cubicle and start checking...

Not a blog, so to speak.. a comment... Saw on Drudge yesterday, was a picture of Hillary doing shots and downing beer. No problem with that, but I fear she could probably drink anyone under a table, then steal your wallet, all while shouting.. "When I am president, I'm gonna take it anyway, might as well get it now.." Sorry, I thought this was funny as hell when I first wrote it. markbureau

That's right - it's official. I heard it on the streets of San Francisco this week. "Omnitasking" has replaced "multitasking" as the entrepreneur's work style. As soon as I heard it, literally as I passed someone on the sidewalk, I whipped around and asked, what's "omnitasking?!" It was explained that omnitasking is a higher state of multitasking enabled by today's many technology tools. Talking on a bluetooth-enabled smart phone while sending out an email from your laptop and sipping a latte at the corner coffee shop - that's omnitasking. I'll add additional meaning to the new term and inject the...

It's a True Crime post and under ongoing crimes we've got new info on Cesar Laurean, Maria Lauterbach's suspected murderer, and how he came to be captured. Plus those fine adolescents who beat up a girl on videotape have parents speaking up and no wonder those kids were so rotten. More on that FLDS sect, a fellow who raped a woman in broad daylight on a Walmart parking lot as he held a gun to the victim's baby's head. And Bobbi Parker, who said a convict forced her to help him escape and lived with him for over ten years,...

... Because the manipulable masses are easily given a "false consciousness" (another category, like religion as the "opiate" of the suffering masses, that liberalism appropriated from Marxism), four things follow: First, the consent of the governed, when their behavior is governed by their false consciousnesses, is unimportant. Second, the public requires the supervision of a progressive elite which, somehow emancipated from false consciousness, can engineer true consciousness. Third, because consciousness is a reflection of social conditions, true consciousness is engineered by progressive social reforms. Fourth, because people in the grip of false consciousness cannot be expected to demand or even...

Speaking at a closed door event, to liberal supporters in San Francisco last week, Obama uttered the following: "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them and they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate, and they haven't. It's not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them...

Carter-ism 101: to submit & enable Islamofascism's domination Carter-ism, a fanatic suicide to be kiss the devil - that seeks annihilation   The phenomenon that of self hatred, complete submission to the devil. Ever wondered what drives this twisted minded to be always on the side of the oppressors, on the side of the aggressors, on the side of the attackers, on the side of those seeking and trying to commit genocide?   Whether it';s the pressing the Shah of Iran that led to the most oppressive regi, the Islamic republic in Tehran of course, or whether it's supporting the enemies...

Centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi warned of "difficult months ahead" as he declared a decisive victory in Italy's general election. The 71-one-year-old media mogul said he was willing to work with the opposition to pass much needed economic reforms. Mr Berlusconi spoke soon after rival Walter Veltroni admitted defeat.

The U.S.Environmental Protection Agency needs to adopt regulations for human emissions of dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO). Last year the Supreme Court ruled last year that carbon dioxide (CO2) qualifies as a pollutant subject to government regulation under existing pollution control laws. The gaseous form of DHMO can produce more adverse effects than CO2. Some people refer to DHMO as dihydrogen oxide. Humans add DHMO to the air through various activities including combustion of hydrogen containing fuels such as natural gas and petroleum based fuels. The only alleged adverse affect of CO2 is that it supposedly causes increased atmospheric temperatures through a...

I am looking for any information that I can find on Jess F. Hale. It would be very much appreciated if you could give me anything.

Wealthy Democrats have donated $40 million to conduct a media campaign against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain (Ariz.). The campaign will be led by David Brock, chairman of Progressive Media USA. Brock said “the effort is necessary because the major media have fallen down on the job. A person who relies on TV and newspapers will have the impression that Senator McCain is some sort of war hero. But as Senator Rockefeller (D-W.V.) has pointed out, McCain fought on the wrong side in Vietnam. Thankfully, it turned out to be the losing side.” “There are some key...

Hopefully none of you wasted your time watching that ridiculous Compassion Forum on CNN last night. I taped it, and watched it this afternoon. And there were a few curious things in the two hours that merit comment. First, who hid the Imam?? We had several ministers and reverends pose questions, even a rabbi, sporting his yarmulka, yet from the Muslim community, well, a different story. Nary an Imam in sight. We had an American Muslim, who runs some charity, very erudite, and CLEAN SHAVEN....Not ONE facial hair...which it seems that 95% of American Muslims sport to some extent. And...

NJ has thousands of far more pressing problems,but... a NJ Assemblyman wants to ban the sale of high-caffeine beverages to "underage" consumers. It never stops !!!

[Transcript of Obama radio ad, including an assertion that gasoline costs $4.00 a gallon in Pennsylvania.] Obama is looking for a scapegoat for high gasoline prices, and let us see whether his statements are accurate or misleading.Bloomburg.com carries energy prices here (http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/energyprices.html). As of April 14, crude oil was running at about $110 per barrel. There are 42 gallons to the barrel, so this translates to $2.62 per gallon of crude oil. Here are current gasoline prices in Pennsylvania (http://www.pennsylvaniagasprices.com/). As of April 14, regular gasoline is available from Sheetz for $3.25 per gallon. In Scranton (Northeast PA), prices range...

The Obama camp has spent the better part of the weekend trying to quell the firestorm created by his haughty and condescending comments about why plebeians in small town America, in their “bitterness” over the souring economy, cling to such red-neck activities as owning guns and fulminating about illegal immigration. There are two important facets to this story: a) Obama’s choice of venue for making his disparaging remarks, and, b) his immediate attempts to “clarify” his statement. An analysis of both tells us a great deal about the hitherto relatively unknown two-term state senator from Illinois. Consider the venue for...