Free Republic

The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a by word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it...

Saw War of the Worlds last night. Did anybody else notice the cool cameo appearance, right at the end, by...Gene Barry? He played Dr. Clayton Forrester, the hero of George Pal's version of the story. He was part of the group standing on the steps in the house in Boston--the white-haired guy on the left. He must be 80-something, but he looked pretty good.

Just saw a howlingly funny new Pepsi ad set in ancient Rome. A couple of Roman soldiers ride up to a group of ragged men wearing chains. One is holding a paper bag. "Hey, guys," says a soldier, "one of you left this behind at the last rest stop. There's half a sandwich here, and a can of Pepsi. I think the guy's name is written on the bag. Yeah, it says Spartacus. Anybody here named Spartacus?" Cut to Kirk Douglas standing up and saying, "I'm Spartacus," then Tony Curtis, then the rest of the crowd. It's the actual scene...

Well, you can all relax. While ROTS isn't a masterpiece, it's pretty darn good. I managed to slip into a preview showing earlier today and had a thoroughly good time. Yes, it's pretty grim in places. Yet if anything, I'd say it wasn't grim enough. The opening battle will have your jaw hitting the floor. Wall-to-wall butt-kicking on a cosmic scale. And the betrayal of the Jedi...well, it really, really hurts. Even when you know it's coming, it hurts. Oh, yes. This one's a keeper.

A downstairs neighbor of debonaire James Bond actor Sean Connery has filed a $30 million US lawsuit alleging he's a bully who's trying to force the family out of the townhouse they share. "Notwithstanding the cinematic James Bond image of consummate finesse, the defendant Connery, in true Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde fashion, acts the part in real life of a bully who ignores norms of neighborliness and decency," the court papers say. Dr. Burton Sultan, an ophthalmologist, lives with his wife and daughters on the lower four floors of a six-story Tudor townhouse, built in 1869, on Manhattan's East Side. Connery...

The good news is that fewer GIs are dying of their injuries than in any modern conflict. In Vietnam, one out of every three soldiers hurt in combat was shipped home in a body bag. In Iraq, it's one in eight. Credit the use of body armor and a dramatic increase in the speed of the Air Force's evacuation chain - the relays of Black Hawk helicopters and transport jets that ferry the wounded from the front lines to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where soldiers receive care before being sent on to hospitals like Walter Reed Army Medical...

DOOFUS du jour A woman planning to burn down her house for the insurance money in Greensburg, Pa., removed almost all of her furniture, a TV, clothes and several large appliances and covered them with a protective tarp in her back yard before setting the house on fire. SLOW RIDE In Butler, Pa., Joel Crytzer, 63, was charged with marijuana possess-ion when officers spotted the drug on the floor of his car, which they had stopped because Crytzer had been cruising down he road, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his car had only three tires.

In a statement issued yesterday evening, Florida’s Indian River Community College (IRCC) overturned its prohibition on a student-organized screening of The Passion of the Christ. IRCC made the decision after the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) took the case of the Christian Student Fellowship (CSF), which wanted to show the film, to the national media. IRCC’s statement confirmed that the college had not enforced its policies on public expression consistently and according to constitutional guidelines. Late last week, CSF also reported that IRCC has rescinded its authoritarian requirement that a faculty advisor monitor all student organization meetings.

The Shroud of Turin is much older than suggested by radiocarbon dating carried out in the 1980s, according to a new study in a peer-reviewed journal. A research paper published in Thermochimica Acta suggests the shroud is between 1,300 and 3,000 years old. The author dismisses 1988 carbon dating tests which concluded that the linen sheet was a medieval fake.

A Japanese woman who went to Iraq as a human shield is now copping flak in the war-torn country for opening a Baghdad brothel for American servicemen, according to Shukan Shincho (1/27). Iraqi communists are up in arms, claiming the human shield who entered their country because she was opposed to the U.S. starting a war there is now operating a sex service for GIs. "A Japanese woman called Yukiko Muragishi came to Iraq with her friends to act as a human shield and stayed there when the war had finished. She stayed because, inside Baghdad's Green Zone being protected...

Florida’s Indian River Community College (IRCC) is engaging in a campaign of repression against a Christian student group for attempting to show Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ on campus. In November 2004, the college banned the Christian Student Fellowship (CSF) from showing the film because it was R-rated, despite the fact that the college has hosted a live performance entitled “F**king for Jesus” that describes simulated sex with “the risen Christ.” CSF students report that after their group wrote President Edwin R. Massey in protest, administrators pulled group leaders out of class and, astoundingly, demanded an apology from...

Halftime of the Orange Bowl featured a number of musical acts. Last on stage was Ashlee Simpson, famous for her hilarious lip-synching disaster on Saturday Night Live. Well, everything went according to plan this time, but the entire Orange Bowl jeered when she was introduced, and jeered when she was done singing. If it hadn't been so funny, it might have been sad...

Tom Briggs was surprised to hear Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cite capacity constraints to explain the shortage of vehicle armor in Iraq. Briggs is vice president of Protective Armored Systems Inc. in Lee, which has made 16,000 bulletproof windows for Army Humvees and is waiting for more contracts. Like other armor executives who say they've got idled capacity, Briggs said he's been frustrated by the slow pace of Army orders. "You watch the evening news and Rumsfeld says you can't get the people to do the work, and that's not true," Briggs said. Such complaints have put heat on the...

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, for example, last July downplayed the intensity of the Iraq war on this basis, arguing that "it would take over 73 years for U.S. forces to incur the level of combat deaths suffered in the Vietnam war." But a comparative analysis of U.S. casualty statistics from Iraq tells a different story. After factoring in medical, doctrinal, and technological improvements, infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out just as intense as infantry duty in Vietnam circa 1966—and in some cases more lethal. Even discrete engagements, such as the battle of Hue City in...

Check this out--I can't quite believe CNN.com did something this hard-hitting.

As part of the legislative compromise to pass the intelligence reform bill signed into law by the President today, the administration and Congressional leaders have promised to attach to the first 'must pass' legislation of the new year a controversial provision that was rightly dropped from the intelligence reform bill -- this provision would effectively prevent the states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens by requiring 'legal presence' status for holders of licenses to be used as 'national ID.' "Although this provision is being touted by its supporters as a security measure, its implementation in practice will be to...

Ever want to find snippets of video on the Internet, but don't know where to look? Here are two new search services that'll help you out. This one is from Yahoo. But the really cool one, IMHO, is from a little-known outfit called Blinkx. Try them both and see what you think.

Handy advice (from one of those airline folders in the back of the seat) on what to do if your Tajik Air flight is hijacked. Apparently, it has a great deal to do with fondling space aliens, mutant airplane doors that eat people, but definitely not drinking. I'm guessing from the pictures. Last few lines of each section are in English. Sort of. Do not express you angry, do not wipe in voice, our cough. Close your eyes and do not stir them.

William A Mitchell never became a household name, but most households you can name have something of his in it – Cool Whip, quick-set Jell-O, egg whites for cake mix… He gave American astronauts the first space-age beverage (Tang) and impressionable adolescents one of the great urban legends (Pop Rocks). Bill Mitchell’s inventions are not to everyone’s taste. Once, for a BBC show about Thanksgiving, I served Martha Stewart a pumpkin pie with Cool Whip, and she wasn’t happy about it. As it happens, Martha and Bill Mitchell both have Nutley, New Jersey in common. In the year of Martha’s...

Last weekend I watched a bootleg copy of Zack Snyder's remake of The Dawn of the Dead. Most remakes fall flat on their face. Not this one. A deadly plague has spread across America, turning people into zombies that prey on the living. A small group of survivors finds shelter in a mega mall. Outside the mall the zombies congregate. I'm not sure if the zombies want in because they know the survivors are inside or because the urge to shop transcends even death. Watching the ghouls shuffling in the mall parking lot, I remembered something Mohammed had said on...