Free Republic

Sometimes even when you attend an event, and take part in it, it still takes time to understand it. I had the honor to speak at the Knoxville Tea Party, as Ben Franklin, a printer from Philadelphia. The visible, massive driving force for that and all 750+ Tea Parties with 1+ million people in attendance was taxes. But the real issue was larger and deeper than taxes. When the mainstream media attempt to deal seriously with this phenomenon, they phrase it as “conservative” as opposed to “liberal.” Sometimes it’s no such thing. The Tea Parties are related to the present...

Actually, it was a dark and stormy weekend. On Friday, right after the computer office closed, our tower-broadcast Internet access failed. It remained out until Monday morning. Meanwhile, Michelle and I had two articles each that were on deadline. But that was the easy part. We have a good friend who is an adopted grandmother, named Gibson Jefferson McConnaughey, almost 91 years old. A week ago, she was fine for her age. Thursday she was in the hospital with serious complications from a blood clot. Saturday morning she died. Until an hour before she died, she was conscious and talking...

Today comes news that the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, is replacing Roger Mackin with Phillip Mudd. Who? What? So? Roger Mackin was the undersecretary for intelligence and analysis. He was responsible for the memo issued just before the 750+ Tea Parties attended by 1 million+ Americans. You know that memo, which said people who oppose abortion, attend church, and own legal guns are potential terrorists. And don’t forget that it also said veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan are risky, too. Before talking about that appalling memo, let’s back up a minute. What is the purpose of the...

“Getting Around Congress?” It’s Much Worse than That by John Armor (632 words) The Treasury Department announced today that it would “convert its preferred stock in the nation’s largest banks into common stock.” The stated advantages were that this would allow Treasury to aid more banks without going back to Congress for more money than what was already approved. Some Administration officials even said that this would “get around Congress.” That alone would be bad enough. But the actual meaning of this action subverts the entire Constitution and is an assault on the American people. It is a take-over of...

As regular readers know, I very seldom rely on other people’s reporting. Most reporters are lazy, or biased, or both, so you cannot trust what you read or watch from them. There are shining exceptions, and one of those is Michelle Malkin. At the end of this column I’ll cite two of her columns that cover much necessary background on the Tea Parties around the nation on 15 April. In the meantime, let’s talk about white stockings, a grey wig, and a trip to Tennessee. Last week I was asked to take part in the program of the Knoxville Tea...

President Obama’s trip to Europe last week offered several more opportunities to observe his speeches. I listened to several of them, to see if they had changed at all. They had not. On my desktop I have stored two Doonesbury cartoons from decades years ago. Back then, when many of Doonesbury’s characters were still the same ones we both knew in college, I admired his work. (That was before his politics turned vicious and non-factual, shall we say._ The best of a cartoonist’s skill is to skewer his subject with a handful of words and a few strokes of the...

On special occasions, I wear a red silk tie printed with 56 signatures, all but one of them in black; the featured one in white is “Th. Jefferson.” The names are, of course, the signers of the Declaration of Independence. When asked, I tell folks I practice law for a bunch of dead guys. They pay me nothing. But it is an honor to represent them, especially when it reaches into the Supreme Court. That brings me to President Obama’s nomination of Harold Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, as Legal Advisor to the State Department. This nomination is a...

The mantra today is that we must get the toxic assets out of the banks and other financial institutions. That way, the banks will be on a sound footing, going forward. That may or may not be true. But, who are the experts assuring us that various steps are needed, now? Well, two key people in this process are Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass) and Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). Barney Frank had a sexual relationship with the federal official in charge of new products from Fannie Mae. Those new products were the bundled toxic assets that collapsed and started the meltdown....

The title of this column is also the title of a book by Simon Winchester, published in 1998. The subtitle introduces the three, seemingly unrelated subjects of the book, “A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary.” I’d never heard of this book. It was only in the house because it was in Michelle’s apartment in New York. And it was there only because she ran a book sale at her church in Manhattan, and it was an orphan – donated for sale but not bought by anyone. Yet it turned out to be an...

On St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish. Maybe just for the moment, or for the next few beers. O’Hara, O’Leary, O’Bama. But some of us have real, biological connections to the Emerald Isle. One of the reasons I was delighted to make a trip to Ireland last year was the chance to close the circle. By a happenstance the year before, I found the oldest proof of my European ancestors. On the Internet I stumbled across the website of the Compass Inn in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. What became the Compass Inn was built as a log building in 1799 on the...

Spring is a very special time, here on the Eastern Continental Divide. This was a particularly harsh winter. The first task on this first truly warm and sunny day was to patrol the grounds and see which plants had survived, and which had not. We were worried about the red maple planted just last summer. It and the wisteria made it through with flexible small branches, not small and brittle ones. Both plants were presents from dear friends, and one of those friends did not survive the winter. So it was good to see that her plant survive. Michelle is...

I’ve spent the last few days at the Conservative Political Action Committee Annual Meeting. Saturday I was part of a panel discussion on New Media and Talk Radio. The main subject was various methods by which the Administration and certain Members of Congress seek to restrict free speech of certain public discussions. When preparing for that, I realized there are parallels between the beginnings of America and now. And parallels between King George III and President Barack Obama. The first person to use the phrase “The United States of America” was the same man who taught residents of the nations...

The greatest single piece of dance music ever written is The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss. It appears at a critical point in three movies, all favorites of mine. In each case it demonstrates the emotional power of the right music at the right time in the plot. The first movie is an obvious use. Yul Brynner dances with Ingrid Bergman toward the end of Anastasia to this waltz. This occurs at the point where he begins to see that the woman he was grooming to pretend to be the surviving Anastasia, might actually be that surviving member of the...

It was just a minor story on Friday about a Dutch politician being denied entry to Britain at a London airport. You might well have missed it. But it was an extremely important event for its broader meaning. Geert Wilders, a member of the Netherlands parliament, was invited to Britain by a member of the House ot Lords. The invitation asked Wilders to show his 17-minute film “Fitna,” which he made last year. Fitna juxtaposes quotes from the Koran with images of Islamofascists attacking and murdering various non-Muslims. Last year there were riots around the world by Muslims against this...

When you write a weekly column for 15 years, there comes a time when you have a column due, and only a handful of subjects you don’t want to write about in your knapsack. Judge for yourself whether you want to read about a stolen hat, a blocked intestine, a frozen underground pipe, or how cold it’s been the last two weeks. The last subject can be handled quickly. In January of 1994 the workmen showed up to handle some inside work at my home, and Raymond Holland, who has a fine sense of humor, said that “it was cold...

A movement has begun among American college professors to boycott Israeli universities and professors and Israeli culture, over the “oppression” of Palestinians by Israelis. I read some of the press accounts of this academic movement, and decided to investigate its leader. David Lloyd, Professor of English at the University of Southern California, is the leader of this US effort. Anti-Semitism is commonplace in Europe, where such boycotts are old news. The background of Dr. Lloyd doesn’t look that bad on first glance. On his Biographical Sketch, there are only a few hints that the man is off-balance. Half of his...

Thank you Mr. President for this interview. We’re both lawyers and students of history. I look forward to your comments on the “ideals of our Founding Fathers” you referenced in your Inaugural Address. Which Founders are you particularly thinking of? Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin? That’s a superlative group. Yes, of course, we must exclude that slavery matter. Both Washington and Jefferson, until they died, held slaves. Did you know that one of your four men founded a secret society that anonymously published a pamphlet by Thomas Paine favoring abolition? Yes, it was Franklin. If he’d come out in public...

Notice how the screen writers for TV like a pack of pigeons on a handful of popcorn kernels? One finds brief success. The others hurry to claim a part of it. A few years ago CSI succeeded. Suddenly the TVs were full of “dead people” shows (as we call them with guilty pleasure). Now, another shift has occurred. In the new wave of “dead people” shows, the heros and heroines are solving crimes with their minds, not microscopes and chemistry sets. These involve intuitive leaps while the camera is tight on the eyes of the star. Think of all those...

I watched as much as I could tolerate of the confirmation hearing for Eric Holder to be Attorney General in the Obama Administration. He claimed that his participation in the last minute pardon of Marc Rich was “a mistake” and that he had “learned from it, and would be a better Attorney General because of it.” The nature of his mistake was that he “did not know” the details of Marc Rich’s crimes and situation. Let’s examine those claims. The Department of Justice has a Pardons Attorney who is assigned the duty of examining each request for a pardon. That...

Whenever there is a decent snow storm at night, as there was in the Blue Ridge this week, the following morning reminds me of a handful of perfect days in my life, fifty years ago in Salisbury, Maryland. Salisbury was then a very small town. Located on the Eastern Shore, it was halfway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, about 20 miles away from each. As a six year old boy, I had no comprehension of the influence of geography on weather. All I knew was, there was a sled in the front hall that had been there...