Free Republic

Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said today the U.S. and the rest of the democratic world is at a security crossroads in the wake of last month’s deadly al-Shabab attack at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya – and suggested an answer could be in arming civilians. In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Noble said there are really only two choices for protecting open societies from attacks like the one on Westgate mall where so-called “soft targets” are hit: either create secure perimeters around the locations or allow civilians to carry their own guns to protect themselves. [snip] In...

The outrageous rhetoric and threats coming from some Democrats demonstrates the necessity of the Second Amendment. In the period immediately before the Civil War, the most ferocious rhetoric came out of the mouths of Southern Democrats who were soon known as “fire-eaters.” They got that nickname because of the strength of their rhetoric in support of slavery and their willingness to talk about secession as a response to the possibility of abolitionists gaining influence in Congress, and even winning the White House. The louder and more ferocious speeches they gave, the stronger the abolitionist position seemed to become. Today,...

CHICAGO – The once mighty community activist group ACORN announced Monday it is folding amid falling revenues — six months after video footage emerged showing some of its workers giving tax tips to conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute. “It’s really declining revenue in the face of a series of attacks from partisan operatives and right-wing activists that have taken away our ability to raise the resources we need,” ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan said. Several of its largest affiliates, including ACORN New York and ACORN California, broke away this year and changed their names in a bid to...

For many journalists, diplomats, and political activists, Amnesty International is considered to be a highly reliable and objective source of information and analysis on human rights around the world. But the halo that surrounds its reports and campaigns is beginning to fray, as the evidence of political bias and inaccuracy mounts. Recently, The Economist, published in Britain, noted that “an organisation which devotes more pages in its annual report to human-rights abuses in Britain and America than those in Belarus and Saudi Arabia cannot expect to escape doubters’ scrutiny.” Other critics, including law professor at Harvard, Alan Dershowitz, and the...

This is the first of what I hope will be an ongoing series of exchanges with notable friends of the Ablution. Our first respondent is one of the most popular novelists of our time. According to his official biography, he: Graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy with Jacob Bronowski. He has taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT. He’s “a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the...

Folks, you can’t make this stuff up. However, I sincerely beg all readers to properly stow potables, combustibles, and sharp objects before proceeding further. An expedition to the North Pole to bring attention to global warming was cancelled due to the extraordinarily cold weather. I kid you not. As reported by the Associated Press Monday (emphasis mine throughout): The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of...

George Allen and Jim Webb had another debate yesterday. Probably to the relief of many of you, I did not get to see it. But from the clip I did see, and the clip that everyone will see, Allen walked away from this fray the big winner. After running a sub-par campaign and his dreadful appearance on Sunday’s Meet the Press, Allen caught a huge break, a break that will likely turn the momentum of the race in his direction. One of the panelists, a woman named Peggy Fox, asked Allen, “It has been reported your grandfather Felix, whom you...

Once a staple of American communications, the telegram died quietly last week. After more than 155 years during which it delivered millions of telegrams around the world, bringing news of births, deaths, weddings, wars and more, Western Union delivered its last telegram messages last Friday, ending a means of communication that began before the U.S. Civil War. Colin Wheeler, a spokesman for Denver-based First Data Corp., which owns Western Union Financial Services Inc., confirmed yesterday that the company ended its telegram services quietly on Jan. 27 by laying off 30 workers who still operated the telegram business. From a peak...

Krugman lies about personal accounts for Social Security. If the liberal establishment is so sure that reforming Social Security with personal accounts is such a terrible idea, then why do they have to lie about it? Consider Paul Krugman’s latest New York Times column. It’s designed to scare his readers into believing that “privatization,” as he calls it, “dissipates a large fraction of workers’ contributions on fees to investment companies” and “leaves many retirees in poverty.” To prove this, he offers a smorgasbord of deceptions, errors, distortions, and misquotations about the way reform with personal accounts has failed — or...

IF BEING A NATIONAL LAUGHINGSTOCK cannot derail a career as a university scholar, what can? The City University of New York graduate school just promoted Stanley Aronowitz from plain old professor to distinguished professor of sociology. Aronowitz’s fifteen minutes of fame came three years ago when his left-wing journal, Social Text, fell prey to “Sokal’s Hoax.” Six ST editors read and accepted physicist Alan Sokal’s “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”—without realizing it was a parody of academic double-talk. With mock seriousness, Sokal claimed to show how “the space-time manifold ceases to exist as an objective...

Right-wingers didn't start the fire. Imagine that you and I were neighbors, or even friends. One day, I drop by to visit. Eventually, I suggest that our community has become dangerous and that you might consider buying a gun and taking shooting lessons. As you extinguish your fourth cigarette in half an hour, I also observe that quitting smoking is the single best thing you can do to improve your health. You suddenly capsize your coffee table and scream, “You talk like Hitler. Damn you and your family!” whereupon you announce that you will move to another state because you...

Another One Bites the Dust “Plan Colombia” is the latest failed drug-war policy. John Walters, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, recently startled the media by admitting that the $3.3 billion “Plan Colombia,” now in its fourth year, has failed to make a significant dent in the amount of cocaine flowing out of that country. Walters added hastily, however, that he expected to see substantial progress in the next year or so. His comments are the latest in a familiar and dreary pattern. Each new initiative in Washington’s international campaign to stem the supply of illegal...

The Federal war on drugs expands. At a time when Federal officials should focus obsessively on crushing terrorists, they are expanding the disastrous War on Drugs into an even more pointless war on substances. From old bogeymen like marijuana to new “hazards” like Oxycontin, Washington busybodies are knocking themselves out combating compounds that, by themselves, do not threaten public safety. The Justice Department has appealed a December 2003 Federal court decision that barred Uncle Sam from impeding Californians who use personally grown, locally cultivated, or charitably donated medical marijuana. In Raich v. Ashcroft, the Ninth Circuit correctly disallowed the Constitution’s...

Student Punished for Posting a Constitutionally Protected Flier SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA — Audiotapes in the possession of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) show that a student at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) was unjustly punished for posting, in a public lounge, a flier that some students considered “offensive.” FIRE came to the defense of the embattled undergraduate student, Steve Hinkle, in April 2003. Despite FIRE’s efforts to resolve the case amicably and discreetly, Cal Poly persists in its injustice, its deceit, and its abandonment of its moral and constitutional obligations. “There are at least three...

Two of the most malignant and cruel mass murderers, rapists and torturers to ever walk the Earth have departed the planet — and the Left sneers. There was a time — I can remember it clearly, though it seems a lifetime ago — when “liberals” were people who fought for humanity and human rights, people who despised murder and torture. Now, wherever we look, the people who call themselves the most “liberal” seem to be the sole remaining defenders of murder, rape, and torture. What the hell has happened to those people? I was very happy today when I heard...

Initially labeled a “suspicious white male” by police investigating a dispute at the multicultural center on the campus of California Polytechnic State University, student Steve Hinkel continues to defy university officials who want him to apologize for posting a flyer advertising a conservative speaker. The original dispute occurred Nov. 12, 2002, when Hinkle, a member of the College Republicans, entered the Cal Poly Multicultural Center to post a flyer promoting an upcoming speech by Mason Weaver, a conservative black author of the book It’s OK to Leave the Plantation. The book analyzes the dangers of blacks becoming too dependent on...

Public University Gives Heckler’s Veto to Students Who Claim “Offense” SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA—In the spring of 2003, a student at the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) was found guilty of “disruption” for posting a flier—in a public area—that some students found “offensive.” The public university placed unequal rights above the Bill of Rights. “Allowing some individuals to veto the protected expression of others is an unconscionable betrayal of Cal Poly’s moral and legal obligations,” said Thor L. Halvorssen, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). On November 12, 2002, Steve Hinkle, an undergraduate and a...

Bad social science and bad legal policy. “If you keep a gun in your home,” a University of Pennsylvania press release said last week, “you dramatically increase the odds that you will die of a gunshot wound, according to research published in the June issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine.” “Keeping guns at home is dangerous,” the researcher was quoted as saying. A New York Times story likewise reported: “People with guns in their homes are almost twice as likely to be killed by guns as people who do not keep them at home.” Another article echoed the same...

One woman’s fight to bear arms. Like many crime-ridden cities, Washington, D.C. has not been able to keep guns away from the violent street gangs. But the city’s success in disarming responsible, law-abiding residents has been remarkable. No handgun can be registered in D.C. Even those few pistols registered a quarter of a century ago, prior to the district’s 1976 ban, cannot be carried from room to room without a license. All firearms in the home, including rifles and shotguns, must be unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger lock. In effect, no one in the district can...

Michael Moore’s mocking. In the field of “mockumentary” filmmaking, there are two giants. Rob Reiner created the genre with his film This is Spinal Tap. Michael Moore has taken the genre to an entirely different level, with Bowling for Columbine. In 1984, This is Spinal Tap premièred as the world’s first self-described “mockumentary.” The film purported to be a documentary of a heavy-metal band called “Spinal Tap.” In fact, there was no such band. No group had ever hit the charts in the 1960s with a song called “Listen to the Flower People.” No rock drummer named John “Stumpy” Pepys...