Free Republic

A family member put this video together today. Simple idea, a slideshow of shut-down national parks and memorials played over the original recording of "This Land is Our Land" by Woody Guthrie; but I think it's powerful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm3MXFo3pSY

context: My older brother, in spite of many fine qualities, is a real knee-jerk liberal - what I call a "Doonesbury Democrat" since he seems to look at things like that comic strip's author. At his house I noticed a notepad (like the ones drug reps hand out to doctors) in the kitchen with the following heading on each page:"Stand with Barack Obama for lasting change - Silence the GOP lies" And I just thought, doesn't this putrid sentiment just about sum up the leftist outlook on political discourse? Not "I disagree with what you say but I'll defend to...

An 18-year-old man was severely beaten with a piece of concrete late Tuesday night, in an assault that’s being investigated by Buffalo police as a possible hate crime. <...snip a few paragraphs...> Witnesses told police that the young man, who is white, was beaten by a group of about 10 to 12 black males ...

A Chinese restaurant in the Town of Hamburg was shut down by the Erie County Health Department Friday after an inspector found employees butchering a deer inside. Officials don’t know whether the dead deer at China King, 5999 South Park Ave., had been hunted or if it was road kill...

He may have taken student as second wife The principal of an Islamic boarding school on Buffalo’s East Side has been forced to resign after allegations that he was sexually involved with one of his students and that he claimed to have taken her as a second wife. Evidence suggests Mohammed Ibrahim Memon, a father of seven, persuaded Sajidah Khan, then 21, to marry under Islamic law as a pretense to sleep with her. Memon, an Islamic scholar and imam, has agreed to leave his post at Darul-Uloom Al-Madania, 182 Sobieski St., for a minimum of seven years...

A Chinese teacher has been sent to a labour camp over his internet photographs of schools that collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake, a rights group said today. Liu Shaokun was ordered to serve a year of "re-education through labour", according to Human Rights in China. The system does not require a formal charge or criminal trial and there is no appeal. He is believed to be the third person held after posting material questioning why so many schools were destroyed in the May 12 earthquake, in which around 70,000 people died.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama today said he will opt out of $84m in public campaign financing – and its attendant spending limits. Here is how his campaign stacks up with Republican John McCain's: Total raised this election cycle, as of April 30: McCain: $100.4m Obama: $272.1m Raised in April: McCain: $18.5m Obama: $32m Cash on hand as of April 30: McCain: $21.8m Obama: $46.6m

ON THE ROAD TO BERLIN OWING to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements, I didn't arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day, after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore. By the time we got there the beaches had been taken and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland. All that remained on the beach was some sniping and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast of a mine geysering brown sand into the air. That plus a gigantic and pitiful litter of wreckage along miles of shore line. Submerged tanks and overturned...

Climate change could lead to a heatwave in the south-east of England killing 3,000 people within the next decade, a Department of Health report said today. It put the chances of a heatwave of that severity happening by 2017 at 25%. Without preventative action, the report said that a nine-day heatwave, with temperatures at 27 degrees, would cause 3,000 immediate deaths, with another 3,350 people dying from heat-related conditions during the summer.

Maybe I shouldn't post something like this but here goes: I saw the new Fantastic Four/Silver Surfer movie on July 4. I love the comic books; while the movie differs quite a bit from the comic books, I don't really care that much as long as it makes a good film. But what really bugged me is the way they portrayed the military. Jack Kirby, originator of the FF and a WWII vet, must be rolling over in his grave. The four-star general who is the face of the US Army in this film is a character who is practically...