Free Republic

Every nation needs an intelligent and constructive form of conservatism. The debate over the health care bill, which mercifully came to a close on Sunday night, was not American conservatism's finest hour. In its current incarnation, conservatism has taken on an angry crankiness. It is caught up in a pseudo-populism that true conservatism should mistrust - what on Earth would Bill Buckley have made of "death panels"? The creed is caught up in a suspicion of all reform that conservatives of the Edmund Burke stripe have always warned against. Authentic conservatism is better than this...

Hey everyone. This is the full text of an article that I wrote and then made a web site for, at . I think you can guess what the point of it is. :-) It's long, but it was important to me to get this right. What I say is probably not going to be agreed to entirely here, but it seems to have gotten a good reception in other places, so I wonder if I could ask you to read this, and then if you find it to be worthy of it, to pass it around as you deem...

LYON I never thought I'd say this, but I'm thinking of leaving New York for a city that's free and tolerant and treats me like an adult. Berlin, maybe, or Barcelona, or even London, the city I left nearly 20 years ago. I came to live in New York to be a musician and a bohemian, but the last time my band played in the city, in April, there were no fewer than five "No Smoking" signs in our dressing room. Two weeks later in Hamburg, Germany, our dressing room had five ashtrays. You can guess where we felt more...

I understand the League's problems with the NAACP, due to the opposition by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) of the public display of the Confederate flags. Of course, like many anti-Southern groups, they view the Confederate flag as "a symbol of slavery". They hold this view, despite the fact that leading Confederate Generals voiced their own condemnation of slavery. General Robert E Lee considered slavery to be "evil" and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson educated his own slaves, despite laws in Virginia which prohibited such activity. Also, there were anti-slavery societies in the South, including the Manumission...

<p>DALLAS, Texas (AP) -- A decorated undercover narcotics officer has been fired from the Dallas Police Department after being indicted in connection with a fake drug scheme that landed dozens of innocent people in jail, police said.</p> <p>The Justice Department announced Friday that Senior Cpl. Mark Delapaz was indicted on five counts of deprivation of rights under color of law and one count of making false statements to federal officials.</p>

I don't really do vanities that much, but I just finished writing this for my own LJ site, and I think you guys here might like this one. On another thread here was this fantastic quote from Dennis Miller, who I'm liking more and more these days: "Michael Moore simultaneously represents everything I detest in a human being and everything I feel obligated to defend in an American. Quite simply, it is that stupid moron's right to be that utterly, completely wrong." As much as this nails how I feel, I know that I've been obsessing a little bit over...

In a recent thread, Freepers were asked to discuss their favorite movies, and we did, 470+ posts worth. Well, far be it from me to miss an opportunity for statistical analysis and scientific inquiry, so I compliled all of the results, and present them to you here. I bring to you, Free Republic's Top 124 movies: #77-124 (3 votes each): The Andromeda Strain, Armageddon, Arsenic and Old Lace, Back to the Future Part 3, The Birds, Cinema Paradiso, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Dawn Of The Dead, Deliverance, Dirty Harry, The Empire Strikes Back, Flight Of The Phoenix, Forbidden...

It was a grand success because more than 50,000 African people, from 66 cities, representing 38 states, participated in the first historic rally and demonstration, singularly focusing on the issue of reparations and demanding reparations from the United States Government that ?They Owe Us!? Thousands more African people who were unable to attend the rally participated in their local areas by passing out flyers, putting up posters, participating in local reparations rallies and forums, and helping to raise money to support this historic event. The Millions For Reparations Mass Rally was called by the Durban 400, led by the December...

I've put together some pictures from the recent Millions for Reparations March. This isn't all of them, as I still need to fix some up, index them, and all that, but some of the ones that I think are the most interesting and relevant are here. Warning: total download = 1.33M Early shot of the entire field facing the main stage. The poster reads: ZULUAMERIKKKA'S MOST WANTED The Hot New Album Explodes in Stores September 11th Votes for sale? A group of New Black Panthers gathers around pictures of what I assume is various ancient atrocities committed against blacks. Considering...

At the United Nations in New York, another quiet but significant step was taken at the international level in the movement for reparations to the descendants of slavery. At its Consultative Session, the Economic and Social Council voted to fund the establishment of a Working Group of five Independent Experts on People of African Descent. Even though the main purpose of this Working Group is to consider ways of eliminating racial discrimination, it will also be an important forum for the diverse descendants of enslaved Africans all across the Americas, the Caribbean and the slavery Diaspora to meet and begin...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, August 6, 2002 WASHINGTON - In a development bordering on what the American Civil Liberties Union called "surreal," the on-line magazine Salon.com today revealed that the Department of Justice is forwarding incoming Operation TIPS calls to the Fox-owned "America's Most Wanted" television series. "This is like retaining Arthur Andersen to do all of the SEC's accounting," said Rachel King, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "It's a completely inappropriate and frightening intermingling of government power and the private sector. What's next - the government hires Candid Camera to do its video surveillance?" "If it continues to cooperate with...