Free Republic

<p>Victim of burglary shoots suspect David Watson of Hollister is charged with seven felonies over a break-in in Forsyth.</p> <p>News-Leader FORSYTH — A Hollister man was charged Monday with seven felonies, including robbery, burglary and stealing after being shot by the victim of the burglary.</p>

<p>Democrats, in the name of tolerance, plan to demonize conservative Christians as being like the Taliban, according to an article in Newsweek.</p> <p>Democrats "are planning a daring assault on the most critical turf in politics: the cultural mainstream," political correspondent Howard Fineman writes.</p>

Dunblane gun law has been failure, says marksman By Stephen Robinson (Filed: 28/12/2001) PISTOL shooters can recall precisely where they were and what they were doing when the first news bulletins came through of the Dunblane massacre on March 13, 1996 . They went through phases of shock and horror, then bafflement, then rage. Rage that a man with a gun licence - one of their own - could have shot dead 16 children and their teacher. Then the mood changed and competitive shooters, many of them reliable winners of medals for Britain in international meetings, found they were the ...

We’re With You, GW, Really! by Brad Edmonds President George W. Bush said, many weeks ago, "You’re either with us or against us" in the US government war against terrorism. The implication was that you are either supportive of all of our government’s measures since 9/11, or else you are a supporter of, or at least sympathize with, the terrorists. This deliberately intimidating statement, which keeps reappearing on television news programs, needs to be examined (and refuted) in light of some of our government’s post-9/11 initiatives. Among the new arrogations of our government are The Patriot Act and Bush’s executive ...

J’Accuse by Michael Peirce There has been a lot of criticism of LewRockwell.com on FreeRepublic, an ostensibly conservative discussion site. Much good comes out of that site, including excellent coverage of the latest war. Patriotism is considered de rigueur there and many of those who post are quite conversant with the constitution. Others have never heard of it. LRC is referred to by some Freepers as a "blame America first" site. They are correct in supposing that LRC writers including myself are not gushing over the Republican Party. It is flawed thinking however, to suppose that we are by default, ...

Eyewitnesses to Disasters The old saying, "seeing is believing," is true most of the time for most people, but it isn't always true. A skeptic may invent alternative explanations for what he is seeing. I call this phenomenon "seeing isn't believing." In every Middle Eastern Islamic nation, the vast majority of those people interviewed so far think that the videotape of Osama bin Laden's bragging was faked by the United States. It is as if they all saw the movie, Then there is another phenomenon, less familiar, "believing is seeing." It may be even more common that "seeing isn't believing." ...

Monday, Dec. 17, 2001 French Debate Killing Disabled People Pro-abortion forces scoff at pro-life Americans who warn of the devaluation of human life, but what's happening in France is enough to frighten anyone. Willemijn Forest, who lives in Marseilles, told the Christian Science Monitor how the first thing doctors asked after she bore a son with Down syndrome was whether she wanted to keep him. "After the delivery, they took him away immediately, assuming I did not want to see him anymore. I said, 'Of course I want to keep him.' I was so appalled by their attitude." France's highest ...

Free trade: Pied piper to global government © 2001 Creators Syndicate, Inc. "John M. Culbertson, an economist known for mounting an articulate defense of protectionist economic policy long after the tenets of free trade were de rigueur among his colleagues, died on Sunday, in Madison, Wis. He was 80." So read Sunday's obit in The New York Times, which went on to quote a Culbertson essay in 1986: "The future of the United States depends on whether we can escape from the childish dream world in which 'free trade' is The Good Fairy and 'protectionism' is The Wicked Witch of ...

<p>According to the polls many years ago, there was little national support for either the civil rights or anti-Vietnam-war movements. But, through teach-ins, newspaper ads, and other ways of awakening the citizenry and Congress, those campaigns prevailed.</p> <p>The odds against similar organized national opposition to the Bush administration's weakening of the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, are much longer than they were in the 1960s. Not only do polls show overwhelming public support for the diminishing of civil liberties; but Congress — except for a few vocal constitutionalists — is not going to vigorously exercise its oversight powers over Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Justice Department.</p>

NTSB Destroys Incriminating Evidence Reed Irvine Dec. 14, 2001 The National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, has secretly sent a large part of the wreckage of TWA Flight 800 to a Long Island junkyard for recycling. Millions of dollars were spent recovering the wreckage from the ocean and transporting it to Calverton, where the fuselage was assembled as a mock-up to impress the public with what a thorough job the investigators – the NTSB and the FBI – were doing. That was for show, but there was other wreckage that they didn't want shown. Journalists and private investigators were not allowed ...

Toward the End of National Sovereignty Paul Craig Roberts Dec. 13, 2001 Tyranny is coming to Europe in the form of a new multicultural empire. Ancient sovereign states, such as England and France, and newer ones, such as Germany and Italy, are to cease to exist, to be folded into a European superstate. National existence is targeted for extinction by about 2006, followed by national consciousness. Preparing the British for their demise as a people, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote in The Independent on Nov. 22 that "in a world where states and the interests of their citizens are so ...

National Review Gets Borked by Bob Murphy For some time now, I’ve been privately making excuses for the modern "conservative" movement. I’ve told some of my colleagues not to be so critical of the present hawks; after all, we’ve got clowns like Bill Clinton paying lip service to anti-imperial sentiments, and perhaps our message is just being clouded. But enough is enough. The December 17 print issue of National Review contains an article by Robert Bork titled, "Having Their Day in (a Military) Court: How best to prosecute terrorists ." And it is this article that has finally convinced me ...

Pat Buchanan: America first By Jake Tapper Dec. 3, 2001 | "The wrong people are winning over there," commentator Pat Buchanan said on Monday when asked his view of the weekend's terrorist attacks in Israel. "I don't think you can have a Sharon agreement with Yasser Arafat now." In this in-depth conversation, the one-time presidential candidate goes on to discuss Arafat's failings as a leader, President Bush's dilemma in the Mideast (his mission is "somewhat hopeless"), Clinton's near success and the controversy surrounding Buchanan's views of the United States' role in World War II. After securing the Reform Party presidential ...

Forget the Constitution by John Keller Ron Paul is frequently, and correctly, praised as the lone constitutionalist in Congress. But he is truly the exception that proves the rule: our government is no longer bound by anything resembling the written limitations of the Constitution. I used to share the minarchist view. A small, limited government seemed possible and pragmatic. Even that’s changed since September 11th. Instead of rethinking the foreign policy that contributed to the attacks, the government piled on more of the same. Instead of firing the chiefs of the FAA, CIA, and FBI, those agencies get more funding. ...

New Perspectives on Gun Control by Michael S. Brown The gun control debate has been forced off center stage in the aftermath of the 2000 election and the 9-11 terrorist attacks. This is an excellent time to take a deep breath and see what can be learned from the experience of the last decade. The public dispute over the role of guns in society reached a shrill peak during the decade from 1990 to 2000. Most arguments took the form of slurs and slogans hurled across the airwaves by loyal troops on both sides. But for those who prefer a ...

November 19, 2001 Congress Fiddles As 'Perfect Storm' Hits Health Care Except for a bioterrorism package, Congress is likely to pass no health legislation this year - despite the fact that major crises are unfolding over health care costs, delivery and quality. Failure to address long-standing problems -plus new factors such as the recession and surging insurance costs - means that "a 'perfect storm' is about to hit our health care system," warns Henry Simmons, president of the bipartisan National Coalition on Health Care. A study released last week by the coalition indicates that health insurance costs are likely to ...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: AMERICA’S GREATEST WAR CRIMINAL By Ron Holland from Southern Caucus http://www.southerncaucus.org Abraham Lincoln should without a doubt be named America’s greatest war criminal. His war of invasion not only killed over 600,000 innocent Americans but it was obvious from his earlier speeches that he had previously advocated the prevalent constitutional right of democratic, state by state secession. Lincoln’s War also effectively overthrew the existing decentralized, limited federal government that had existed and governed well in the US since established by America’s founding fathers. Lincoln bastardized a respected federal government with limited powers into a dictatorial, uncontrollable Washington federal ...

November 19, 2001 Justice-Free Zones? Home schools could make drug prosecution yet more draconian. By Sam MacDonald First, the good news: House and Senate negotiators, now hammering out education-reform legislation, are clarifying a troubling legal ambiguity regarding gun laws and home schools, one that could land gun owners in big trouble if any of their neighbors are home schoolers. The bad news: a similar ambiguity involves drug laws and home schooling, and there do not appear to be any efforts to address it. The gun-ownership problem stems from the federal Gun-Free Schools Amendment. Passed in 1996, the law requires substantial ...

A Coup against the American Constitution An interview with Professor Francis A. Boyle Conducted Wednesday, November 14, 2001 by Dennis Bernstein, host of Flashpoints on KPFA Radio 94.1 FM – Berkeley, California Dennis Bernstein: You’re listening to Flashpoints, on KPFA. This is Dennis Bernstein. George W. Bush declared an extraordinary emergency yesterday that empowers him to order military trials for suspected international terrorists and their collaborators, bypassing the American criminal justice system, its rules of evidence and its constitutional guarantees. The presidential directive, signed by Bush as commander-in-chief, applies to non-U.S. citizens arrested in the United States or abroad. Joining ...

Getting the Pipeline Map and Politics Right by Stephen Gowans November 12, 2001 "Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival," said the leaked Pentagon policy-planning document, excerpted in The New York Times, in 1992. "First, the US must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests." (1) The document, widely believed to have been authored by Dick Cheney, set out a plan to ...