Free Republic

Betrayed at the Top It’s not just our political leaders who can’t be trusted to represent conservative values. PRINT LISTEN As a Conservative, I have to confess I see less of a problem in having to deal with Biden, Schumer and Pelosi, than in having to accept that McConnell, McCarthy and Cheney constitute my party’s leadership. One day, God willing, those Democrats will be gone from the scene. But the fact that our party is being led by three hacks who hate Donald Trump means that even if these three are gone, they will be replaced by like-minded shills for...

Goodbye, Mr. Fauci- He quickly became the media’s darling because they quickly realized that he opposed the President. Of all the terrible consequences of the Wuhan virus, one of the worst was having Anthony Fauci introduced into our daily lives. To look at him, you’d think he worked as a mascot for one of the baseball teams. But when he strode to the microphone and saw the red eye of the TV camera pointed in his direction, he suddenly felt himself 10-feet tall and the master of all he surveyed. He quickly became the media’s darling because they quickly realized...

BURT PRELUTSKY / MAY 10, 2021 Mask Hysteria If ever a treatment was worse than the disease, this was it. If this past year has taught us anything, it’s that even Americans can be so easily manipulated, they will quickly surrender their freedom and liberties, including those enshrined in the Constitution. All that was required was that those with political authority scared us into acquiescence by pretending that a virus that was far less lethal than the seasonal flu marked the return of the Black Plague. The people who died were the old and those with decrepit immune systems. To...

Justice Was Mis-Served! The Derek Chauvin verdict will obviously be appealed. PRINT LISTEN I believe that Derek Chauvin was guilty of manslaughter, but not murder. The man is obviously a bully, but if he had wanted to kill George Floyd, it wouldn’t have taken him nearly nine minutes to do it. I suspect he kept his knee on Floyd’s neck because he didn’t like his attitude. After all, lying face down with his hands cuffed behind him, Floyd wasn’t going anywhere. On the other hand, there was no way for the cop to know that the perp had a huge...

Pastor James Coates' bail review has just been denied in an Alberta courtroom. The pastor will now remain behind bars awaiting his May trial. According to a release from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, ...Justice Peter Michalyshyn of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench in Edmonton has ruled that Pastor James Coates of Grace Life Church must remain in jail for the next eight weeks pending his trial, unless he agrees to abide by health orders that violates his Charter freedoms of conscience, religion, expression, association and peaceful assembly. This is a dark day for religious freedom, Charter rights...

Mark Steyn: Lights Out on Liberty - Mark Steyn’s column appears in the New York Sun, the Washington Times, Philadelphia’s Evening Bulletin, and the Orange County Register. In addition, he writes for The New Criterion, Maclean’s in Canada, the Jerusalem Post, The Australian, and Hawke’s Bay Today in New Zealand. The author of National Review’s Happy Warrior column, he also blogs on National Review Online and appears weekly on the Hugh Hewitt Radio Show. He is the author of several books, most recently America Alone: The End of The World as We Know It. Born in Toronto, Mr. Steyn lives...

Oh, to be in England. Theodore Dalrymple: Childhood’s End - Britain, land of bleak houses and low expectations Growing up in today's England is far from the idyll depicted in this nineteenth-century lithograph. kate greenaway/Victoria & Albert Museum, London/Art Resource, NY Growing up in today’s England is far from the idyll depicted in this nineteenth-century lithograph. Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent UNICEF report. Ordinarily, I would not set much store by such a report; but in this case, I think it must be right—not because I...

Free Speech in an an Age of Jihad-The lamps are going out By Mark Steyn It’s an honor to be here, with so many people I greatly admire, including Rachel Ehrenfeld, and my comrade-in-arms from our struggle up north, Ezra Levant. I feel like giving a version of the Churchill speech in Fulton, Missouri, about how a Maple Curtain has descended across the forty-ninth parallel. It’s not quite that bad—yet—but if you do see a couple of guys bust into the Princeton Club in red coats on a dog sled, it’s the Royal Canadian Mounted Police snatch team, so just...

Theodore Dalrymple: Europe’s Unhappy Union - Political elites continue to push unification against their constituents’ wishes. 18 June 2008 Is the European Union heading for a Yugoslavian-style denouement? It sometimes looks as if its political class, oblivious to the wishes or concerns of the EU’s various populations, is determined to bring one about. The French and the Dutch voted against the proposed European Constitution, but that did not deter the intrepid political class from pressing ahead with its plans for a superstate that no one else wants. To bypass the wishes of the people, the politicos reintroduced the constitution as...

<p>Acting recently as an expert witness in a murder trial, I became aware of a small legal problem caused by the increasingly multicultural nature of our society. According to English law, a man is guilty of murder if he kills someone with the intention either to kill or to injure seriously. But he is guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter if he has been sufficiently provoked or if his state of mind at the time was abnormal enough to reduce his responsibility. The legal test here is a comparison with the supposedly ordinary man—the man on the Clapham omnibus, as the legal cliché has it. Would that ordinary person feel provoked under similar circumstances? Was the accused’s state of mind at the time of the killing very different from that of an average man?</p>

Theodore Dalrymple: Delusions of Virtue - We should hope Hillary Clinton’s Bosnia tale was a lie—and not a fantasy. 3 April 2008 Nietzsche, in one of his disconcertingly piercing aperçus, wrote: “‘I have done that,’ says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,’ says my pride, and remains adamant. At last—my memory yields.” Hillary Clinton seemed to reverse the Nietzschean order of things when she “misspoke”: “I cannot have done that,” said her memory. “I must have done that,” said her pride, and remained adamant. At last—her memory yielded. Was she lying? A journalist called and asked my opinion as...

Stalin's last army: hordes of gigantic crabs on their way to invade Europe - By Julius Strauss in Kirkenes, Northern Norway Millions of giant Pacific crabs, whose ancestors were brought to Europe by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, are marching south along Norway's coast, devouring everything in their path.The monster crabs, which can weigh up to 25lb and have a claw-span of more than three feet, are proving so resilient that scientists fear they could end up as far south as Gibraltar. Energised by a mysterious population explosion a decade ago, whole armies of the crustaceans - known as the...

Who Was Hillary Clinton? - February 2, 2008 Hillary Clinton is running for President based in large part on her experience, especially her eight years as first lady. So it is revealing that she and her husband don't want the media and others to have ready access to the records that might tell us a good deal more about that 1990s "experience."...snip

“It’s my BLOODY right to do so!” by Baron Bodissey A Motoon Ezra Levant is the publisher of Western Standard magazine, whose print version — now defunct — published the Danish Mohammed cartoons two years ago. On Friday Mr. Levant was summoned under protest to be interrogated by a “human rights officer” from the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The reason? Khurrum Awan, an imam from the Canadian Islamic Congress, filed a complaint with the HRC against him. Mr. Levant was required to appear before this extra-judicial body — no one on the HRC is a judge, and the panel is...

Trading Freedoms - Watch your back if you voice an opinion, but feel free to do business Matthew Stuart - September 17, 2007 Here's a quote from Amnesty International's website: "Symbolize the silencing of dissent . . . by covering your mouth, with tape or a gag, in demonstrations or vigils." Well this isn't a demonstration or a vigil but we thought we would take their advice to illustrate the topic that our cover story examines. The symbolism has been hijacked of late by attention-seeking peace protesters such as actor Martin Sheen, but we think it's quite appropriate for a...

How, as Mayor, I would help our brave troops - Boris Johnson 13th December 2007 Boris Johnson is appalled by the indifference towards veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Whatever our views, we should honour those who have performed their duty - Even if the story is exaggerated, the underlying psychology is convincing. It is reliably reported that last month a woman in her thirties was doing her daily laps of the pool in Leatherhead, Surrey, when she became aware of an obstacle. A section of the swimming-pool had been roped off to allow 15 wounded soldiers to receive the therapy...

RING IN THE OLD! - Mark's New Year Movie Vault We’ve come to that time of year when we critics advise you to skip New Year’s Eve and rent a movie instead. Better yet, rent a New Year movie, for it’s a curious fact that almost any film about December 31st somehow takes on the same depressing, desperate quality as the night itself. The great exception is Ocean’s Eleven (1960), in which the Rat Pack plot a five-casino heist in Vegas. That’s a jollier way than most to spend New Year’s Eve, and, as readers may recall, I’m especially fond...

TILL THERE WAS YOU - Song of the Week 10 December 2007 Song of the Week #80 by Meredith Willson It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas Ev'rywhere you go...That's true. Unless you're in Iowa, where it's beginning to look a lot like quadrennial Iowa caucus time ev'rywhere you go. The conjunction of those two events would be justification enough to celebrate Meredith Willson, the great son of Iowa who wrote "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas". But this December marks another landmark event in Willson's life: the 50th anniversary of the opening of his biggest Broadway...

Gaza's donkeys in demand as fuel crisis mounts - December 08, 2007 By Donald Macintyre It's not surprising the buyers at yesterday's weekly donkey market here were looking over their prospective purchases with care. They opened the jaws of the tolerant beasts to examine their teeth, and test-drove them, harnessed to a cart, out of the crowded yard to gauge their pulling power. "You need to make sure that it doesn't kick people with its back legs, that it's strong and that the colour of the coat is all right," said Saber Dabour, 25. He had just bought a donkey...

Grandmother who has brushed doorstep for 62 years told by council she could face court - 28th November 2007 Grandmother Betty Davies has swept the street clean outside her house for the past 62 years without so much as raising an eyebrow. The 88-year-old widow prides herself on keeping her front doorstep and pavement pristine. But after one of her daily tidy-ups, a council worker knocked on the door of her home in Splott, Cardiff, to warn her she could be taken to court. Mrs Davies was told she could be breaking litter laws and might be fined for brushing...