Free Republic

‘Rick Santorum has never been considered a go-to guy for Big Business on Capitol Hill. After all, some corporate types are nervous about his blue-collar roots, his populist proclivities, and his emphasis on religious issues.” So began a Business Week story in January 2006. At the time, Santorum was scrambling to raise money for his reelection campaign against Democrat Bob Casey, a race he ultimately lost. Six years later, however, the perception persists. And at least one corporate type — Mitt Romney — is nervous about Santorum’s rising Rust Belt appeal. Advertisement According to the latest polls, Santorum continues to...

The Democrat-leaning Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is trying to revive the so-called "scandal" that the Democrats trumpeted during their successful campaign to unseat Rick Santorum in 2006. Other news outlets are starting to pick up the Post-Gazette's claims. For example, in an article published on February 14 and linked to by the Drudge Report ("Santorum's Electability Pitch Undermined by 2006 Senate Reelection Loss"), Bloomberg reports: Santorum's 2006 loss came after he was accused by Democrats of being hypocritical for moving his family to suburban Virginia, yet still claiming a property tax deduction and tuition reimbursement in Pennsylvania. The school district where his...

The debate over what to do about an Iranian Islamist regime apparently bent on acquiring nuclear weapons has been on or near our front burner for at least six years, and is now almost a settled feature of the policy landscape. There is general agreement in the United States on two points. First, an Iranian nuclear weapons capability is “unacceptable”, as both the Bush and Obama Administrations have put it; and second, we prefer getting to an acceptable outcome without using force. The debate gets testy when we consider that means short of force, such as sanctions and covert technical...

The sad passing of Whitney Houston has brought many mentions in the press about her battle with cocaine addiction. It is, also sadly, not a new story; many celebrities have soared to the heights of popularity, only to have their lives end tragically and entwined with drugs. Stories of stars such as Ms. Houston frequently include abuse of both illegal and legal drugs, although, as with Michael Jackson, even the legal drugs are abused in amounts common citizens could not obtain. That said, these two stars, and many others, were exercising their liberties in consuming the drugs -- they were...

Every teacher knows that one can make any group of kids look smart just by altering the content of the test. That is what's behind several studies purporting to show that liberals are smarter than conservatives. Using data from previous studies in Britain, researchers at Brock University in Canada claim to have discovered a relationship between IQ scores and political orientation. The study suggests that persons of lower IQ choose to be conservatives because conservatism opposes change and is thus "safer" for those who are slow to adapt. Not only that, the researchers find that conservatives, being persons of low...

In a world where Tiger Woods can lose by eleven shots to his playing partner on a Sunday at Pebble Beach and where Joe Paterno can be fired via cell phone for the actions of a former assistant coach, almost anything previously "unthinkable" can indeed happen. However, with that said, it is becoming increasingly difficult to see how President Barack Obama is not re-elected, potentially by a healthy margin. This reality is not because of anything Obama does done to secure re-election, but rather because the Republican Party and the conservative movement have created a set of circumstances where the...

The pollsters Pat Caddell and John McLaughlin unveiled some startling national poll numbers recently, at David Horowitz's November 2011 Restoration Weekend (video presentation here). The gist of the research is that Obama is very vulnerable on foreign policy, if Republican candidates take him on directly, issue by issue, which they have yet to show any strong interest in doing. In reading through these poll results it is obvious that Iran, sharia and jihadists frighten the public, more so than most Republican elected officials are frightened. Here are the 8 poll questions: Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/01/is_the_national_electorate_to_the_right_of_republicans_on_national_security.html#ixzz1l6V9mvD5

“Whatever the details of the investigation are, this much is clear to me: There was a villain in this tragedy. It lies in the investigation, not in Joe Paterno’s response to it,” Knight said, prompting a prolonged standing ovation from the crowd in the Bryce Jordan Center on the Penn State campus. Despite Paterno’s actions, “he was excoriated by the media and fired over the telephone by his university. Yet in all his subsequent appearances in the press, on TV, interacting with students, conversing with hospital personnel, giving interviews, he never complained, he never lashed out. Every word, every bit...

Two tickets for Joe Paterno’s public memorial service were selling for nearly $100,000 on eBay before the website shut down the auction, CBS Sports reports. An auction appeared on the site after it was announced that there were no more free tickets for Thursday’s “A Memorial for Joe” service. The bids reached as high as $99,509 for the pair of tickets before it was taken down. Amanda Coffee, spokeswoman for eBay Inc., said the site has unspecified internal controls to remove inappropriate ads. She said eBay doesn’t “allow the sale of tickets to events in which all tickets are free...

Introduction I was elected to the Penn State Board of Trustees more than two decades ago, and served on it as an alumni Trustee for twelve years — from 1988 to 2000. I came onto the Board thinking that it was a deliberative body such as one reads about in civics books. It is not. It took me years to understand what was really going on. In what follows, I hope to shed some light on the inner workings of the Board, as well as to explain both why the Board remains so secretive, and why it has offered so...

A Harrisburg civil attorney who has been advising some of the alleged victims of former Penn State defensive coach Jerry Sandusky released a statement today about the board of trustees action last night firing coach Joe Paterno. "The board of trustees got it wrong. They should have consulted the victims before making a decision on Mr. Paterno," Ben Andreozzi said. "They should have considered these victims watch TV and are aware of the students' reaction and may not want to be associated with the downfall of Mr. Paterno. The school instead elected to do what it felt was in its...

After hearing the news that my college defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky has been charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse of minor boys, I figured I would write about my feelings on the matter before the bullets really started flying. I want to preface this post by saying that I love my school and I care deeply about the people who were apart of my development as a man while I attended Pennsylvania State University. My thoughts and opinions are strictly my own and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts of my teammates or other staff at Penn State. I...

Hi, everybody. Right now, I am beginning to consider buying a new car. As with all purchases, I try to support only companies that conservatives can support in good conscience. I've been doing some research lately, but not all information is easy to come by concerning car manufacturers. Since buying a car is a major purchasing decision that requires giving a large amount of money to a company, I've decided to also consult the experts: freepers. So what car companies should a conservative have the least trouble supporting based on things such as employing union labor, corporate donations, locations of...

Thomas Woods here addresses a question that many of his readers will find of vital personal concern, but even those who need not confront this question directly have much to gain from his analysis of it. Woods is a Roman Catholic and also supports free enterprise capitalism. He rejects the need for any government intervention to correct the supposed excesses of the free market. In support of this view, Woods relies principally upon Austrian economics, of which he shows himself in this book a gifted expositor. May a Catholic accept the free market in the unreserved fashion of our author?...

LONDON -- Fulham unveiled a statue of Michael Jackson outside its stadium on Sunday, with team chairman Mohamed Al Fayed telling fans to support another Premier League club if they don't like the idea. Al Fayed, who was close friends with Jackson, danced with children after unveiling the statue of the "King of Pop" before Fulham's home match against Blackpool. The statue outside Craven Cottage has divided opinion, but Al Fayed launched a passionate defense of his move to commemorate his friendship with Jackson, who died in 2009. "Why is it bizarre?" he said. "Football fans love it. If some...

We approach the greatest moment of all. The Faith is now in the presence not of a particular heresy as in the past — the Arian, the Manichean, the Albigensian, the Mohammedan — nor is it in the presence of a sort of generalized heresy as it was when it had to meet the Protestant revolution from three to four hundred years ago. The enemy which the Faith now has to meet, and which may be called "The Modern Attack," is a wholesale assault upon the fundamentals of the Faith — upon the very existence of the Faith. And the...

The movement generally called "The Reformation" deserves a place apart in the story of the great heresies; and that for the following reasons: 1. It was not a particular movement but a general one, i.e., it did not propound a particular heresy which could be debated and exploded, condemned by the authority of the Church, as had hitherto been every other heresy or heretical movement. Nor did it, after the various heretical propositions had been condemned, set up (as had Mohammedanism or the Albigensian movement) a separate religion over against the old orthodoxy. Rather did it create a certain separate...

In the heart of the Middle Ages, just when they were working up to their most splendid phase, the great thirteenth century, there arose — and was for the moment completely defeated — a singular and powerful attack upon the Catholic Church and all the culture for which it stood. This was an attack, not only on the religion that made our civilization, but on that civilization, itself; and its general name in history is "The Albigensian Heresy." In the case of this great struggle we must proceed as in the case of all our other examples by first examining...

It might have appeared to any man watching affairs in the earlier years of the seventh century — say from 600 to 630 — that only one great main assault having been made against the Church, Arianism and its derivatives, that assault having been repelled and the Faith having won its victory, it was now secure for an indefinite time. Christendom would have to fight for its life, of course, against outward unchristian things, that is, against Paganism. The nature worshippers of the high Persian civilization to the east would attack us in arms and try to overwhelm us. The...

Arianism was the first of the great heresies. There had been from the foundation of the Church at Pentecost A.D. 291 to 33 a mass of heretical movements filling the first three centuries. They had turned, nearly all of them, upon the nature of Christ. The effect of our Lord's predication, and Personality, and miracles, but most of all His resurrection, had been to move every one who had any faith at all in the wonder presented, to a conception of divine power running through the whole affair. Now the central tradition of the Church here, as in every other...