Free Republic

When Lieutenant Governor Catherine Baker Knoll crashed yet another military funeral (this time for fallen hero Marine Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich) and said to one of the grieving relatives “I want you to know our government is against this war” (while she passed out her quite important business cards to all who would take one—during Communion no less), I wondered to which government the lady was referring. Certainly, it was not the US government. And why did she show up, uninvited, in the first place? One would think, out of any common courtesy, she might have called to ask permission...

Moore used footage of Maj. Stone's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery in his antiwar propaganda film, Fahrenheit 9/11. He did so without the permission of Maj. Stone's family. The family was not pleased. Maj. Stone's mother called Moore a "maggot that eats off the dead." Catherine Baker Knoll has done Moore one better (or worse). On July 19th, a funeral service was held at St. John Lutheran Church in Carnegie for Staff Sergeant Joseph Goodrich, 32. Goodrich and fellow Marine reservist Lance Corporal Ryan Kovacicek, 22, were killed by mortar fire July 10th while conducting combat operations in Hit, in...

In a way, catching a ride is how it all began. Fleeing the threat of Portuguese violence, 23 Jewish refugees boarded the Sainte Catherine, a ship that was setting sail for New Amsterdam. They arrived in the Dutch colony almost exactly 350 years ago on Sept. 12, 1654. They were hardly welcomed with open arms, at least not by the governor, Peter Stuyvesant, who tried to expel these "blasphemers of the name of Christ." But enough of his superiors in the Dutch West India Company thought otherwise: the Jews were allowed to stay, becoming the founding members of what would...