Free Republic

BERKELEY, Calif. -- A bill punishing the City of Berkeley for its "anti-Marine" actions is scheduled to come up for a hearing and a vote Monday afternoon before the Assembly Transportation Committee at the Capitol.Bay Area Assemblyman Guy Houston's measure would suspend $3 million in transportation funds slated for Berkeley.The money is usually spent to fix potholes and other road problems, NBC11's Mike Luery reported.Scores of activists have poured into the city for protests in recent months as the City Council prepared to consider rescinding a letter it drafted to the recruiting center telling Marines they were not welcome in...

Code Pink 'Bundles' for Barack by Catherine Moy Posted: 04/14/2008 The co-founder of the radical anti-war group Code Pink has “bundled” more than $50,000 for Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and pro-troops groups are demanding that he return the money.Jodie Evans, a Code Pink leader, gathered at least $50,000 from friends and associates and donated it to Obama’s presidential campaign, according to information compiled by the nonpartisan watchdog group, Public Citizen.Evans and her son, a student who lives at her Southern California address, each also gave the maximum individual allowable donation of $2,300 to Obama’s campaign.The donations have raised...

As Gen. David Petraeus testified under the glare of the klieg lights before Congress this week, we were treated to a close-up of the character of not just the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, but also those attempting to sit in judgment of him. [snip] Among those who have attempted to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is that self-proclaimed champion of "hope," Sen. Barack Hussein Obama. [snip] Someone who hasn't been absent from the pews of the church of Obama-mania is a woman named Jodie Evans, who happens to work for the anti-American group Code Pink. Campaign...

What comes to mind when you think of the United States peace movement? Cindy Sheehan? Code Pink? Berkeley? Those are all important players in the current U.S. movement for peace in Iraq, and their brave and tireless contributions should be commended. But many others around the country have also been voicing their desire for true peace and justice since before the war on Iraq began. And not all of them are white. One such grouping, which I have had the privilege to be part of these past five years, is the Strength in Unity contingent. Made of people and organizations...

McCain was a POW when U.S. began to use laser-guided bombs TRIBUNE-REVIEW By Salena Zito Sen. Rockefeller got down and dirty today with colleague John McCain in an interview with the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia when he said: "McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues." Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki had this to say about the Rockefeller smack down: "Senator...

To Code Pink and friends: I think this is how General George S. Patton would sum things up…and then catch holy hell from Ike. He sure had a unique way of expressing his thoughts. A Message from the Ghost of General Patton: ATTENTION! “To ALL those whining, panty-waisted, pathetic Maggots, it’s time for a little refresher course on exactly why we Americans occasionally have to fight wars.“ “See if you can tear yourself away from your ‘reality’ TV and Starbucks for a minute, pull your head out of your flabby ass – and LISTEN UP!“

BERKELEY _ CodePink should be turning red. That seems to be the consensus of many who were on the receiving end of a bogus announcement Tuesday by the radical anti-war group that the embattled U.S. Marine Corps recruiting center in Berkeley was caving to the pressure of weekly protests and leaving town. ``If you want to be taken seriously as an organization of serious protest, then you don't play jokes _ even on April Fools' Day,'' said Robin Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written about the politics of language. CodePink and other...

Almost unbelievable that it's really been three years for this event. I've participated since August of 2005, and that itself seems long enough, so I my thanks goes out to those intrepid FReepers who started this FReep back in March of that year. With this in mind, we had a special FReep planned for the Three Year Anniversary. When I got there just before 6:30, our usual starting time, FReepers were already on our corners holding their signs! I got out the MOAB and we set to work Soon we had it up and the FReep truly began! On the...

RED, WHITE AND BLUE ALERT! CodePink Claims Victory in Forcing Marines from Berkeley Recruiting Cente Written by Melanie Morgan    Monday, 31 March 2008  APRIL'S FOOLS! The United States Marines has decided to stand-down in face of anti-war protests by CodePink and others in Berkeley, Calif. this evening. From CodePink website tonight.And AfterDowningStreet.orgMajor Media Falls for Code Pink 'Prank'  But, KTVU Channel 2 News in Oakland is planning to report the story tonight at 10:00 p.m.Captain Rick Lund of the Marine Recruiting Center in Berkeley assured Move America Forward that this story is not true.(Did KTVU ask Captain Lund about the accuracy of the story?...

Department monitors increasingly raucous rallies at Marine center BERKELEY — In the last six weeks, the city of Berkeley has spent more than $210,000 on police overtime to try and keep the peace during protests at the U.S. Marine Corps recruiting center and Old City Hall, a police official said Thursday. Police spokeswoman Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said police department overtime from Feb. 12 to March 22 was $210,814.13. The city spent roughly $93,000 Feb. 12 during an all-day protest at Old City Hall that drew about 2,000 anti-war protestors and military supporters, she said. By comparison, the 186-officer department...

Honor roll of Freepers and FRiends: trooprally; Cindy_True_Supporter; Angelwood; rongkirby; Just A Nobody; Prezusa222; kburi; Basil; Jimmy Valentine's brother; Christopher Lincoln; Trueblackman; kristinn; a young lurker (HS Student that intends to join the Marines upon graduation ); another Second Amendment Sister (WI) and Coby (Vets for Freedom, OIF).The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) must enforce local law and the rights afforded to every person under the United States Constitution. The law allows MPD personnel to make arrests only when there is probable cause to do so. The MPD cannot arrest every peaceful demonstrator for the sake of a few rowdy participants....

Cindy Sheehan barely fits into her "campaign limo," her sister's blue Hyundai Tiburon. She ducks low to avoid hitting her head on the way in, and her knees are nearly at her chest when she sits, even with the seat rolled all the way back. Traveling over the Oakland Bay Bridge, her campaign manager at the wheel--steering with one hand and scrolling through e-mails with the other--the 6-foot-tall antiwar activist turned congressional hopeful tries in vain to stretch out in the passenger seat. It's raining when they pull into a parking spot near Berkeley City College, where Sheehan is about...

Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a "measureable effect" on insurgents there. Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinions on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq... The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency...

This Friday, March 28 2008, marks the Three Year Anniversary of our Walter Reed FReep. The main entrance to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which is where we hold the Freep, is located at 6900 Georgia Avenue NW, Washington DC 20307 If you live anywhere near the Washington DC area please consider coming out to support the troops! There is plenty of parking in the area so you can drive there no problem. There's also a metro stop a few blocks away, but since it's a zig-zag walk from it to the hospital, if you're going to take the metro...

In Denver. Denver is not equipped to handle any convention scenario other than a coronation, and certainly not the most (potentially) contentious national convention in 40 years. It is important to point out that the state of Colorado, and the city of Denver, is currently nearly completely controlled by Democrats at every level of government. This puts these locals in a box, politically and from a law enforcement standpoint. This sets up a scenario similar to Seattle 1999 WTO debacle. I happened to be living in downtown Seattle during that awful experience, and what stands out is that the city...

Venezuela’s Marxist strongman Hugo Chavez is the kind of anti-American that certain kinds of American leftists swoon over. In September 2006, he stood before the United Nations General Assembly in New York City to insult President George W. Bush, who had stood at the same podium the day before. He called Bush “the Devil” and made the sign of the cross, adding “and it smells of sulfur still today.” Chavez held up Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, a book by the famous linguist Noam Chomsky, a radical critic of U.S. foreign policy, and urged his audience to...

DC Moonbat Convergence March 19th, 2008 Another day, another protest. Today is ANSWER’s “Day of Action”. Since the Iraq War started five years ago today, all of the organizations that have sprung up to cash in on the war decided to have an eight-ring circus in downtown Washington DC, because as one IVAW member told me, the war is about money - apparently for the moonbats, too. My coverage was abruptly ended when I was ID’d as “one of those Milblog guys at Winter Soldier”, so excuse me for not getting all I should have.I was there bright and early...

The Left's Day of Reckoning Written by Melanie Morgan    Wednesday, 19 March 2008 The militant anti-war seditionists swarmed the streets of San Francisco and Berkeley, Ca. today with the intention of disrupting traffic, commerce and left behind a trail of environmental filth in their wake. Bay Area Newsgroup has video from Berkeley's Marine Recruiting Center, where (sigh) Cindy Sheehan showed up.  In Washington, D.C. District police cleared the way TWICE to allow anti-war demonstrators back in front of the military recruiting center on L Street, and that emboldened the terrorist tactics of the left to escalate.  Kristinn Taylor from FreeRepublic.com...

Military Families Voice of Victory got a very interesting comment from an article about recruiting center attacks yesterday from coast to coast. One of the cities reported about was DC "SDS threw paint bombs, rocks and damaged police cars. Witnesses have reported that MPDC Chief Cathy Lanier has ordered the police to do nothing if the center was attacked." This was from a report phone in which was also reported here at FR. Today a response was made by Communications at MPD. "The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) must enforce local law and the rights afforded to every person under the...

Vandals dumped a bucket of red paint on a downtown veterans memorial this morning, the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in what police suspect was a symbolic act of protest. Passers-by spotted the blood-toned paint on the Anchorage Veterans Memorial, in the Delaney Park Strip off I Street, during the morning commute and reported it to police. The soldier's helmet was blood red, with the paint dripping down to the ground below. "There's a movement across the country, since it's the fifth anniversary of the war, to protest," police Lt. Paul Honeman said. Police say they are...