Free Republic

Scholastic Inc. is a nearly century-old educational publishing company that distributes books, magazines, and other teaching materials through the schools. If you have kids (or remember from your own grade-school days), Scholastic puts out news bulletins that get sent home weekly or monthly. One of those items is Scholastic News, which bills itself as “America’s Leading News Source for kids.” Reader Edward has a daughter in fourth grade who brought home the December issue of Scholastic News — and he wasn’t too happy when he saw the publication’s coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Read for yourself (click for...

The investigation revealed that the plastic laminates, and other document-making implements supplied by Serrano and others over several years have been used to manufacture thousands of false documents. The indictment alleges that Serrano has been intercepted on a wiretap discussing the fact that he has been engaged in the false document business for more than a decade. Evidence developed during the investigation revealed that the fraudulent documents were utilized by illegal aliens to gain employment, as well as other citizenship and residency related benefits. In addition, the operation supported a variety of criminal activity, in that the false documents were...

In a fledgling nation hungry for men to fight in the American Revolution, conscientious objectors were frequently greeted with scorn and their loyalty was questioned. (According to FR rules, please go to the link to read this most interesting story.)

It looks like the National Education Association is not putting its money where its mouth is. In its mission statement, the nation’s largest teachers union asserts that “we will focus the energy and resources of our 3.2 million members on improving the quality of teaching, increasing student achievement and making schools safer, better places to learn.” But a secret union document reveals that the NEA’s commitment to “improv(ing) teaching and learning” works out to a paltry $7.44 per member every year. This is according to a document obtained from an internal source of the Indiana State Teachers Association, one of...

A top aide to Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin supplied an answer last year to a thorny question a friendly witness would face the next day at a pivotal hearing on for-profit colleges, raising questions of witness tampering, an email obtained by The Daily Caller shows. As Harkin prepares for another event on the same subject at 2:00 p.m. today, the email raises fresh concerns about the senator’s committee conduct after he recently faced accusations from Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigators that he pressured them on an error-ridden report unveiled at the very same hearing. That Senate Health, Education, Labor...

Is constitutionalism akin to blind faith? Some statists certainly think so, as they have called the position “constitution-worship.” In light of this, what should we call those who lack that “faith”? Given that they don’t believe in the Constitution, and that the document is the supreme law of the land, can it be said that they don’t believe in law? Are these people, who are often atheists, also “alegalists”? Whatever you call them, they’re more visible and brazen than ever. Writing in Time magazine recently, Richard Stengel insisted that our Constitution “must accommodate each new generation and circumstance.” Georgetown professor...

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY Liberty is a free agency to do a thing or not at pleasure.Rational Liberty is a freedom of doing a thing from some motive agreeable to a Moral Law which is always founded in Reason or perfect vertitude.Religious Liberty is a freedom of doing right or any Moral action or refraining from any immoral or wrong action accord to the dictates of a person’s conscience. Every rule of conscious was given an intelligent Being by his Creator who created his Mind, to govern his actions and to his curator alone every such Being is only accountable rationally expecting...

I’ve been keeping you abreast of all the Obama administration’s Project Gunrunner stonewalling since March (links/chronology below). Today, vigilant GOP House Oversight and Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa is holding another hearing to pressure Team Obama for the whole truth. On Monday, Issa and GOP watchdogs spotlighted DOJ obstructionism (Sipsey Street Irregulars has a rundown here.) More fit is hitting the shan. And in one of those rare confluences, other MSM outlets have joined CBS News in exposing the story. First, new documents. Just in from Issa’s office: Moments ago in his opening statement at today’s hearing, Operation Fast and...

After Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson testified on Feb. 2 that regulating drinking water might help prevent children from getting autism, CNSNews.com asked Jackson by e-mail whether she could provide “any data, studies, documents, reports or other sources” to confirm her claim. Her office subsequently stated there were “emerging studies” but provided no evidence. In an e-mail statement to CNSNews.com on Feb. 11, Jackson said there were “emerging studies” that show a possible link between autism and environmental factors. But repeated requests by e-mail and by telephone to t

Monday, January 31, 2011 New USCCB Document Highlights Biblical Quotations in the Mass The Catholic Mass draws heavily from Scripture--in every prayer you hear quotations and allusions to biblical texts. In fact, last year I did a series presentations now available through Saint Joseph Communications here (shameless plug!) exploring the biblical backdrop for the prayers of the Mass.   Now the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has put out a footnoted version of the prayers of the new translation of the liturgy, alerting you to the Biblical background of each of the prayers.  Some examples: The response: "The Lord be...

For three days running, Al-Jazeera has been pounding the Palestinian Authority with release of hundreds of PA negotiating documents, which show Mahmoud Abbas as a two-faced leader -- publicly insisting on getting all of East Jerusalem, including the entire Old City, while privately agreeing to Israel's retention of virtually all Jewish neighborhoods in the eastern sector of Israel's capital. Or as Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat put it to an Israeli interlocutor: "We're giving you the largest Jewish Yerushalaim ever." With the Palestinians being that flexible and pragmatic about Jerusalem, the question

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that a peace agreement does not guarantee the existence of peace, which is why he insists on security arrangements.

Ohio Democrat Congressman Charlie Wilson was first elected to Congress in the Democrat wave year of 2006. Prior to that, he had been a long-time member of the Ohio state legislature, first elected to the Ohio House in 1996 and the Ohio Senate in 2004. (One of his four grown sons succeeded him in the legislature and is currently an Ohio State Senator.) He was also married for 27 years to his wife, Clara. The marriage ended in divorce in 1990. BigGovernment has obtained a trial brief filed by Mrs. Clara Wilson prior to the formal divorce proceedings. The brief...

HONOLULU (AP) -- It's now law in Hawaii that the government can ignore repetitive requests for President Barack Obama's birth certificate. Republican Gov. Linda Lingle signed into law Wednesday a bill allowing state government agencies not to respond to follow-up requests for information if they determine that the subsequent request is duplicative or substantially similar to a previous request.

Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb. The notes, from Iran’s most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme. An Asian intelligence source last week confirmed to The Times that his country also believed that weapons work was being carried out as recently as 2007 — specifically, work on...

Have you heard the one about the pimp, prostitute, politician and the community organizer? Well, thanks to San Diego private investigator Derrick Roach, Californians are not laughing at what is turning into a political nightmare for California Attorney General Jerry Brown and ACORN. On Tuesday, November 24, Attorney General Brown appeared on KABC’s “Peter Tilden Show” after it was revealed that some 20,000 documents had been thrown into a National City dumpster by ACORN employees. The documents were thrown out in advance of state investigators arriving at the local ACORN office to conduct an investigation resulting from national media attention....

On Tuesday November 24th, the day after Big Government broke the story revealing tens of thousands of documents containing sensitive material had been unceremoniously dumped in a trash bin behind the San Diego ACORN office, Attorney General Jerry Brown appeared on Talk Radio KABC’s Peter Tilden Show. Considering this document dump occurred just a few days after the Attorney General had announced an investigation of this very same office, we anticipated his righteous anger at this obvious afront to the integrity of his investigation and the people of California’s right to investigate all evidence pertaining to the operations of ACORN.

A new U.S. EPA analysis requested by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) is spawning a lobbying frenzy among Midwestern utilities that claim the document shows they will be treated unfairly under federal climate legislation. They say the assessment (pdf) reveals that states like California will receive a financial windfall under a global warming bill, while states like Wisconsin will not get enough help and will have to spike electricity rates as a result. "The EPA document just confirms the formula will disadvantage Midwest states for decades to come while the coastal states will hit a 'federal jackpot' every year over the...

The CIA released the documents today that former Vice President Dick Cheney requested earlier this year in an attempt to prove his assertion that using enhanced interrogation techniques on terror detainees saved U.S. lives. The documents back up the Bush administration's claims that intelligence gleaned from captured terror suspects had thwarted terrorist attacks, but the visible portions of the heavily redacted reports do not indicate whether such information was obtained as a result of controversial interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding. Cheney's initial request in the spring that the documents be declassified was rejected by the CIA. Lawmakers derided his claims...

(CNSNews.com) – Michael Copps, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission and its former acting chairman, has circulated an internal report examining the state of media journalism in America and discussing ways to address issues such as the rise of media conglomerates and the prevalence of opinion journalism.