Free Republic

What are the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works?...Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders.

Readers committed to physical books can give a sigh of relief, as new figures reveal that ebook sales are falling while sales of paper books are growing – and the shift is being driven by younger generations.

On April 30, 1995, William S. Lind published an op ed in The Washington Post that foresaw a future breakup of the United States, driven by multiculturalism. The piece described not only America’s second civil war, but also a recovery of our traditional, Western, Christian culture. That cultural and moral recovery was led by a new country located in the northeast, which named itself Victoria because it had returned to Victorian values. Mr. Lind’s op ed has since been turned into a book, Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War, by “Thomas Hobbes,” the well-known theorist of the state and...

I had a good response to putting the Enemies trilogy novels on Kindle free runs the last three weeks, so I decided to go ahead and do it with everything I have. The Bracken Anthology is a good introduction to my stuff, both fiction and nonfiction, so if you can spread the links to your "low information" friends and family, it might slap some sense into them. Or just entertain them. I'm doing these free runs prior to going sailing next year, and spending (I hope) a lot of time over the horizon and unconnected.All of these "internet published" short...

My first novel, Enemies Foreign And Domestic, is available free in the Amazon Kindle store today through Thursday. Then on the next two Mondays I'm going to do it with the other two novels in the Enemies trilogy. If you haven't read my novels about defending freedom while America is being "fundamentally transformed" into a socialist police state, I hope you will take this opportunity to do so. But even more importantly, I hope you will share these links beyond the "conservative choir." We already understand why the 2nd Amendment is so critical to our freedom, but millions of reachable...

The U.S. Justice Department says it has reached a settlement with the Sacramento (California) Public Library over a trial program the library was conducting that let patrons borrow Barnes and Noble NOOK e-book readers. DOJ and the National Federation of the Blind objected to the program on grounds that blind people could not use the NOOK e-readers for technological reasons. The Justice Department said the settlement is aimed at stopping discrimination: “Emerging technologies like e-readers are changing the way we interact with the world around us and we need to ensure that people with disabilities are not

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, have given $2.5 million to fund efforts in the state of Washington to legalize same-sex marriage, effectively doubling the current electoral war chest of proponents. The gift was announced by Washington United for Marriage, the coalition working to pass Referendum 74 in November. It's believed to be the largest individual gift “to secure or protect the freedom to marry,” the group said in a statement released on its website. Washington is one of four states where the issue of same-sex marriage will be on the ballot this year.

Just as it did in public statements, Apple's taking a strong stance in its defense against alleged price-fixing actions in concert with major ebook publishers. In US District Court filing yesterday, Apple claimed that "the Government's Complaint against Apple is fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact and law," going on to say that "Apple has not 'conspired' with anyone, was not aware of any alleged 'conspiracy' by others, and never 'fixed prices.'" Apple even acusses the government of "[siding] with monopoly, rather than competition."All in all, it's quite the strenuous defense. Unsurprisingly, Apple claims its entry into the eBook...

The DOJ's Mugging Of Apple Reminds Us That Antitrust Is TheftThe government should not interfere in any pricing or offering, even if a company outright colludes with competitors to set a price. Market participants have a right to offer their goods and services at whatever price they wish, and they should be free to determine that price however they wish. Some sort of twisted resentment at companies for deliberately trying to get the most money from a deal is not a valid basis for outlawing their activity. No one is forcing anyone to buy their products. Those who do not...

The U.S. filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple Corp., Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York district court, claiming collusion over eBook pricing. Apple and Macmillan, which have refused to engage in settlement talks with the Justice Department, deny they colluded to raise prices for digital books, according to people familiar with the matter. They will argue that pricing agreements between Apple and publishers enhanced competition in the e-book industry, which was dominated by Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)

The case centers on Apple's move to change the way that publishers charged for e-books as it prepared to introduce its first iPad in early 2010. Traditionally, publishers sold books to retailers for roughly half of the recommended cover price. Under that "wholesale model," booksellers were then free to offer those books to customers for less than the cover price if they wished. Most physical books are sold using this model. To build its early lead in e-books, Amazon Inc. sold many new best sellers at $9.99 to encourage consumers to buy its Kindle electronic readers. But publishers deeply disliked...

The Kindle and Nook may make for not only the most important advance in reading since Gutenberg, but also, quite likely, a major lesson in unintended consequences. Especially for the educational establishment, because for the first time in history, Americans should be able to envision a future without public-school teachers -- indeed, a future without public-school administrators or state departments of education with their rigidly enforced, politically correct social-transformation curriculum. A future without onerous school taxes, "education president(s)," self-preening school boards, or million-dollar classrooms. But most happily, a future without a single supercilious finger wagging in our face as we're...

Penguin's security issue was not specified, although it likely refers to piracy concerns. But analyst Avi Greengart said he wondered how much of Penguin's objections have to do with security and how much with the business model of lending titles, especially new titles, through libraries. The growing availability of e-book titles for borrowing through public libraries has hit a bump. On Tuesday, Penguin Group USA announced it would no longer allow digital editions in any e-format of new titles to become available for library lending -- and it is disabling availability of all titles for lending in Amazon's Kindle format....

A wide selection of Free preparedness books on a great number of subjects: Preparedness General. - All Hazard Preparedness Workbook - ARC - Emergency Preparedness Checklist - ARC - Family Disaster Plan - ARC - Preparing for Emergencies - ARC - Supply Kit - Becoming Self-Sufficient for 6 Months - Bug-out List - Civil Preparedness Guide (FEMA) - Diabetes Disaster Guidelines - Disaster Handbook - Disaster Supply Kit - Emergency Plan - Emergency Survival Preparation - Family Disaster Plan - Family Emergency Handbook - Family Emergency Plan Template - FEMA Are You Ready - FEMA Checklist - In Home Shelter...

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is expected to launch its long-awaited tablet computer on Wednesday, sporting a low-enough price to give Apple Inc's iPad some serious competition for the first time. At a news conference Wednesday morning in New York, Amazon will likely unveil a seven-inch tablet that will let users read e-books, download digital music and video games and stream movies and TV shows. Analysts expect the tablet to be priced around $250, roughly half the price of Apple's dominant iPad, which starts at $499. "If Amazon prices the Kindle Fire at $250, it has the potential to become the...

“The Tea Party is the most exciting political movement of my lifetime,” Bellow recently told CNN. “I say that as someone who was around during the 60s and was in many ways a product of that decade.” The mission of “Voices of the Tea Party,” in the words of Broadside Books’ website, is to connect readers and writers to those “citizen activists” Bellow mentioned: Readers and writers alike can thereby join important national discussion within this ever-expanding community of citizen activists who have dedicated themselves to securing the movements’ core values of constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility and free markets....

A discussion thread on Amazon’s Kindle Community forum notes that Amazon has begun removing some previously-published books or stories from its store, and from the Kindle archives. Readers who have previously downloaded them to their Kindles can keep them there, but cannot re-download them (and will be refunded the price of purchase assuming Amazon can still find the purchase record). The story whose removal sparked the discussion was an erotica title called Wicked Lovely by author Jess C. Scott. The tale dealt with incest, and involved a love scene between a 17- and an 18-year-old. However, Amazon would not tell...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Google Inc. on Monday threw down its newest gauntlet in the tech industry, launching its long-awaited online bookstore as a shot against the offerings from Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. Google says its e-book store has more than 3 million titles, many of which are free, from almost 4,000 publishers, including Simon & Schuster Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!cbs/quotes/nls/cbs (CBS 17.66, +0.03, +0.17%)  and Random House. Additionally, Google /quotes/comstock/15*!goog/quotes/nls/goog (GOOG 578.50, +0.14, +0.02%)  will let independent bookstores sell books through their own sites on the Google e-book store. “Launching Google eBooks is an initial step toward giving you greater...

Barnes and Noble expands its use of colorWhen it comes to the e-reader market, Amazon's Kindle lineup of devices get the bulk of the attention (and sales in the marketplace). However, there are other strong competitors in this field including an entry from Barnes and Noble. The Nook was announced just over a year ago and has gone on to take roughly 20 percent of the e-reader market according to Engadget.  The first generation Nook made use of a main e-ink display for books and a smaller color panel directly below for navigation. The new NOOKcolor, however, does away with...

We have already discussed how eBooks will hasten the end of what we called long-form reading, i.e. book reading, by the majority. We have speculated that eBooks will lead to a vast reduction in traditional publishing, mainly because with eBooks there are no used books to sell, which excludes a major pathway by which readers discover new authors. And it now appears that, if a certain court ruling holds, eBook publishers will be able to legally forbid the reselling of eBooks. Thus, if you buy a Kindle or iPad from another citizen upon which are titles not in the public...