Free Republic

As we now move into the official Political Aftermath period of the Boston bombing — the period that will determine the long-term legislative fallout of the atrocity — the dynamics of privilege will undoubtedly influence the nation’s collective reaction to the attacks. That’s because privilege tends to determine: 1) which groups are — and are not — collectively denigrated or targeted for the unlawful actions of individuals; and 2) how big and politically game-changing the overall reaction ends up being. This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic...

Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not. Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some Americans' more favorable views of blacks. Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views...

...The entire Democratic Party, from the top down, now looks like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. The hatred of America is open. The desire to undo American constitutionalism is explicit. And this exposure will only accelerate in the coming months and years, as the left realizes ever more acutely that its days as an accepted political faction are numbered, and it is forced to take increasingly drastic and sudden measures to achieve its brutal aims before the clock runs out....It has become patently clear that the present Republican Party establishment is not up for this fight. Constitutional conservatives must do...

Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, the now freed American hikers who were held in an Iranian prison after being convicted for espionage, appeared before cameras and reporters in New York on Sunday and gave prepared statements about their detentions in Iran. Bauer, a freelance journalist, along with Sarah Shourd, a teacher and women’s rights activist, and Fattal, an environmentalist, were arrested July 31, 2009 while hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan. Shourd was released last year. Bauer's and Fattal's remarks were critical of American foreign policy towards Iran as well as the Iranian government's treatment of it's own people. "The only explanation...

Fear is a powerful weapon. Its destructive force can be more devastating to a nation than a nuclear explosion. It is the primary tool of terrorists. After the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, dozens of “patriotic” Americans carrying flags gathered in the Southland to march on a mosque in Bridgeview. More than 200 police officers were called to the scene to prevent violence. A man from Pakistan, who wasn’t even a Muslim, was bashed over the head in Chicago because “he looked like one of them.” A neighbor of mine, a woman who grew up in Palestine, suddenly disappeared. This...

If your sister were among the nearly 3,000 people murdered in the World Trade Center on 9/11, how would you react to Osama Bin Laden's death? More specifically, if you were to write an opinion piece on the subject for a major newspaper, what would you most want to communicate?One would think that anyone who had lost a loved one on 9/11 would write about bin Laden's guilt, about evil and about experiencing some degree of moral and emotional satisfaction that the loved one's murderer had been killed by American forces.But not Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia...

"Mr Moore said: 'We've lost something of our soul here in this country, and maybe I'm an old-school American, who believes in the American justice system, something that separates us from other countries. 'We say everybody has their day in court, no matter what sort of person, no matter what piece of scum they are."

"We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic."

DENVER -- A Centennial-based organization has canceled an up coming charity event featuring Sarah Palin, citing safety concerns. The Sharon K Pacheco Foundation announced Saturday that the 2011 Patriots & Warriors Charity Gala scheduled for May 2 would not be held. "Due to an onslaught of personal attacks against Governor Palin and others associated with her appearance, it is with deep sadness and disappointment that, in the best interest of all, we cancel the event for safety concerns," said the Foundation's Director.

Like a Rorschach test which tells you more about the patient, than about the image on the card, Wikileaks reveals more about the left than it does about America. And what it reveals is that the left's antipathy toward America is not policy based at all. If Wikileaks' heavily edited helicopter video at least allowed the left to pretend that it was opposing American war crimes, the leaked diplomatic cables are based on nothing more than opposing American diplomacy. Not even the capital D diplomacy, but the small letter diplomacy. The minor observations, petty notes and random scribbles of a...

Democrat pollster Mark Penn appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball and said that President Clinton reconnected with his speech after the Oklahoma City bombings, and Obama needs a similar situation to do the same. “President Clinton reconnected with Oklahoma. And the President right now he seems removed. And it wasn’t until that speech that he really clicked with the American people. Obama needs a similar kind of, yeah” said Penn.

Wikileaks mastermind Julian Assange let slip his terrorist sympathies during an Internet conference held Thursday where he announced plans to release 15,000 more classified Pentagon documents on the war in Afghanistan, following on the group's previous release of 76,000 Pentagon computer files on the war.The Australian Assange, speaking via Skype from an undisclosed location to a gathering at the Frontline Club in London, called Afghans helping the United States fight al Qaeda and the Taliban traitors who should be outed. Wikileaks has come under criticism from Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders for releasing the classified Pentagon documents without redacting...

Obama's policies and personnel are "alien" to America and not what we expect from a President of the United States!Dorothy Rabinowitz's latest column at the Wall Street Journal caused a big splash Wednesday on the Talk Radio circuit. It's worth reading in it's entirety. Here's an excerpt: The Alien in the White House The distance between the president and the people is beginning to be revealed. By Dorothy Rabinowitz Wall Street Journal JUNE 9, 2010 ...A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard...

Sandra Soto addresses Arizona's SB 1070 law at commencement. The student reaction was encouraging.

In the last century, the impassioned words and actions of patriots like Winston Churchill – along with America’s heroic help and sacrifice – saved Europe. The eloquence and actions of “I’ve been to the mountaintop” Martin Luther King Jr. brought America to an unprecedented level of social justice. The peerless oratory and tireless diplomacy of the man who would become Israel’s Foreign Minister, Abba Eban convinced the entire world that after the wanton murder of six-million Jews in the Holocaust its straggling survivors deserved their own state of Israel. The inspiring words and decisive actions of President Ronald Reagan ended...

Does anyone know where George W. Bush is? You don’t hear much from him anymore. The last image most of us remember is of the president ducking a pair of size 10s that were hurled at him in Baghdad. We’re still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is thrashing the Palestinians in Gaza. And the U.S. economy is about as vibrant as the 0-16 Detroit Lions. But hardly a peep have we heard from George, the 43rd. When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content...

<p>Bless your heart, sir, my son is over in Eye-Rack, fighting for your right to protest. -- Sarah Palin, to a purported heckler at a rally yesterday.</p> <p>There's something doubly evil about a self-avowed Christian who prefaces almost every uncharitable remark she makes with a disingenuous "Bless your heart!" In any case, I say this without even the slightest amount of support or emboldening from the US military-- fuck you and your jingoistic blather, Palin. How's that for freedom?</p>

When some organizers for the Primary Campaign of Barak Obama in Oregon dropped several rented Porta-Potties in the middle of a memorial for fallen police officers, they made a statement. They deny this to the hilt, but I am convinced just as vehemently that these Porta-Potties didn’t get put where they were put as a result of unfortunate random number generation. Barak Obama’s political movement discourages the deep and profound disrespect for decency, patriotism and all accepted social norms. If this Porta-Potty incident were to have happened to Democratic Congressman Skelton of Missouri, who has been on the House Armed...

The Surrender Lobby's Tet Offensive   By Andrew WaldenFrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, January 31, 2008 A year ago, Iraq was racked by horrific violence and on the brink of civil war. Now, levels of violence and civilians and military casualties are significantly reduced and hope has been rekindled in many Iraqi communities. – General David Petraeus, letter to the troops December 28, 2007. It has been a bad year for al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the Jihadis’ allies in America are feeling their pain. Speaking to The Politico January 17, John Isaacs, executive director of the misnamed Council for a Livable...

Commenting on Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, I recently commented that there are three groups that oppose democracy in the Muslim world: the secular dictators like Musharaff, the Islamic radicals of the Bin Laden stripe, and the cultural left here in America. In response, several people expressed indignation. One challenged me to provide a single example of a leftist who opposed Muslim democracy. Other liberals noted that they favored the idea of democracy but alas it wasn't succeeding in Iraq. Certainly it does seem odd that a left which is always calling for "more democracy" in America would resist democracy in Muslim...