Free Republic

Beware the Ides of March.

Obama didn’t plan on losing the public’s support so soon. I believe he figured he had at least one term, maybe two to get his deeds done. But this past year has caused him to accelerate his agenda. And that means the sharp pain you feel attempting its way into your backside is more than just healthcare. It’s Cap and Trade. It’s Nationalization of our economy. It’s the whole enchillada, folks. Obama’s getting desperate. And when desperate tyrants don’t get their way, they get angry and vengeful. And when they get angry and vengeful, they tend to pull out all...

Being the only true and reliable account ever published; taken from the Roman "Daily Evening Fasces," of the date of that tremendous occurrence. Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much satisfaction as gathering up the details of a bloody and mysterious murder and writing them up with aggravating circumstantiality. He takes a living delight in this labor of love--for such it is to him, especially if he knows that all the other papers have gone to press, and his will be the only one that will contain the dreadful intelligence. A feeling of regret has often come...

ONE OF THE most important dates in American history passed unnoticed last weekend. It was the 225th anniversary of the day we didn't become a banana republic. It ought to be a national holiday, right up there with July Fourth. But hardly anybody remembers it any more. The date was March 15, 1783. The Revolutionary War had just been won. Trouble was, the army hadn't been paid during the war. They were promised that they'd get their money when the war was over; but now that the time had come, Congress was reneging on that pledge. Resentment rippled through the...

Today marks an important milestone in the history of freedom loving people everywhere. On this day, March 15th (the Ides of the Roman calendar) in 44BC, Marcus Brutus, Gaius Cassius, Decimus Brutus, Gaius Trebonius and nineteen other Romans took the life of the Man Who Would Be King, Gaius Iulius Caesar. I have read the accounts that many make- that the assassins acted out of personal ambition, rather than an altruisitic desire to restore Republican freedom. And in some cases among the other nineteen, I don't doubt the strong possibility. But history doesn't dispute the disinterested idealism of Marcus Brutus....

Forget Friday the 13th. Ignore ladders, black cats, broken mirrors and spilt salt. Think instead of today, March 15, and beware. As superstitions go, being wary of the ides of March is certainly more unusual. Yet the day does have a certain resonance. In the complicated world of the Roman calender, there were 45 public festivals (not bad compared to the UK's eight bank holidays), as well as the ides of each month, days which were sacred to Jupiter. In March, May, July and October, the ides fell on the 15th. The Julian calendar, established by Julius Caesar, gave us...