Free Republic

Jimmy Carter is without doubt one of the most active and influential ex-presidents in American history. After leaving office, he established the nonprofit Carter Center, tasked with advancing human rights around the world. Through his and the center’s work, Carter has helped monitor more than 60 democratic elections, worked with governments in sub-Saharan Africa to develop sustainable agriculture, negotiated for peaceful conflict resolution in various countries, and worked to eradicate diseases such as Guinea worm and river blindness. For these and other efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Carter–whose presidency was highlighted by achievements in international...

"Certainly this isn't the first Hollywood production done in by the competing corporate and personal interests that funded it (consider the unspoken implications—both commercial and propagandistic—of the film's last-minute title change from Flight 93 to United 93), but it is the only one I've come across where the families of those onboard gave it their full-on approval. Not all the families, of course. All evidence suggests that the terrorists' relatives were left entirely out of the creative process, an action which goes a way toward revealing the film's hagiographic bias (how easy it then becomes to turn victims into heroes...

Address to: Summer Sounds Symposium Punga Cove, New Zealand February 11 2006 For the past three decades and more, many of the leading opinion makers in our universities, the media and the arts have regarded Western culture as, at best, something to be ashamed of, or at worst, something to be opposed. Before the 1960s, if Western intellectuals reflected on the long-term achievements of their culture, they explained it in terms of its own evolution: the inheritance of ancient Greece, Rome and Christianity, tempered by the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the scientific and industrial revolutions. Even a radical...

How to address a bitter, war-torn but still somehow giddy and deeply horny nation. My fellow Americans, we're not as royally screwed as everything Bush has done during his miserable term in office would have you believe.

Here's the audio and transcript of Hugh's interview with Joel Stein. It's another glaring example of why the Times is the worst newspaper in America: HH: Welcome now Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times, columnist there. Hi, Joel. Welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show. JS: Hey, thanks for having me. HH: You wrote a very controversial column today, and I want to talk about it. But first, some background. How long have you been a columnist for the L.A. Times? JS: A little more than a year. HH: All right. And you're a graduate of Stanford, right? What year?...

Yaa, you repukes are not doing so well, huh? Imagine, you repukes control the presidency, both houses of Congress, and appointed 7 of the 9 Supreme Court justices. Yet the Supreme Court thre out sodomy laws in all 50 states and recognized the right of government to seize land for any reason. And you couldn't pass your Social Security changes could you? Sorry, that was your last shot. Come November, we're going to start seeing more Democratic faces in the House. It's the end for you guys. You guys are celebrating when Bush's numbers go *up* to 45%. Then Faux...

I was all wrong about "Narnia." Which is to say, about six months ago in this space I was hell-bent on the white-hot idea that Hollywood and the Christian-right group/billionaire that helped produce the tepid and saccharine flick would absolutely ruin "The Chronicles of Narnia" books, ruin the deep magic and the astounding sense of wonder these books held for millions of children (including this writer) by regurgitating them as a slick, dumbed-down, poorly acted smarm-fest full of ham-fisted Jesus allusions and excessive special effects, all from the director who brought you, ahem, "Shrek 2." Things did not, shall we...

Mourners overflowed a church Tuesday for the funeral of executed murderer and Crips gang co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams, listening to eulogies by hip-hop star Snoop Dogg and Rev. Jesse Jackson and a recording of Williams urging peace. As police watched, mourners including gang members flashing hand signs gathered at the 1,500-seat Bethel AME Church in South Los Angeles and in a parking lot where a TV showed the funeral for Williams, who was executed Dec. 13 despite a celebrity-studded campaign for clemency. Snoop Dogg recited a poem, "Until We Meet Again," in which he referred to the execution. "It's nine-fifteen...

These photographs and videos were taken outside the gates of San Quentin Prison on the evening of December 12, 2005 during a vigil marking the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, which happened shortly after midnight. Before arriving at San Quentin, I had been under the naive impression that the crowd in front would be evenly split between anti-death penalty protesters and pro-death penalty protesters. I was sorely mistaken. I quickly learned that the crowd was 99% anti-death penalty. And a substantial proportion of them were avowed socialists, since several radical groups showed up en masse…. Full collection of photos &...

The Inmates are Running the Asylum How much damage will men like George Bush, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Sam Brownback, Ralph Reed, and Rick Santorum inflict before reason prevails and they are unmasked as the twisted, malevolent charlatans that they are? Fundamentalist Christians, adherents to a nauseating perversion of Christianity (conjured from their twisted imaginations and their distorted interpretations of the Bible) wield a significant amount of power in the United States, socially and politically. Fund-raising, promotional, and organizational skills have enabled these Corpora-Fascist Capitalists masquerading as practitioners of the Christian faith to gain pervasive influence over the Republican Party....

Unstoppable Political Correctness Meets The Immovable Identity Group In my sophomore year at Pomona College my intramural inner tube water polo team made it to the championship game. The co-ed activity required each 7 person squad to have two women in the water at all times. Women's goals counted as two points as well - nice shooting Emily Gold, class of 2003! Some called this setup sexist, but it achieved its aim - women were included both on the squad and during the games. (The unintended consequence - a team fielded by the Women's Water Polo Team proved very difficult...

Anti-American left wing lunatic Ted Rall was not content with depicting the US military as rapists, pedophiles and idiots. In his latest piece of artwork, Rall portrays Iraq War Veterans as torturers and domestic abusers. The cartoon, Sex Lives of Iraq War Vets, published on November 26, 2005, shows the veterans torturing their girlfriends and the girlfriend's parents Abu-Ghraib style. The final frame shows a vet dropping bombs on his girlfriend's home in response to a break-up. This latest attempt to undermine our military comes on the heels of Rall's cartoon depicting US soliders in Iraq as rapists and pedophiles.Ted...

The bitter truth, as we feast on the bounty of the empire -Our myth of Thanksgiving warps a history of genocide ONE indication of moral and intellectual progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day with a National Day of Atonement. Indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas. But the thought of changing this white-supremacist holiday is hard to...

THE United States is “America” to most people. But that word refers to the continent. When applied to the United States, it is better spelled with a “k,” as in “swastika.” It’s the country most Filipinos want to visit. But if you’ve ever been involved in any group or activity faintly progressive; if you have relatives or friends who have been there; or you’re from a country that its officials say harbors “terrorist groups,” you’d be tempting fate to go there. No matter how vague or past your involvement, it could earn you a strip search, an interrogation session with...

March 12, 1944 WARM SPRINGS (Routers) A Minnesota woman whose son was killed in the recent Anzio offensive has demanded a private audience with President Roosevelt, and has taken up residence outside his Georgia retreat until she gets one. Mrs. Etta Mae Hanberg, of Fergus Falls, had a son, Lawrence, who died after stepping on a land mine near the Italian village of Aprilia on January 25th. Overcome with grief, she now questions the war, and laments the apparent purposelessness of her son's sacrifice. She has set up camp outside the president's vacation retreat here, and refuses to leave until...

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cmp/20050715/tc_cmp/165702500 UN Panel: No Single Nation Should Control Internet Addresses Aoife White Thu Jul 14, 9:38 PM ET BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP)--A U.N. panel created to recommend how the Internet should be run in the future has failed to reach consensus but did agree that no single country should dominate. The United States stated two weeks ago that it intended to maintain control over the computers that serve as the Internet's principal traffic cops. In a report released Thursday, the U.N. panel outlined four possible options for the future of Internet governance for world leaders to consider at a November "Information...

Here is the list so far for sponcers to this hate America fest: ANSWER Code Pink UFPJ NION Al Awda World Workers Party Ruckas Revolutionary Communist party Moveon.org ACORN Campus Antiwar Network International Socialist Org Greens Party Muslim Student Association CPUSA

COUNTDOWN TO ATTACK ON IRAN & SYRIA 27 days left before war with Iran Are we going to stand idly by as more sovereign countries are attacked? This farce has nothing to do with getting rid of nuclear weapons in the Middle East or else the US would shut down the billions of dollars of aid that Israel receives. Money that is funneled into its massive chemical, biological and nuclear arsenal, which is turning Israel into a dominant superpower. Their military & political might remains unchecked. They are in firm control of the world’s remaining superpower, the United States, and...

"Making fun of Repubicans won't get them on our side, but threatening to kill them might be more effective."WARNING: The screen blurb on the left of the front page is peppered with F-bombs and similar sentiments from this representative of the Tolerant Left.

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...