Free Republic

NEVER FORGET THE PRICE THAT WAS PAID WHEN GOD BECAME MAN AND PROVIDED US THE MEANS FOR OUR SALVATION. NEVER FORGET THE PRICE THAT WAS PAID BY BRAVE PATRIOTS WHO BY GOD’S GRACE WERE ABLE TO GRANT US THE LIBERTIES WE NOW ENJOY! Amazing to discover that in the minds of early Patriots, the 4th of July signified a religious holiday like Christmas. To many of the followers of Jesus Christ, who by The Grace of Almighty God, had helped form this nation of ours, God who became Man had granted us freedom of knowing God and becoming like Christ;...

The state of Texas is warning Americans to avoid travel to the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo this holiday weekend because of an anticipated surge in drug cartel violence aimed at Americans. In a news release Saturday, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Webb County Sheriff's Office said their sources indicated that the Zetas drug cartel was "planning to target U.S. citizens who travel to Nuevo Laredo this weekend." Steven C. McCraw, the department's director, also said in the statement: "According to the information we have received, the Zetas are planning a possible surge in criminal activity,...

Welcome To.... 'Amy's Place' welcomes all poets and those who enjoy poetry.'Amy's Place' is more than just about poetry.Come in, relax, and share with fellow FReepersyour thoughts about any of the things on the *Menu*. Enjoy! :) Never Forget! Bad Penny Amy's personal guardian ~ the ever charming, lovable, huggable, LouieWolf Many thanks for stopping by. : )

Sarah Palin, left, poses with celebrity impersonator Cecilia Thompson in Boston last week, Source: AP ~snips~ Reporters were reduced to begging for a hint of what time she might be leaving and then jumping red lights just to keep up. "Even we don't know where we're going the next day," said her father, Chuck Heath. "It's been fun, sneaking out the back of hotels, leaving at midnight." It was a chance for revenge on the media, which was not kind to Palin when she was chosen as John McCain's running mate in the 2008 presidential election. "Three years ago, it...

Private sector employment rose slightly more than expected in July, easing some concerns about labor market weakness ahead of a key government jobs report later this week. Private employers added 42,000 jobs in July, compared with a revised gain of 19,000 in June, the report by a payrolls processor ADP Employer Services showed on Wednesday. The rise in hiring was slightly higher than an estimate from economists surveyed by Reuters for a gain of 40,000 private-sector jobs. The June ADP figure originally was reported as a gain of 13,000 jobs. However, while above market expectations the gains still show the...

A group of Republican senators has written to top immigration officials in the Obama administration asking them to reveal whether large-scale plans are under way to provide a so-called non-legislative version of amnesty. The lawmakers cite an 11-page draft document written by staff to the director of the Citizenship and Immigration Service that says they are reviewing several executive orders and other mechanisms that effectively would serve as a substitute for comprehensive immigration reforms.  The objective would be to promote “family unity, foster economic growth … and reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States...

The Obama administration, anticipating that Congress might not pass comprehensive immigration reform this year, is considering ways it could act without congressional approval to achieve many of the objectives of the initiative, including giving permanent resident status, or green cards, to large numbers of people in the country illegally. The ideas were outlined in an unusually frank draft memo prepared for Alejandro N. Mayorkas, director of the federal agency that handles immigration benefits, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS). The memo lists ways the government could grant permanent resident status to tens of thousands of people and delay the deportation...

Investigators have found concrete evidence on computers used by Pfc. Bradley Manning that link him with the leak of classified Afghanistan war reports, a U.S. defense official said. The disclosure came as Defense Secretary Robert Gates pledged Thursday to "aggressively investigate the leak" and find ways to prevent further breaches, and told reporters that he had invited the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist the probe. Defense officials said the FBI was investigating whether civilians aided Pfc. Manning in providing the information to WikiLeaks, a Web-based group that this week released 76,000 secret reports from Afghanistan. Pfc. Manning already was...

In the winter of 1983, archival research expert David Dodge, and former Baltimore police investigator Tom Dunn, were searching for evidence of government corruption in public records stored in the Belfast Library on the coast of Maine. By chance, they discovered the library's oldest authentic copy of the Constitution of the United States (printed in 1825). Both men were stunned to see this document included a 13th Amendment that no longer appears on current copies of the Constitution. Moreover, after studying the Amendment's language and historical context, they realized the principle intent of this "missing" 13th Amendment was to prohibit...

US v. State of Arizona and Janice K. Brewer

Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot. That argument comes despite...

Among the individuals who were part of the controversial "JournoList" e-mail group were activists with ties to the White House and a socialist group closely linked for years to President Obama. Other members of JournoList were activists from a far-left think tank that has been partnered with ACORN and was founded with input from Obama. The group, Demos, may have been instrumental in securing the appointment of Obama's former "green jobs" adviser, Van Jones, who resigned after it was exposed he funded a communist organization. JournoList – a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists and like-minded professors and activists...

If freedom of religion means anything in the United States, it means that Mus lim-Americans have a right to congre gate and worship wherever they please -- including places those with vivid memories of 9/11 may find distasteful. But that doesn't mean the people behind a planned mosque blocks away from Ground Zero are acting like good neighbors -- or good citizens. Exhibit A: Their secrecy about who'll actually be funding the project. Granted, the groups leading the mosque-building effort seem just fine. The Cordoba Initiative, led by Kuwaiti-born Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, says it's devoted to "interfaith tolerance," while...

US authorities have known for weeks that they have suffered a haemorrhage of secret information on a scale which makes even the leaking of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war look limited by comparison. The Afghan war logs, from which the Guardian reports today, consist of 92,201 internal records of actions by the US military in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December 2009 – threat reports from intelligence agencies, plans and accounts of coalition operations, descriptions of enemy attacks and roadside bombs, records of meetings with local politicians, most of them classified secret. The Guardian's source for these is...

<p>THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be "far preferable" to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.</p> <p>Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.</p>

For a number of years traditional print media has been on life support, but after the revelations from Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller, it looks like someone finally pulled the plug. The expose on Journolist, a now defunct, listserv that included hundreds of liberal journalists, detailed: the Journolisters’ attempt, during the 2008 presidential campaign to kill and bury stories about Obama’s relationship with “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright; their push to deliberately smear innocent conservative journalists and politicos as “racists” and “bigots” their twisted passion to see Rush Limbaugh killed off and dead; their intolerant desire to have the government censor and...

New e-mail messages published by the Daily Caller Thursday show a coordinated effort by the JournoList's members to destroy Sarah Palin the moment she was named John McCain's running mate on August 29, 2008. Some even discussed how the former Alaska governor's decision to have a Down Syndrome baby rather than abort it could be used against her. As the attacks ensued, the Nation's Chris Hayes wrote, "Keep the ideas coming! Have to go on TV to talk about this in a few min and need all the help I can get." Witness America's so-called journalists conspiring to destroy a...

Having worked with Elena Kagan at the Clinton White House, Dick was inclined to see her as a political moderate, worthy of support as the best one could expect from the Obama White House. But no more. Thanks to the work of the Center for Security Policy Director Frank Gaffney and the writing of Andrew McCarthy of the National Review Institute, there has emerged a compelling reason to vote against Kagan’s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice: her support for Shariah law while she was dean of Harvard Law School. Islamists are seeking to spread Shariah law by inducing American...

(BALTIMORE, MD) NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous issued the following statement today after learning of the resignation of Shirley Sherrod of the United States Department of Agriculture: “Since our founding in 1909, the NAACP has been a multi-racial, multi-faith organization that-- while generally rooted in African American communities-- fights to end racial discrimination against all Americans. We concur with US Agriculture Secretary Vilsack in accepting the resignation of Shirley Sherrod for her remarks at a local NAACP Freedom Fund banquet. Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her...

Since the initially strong language on religious freedom used in President Obama's Cairo speech, presidential references to religious freedom have become rare, often replaced, at most, with references to freedom of worship. A purposeful change in language could mean a much narrower view of the right to religious freedom. As Catholics, this is an area where we must remain vigilant. These small changes can be used to change our perception of rights and freedoms. The change in language was barely noticeable to the average citizen but political observers are raising red flags at the use of a new term "freedom...