Free Republic

We hear from a soldier who is refusing to fight in Iraq. Mark Wilkerson has been AWOL for more than a year and is turning himself in at Fort Hood in Texas today. In a taped video statement he says, "I am not willing to kill or be killed for something I don't believe in. My morals said going to Iraq was not the right thing to do." I was not going to live a life of violence." [includes rush transcript]

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS - A professor at Northern Kentucky University said she invited students in one of her classes to destroy an anti-abortion display on campus Wednesday evening. NKU police are investigating the incident, in which 400 crosses were removed from the ground near University Center and thrown in trash cans. The crosses, meant to represent a cemetery for aborted fetuses, had been temporarily erected last weekend by a student Right to Life group with permission from NKU officials. Public universities cannot ban such displays because they are a type of symbolic speech that has been protected by the U.S. Supreme...

It may now be 2006, but George Orwell’s 1948 novel 1984 – which predicted a dark dystopian future in which a totalitarian government watches its subjects relentlessly - is still terrifyingly prescient. Its influence can be seen in many movies, from Brazil to this year’s V For Vendetta, while Michael Radford directed a screen version in, wait for it, 1984. But if Tim Robbins has his way, there’ll soon be a brand-new movie version coming our way. Robbins is currently directing a stage version of the novel for his LA theatre troupe, The Actors’ Gang. That runs until April 8,...

Juan comments are just too funny, making himself look silly suggesting Bush should have a bunch of dissenting Michael Moore's in his cabinet, etc.