Free Republic

"President Obama, I support the Americans' outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing." -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Sept. 24 WASHINGTON -- When France chides you for appeasement, you know you're scraping bottom. Just how low we've sunk was demonstrated by the Obama administration's satisfaction when Russia's president said of Iran, after meeting President Obama at the U.N., that "sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable." You see? The Obama magic. Engagement works. Russia is on board. Except that, as The Washington Post inconveniently pointed out, President Dmitry Medvedev said...

(IsraelNN.com) A recent children's television program broadcast from Gaza teaches Muslim Arab children several different vocabulary words for "slaughtering" the Jews in the Land of Israel. The theme is hardly new for the Hamas-run station. Al-Aqsa TV broadcasts a children's program called "Tomorrow's Pioneers" featuring a live child actor and an adult actor dressed in an animal costume. The current "animal" co-host is Nassur the Bear, introduced earlier this year, who follows in the footsteps of Nahoul the Bee, Assoud the Rabbit, and Farfour, who was a Mickey Mouse lookalike. Themes promoted by all the characters include Islamic triumphalism, anti-Semitism,...

Derivative markets . . .an understandable explanation: Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit . In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers, most of whom are unemployed alcoholics, to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now pay later" marketing strategy and as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar and soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit. By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment...

(CNN) -- Connie and Donald McCracken were watching CNN one evening last week when they learned of the tragic death of actress Natasha Richardson from a head injury. Immediately, their minds turned to their 7-year-old daughter, Morgan, who was upstairs getting ready for bed. An injured Morgan McCracken has benefited from awareness after Natasha Richardson's death. 1 of 2 Two days earlier, Morgan, her father, and brother had been playing baseball in the yard of their Mentor, Ohio, home when her father hit a line drive that landed just above Morgan's left temple. A lump formed, but the McCrackens iced

Compared to 2004, Republican turnout declined by 1.3 percentage points to 28.7 percent, while Democratic turnout increased by 2.6 points from 28.7 percent in 2004 to 31.3 percent in 2008.

NEW YORK, Dec. 3, 2008 – Army Sgt. Joel Dulashanti is, in his own words, “pretty much fully recovered” now, but the road to recovery was neither short nor easy. It did, however, provide him with a life lesson. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army's vice chief of staff, presents a flag flown over Ground Zero in New York City to Army Sgt. Joel Dulashanti after a brief ceremony at the site for a group of wounded veterans. The ceremony was part of a United Service Organizations-Microsoft "Salute to Our Troops" weekend, Nov. 8, 2008. DoD photo by Samantha...

~EXCERPT~ WASHINGTON -- Former President Clinton says he's learned a valuable lesson from the dustup over his remarks on the campaign trail _ he can promote his wife's presidential candidacy, but he's not free to defend her. Clinton also said that everything he said in South Carolina about Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was "factually accurate," but a lot that has been said about what he said is "factually inaccurate." "I think the mistake that I made is to think that I was a spouse like any other spouse who could defend his candidate," Clinton said, referring to his wife, New...

ELECTION POST-MORTEM While most Republicans woke up this morning lamenting Armageddon Tuesday, some of us didn?t lose any sleep over the election results. Happy at the prospect of two years with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi running Congress? Hardly. But there are a lot of silver linings behind these otherwise dark clouds? * The single, most important lesson here: Democrats didn?t win; Republicans lost. And they didn?t just lose; they were routed. Voters didn?t reward Democrats, they punished Republicans. Badly. This wasn?t the country saying it wanted to go further Left; it was the country saying Republicans had already taken...

Two robbers who thought they had an easy mark in a 68-year-old Omaha man were surprised on Sunday. Police said Earnest Coleman was sitting in his car outside an Omaha grocery store when a young man jumped into the passenger seat with a gun and demanded Coleman's money. Coleman responded by grabbing the robber and his gun, and exchanging blows. A second robber came to Coleman's window and hit the elderly man, police said. Undeterred, Coleman pulled that man into the car and began to hit him, too. The two robbers then ran away - without Coleman's money and without...

Lib/Dem/Soc/Commies -- You've Forgotten The Lessons Of 9/11 Written by Doc Farmer Monday, September 11, 2006 Author's Note: This is a request to most of my conservative, patriotic readers. Please don't read it with yourself in mind. Instead, send it along to every lib/dem/soc/commie discussion board, mailing list or group you can find. Send it to every lib/dem/soc/commie media outlet. Call every lib/dem/soc/commie talk show with it. This message is for them, and it's high time they heard it. Five years. It's not that long a time, when you consider the history of our nation. It's a mere blink of...

Miko was special. The police canine could sniff out drugs as easily as run down a perp. And probably most appropriately, Miko died Saturday night doing his job, just inches away from nabbing a man police say was a carjacker before the dog fell about 30 feet from an overpass. It was a routine traffic stop, Officer Gary Schad said Thursday, speaking publicly for the first time about the events leading to Miko's death. Schad released Miko when the man bolted from what was until then a routine traffic stop. After an extensive search, the man was not found. "There...

Twelve-year-old Alejandra Martinez missed school Monday, but that doesn't mean she didn't learn. Her parents, Rafael and Ruby Martinez, took their three daughters and 4-year-old son to the immigrants' rights demonstration that took over downtown Los Angeles to show them the power of peaceful protest. "I learned when people stick up for each other good things can happen," Alejandra Martinez said. Ruby Martinez, a 33-year-old third grade teacher, said she was supposed to write sick notes for her daughters but refused because they weren't sick. "We all come from an immigrant family," said Ruby Martinez, a U.S. citizen born in...

My parents were born in Denmark — Jutland, to be exact, the peninsula of that tiny kingdom that links Denmark to Germany. The Danish name is Jylland, and Jylland Posten is the newspaper that published the offensive cartoons last September. It’s a national newspaper with its home base in Denmark’s more rural countryside. Having lived in Denmark for a number of years prior to retiring to Sierra Vista, I came to know my heritage fairly well and what to expect in Danish newspapers. I’m exceedingly proud to be an American, but I am equally proud of my Danish background. Yes,...

Subject: A history lesson: LAUS DEO LAUS DEO: A little history lesson you may enjoy. I thought that you and others may like to see this. One detail that is not mentioned, in DC, is that there can never be a building of greater height than the Washington Monument. With all the uproar about removing the ten commandments, etc... This is worth a moment or two of your time. I was not aware of this historical information. On the aluminum cap, atop the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, are displayed two words: Laus Deo. No one can see these words....

The Mirage that Is Derailing the Rebuilding of New Orleans By Ari Kelman 1-02-06 Mr. Kalman, the author of A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans, teaches history at the University of California, Davis. The flood was voracious; it swallowed whole neighborhoods, ending hundreds of lives. But the battered levees have been repaired. They again stand between New Orleans and catastrophe, holding the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain in check. The antique drainage system, too, is back online. Any water that falls in the city, every drop of rain or tear shed, ultimately flows through canals...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14, 2005 – Elementary school students at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., got a combined current events and history lesson Dec. 13 from the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney. Lynne Cheney spoke to students at W.W. Burrows Elementary School about the election taking place in Iraq on Dec. 15. "What's happening is that the people in Iraq are going to vote for, what is in essence, their Congress, their national assembly," Cheney said. "It's a turning point, one of those things that when you're a grown-up, you will look in your history books and you will see...

A relative of mine, immediately after graduating from college, went to work for a bank. Even though he had a university degree, he was assigned the job of repossessing cars. We kidded him a lot about that. He eventually ended up a vice president, but his entry into the banking industry was about as low as you can get, and we never let him forget it. In similar fashion, the Enterprise car-rental firm goes to college campuses to recruit management trainees, but among the first jobs these trainees handle is washing and cleaning cars coming off rental. When I moved...

CHICAGO -- How well do you know your civics? A survey by a lawyers group suggests many Americans could use a refresher. The American Bar Association poll finds many adults struggle to identify the branches of government -- legislative, executive and judicial -- and have trouble explaining separation of powers. One in five incorrectly said the three branches were Republican, Democrat and independent. Sixteen percent thought the three were local, state and federal. While eight in 10 people said separation of powers is important, fewer than half, when given four choices, correctly picked that "Congress, the president and the federal...

War game gives Washington a lesson in power By Alec Russell in Rhode Island (Filed: 04/06/2005) The mood in the White House situation room was gloomy. Iran had nuclear weapons; the Chinese had turned North Korea into a de facto colony; and Brazil was getting uppity and refusing to take America's side. And still the world's lone superpower was barely reacting. Peter Sellers in the cold war satire Dr Strangelove "We are perceived as losing prestige, as not taking the lead,'' a US aide said. "Not,'' she added thoughtfully, "that we didn't get whacked around earlier for being a bully.''...

After reading Sunday's New York Times, my first inclination was to call 9-1-1 and ask police to put St. Paul's Mac-Groveland and Crocus Hill neighborhoods, as well as Minneapolis' uberliberal Uptown enclave, on suicide watch. I was particularly worried about Heather Martens and the other folks over at Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, the local adjunct for the mathematically challenged Million Moms. The "paper of record" ran what must have been a painful front-page story for readers and staff alike. The Old Gray Lady admitted what many of us have known all along: Sen. Dianne Feinstein's assault-weapon ban had little...