Free Republic

When teenage thugs are called "troubled youth" by people on the political left, that tells us more about the mindset of the left than about these young hoodlums. Seldom is there a speck of evidence that the thugs are troubled, and often there is ample evidence that they are in fact enjoying themselves, as they create trouble and dangers for others. Why then the built-in excuse, when juvenile hoodlums are called "troubled youth" and mass murderers are just assumed to be "insane"? At least as far back as the 18th century, the left has struggled to avoid facing the plain...

By now, most McCain haters will have already skipped down to the comments section to post their expletives and tell me how it’s a free country and they have a 1st Amendment right, etc. to yammer on and on about how bad McCain sucks, totally missing the point of my post, again. But I’m here to tell you, in this free country, that in my opinion, you should SHUT YOUR STINKIN TRAP! To all you ingrates, rageaholics, and self-absorbed punks, WE KNOW YOU HATE MCCAIN. You can give yourself a rest now and stop posting on every single thread the...

This is not an Onion article. I solemnly affirm to Scrappleface: New York Times columnist Judith Warner doesn't want decisions on spending taxpayer money on social programs to be judged by how much they cost or whether they work. Despite my disclaimer, I bet you're still dubious. "Come on, Finkelstein - that can't be right. As liberal as the New York Times might be, there's no way one of its regular columnists would come right out and say that."Wanna bet?The particular government programs that Warner - the Times's family-issues maven - discusses in The Real Value of Public Preschool [subscription]...

The leading imam in Manchester, confirms that he thinks the execution of sexually active gay men is justified, the rights group Outrage reported. Arshad Misbahi of the Manchester Central Mosque confirmed his views in a conversation to John Casson, a local psychotherapist. Casson said: "I asked him if the execution of gay Muslims in Iran and Iraq was an acceptable punishment in Sharia law, or the result of culture, not religion. "He told me that in a true Islamic state, such punishments were part of Islam: If the person had had a trial, at which four witnesses testified that they...

HISTORY REVISITED -- OR HISTORY REVISED?THE ISSUE: Steven Spielberg's provocative "Munich" recounts the '72 Olympics murders.   Lou Lumenick starts his gushing review of "Munich" by noting that Steven Spielberg dares to present "Palestinian terrorists as human beings with possibly legitimate gripes" ("Tragedy's Wake," Dec. 20). Spielberg is wrong to suggest that the murderers at Munich had some plausible justification for what they did. The Arabs refused to live in peace with Israel and invaded them four times between 1948 and 1973. The world made a mistake in 1972 when most people reacted to the Olympic massacre, not by...

<p>Regarding your protest outside of Crawford, Texas, and your many statements regarding the death of your son, Casey, and against the war in Iraq, where your son was fighting for his country and died in that war, I have this to say to you.</p>

WASHINGTON - Pessimistic, anxious and depressed people may have a higher risk of dementia, U.S. researchers reported Thursday. A study of a group of 3,500 people showed that those who scored high for pessimism on a standardized personality test had a 30 percent increased risk of developing dementia 30 to 40 years later. Those scoring very high on both anxiety and pessimism scales had a 40 percent higher risk, the study showed. “There appears to be a dose-response pattern, i.e., the higher the scores, the higher the risk of dementia,” Dr. Yonas Geda, a neuropsychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic in...