Free Republic

He was notoriously reluctant to discuss religion while Prime Minister, with his chief spin doctor Alastair Campbell famously commenting: ‘We don’t do God.’ (Snip) Mr Blair has previously praised the Muslim faith as ‘beautiful’ and said the Prophet Mohammed had been ‘an enormously civilizing force’. In 2006 he said the Koran was a ‘reforming book, it is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and way ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance’.

Okay, folks, place your bets. Was it clueless incompetence on a cosmic scale? Or, was it John Deweys collectivist wet dream turned Clockwork Orange? One of these ways or the other, we became a country with 50,000,000 functional illiterates, people who can't read a cereal box, never mind instructions on a pill bottle when that exact skill might save a life. Prisons are full of people who can't read. The country's schools wallow in mediocrity. All thanks to educational malfeasance, decade after decade. Illiteracy_in_AmericaJ'accuse! J'accuse! The so-called experts in charge of reading are derelict and destructive. Please, remove these parasites...

Now this is a laugh. As Vanity Fair reports, the House GOP leadership's symbolic gesture of reading the Constitution on the House floor today -- in an effort to please their Tea Party base who decry virtually all of the Obama administration's policies as both a monumental waste of money and, more importantly, an affront to our founding document -- could also itself cost a lot of money. The magazine asked an expert on government waste, and he said in part: The amount I get is nearly $1.1 million. $1,071,872.87, to be exact, though of course this is more back-of-the-envelope...

In a nation founded upon the U.S. Constitution, one might think that reading the founding document out loud on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives might not be controversial, but some on the left suggest those promoting its voicing have a "fetish." Among them is Dahlia Lithwick of Slate.com, who penned a column titled, "Read It and Weep: How the tea party's fetish for the Constitution as written may get it in trouble."

It took two days to print and it will take even longer to read. According to The Hill, Senate Republicans are going through with a plan to have the entire omnibus spending bill read on the Senate floor, a feat that won’t be completed for 50 hours. Republicans have vowed to vote against the 1,924-page, $1.1 trillion bill that is loaded with billions in earmarks. “Senate clerks are expected to read the massive bill in rotating shifts around the clock — taking breaks to drink water and pop throat lozenges — to keep legislative business on track, according to a...

Editor’s note: The following outline was obtained by The Blaze from Glenn Beck’s TV team. It is the background document they used to produce Tuesday night’s George Soros expose. It has been edited for form but not content: BACKGROUND “Messianic Fantasies” * “It is sort of a disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out,” (The Independent, June 3, 1993) * “I admit that I have always harbored an exaggerated view of self-importance –to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as...

Chicago election officials say crews will work overtime to reprogram thousands of electronic voting machines that mistakenly list a gubernatorial candidate's name as "Rich Whitey" instead of Rich Whitney. Chicago elections board chairman Langdon Neal said 530 machines being used for early voting and an additional 4,200 destined for the Nov. 2 election will be reprogrammed and retested. The mistake in the Green Party candidate's name appears on a review screen that allows voters to double-check their selections and not on the screen where the vote is registered. It also is not on paper ballots, Neal said. He said the...

If you’re like us, you’ve witnessed the mess in Springfield with utter shock. We were told it was just Rod Blagojevich but now he’s been removed and the mess remains. The only consistent feature of our dysfunctional state government is the legislature. That is why we started this non-partisan reform effort to reform the General Assembly and put the people back in charge. The “Bambenek Put-Back Amendment” is a comprehensive package of reforms designed to end the backroom dealings of the General Assembly. Did you know that most legislation is written behind closed doors and is never seen by most...

Coburn Backs Off Threat to Read Health Care Bill in Senate The Oklahoma lawmaker says there's uncertainty about whether reading the bill during Thanksgiving week would be productive. WASHINGTON -- Republican Sen. Tom Coburn is backing off his threat to require that the Senate read the 2,074-page health care bill because some GOP colleagues aren't supporting the effort. The Oklahoma lawmaker said there's uncertainty about whether reading the bill during Thanksgiving week would be productive. He also said that if the Republicans do decide to tie up the Senate for the dozens of hours it would take, six GOP colleagues...

There are two ways to view this video of a 2005 floor speech by then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, condemning Republican leaders for not allowing members three days to read "a bill of thousands of pages" before voting on it. The video is posted on Breitbart TV and is well worth watching in the aftermath of Speaker Pelosi's legislative blitzkreig of the past week to gain passage of her version of Obamacare at all costs. It was done with not even a token nod in the direction of allowing the sort of legislative transparency she promised voters during the...

Earlier this week, the Senate Finance Committee approved the health care bill proposed by Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.). Without a doubt, this bill will increase government spending and increase taxes for Americans ..... We need more people to voice their opposition to the Democratic leadership. Will you help us get this message out?

After this heathcare is rammed down our throats by the misfit from Nevada I hope the there is a new term used freely in Congress for it. Let's call it Reiding the bill.

With the President and Congress’s plan to pass comprehensive health care reform reaching increasingly high levels of unpopularity, and reconciliation becoming an impediment, the leadership of the Senate is rumored to be preparing a new secret plan to railroad the bill through the Senate in record time by using a seldom used parliamentary procedure.Their plan is to proceed to a House passed non-health care bill to provide a shell of legislation to give Obamacare a ride to the House then to the President’s desk.  Sound confusing? We lay out the steps below, but essentially the Senate would pass health care...

(CNSNews.com) - The “corrected” lesson plans the U.S. Department of Education is suggesting that schools around the country use to turn President Obama’s speech to students today into a “teachable moment” still call for teachers to read books about Obama and to post quotations from Obama in large print on classroom walls. The Department of Education created two “menus of classroom activities” for use with the president’s speech. One is designed to guide Pre-K through 6th grade teachers, and the other is designed to guide 7th through 12th grade teachers.

No More “vote before Reading” Bills! Please submit a simple and short Bill to mandate a “10 minute per page” lag-time, for the study of any Bill leaving “committee, for the Floor”. The “clock” should start AFTER the Government print shop has delivered a hard copy of the proposed bill to Your Office or Desk; and the News Media. If a Bill contains a “to be written later” paragraph, the Print Shop shall not release it. Approved “Floor Amendments” should get the same treatment. Add 10 minutes per page of Approved Amendments to Bills “pre-vote time”. A 2 page “Declaration...

A few weeks ago I suggested a few non-fiction books that were good reads. Here are some of my suggestions for fiction: Caleb Carr, The Alienist. Carr is trained in history, and this long, but involved, mystery involves a 19th century serial killer in which the detective is just beginning to use some of the forensic tools available to us today. In the process, he encounters Teddy Roosevelt, Jacob Riis, and J. P. Morgan among others. Each has more than a cameo. The Civil War trilogy by Newt Gingrich and Bill Fortschen, Gettysburg, Grant Comes East, and Never Call Retreat....

I was talking to a friend the other day who teaches at an elementary school and has a student whom I shall name Shakir. Shakir is ten, and he's barely literate. My friend's class is not a large one; she has five to eight students. She also has a teaching assistant, and between them, the kids receive a lot of personal, one-to-one attention. Nevertheless, Shakir still can't read. The why of this phenomenon is quite important; you see, there are lots of Shakirs in the black community. For he is one of many kids flunking his way through the educational system,...

APRIL 23--The parents of a 21-year-old soldier killed in Iraq are suing an online retailer for including their son's name on antiwar t-shirts that list the names of thousands of military personnel killed in the war. In a $10 million federal lawsuit, Michael and Robin Read allege that the manufacturer of the shirts is using their son Brandon's name in a commercial venture without their permission. The Reads's complaint, a copy of which you'll find below, was filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Greeneville, Tennessee; it names Dan Frazier and his firm Lifeweaver, LLC as defendants. While the lawsuit...

A month ago, when I got an e-mail from a Lubbock mom who told me her 16-month-old baby could read, I didn't really take it seriously - especially when she told me it was her first baby.  But after a few weeks and a few more e-mails, I decided to meet her and see for myself.Elizabeth Barrett is now 17 months old. She looks and acts like most babies her age, but  her mom Katy says, "She can read sentences. She can read more words than we can count."  So we watched as Elizabeth pulled out her favorite book,...

FORT HUACHUCA — There is one thing Command Sgt. Maj. Gerry Wykoff is thankful for, and that is Dr. Seuss never wrote an Army Field Manual. As it is, his children’s books are full of tongue twisters, as the senior noncommissioned officer for the Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca found out Monday when he read Seuss’ “The Sleep Book,” to fourth-grade students of Janet Josa’s class at General Myer Elementary School. For many young school students, the Dr. Seuss books are today’s “See Spot Run” that older generations remember from their days in the lower grades of elementary education. Nationwide,...