Free Republic

York County didn't qualify to receive low-interest loans to help residents and businesses impacted by severe weather earlier this month. The announcement came after a federal survey team from the U.S. Small Business Administration visited the county this week to assess damage caused by tornadoes and severe storms on Aug. 7. The SBA didn't say why York County didn't qualify for assistance. The National Weather Service confirmed two tornadoes touched down – one in Manheim Township and the other in East Hopewell Township. Thousands of people were without power for up to a week. Some families said it will take...

It’s tempting to call “democracy” meaningless in today’s parlance. Except it has a meaning: the opposite of what its dictionary entry says. “Democracy” now means not the rule or sovereignty of the people but the fiat of elites and “experts.” When the people can be persuaded, duped, or bullied into ratifying expert insistence, so much the better. That extra pretense of legitimacy helps quiet and discredit dissent. When they can’t, no matter. The “right thing” will be done, come what may, and that too is “democratic” under the new meaning. The cloyingly disingenuous phrase “our democracy” really means “their oligarchy.”...

Red America, my new blog at washingtonpost.com, has been under attack since its launch. It is a conservative blog on a mainstream media site, so many of the attacks were expected. If one bothers to read it, I believe it stands as a welcome addition to the opinion debate. The hate mail that I have received since the launch of this blog has been overwhelmingly profane and violent. My family has been threatened; my friends have been deluged; my phone has been prank called. The most recent email that showed up while writing this post talked about how the author...

***scroll for updates...statement from NRO...Domenech speaks to Human Events Online*** I just got home from Pittsburgh and am late heading out the door for the Abdul Rahman event in D.C., but I can't let this blog sit silent about the plagiarism debacle now engulfing young conservative Ben Domenech, the Washington Post's "Red America" blogger. I cheered for Ben, the editor of my last book at Regnery, when he announced his new position. I criticized unhinged bloggers on the Left who leveled vicious ad hominem attacks against him. It's clear, as the good folks at Red State (which Ben co-founded) note,...

NEW YORK A two-day effort by liberal bloggers to find, and publicize, numerous examples of plagiarism committed by new Washington Post blogger Ben Domenech culminated today in calls that he give up his new position--from some of his conservative supporters. One of them, most dramatically, is columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin. As an editor at Regnery, Domenech handled her most recent book. Conservatives had hailed Domenech's appointment to write the Red America blog. "I cheered for Ben, the editor of my last book at Regnery, when he announced his new position," Malkin wrote on her Web site today. "I criticized...

NEW YORK Ben Domenech's conservative blog Red America lasted all of three days at the Washington Post. He quit today after numerous examples of alleged plagiarism in his work surfaced. Yesterday, in a seprate matter, he had apologized for calling Coretta Scott King a "Communist" the day after her recent funeral. The embarrassing episode for the Post culminated Friday afternoon when washingtonpost.com executive editor Jim Brady posted the following notice on the Web site: "In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting...

BOISE, IDAHO -- So what are people in one of the nation's most conservative states saying about the gay-sex scandal surrounding their much-revered, oft-elected Sen. Larry E. Craig? Family-values organizations, powerful in Idaho, want his head. Politicians, most of them Republicans like Craig, want more facts. Gays, a seemingly small group here, are embarrassed and yet strangely appeased by the spotlight on a politician who consistently has voted against gay-rights legislation.The state's entire congressional delegation is Republican, and the party holds overwhelming majorities in both houses of the Legislature. Idahoans sided staunchly with the GOP in at least the last...

If you're looking for areas with a low cost of living, good job prospects and a high quality of life, here are 10 best bets to research. Cities such as New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles might be great places to jump-start your career, but their high cost of living can break the bank for many grads and young families. Some of the best places to live and work may be smaller so-called flyover cities such as Fayetteville, Ark., Blacksburg, Va., or Logan, Utah, according to Bert Sperling of Sperling's Best Places. He has put together a list of...

In his first public comments since resigning earlier today as a blogger for washingtonpost.com, Ben Domenech says his editors there were “fools” for not expecting an onslaught of attacks from the left. “While I appreciated the opportunity to go and join the Washington Post,” Domenech said, “if they didn’t expect the leftists were going to come after me with their sharpened knives, then they were fools.” Domenech has been under a steady stream of criticism since washingtonpost.com launched the new blog, “Red America,” on Tuesday. Domenech, an editor at Regnery Publishing (a sister company to HUMAN EVENTS), was accused of...

The divide between conservative and liberal America was on full display at the Oscars, with both the winners and losers championing social and political topics heralded by the left. Across the United States, in blogs and on call-in radio talk shows, conservatives seethed that their point of view was not represented in the choice films honored with nominations -- let alone among those given awards. "This year's Oscar nominees include stories of homosexual sheep herders, a transvestite and Japanese prostitutes," ... American conservatives are accustomed to frowning at liberal Hollywood, but they were more disaffected than ever by the left-of-center...

The Democratic Party, the self-proclaimed defender of the middle class, was trounced by Republicans among those voters in the 2004 election, according to a Democratic advocacy group that says the party faces "a crisis with the middle class." A report released yesterday by Third Way says support for Republicans begins at much lower income levels than researchers had expected: Among white voters, President Bush got a majority of support beginning at an income threshold of $23,300 -- about $5,000 above the poverty level for a family of four. The report says the economic gains of Hispanics have translated into strong...

Sally Field was widely ridiculed some years ago for gushing in her Oscar acceptance speech that: “You like me, you really like me.” Post-election analysis is split about the reasons President Bush won re-election. Immediate reaction focused upon exit polls that seemed to show moral values as the deciding issue; later commentary has rejected that conclusion as the result of a poorly drawn question. I don't know why Bush won, as people voted the way they did for any number of reasons. But one thing can safely be said about the election. To paraphrase Sally, the chattering classes hate people...

So John Kerry lost the election not because most of the nation rejected his approach to Iraq or health care or taxes. Rather, he lost because President Bush succeeded in energizing the Bible-thumping homophobic masses averse to redefining marriage. Or so goes the story line emerging from Blue America media outlets. It's been extrapolated from exit polling on the primacy of "moral values," and from the fact that referendums to ban gay marriage passed easily in the 11 states where they were on the ballot. But we think these returns tell a different story, and it's one that liberals who...

We won an historic victory. President Bush received 59,651,290 votes, more than any president in history. He received 51% of the vote, while Sen. Kerry received only 48% (Bill Clinton was re-elected with only 49%). He received 286 electoral votes and carried 30 states. President Bush became the first president to increase his majority in both the House and the Senate since 1936. In the face of four years of constant smear attacks by Democrats and their front groups, labeling President Bush everything but a child of God, he gained support across the board and won big! Republicans are likely...

Like an anthropologist touring deepest, darkest Africa, the writer David Brooks has courageously trekked to Middle America, studied the natives there, and reported back to readers of The Atlantic Monthly, one of the nation’s toniest opinion magazines. He reports that out here in Red America (as the last election maps dubbed George Bush country) we’re dumber, poorer, fatter, and less well dressed than those in Blue America (the parts of the country that voted for Al Gore). At least, his data shows, our wives have more orgasms. Brooks didn’t do his investigating in actual fly-over country—not as far as I’m...

This is the home of Britton Stein, who describes George W. Bush as "a man, a man's man, a manly man," and Al Gore as "a ranting and raving little whiny baby." Next he goes through a site called FreeRepublic.com, which calls itself "the premier conservative news forum," and then moves on to a site called sftt.org.