Free Republic

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says he backs immigration reform, announcing last month an initiative to ease deportation policies, but he has sent home more than 1 million illegal immigrants in 2 1/2 years — on pace to deport more in one term than George W. Bush did in two. The Obama administration had deported about 1.06 million as of Sept. 12, against 1.57 million in Bush's two full presidential terms. This seeming contradiction between rhetoric and reality is a key element of debate over U.S. immigration policy, and stakes are high for 2012's presidential election as Obama faces criticism...

After nearly half of the servers for a South Korean bank crashed one day in April, investigators here found evidence indicating that they were dealing with a new kind of attack from an old rival: North Korea. South Korean officials said that 30 million customers of the Nonghyup agricultural bank were unable to use ATMs or online services for several days and that key data were destroyed, making it the most serious of a series of incidents in recent months. But even more troubling was the prospect that a belligerent neighbor had acquired the tools to disrupt one of the...

“I will work every day to make Washington, DC as inconsquential in your life as I can,” says Rick Perry as he announces for president. Well, there it is. The 2012 race in a nutshell—”America is not broken. Washington D.C. is broken,” as Perry said, in contrast to Barack Obama’s continuing insistence that government must somehow lead the way out of the economic doldrums with infrastructure banks and payroll tax cuts and extending unemployment insurance. If the dividing line between Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats want, in some sense, to direct America from Washington, Republicans believe the United States...

Residents and the legislative leadership in South Carolina without a doubt don’t want anything to do with Big Labor’s oppressive tactics. Workers in South Carolina’s new Boeing plant recently booted out union bosses and legislators created a business climate to land the production of the big 787 Dreamliner for years to come.However, according to the Daily Caller, local representatives from the International Association of Machinists (IAM) won’t leave the Palmetto State. Anthony Riedel of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation told The Daily Caller in an interview that workers have been told that if they unionize, IAM leadership...

It will never happen, but if you’re wondering what that proposed state of “South California” would look like, geographically and politically . . . Those blue counties have about 13 million people, which would make it the country’s fifth most populous state, behind Texas, New York, Florida, and what’s left of California. It would have roughly 20 congressional districts and 22 electoral votes. It would also be heavily Republican. Again, it will never happen; Congress and the state legislature would have to agree . . . but I wonder how many Republicans will dream of taking 22 electoral votes out...

A century and a half after the opening shots of the U.S. Civil War, nearly four in 10 Southerners say they still sympathize with the Confederacy.

It is almost clockwork: As a new presidential election cycle winds around, the early primary state of South Carolina provides a defining issue for Americans and candidates to chew over. Whether it’s a debate about where the Confederate battle flag should fly — or the “real” meaning of secession — the nation’s most stubborn state can be a tar pit for the incautious politician. Thus, almost to the day that South Carolina commemorated the 150th anniversary of the first shot of the Civil War, the federal government lobbed a grenade into the Palmetto State, challenging a private industry’s right to...

1861 - Colonel Robert E. Lee resigned from the U.S. Army. Two days earlier he had been offered command of the Union army.

Black Americans are leaving northern states and relocating in the south, US census data show. Blacks are not just leaving Michigan, as one would expect. They are leaving New York and Illinois and the two major cities therein: New York City and Chicago. The New York Times reports that those leaving tend to be "younger and better educated." Walter Mead has a long post today on what this reversal of "the great migration" means for the "Big Blue" model of Democratic Party governance. Here's an excerpt: "The failure of blue social policy to create an environment which works for Blacks...

The Census Bureau last week released county and city populations for the last of the 50 states from the 2010 Census last week, ahead of schedule. Behind the columns of numbers are many vivid stories of how our nation has been changing -- and some lessons for public policy, as well. Geographically, our population is moving to the south and west, to the point that the center of the nation's population has moved to Texas County, Missouri. That sounds like the familiar story of people moving from the Snow Belt to the Sun Belt, but that's not exactly what's happening....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWa76N5B1_0

The world's largest neutrino telescope – made from a giant cube of ice at the South Pole – aimed at detecting subatomic particles traveling near the speed of light has been completed, researchers announced today (Dec. 20). http://www.livescience.com/environment/south-pole-neutrino-observatory-construction-finished-101220.html

The Egyptian revolution has huge implications for Israel, the U.S. and what is left of the Free World. Excerpts from a statement by Blade Nzimande, General Secretary South African Communist Party. In a column by George Galloway analyzing the Tunisian and Egyptian developments in the British ‘Morning Star’ – the daily newspaper of our sister party, the Communist Party of Britain – reference is made to Lenin’s apt observations about revolutions: “There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen”

Reporting from Atlanta — For Democrats, Ashley Bell was the kind of comer that a party builds a future on: A young African American lawyer, he served as president of the College Democrats of America, advised presidential candidate John Edwards and spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. But after his party's midterm beat-down in November, Bell, a commissioner in northern Georgia's Hall County, jumped ship. He joined the Republicans. Bell, 30, said he had serious issues with the healthcare law and believed that conservative "blue dog" Democrats in Congress who shared his values had been bullied into...

Columbia, S.C. (AP) - A South Carolina proposal would prevent the state's courts from enforcing foreign law, including Islamic Sharia law, though Muslim advocates say it could essentially ban religion from mundane matters such as weddings and even burials. The bill makes no reference to a specific religion or country, though its sponsors acknowledge they worry about the ultraconservative tenets of Sharia law, or Islamic religious law. At least 13 states have introduced similar measures this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Sen. Mike Fair, a Greenville Republican who is the bill's main sponsor, said there was...

Oliver Stone defends film ‘South of the Border'Published: Sunday, January 30, 2011 1:22 PM PST **SNIP** “He's an honest man,” Stone said of Chavez on Thursday. “I sense no corruption in him.” But Stone has been accused of filming Chavez with a sympathetic lens, offering odd adulation to the Venezuelan leader, ignoring the president's worldwide reputation as a power-mad dictator and censorship bully. It's a sharp contrast to what Stone's heard of his past work-that biopics on Richard Nixon and George W. Bush were too harsh on the right wing. [Clarification: It was Stone who made the remark: Comparing Bush...

For Democrats in the South, the most ominous part of a disastrous year may not be what happened on Election Day but what has happened in the weeks since. After suffering a historic rout — in which nearly every white Deep South Democrat in the U.S. House was defeated and Republicans took over or gained seats in legislatures across the region — the party’s ranks in Dixie have thinned even further. In Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama, Democratic state legislators have become Republicans, concluding that there is no future in the party that once dominated the so-called Solid South. That the...

A frustrated North Korea is lashing out again, this time with a deadly volley of artillery aimed at reminding rival South Korea — and the world — that it will not be ignored. The barrage of shots fired Tuesday at a South Korean island lying within sight of its shores did not come out of nowhere. For weeks, North Korea has been angling for credit for reaching out to the U.S. and South Korea, and has warned that the cool response would come at a cost. The destruction that set homes ablaze, sent civilians fleeing for underground shelters and killed...

North Korea threatens continued strikes on South Breaking News: President Lee meets in bunker; witness tells TV channel fire on island burning out of control By Agencies Smoke rises from South Korean Yeonpyeong Island after being hit by dozens of artillery shells fired by North Korea November 23, 2010. Several South Korean civilians and soldiers were wounded and many others were being evacuated to bunkers on Tuesday, a Seoul television reported. The island is located near the western maritime border between the two Koreas, 11 km (7 miles) from the North and about 115 km (71 miles) northwest of Seoul....

The White House is strongly condemning North Korea's artillery attack against the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong. In a statement released before dawn Tuesday, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs calls on North Korea to "halt its belligerent action." He says the United States is "firmly committed" to South Korea's defense, and to the "maintenance of regional peace and stability."