Free Republic

In the wake of a crushing defeat last week for the climate alarmism-promoting Australian Labor Party, which imposed the deeply unpopular and expensive “carbon tax” credited by analysts for the conservative coalition’s victory, authorities in Australia are preparing to dismantle and consolidate the myriad global-warming schemes spawned under the previous government. However, while legislation is already being drafted, major hurdles remain before the tax on CO2 can be scrapped, sparking an outcry among businesses, state governments, and especially Australian voters, who voted overwhelmingly in favor of the new coalition and its pledge to kill the costly economic burden. According to...

Howard Zinn (left) with the very serious-looking actor Viggo Mortensen The small-screen version of Marxist historian Howard Zinn’s leftward-slanted history of America, The People Speak, aired Sunday night on the History Channel. The film, based on Zinn’s influential book, A People’s History of the United States, is chock full of useful idiot celebrities including Matt Damon, Marisa Tomei, Morgan Freeman, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Penn, Bruce Springsteen, and its executive producer Josh Brolin, all parroting the radical platitudes written for them. One scene in the shlockumentary tells the story of an organizer-agitator who rallied tenants against landlords during the Great Depression....

History serving “a social aim,” rather than chronicling the past in a detached manner, is what readers get in A People’s History of the United States. With any luck, “The People Speak,” the History Channel documentary based on the book that premieres this Sunday, will be, like so many Hollywood productions, unfaithful to the original. Given A People’s History of the United States’ infidelity to facts, this might be the only chance viewers have of seeing anything resembling an accurate retelling of history.Through Zinn’s looking-glass, Maoist China, site of history’s bloodiest state-sponsored killings, transforms into “the closest thing, in the...

At the Giants halftime last night in the Meadowlands, a "Stand Up for Cancer" presentation was made by three people from the 50 yard line: Steve Tisch, partner in the ownership of the Giants, a radiant and gorgeous Christie Brinkley, and Jeff Zucker.Tisch was roundly booed (because of the personal seat licenses which the Giants have instituted for the new stadium which will open in 2010). Chritie came on next and was warmly greeted by the 77k fans.But when Zucker was announced and began to speak, the fans booed him almost as vigorously as they did to Tisch. Why? The...

Elected Republicans are now openly complaining that they are receiving "threats" because of their support for the illegal alien amnesty bill. I guess they now know what it's like to walk around a Los Angeles park after dark. Immigration Bill Prompts Some Menacing ResponsesWASHINGTON, June 27 — The threat came in the weekend mail.The recipient was Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, who has been a leading advocate of the proposed legislation for changing the immigration system. His offices in Washington and across Florida have received thousands of angry messages in recent weeks, but nothing as alarming as that letter...