Free Republic

"Resolved, That Dr. Franklin, Mr. J. Adams and Mr. Jefferson, be a committee, to bring in a device for a seal for the United States of America." – July 4, 1776, Journals of Continental Congress For the design team, Congress chose three of the five men who were on the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Although these distinguished committee members were among the ablest minds in the new nation, they had little knowledge of heraldry. To help convey their vision, they chose the artist Pierre Eugène Du Simitière to work with them.

This is a Vanity. If it shows up in the wrong place, would some kindly soul remove it to a better place. I have recently seen the movie "Amazing Grace", with Ioan Gruffudd, about William Wilberforce and his efforts to end British participation in the slave trade. At one point, his friend, PM Pitt, tells him that one of the reasons he's having trouble is that it is rumored that WW was corresponding with Thomas Jefferson. Is it true? Does anyone know what they were writing about? Jefferson had slaves, and WW was against it.

Let us approach the question from another perspective. Much as injustice against black slaves is used to discredit the men who wrote and signed the Declaration and Constitution, hypocrisy is also used to discredit advocates of social conservatism. Whether due to divorce, infidelity, homosexuality, or some other moral violation, guilty politicians, preachers, and commentators are called out for violating the family values they otherwise advocate. Often, the argument against such offenders extends to the principles they support. We are led to believe, because a man gets a divorce or has an affair, he may not credibly argue in defense of...

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"Here's to You Mr. Jefferson" Awesome! by Mike Church

A Library of Congress curator is on a worldwide mission to find exact copies of the books that belonged to Thomas Jefferson For more than a decade, Mark Dimunation has led a quest to rebuild an American treasure—knowing he will likely never see the complete results of his efforts. On an August day 195 years ago, the British burned the U.S. Capitol in the War of 1812 and by doing so, destroyed the first Library of Congress. When the war ended, former President Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his personal library, which at 6,487 books was the largest in America,...

Law Of The Sea: The U.S. seeks U.N. authorization to fight Somali pirates from the air, on land and at sea. When American cruise ships become targets, maybe it's time to renew a proud tradition: Send in the Marines.On Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice formally presented to a special U.N. session on Somalia a draft Security Council resolution saying that member states fighting against piracy "may take all necessary measures ashore in Somalia, including its airspace, to interdict those who are using Somali territory to plan, facilitate or undertake acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea and to...

John F. Kennedy once said to a assembled group of scholars in the White House, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." The quotes below could prove his point. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe Thomas Jefferson The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would...

IN THE battle over how to teach evolution in public schools, Thomas Jefferson’s demand for a “separation between church and state’’ has been cited countless times. Many argue that the controversial alternative to Darwinian evolution, intelligent design, is an exclusively religious idea and therefore cannot be discussed under the Constitution. By invoking Jefferson’s principle of separation, many critics of intelligent design assume that this visionary Founding Father would agree with them. But would he? For too long, an aspect of Jefferson’s visionary thought has been ignored, hidden away as too uncomfortable for public discussion - his support for intelligent design....

Thomas Jefferson, The First Amendment and the separation of church and state - most are surprised to discover that neither the Constitution nor the First Amendment contain these words. The First Amendment simply states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The fact that the phrase “separation of church and state” appears in no founding document does not prevent many judicial and social activists from invoking that phrase as the basis for many public policy decisions. Today, Thomas Jefferson (author of that phrase) is portrayed as the authority on the First...

Next time someone tells you intelligent design is “based on religion,” you might point him to American Founder Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. As I explain in a special July 4th edition of ID the Future, Jefferson not only believed in intelligent design, he insisted it was based on the plain evidence of nature, not religion. Ironically, the critics of intelligent design often think they are defending the principles of Jefferson. The National Council for the Social Studies, for example, claims that intelligent design is religion and then cites Jefferson’s famous Letter to the Danbury Baptists calling...

John Adans: Yesterday, the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, "that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States." ...

For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now. The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them. There is no evidence...

Frequently Asked Dead Presidents Questions Which Two Presidents Died On The Same Day?? I don't know why (maybe it's on a lesson plan for schools around the country) but this little question with a quick answer (and one that is quickly found in any ready reference) has been asked of me so often that I finally decided to list the answer here. The answer is John Adams (second President) and Thomas Jefferson (third President). These two men died on the same day. But that's not all; read on....The question with an even more interesting answer is, "On which day did...

Three descendants of Venus' son, who was called West Ford, say that according to a family tradition two centuries old, George Washington was West Ford's father. They hope to develop DNA evidence from Washington family descendants and his hair samples to bolster their case... There is, however, reason to believe that if the child's father was not Washington, it might have been someone closely related to him. The cousins' claim has several elements of truth, enough to set up a historical mystery as to the identity of West Ford's father and to add a new strand to the emerging links...

“That brought us to our essential difference, the difference of the Evolutionary Collectivist and Marxist, the question whether the social revolution is, in its extremity, necessary, whether it is necessary to over throw one economic system completely before the new one can begin. I believe that through a vast sustained educational campaign the existing Capitalist system can be civilised into a Collectivist world system;” - H.G. Wells, Russia in the Shadows

President Thomas Jefferson's own words (the right-wing extremist that he was!):"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government." "Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state." "I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." "No free man shall ever be debarred the use...

The Navy’s efforts are highly commendable, our President’s orders are troubling and leave us with a few questions. Did Obama’s administration plan to negotiate and pay a ransom? Mr. Obama is quite well acquainted with the Qur’an in its original language, is his knowledge of America’s history just as deficient as his many faux pas at the recent G20 Summit showed his judgment is? Should not a President of a country know its history well enough to learn from what worked and avoid what didn’t? Or was the American taxpayer to be soaked again and again in “bailing out” Somalia’s...

U.S. been fighting Islamic fundamentalism since colonial era April 10, 2009 By Bryan Fischer As we watch the Somali pirate incident unfold in the Middle East, it serves as a reminder that, besides 9/11, Islam has had one other shaping influence on the history of the United States: we have a navy, thanks to the sea-going Islamic thugs of Thomas Jefferson's day, the Barbary Pirates. Even prior to our Declaration of Independence in 1776, Islamists under the control of an Ottoman warlord in Algiers were pirating American ships and enslaving their Christian crews. Thus our forefathers had early experience with...

Somalia Standoff Generates US Policy Debate Voice of America - ‎Apr 10, 2009‎US officials said the group, which controls parts of Somalia, poses a dilemma. They point to its rapid expansion, ties between its leaders and the al-Qaida ...http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-04-11-voa12.cfm   The Pirates Challenge Obama's Pre-9/11 Mentality Wall Street Journal - ‎Apr 10, 2009‎As the eminent military historian Sir Michael Howard argued shortly after 9/11, the status of al Qaeda terrorists is to be found in a distinction first made ...http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123940383654409651.html   Somali Pirates Tied to Jihad Intellectual Conservative - ‎Apr 8, 2009‎Since 2003, Somalia has witnessed the growth of a...