Free Republic

Artur Davis, D-Ala., admitted that the law would not protect a pastor from prosecution. Scarborough reported the U.S. plan is to be voted on in the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. "Hate crimes laws are actually 'thought crimes' laws that violate the right to freedom of speech and of conscience," warned Liberty Counsel. "Hate crimes laws will have a chilling effect on people who have moral or religious objections to homosexual behavior. Evidence of a person’s beliefs will be used against any individuals who are even suspected of criminal activity. "Hate crimes laws are unnecessary, as criminal laws already provide criminal...

Our late colleague Jim Boulet last year unearthed the facts here and here and here on how the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) ‘localism' schemes could shut down or inhibit talk radio. Last Thursday, Ishmael Jones, nom de plume of a former officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) clandestine service, gave his take on the danger radio ‘localism' poses to free political speech in his American Thinker article "What the CIA's Censors Can Teach Us about Plans to Muzzle Talk Radio" here. Here is Ishmael Jones on this Administration and their possible ‘localism' approach to shutting down political speech on...

I apologize to all readers for a stupid and inappropriate posting. It got my privileges revoked for a week. It will not happen again. Now, my thought. I watched most of the debate on Wednesday, until it frankly got boring. McCain seems to understand the anger and frustration. Bob Scheiffer almost got it when he asked about cutting spending and reducing the deficit. Neither McCain nor Obama gave a convincing answer. What we need - before Election Day - is an "I'm p!$$ed off" Day. Everybody is p!$$ed off about something or another. Let's channel it into a no work,...

“Alan from Upland CA” has finally stepped up to challenge Tony Wicher’s anti-Semitic hate speech at Barack Obama’s official Web site. ...Alan replies to Mr. Wicher’s “Obama’s Jewish Problem” as follows. Obama’s sanction of Wicher’s commentary, plus his unbelieveable cowardice (heck, he all but called Abraham Lincoln a “Racist”) in denouncing the Black Nazi Wright is enough of a turn-off. Wicher just adds more fuel to the fire. Could have been set by David Duke or Farrakhan... ...Tony Wicher’s and Desmond Tutu’s terminology for Zionists and even Jews is identical to material from David Duke’s Web site. Again, all this...

Wicher repeatedly refers to Israel as an apartheid state, and in fact claims that Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Authority Arabs is “worse than apartheid.” ...He dismisses any who call his claims of Israeli “apartheid” anti-Semitic as members of the “Zionist thought police.”

Doctors, teachers and social workers will be told to act as informers to identify potential violent offenders for monitoring by the police and other agencies. Ministers hope that by spotting binge-drinkers, drug addicts and young gang members early before they commit serious crimes they can be placed on a national database and steered away from offending behaviour. The plans have been dubbed the Minority Report powers, a reference to the 2002 Tom Cruise movie in which a futuristic "precrime" police unit uses psychics to arrest and imprison criminals just before they carry out attacks. But civil liberty campaigners and union...

Part I Every tate is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good. Some people think that the qualifications of a statesman, king, householder, and master are the same, and that they differ, not in kind, but only in...

With overwhelming bipartisan support, Rep. Jane Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" passed the House 404-6 late last month and now rests in Sen. Joe Lieberman's Homeland Security Committee. Swift Senate passage appears certain. Not since the "Patriot Act" of 2001 has any bill so threatened our constitutionally guaranteed rights. The historian Henry Steele Commager, denouncing President John Adams' suppression of free speech in the 1790s, argued that the Bill of Rights was not written to protect government from dissenters but to provide a legal means for citizens to oppose a government they didn't trust. Thomas Jefferson's Declaration...

On Tong’s screens a series of images appear: black-and-white cross sections of the living brain, with small fluctuations in brightness that indicate regions of increased activity. Tong leans closer to the pixelated images. The complex patterns look nothing like a bird, of course, but hidden within them lie clues to the student’s thoughts. He cannot tell what the undergrad is looking at just by peering at the dance of neuronal firings inside his head. So Tong extracts the data from the scanner, takes it back to his lab and runs it through his processing software.

The Thought Police By Chuck Colson 5/1/2007 What the Hate Crimes Law Would Do In George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, the government Thought Police constantly spies on citizens to make sure they are not thinking rebellious thoughts. Thought crimes are severely punished by Big Brother. 1984 was intended as a warning against totalitarian governments that enslave and control their citizens. Never have we needed this warning more urgently than now, because America’s Thought Police are knocking on your door. Last week the House Judiciary Committee, egged on by radical homosexual groups, passed what can only be called a Thought Crimes...

THE THOUGHT-FACTOR IN ACHIEVEMENT ALL that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts. In a justly ordered universe, where loss of equipoise would mean total destruction, individual responsibility must be absolute. A man's weakness and strength, purity and impurity, are his own, and not another man's; they are brought about by himself, and not by another; and they can only be altered by himself, never by another. His condition is also his own, and not another man's. His suffering and his happiness are evolved from within. As he thinks,...

The process of erosion to our constitution continues every so steadily. As they say, perception is reality in politics. And this is how the left is redining diveristy of thought. Political correctness & intolerance rein supreme. If interested follow the link and join the fight... http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?c=THOUGHT_CRIMES&load=WX07C17#

'I thought only of escape. I felt like a poor chicken in a hen house' By Kate Connolly in Berlin (Filed: 07/09/2006) Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian teenager who was held in captivity beneath a garage for eight years, said yesterday she had thought "only of escape" during her imprisonment and dreamed of cutting off her kidnapper's head with an axe. Austrians watch the TV interview on a big screen in a café in Vienna Speaking to the media for the first time since her ordeal ended with her escape two weeks' ago, Miss Kampusch appeared self-confident, witty, articulate and strong-willed....

Abstract: Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use...

Mashed-up corn is heated to produce vapor, which condenses into grain alcohol. Sound familiar, NASCAR old-timers? It's the recipe for moonshine, the largely forgotten foundation of a sport that has moved from backwoods to big time. But moonshine is going mainstream, too. You know it as ethanol -- a gasoline alternative that isn't much different from the hooch (shh!) Junior Johnson used to hide in his trunk. And given the current political climate, it might be smart for NASCAR to fire up the still. The Indy Racing League is leading the way on alternative fuels, beginning a two-year transition to...

3/29/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- Thirty-five tons of apples, oranges, bananas and plums, 1,600 gallons of milk, 16 tons of grilled chicken breasts and 39,040 candy bars. The list of food consumed here in one month goes on and on. “It’s an amazing operation,” said Lt. Col. Kevin Schields, 379th Expeditionary Services Squadron commander, referring to the largest food service operation in the region. “No matter how you slice and dice it, the 379th feeds more people than any other base in the theater.” On any given day, the food service flight serves 14,000 meals at the Manhattan, Independence...

In the long run, the battle to make America safer is part of a larger cause—the battle to make the free world safer and, indeed, to make the whole world freer. Victory will come only if representative government prevails, because freedom is the one force strong enough to stop tyranny and terror. In our modern day and age, America appears to have forgotten the guiding principles that have led her thus far. Getting America Right offers not a revolutionary, novel solution, but an answer that is as old as America herself—a conservative one...

News Published online: 16 February 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060213-9 Why you should go with your gut Study says unconscious consideration yields most satisfying decisions. Helen Pearson Which would you choose? Studies say you should list the pros and cons, then sleep on it. © Punchstock The best way to make a tough decision is to put your feet up and think about something else. So says an investigation of people shopping for cars, clothes and furniture. Many people assume that the best way to tackle a difficult choice is to list the pros and cons and ponder them deeply. Others believe...

The Secret in the Steppes Thought Safe for All TimeDespite Misgivings in Mongolia, Explorers Hope to Find Site of Genghis Khan's 800-Year-Old Tomb By Edward Cody Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, February 9, 2006; Page A20 ULAN BATOR, Mongolia -- On the vast flatlands of eastern Mongolia, enclosed by a two-mile wall in the form of an oval, diggers have uncovered tantalizing clues to the solution of one of history's enduring mysteries: the site of Genghis Khan's secret grave. Finding the spot where the great Mongolian conqueror was laid to rest in 1227 by his famed horseback warriors would fill...

Source: JAMA and Archives Journals Date: 2006-01-19 Avian Flu Transmission To Humans May Be Higher Than Thought A new study suggests that there is an association between direct contact with dead or sick poultry and flu-like illness in humans and that the transmission is probably more common than expected, according to a new study in the January 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Anna Thorson, M.D., Ph.D., from the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues analyzed data from household interviews conducted in FilaBavi, a Vietnamese demographic surveillance site in Bavi district, northwest Vietnam, with...