Free Republic

Sometime back in the eighties, 1984 I think it was, some genius at the Coca-Cola company thought it would be a good idea to re-brand the number one selling soft drink. Calling it “New Coke”, the disastrous marketing ploy lasted a hair longer than Cher’s marriage to Greg Allman.

Margaret Atwood is many things. She's a "National Treasure", and recipient of countless subsidies from the Canadian government, but she endorsed the separatist Bloc Quebecois in the last election. She natters on about the environment, but jet-sets like a rock-star. I'm guessing it's not coach class, either. She's a socialist millionaire. And she's the vice-president of International PEN, the writers free speech group, and a censor herself. Here's my story in the Sunday Sun newspapers. Atwood's free-speech flopCanadian author Margaret Atwood is a free-speech activist. She is the vice-president of International PEN, the advocacy group for imprisoned writers. As a...

9/11/10 Koran burning at Ground Zero captured on video.

by Fareed Zakaria September 04, 2010 Nine years after 9/11, can anyone doubt that Al Qaeda is simply not that deadly a threat? Since that gruesome day in 2001, once governments everywhere began serious countermeasures, Osama bin Laden’s terror network has been unable to launch a single major attack on high-value targets in the United States and Europe. While it has inspired a few much smaller attacks by local jihadis, it has been unable to execute a single one itself. Today, Al Qaeda’s best hope is to find a troubled young man who has been radicalized over the Internet, and...

The culture of America is always under siege. Countless new arrivals have transformed American culture over the generations. Muslims from places as diverse as Morocco, Albania and Malaysia will change American culture, too. Whoever follows them will change it again. The idea that a handful of Islamic radicals can destroy a nation of 300 million people protected by the world's largest military is absurd. But questions about the Muslim world and its intentions toward the United States deserve answers, and I don't mean the ignorant rants polluting cyberspace. Fortunately, we have Karen Armstrong, a former Roman Catholic nun and an...

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has arrived in Boston with an American held for seven months in North Korea. Aijalon Gomes, 31, who had crossed the border illegally on a one-man peace mission, flew from Pyongyang with Mr Carter, who had travelled to the North Korean capital three days earlier to negotiate the release. A plane carrying Mr Gomes and Mr Carter landed on Friday at Logan International Airport. Gomes appeared thin while walking off the plane. He hugged the former president and his mother before family and friends circled him. In a statement released earlier Friday, the family...

Self-styled environmental activist Jonathan Lee(age:13,) a Korean-American from Mississippi, visits N. Korea and had his picture taken with a N. Korean female soldier.

LOS ANGELES – Mexican-American actor Richard Anthony "Cheech" Marin is slamming the Arizona immigration law as little more than an attempt to hold on to “white culture.” “It’s ridiculous; it’s the last gasp of white culture,” he told Pop Tarts at the Los Angeles launch last week of Disney Pixar's online "World of Cars." “Reactionaries and Congress (are to blame) only because they think that's the way of getting votes. We'll stir up the rabble! If you take the Mexicans out of Arizona, Arizona is going to collapse the next day.” But it’s not only the immigration law with which...

For the last week or so, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart has presented relentless coverage of the Ground Zero Mosque issue. All of the coverage was in favor of the Mosque. Comedy Central are even pleadingly presenting the Muslim generated straw-man arguments. CC insists that it is not a mosque, it is a 'cultural center' (yeah right) and Muslims are good honest people and only Al Quiada is bad. We know that the Left uses, so called, 'comedy', to say what they really believe and to attack people personally in the most vulgar way possible. The Daily Show is...

Is it "the economy, stupid" or is it just that the economy makes people stupid? Either way Matt Yglesias, ThinkProgress.org blogger extraordinaire, believes the economy is what's driving conservative furor over the "Ground Zero Mosque." On MSNBC's August 9 broadcast of "Countdown," Yglesias did his best to psychoanalyze people that are upset a mosque is being built in the shadow of Ground Zero, where over 2,600 people died in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. According to Yglesias, whose blog, ThinkProgress.org, is a function the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, opposition to the plan had nothing to do with sensitivities...

Mayor Bloomberg said he doesn't know where the planners of the proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero will get the money to build -- and he doesn't care. "People say, well, you know, 'Do they have the money? Can they raise the money? Where does it come from?' " the mayor said Friday on his WOR-AM radio show with John Gambling. "I don't know, and government shouldn't -- do you really want every time they pass the basket in your church and you throw a buck in, they run over and say, 'Okay, now, you know, where...

Howard Zinn (1922 to 2010) is the left's favorite contemporary historian. As an historian he is a child of the Beardian revolution yet he has for decades been able to straddle that line between legitimate historical observer and anti-American leftist. America's intellectual society, in both the social movement and universities, have looked to him as a paragon of American virtue. He's always been held up as just the right mixture of American leftism coupled with true scholarship. But those of us on the right that have paid attention understand that he is not American in outlook and never was. Until...

I'm a conservative Republican on over 9 out of 10 issues. I'm for almost everything conservatives and Republicans are for. However, SB1070 is a terrible bill. We need McCain's comprehensive immigration reform. The immigrants help many companies which in turn help the US economy. The bill does nothing but make people angry at each other. I also support McCain over Hayworth in the AZ senate race. We can't risk losing that seat to a Democrat if we except to pick up both houses in November.

Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat, appears to think security on our borders is not an important issue. The Golden Gate Minutemen posted video of an exchange during a recent town hall meeting on June 26 in Fremont, where the congressman asked a border security advocate in attendance, "Who are you going to kill today?" Mr. Stark continued to heckle and mock the town hall attendees who reacted in disbelief as the congressman disrespected his own constituents. (all emphasis is mine) Mr. Stark made such outrageous statements like: "If you knew anything about our border, you would know that's not the...

Sergio "El Shaka" Vega, a Mexican musician famous for his songs about drug barons, was murdered Saturday night while driving in his red Cadillac to a concert in Sinaloa state in northwest Mexico. Only hours before the attack, the 40-year-old Mexican singer had publicly denied rumors that he had been murdered, reports the BBC. "It's happened to me for years now, someone tells a radio station or a newspaper I've been killed, or suffered an accident," Mr Vega told entertainment website La Oreja according to the BBC. ...the musician was gunned down by unknown men who were following him while...

Did you know that deep down inside (when he’s not silencing his opposition, supporting the FARC, sponsoring drug trafficking, and courting Hezbollah and almost every other enemy of the West) Hugo Chavez is a good, admirable man? Yup, he is—according to Leftist filmmaker Oliver Stone. The filmmaker, along with the upcoming release of his “Wall Street” sequel, has a new documentary called “South of the Border” that praises Chavez, Castro, their allies, and highlights other South American leaders. But, apparently the Venezuelan people aren’t as hot on the near-dictator as Stone is: The documentary is bombing in the country. Personally,...

I love the World Cup. And I love America — it’s my hometown! But I would not love to see America win the World Cup. Frankly, we don’t need another feather in our already overstuffed cap. And considering soccer is the world’s game — and most of the world is at odds with America at any given moment — I think it might be a nice idea for Uncle Sam, in an effort to promote world harmony, to lie down in South Africa. Now, in all likelihood, the U.S. is not going to be in a position to win...

Well, she's a former alcoholic, drug addict, washed up actor, shock therapy patient (no, really) and one-time princess to the universe, but now Carrie "Princess Leia" Fisher can add one more calumny to her long list of off-kilter, personality deficits: she's a "teabagger" hater. So, she's got that going for her, which is nice. Hawking another one of those prosaic celebrity tell-alls, Fisher spoke to the folks at the entertainment site PopEater.com and when the subject of Obama and the Tea Party movement came up, the one-time heartthrob of nerds everywhere didn't hold back. They are all "racists" she said....

Fairey, , "Some of the works are about gridlock in Washington. Washington is too intertwined with corporate America . . . I had a lot of hope for Obama, but it's not panning out. He's not pushing hard enough."

On her Twitter this morning, M.I.A. attacked New York Times writer Lynn Hirschberg over a profile (set to appear in print this weekend but available online now) that addresses the artist's politics and upbringing in Sri Lanka. ""CALL ME IF YOU WANNA TALK TO ME ABOUT THE N Y T TRUTH ISSUE," she Tweeted, adding Hirschberg's phone number. "ill b taking calls all day b--ches." In the piece, Hirschberg implies that M.I.A. doesn't understand the complex political web of Sri Lanka and that violent videos like "Born Free," in which red-headed children are assassinated by military police, are "exploitative" and...