Free Republic

Once again, we're into the college commencement season. And once again, conservatives and libertarians have been kicked to the curb. Even if some balsy college president or board announced the selection of one of the persons below, the campus would be quickly engulfed in flames, its administrators subject to public mockery and humiliation, followed by summary termination. These are the children and grandchildren of those who went to Woodstock and never came home. Our nation is the very carcass of Woodstock on which we now feast. Below is a list of conservative/libertarian speakers of which any university should be proud...

For the baby-boomer generation (or at least the counterculture segment within it) the summer of 1967 became known as The Summer of Love.Actually, most of us boomers never experienced it. Certainly, 1967 wasn't a blissful, carefree summer of love for the hundreds of thousands of Americans serving in Vietnam.It didn't feel much like love in my hometown of Detroit either. Fifty years ago this week, on July 23, 1967 (a Sunday, as it is this year), deadly riots erupted in the Motor City. They lasted through Friday, July 28, when, with help from the National Guard (including Detroit Tigers' second...

On August 15, 1969 more than 400,000 people flocked to a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, for “3 days of music and peace.” Woodstock became a cultural icon representing the spirit of many of the young generation at the time. Check out some pictures from the event to see how crazy it actually was! Peace Out Wallkill, Hello Bethel Woodstock was originally supposed to take place in Wallkill, Orange County, New York. However, the town board quickly passed a bill stating you must have permit in order to host any event over 5,000. A permit was applied for but...

Thousands of festival-goers were left stranded at TomorrowWorld and forced to sleep on top of cars and on wet and muddy grass. Organizers of the event offered refunds for Sunday’s ticketholders as the bad weather made the last day of the three-day electronic dance music festival inaccessible. But those who tried to leave after Saturday night’s closing set were left waiting in the rain for hours as poor planning led to traffic congestion around the festival site in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia. The festival was only accessible to visitors in the DreamVille on-site camping area after heavy rain hampered the event’s...

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz will be at FoxTale Book Shoppe in downtown Woodstock on July 3 to promote his new book “A Time for Truth: Reigniting The Promise To America.”Admission is $30 and includes a first edition copy of the book. The book-signing event begins at 10 a.m., and the store, located at 105 E. Main St., will open to the public after the event concludes. “The event ticket includes you and a guest,” said Ellen Ward, co-owner of FoxTale Book Shoppe. “You will have an opportunity to meet Sen. Ted Cruz and get your book signed.” As the son...

<p>Joe Cocker has died aged 7 after a battle with lung cancer.</p> <p>His management confirmed his passing to Britain's IITV News.</p> <p>Born John Robert Cocker in Sheffield, he achieved international success as a blues/rock singer beginning in the 1960s and recorded 40 albums.</p>

Leaders from at least three of al Qaeda’s most virulent affiliates are now in Libya. What are they planning there? In the nearly 20 months since the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks, al Qaeda operatives and allied terrorists have flocked to Libya, making the fragile North African country a hub for those seeking to wage jihad from north Africa, current and former U.S. counterterrorism officials tell The Daily Beast. Not only does al Qaeda host Ansar al-Sharia, one of the militias responsible for the Benghazi attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. But U.S. intelligence now assesses...

Academics, the very people who claim they want “progress” “going forward,” frequently want to turn back the clock a half century or so. “Without hope—the fervent, animating kind—the 60s would have had no fuel to feed the engines of change,” Paul Kane wrote in The Chronicle Review on March 7, 2014. “To have seen our causes as hopeless would have drained them of force.” “No civil-rights movement, no antiwar protests, no feminism, no gay and lesbian rights, no counterculture and commune movement, no Woodstock, no environmentalism. Whatever we might think of that period now, we believed then in what we...

Over a half a million people were attending the funeral of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Monday night in Jerusalem. Rabbi Yosef, 93, passed away earlier in the day. The crowd, observers said, consisted of a cross-section of Israelis, from hareidi to Religious Zionist to secular. Eulogies were being held at the Porat Yosef yeshiva in the Geula neighborhood. Dozens of speakers will eulogize the rabbi. Among the first to speak was Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, one of Rabbi Yosef's sons and current Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel. In a heart-wrenching voice, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef spoke of his father, saying that “from the...

Man owes a lot to chunks of rock and ice floating through space. From ancient jewellery to water and possibly even the beginnings of life itself, scientists are discovering that comets have contributed in many ways to the development of life on the planet, Robert Matthews writes Since their discovery in an Egyptian cemetery more than a century ago, a handful of metal beads have perplexed archaeologists. As jewellery, the beads seem decidedly downmarket, being made of nothing more glamorous than iron. Yet clearly their owner, dead for more than 5,000 years, held them in great esteem - as do...

Folk singer and guitarist Richie Havens, who opened the 1969 Woodstock music festival with a legendary and lengthy set that helped make him famous, died Monday at age 72. His family says Havens died of a heart attack, and that a public memorial will be announced later. A statement on his official website posted before Havens' death says that the singer never fully recovered from kidney surgery he underwent several years ago.

On the 43rd anniversary of the legendary Woodstock music festival, held in Bethel, New York, a series of remarkable photographs taken at the time offer a window on the landmark event celebrating music and peace. Woodstock Music & Art Fair was staged at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskill mountains near the hamlet of White Lake from August 15 to August 18, 1969.

Private pilots who may want to fly near Chicago on the weekend of May 19-20 have been warned they could be shot down, and a Red Cross memo suggests there could be mass evacuations of the city in the event of riots by left-leaning activists protesting the NATO summit. Less than a day’s drive away, however, near Jefferson City, Mo., at the same time there will be an event for Americans who also are worried about the nation. But instead of protests and riots, participants will focus on how to build up America, repair it and stabilize it for future...

April 24, 2012. Des Moines. Two networks yesterday, CNBC and MSNBC, broadcast a little known fact – Ron Paul appears to be winning the Republican nomination for President. When the popular Texas Congressman repeatedly assured supporters that the race was about delegates, not beauty contests, he apparently knew what he was talking about. Now, after three more states locked in delegates to the GOP nominating convention – CO, MN and IA – indicators point to a brokered convention with a possible, even probable, Ron Paul victory.

C'mon. You didn't think I was going to let this luscious bit of traffic bait pass unposted, did you? Atheist Woodstock? Good lord. I may have to take weekend duty just so I can liveblog it.I'll be there in spirit. Er, so to speak. Paul Fidalgo, communications director at the Center for Inquiry, said that, despite appearances, this isn’t a rally about believing in nothing. There’s actually an agenda involved — and that includes current politics, the 2012 race and President Barack Obama ...Among the issues: international anti-blasphemy laws, the recent clash over contraception and the Republican presidential race.“The right...

A 22-year-old Canadian with a homemade smoke bomb in his car closed the Canada- U.S. border for two hours Sunday, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Monday in a release. An Ontario man was stopped when he tried to cross the Canada-U.S. border with a smoke bomb in his car.An Ontario man was stopped when he tried to cross the Canada-U.S. border with a smoke bomb in his car. (CBC)Trevor Hickerson, 22, of Trenton, Ont., was returning home from the Bay of Fundy area, through Maine when he was stopped by the border agency. He was charged with the...

TOPEKA — A handful of Tea Party activists from various states gathered on the steps of the Kansas Statehouse this afternoon to announce Freedom Fest 2011 — an event billed as the National Tea Party's candidate nominating convention, slated for Oct. 5-9 in Kansas City, Kan. Organizers said the convention would be like "a Tea Party Woodstock." But without all the "hippies, drugs and trash." The activists were greeted by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and State Rep. TerriLois Gregory, R-Baldwin City.

Normally, I spend all week researching on the Internet to fact-check data I'll include in my weekly column. Unfortunately, my router/modem died on me and while I'm awaiting delivery of a new one, I've decided to write this week's essay on a subject that needs no research. It's simply an essay I've written in my head over and over and plan to include it in my future memoir, if I ever get around to it. I'm a child of the '60s but more of a critic because I found the Age of Aquarius to be one big lie. I well...

Here is Nancy Pelosi a few months ago telling a group of musicians and artists that because of ObamaCare they can now leech off of the rest of us saps who have to work for a living: [VIDEO AT SITE] We see it as an entrepreneurial bill, a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care. I'm thinking a lot of doctors will want to escape the grind and become...

The majority of Baby Boomers and those of the post sixties generation are joyfully celebrating the 40-year anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival which took place in 1969. Since then, the event has been glorified, glamorized, sensationalized and etched into the very fabric of our American consciousness and youth culture. This festival was the defining point against “the Establishment” and America’s core Judean/ Christian values. This festival was the brown acid of the radical Left’s agenda, whose goons in the reprobate (godless) music industry have steadily pushed the boundaries of morality over the past 40 years. In the wake of...