Free Republic

This past week, Luke Rosiak reported for the Daily Caller News Foundation on a concern expressed by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) about a 2012 motion before the FISA court to expand the sharing of intelligence collected under FISA authority. Gohmert’s concern is certainly an arresting one. He seems to hint, as quoted by Rosiak, that the motion’s real objective was somewhat buried by being inserted toward the end. And that probably isn’t an unfair reading. But the motion, in hindsight, has plenty of sizzle to it simply on its face. It has the potential to explain a lot, and to...

I'm a doctor in a major hospital in Western Europe. Watching you Americans (and you, Brits) in these still-early days of the coronavirus pandemic is like watching a familiar horror movie, where the protagonists, yet again, split into pairs or decide to take a tour of a dark basement. The real-life versions of this behavior are pretending this is just a flu; keeping schools open; following through with your holiday travel plans, and going into the office daily. This is what we did in Italy. We were so complacent that even when people with coronavirus symptoms started turning up, we...

The collusion hysteria have deviled the Trump administration since day 1, precisely as intended. It has brought us the Special Counsel to provide the predicate for the removal of Trump from office. It has produced absurdity upon absurdity delivered by such artists of the calculated lie and the straight face as Adam Schiff. All the while, the mainstream media have made themselves instrumental to the production by serving as the faithful public relations adjunct of the Democratic Party. They are part of the scandal.

Immediately following the election we commenced Operation Hypo. As I noted in the after action report, a new phase of infiltration and investigation was launched to penetrate the “resistance” movement that had been formed to obstruct the President and attempt to remove him from power. Our efforts started by infiltrating a George Soros led group named “Democracy Alliance”. This organization is singularly focused on undermining the President and financially supporting a myriad of efforts towards that objective. We learned early on in our investigation that high ranking Government officials that had tried to undermine Candidate Trump prior to the election...

George W. Bush’s first presidency, devoted to compassionate conservatism and to establishing his own bona fides, lasted less than eight months. On September 11, 2001, he was reborn as a War President. In the upheaval that followed, compassionate conservatism took a back seat to a new, more urgent formulation of the Bush Administration’s purpose. The Bush Doctrine called for offensive operations, including preemptive war, against terrorists and their abetters—more specifically, against the regimes that had sponsored, encouraged, or merely tolerated any “terrorist group of global reach.” Afghanistan, the headquarters of al-Qaeda and its patron the Taliban, was the new doctrine’s...

Indulge me as I relate my ambivalence about the coming war in Iraq. It rests on several factors. First, I am not yet persuaded that fighting a war in Iraq would necessarily work to the advantage of America and the West and against the interests of our Islamic enemies. Now it may work to our advantage, but that it will is not obvious. I cannot quite fathom why the administration has not made a more emphatic effort to highlight the Iraq-al Qaeda connections, unless there simply are none to highlight, or none which we have uncovered, or none which we...

BAGHDAD - A few weeks ago, Janis Karpinski was in the middle of a briefing when a man suddenly reached out and grabbed her. Crass? No, just a nervous soldier trying to protect the commanding officer as an Iraqi mortar exploded a few dozen yards away. "A mortar will get your attention real fast," Karpinski says, "and it can be an indication of other things to come." Such are the daily distractions for Karpinski, a brigadier general and the only female U.S. commander in Iraq. Since June, the 50-year-old Karpinski has been in charge of the country's prison system, including...

VINDICATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: Supreme Court of the United States; United States vs. Planned Parenthood; decided Jan. 22, 2073 This case comes before us on appeal from the Circuit Court, which held that the state of Puerto Rico's restrictive abortion law violates the Constitution. We reverse. Appellees Planned Parenthood contend that the judgment below cannot be reversed without overruling our century-old decision in Roe vs. Wade. Appellees are correct; we hereby overrule Roe. We are met at the outset by the argument, pressed vigorously by Planned Parenthood, that it is too late in this nation's history to revise—much more, to...

MOZAMBIQUE, February 3, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Zenit.org reports that five missionary nuns working in Mozambique have revealed a gruesome network trafficking in human organs that involves kidnap and murder of child victims and the complicity of police. In a report revealed by the Catholic aid agency, Veritas, the nuns described "kidnappings and multiple killings of persons, many times children, victims of an organ trafficking network." The nuns have received death threats for uncovering the network and report that they have already themselves escaped four attempts at ambush. The nuns were able to gather in the information because the operation was...

One of the most remarkable consequences of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 has been the emergence of Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. secretary of defense, as a political star. As the main architect of the U.S. global war on terrorism, Rumsfeld has become by far the most prominent and influential cabinet member in the Bush administration. He has also reestablished civilian control of the U.S. military, which was allowed to atrophy during the Clinton years. But as a result of his televised briefings to reporters, Mr. Rumsfeld has also become better known to the American public than any other cabinet...

We moderns are expert immoralists. It is not that we are more licentious than our predecessors, but that we know how to better hide our sins, even from ourselves, under fine webs of philosophic rationalization. The philosophy in question is utilitarianism. It is the same philosophy that encourages women to abort their babies; the same ideology that drives the eugenics movement; and the same creed now demanding the legalization of prostitution. The legalization of prostitution is not exactly a “hot-button” issue among pro-lifers. What, after all, does abortion have to do with prostitution? Think about it. Contraceptive sex entails an...

Go back in your mind’s eye to the fall of 1940, the fateful period that Winston Churchill called Britain’s “finest hour.” Having subdued the Low Countries and France, Adolf Hitler now turned his attention to the last remaining democratic power in Europe. Hermann Göring convinced Hitler that Britain could be bludgeoned into submission on the cheap, so the Luftwaffe unleashed a fierce aerial blitz intended to break the British will to resist. Night after night, London burned. One of the most famous photographs from those desperate weeks was a nocturnal silhouette of St. Paul’s Cathedral, its great dome standing strong...

I was once asked by a friend to recommend his son for the U.S. Naval Academy. I asked in response, "Does your son want to be a professional killer?" "Well no, of course not. He wants to be a peacemaker." I replied, "Well, then tell him to enter a seminary." John Silber, Straight Shooting, 1989 In 1983, when I was just beginning to fancy myself a man and was looking for a place to prove it, some well-known slogans offered and answer: "The Marines are looking for a few good men;" and "Maybe you can be one of us ....

The feeling seems to be growing that gay marriage is inevitably coming our way in the U.S., perhaps through a combination of judicial fiat and legislation in individual states. Growing, too, is the sense of a shift in the climate of opinion. The American public seems to be in the process of changing its mind—not actually in favor of gay marriage, but toward a position of slightly revolted tolerance for the idea. Survey results suggest that people have forgotten why they were so opposed to the notion even as recently as a few years ago. It is curious that this...

BACK in the Sixties, many ridiculed the idea of lifelong marriage because they saw it as inherently undesirable. Today the idea is ridiculed because it seems virtually impossible. The divorce rate is half again as high as it is virtually anywhere else in the modern world--and it is high virtually everywhere in the modern world. And increasing numbers of people choose not to marry at all. This will not engender social disintegration; individuals and societies have a way of stumbling through. But the increasing fragility of marriage does threaten to make the breakup of the parents and absence of the...

We have lain down in our shame, and our disgrace has covered us: because we and our fathers have sinned before our God, from our youth until this day; and we have not hearkened to the voice of the Lord our God (Jer. 3:25) Alas, the man of today cannot repeat these words of the prophet, for the conscience of many fell silent long ago, and shame has been extinguished in the heart. With the secularization of ethics and the decline of morality, i.e., with the divorce of virtue from its Christian roots, morality and culture today are in a...

Pfc. Jessica Lynch recently was awarded a Bronze Star Medal, a Purple Heart and the POW Medal. The BSM citation reads: “For exemplary courage under fire during combat operations to liberate Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Private First Class Lynch's bravery and heart persevered while surviving in the ambush and captivity in An Nasiriya.” A BSM for “bravery” and “surviving in the ambush and captivity”! The Army's official After-Action Report said she was in a vehicle that crashed while hauling butt trying to escape an enemy ambush. She was knocked unconscious and woke up at a nearby Iraqi...

Perhaps the culture of death my generation has unwittingly created will only come home to roost when, in our creaky 80s, we face the Futile Care Committee at our local hospital, to be told, well, it's simply too expensive to keep you alive any longer, buster. Inappropriate Care Protocols rule. Say your prayers, and your goodbyes, the lady with the "Aussie Exit Bag" is coming, next Tuesday at 11 o'clock. Death with Dignity. Good of the State. Here's the extension of the Therapeutic Grieving Committee. You can have whatever music you want. '70s? '80s? '60s? My, you are old. And...

The Government has at last recognised what has long been stark staring obvious to everyone with his head below the clouds: that anti-social behaviour is one of the most serious problems facing Britain. Indeed, anti-social behaviour is almost the only field in which Britain leads the world, and is what the British are now principally known (and despised) for, everywhere they go. Hooliganism is to Britain what fraud is to Nigeria. It would be comforting to think that anti-social behaviour is the province of a small if prominent minority, but this is not so. It is true that, on many...

1. Catholic priests are more likely to be pedophiles than other groups of men. This is just plain false. There's absolutely no evidence that priests are more likely to abuse children than are other groups of men. The use and abuse of children as objects for the sexual gratification of adults is epidemic in all classes, professions, religions, and ethnic communities across the globe, as figures on child pornography, incest, and child prostitution make abundantly clear. Pedophilia (the sexual abuse of a prepubescent child) among priests is extremely rare, affecting only 0.3% of the entire population of clergy. This figure,...