Free Republic

Let's examine the issues rationally, and see who actually understood the Age of Reason.Last March, California Governor Jerry Brown declared that those who wished existing federal immigration law to be enforced — in the manner that would have saved the late Kate Steinle from a five-times deported, seven-times released felon illegal alien – were: [A]t best … troglodyte, and at worst … un-Christian. In California, if one assumes that the law as written should be followed, one is dubbed either a cave-dweller or an apostate. Meanwhile, sophisticated non-troglodytes in San Francisco have a sheriff — with a criminal record of...

Tehran, 18 Feb. (AKI) - A man known as Sharif has reportedly stoned his fourteen-year-old daughter to death in southeastern Iran because for allegedly having a relationship with a man. Sharif's wife reported him to police after he and a friend killed the girl in Zahedan, capital of Baluchistan province. Sharif showed no sign of remorse, telling police who interrogated him: "I suspected that my daughter had a relationship with a man and I had to stone her to death as she had besmirched my honour." "I had no other choice," he said, telling police how he had carried out...

SLAY THREAT BY TALIBAN Reuters June 25, 2007 -- KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban says it will kill 18 Afghan mine-clearing experts if an investigation shows they're working for U.S.-led forces, officials and the insurgents said yesterday. The 18 "deminers" were taken captive at gunpoint, along with four mine-sniffing dogs on Saturday.

The beat-up video camera was delivered to Afghanistan in a box, and picked up by two clean-shaven Arabs posing as journalists. They met with Osama bin Laden before leaving on their mission — to kill mujahedeen hero Ahmad Shah Massood. Five years after the Taliban opponent was slain by a bomb hidden in the camera, a former Taliban official on Saturday described how al-Qaida staged the killing — two days before the Sept. 11 attack on America — hoping to strike a fatal blow to the pro-U.S. Northern Alliance. Waheed Mozhdah, director of the then-Taliban Foreign Ministry's Middle East and...

The lobbying scandal that may lead to the downfall of Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay — a conservative evangelical Christian purportedly sabotaged by his friendship with an Orthodox Jewish lobbyist, Jack Abramoff — is of interest for what it says about the value of honesty in the political and media elite. Abramoff is depicted as the epitome of the mendacious, greedy Washington influence peddler. Two Senate committees are investigating him, and he may go to prison — for breaking laws, the precise nature of which remains largely unclear.. Accounts of Abramoff's sins center upon reports that he wildly overcharged...

Even before the Sept. 11 attacks and the crackdown that followed, American Muslim leaders generally had come to believe they had made a mistake. In 2000, they made their first unified endorsement in a presidential race, backing George W. Bush. Many thought he would take a harder line against Israel, and, based on statements he made while campaigning, would protect the rights of immigrants facing deportation. Muslims say they were disappointed on both counts. Now, feeling the additional sting of being scrutinized in the domestic hunt for terrorists, they are mobilizing to express their anger at the polls in 2004....