Free Republic

This Cannot be Discussed” My apologies for only getting to it now, but this one was at least as good as “I will transmit this information to Vladimir.” In fact, it’s better, since it comes from a representative of the “Land of the Free,” which in the past two decades has been trying to out-Sovietize the old Soviet Union. In case I thought there was only one meaning to my statement that you just can’t talk about Kosovo, on Halloween Hillary made it official in more ways than one: Kosovo is my personal matter, Clinton says (Oct. 31, 2012) U.S....

A European Union report has urged tight press regulation and demanded that Brussels officials are given control of national media supervisors with new powers to enforce fines or the sacking of journalists. The “high level” recommendations that will be used to draft future EU legislation also attack David Cameron for failing to automatically implement proposals by the Lord Justice Leveson inquiry for a state regulation of British press. A "high level" EU panel, that includes Latvia’s former president and a former German justice minister, was ordered by Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice-president, last year to report on "media freedom...

It seemed that the grocery chain’s CEO, John Mackey, was that elusive creature for whom Diogenes searched so fruitlessly — an honest man. Mackey is currently promoting his new book, Conscious Capitalism, and has therefore subjected himself to a series of media interviews, including one recently broadcast on NPR. During that interview, he was asked if his opinion of Obamacare had changed since he wrote, in the Wall Street Journal, “All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.” He answered as follows: “Technically speaking, it’s more like fascism....

Most modern-day leftists in Western countries have abandoned the idea of a violent revolution, having replaced it with "the long march through the institutions" as part of the culture war to transform the society through cultural hegemony. Instead of commanding firing squads, they play mind games of manipulative illusions, in which the demonization of dissent plays a crucial role. The basic premise hasn't changed: as much as the statists want you to love them, they want you to hate their opponents even more. Until a time when political opposition can be eliminated completely, having opponents can still be useful: you...

On January 22nd, 1973, forty years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized unrestricted abortion. On October 20th, 1999, as the U.S. Senate was giving consideration to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Senator Rick Santorum, the chief sponsor of the bill, debated with Senator Barbara Boxer, a strong opponent of it, on the floor of the Senate. During their exchange, both Boxer and Santorum endorsed the legal personhood of a fully birthed newborn. Santorum then asked Boxer if she supported the legality of abortion of a fetus an instant prior to it being fully birthed. Boxer refused to directly answer...

Sen. Rand Paul accused House Republican leaders of having “retreated” in the face of a confrontation with President Barack Obama, criticizing their decision to vote on raising the U.S. debt ceiling this week during a speech in South Carolina Monday night. In remarks to the Charleston Meeting, a gathering of conservative leaders in the first-in-the-South presidential primary state, Paul rebuked the House for its plans to delay the debt limit fight by a few months. Republicans intend to vote this week on raising the country’s statutory debt limit to delay a spending standoff with the White House by about three...

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 21, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – In his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama hailed a riot in which homosexual rioters, some dressed in drag, pelted police officers with bottles and attempted to set them on fire for raiding a mafia-controlled gay bar. “We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall,” the president said just after noon today. The Stonewall Riots took place on June 28, 1969,...

Six Catholic schools in Blitar municipality, East Java, have finally given in to a local ordinance and will provide Islamic lessons for their Muslim students. The city ordinance requires all Muslim students to be able to read and write Koranic verses. The head of the Religious Affairs Ministry’s office in Blitar, Imam Mukhlis, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday that the six schools had finally agreed to provide Islamic teachers for their Muslim students. “We met today [Tuesday] and everything is just fine and there is no problem. They are willing to carry out the city ordinance,” he said. A...

As President Barack Obama's second term commences, I thought I'd write about the things I liked in his first term. Here are five: 1) Obama is a great role model -- and not simply as a black American who broke racial barriers. Obama is a strong role model for the adult male -- a husband who cherishes his wife, a father who nurtures his daughters. Obama has shown the country how a youthful yet mature man takes care of his family. 2) Obama authorized the mission that brought Osama bin Laden to justice. 3) Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act,...

No sooner did President Barack Obama finish his second inaugural address than the liberal pundits proclaimed it to be a speech of unity on behalf of all Americans. .... Take the enthusiastic response by liberal columnist Matthew Yglesias writing at Slate. ... the president’s speech was “not even slightly” anti-capitalist, but instead was a defense of economic liberalism tempered by a “robust welfare state and select government interventions in the economy.” Obama, he thinks, came off not as any kind of socialist or statist, but as a pragmatist in the American tradition who believes that fidelity to the Constitution demands...

Rarely have second terms lived up to the hopes and expectations of presidents or their electorates. FDR's began with an attempt to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices and a second Depression of 1937. He was rescued only by the war in Europe in 1939 and the GOP's nomination of "the barefoot boy from Wall Street," Wendell Willkie. What can be called Harry Truman's second term was a disaster. In 1949, the Soviets exploded an atom bomb and China fell to Mao. In 1950, the Rosenbergs were convicted as atomic spies for Stalin and North Korea invaded the...

Ah, the masses. How they loved President Obama's inaugural speech. And how Andrea Mitchell, being "up there," loved looking out over them. She was "very moved." Yes, on Morning Joe today, NBC correspondent Mitchell not only said that she was "very moved, being up there . . . looking out over the masses," but that she found the speech "uplifting," and that it was "a bigger moment that a lot of people originally gave it credit for." View the video here.

Baby foxes or Bigfoot? The eerie late-night serenades began in November and emanate from a brushy swamp on the Umatilla Indian Reservation east of Pendleton. The cries range from high-pitched screams to basso profundo roars. "It's causing an uproar around here," said Sylvia Minthorn, who lives in a tribal housing unit near the swamp, where she used to play as a child. She's seen grown men's hair stand on end when the shrieks commence. Colleen Chance, a tribal housing authority employee, keeps a recording of the howls on her iPhone. "It's kind of spooky," she said. "Some say it's foxes,...

One Sentence That Explains Why Bears Are Dropping Like Flies Joe WeisenthalJanuary 22,2013Flickr / Brian Digital To really appreciate this moment, you really need to appreciate the explosion of optimism that's broken out in global financial markets. It's not just that the S&P is near all-time highs. It's not just that pro-investors are more in stocks than they've been in years. It's also that economic skeptics are starting o throw in the towel, and accept that the economy is back. Either that's a great sign, or it's a sign that things have gotten way to extreme on the positivity front....

I estimated that there were over a thousand people in attendance. I counted 100, then counted roughly equivalent slices. I would estimate that about on third of participants were armed. The gun show a short distance away (competition for the rally) was packed. Dean Weingarten

A cloud of harmless gas smelling of sweat and rotten eggs leaked out of a chemicals factory in northwest France and wafted across the English Channel as far as London on Tuesday. The leak occurred on Monday morning at a Lubrizol France plant near Rouen, 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Paris, and winds blew the invisible gas cloud south over northern France on Monday night and then up into England on Tuesday. The fire brigade in the county of Kent, southeast of London, warned residents to keep their doors and windows closed due to a gas cloud it believed...

He swore his oath of office on Abraham Lincoln's Bible. He has asked to give the State of the Union address on Lincoln's birthday. He rode to Washington in 2009 on a train route similar to Lincoln's in 1861. He has compared his critics to Lincoln's critics. He confides to admirers that he likes to read the handwritten Gettysburg Address that hangs in the Lincoln Bedroom. Barack Obama is inviting the world to compare him not just to good presidents but to the greatest in American history. There can be majesty in invoking past presidents and the Founding Fathers....

A new asteroid-mining company launches Tuesday with the goal of helping humanity expand across the solar system by tapping the vast riches of space rocks. The new firm, called Deep Space Industries, Inc., announced Tuesday, Jan. 22, that it plans to launch a fleet of prospecting spacecraft in 2015, then begin harvesting metals and water from near-Earth asteroids within a decade or so. Such work could make it possible to build and refuel spacecraft far above our planet's surface, thus helping our species get a foothold in the final frontier. "Using resources harvested in space is the only way to...

In a stunning blow to the Internal Revenue Service’s efforts to regulate the tax preparation profession, a federal judge struck down the IRS’s licensing requirements for tax preparers on Friday, including testing and continuing education. U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ruled against the IRS and in favor of the tax preparers in enjoining the agency against enforcing its Registered Tax Return Preparer requirements. “Today’s ruling is a victory for hundreds of thousands of tax preparers across the country and the tens of millions of taxpayers who rely on them to prepare their taxes,” said lead attorney Dan Alban....

We the Government An inaugural address of striking liberal ambition and partisanship. President Obama's second inaugural address won't be remembered for stirring lines, but then its purpose seemed to be more political than inspirational. Mr. Obama was laying down a marker that he has no intention of letting debt or deficits or lagging economic growth slow his plans for activist, expansive government. Inaugurals usually include calls for national unity and appeals to our founding principles, which is part of their charm. With the election long over, swearing in a President is a moment for celebrating larger national purposes. But Mr....