Free Republic

A Chicago police officer suffered a stab wound to the leg, Sunday, and three others were injured during a day of protests around the NATO summit. Chicago police Supt. Garry McCarthy did not know what was used to stab the officer and became emotional when discussing the crowd with which his officers dealt. "If you think it's easy to ask people to do what they did, it's not," he said, pausing to gain his composure. "Asking people to put themselves in harm's way, knowing that they're going to get assaulted, and to be able to stand there and take it,...

After edging out Rockefeller 51% to 49% in the winner-take-all race in California, Goldwater had a huge majority of delegates, enough to easily win the nomination at the Republican convention. George Romney set about denouncing Goldwater, and even raised a stink at the convention to have Goldwater′s delegates disqualified. Romney was accusing many of Goldwater′s delegates as being everything from racists, members of the Ku-Klux-Klan, the John Birch Society and even accused some of being Communists! Imagine that! Once Goldwater was named the presidential nominee, George Romney still worked to undermine his campaign, refusing to endorse or support him. So...

There was something awful about the year 1968.I was but a lad at the time, merely seven or eight years of age, but almost everything on the T.V. terrified me. Terrible reports from Viet Nam, (where my father was at the time), the Tet Offensive nightly reports of death and casualties (was my daddy one of the ones killed?). Riots and anti-war demonstrations in America’s cities and college campuses. The first stirrings of militant feminism. A second hideous year of hippies with their “summer of love� nonsense, which was just an excuse for selfish, spoiled college kids to get high,...

Those who slight the Republican primary candidates and sneer at their campaigns are either innocently misinforming their audience or strategically disinforming them. In fact, this is the all-around spunkiest campaign season I have witnessed since 1968 and the smartest since about 1864. I have been tracking campaigns closely since 1960. Then, as a pre-teen paperboy and JFK fan, I scrutinized the results of the Democratic primaries as intensely as I did Dodger games. In 1964, I chanced upon Ronald Reagan's stirring televised defense of Barry Goldwater and began to rethink my adolescent allegiances. In 1968, I tried desperately to reconcile...

October 12, 2011 Wednesday (SitNews) - U.S Senators Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) have introduced the Firearms Interstate Commerce Reform Act. The bill allows for the interstate sale of firearms and removes several antiquated and unnecessary restrictions imposed on interstate firearms transactions. “Current laws restricting interstate commerce of firearms not only lag behind common sense and new technology, they are unfair and burdensome,” Sen. Begich said. “This legislation cleans up decades-old laws that are unnecessarily restricting the rights of Alaskans and other Americans to purchase and sell firearms.” “Utahns and Americans everywhere have a right to bear arms,...

One of two court cases that could have expanded gun rights if successful and had drawn national attention in the debate over the constitutional right to bear arms was dismissed today by a federal judge in Lubbock. In a 17-page order, U.S. District Judge Samuel Cummings dismissed a challenge to a 32-year-old federal law barring handgun sales by licensed gun dealers to people under the age of 21. “The Court is of the opinion that the ban does not run afoul of the Second Amendment to the Constitution,” the ruling states. “The right to bear arms is enjoyed only by...

It took less than 24 hours for the political Left to seize upon the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six people on Saturday to blame the political Right for the shooting. Perhaps the most egregious example came from Paul Krugman of the New York Times, who wrote "We don't have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was." (The newspaper that published plagiarized and fabricated accounts of the "D.C. sniper" by affirmative-action hire Jayson Blair in 2003 is still publishing unsubstantiated suppositions without "proof," eh?) "[Giffords'] father says that ‘the...

Reading "Masters and Commanders," Andrew Roberts's magnificent account of British and American leaders in World War II, I was struck by how many of them, working prodigious hours and under great strain, were struck down by heart attacks while in their 60s. This doesn't happen anymore, I thought, with the blood pressure and cholesterol medicines many of us routinely take. But it does, as we were reminded by the sudden death at age 69 this week of Richard Holbrooke, who was working prodigiously as Barack Obama's special representative for AfPak, i.e., Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke was known in cynical Washington...

ABC News has learned that Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died. On Friday, Holbrooke was rushed to the hospital with a torn aorta. He went through more than 20 hours of surgery. Earlier this evening, speaking at the US State Department, President Obama sang Holbrooke's praises and called him "a tough son of a gun." Holbrooke, 69, was a former ambassador to the United Nations and served as chief negotiator at the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. The New Yorker's George Packer wrote a nice story about Holbrooke last year,...

The Leftwing extremist group called 'The Southern Poverty Law Center' of Montgomery, Alabama has with one stroke of the pen smeared conservatives and Patriots in its new, infamous 'blacklist' it entitles, 'Meet the Patriots.' Among those it includes in the blacklist are some of the most reputable conservative Patriots in America today, such as U.S. Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), federal judge and Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), Gun Owners of America (GOA) chief Larry Pratt, Fox News personality Glenn Beck, and U.S. Representative Paul Broun (R-GA), among others.

Is Kim Jong-il building a new type of weapon? On Monday Seoul announced that the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety had detected unusually high levels of xenon gas near the North Korea border on May 14. The concentration of xenon was eight times higher than normal, and the presence of the gas is indicative of nuclear activities. Because the wind was blowing south at the time, the source of the gas could not have been one of South Korea's nuclear plants. The xenon might have originated in China or Russia, but the most likely place was the land of unexplained...

<p>A 67-year-old man on Thursday admitted hijacking a plane four decades ago and forcing it to land in Cuba, telling a judge how he threatened to cut a flight attendant's throat to get access to the cockpit, where another man held a gun to the back of the co-pilot.</p>

The Post & Email has received tonight a decclassified FBI report admitted in evidence in the case brought against W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller by President Jimmy Carter’s U.S. Attorney General, Mr. Griffin B. Bell. This document was obtained by an American citizen, who wished to remain anonymous, via a FOIA request. Mr. W. Mark  Felt is none other than the informant who spoke with reporters from the Washington Post, exposing the Watergate Scandal:  who went by the name “Deep Throat” a fact that points to his political neutrality in American politics.What is not know about Mr. Felt...

The president of Estonia goes on national TV to urge his countrymen to have more children. Russian President Vladimir Putin warns his parliament about "a serious crisis threatening Russia's survival": the nation's low birth rate. The government of Singapore is trying to reverse that country's birth dearth by sponsoring a massive taxpayer-funded matchmaking service. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, panicking the world with dire predictions of a population explosion. By the year 2000, he predicted, the world would be so crowded that hundreds of millions would die of starvation. Although Mr. Ehrlich's prophecies have turned out to...

June 14, 2009Obama's Other Controversial ChurchBy Andrew Walden "This is a guy (former Weatherman terror-bomber Bill Ayers) who lives in my neighborhood ... the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago - when I was 8 years old - somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense." -- Barack Obama on the Campaign trail, 2008 As President Obama prepared to commemorate D-Day, the Associated Press dug up old details and photos to write a warm fuzzy story about the WW2 service record of Obama's maternal grandfather...

Original Article: Accused Terrorist on Trial in Jordan Attended Classes at Sac State; Initiation to Terrorism May Have Started in Sacramento, According to Published Reports. Layla Bohm State Hornet (Student Newspaper) November 27, 2001 Former Sacramento State student Raed Hijazi at his trial in Jordan Nov. 26. Hijazi pleaded innocent to nine charges stemming from a plot to execute terrorist attacks on America and Israel during Millenium celebrations in December 1999. Courtesy Photo/A He was a typical California student. Born in San Jose Dec. 3, 1968, Raed Hijazi eventually attended Sacramento City College, took a Sacramento State extension course...

Cardinal James Stafford reflects on how dissenters to Humane Vitae tore the Church apart -- and how that rift left scars that remain to this day. "Lead us not into temptation" is the sixth petition of the Our Father. Peirasmòs, the Greek word used in this passage for 'temptation,' means a trial or test. Disciples petition God to be protected against the supreme test of ungodly powers. The trial is related to Jesus's cup in Gethsemane, the same cup which his disciples would also taste (Mk 10: 35-45). The dark side of the interior of the cup is an abyss....

Christian Klar, now 56, will walk out of jail after 26 years on January 3 after a court ruling. The decision comes despite earlier demands that he make an apology for his murderous crimes still not being met. Klar is portrayed in 'The Baader-Meinhof Complex' which is currently playing in British cinemas. The movie documents the crimes of the urban terrorists before they took the name RAF and it has been heavily criticised in Germany, particularly by the families of victims, for portraying him and his cohorts as 'cool' and their methods justified. Klar has shown no repentance for...

If you're not signed up already, sign up to Buzz and FReep this BUZZ to ensure that it does not get buried by the libtards! The election is just around the corner, and millions of moderates, independents, and undecideds have been prevented from learning the TRUTH about ObamaNation. Here's our chance to bypass the MSM and reach undecideds through the NEW media!

In an earlier article, I posted a review of a portion of the 1968 Democrat Party Platform, dealing largely with domestic affairs, and contrasted the claims made in the platform with the actual results once the policies were put into practice. Hindsight is always 20-20. With that in mind, it is instructive to return again to the 1968 Platform, and look at its highlights as it touches on foreign policy. The section entitled “The World” leads off: The conscience of the entire world has been shocked by the brutal and unprovoked Soviet aggression against Czechoslovakia. By this act, Moscow has...

Many people have drawn comparisons between the current election cycle and that of 1968. And there are societal parallels – an unpopular war overseas, anarchists outside of the Democrat convention, racial unrest, the possibility of a Minnesotan on a major party ticket, even the Weather Underground. Granted, the racial unrest is with illegal immigrants from Mexico, and the Minnesotan would be on the Republican side. But all in all, there are enough similarities to warm the memories of any aging ex-hippie. So, in a trip down memory lane, here is a list of highlights from the 1968 Democrat party platform,...

Forty years ago, in the third week of August 1968, something horrible happened to the American Left and to its host, the Democratic Party. We have been living with this horror ever since. Democrats once embraced patriotism. Scoop Jackson, a true liberal on domestic issues, was as passionate a supporter of America against our enemies as any other politician in America. JFK, in his 1960 campaigned against Nixon in 1960, argued that the Eisenhower Administration had neglected national defense and he promised to defend freedom anywhere. Harry Truman was wrong on many things, but he defended the Republic of Korea,...

Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice is holding a press conference at the State Department. It was being covered by Fox.The hot quote by Rice is her telling Russia "this is not 1968" where they can go into a country and topple the government like was done by the Soviets to Czechoslovakia.

The summer of 1968 was a great time to forget the unpleasantness of changing schools that had happened earlier in the year. I found escape in television and the offerings of the three and only networks along with "educational television" that would soon be known as PBS. The game shows of daytime ("Match Game", "Lets Make A Deal") along with the entertainment of prime-time ("Dragnet", "Red Skelton") were running as usual until early August when political convention coverage took over. It was wall-to-wall day and night coverage of the Republican National Convention I was seeing. The convention was being held...

How perfect it was that while running for president in 2008, the 40th anniversary of "1968," Barack Obama should denounce the 1960s. His candidacy and his times are bland compared to what was happening then, or so everyone thought. The year 1968 had a torrent of cataclysmic political events, each of which might have destabilized any other year. We just passed Robert Kennedy's assassination, and before that the Paris student riots in May 1968. Up next month, the Democratic convention in Chicago - with its pitched battles in Grant Park between the cops and antiwar demonstrators, the anti-Vietnam protests inside...

[Click through to article to view interview with author James Piereson.] The central thesis of James Piereson's Camelot and the Cultural Revolution was that JFK's assassination was the key moment that caused a large portion of once sensible liberals to begin to tilt to the far, far left, and for lack of better word, become Unhinged. Like this calm, rational fan of the New Frontier! In the (admittedly totally tasteless) formulation of a friend of mine, the best thing that ever happened to civil rights in this country was the bullet through JFK's head. Along the way, as I wrote...

Sometime later, after the events of 1968, I would look back at Hayden’s Bratislava speech as a turning point not only in the short history of the New Left but also in the history of American radicalism. Protesting against America’s wars has an honorable tradition, running from Thoreau to Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas. But starting with Hayden and continuing in the turbulent outbursts of 1968, that tradition of legitimate democratic opposition morphed into outright collaboration with the enemy.

By late in the evening of June 4th, 1968 it was clear that Robert Kennedy had defeated Eugene McCarthy in the California Primary to establish his preeminence as the "outsider" Democrat candidate for president. Bobby Kennedy did one-on-one interviews with the big network television reporters and then walked into a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles to make a victory speech. Kennedy told his audience "we can end the divisions within the United States" and then spoke of "change" happening if delegates would consider how he had won in California. It was now after 3am in the East...

He had a doctorate in education from UCLA, but his ideas were anything but "Piled higher and deeper." Max Rafferty had been elected twice (in 1962 and 1966) as California's Superintendent of Public Instruction. Dr. Max Rafferty wrote books with titles like "Suffer Little Children" and "What They Are Doing To Your Children." Rafferty blasted modern public education and its emphasis on "life adjustment." His conservative views on education appeared in a nationally syndicated newspaper column. Rafferty's conservative supporters put him up as an alternative in the June 4th, 1968 Republican U.S. Senate Primary. Rafferty faced incumbent liberal Republican U.S....

The assassination was over in a few seconds. In the photograph of that moment, Bobby Kennedy, his eyes open and glazed, lies on his back on a hotel pantry floor, his head cradled by a busboy dressed starkly in white - a tableau that seems almost angelic were it not so brutal. Less than 26 hours after being shot early on June 5, 1968, right after winning the California presidential primary, Kennedy was dead. He was 42.Three major assassinations rocked America in the 1960s. Two of the assassins - Lee Harvey Oswald, the killer of John F. Kennedy, and James...

The Robert Kennedy campaign began in the ashes of Lyndon Johnson's re-election effort. Eugene McCarthy had spoiled LBJ, but if there was a favorite among anti-Johnson forces in the Democrat Party, it was Bobby Kennedy. He was warmly received at the 1964 convention and those who loved his brother always looked to him to bring back the Kennedy Administration. Lyndon Johnson did not bow to pressure to make Robert F. Kennedy his running mate in 1964. Instead, LBJ chose Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, a man who proudly wore the label "liberal" and who would buckle under to Lyndon Johnson's leadership...

The killing of Robert F. Kennedy has always been submerged in mythology spread by a liberal media and educational elite that has its own ideology and "theology" in mind. Kennedy's killing is bunched together with the assassinations of his brother John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King in a "Holy Trinity" of martyrdom that is an object of idolization and worship. It is ironic that all three men were far from deities, but all too human as has been evidenced by the details of their extramarital "relationships" that have emerged over the years. The other common mythology that was spread...

I sat in the same kitchen this morning and listened to the same song I heard on the radio every morning in late May and early June of 1968. I knew nothing about a movie called "The Graduate" back then but my eight year old mind easily comprehended the common phrases Paul Simon put into the song. Those lyrics were drummed into me: "Jesus loves you more than you will know.... "God Bless You please Mrs. Robinson, heaven holds a place for those who pray...... "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you..." Of...

Lost in the uproar over Sen. Hillary Clinton's invoking of the assassination of Robert Kennedy when explaining why her staying in the race won't hurt party unity is an actual examination of her comparison of the 2008 Democratic primary season to the one from 1968. Clinton yesterday before the Argus Leader editorial board also invoked her husband's race in 1992. We've already twice now looked at how her reference to how her husband was still campaigning in June 1992 is a disingenuous claim.

'WHY don't we just vote to strike tonight - and we'll decide to morrow what we're striking for?" Those were the words of a student protester thoughtfully deliberating at Yale University, as recounted by Roger Kimball in his book on the left, "The Long March." It was a question that captured much of the heedless spirit of the student demonstrations of the 1960s, for which "May 1968" is shorthand. That spring 40 years ago saw a radical takeover of Columbia University - eventually duplicated at other elite campuses - and student protests around the world. In France, the government was...

Nineteen sixty-eight was one exciting moment in a much larger movement. It spawned a whole range of movements. There wouldn't have been an international global solidarity movement, for instance, without the events of 1968. It was enormous, in terms of human rights, ethnic rights, a concern for the environment, too. The Pentagon Papers (the 7,000-page, top-secret US government report into the Vietnam War) are proof of this: right after the Tet Offensive, the business world turned against the war, because they thought it was too costly, even though there were proposals within the government - and we know this now...

The ACLU of Colorado has filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Secret Service and the city of Denver to ensure that protesters are within "sight and sound" of delegates attending the Democratic National Convention this August. "Ultimately, it's the federal courts that are sort of the last resort protectors of constitutional rights," Mark Silverstein, the ACLU's legal director, said today. "It's been the federal courts that are the ones to say law enforcement has not struck the proper balance here between security concerns and citizens' fundamental First Amendment rights," he said. Silverstein said the city is dragging its feet...

Americans are well acquainted with presidential candidate Barack Obama’s legendary pledges to bring “change” to America’s political and social landscape. (For example, see here and here and here.) Indeed, “Change We Can Believe In” is the slogan that adorns the homepage of his campaign website and so many of the placards displayed by the supporters who attend his speaking engagements. His Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, is also well practiced at issuing calls for change. Her “Change and Experience” ad campaign was but an outgrowth of her 1993 declaration, as First Lady, that “remolding society is one of the great challenges...

NEW YORK, April 26 -- Forty years ago, they launched a student protest at Columbia University that involved the occupation of five campus buildings, the hostage-taking of a dean, 712 arrests and injuries to scores of students, faculty members and police officers. This Story At Columbia, Remembering a Revolution The 1968 Protesters, Then and Now Now, they are lawyers, judges, playwrights, poets, professors and ministers. They gathered this weekend back on campus with former classmates to hear memories of those events and occasionally raise a revolutionary fist for old times' sake. "Strangest reunion I ever saw," said Victoria Benitez, a...

Spiro Agnew's political career rose like a phoenix from the ashes. In six short years he went from being elected Baltimore County Executive to being elected Vice-President of the United States. He would be a bulldog for President Richard Nixon, playing a role that many future GOP Vice-Presidents like Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney would, making tough speeches to keep conservatives in line with the more moderate president who would "stay above it all." Agnew's attacks on the mainstream media ("the nattering nabobs of negativity") would make him as hated at the president himself in MSM circles. Agnew's election as...

The conference program on the sponsors’ website promises to air a “wide range of viewpoints” on what happened and why, but the list of speakers shows no range at all—everyone seems to be a proud ex-protester or at least a familiar partisan of the Left. While Todd Gitlin (formerly the president of Students for a Democratic Society, now at Columbia’s journalism school) is a sober and reflective thinker, most of his fellow speakers are far from that standard. They include Kathleen Cleaver, Eldridge Cleaver’s widow and a former Black Panther official; veteran activist Tom Hayden; several former members of the...

Tributes poured out from all over the world in honor of Martin Luther King with Father George Clements of Chicago saying King "is a saint" and "should be canonized." Meanwhile on the streets of Chicago rioting broke out after King's death. Three thousand National Guard troops were initially deployed as many fires burned on the West Side of the city. Dozens were injured by rocks thrown at their cars or by gangs on the streets. Bricks were thrown at firefighters trying to put out the flames and stores were looted. Mayor Richard Daley called on President Johnson for regular Army...

"go home and get your guns"-Stokely Carmichael April 4,1968 in Washington D.C. I had a habit of sitting in the kitchen and eating my breakfast while the radio was turned on to the morning news. The morning of Friday April 5th, 1968 I heard the account of a radio reporter (from UPI) who hid under a car while mobs rioted in the street around him. He sounded scared and he had reason to as rioting broke out in the nation's captial following the assassination of Martin Luther King late on the evening or April 4th and early on the morning...

On Thursday April 4th, 1968 the City of Memphis was back in federal court seeking a permanent injunction against any protest by Martin Luther King to support the sanitation workers strike. Police Director Frank Holloman spoke of black adults buying guns and young black people receiving training in the use of molotov cocktails. In the evening I watched the "Huntley-Brinkley Report" on NBC and saw the story of the day before including the King speech. I was seven years old and this was the first time I had ever heard the name "Martin Luther King." In the evening just after...

Dr. Martin Luther King originally wanted to stage a new march in Memphis on Friday April 5th, 1968 but decided to push the march back to Monday the 8th so labor leaders could show up. The City of Memphis was afraid of more violence if King led another march on behalf of the striking sanitation workers. They went to federal court seeking an injunction. Federal District Judge Bailey Brown issued a temporary restraining order against a march on Monday April 8th. It was with that court order in mind that Dr. King made what would be his last speech. The...

On Monday April 1st, Martin Luther King was in Atlanta preparing for a return to Memphis to lead a march on behalf of the striking sanitation workers. He spoke to his aides and others that day. Matters of discussion were the planned Poor People's March On Washington later in the year and the decision of President Johnson not to run for re-election. King had started on good terms with Johnson, who pushed through the controversial civil rights legislation of 1964. Portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were seen by conservatives as federal power usurping state power in an...

Those lovable, aggressive peace-loving anti-war factions of the left are ready for the 1968 presidential race. At least some of them are preparing to recreate the chaos that surrounded the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago when the Dem delegates gather this August in Denver, Colorado. The band of loons, freaks and frauds planning the new mess is unimaginatively named Recreate 68. It’s a radical left-wing group of “peace-loving” Castro-ettes whose goal is described as peaceful through good old fashioned liberal violence upon the dangerous American establishment and government that Recreate 68 feels must be taken down and controlled by revolutionaries....

"Does Ho Chi Minh have anything like this"-President Lyndon Johnson According to Texas writer Larry L. King (not the CNN guy) the earthy talking Lyndon Johnson made this comment in the White House to staff members with his pants down and his manhood on display. Regardless of the raw nature of Johnson's reported comments the administration's Vietnam War policy always aimed to be a repeat of the Korean War with some negoatiated ending. The "bombing" of North Vietnam was restricted when it came to the main conduit of North Vietnam's war supplies, Haiphong harbor. There was fear that Soviets on...

The sanitation workers strike in Memphis could be seen as just any other labor-management dispute over pay, but since most of the workers were black, the racial aspect stood out. This brought Dr. Martin Luther King to Memphis in the spring of 1968 to support the strike that had begun in February. On March 28th, 1968 King marched with five thousand others in the streets of Memphis. Around 20 minutes after the march began, 200 youths began to break windows and loot stores along Beale Street. The march turned into chaos and Dr. King was taken away. One person was...