Free Republic

A U.S. Army simulation game at Summerfest, shut down after complaints to festival officials, was replaced Wednesday by a modified version in which players shoot at still targets instead of virtual human beings. The decision to reopen “America’s Army” was announced late Wednesday afternoon in a joint news release from the Army and Summerfest faxed to the Journal Sentinel on Army stationery. --------------------- This is a followup to an earlier FR post at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2039585/posts

UPDATE: Army shuts down warfare game At the request of Summerfest officials, the U.S. Army on Tuesday removed a virtual urban warfare game that allowed fest-goers as young as 13 to hop into a Humvee simulator and fire machine guns at life-size people displayed on a computer screen. "We're determining it's probably not something that we want to have shown at Summerfest," said John Boler, vice president of sales and marketing, said before the decision was made to request removal of the game, called Virtual Army Experience. The game drew criticism from Peace Action Wisconsin, which called it "totally inappropriate...

Well, the PEW Research Center just completed its latest "Who Hates America Most" survey, and the results are predictable, according to the International Herald Tribune.

When some organizers for the Primary Campaign of Barak Obama in Oregon dropped several rented Porta-Potties in the middle of a memorial for fallen police officers, they made a statement. They deny this to the hilt, but I am convinced just as vehemently that these Porta-Potties didn’t get put where they were put as a result of unfortunate random number generation. Barak Obama’s political movement discourages the deep and profound disrespect for decency, patriotism and all accepted social norms. If this Porta-Potty incident were to have happened to Democratic Congressman Skelton of Missouri, who has been on the House Armed...

What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback and let me tell you something, For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I have seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues. It has made me proud."

"What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback and let me tell you something. For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I have seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues. It it's made me proud."

Memo to New York Times Public Ed itor Clark Hoyt: Your urgent atten tion is needed on the slanderous 7,000-word front-page article published last Sunday about homicides allegedly committed by US veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. We say "allegedly," because the article lumped those merely accused of a homicide with those who've already been convicted. But that was the least of the piece's problems. As our colleague Ralph Peters so adroitly demonstrated on these pages Tuesday, the article embraced the hoariest of overwrought clichés - the US combat vet as psychotic killer. But on what evidence? None at...

Under the heading “The end of a U.S.-centric world?” the PostGlobal section of The Washington Post website recently declared that “U.S. influence is in steep decline.” It was just the latest verse in a growing chorus of declinist doom-saying at home and abroad. In 2004, Pat Buchanan lamented “the decline and fall of the greatest industrial republic the world had ever seen.” In 2005, The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee concluded that Hurricane Katrina exposed “a hollow superpower.” In 2007, Pierre Hassner of the Paris-based National Foundation for Political Science declared, “It will not be the New American Century.” And the dirge...

After the Republican debate on Tuesday evening in Dearborn, Mich., a reporter from the Arab-American News asked Ron Paul what he thought of the term “Islamic fascism.” “It’s a false term to make people think we’re fighting Hitler,” Paul responded. “It’s war propaganda designed to generate fear so that the war has to be spread.” The call has gone out to all the Muslim Americans to hurry up and register to vote Republican so that they can vote in the Republican Primary to support Ron Paul, the anti-interventionist, non-isolationist candidate for President of the United States. Muslims are opening their...

NEW YORK - Hollywood director Brian De Palma has lashed out at what he calls the censorship of his new film about Iraq and the chilling effect of corporate America on the war. De Palma's film, "Redacted," is based on the true story of a group of U.S. soldiers who raped and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdered members of her family. It has stunned audiences for its shocking images and rattled American conservative commentators before its U.S. opening next month. But De Palma says he is upset that the documentary-style drama has been censored. The film's distributor, Magnolia...

The Republican Party, by almost universal disgruntled consent, is in every way a cause of concern for the limited government espoused in the articles adopted by the GOP membership. The Republican Party has become in governing what they've fear-mongered us for decades the Democratic party would be if, in fact, we elected Democrats to Washington. Let's be honest: The D.C. Republicans who've lied their way into leadership are little else than a rejected radical left wing of the Democratic party. Pre-emptive nuclear strikes? NAFTA, CAFTA? The Patriot Act? Enforcing U.N. resolutions? Lowering taxes a couple hundred dollars for the average...

When Americans evaluate today's political landscape, most feel something between impotence and disapproval. So, while citizens shake their heads or shrug at the mainstream media's “top tier” presidential candidates, it is extraordinary how many are becoming overjoyed about one lesser covered candidate. Tens-of-thousands have joined the appropriately named Ron Paul Revolution, joining Meetup.com groups, putting up signs, and crossing states to attend rallies. Congressman Ron Paul's genuine message and untarnished record of promoting individual liberty for everyone, a free-market economy of wealth and abundance, and a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace and free trade, has attracted vast support from diverse...

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power. National spirit can...

Last night I listened to the Presidential debate between Democratic candidates, and I got almost physically sick. They kept repeating their most vicious word, “we,” for two hours. Here’s some typical policies the Democrat-looter candidates suggested: “We” need to give health care to all people with a “non-profit” socialized-medicine system (the same system that wrecked medical care in England and Canada?, and paid for by whom?). “We” need to give all kids tuition money for a college education (a socialist, anti-American-values education presided over by Marxist professors?, and paid for by whom?). “We” need pre-school for all children from age...

Boston - No taxation without representation? Residents in Boston, New York, and other cities are reviving America's famous battle cry for political revolution. In the midst of a stormy national debate on immigration, they're challenging the idea of excluding noncitizens on a front that's less noticed but equally contentious. They want immigrants to vote. While that idea may seem outrageous to many, it's less radical than it sounds to its supporters. They want to limit such voting to local races and referendums and, in most areas, to legal immigrants. Supporters argue that noncitizens are long-term residents who care about the...

Miss USA gives Mexicans lesson in graciousness By Herald wire services Wednesday, May 30, 2007 Miss USA Rachel Smith gets up after falling during the Miss Universe pageant. (AP photo) MEXICO CITY - When Miss USA took the stage, there was nary a caballero in the crowd. The Mexican audience booed and hooted Rachel Smith repeatedly during the weekend’s Miss Universe competition. The music was too loud to tell how they reacted when the gringa took a tumble on stage. Smith was encountering what other Americans have before her. Mexican rudeness toward all things American. In 2004 and 2005, Mexican...

PEARL HARBOR (NNS) -- The Navy is disappointed with EarthJustice’s decision to pursue litigation against critical training activities in Hawaiian waters, the deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet said. “These fleet training activities are essential to the Navy’s ability to ensure our nation’s armed forces are fully combat ready and adequately trained according to established, time-tested standards,” said Rear Adm. John M. Bird. The suit, filed May 16 by EarthJustice on behalf of five non-government organizations, asks the court to prohibit naval sonar exercises near Hawaii, saying that sonar can have a negative impact on marine mammals. But such...

At the annual Cairo antiwar conference in Egypt, the hot panel discussion this year was “Bridge-Building Between the Left and Islam.” John Rees, a British Trotskyite, observed: “Where else can you sit down in a single evening and listen to senior people from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, people from the revolutionary left and the antiwar movement from around the globe?” Gosh, it sounds great. I’m just sorry I missed the rollicking game of Pictionary between the Castroites and the jihadis afterwards. Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, recently reported in the New York Sun...

For most Americans, the Iraq war is both distant and never ending. For Private Matthew Zeimer, it was neither. Shortly after midnight on Feb. 2, Zeimer had his first taste of combat as he scrambled to the roof of the 3rd Infantry Division's Combat Outpost Grant in central Ramadi. Under cover of darkness, Sunni insurgents were attacking his new post from nearby buildings. Amid the smoke, noise and confusion, a blast suddenly ripped through the 3-ft. concrete wall shielding Zeimer and a fellow soldier, killing them both. Zeimer had been in Iraq for a week. He had been at his...