Free Republic

It’s been five weeks since the Obama administration granted Egypt its full $1.3 billion in annual military aid despite its government’s failure to meet conditions set by Congress for advancing democracy. In granting a waiver on national security grounds, administration officials argued that continuing the funding was more likely to encourage cooperation with the United States and progress on human rights than a cutoff would. As it turns out, the administration was wrong. In a number of tangible ways, U.S.-Egyptian relations and the military’s treatment of civil society have deteriorated since the waiver was issued March 23. The threat to...

A year ago, in Action Comics, Superman declared plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship. "'Truth, justice, and the American way' — it's not enough anymore," the comic book superhero said, after both the Iranian and American governments criticized him for joining a peaceful anti-government protest in Tehran. Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman's lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That's a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It's also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has taken the unusual step of issuing a permit allowing an American Indian tribe in Wyoming to kill two bald eagles for religious purposes. The agency's decision comes after the Northern Arapaho Tribe filed a federal lawsuit last year contending the refusal to issue such permits violates tribal members' religious freedom. Although thousands of American Indians apply for eagle feathers and carcasses from a federal repository, permits allowing the killing of bald eagles are exceedingly rare, according to both tribal and legal experts on the matter.

Editor’s note: More information on the unholy alliance’s campaign to silence critics of the jihadi threat can be found in David Horowitz and Robert Spencer’s pamphlet, “Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future,” available in our bookstore. For a person like me who learned English as a second language, the current trend of inventing new meanings for words is a disturbing phenomenon. Our vocabulary is transforming, particularly in politics, where the new interpretation of news and events is distorted to adversely affect reality. It started with our government demanding that we stop using certain words and specifying alternates. “Overseas contingency...

Is this why Sandra Fluke went public? Look which groups behind Obama's contraception strategy Published: 11 hours ago by Aaron Klein Email Aaron Klein is WND's senior staff reporter and Jerusalem bureau chief. He also hosts "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on New York's WABC Radio. His latest book is the N.Y. Times best-selling, "The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists Prior to her statements to congressional Democrats, did Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke have any prior connection to Obama administration officials? Did the congresswomen who pushed Fluke’s testimony coordinate with a marketing and...

“When you look that closely at someone, you almost always develop sympathy for them,” Rockwell says. “It's like sitting next to someone for a long bus ride. … I want to think about who these people are and why they made the choices they did. I want to share the results of my thoughts, which are my paintings, with other people.” She was particularly inspired to paint bin Laden. “We take for granted who he was and what he did and why, and stop thinking of him as a human being with profoundly human motivations. The war on terror is...

Following are excerpts from a statement by Egyptian MP Mustafa Bakri, which aired on Sawt Al-Sha'b TV on February 2, 2012. Mustafa Bakri: Our country is entering a state of anarchy. This anarchy is caused by America, Israel and the former regime. Look at the New Middle East scheme. Don't talk about all the minute details. What happened in Port Said is a continuation of what happened in Muhammad Mahmoud Street, in Al-Qasr Al-Ayni Street, across from the government, across from Maspero, and in the soccer match against Tunisia. They are all connected. It is an attempt to bring this...

Who is to blame for the eurozone crisis? The governments that ran up the debts? The officials who fudged the criteria so that Italy and Greece could join? The dolts who dreamed up the single currency in the first place? Nope: it's those wicked Anglo-Saxons again. In Die Welt, the EPP's Elmar Brok claims that the US has launched an economic war against Europe. For those who can't read German, here is a rough summary of his argument. The US ratings agencies, he says, had no conceivable reason to downgrade nine eurozone states last week. What this is really about...

Here’s a blast from the past. Remember Eason Jordan? Every conservative political blogger worth his/her salt knows and remembers who he is. Former CNN head Eason Jordan is the disgraced journalist who admitted in a 2003 New York Times op-ed piece titled “The News We Kept to Ourselves” that he deliberately and intentionally whitewashed Saddam Hussein’s atrocities and regurgitated Hussein propaganda for a decade in exchange for access. Let me underscore that: In 2003, after the U.S.-led Coalition invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Jordan confessed that CNN had deliberately reported Baathist propaganda during the Saddam era...

Motorists driving along the 6000 block of Douglas Avenue near Merle Hay Mall in northwest Des Moines will be told, via a billboard, that eating bacon can lead to rectal cancer.

The US has pulled terrorism manuals referencing Islam following complaints from terror-linked advocacy groups.eputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole confirmed on Wednesday the Obama administration was recalling all training materials used by the law enforcement and national security communities, in order to eliminate all references to Islam. “I recently directed all components of the Department of Justice to re-evaluate their training efforts in a range of areas, from community outreach to national security,” Cole told a panel at the George Washington University law school. The move comes after complaints from Muslim advocacy organizations, including the Council on American Islamic Relations...

I leave and heave A sigh and say goodbye

Some Islamist (Wahhabist/Sunni) fundamentalist anti-American terrorists have been uncovered and are apparantly in support of the "Occupy Wall Street Movement" in the United States, and providing moral and perhaps personnel support based on monitoring of their Arabic language website. FBI and local law enforcement anti-terrorist units should be notified. Apologies for the link to this group's site (and the specific web section in which they promote "Occupy Wall Street"), but it proves the wider point for evidence' sake. FR of course does not condone nor support such activity (disclaimer). For information and investigative journalist purposes only. The site supporting...

With Mitt Romney campaigning...his Mormon religion is coming under increasing scrutiny. SNIP Now Mark Driscoll, pastor of the high-profile Seattle-based Mars Hill Church, has added his voice to the fray -- agreeing that Christians should consider Mormons as members of a "cult" and not "brothers and sisters in a common faith." Writing on his website Tuesday, Driscoll goes on at length about the various definitions of a cult. He is careful to say that Mormonism has "outgrown" the popular culture and sociological definitions of a cult because of its enormous growth and general acceptance in the nation. But, Driscoll writes,...

I had been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints for just a few days when I encountered my first experience of anti-Mormon prejudice. -SNIP- “But you’re not Christian and you don’t believe in forgiveness.” It was not a question, but a declaration, delivered with a finality reminiscent of a judge’s gavel rendering verdict on a hapless miscreant. -SNIP-Mormons do not pretend that their understanding of Christ is identical to that of Christian orthodoxy. We embrace the New Testament and much of what the modern Christian world teaches about the Savior of the world, but...

I subscribe to a Mormon apologetic Newsletter titled FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research). Normally it falls into my junk email account and I don't even open it, but today I had a few minutes and scanned the latest offering and was stunned to see the hypocrisy of the authors. Please note the entire email is posted below. This particular issue has a great deal of whining about those mean Christians who make the spurious claim that Mormons are not Christians, but are a cult. A couple of examples: -"Mormons are a cult" epithets into the national spotlight. In...

(Reuters) - U.S. officials have met members of the Muslim Brotherhood's political party, a U.S. diplomat said, after Washington announced it would have direct contacts with Egypt's biggest Islamist group whose role has grown since U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was ousted.

Days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11 a leader from a group in Massachusetts is calling on public schools in one town to ban students from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, saying it has no educational value and the pressure it places on children to participate makes his “skin crawl,” The Boston Globe reported. Martin Rosenthal, the co-chair of Brookline Political Action for Peace, or Brookline Pax, told the paper the pledge puts “kids in an uncomfortable situation” and doesn’t belong in schools. The group, therefore, will ask town meeting voters in November to pass a nonbinding resolution on the...

Men stand near their trucks as they are questioned by U.S. soldiers with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment about the contents in their trucks on July 14, 2011 in Iskandariya, Babil Province, Iraq. On the ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, many Americans are wondering whether the risk of a terrorist attack against America has been reduced. The picture is mixed. With the death of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda is weaker. With revolutions in several Arab countries, frustrations with unpopular autocratic governments — a recruiting theme for terrorist groups - have been mitigated. But one important contributing factor has...

<p>One day, at the height of her fame in the mid-Seventies, Jane Fonda turned up on the doorstep of her ex-husband, Roger Vadim. She was lugging a bulging sack.</p> <p>Vadim’s glamorous new girlfriend let her in, thrilled to meet the movie icon at last. But her excitement soon turned to disbelief. The star of Julia, Klute and The China Syndrome had come to do her laundry. Why? Because her second husband, Tom Hayden, a Left-wing activist with a bulbous nose and acne-scarred cheeks, had forbidden her to have either a washing machine or dishwasher. Far too bourgeois.</p>

On the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a radical Islamic group hopes to “expose the crimes of the American government,” while showcasing its opinion that the U.S. has lost its battle against terrorism. The group, Muslims Against Crusades (MAC), plans to purposefully disrupt a commemorative 9/11 ceremony. Participants pledge to make as much noise as possible during a planned moment of silence that will be held outside the U.S. Embassy of London next weekend.

An elementary school in Colorado has come under criticism after they lowered the American flag and elevated a Saudi Arabian flag. The principal at Bauder Elementary School in Fort Collins said they did not mean to disrespect the American flag, according to a report in the Greeley Gazzette.

...we pretty much know what kind of re-election campaign Barack Obama is going to wage: A relentlessly negative one, which...will focus almost exclusively on making the challenger seem unacceptable rather than defending the sitting president’s accomplishments. Thanks to Ben Smith at Politico, we also know roughly how the White House plans to “destroy Mitt Romney,”...By “attacking him as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, ‘weird.’” Weird how, you ask? Here’s Smith: The character attacks on Romney will focus on what critics view as a makeover, both personal (skinny jeans) and...

<p>CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor Eric Marrapodi jumped into the fray on the topic with Foreman as well. He said while religious views shape Mormon politicians on a macro level, there is no evidence Mormon politicians have a "bat phone" to Utah and take orders from the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the church is formally known.</p>

When Joseph Smith died in June of 1844, the Mormon Church faced a succession crisis. Mormon historian Richard S. Van Wagoner explained, “Despite frequent kidnaping and assassination attempts, Joseph Smith established no firm policies regarding presidential succession in the event of his death. The resulting confusion threw the prophetic transition into turmoil. He simply had not expected to die at thirty-eight. Never given to full disclosure to any man or woman, the prophet’s public and private statements between 1834-44 suggested at least eight different methods for succession, each pointing to different successors with some claims to validity.” (“The Making of...

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to certify that gays can serve openly in the armed services

Just a brief exposure to an image of the American flag shifts voters, even Democrats, to Republican beliefs, attitudes and voting behavior even though most don't believe it will impact their politics, according to a new two-year study just published in the scholarly Psychological Science. What's more, according to three authors from the University Chicago, Cornell University and Hebrew University, the impact had staying power. "A single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants' Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs, and implicit and explicit attitudes, with some effects lasting 8 months," the study found....

The US has said it will send aid to famine-hit areas of Somalia controlled by the Islamist group al-Shabab. But US aid officials say assurances must be given that the insurgents will not interfere with its distribution. The US considers al-Shabab a terrorist group and last year stopped aid to the large area of Somalia it controls. The UN has declared a famine in two areas of southern Somalia as the region experiences the worst drought in more than half a century. Al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group which controls large swathes of south and central Somalia, had imposed a ban on...

Yes, the rest of the world is watching this embarrassing debt ceiling nonsense, and it is growing dismayed. Der Spiegel has a roundup of commentary in German newspapers about the fight, and the universal message is this: The US is holding the entire world hostage, and it's the Republicans that are playing with fire.

Paramount and Marvel Studios have a bit of a marketing challenge on their hands with their upcoming Captain America: The First Avenger. Namely, how do you sell a pro-U.S.A superhero movie to the many regions of the globe that can't stand us? Their solution was to play it safe, and release the film in all foreign markets as just "The First Avenger." But then a wonderful thing happened. From the Times: [I]n a surprise, Paramount's overseas operation objected, arguing that Captain America had too much brand value, even in spots like France that are leery of embracing Team America too...

LOS ANGELES - Captain America will keep its patriotic full title in most of the world when the superhero adventure hits the big-screen. Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios gave distributors around the world the option of shortening the title of "Captain America: The First Avenger" to simply "The First Avenger," out of concern about anti-American sentiment. But the only countries that took them up on it were Russia, Ukraine and South Korea. In other territories, the movie will go out with the full title, a sign that the brand value of the Marvel Comics hero trumps any potential anti-U.S. feelings...

...In those early music classes you learned songs that became part of your American songbook, songs as familiar as your grandmother's hands or the stretch of street where you grew up... Today's kids still learn traditional American folk tunes, but educators are casting a wider net. "There is certainly a world music trend now," says Brian Shepard, of the Music Teachers National Association, based in Ohio. "Schools are teaching folk tunes from other cultures." At Hicks Elementary... students learned Nigerian boat song Eh Soom Boo Kawaya, Canadian folk song J'entends le Moulin and Norwegian emigrant song Oleanna, and other far-flung...

When he first entered the national political arena, I thought Barack Obama was a sincere man, mistaken in his political beliefs, but an honest advocate of them. Today, like millions of Americans, my evaluation of Barack Obama would be quite different. Without attempting to go over every policy, speech, and embarrassment to explain what is wrong with the man, I might just sum it up the way that many parents do when teaching their sons and daughters about right and wrong. "Obama," I would say, "is a bad man."

It’s self-fisking, but worth watching for the sheer smug idiocy of it all.

A “howler,” the Wall Street Journal called it in an editorial yesterday. That certainly is a fitting description of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s latest mindboggling foray into Middle East analysis. It makes sense, she maintains, for American armed forces to get “kinetic” in Libya but not in Syria because Moammar Qaddafi is a brutal dictator while brutal dictator Bashar Assad is really a “reformer.” Perhaps she has been watching too much al-Jazeera, this former first lady who was so instrumental in her husband’s airbrushing of the terrorist kleptocrat Yasser Arafat — a peace-seeking statesman . . . at least...

Mainstream media has become defeatist, abandoning the notion that Americans are uniquely able to accomplish great things. Worse yet, members of congress, mostly Democrats but some Republicans too, have become similarly defeatist. How sad. When confronted with challenges, danger, or catastrophe, their common response is to shirk. These defeatists seem to think that Americans lack the grit, ingenuity, and raw courage to tackle complicated problems. Consider the typical Democrat response to some recent crises. When there was an oil spill in the Gulf—Democrat leaders recommended that all off-shore drilling be abandoned. When there was an accident in a West Virginia...

In July, the (NEH) sponsored a workshop on “History and Commemoration: The Legacies of the Pacific War in WWII” for college professors in Hawaii. Professor Penelope Blake, a veteran professor of Humanities at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill., was one of 25 American scholars chosen to attend the workshop, but was reportedly disheartened to find the conference “driven by an overt political bias and a blatant anti-American agenda.” Professor Blake is now reportedly calling on Congress to implement better oversight over the NEH. In a letter addressed directly to her Illinois congressman, Rep. Don Manzullo, Blake documents conference details...

Today the United States finds itself adrift on a sea of uncertainty; its economy floundering under the weight of oppressive debt and mismanagement, its status in world affairs at its lowest ebb since the beginning of the 20th Century and its citizens openly questioning the future. At such a critical time the country has as its President a man unable or qualified to lead. Barack Obama is a man without a core, leaving the ship of state without a rudder in the management of foreign affairs and domestic policy which have spun dangerously out of control over the past two...

Last night, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sat down for a rare, extended interview with Steve Kroft of '60 Minutes.' In what CBS has called Assange's "most extensive television interview to date," the Australian national defended his organization's mission, discussed the roots of his own anti-authoritarian philosophy, and compared WikiLeaks' core principles to "those of the U.S. Revolution."

Egyptian riot police are firing tear gas canisters bearing the label "Made in U.S.A" against street demonstrations in Cairo, according to protesters who provided ABC News with pictures of the canisters. The protestors said the tear gas canisters were recovered in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo on Tuesday. The label urges anyone who comes in contact with the gas "to seek assistance as soon as possible." According to the canister labels, the tear gas is produced by Combined Systems International of Jamestown, Pennsylvania. The company's web-site says it sells "non-lethal weapons" to foreign governments, without specifying Egypt. A company spokesperson...

Reporting from San Diego — U.S. border authorities have arrested a controversial Muslim cleric who was deported from Canada to Tunisia three years ago and was caught earlier this month trying to sneak into California in the trunk of a BMW, according to court documents. Said Jaziri, the former imam of a Muslim congregation in Montreal, was hidden in a car driven by a San Diego-area man who was pulled over by U.S. Border Patrol agents near an Indian casino east of San Diego on Jan. 11. Jaziri had allegedly paid a Tijuana-based smuggling group $5,000 to get him across...

Remember when churches used to have "Sunday School" buses that picked up your children and gave them Bible lessons on their way to church? Now, thanks to the Southern California Young Communist League (YCL), a branch of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), little red school buses may be coming to your neighborhood. But they won't be teaching your children Bible lessons, or courses in American history that highlight the freedom we have and those who died to protect it. They'll be teaching your children the wonders of communism and socialism. According to an article at The Blaze, the "National Red...

The principal of a public school in Brookline, Mass., is asking parents to fill out permission slips before their children can participate in a weekly recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Gerardo Martinez, the principal of The Devotion School, informed parents that the school would begin reciting the pledge in January over the public address system. Attached to the letter was a form that asked parents to check either: "Yes, my child will participate in the weekly Pledge of Allegiance" or "No, my child will not participate in the weekly Pledge of Allegiance." "I urge you to have a conversation...

After three years of eating steaks the size of elephants' ears, Kevin bids farewell The BBC's America correspondent Kevin Connolly is packing his bags for a new post in the Middle East. During his three years in the US he has visited 46 out of 50 states and covered the country's election of its first black president.Sometime around the spring of 1835, a young Frenchman called Alexis de Tocqueville travelled to the United States on a mission guaranteed to make Americans bristle with irritation. He was going to understand them, and explain them. De Tocqueville was smart, Gallic and aristocratic...

BERKELEY, Calif. — The Berkeley City Council will consider a resolution that would declare the Army private suspected of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks a hero and call for his release. The council plans a vote Tuesday on the resolution in support of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is being held in a military brig in Virginia. A city commission already has approved it. Bob Meola, who authored the resolution, tells the San Francisco Chronicle that Manning is a patriot who deserves a medal. Federal officials have criticized the leaks, saying they could endanger lives.

Authorities say a person has been arrested in the Baltimore area for plotting to blow up a military recruitment center. Marcia Murphy, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore, tells The Associated Press the person will appear in court Wednesday afternoon. An FBI spokesman also confirmed the arrest. They did not provide any more details. The official says the person's goal was to blow up a military recruitment center. The official says the person is a U.S. citizen and the plot was carried out in Baltimore County.

A new headache may have been created for US and international currency use as it has been determined that a flaw was created in the printing of up to 30% of all new $100.00 bills scheduled for distribution in 2011. In a new report by CNBC today, an official familiar with the problem reported that the new $100 bills are so complex that the printers at the mint have experienced massive problems in the creation of the notes. A significant production problem with new high-tech $100 bills has caused government printers to shut down production of the new notes and...

Experts say that in addition to protections for free speech, there are difficulties with proving leaked documents are classified, under a US government executive order which sets limits on documents that can be properly termed as classified documents. However, if charges are made against Julian Assange under the law in the US, then he would face extradition under the controversial UK-US extradition treaty, which provides special measures for extraditions between the two countries.

The MSM continues to fawn over this outrage at Ground Zero to show us common folk how “progressive” they are…Via Pundit Press:NBC and its affiliates have been trounced in ratings over the last several years. With stations like MSNBC under their belt and liberals such as Matt Lauer and Keith Olbermann hosting programs, NBC is clearly disconnected with the average American. Another clear sign of their mismanagement: naming Sharif El-Gamal, developer of the Ground Zero Mosque, one of their “People of the Year.” In an interview set to air on Thanksgiving Day, Matt Lauer sat down with El-Gamal and discussed...

13-year-old Cody Alicea rides with an American flag on the back of his bike. He says he does this to be patriotic and to honor veterans, like his own grandfather, Robert. He's had the flag on his bike for two months but Monday, was asked told to take it down. A school official at Denair Middle School told Cody some students had been complaining about the flag and it was no longer allowed on school property. "In this country we're supposed to be free," said Cody. "And I should be able to wave my flag wherever I want to. And...