Free Republic

The anti-war movement was all over the news before President Obama was elected. But apparently they weren’t really anti-war ... they were just anti-President Bush. Two college professors just released a study of national protests between 2007 and 2009. What did they find? … After January 2007, the attendance at antiwar rallies [measured in] roughly the tens of thousands, or thousands, through the end of 2008. … After the election of Barack Obama as president, the order of magnitude of antiwar protests dropped [...] Organizers were hard pressed to stage a rally with participation in the thousands, or even in...

After some quiet time following last year’s departure of union bosses Andy Stern and Anna Burger, it appears the purple behemoth known as Service Employees International Union, has been quietly plotting its own Egyptian-style revolution. Given the ever-shrinking private-sector union membership ranks, as well as the realization that its political influence has shrunk as well, the SEIU’s plan is apparently to engage in a class-warfare based campaign. According to a Politico piece, SEIU’s plan (called “Fight for a Fair Economy”) and will reach outside the union movement in order to “mobilizing underpaid, underemployed and unemployed workers” and “channeling anger about...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Since 2003, the antiwar movement in the United States has had much to protest with Americans fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya, but the movement—which has dropped off sharply the past two years—may be more anti-Republican than antiwar, says a University of Michigan researcher. A new study by U-M's Michael Heaney and colleague Fabio Rojas of Indiana University shows that the antiwar movement in the United States demobilized as Democrats, who had been motivated to participate by anti-Republican sentiments, withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success, first with Congress in 2006 and then...

"No blood for oil" was a popular slogan chanted by the left in opposition to President George W. Bush's push to send U.S. forces into Iraq. Now that President Obama has authorized Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya, I have been waiting to hear chants of "no blood for oil." I am happy to report, I don't hear them. I went to the No Blood For Oil website; its lead item opposes efforts to strike wolves from the endangered species list. In fact, as NATO forces are lobbing missiles to enforce a no-fly zone over the country with Africa's largest oil...

In 2008, Democratic voters had their pick of many candidates for president -- from Hillary Clinton to John Edwards to Joe Biden. Why did they choose Barack Obama? After all, he had less experience in office than many of his rivals. He was not as well-known. He had the potential electoral liability of being black. No one knew if he was tough enough to stand up to Republican assaults in a nasty campaign. So what accounts for his success? More than any other reason, he won because he had opposed the invasion of Iraq -- which Clinton and others had...

Cal Thomas reminds us this morning of a very different period in President Obama's career: Instead of Saddam Hussein, Obama is going after Gadhafi. Is this the same man who delivered a stem-winding, anti-Iraq war speech almost nine years ago in Chicago when he was a state senator? Here is the full text of the speech delivered by Barack Obama, Illinois State Senator, at a Chicago anti-Iraq war rally as President Bush and Congress announced their agreement on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War: Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an...

Thanks to the helpful feedback I have received over these past two, or so, years, I have seen the enormous error of my ways. I used to be against ALL wars and the use of violence, but (and I must admit a little confusion on this one, at first) now it seems that I am against wars, acts of war, and violence ONLY if a Republican is president. Now I understand with perfect clarity that it was good to protest Bush—and if the US-UN resolution against Libya was done when Bush was president, it would have been wrong—but now it’s...

So three or four of Obama's advisers, all women, wanted war against Libya.   We'd like to think that women in power would somehow be less prowar, but in the Obama administration at least it appears that the bellicosity is worst among Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power. All three are liberal interventionists, and all three seem to believe that when the United States exercises military force it has some profound, moral, life-saving character to it. Far from it.

A Communication from Operation:Countertroll to Ann Althouse and “Meade” Because of their extensive, lifelong, union freeloading (Althouse, the breadwinner of their pathetic, sexual-frustration driven “family” is an AAUP freeloader, a public sectorsecondary education freeloader, a University of Michigan freeloader, a University of Colorado freeloader and, most disgustingly to us, a University of Wisconsin Freeloader),their movement freeloading (they have greatly enhanced their reputation and socialcurrency both within her nauseating Tory brotherhood they represent and across theinternet by wandering around Madison lying about all they see) their repeated lies andgeneral commitment to irresponsible citizen-journalism (how dare they sneak around anongoing citizen protest...

Working people are under assault and the assault will continue until we put an end to it. The protests at the Capitol are showing what working people are made of. That’s the idea behind the Madison Labor Notes Troublemakers School. How do we build on the protests, protect what we have--and lay the foundation to fight for more? Led by experienced labor activists, our workshops will explore strategies to fight back and give you the hands-on skills to make it happen. The idea is not just to talk about problems for a day and then go home, but to come...

The Rotunda continues to fill up as the 4pm deadline approaches. The Ustream video showed an almost empty Rotunda 35 minutes ago. Now the Rotunda is packed.

A prominent conservative activist group has given Ron Paul the boot. The Young Americans for Freedom has voted the Texas congressman off its national advisory board in the aftermath of his straw poll win at CPAC over his positions on national security issues. Continue Reading "It's a sad day in American history when a one-time conservative/libertarian stalwart has fallen more out of touch with America's needs for national security then our current socialist presidential regime," said the group's national director Jordan Marks. The dispute between Paul and the the group seems to stem from Paul's anti-war activities and the prominence...

Even as President Obama maintains close to 50,000 troops in Iraq and continues to escalate and expandthe war in Afghanistan, the antiwar movement in America continues to shrink (PDF). So, what happened? Reason.tv visited two antiwar protests—one left-leaning, one libertarian—in an attempt to answer that question. Author and historian Thaddeus Russell and Reason Senior Editor Brian Doherty also weigh in. War, it seems, is a bipartisan venture, which is reflected by the fact that Democrats have a favorable view of Obama’s foreign policy, despite its remarkable similarity to George W. Bush’s foreign policy. And though there have been rumblings of...

George W. Bush says Harry Reid badly irritated him due to his anti-war statement about Iraq. Appearing on Fox and Friends yesterday as part of his publicity stop for "Decision Points," Bush was asked about a notorious quote of anti-war defeatism that Reid had blurted out just when the former president was about to authorize the Surge strategy in Iraq. Looking at Brian Kilmeade intensely, Bush revealed that the comments by Reid—where he infamously stated that the Iraq war was lost and the Surge wouldn’t accomplish anything—irritated him a tremendous amount. He also chastised Reid for not voicing a mere...

President Obama imagines a world without nuclear weapons, but he does nothing while fanatics in Iran build nukes. On the contrary, Obama reversed longstanding U.S. policy, promising not to retaliate with nuclear weapons against an attack using chemical or biological weapons. We do not have chemical or biological weapons, so the threat of nuclear retaliation was the most effective deterrent we had. What is the result of Obama’s peaceful imaginings? He made chemical or biological attacks more likely, while doing nothing about the ongoing nuclear threat. Liberals confuse imagining something good with actually doing something good. In this, liberals resemble...

MINNEAPOLIS — Protesters gathered outside FBI offices in Minneapolis and Chicago, bearing signs and shouting chants condemning the agency's searches of anti-war activists in both cities. About 150 people protested in Minneapolis on Monday, holding signs reading: "Stop FBI harassment. Opposing war is not a crime." Roughly 120 people marched in Chicago. Search warrants had indicated investigators were looking for connections between the anti-war activists and radical groups in Colombia and the Middle East.

Note: Photo included, Wanted poster included, audio file and transcript include, and a link to America's Most Wanted included. (See below.) # Note: The following text (minus the photos) is a quote: Headline Archives The aftermath of the attack on Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin 40 years ago this week. TERROR AT STERLING HALL 40 Years Later, Fugitive Search Continues 08/23/10 Where is Leo Burt? You can earn up to $150,000 by helping us find him. Forty years ago—on August 24, 1970—Burt and three other young men protesting the Vietnam War carried out a pre-dawn bomb attack at...

Politics: Retailer Target found itself in the bull's-eye of a boycott over its donation to a pro-business group that MoveOn.org claims is anti-gay. Target said sorry, but MoveOn won't stop. So what's the real agenda here? Already something smells funny with the leftist radicals of MoveOn.org. The group, which claims to be member-run and grass roots, seems to have full-blown rebellion on its hands over its nonstop boycott of and harassment campaign against Target Corp. Last month, the Minneapolis-based retailing giant donated $100,000 to a pro-business group called MN Forward. MN Forward in turn donated some of its cash to...

In 2008 they barricaded the recruiting office in Berkeley with the blessing of the Berkeley City Council. We at Move America Forward had all we could stomach when we heard them tell the Marines they were unwelcome, unwanted intruders, not in Iraq or Afghanistan but on American soil in Berkeley, California. Americans from across the nation joined us in Berkeley to counter-protest these anti-war hippies. Numerous times they told me they support the troops but not the war, yet over and over when I asked if they had sent care packages, phone cards, written letters, or helped the families left...

Sen. Carl Levin was hit in the face with a pie this morning at a question-and-answer session on what should've been friendly ground in Big Rapids. The Democrat from Detroit was speaking to members of the Mecosta County Democratic Party when a young man -- who described himself as a student -- began chastising Levin for his work on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which helps direct military and war policy. After a few minutes of speaking at Pepper's Café and Deli, a woman who accompanied the student to the event walked up to Levin and hit him in the...