Free Republic

Late last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took what is being called "the final step" towards implementing their illegal Net Neutrality regulations. You may recall, that back on December 21, the FCC bypassed government regulations and seized control of the Internet -- delivering what many believe is a knockout blow to one of the last, great free-market frontiers our nation and the world has ever seen. According to the organization Less Government, regardless of a multiple lawsuits, a move by the House of Representatives and a D.C. Circuit Court unanimously ruling that the FCC had no authority to take...

As a way to solve the national debt crisis, North Carolina Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue recommends suspending Congressional elections for the next couple of years. “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue said at a rotary club event in Cary, North Carolina, according to the Raleigh News and Observer. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.” Perdue said she thinks that temporarily halting elections would allow members...

In the weeks during and since the debt-ceiling debate, the media, pushed by the Democratic Party, has peddled the propaganda that our government is broken -- because the Republicans in the House of Representatives negotiated a better deal than the liberals wanted. snip Abraham Lincoln could have been thinking of Thomas Friedman when he worried out loud in the Gettysburg Address whether any nation "conceived in liberty...could long endure." Lincoln then called the nation to the "unfinished work" of maintaining a nation "of the people, by the people and for the people." That work goes on today.

He goes into this at about 15 minutes into the video. You need to hear these people. The text does *NOT* do it justice. This is what danger we are in. Obama's La Raza speech And I promise you, we are responding to your concerns and working every day to make sure we are enforcing flawed laws in the most humane and best possible way. Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. (Applause.) And believe me, right now dealing with Congress -- AUDIENCE: Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes,...

But I’ve learned, by participating in over a decade of specific media struggles, that when you are in the short-term and you are fighting to win, sometimes you make tactical alliances. You don’t sacrifice your principles and embrace someone else’s lame political agenda. If you want to win public credibility and advance a progressive media agenda that actually has a broad impact, this is what you do. That is how politics works. Most progressives understand this. But there is always going to be those who say: “here is a checklist of seven-hundred points that we think reflect the ideological foundations...

A standoff between public interest groups and Verizon Wireless could determine whether many consumers can use their smartphone as a modem for a laptop or tablet — or whether they’ll have to pony up for an aircard or separate wireless plan instead. Consumer advocates say Verizon has violated its license agreement to operate over a valuable chunk of public airwaves known as the C-Block. According to (soros funded)Free Press and (soros funded)Public Knowledge, Verizon has asked Google to block third-party applications on Android phones that allow “tethering,” or using a smartphone to connect to the Internet on another device such...

For unsurprising reasons, the people's uprising in Egypt has been widely cast as an epochal event for Arab political culture, and somewhat more widely, for the entire Middle East. To limit our understanding of these events in this way, however, is to lose sight of a story playing out against an immensely larger backdrop. The putative and much discussed decline of the United States in recent years has been cast against the perceived successes, or at least the argued attractiveness, of an authoritarian other. It is hard, though, to overstate the difficulties of spinning the Egypt situation from the perspective...

Kirksville, Mo. — A report of an armed man acting erratically in the Wal-Mart parking lot Wednesday led to the store being temporarily locked down before Kirksville Police responded to and diffused the situation with no injuries. According to Kirksville Police Chief Jim Hughes, a passerby stopped a Kirksville Police officer and said they had seen an individual acting erratically in a truck in the Wal-Mart parking lot shortly before 2:30 p.m. The passerby believed the individual had a gun to his head. "We don't take these things lightly," Hughes said, "especially nowadays." KPD responded to control the scene and...

In a book called When the War Ends. The Road We Are Traveling, 1914 1942. Stuart Chase wrote this, free enterprise into X. He said many more studies will be needed before the mystery is cleared up, but we have something called X which is displacing the system of free enterprise all over the world. We don't know yet what to call it. We can describe its major characteristics. Got it? He said there's something called X. We could call it communism, we could call it fascism, we could call it state capitalism. But he said we don't really know...

As we continue to tumble down the road to economic ruin, security vulnerability, and reduced health care benefits, things become "curiouser and curiouser." While President Obama speedily demands that General McChrystal zoom home to be dismissed from his post, the frustrated Gulf residents still cannot get all the equipment and assistance that they need to hold back the oil that is wrecking their homes and their livelihoods. Thus, one wonders as Alice in Wonderland did, "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,"...

NEW YORK – President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, argued certain forms of speech that promote "racial or gender inequality" could be "disappeared." In her few academic papers, Kagan evidences strong beliefs for court intervention in speech, going so far as to posit First Amendment speech should be weighed against "societal costs.”

Sources: Pelosi, Dems lock up 218 By PATRICK O'CONNOR & JOHN BRESNAHAN & JONATHAN ALLEN | 11/7/09 7:16 PM EST POLITICO 44 Hours before an expected vote on a sweeping health care bill, House Democrats believe they've secured the 218 votes they need to approve the bill, several party insiders said. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to the House floor about 6:30 p.m. to say, “Today we will pass the Affordable Health Care for America Act.. . .We will make history. We will also make progress for America's working families." In response to a question about whether the bill would...

Kabul (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The latest threats issued by the Taliban to disrupt next Thursday’s presidential election include “suicide attacks against polling stations” and cutting off “noses and ears of those who vote”, this according to leaflets left in the southern part of the country, but also to a lesser extent in Kabul. Equally attacks have been stepped up against the military but especially the civilian population. “We are using new tactics targeting election centres,” Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said.

"The quickest way to end a war is to lose it". - George Orwell Monoculture is a term that has been freighted with a lot of baggage, mostly negative. The origin of this compound word is usually traced to agriculture where it is used to describe a farm or a farming community that relies on a single crop. Tobacco, cotton, sugar, and now corn, are examples. The advantages of monoculture farming are obvious; seed, soil, water and equipment requirements are uniform. Yet standardization has a down side. Uniformity makes crops vulnerable to a single pathogen or pest; and the soil,...

Excerpt: "The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving federal bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report about some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Under normal circumstances, these young Taiwanese professionals would be doing just what about any other people their age would do on a Saturday afternoon: rest, or go shopping. But for the three or four sitting at the table sipping cappuccinos and smoking cigarettes, shopping is the last thing on their mind. It’s only a couple of days before the arrival of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yulin (陳雲林) and already their anxiety is palpable. Like many others this past week, they are planning on demonstrating his presence in Taiwan, as well as the Ma...

 Saudi Cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid Slams Beijing Olympics: Nothing Makes Satan Happier Than The 'Bikini' Olympics Sheikh Muhammad Al-Munajid is a well-known Saudi Islamic lecturer and author. He frequently appears on Saudi TV channels and is known for issuing controversial fatwas. He previously worked in Washington, D.C. at the Saudi Embassy Islamic Affairs Department but was stripped of his diplomatic credentials. [1] In an August 10, 2008 interview with Al-Majd TV, Al-Munajid was highly critical of the Beijing Olympics, which he called the "bikini Olympics," referring to them as "satanic." Al-Munajid is known for his criticism of other sporting events....

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, democracy was on the march and we declared the End of History. Nearly two decades later, a neo-imperialist Russia is at war with Georgia, Communist China is proudly hosting the Olympics, and we find that, instead, we have entered the Age of Authoritarianism. It is worth recalling how different we thought the future would be in the immediate, happy aftermath of the end of the cold war. Remember Francis Fukuyama’s ringing assertion: “The triumph of the west, of the western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives...

You might have thought the demented Americans with Disabilities Act — a bonanza for lawyers that requires any public facility to be designed with handicappers in mind or be sued out of existence — would be the last word in otherly-abled totalitarianism. Not so. Visitability is a concept that makes the ADA downright libertarian by comparison. The initial objective of Visitability proponents is to impose on every home a zero-step entrance, interior doors at least 32" wide, and at least one wheelchair-accessible bathroom on the ground floor. Once they've managed to have this mandated, we'll see where they go from...

I think he meant it as a compliment. But Bill Clinton's praise for his wife should send chills down the spine of people who like to live their own lives, thank you very much. And it reinforces the image of Hillary as a big-government busybody, an It Takes a Villager, a smarty-pantssuit who wants to lean over your shoulder and kibitz on every decision you make. Bill made his comments while campaigning recently for Hillary in West Virginia. If he had made the remark once, it might be written off as a slip of the tongue. But as per this...

There's a nostalgic quality to the angry demonstrations that have greeted the arrival of the Olympic flame in Europe and the United States this week. For some time now the modern wisdom that has brought young malcontents on to the streets of London, Paris and San Francisco has held the US and its dependable ally Britain to be the root of all evil. Governments from Beijing to Caracas could trample their citizens into the ground and you wouldn't fill a telephone box with people upset about it. But call for the heads of the warmongers Bush and Blair and a...

There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it's perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, who in 2003 forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing Advil in her crotch or cleavage. It also includes two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, who last fall ruled that the strip search did not...

Back to Socialism in Central Europe by Bill Steigerwald Posted Dec 04, 2006 Central Europe's four-pack of liberated former Soviet colonies -- Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic -- have been drifting away from free markets and democracy and back toward socialism and authoritarianism. According to Marian L. Tupy, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute, Central Europe's liberal political parties (i.e., free market parties) have been losing out at the polls to populist parties that combine left-wing economics with right-wing social attitudes. I talked to Tupy, who has an article about the rise of illiberalism in Central Europe...

No opinion pieces having particularly incited my ire at my normal haunts of the NY Times, LA Times or Boston Globe this morning, I ventured over to the Huffington Post, and found this beauty by Cliff Schecter, "Are You Psychotic? Because Empirically That Makes You Susceptible To Being A Republican."It in turn touted a study by a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University purporting to find that there exists "a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush."And how does the study's author explain the results? “If your world is very mixed up, there’s something...

LIKE a modern tsar, President Putin held court with ordinary Russians yesterday in a question and answer session that underlined his total dominance of the country’s political life.Mr Putin insisted that he would step down at the end of his second term in office in 2008 but made it clear that, like a tsar, he would retain influence for as long as possible. He offered no clue as to his preferred successor in the Kremlin. Mr Putin, 54, is wildly popular with the public but is barred by the Constitution from seeking a third term as President. One poll this...

Welcome to The Political Compass™. There's abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left', established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape. For example, who are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher ? On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental...

Russia is growing, and so are the shadows that are cast over the business proceedings there. The bureaucracy is still extremely burdensome and growing. And laws are a matter of convenience and seemingly circumvented at will -- or at least when you have the right connections. Corruption and middlemen are a matter of course, and bribes are expected and given. Confiscation of private goods -- i.e., Motorola's ongoing fiasco -- and resale for profit is old news. Legitimate dealings are called smuggling. And smuggling is called smuggling. Russian law allows confiscated material in criminal investigations to be sold or destroyed...

Unveiling the Truth About IslamToo many Christian books miss the mark. by Warren Larson Ever since September 11, 2001, I have seen a sharp increase in books about Islam by American evangelicals. Even if the titles do not include the word "unveil," most attempt to expose Islam for its theological, historical, and moral shortcomings. According to Richard Cimino of the New School for Social Research, evangelical attitudes toward Islam have hardened since the attacks, positing that Islam is an essentially violent religion. Responses to the cartoons depicting Muhammad in parts of the Muslim world have only strengthened such perceptions.Unfortunately, too...

Do not condemn Putin out of hand By Anatol Lieven Published: February 28 2006 02:00 | Last updated: February 28 2006 02:00 A measure of western hostility to Russia is justified, given both the nature of Russian external policies and the crude, clumsy way in which they are often executed. Unfortunately, this hostility can take on an irrational and hysterical tone absent from western attitudes to China, for example. In recent years one reason for this particular western attitude has been growing dislike of the semi-authoritarian character of the Putin administration. A good deal of hypocrisy is involved here.

A Venezuelan court has sentenced one of the most prominent leaders of the opposition to 15 years in prison. Carlos Ortega, who once led powerful trade unions, was found guilty of inciting civil unrest during a strike that began in late 2002. The two-month strike paralysed Venezuela's vital oil industry. Ortega said the verdict was politically motivated, and his lawyers immediately announced an appeal. Ortega was arrested in the capital, Caracas, in March. He was found in possession of identity papers with an assumed name, a police official said earlier. Family members said Ortega secretly returned to Venezuela in last...

KIEV, November 8 (Itar-Tass) -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has dismissed the governors of the Lugansk and Zaporozhye regions – Alexey Danilov and Yuri Artyomenko, presidential press-secretary Irina Gerashchenko has said. According to the official the governors have been moved to new positions in the executive bodies of power. Both Artyomenko and Danilov were appointed on February 4. More personnel reshuffles are likely after the Cabinet on Wednesday reviews the performance of regional and central executive bodies of power over the past nine months. As he previewed forthcoming personnel changes, Yushchenko said that there would be no purges. The dismissed...

In his first term in office, President George W. Bush established and nurtured a close personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin. Early on, Bush’s overtures toward his counterpart in the Kremlin produced beneficial results for the president’s policies. President Bush succeeded in persuading Putin to acquiesce in the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a revision of the Cold War arms-control regime that Bush deemed necessary for his security agenda. After the attacks of September 11, Putin sided publicly and unequivocally with the United States in the war on terror, providing material and intelligence assistance to the American military intervention...

SACRAMENTO — Bucking dire predictions by anti-drug warriors, the 10 states that approved medical marijuana laws over the last decade have experienced sharp declines in cannabis use among teenagers, according to a new study by a marijuana advocacy group. California has seen usage among ninth-graders drop 47% since 1996, the year the state became the nation's first to legalize medical marijuana. Over the same period, the nation as a whole experienced a 43% decline among eighth-graders. The study, released today, is based on data from national and state surveys, which show a drop in marijuana use by teens.

PERHAPS I shouldn't have been surprised at my reception last week at a Lakewood, Ohio, hearing on banning smoking in restaurants and bars. Such events tend to bring out the penny-ante dictators. After all, when customers can readily find smoke-free facilities and nobody's forced to take a job, such bans are inherently authoritarian. But these people made Mussolini look like freedom's friend. The nine-member commission appointed to advise the city council on the ban originally arranged to have six witnesses testify. Three for and three against, right? Try six for and zero against. Then they relented and deigned to allow...

NO2ID NEWSLETTER - Supporter's Newsletter No.15 - 17th February 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------- +++ Stop ID-cards and the database state This is the latest email newsletter to keep you informed about the campaign against the Home Office's plans to fingerprint and track the entire population of Britain for its National Identity Register. As soon as practicable the NO2ID Newsletter will also be produced in printed form to let us reach people without email. Meanwhile, if you want to forward this email to friends or print and distribute hard copies, then we have no objections. You've been sent this (if you are a...

Blunkett quits as home secretary David Blunkett has quit as home secretary following a string of newspaper claims that he fast-tracked a visa for his ex-lover's nanny. Mr Blunkett denies the claims but has faced increasing pressure in recent days from members of his own party. His position became more uncertain after he criticised a string of Cabinet colleagues in a new biography. The BBC's Mark Mardell said the withdrawal of support by Labour colleagues delivered the final blow.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government renewed its call on Monday for Americans to leave Saudi Arabia after the recent terrorist attacks, saying the safety of U.S. workers was more important than any effect on oil supplies or the Saudi economy. An estimated 35,000 Americans have been working in Saudi Arabia and it was unclear how many have left since the increase in attacks, which have come at the same time the Bush administration has been pressing the Saudis to boost oil production to help lower gas prices in the United States. Referring to U.S. workers in Saudi Arabia, State...

Dyab Abou Jahjah's Arab European League calls for sharia law, celebrates 9/11 and warned Belgian Jews to break with Israel or else. Is he defending Muslims' civil rights -- or inciting hatred?

Directly on the heels of news that the House of Saud has decided to crack down on one of its most notorious "charities" comes news that a freshly released poll shows that nearly half of Saudis support the views and propaganda of Osama bin Laden. Which means that even if the Saudi government does finally do something about the petrodollar pipeline that feeds Islamic terrorists -- because this time they "really mean it" -- Saudi cash will still be responsible for most terrorism around the world. Just look at the survey.

Last fall, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, a federally funded agency chartered to spread liberty around the world, President George W. Bush delivered a speech holding out some "essential principles" as "common to every successful society in every culture." The first of these, the President declared, is that "successful societies limit the power of the state and the power of the military so that governments respond to the will of the people and not the will of the elite." That was what America had learned in its 200-year "journey" on the road...

The Two Boots of Authoritarianism By Gary Lloyd "When the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence." Mainstream political pundits waste endless amounts of time and effort condemning, criticizing, and categorizing one political movement or another as right-wing or left-wing.  The merits (or otherwise) of one "wing" over another are a point of never-ending obsession with reporters, academics, and similar self-proclaimed experts. Supposedly, right-wingers are "for" the elitists and trend toward fascism: top-down control over an oppressed and helpless common people who are prevented from reaching their...

<p>HANOI — If you took a large beehive, shook it, and then watched the bees fly out in droves, you would have an idea of the traffic in today's Hanoi.</p> <p>Along with ubiquitous construction sites and humming commercial districts, the thousands of mopeds that clog the streets — some carrying families of three or more — represent a thriving informal sector that has helped make this Asia's second fastest-growing economy after China.</p>

As many of you folks know, I used to be a John Bircher. I just followed a link to an article on the recent death of Dan Smoot and found another one of "those" sites--you know the kind--that pictures President Bush as a sort of Mao Tse-tung-style dictator and that prattles endlessly on and on about "liberty" and how America is a "police state" (along with loads of attacks on Israel and citations of anti-Israel UN resolutions, of course). Now here's what I want to know and this is not a rhetorical question. I recently did a web search on...

In 1972, a renowned and insightful libertarian economist of the Austrian School and a former associate of Ayn Rand, Dr. Murray Rothbard (1926-1995), composed a purported analysis of the “cult dynamics” of Ayn Rand’s personal associations wherein he compared the early development of Objectivism to a Soviet-like hierarchy of unquestioned subordination and an essentially religious acceptance on faith of the positions upheld by a master “guru.” While Rothbard does validly pinpoint some of the foibles which lay within even so ingenious, industrious, and intellectually colossal mind as Rand’s, his exposition should by no means be interpreted as a refutation of...

This essay is the eighth in a series designed to dissect the totalitarian mentality portrayed in George Orwell's 1984 and to draw parallels to trends in modern academia and the socipolitical arena of today. The following is an index of previous portions of this commentary: 1. Collectivism: http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Collectivism.html 2. Antiprogressivism: http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Orwells_Warning.html 3. Relativism: http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Relativism.html 4. Doublethink: http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Doublethink.html 5. Popular Culture: http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Popular_Culture.html 6. Newspeak: http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Newspeak.html 7. Vaporization: http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Vaporization.html 8. The Origin of Tyranny - You are here. Read on to continue your analysis of this topic. The Party had first manifested itself in Oceania following a hypothetical massive armed conflict between...

This essay is the fourth in a series designed to dissect the totalitarian mentality portrayed in George Orwell's 1984 and to draw parallels to trends in modern academia and the socipolitical arena of today. The following is an index of previous portions of this commentary: 1. Collectivism: http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Collectivism.html 2. Antiprogressivism: http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Orwells_Warning.html 3. Relativism: http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Relativism.html 4. Doublethink - You are here. Read on to continue your analysis of this topic. It is apparent at present that the fallacy of relativism is littered with assertions of infantile naïveté and a complete disregard for man's welfare. Relativism, evaluated from the perspective of logic,...

Liberals used to accuse me of being an extremist radical right-wing superpatriotic cold warrior. I didn’t exactly enjoy having these labels slapped on me, particularly by Mom, but at least I could understand why some people used them. They were a caricature, which is an exaggeration of real features. Lately, though, I’ve been called some unflattering names by people I used to think of as my fellow conservatives. One, a radio talk-show host, has gone so far as to call me “anti-American.” How did I go from being superpatriotic to being anti-American, or even, as some have called me, “treasonous”?...

Thought for the day If you believe in a truly libertarian society, your only way to success is in working to build a society based upon traditional morality, shame and chastity. Contradictory? Actually, no. Given a little examination, it turns out to be rather obvious; almost self-evidently true. If you want to live in a country where every man supports himself rather than looking to the taxpayer, where crime is rare and so massive police powers, ID cards and DNA databases are superfluous, you will not do so on the back of the destructive policies of social liberalism. Libertarians traditionally...

When I was growing up, the word ''patriotic'' made me cringe. No, my parents weren't communists; they were devout anticommunists living in the Soviet Union. Patriotism, to me, meant allegiance to the Soviet regime - which, with the help of my parents, of banned literature we had in our home, and of equally forbidden foreign radio broadcasts, I had come to regard as tyrannical and profoundly evil before I had reached my teenage years. I loathed and despised the ''patriotic'' poems, songs, slogans, and rituals extolling the glories of communism and of ''Soviet power'' that were continually shoved down my...

I would enjoy some opinions and criticisms of this. I have written it and am looking to develop the argument further. What are your opinions and what do you believe should be brought up in this essay? Thank you. ------------------------------------------ Authoritarian Conservatism? Is Conservatism Authoritarian? I think not, but there are those who claim it is. I offer this definition of “authoritarian”: “of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority.” Conservatism does not “favor” this at all. The leaders of the Conservative movement – Messrs. Buckley, Kirk, Meyer, et al – vigorously refuted the supposed authoritarianism of Conservatism when...