Free Republic

Not all that long ago E L James was Snowqueens Icedragon, cranking out her sexed-up "Twilight" fan fiction online. Well, faster than you can shriek your safe word, her kinky "Fifty Shades of Grey" trilogy has fanfic of its very own in the same place where she first serialized her story under a different title.

I have started a new full service small press publishing company call The Stainless Banner Publishing Company. This press is dedicated to the preservation of Southern heritage and history. If you know a writer or have a non-fiction, biography, memoir, novel, or alternate history and are looking for a publisher, I hope you will consider submitting your manuscript to my small press. Let me tell you what The Stainless Banner Publishing Company can offer you: Professional editing Dynamic Covers Hard cover or paperback Competitively priced books High royalties paid monthly Your book on Amazon, Barnes & Nobel and many other...

Anyone out there read Art Robinson's new book entitled "Common Sense in 2012"? I received a draft copy in the mail and think it is very impressive. Any comments welcome.

This is an excellent and much-needed book by a veteran historian. Well-researched and engagingly written, Forged in Faith is a pleasure to read and an indispensable starting point for a clear understanding of the origins and nature of American government and society." —Steven E. Woodworth, author of While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers “No wonder Americans have always proclaimed, ‘In God We Trust!’ Finally—a work of history that skillfully and accurately reveals the extraordinary story of faith and the founding of our nation. This is truly a book ‘for such a time as this.’”...

Just as it did in public statements, Apple's taking a strong stance in its defense against alleged price-fixing actions in concert with major ebook publishers. In US District Court filing yesterday, Apple claimed that "the Government's Complaint against Apple is fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact and law," going on to say that "Apple has not 'conspired' with anyone, was not aware of any alleged 'conspiracy' by others, and never 'fixed prices.'" Apple even acusses the government of "[siding] with monopoly, rather than competition."All in all, it's quite the strenuous defense. Unsurprisingly, Apple claims its entry into the eBook...

Edward Klein’s new book about President Obama, The Amateur, has already made some news, particularly with regard to allegations that an ally of Obama’s offered the odious Reverend Jeremiah Wright a $150,000 bribe to keep his mouth shut during the 2008 presidential campaign. And the title of the book is a quote from Bill Clinton, who was said to be urging his wife to challenge Obama for the Democrat nomination in 2012. That’s pretty sensational stuff, but the media has been studiously ignoring Klein’s book. NewsBusters noted on Tuesday that none of the mainstream media networks have interviewed Klein on...

FP: David Cohen, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Let’s begin with you telling us how it is exactly that you became a conservative without abandoning your liberal ideals. How can it be that conservative policies can be the best way to achieve liberal ideals? Cohen: When I was a liberal, I wanted America to live up to its billing as the Land of Opportunity, with no one being held back because of race, ethnicity, religion or gender. I believed that America’s diversity was its strength. I was concerned about poverty; I wanted poor people to have a genuine shot at realizing...

Sovereign citizens believe the USG is illegitimate and has drifted away from the true intent of the Constitution. As a result, the USG is not perceived to be acting in the interest of the American people. These groups generally do not adhere to federal, state, or local laws. Some sovereign citizens believe federal and state officials have no real authority and will only recognize the local sheriff’s department as the only legitimate government official. Other law enforcement officials are viewed as being oppressive and illegitimate.

Amazing! Get in touch with your roots!, May 17, 2012 By Joshua P. Strodtbeck "fishstik45" (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME) This review is from: Pow Wow Chow: A Collection of Recipes from Families of the Five Civilized Tribes : Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole (Paperback) Some of the recipes in this book are by the nation's most famous Cherokee, Elizabeth Warren, who is 0/32 native on her mother's side. As a fellow 0/32 Cherokee, I have enjoyed getting in touch with my ancestry through some of the delightful recipes Dr. Warren has published, such as...

Paramount and the estate of Mario Puzo have come to an understanding on the release of the long-disputed, Puzo-outlined prequel novel The Family Corleone, after the latter made the studio a mediation offer it couldn't refuse, and other allusions to the movie that will soon follow. After the book detailing Vito Corleone's rise to power in Depression-era New York debuted in bookstores and online last Tuesday, the late author's son revealed that Paramount and the estate had reached a deal "several weeks ago" to put all of its profits in escrow until they can reach an agreement on the publishing...

It has joined the ranks of Doctor Who and Downton Abbey as one of British TV's most successful exports to America. But U.S. fans of Sherlock were left feeling a little short-changed after complaining that eight minutes of one episode has been mysteriously cut from the show. More than 3million viewers, double the prime-time audience average on the PBS network, tuned in this week to watch A Scandal In Belgravia, the episode featuring whip-smart dominatrix Irene Adler. However, some amateur sleuths noticed a missing piece in the puzzle when harking back to the same episode they had watched previously on...

Theft, espionage, corruption and a cover-up lasting decades — a new book by a Times of Israel reporter exposes the extraordinary saga of the uniquely revered, 1,100-year-old Aleppo Codex A new book by a Times of Israel reporter reveals dramatic new information about the fate of a manuscript many consider Judaism’s most important book — the 1,100-year-old Aleppo Codex.The manuscript — or the part of it that did not go mysteriously missing in the mid-20th century — is currently held alongside the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. It is revered as the authoritative version of the Hebrew...

Looking for a good, balanced (read "not leftist") survey of the period, both political/legislative & social/cultural developments.Don't need anything with an agenda on either side.

On the dust jacket of his new book, "The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas," best-selling conservative author and commentator Jonah Goldberg is described as having "twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize." In fact, as Goldberg acknowledged on Tuesday, he has never been a Pulitzer nominee, but is merely one of thousands of entrants.

A rake seduces women and murders their male relatives with impunity until the statue of one of his victims invites him to supper and drags him to hell. It sounds silly, but for two centuries it was the most-favored plot device in Western literature. Don Juan was the invention of Tirso de Molina, a Spanish monk from a family of converted Jews. Concealed in its puppet-theater plot is a Jewish joke: Don Juan exists to prove by construction that a devout Christian can be a sociopath, and by extension, that the Christian world can be ruled by sociopaths. The Enlightenment’s...

Pandora's Box Pandora's box was a poisonous gift given by gods to mankind... but let's start with the beginning. Zeus was terribly mad when the titan Prometheus stole the fire from the gods and gave it to man. That's why he decided to punish all mankind (which, until then, had lived in a state of perpetual bliss and innocence, the Golden Age). He asked Hephaistos to make the woman, out of clay. Until then, there were no women on earth. Hephaistos made her taking as a model the beautiful goddesses, and each god gave her a quality: beauty, grace, manual...

Son of Austrian Chancellor shares fascinating perspective of events in When Hitler Took Austria SAN FRANCISCO, April 12, 2012 /Christian Newswire/ -- In March 1938, Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg found himself under house arrest by invading German troops who stormed the country as part of the Nazi takeover of Europe. Chancellor von Schuschnigg spent time in Gestapo prisons from May 1938 to December 1941, when his wife Vera and daughter Sissi joined him in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Ignatius Press has published the gripping true story of von Schuschnigg as told by his son, who came of age during these...

Quietly strolling between the aisles of books he doesn’t cause much trouble. In fact most of the time he just enjoys a sit, curled up on the chairs, listening to others read. But this visitor of Bungay Library doesn’t have a library card and certainly won’t be taking any books away with him – because he’s a cat. The black cat has been visiting the library, in Wharton Street, for about a year, and library manager Amanda King says he has become a very familiar sight. “It used to live quite locally so it used to pop in and have...

Despite the constant, incessant, pervasive portrayal by the media, schools, and cultural and political elites, that blacks are the eternal victims and white people are unregenerate racist oppressors, there is evidence that the indoctrination and brainwashing have failed. More and more Americans, including young Americans, are just not buying the victimology fairy-tale — not any more.

Here's the pitch: A tough, yet honorable Army vet joins the NYPD, where he is suddenly thrust into the underbelly of rampant police corruption, and, in the dramatic climax, is shot – and nearly killed – exposing the truth. Sounds like it would be an awesome movie, right? Lucky for you, it is. Even luckier? It's a true story. This afternoon (April 24), GAP's American Whistleblower Tour: Essential Voices for Accountability comes to John Jay College with NYPD whistleblower Frank Serpico (i.e. the "tough, yet honorable" cop). This Tour stop is highlighted by a discussion with Serpico about his experience...

At Johns Hopkins, reviving a dying art In 1970, Cynthia Ozick published an essay suggesting that in light of the rapid decline of Yiddish among American Jewry, English could serve as the new language of the Jews: "a language for our need." Ozick has since retracted this opinion-and yet, the issues that drove to her raise the idea remain: What role, if any, does Yiddish still play for Jews in this country? If it can be maintained, in what form? Tamar Nachmany, a junior at Johns Hopkins University has a compelling new answer to these questions in the form of...

Amazon is now the proud owner of North America licensing rights to Ian Fleming's James Bond series. The online company announced yesterday that it now has a 10-year license to sell all 14 of Fleming's classic James Bond titles, including "Casino Royale," "Dr. No," and "The Spy Who Loved Me." The company will start publishing the titles this summer under its mysteries and thrillers imprint, Thomas & Mercer. In addition, Amazon says that it will offer the books in digital form in its Kindle Store.

Listen my children and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,-- One if by land, and two if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the...

BERKELEY — “The Occupy Handbook,” a new publication examining the factors contributing to the Occupy Wall Street movement – as well as where it stands now and where it goes next – contains contributions by leading economic scholars, including UC Berkeley’s own economists Emmanuel Saez, Brad DeLong and Robert Reich. The book hit the bookstore shelves today (Tuesday, April 17). Saez is well known for his work on income inequality; DeLong is an economic historian with one of the most popular blogs dealing with economics and politics; and Reich recently described himself in a blog post as “a class worrier”...

A smattering of Yiddish words has crept into the American vernacular: Non-Jews go for a nosh or schmooze over cocktails. Yet the language itself, once spoken by millions of Jews, is now in retreat. But you don't have to be Jewish to love Yiddish. In Japan, a linguist has toiled quietly for decades to compile the world's first Yiddish-Japanese dictionary — the first time the Jewish language has been translated into a non-European language other than Hebrew. It was in the hills of Kyushu Island in southern Japan where Kazuo Ueda carried out his impressive and quixotic quest, devoting his...

The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) said on Thursday they intended to digitize 1.5 million pages of ancient texts and make them freely available online. The libraries said the digitized collections will centre on three subject areas: Greek manuscripts, 15th-century printed books and Hebrew manuscripts and early printed books. The areas have been chosen for the strength of the collections in both libraries and their importance for scholarship in their respective fields... The initiative has been made possible by a 2 million pound ($3.17 million) award from the Polonsky Foundation. "The service...

In what could only have been a failure in reading comprehension, or the work of an overactive copy editor, Yahoo has just posted an article suggesting that actress Zooey Deschanel left her husband “Death Cab” for “Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard.” While there’s no word on whether Deschanel had been cheating on Mr. Cab, the article goes on to note that “Deschanel and Cab were married for a little more than three years.”

William Boyd, the award-winning and bestselling author of Restless and Any Human Heart, is to write the next James Bond novel. The novel, which is yet to be titled, will be published in the UK and Commonwealth in autumn 2013 by Jonathan Cape - Ian Fleming's original publisher and an imprint of Vintage Publishing - and simultaneously by HarperCollins Publishers in USA & Canada. Rights were sold in the English language by Jonny Geller of Curtis Brown, on behalf of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. William Boyd is the third author in recent years to be invited by the Ian Fleming...

Is it safe to talk about punctuation again? Eight years ago, Lynne Truss’s best-selling “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” took, in the words of her subtitle, a “Zero Tolerance Approach” to the subject. Although Truss’s focus on errors drew the ire, if not the fire, of grammarians, linguists and other “descriptivists,” her book was, for the most part, harmless and legitimate. Still, it overlooked a lot. Maybe more than any other element of writing, punctuation combines rules with issues of sound, preference and personal style. And as Truss didn’t adequately acknowledge, even the rules change over time. The two big players...

Reading Jason Mattera’s book, "Hollywood Hypocrites," made me feel like I was back in grad school, except I was sober this time. The last week has been a graduate seminar in Hollywood Hypocrisy, and reading Mattera's book while paying attention to the recent goings on earned me a masters degree with a minor in Media Irresponsibility. Mattera’s tome takes a slightly differ tack than Ben Shapiro’s "Primetime Propaganda." Where Shapiro, a Harvard-trained lawyer (though you’ll never hear that from him), builds a thorough brief indicting the industry on about 1,000 felony counts of Conspiracy to Impose a Leftwing Narrative, Mattera...

I have been looking for ages for the titles for two movies, and I only have a vague memory of the basic premise or plot: One: a small town, where the sheriff (or mayor) and the whole town are so crooked that they bet on anything, and they end up betting the who treasury on the results of a fight that they go to more and more ridiculous ends to cheat and win. (the word 'dog' in the title?) Two: An old B/W movie where a man and his lover scheme to drive his wife crazy, setting up horrible scenes...

One hundred eight years ago today, the world welcomed Theodor Seuss Geisel, better-known as Dr. Seuss—legendary children's book author, radical ideologist, lover of reading. Among his many creative feats is a fairly unknown, fairly scandalous one: In 1939, when Geisel left Vanguard for Random House, he had one condition for his new publisher, Bennett Cerf—that he would let Geisel do an "adult" book first. The result was The Seven Lady Godivas: The True Facts Concerning History's Barest Family, which tells the story of nudist sisters who, after their father's death, pledge not to wed until each of them has "brought...

"Game of Thrones" Season 2 thread - 9pm EDT HBO. Season 2 begins tonight at 9pm EDT with a reprise at 10pm EDT on HBO.

POPCORN AND A (WORLD)VIEW Julia Roberts plays 'Evil Queen Obama' Exclusive: Drew Zahn says 'Mirror Mirror' reveals who isn't 'fairest of them all' At its heart, “Mirror Mirror” is a fairy tale filled with surprisingly value-affirming morals, lessons that Christians in particular and families of all stripes can appreciate. More subtly, it reflects the antics of certain “bad apples” in government, a lesson particularly poignant in America today. A retelling of the story of “Snow White,” the film is told from the perspective of the evil queen (played by Julia Roberts) who is frustrated at every turn attempting to vanquish...

In 1940, I.I. Rabi, who would win the Nobel Prize four years later and who was already recognized as one of the best physicists in the United States, decided that he wanted to help the war effort. Projects were under way to design nuclear weapons, but Rabi felt that, while they might win the war eventually, without radar to help fight the Luftwaffe the war would be lost in the meantime. Rabi offered his services to Lee DuBridge, the director of the lab at MIT where the radar work was being done. DuBridge, Rabi told me later, "was a bit...

A long-lost medieval cookbook, containing recipes for hedgehogs, blackbirds and even unicorns, has been discovered at the British Library. Professor Brian Trump of the British Medieval Cookbook Project described the find as near-miraculous. "We've been hunting for this book for years. The moment I first set my eyes on it was spine-tingling."

Something just struck me. The demand that Zimmerman be found guilty and punished, before anything resembling a trial or hearing of the facts has been held, greatly resembles other incidents in history and literature. To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, with an excellent movie released in 1962. It tells the story of a black man accused of the rape of a white woman. In it the town and jury, despite strong evidence of the innocence of the accused, closes ranks to convict him. For the simple reason that convicting him, in their minds, served the purpose of a...

Author Harry Crews, a hell-raiser and cult favorite whose hard and crazy times inspired his brutal tales of the rural South, died Wednesday in Gainesville, Fla. He was 76 and had suffered from neuropathy, said his ex-wife, Sally Ellis Crews.

James Arruda Henry had plenty to be proud of as a lobster boat captain who managed to build his own house and raise a family. But he kept a secret into his 90s, one that forced him to bluff his way through life by day and brought tears at night. Henry was illiterate. He couldn't even read restaurant menus; he'd wait for someone else to place an order and get the same food. Sometimes he'd go hungry rather than ask for help. Most of his family was none the wiser. Now he's 98, and his self-published collection of autobiographical essays...

Here's my latest fiction review. In the interest of full disclosure, it was recommended to me by the author, who also happens to be a fellow member of FR. I’ve been reading indie novels lately, so it fit right in with my kindle bookshelf. 28 Pages is a political thriller that deals with a lawyer trying to find her sister’s killers. The villains are Saudi diplomats, which is unique and definitely grabbed my attention. It’s a combo of The Pelican Brief by Grisham and Saving Faith by David Baldacci, but with themes of jihad, Wahhabism, Sharia and Saudi conspiracies. I...

NEW YORK: A Pakistani journalist cautions that Pakistan is heading towards anarchy in his new book that offers solutions for his country’s frayed ties with the United States (US) and how the US peace talks with the Taliban are crucial in its exit strategy from Afghanistan. The writer, Ahmed Rashid, gives a dire assessment of the region he has reported on for more than 30 years in Pakistan On The Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan released in the US this week. In his fifth book, the Lahore-based prize-winning journalist says he fears Pakistan is on the verge...

Listen to any discussion about education. The main thing you will hear is confusion. Everyone has a theory. No one has a compelling answer. Worse than that, many of the supposed issues and their solutions are irrelevant distractions. They prevent everyone from focusing on what is really important. Let’s first consider what might be called The World According to Bill Gates and the Education Establishment. Their answers tend to be financial, administrative, bureaucratic, psychological, and even ideological. Here  are a few of their many buzzwords: school size, class size, unions, tenure, charter schools, teacher accountability, vouchers, alternative assessment, equity, teaching...

Reviewing Barbara W. Tuchman: The Guns of August, The Proud Tower in the Times Literary Supplement recently, Robert Zaretsky noted that one of the ways to assess the aims and success of her 1962 Pulitzer prize–winning book is to consider “its influence on a man whose job it was to respond to present pressures: President Kennedy." Much has been made of the influence The Guns of August had on Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis—and for good reason. Kennedy himself made a point of referring repeatedly to the lessons of Tuchman’s book (which had been published just a few months...

“The Hunger Games” by Susan Collins makes it to the big screen this week, meaning the audience made aware of the book’s dystopian sentiments is bound to expand from its already more than 23.5 million copies sold. -- snip The message board for “independent, grass-roots conservatism,” Free Republic,” also has a discussion on the ultimate political goal of the book. One commenter writes, “I‘ve heard some conservatives claiming that it’s a politically conservative message, but I’m not convinced.” Here are some of the responses: Onelifetogive: The first two seem to have(at least) an anti-big-govt bent. Those opposing the big-govt are...

Michonne’s gory Walking Dead backstory revealed in the latest issue of Playboy Stoic, sword-wielding Michonne is one of the greatest characters in The Walking Dead comic series, but before the zombie apocalypse, she was an ordinary lawyer who used swords for fencing rather than chopping off limbs. The new issue of Playboy features a six-page comic that reveals the precise moment Michonne became a badass. Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard made the short comic "Michonne's Story" for the April 2012 issue of Playboy, which just came out yesterday. It's a quick trip down memory lane with a very different Michonne,...

The minister of culture and tourism on Thursday confirmed media reports suggesting that a 1,500-year-old Bible that was discovered by Turkish police during an anti-smuggling operation in 2000 is being kept in Ankara today. According to media reports on Thursday, the Bible was seized from a gang smuggling artifacts during a police operation in southern Turkey in 2010 and reportedly preserves its originality and many traces of the period in which it originated. The gang was reportedly convicted of smuggling various items seized during the operation, including the Bible, and all the artifacts were kept in a safe at an...

What's the secret to getting sober and repairing the other broken parts of an alcoholic's life? It starts with setting your own terms, writes Paul Carr.For years I'd told myself I wasn't an alcoholic. I never drank alone. I didn't wake up with fierce cravings, and sometimes I went for one or two days without drinking. A need to drink all day, every day, was never my problem. My problem was that once I had a drink—whether it was at 7 p.m. or 9 a.m.—I couldn't stop until my body shut down and I passed out in a pile on...

Nationally syndicated talk radio host, Mark Levin, presents his thoughts on the current state of politics in America, specifically the idea of utopianism. The author contends that such a state is untenable and hurts society and the individual. Mark Levin speaks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

Author explores the global goodness of nature’s beloved cloveThe outrageous success of Twilight in recent years has resulted in authors pitching every kind of vampire-riffing book they can think of, from teen romance to paranormal thrillers. Liz Primeau went another way: She wrote a book about garlic. The bulb went off, so to speak, for Primeau in 2009 — but not because of garlic’s folkloric ability to repel vampires. “China dumped on us, flooding the market with cheap low-quality garlic and undercutting local agriculture,” the author recalls. “When I read that, that was sort of the finishing touch. I’ve been...

Go up to Scott Shepherd and ask him to begin reciting from, say, the beginning of Chapter Seven of "The Great Gatsby" and he pauses for only a moment. "'It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night,'" he says in a soft and smooth delivery. Every word is correct. And he keeps going. This is no mere party trick: Shepherd long ago memorized all 49,000 words of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel as part of a critically acclaimed, word-for-word theatrical adaptation called "Gatz," which has returned...