Free Republic

Yesterday, in response to one of the many brouhahas that CPAC seems always to invite, Brent Bozell issued the following statement: The invitation extended by the ACU, Al Cardenas and CPAC to American Atheists to have a booth is more than an attack on conservative principles. It is an attack on God Himself. American Atheists is an organization devoted to the hatred of God. How on earth could CPAC, or the ACU and its board of directors, and Al Cardenas condone such an atrocity? The particular merits of the American Atheists group to one side, this is a rather astounding...

Snowbound today, so it's time for a new "new music" thread. As before, I'll kick it off with three bands primarily active in the 21st century, and welcome any and all feedback (except as mentioned below).This will be a continuing series of posts, every month or so. If you want to be pinged, please freepmail me.If you think all this sucks and would rather listen to Zep or the Stones, I've already heard from you - please feel to start your own thread!!Dropkick Murphys - They've been described as the love child of the Pogues and AC/DC, I think that's...

The recent commutation by President Obama of eight lengthy individual sentences for drug abuse is a tiny but significant gesture, as America’s long indulgence, spiked intermittently into passionate support, for draconian hypocrisy in its failed War on Drugs yields grudgingly to the forces of reason and decency. This follows the reduction in the disparity of sentences for crack as opposed to powder cocaine from 100 to one to 18 to one. There are a number of reasons for this change, but the principal one, apart from the absurd starting imbalance, is that the cocaine-using middle-class and university white people are...

This thread had its genesis in this one - Millenial's Music Taste (vanity). Whats wrong with your generation? - where a few of us made the case for really good music being made in the 21st century by artists who aren't retreads from the boomer era or earlier. It's a mission of mine to try to get my fellow boomers to break that fixation with the "oldies station" and listen to some new stuff.I plan to make the case for a few artists here, and hope that more Freepers will chime in.Please do so!! Give us a little info about...

I have over 300 GB of high quality (256 and 320 MP3, and FLAC) digital audio in a hard drive on my home server.About forty feet away is my living room stereo, an old but quite decent sounding Technics receiver (which far predates the networking era) and floor-standing JBL speakers.What I would like to figure out is a way to get the latter to pull tunes from the former, via my wireless router.Is there a device that will read the server contents and feed them to my existing receiver's audio inputs?? What is it?? Or do I need to get...

It sounds like the opening line of a joke, “A father walked up to his kid’s school and gets arrested…” but watch the video of Jim Howe trying to pick up his kids from South Cumberland Elementary School in Cumberland County, Tennessee, and you’ll sooner cry than laugh. That’s because Howe’s alleged crime was walking into the school building and asking to take his children now that classes were over. Howe was supposed to wait, you see. All walking parents are supposed to cool their heels until a long line of drivers have picked up their kids, and only then...

I used to like the PJ Media site a lot. But the last couple of weeks, every time I go to a new page I get a @#&*!@&! popup, wanting me to subscribe to their service which will fill up my mailbox with stuff I don't want.The popup has a button that says "I've already subscribed" which leads me to believe that even if I give them my email address it won't stop. I've tried every option I can find in Firefox and Adblocker to make this bloody thing stop showing up. And I've "signed up" using a throwaway address...

The city of Atlanta (Motto: “Home of the airport where you changed planes last Christmas”) has installed a roundabout at a rather busy intersection near my house. This is highly entertaining if you’re watching from a safe distance, such as a nearby restaurant patio, or possibly South Carolina. But actually driving in this roundabout is the closest most Atlantans come every day to serious injury, or at least a rather large fender dent. We all know it’s true: Americans aren’t fond of roundabouts. In fact, a new survey says 93 percent of Americans would rather stub their toe on furniture...

Just thought you'd like to see what a left-wing cartoonist is thinking about His O'ness this week. Yes, he gets in a shot at the GOP in the last couple of panels, but all in all I'm having fun reading this and the comments on the liberal site where it was published.

Readers — The story below makes me so sad and so angry, and you will see why. If anyone at Child Protective Services or the police department would pick up a single book written before predator panic swept the country, they’d see that 6-year-olds were always part of the neighborhood scene, scampering, playing, or even — in many eras and areas — working! The idea that a 6-year-old can’t be outside without constant supervision is new and warped. It also seriously underestimates kids. Is there a law requiring parents to stunt their children’s curiosity, competence, maturity and independence? I fear...

If you think a twenty-something ought to be tossed in federal prison for 35 years because he tried to download some musty academic journal articles without permission, you are a lot things, but a conservative is not one of them. You might be relieved to know that Aaron Swartz, one of the internet geniuses behind RSS and Reddit.com, will not be imprisoned for a third of a century. Unfortunately, that’s because the fragile young man hanged himself after the United States attorney prosecuting the case generously offered him the alternative of pleading guilty to a felony, paying a crippling fine...

Ask your doctor about Unpretentiousil today.

In the end there were 38 children dead at the school, two teachers and four other adults. I’m not talking about the horrific shooting in Connecticut today. I’m talking about the worst school murder in American history. It took place in Michigan, in 1927. A school board official, enraged at a tax increase to fund school construction, quietly planted explosives in Bath Township Elementary. Then, the day he was finally ready, he set off an inferno. When crowds rushed in to rescue the children, he drove up his shrapnel-filled car and detonated it, too, killing more people, including himself. And...

After months of bad press, the greatest competitive cyclist of all time has officially hit rock bottom: The Lance Armstrong Foundation has dropped the name of its eponymous creator and will now be known as the Livestrong Foundation. Rest easy, Lance, it can’t get much – or is that any? – worse. His story is unparalleled, Shakespearean in scope and breadth. A cocky, gum-flapping athlete battled insurmountable odds after a devastating cancer diagnosis, his greasy soul barely slipping the surly clutches of a certain dirt nap. Ultimately, he rehabilitated his battered body and morphed into a champion. Not only did...

The 19th of May, 1780, was a remarkable day. Candles were lighted in many houses; the birds were silent and disappeared, and the fowls retired to roost. The legislature of Connecticut was then in session at Hartford.A very general opinion prevailed, that the day of judgment was at hand. The house of Representatives, being unable to transact their business, adjourned. A proposal to adjourn the Council was under consideration.When the opinion of Colonel Davenport was asked, he answered, "I am against an adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is...

Where’s the outrage? No, not at President Obama’s performance, foreign and domestic, or his airbrushing the past three years of his failed economic policies out of the history books. That particular outrage Mitt Romney is taking good care to express as part of his strategy of concentrating on Obama’s failures rather than risk proposing policies to return morning to America. But where is the Republican candidate’s outrage at some of those who might be considered his own friends and allies? Just because Obama attacks “fat cat” bankers in one of his egalitarian rants doesn’t mean that Romney should refuse to...

If Charles Dickens were writing "A Tale of Two Cities" about today's Afghanistan, his opening line would be abbreviated: "It was the worst of times." "Sunday was a particularly deadly day in Afghanistan," reported the Associated Press this week. "Roadside bombs and militant attacks killed seven American soldiers, 19 Afghan civilians and seven Afghan policemen. "Violence erupted again on Monday as militants launched suicide attacks on two police headquarters and carried out other assaults that left 20 people dead -- three policemen, an Afghan prosecutor, two children and 14 attackers, according to officials." But when are there ever peaceful stretches...

Hey kids, wake up! Stop playing your X-Box while listening to your Facebooks on the iPod and wearing your iPad with the cap turned backwards with the droopy pants and the bikini underwear listening to Snoopy Poopy Poop Dogg and the Enema Man and all that! Take a break from getting yet another tattoo on your ass bone or your nipples pierced already! And STFU about the 1 Percent vs. the 99 Percent! You're not getting screwed by billionaires and plutocrats. You're getting screwed by Mom and Dad. Systematically and in all sorts of ways. Old people are doing everything...

Windows 8 is obviously geared toward smartphones and tablets, or as we should call them, stupidphones and craplets. Lovely. Except, Windows 8 will also be shipped to customers running normal computers where battery life is of no consideration, screen size is ample, and productivity and efficiency are more important than looking cool. OK, let me be blunt. No one is going to write their business PowerPoint presentations on a smartphone. No one is going to design a new car on a tablet. No one will run protein folding on their smartphone. No one will play ArmA II on a smartphone....

Constellation, the Bush administration’s plan to return to the moon, was canceled a couple years ago. But not all of Constellation was canceled. The Orion crew module, designed to go to lunar orbit and back, survives, with plans to test fly on a Delta IV rocket in a couple years, and Congress, eager to preserve the Space Shuttle jobs base, demanded that NASA reinstitute a new heavy-lift launch vehicle to replace the canceled Ares V with the Space Launch System. So at this point, despite the cancellation, Constellation continues to waste money, except for the Ares I, the new crew...