Free Republic

Kate Smith first performed “God Bless America” the day before Veteran’s Day in 1938. She was a patriotic American, who wanted to encourage fellow citizens as they suffered through a terrible depression and saw a world being torn apart by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. She wanted to reach Americans with the faith she felt for the future of the nation.As a leading performer in a radio market reaching nearly every household in the country, her way would be through song. So, Kate asked Irving Berlin to write a song that would cause citizens to embrace a positive perception of...

Rockets rained down on cities and towns, bulldozers toppled border fences, and hundreds of armed militants from Gaza flooded the border and crossed into Israel. Some militants arrived by paragliders; others used boats to storm Israeli beaches.The ensuing death and carnage by armed members of Hamas claimed more Israeli lives than any attack since the Holocaust and caught Israel by surprise. But threats from the terrorist group are nothing new. A ¬rundown of Hamas’ history reveals an organization with a persistent commitment to wiping Israel off the map.Launched in 1987 as an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas has never...

Russia’s renewed invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022 marked the start of Europe’s deadliest armed conflict in decades. After a steady buildup of military forces along Ukraine’s borders since 2021, Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, with Russian ground forces attacking from multiple directions.Initially, Russian forces made gains along all lines of advance. However, Russian forces ran into effective and likely unexpected levels of Ukrainian resistance from the invasion’s outset. In addition, many analysts and officials assess that, during this first stage of the war, the Russian military performed poorly overall and was hindered by specific tactical choices,...

When Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill—named the Safer Streets For All Act—he emphasized it did not legalize prostitution. But pimps quickly posted celebratory messages on social media. Stephany Powell, director of law enforcement training and survivor services for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, saw one message proclaiming, “The streets belong to us now.”Powell, a former vice sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, fought hard against the bill. She and other anti-trafficking advocates argued it would further enable pimps and traffickers while impeding law enforcement and nonprofits from intervening quickly to help victims escape the brutal realities...

North Korea continues to advance its nuclear weapons and missile programs despite UN Security Council sanctions and high-level diplomatic efforts. Recent ballistic missile tests and military parades suggest that North Korea is continuing to build a nuclear warfighting capability designed to evade regional ballistic missile defenses. Such an approach likely reinforces a deterrence and coercive diplomacy strategy—lending more credibility as it demonstrates capability—but it also raises questions about crisis stability and escalation control.U.S. policy as well as U.N. resolutions call on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and missile programs. Kim Jong Un has repeatedly rejected “denuclearization” talks. According...

The Continental Congress chose Thomas Jefferson instead of John Adams to write the Declaration of Independence, because they wanted to solidify the southern states participation in the revolution.Jefferson suffered through Congress remaking his work. His draft at 1704 words was 366 words longer than the final. The Congress added 253 words, and removed or rephrased 792 words, thereby transforming over 60% of his work. Among passages removed was a 168 word section complaining the mercantile system, imposed on the colonies by commercial charter, mandated the importation of slaves to the New World. Such is my analysis, but you can find...

The emergence of LGBTQ Pride Month began for me with the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Removal followed a two-year campaign Newsweek described as ongoing disruptive, chaotic attacks on psychiatrists and physiologists. Yet throughout these disruptive attacks, no academic papers appeared at conferences refuting research previously done. Eventually onslaughts forced sufficient abstentions, under-votes, and apprehensive responses for a third of APA’s 17,000 plus membership to accumulate enough votes to approve removal. Approval resulted from Psychology and Psychiatry having a tenuous hold on claims...

U.S. — After scanning thousands of photographs and cross-referencing facial features with political affiliation, researchers have discovered a bizarre connection between being liberal and have enormous, googly eyes."Why? Why do they all look so insane?," wondered lead researcher Dr. Michael Zorn. "Man, those are googly eyes. These pictures are going to keep me up at night."According to sources on the team, the shocking connection became immediately apparent as soon as they began reviewing pictures of liberals. "I honestly screamed when I flipped over the first picture and saw Hillary's psycho eyes," said assistant Jamie Reynolds. "I flipped to the next...

ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court. Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Amer- icans hold sharply conflicting views. Some believe fervently that a human person comes into being at conception and that abortion ends an innocent life. Others feel just as strongly that any regulation of abortion invades a woman’s right to control her own body and prevents women from achieving full equality. Still others in a third group think that abortion should be allowed under some but not all cir- cumstances, and those within this group hold a variety of views about the particular restrictions that...

Flag Day should not pass without recognizing Rick Monday.My contribution to the day is being one of the volunteers who place 1,700 flags along the downtown streets of Redmond Oregon, that is known as Flag City.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived in London January 2, 1944 to command Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) and to direct the last five months of planning for D-Day; the most difficult and complicated military operation ever attempted. Eisenhower’s study of leadership skills required he ignore opportunities for fear and doubt, which inevitably arise as strain and tension wear away endurance. He persevered to present confidence and optimism to those around him. For that reason, he brought with him a confident, battle tested team that had led successful landings in North Africa, Sicily, and Salerno, despite experiencing German counterattacks nearly...

Today, the press is seen by large numbers of Americans as only selectively truthful—slanted toward a particular point of view, usually one that is both secular and progressive. A 2022 Gallup poll found that just 7 percent of Americans have “a great deal” of trust and confidence in the media, and 27 percent have “a fair amount.” Meanwhile, 28 percent of U.S. adults say they do not have “very much confidence” and well over a third have none at all in newspapers, TV, and radio.“Notably,” Gallup reported, “this is the first time that the percentage of Americans with no trust...

ERNIE PYLE: The Death of Captain Waskow AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be...

When I was working on the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s ‘Disloyal Military’ investigation, I predicted that Air Force Chief of Staff Charles Q. Brown Jr. would be selected as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The media is now reporting that Biden will indeed pick Brown to replace Milley. And as bad as Milley was, expect Brown to be much worse.Under Gen. Brown, the Air Force has become the most woke of the major service branches.Brown disgraced himself and his uniform during the Black Lives Matter race riots by releasing a video in which he “seemed to...

Overcrowding at Santo Tomas caused the Japanese to establish another civilian internment camp at Los Baños, some 25 miles southeast of Manila, in May 1943. The Japanese sent 800 young men, internees from Santo Tomas, to make the 40-acre site of the abandoned agricultural college habitable. Nash recalled the five-hour train ride in overcrowded, stifling boxcars: “As we stopped at different stations, they [the Japanese guards] would open the doors to let just a little air in. It was suffocating and maliciously unhuman.”On arrival at Los Baños, the internees found primitive conditions; almost everything that could be carried away had...

Just about everybody on Wall Street knows, despite what you read in the financial press, that the Biden administration’s economic policies are driving our economy into a recessionary ditch. In a recent Wall Street Journal survey of 23 large financial institutions that do business directly with the Federal Reserve, 16 predicted a recession in 2023 and two predicted a recession in 2024, while only five predicted that we would avoid a recession—although even those five predicted we’d have only one-half percent economic growth, well below the 2.1 percent average over the past 20 years and dangerously close to what has...

China views public relations as an asymmetric weapon it can use to put other nations’ governments into conflict with their respective militaries. Its strategy is to have the Ministry of Foreign Affairs extend a generous economic carrot of trade agreements and infrastructure pledges, while the PLA wields an ever-present, ever-more-capable military stick. In addition, China has established itself as the indispensable economic heavyweight in terms of its ability to rapidly and efficiently fund infrastructure and development projects around the world, seemingly with few strings attached. Nations and their respective populations are told they can share in the economic growth that...

By 2019, prior to COVID, life expectancy in the U.S. had fallen relative to that in the other countries so much that 500,000 Americans were dying each year in excess of the death rates of the citizens of those other countries. To exclude poverty as a factor in these numbers, a study looked at the health of privileged Americans—specifically, white citizens living in counties that are in the top one percent and the top five percent in terms of income. This high income population had better health outcomes than other U.S. citizens, but it still had worse outcomes than average...

Here is the letter I send to papers annually, which of course is never published.Vietnam Veteran’s Day, March 29, recognizes a precious sacrifice. North Vietnam agrees we won all the battles, but asserts it made no difference. During Tet, the US and ARVN shattered VC main force units, causing an irreparable loss of face. In March 1972, the ARVN destroyed an invading NVA army.The Democrat Party secured defeat. Responding to Tet, those that got the United States into war cut and ran. In 1972 a Democratic Congress refused funding to restore South Vietnamese forces, which had defeated the invading NVA...

If you find comforting the understanding that George Bush lied to the country and the world about Saddam Hussein possessing WMD’s to enable him to start the Second Iraq War, please read no further.The war began with the United Nations Security Council passing Resolution 678, which reaffirmed and recalled eleven prior resolutions concerning Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Resolution 678 did not order the coalition to simply expel Saddam’s forces from Kuwait but used a more expansive term for which precedence existed. The term” restore international peace and security in the area” used language the UN and our Congress understood from the...