Free Republic

President Obama's appointment of Rashad Hussain, his deputy associate counsel, as special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations, charged with safeguarding and protecting "the interests of the Muslim world," should be of serious concern to Congress and the American public. Especially since Hussain, a devout Muslim, has a history of participating in events connected with the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Chicago Tribune, "the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group" whose goal is to create Muslim states throughout the world. In 1991, a memo written by Mohamed Akram...

That a double standard exists for Republicans, for religion, for even whites and blacks and what they say on race and other subjects is a given. The media treat such comments differently depending on the policies of those who utter them. In fact, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia can utter the phrase "white nigger" and it barely raises an eyebrow in liberal circles. Rarely is Byrd's background as a former leader in the Ku Klux Klan mentioned in polite liberal company. As long as the speech offender is a liberal who favors the social and political policies of...

That a double standard exists for Republicans, for religion, for even whites and blacks and what they say on race and other subjects is a given. The media treat such comments differently depending on the policies of those who utter them. In fact, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia can utter the phrase "white nigger" and it barely raises an eyebrow in liberal circles. Rarely is Byrd's background as a former leader in the Ku Klux Klan mentioned in polite liberal company. As long as the speech offender is a liberal who favors the social and political policies of...

Cal Thomas, America's most widely syndicated political opinion columnist, is joining The Washington Examiner's growing stable of top-notch commentary writers. More than 500 daily newspapers currently publish the veteran conservative commentator's twice-weekly columns, which are syndicated by Tribune Media. "In a very short time, The Washington Examiner has gotten the attention of an increasing number of Washingtonians." Thomas said. "From its news coverage, to its opinion, editorial and sports pages, The Examiner has become a newspaper that must be paid attention to. I am delighted to now have my column running there twice a week." The Thomas column will begin...

Apparently not content with his congressional majority that wishes to force Americans on a long march to healthcare disaster, President Obama has invoked the name of Jesus to broadcast his gospel of spreading the wealth around. Speaking Monday afternoon to a group of children from the Washington, D.C., Boys and Girls Club, the president delivered a mini sermon on “why we celebrate Christmas.” He asked the children if they knew. One piped up and said, “The birth of baby Jesus.” One can imagine the reaction of the media and other elites had a Republican president asked such a question. That...

It's a night and day difference between the media's scrutiny of former President George W. Bush and the current command-in-chief, President Barack Obama. And the coverage of three Navy SEALs now facing a court martial that captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq, who allegedly was the mastermind of the murder of four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah in 2004, is proof. John Scott, host of "Fox News Watch" noted this story on the show's Nov. 28 episode and asked why there hasn't been more coverage about this. "Pretty outrageous story came out, in my view, this week," Scott...

Not all revolutions begin in the streets with tanks and guns. Some advance slowly, almost imperceptibly, until a nation is transformed and the public realizes too late that their freedoms are gone. Such is the revolution now taking place in America. The '60s crowd has emerged from the ideological grave and is about to impose on this country a declaration of dependence in the form of government-run health insurance and treatment. It matters not what facts are known about this "coup," because to those from the '60s -- whether they lived in that decade or were born later and adopted...

There's little doubt that at hand is an ongoing effort by the Obama White House to marginalize the Fox News Channel - especially after the administration attempted to leave Fox out of the White House pool last week. That is something conservative columnist Cal Thomas said is eerily comparable to Cold War tactics of the old Soviet Union. On the Fox News Channel's Oct. 24 "Fox News Watch," Thomas alluded to an Oct. 21 column he wrote, which he compared what the Soviets did with radio signals that penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver a message of freedom from Western...

I am sympathetic to the story told by Joseph Rocha, who claims in a Washington Post opinion column that he was discharged from the Navy because he is gay, though he says he never told anyone. Rocha says his male colleagues concluded he was gay when he wouldn't laugh at their dirty jokes about women or visit prostitutes with them. Gay service members have a point when they claim a double standard exists for heterosexuals and homosexuals regarding sexual behavior. Rocha also alleges cover-ups by higher-ups about male sexual assaults on lesbians and the pressure he says lesbians feel to...

If you are an enemy of America seeking her destruction, you would add to your pursuit of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons the undermining of this nation from within. You would do this largely through deception, putting on a peaceful face while subtly plotting ways to bring America down. That tactic was on display last Friday in Washington as a crowd estimated at 3,000 Muslims gathered to pray. The organizer of the rally, Imam Abdul Malik of Brooklyn, N.Y., told Americans what we like to hear: "What we've done today, you couldn't do in any Muslim country. If you prayed...

Who wrote the following: "We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about 'unthinkable things' because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless." A "right-wing extremist" didn't write these words, nor did a cable TV or radio talk show host. Sen. J. William Fulbright, the late Arkansas liberal Democratic senator and Bill Clinton mentor, wrote them in his 1966 book, "Arrogance of Power." The arrogance of power and disdain for average Americans is what fueled much of the dissent expressed in town hall meetings. Growing numbers of...

HBO showed the film "Schindler's List" last week. The 1993 Steven Spielberg movie never ceases to arouse my deepest emotions. The perennial question put forth in the film remains: How could people wantonly kill so many others as a matter of state policy? This is more than history, however. There are those who would gladly "finish the job" the Nazis started. The Obama administration -- like previous administrations -- is pressuring Israel in ways that, if the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succumbs, will effectively give Israel's modern enemies the opportunity to destroy its people. Next time it is...

Despite their control of all three branches of government, this has not been a good summer for liberal Democrats. Their healthcare “reform” bill, which has yet to be fully written, much less fully funded, has been exposed at town hall meetings as a power grab over life and death with the strong possibility that “do no harm” will be replaced by a utilitarian approach to treatment. The cap-and-trade measure (dubbed “cap and tax” by The Wall Street Journal) appears in trouble. Closer scrutiny has revealed it as one more reach into our pockets by politicians who never have enough of...

OPINION: A columnist from the right side of the political spectrum will miss his longtime friend and ideological rival from the left | Cal Thomas http://www.worldmag.com/webextra/15808

After pledging during last year's presidential campaign, and as recently as the spring, not to re-visit the past, the Obama administration, in the person of Attorney General Eric Holder, has named a special prosecutor to go after CIA interrogators who pried information from terrorist suspects, preventing more deadly assaults on the country. Before the hard Left assumed power, anyone engaged in protecting America by interrupting terrorist plans might have expected to receive a commendation. Now they could face jail time. And somewhere in a cave in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden rejoices. By any objective standard, releasing terrorists from prison and...

Seven months after taking office amidst a religious-like faith that he was the one (or even The One) we had been waiting for, President Barack Obama is beginning to resemble a shooting star. A new USA Today-Gallup Poll finds that 57 percent of adults believe the president's $787 billion economic stimulus package is having "no impact on the economy or making it worse." The poll asked six questions and the answers reveal that Obama's short-term fixes are producing long-term anxiety. Fifty-four percent told pollsters they think the economy will still be in a recession one year from now. Forty-six percent...

Seven months after taking office amidst a religious-like faith that he was the one (or even The One) we had been waiting for, President Barack Obama is beginning to resemble a shooting star. A new USA Today-Gallup Poll finds that 57 percent of adults believe the president's $787 billion economic stimulus package is having "no impact on the economy or making it worse." The poll asked six questions and the answers reveal that Obama's short-term fixes are producing long-term anxiety. Fifty-four percent told pollsters they think the economy will still be in a recession one year from now. Forty-six percent...

PORTADOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND—For the past month I have watched British media report and comment on the American healthcare uproar. American cable networks are also available here. The back-and-forth reporting and commentary resembles a replay of the War of 1812, this time with verbal salvos. Conservative American politicians and commentators fire at the British National Health Service (NHS) system and the British fire back, sometimes on the same program, repeating the Democrats’ mantra of how 47 million Americans are “uninsured” and how medical treatment in the United States depends on how much patients, or their insurance companies, will pay. Here, they...

PORTADOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND -- For the past month I have watched British media report and comment on the American health care uproar. American cable networks are also available here. The back-and-forth reporting and commentary resembles a replay of the War of 1812, this time with verbal salvos. Conservative American politicians and commentators fire at the British NHS system and the British fire back, sometimes on the same program, repeating the Democrats' mantra of how 47 million Americans are "uninsured" and how medical treatment in the United States depends on how much patients, or their insurance companies, will pay. Here, they...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- While America debates whether the federal government should dictate which insurance policies and medical treatments it will allow us to have, here in the UK, the conversation has "advanced" to the approval of assisted suicide. Debbie Purdy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, has won a landmark ruling in the House of Lords that many believe will move Britain one step closer to self-destruction. Purdy must be told under what circumstances her husband could be prosecuted should he accompany her to the Dignitas euthanasia clinic in Switzerland. The Director of Public Prosecutions will now be required to...