Free Republic

"This is the point of commie-lib politics. They will use their power to take your power. The commie-libs make demands, not because of the facts and the "progress" toward their utopia, but because if you do what they want you will be weaker and vulnerable to the next demand. Yet, the guileless Conservatives debate the merits of the details of the commie-lib demand, or they'll point out this latest demand is inconsistent with some past demand. The details and the consistency matter only to the Conservatives, yet that is what they spend 98% of their energy discussing. You might as...

<p>CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Actor Sean Penn criticized Republican presidential candidates during a visit to Venezuela on Thursday, saying that right-wing policies in the United States aim to benefit the wealthy. Penn made the remarks after meeting with socialist President Hugo Chavez at Venezuela's presidential palace, when he was asked by a reporter about criticisms of Chavez by some Republican candidates.</p>

SNIP SNIP Local government planning should, first of all, protect the private property rights of its citizens. The legitimate function of local planning is to facilitate the safe and coordinated exercise of the free market in real estate and commerce. Social engineering, on the other hand, is the result of professional planners creating a vision of what they think a community should be in the future. What the landowners may want is not a factor in the design. What the planners think the broader community will want, such as open space and protected wildlife areas, outweighs private property rights or...

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., speaking in New Hampshire this morning, reminded her audience of the tragic Tucson shooting last year -- and also insinuated that the Tea Party, which she said regards political opponents as "the enemy," has enhanced divisiveness in Congress and had something to do with the shooting, at least indirectly. "We need to make sure that we tone things down, particularly in light of the Tucson tragedy from a year ago, where my very good friend, Gabby Giffords -- who is doing really well, by the way, -- [was shot]," Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee...

Mainstream Media Lies: 23 Things That Are Not What They Seem To Be On TelevisionJanuary 6, 2012 Most Americans believe the lie that the mainstream media is "fair and balanced" and is looking out for the interests of average Americans. Well, that simply is not true. Those in the mainstream media serve those that are providing them with paychecks. The reality is that just 6 gigantic corporations collectively own most of the major mainstream media outlets in this country. Reporters are simply not going to be allowed to report stories that are severely damaging to those corporations or to the...

Penn sees red in LAX tirade Sean Penn and Cuban actress Maria Conchita Alonso were once Hollywood co-stars — but they had an angry bust-up at LAX, with Alonso branding Penn a “communist [bleep]hole” after he called her a “pig” in front of a stunned crowd. It started when Alonso picked up her mother from a Miami flight and spotted Penn in an American Airlines lost luggage area Sunday. Alonso, born in Cuba and raised in Venezuela, says her “heart stopped” when she saw the actor, to whom she’d written an open letter last year to say she was “appalled”...

I don't know about you, but I'm getting fed up with these self-important gangs of masked, black-clad agitators running roughshod over our city streets. They've occupied parks, shut down roadways, vandalized private property, assaulted law-abiding citizens and left entire communities afraid to venture into financially struggling downtown business districts. They've wielded spray cans and left behind eyesores that have incensed the community. I am speaking, of course, about the police.

Every year I check both Yahoo and Google to see if they will acknowledge Pearl Harbor Day. As usual, nothing.

Fox Business News Calls Muppets Communist; Debate Goes Viral A segment on the network was highlighted by Media Matters, reigniting a conversation about whether or not there are political messages in children's movies. If you Googled news about “Muppets” on Monday you were treated to hundreds of news stories and blog items debating whether Disney’s lovable creatures were Communists or not. You can thank Fox Business News and Media Matters for that. Eric Bolling of Follow the Money set the stage on Friday when he hosted a 7-minute segment that argued that The Muppets film – featuring bad-guy oilman Tex...

House GOP leaders are considering tacking legislation to advance the Keystone XL pipeline to attract Republican votes for a package to extend a payroll tax holiday that would hit American workers with an average $1,000 tax hike on Jan. 1 if it is allowed to expire at year's end. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) met behind closed doors with rank-and-file lawmakers Friday morning, but opposition to continuing the payroll tax break still runs high among conservatives in the House, showing the difficulty Boehner will face in drawing backing for the measure. The prospect of adding the legislation to advance...

Can The Disgraced Van Jones Build A Left-Wing Version Of The Tea Party? Michael Brendan Dougherty Nov. 26, 2011, 11:33 AM Remember Van Jones, the President Obama's "green energy czar," from the early days of the administration? He's the one who resigned after Glenn Beck and others exposed a video of him calling Republicans "assholes," and his dabbling in 9/11 conspiracy theories. Well, according to Politico, he's back. And he's apparently helping to shepherd an open-source left-wing political coalition that was inspired by the Tea Party. He calls it The American Dream Movement, and its slogan is "Rebuild the Dream"...

Occupy Attacks! Occupy Portland Attacks KGW News Crew! BREAKING (Viewer Discretion Advised) Dateline November, 8, 2011 - Mostly RAW Apologies for being long, but the entire video is good. A KGW News Crew was attacked by Occupy Portland while a Citizen Journalist films. Quote the attacker: "We are the 99% and we don't want you in our society!" The attacker uses profanity and insists to a Native American member of the News team that he (the protestor) is the actual native American. While the angry protestor insists he does not want violence, he continues his tirade and a lengthy provocation....

You didn’t think there wasn’t going to be a price to pay for all of this, did you? Our sports, with our kids targeted to ride shotgun, have been headed this way for years. The cumulative effect of relentlessly marketing bad as good and dismissing good as unmarketable -- the pandering, the silence, the network promos that replaced football with chest-pounders and preeners, the media’s insistence that one play with “a swagger” -- has inevitably brought us to a place that years ago should not have been fed nor watered. This past Sunday in Denver, during a 45-10 loss to...

Cards on the table: y'all know that the Occupy protests and I don't agree politically. Nonetheless, I've been basically supportive of their right to protest, sympathetic to their frustrations with the system, and interested in their problems (and solutions) of self organization in a rather chaotic and fluid situation. Unless there were clear and dramatic harms to the community, I figured the cops should leave them alone until the protests dispersed naturally. (snip) At this point, the movement is hurting itself more than it's helping--at least, if you think their goal is to peacefully and democratically push for changes in...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan thinks public-school teachers are “desperately underpaid” and has called for doubling teacher salaries. In a new paper co-authored with Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation, I look into whether teachers really are desperately underpaid, or underpaid at all. Jason and I find that the conventional wisdom is far off the truth. At first glance, public-school teachers definitely look underpaid. According to Census data, teachers receive salaries around 20 percent lower than similarly educated private-sector workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says teachers’ benefits are about the same as benefits in the private sector. But both the...

SHOCKER: Report: Fights erupt among Occupy Wall Street protesters. “Fights are erupting among Occupy Wall Street protesters, so much so that one corner of Zuccotti Park has emerged where protesters say they won’t go for fear of their safety, the New York Daily News is reporting.”

Greece wants a solution to its crippling debt that applies to all its sovereign bonds expiring up to 2035, a government source said on Monday, adding that the process should remain voluntary and any deal must include the European Central Bank. This would be a marked expansion from a previous, now defunct, plan agreed by the EU in July, under which Greece's debt burden would be lowered through a bond exchange involving paper maturing up to 2020. "We are looking at the entire Greek debt, expiring through to 2035... It does not stop at 2020 as the previous model did,"...

If you believe a column in Newsweek magazine, most of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are just regular folks, people like you and me. Writer Michael Daly puts forth that the demonstrators simply have had enough of an unfair economic system, and what's wrong with that? But a survey taken at the protest site in New York City tells quite another story. Pollster Doug Schoen, who once worked for President Clinton, had his staff ask 200 protesters to define themselves. -- Just 15 percent are unemployed. -- Most voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but now only 44 percent approve...

Report: Occupy Oakland Devolves into “Lord of the Flies” John on October 20, 2011 at 12:01 am From the Oakland Tribune: The next thing Hughes knew he was in a headlock, then he was being punched, and then he was on the ground as a large man began to choke him. This happened as Hughes, a substitute teacher and Occupy Oakland resident, tried to keep a larger man who also lived in the camp from threatening a woman there. Finally, after another threatening incident involving the same individual, the occupiers had had enough: About 3:30 Tuesday afternoon, a group of...

Friday morning could be the beginning of the end of the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstration. On Thursday, Brookfield Office Management employees were passing out notices to protesters, who have been camped out for 26 days, saying that tarps, sleeping bags and tents are all prohibited in the park, as is lying on the ground and on benches when it becomes an interference for others. CBS 2 learned late Thursday night the protestors are preparing in case they cannot base their operations out of Zuccotti Park anymore. They are now encouraging people to occupy Tompkins Square Park in the East Village....

Scientists and yeti enthusiasts believe there may finally be solid evidence that the apelike creature roams the vast Siberian tundra, reports the Guardian. A team of a dozen-plus experts from as far afield as Canada and Sweden have proclaimed themselves 95% certain of the mythical animal's existence after a daylong conference in the town of Tashtagol in the Kemerovo region, some 2,000 miles east of Moscow. In recent years, locals there have reported sightings of the yeti, also known as the abominable snowman. The Kemerovo government announced on Oct. 10 that a two-day expedition the previous weekend to the region's...

Actual title is too long (really need to expand that title space fr lol) ‘Economic terrorist’ Behind Wall Street protests? Radical’s plan: ‘Bring down stock market’ ‘Literally cause a new financial crisis’. Stephen Lerner, a controversial anti-Capitalist SEIU organizer, is one of the forces behind the protests on Wall Street and nationwide, according to quotes obtained by a socialist activist who doubles as a Washington Post columnist. KleinOnline was first to report, Lerner was the brainchild of some of the economic protest templates being used by the Occupy Wall Street campaign. Lerner recently laid out a mass economic protest plan...

The Vatican has accused the BBC of an ‘act of enormous foolishness’ for dumping the terms BC and AD in case they cause offence to non-Christians. The Roman Catholic Church also severely criticised the ‘senseless hypocrisy’ of Britain’s public service broadcaster for using a false respect for other religions to purge Christianity from Western culture. ‘It is by now very clear that respect for other religions is only an excuse, because those who wish to erase every trace of Christianity from Western culture are only a few secular westerners,’ said a front page editorial in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official...

Drowning in red ink, Greece has nowhere to turn to revive the economic growth that might put its debt on a sustainable trajectory, reassure angry foreign creditors and offer hope to its recession-weary citizens. Instead, the country finds itself in a vicious circle—a death spiral, some would say—in which it is borrowing ever more to keep up on its existing debts, crushing growth in the process and thereby worsening its all-important ratio of debt-to-gross domestic product. Springing the debt trap would not be a miracle cure either: a manageable level of borrowing is a necessary but not a sufficient condition...

STATE REP. LaShawn Ford was among House lawmakers led by state Reps. Dan Burke and Jack Franks who visited Cuba earlier this month with the goal of increasing exports from Illinois to Cuba and creating jobs for folks in our state. Ford, who is over the 8th District and is chairman of the House Small Business Empowerment and Workforce Development Committee (whew!), told this columnist that “no taxpayer dollars were spent on the trip” and that he paid his on way. “We didn’t meet President Fidel Castro; however, we did meet with other Cuban leaders during our mission. One of...

Students Fight to Keep UCSD Landmark Open SAN DIEGO -- A group of UCSD students is fighting to keep an eccentric landmark open. "It's that one last place at UCSD that sort of exudes that college atmosphere," said Alex Peterson, UCSD student. "It sort of represents the revolutionary, liberal, young college student." The Che Cafe opened in 1980 as a co-operative run by students and volunteers. It was named after Ernesto "Che" Guevara, an Argentinian doctor who was a major figure of the Cuban revolution. It's one of the oldest structures on campus. Built in 1960, the building was turned...

Does SWAT Need to Be Explained? Written by Ed Sanow I get frustrated with the educational sessions at chief’s conferences on SWAT. The attendees are treated like kindergarten kids. “There are some vewy, vewy bad people out there. They won’t do what the nice police officers tell them. So, sometimes, those nice police officers need help from ‘special’ police officers.” You got to be kidding me! Some 90% of agencies serving populations of more than 50,000 people, and 70% of agencies serving smaller populations have some kind of SWAT team. Yet, SWAT has to be explained like it is something...

n this video entitled "Marxism in America" General Jerry Boykin discusses his background and training in understanding Marxist insurgencies and how current government actions parallel Marxist tactics.

Law enforcement officers arrested the owner of BoCoMo Bay yesterday after firearms and a large amount of synthetic marijuana were found at his south Columbia home, they said. Approximately 100 firearms along with a large amount of substances believed to be synthetic marijuana were discovered at the home of Kevin E. Bay, 47, at 400 E. Old Plank Road, according to a Boone County Sheriff’s Department news release. Bay operates BoCoMo Bay at 1122 Wilkes Blvd. ***** Bay was arrested on the outstanding warrant from Stoddard County that charges him with six counts of delivery or imitation of a synthetic...

Post Columnist Says King Monument is Stalin-like A Washington Post columnist has criticized the new Martin Luther King, Jr. monument, while his paper is publishing a 24-page special supplement hailing the unveiling of the “Stone of Hope” in the memorial that includes the 30-foot tall statue of the civil rights leader. Black columnist Courtland Milloy writes, “Let’s face it: There really is something peculiar about having an artist from communist China sculpt the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial statue. And, yes, it would have been fantastic had an African American sculptor been chosen instead.” He adds, “The sculpture is based...

This time the wild and crazy bunch attempts to defy an Order to Stay by a Federal Judge. Paragraph 4 - "All mortgage foreclosure cases are hereby STAYED and shall remain so until further order of the court. Any deadlines for filings on any issue are hereby suspended." Seems pretty clear to me. Maybe the good folks at Harmon Law accidently sent their copy of the order to LPS for some repair work. Or could it be that they interpret the STAY order to exclude evictions?

Economic Policy: The Democrats' aggressive push to extend the payroll tax cut for another year has nothing to do with boosting economic growth and everything to do with class warfare politics. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) made it known this week that it plans a full-court press to extend the temporary payroll tax cut into 2012. Enacted as part of the deal last December to extend the Bush income tax cuts, it trimmed workers' Social Security tax rate to 4.2% from 6.2% this year. President Obama routinely includes the extension as part of his jobs plan because, he says, "it...

Two American hikers who were detained in Iran have been sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of "illegal entry" and "espionage," the state TV website says.

Ctirad Masin, who died on August 13 aged 81, was a leading member of a Czechoslovak group that took up arms against the communist state before fighting its way to freedom across the Iron Curtain, eluding the biggest manhunt in the history of the Soviet bloc. The ruthlessness and daring of the “Masin Gang”, as they were known, continues to divide opinion in the Czech Republic, with some regarding them as resistance heroes, and others (including around half the Czech population, according to a recent poll) regarding them as murderers. Ctirad Masin Masin, his brother Josef, and their friend Milan...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Struggling to clear its inventory of foreclosed properties, the Obama administration said Wednesday it’s looking for investor ideas for converting more than 92,000 foreclosed properties owned by the U.S. government into rental units, a sign of the depths to which the U.S. housing market has sunk. “Exploring new options for selling these foreclosed properties will help expand access to affordable rental housing, promote private investment in local housing markets and support neighborhood and home-price stability,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement. The Obama administration is working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator for...

Vietnam is not alone in a festering territorial dispute with China. In the near future Indian warships will arrive into the South China Sea. This is a group of destroyers CMD (controlled missile defense). But there is more to it: at the end of June there were reports from New Delhi that the Indian Navy intends to settle in the South China Sea for a long time. The Indian side is expected to establish a permanent military presence there. According to the official government version of India, this will help the Navy of India to play a more prominent role...

Gold continues to set records, hitting a fresh nominal all-time high of $1,602.86 on Monday, as the shiny metal goes on an 11-day rally (its longest since 1980) and appears set to go higher. Concerns over the debt ceiling debate in the U.S., along with sovereign debt woes in Europe sending peripheral debt to nearly unsustainable levels, have put pressure on risk assets across the board and sent investors fleeing for safe-haven assets like gold and the Swiss franc. The question now is, how high can it go?Gold is up 13% this year as measured by the SPDR gold trust...

Angelo de Codevilla’s review of six accounts of Barack Obama’s life at the Claremont Review of Books ends in the conclusion that Obama was always something other than what he portrayed himself to be. What that is, in Codevilla’s summary, is this: In sum, Barack Obama grew intertwined with the narrow, self-referential left side of the American Left. They helped one another believe they had come up the hard way, as underprivileged but brilliant, square-jawed tribunes of the common man. Their common problem, however, is that their agendas are antagonistic to people unlike themselves, and that they cannot keep from...

“Stop bombing Libya! U.S. out of Africa!” echoed throughout San Francisco’s major intersection at Powell and Market as more than 125 activists and supporters gathered to demand an end to the U.S./NATO bombing of Libya and call for the money spent on war to instead provide for people’s needs. The demonstration was sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). While participants picketed, a number of people spoke. A common thread throughout the speeches was that the U.S. government claim of “humanitarian intervention” is a lie. Antoinette Marquez, an elementary school teacher and member of...

Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, has called for a referendum in California on the state’s controversial move to tax online shopping. The online retailer, which is based in Washington state, said on Monday that it would support a referendum on California’s move to require Amazon and other online retailers to collect sales tax from customers in the state.

Paramount and Marvel Studios have a bit of a marketing challenge on their hands with their upcoming Captain America: The First Avenger. Namely, how do you sell a pro-U.S.A superhero movie to the many regions of the globe that can't stand us? Their solution was to play it safe, and release the film in all foreign markets as just "The First Avenger." But then a wonderful thing happened. From the Times: [I]n a surprise, Paramount's overseas operation objected, arguing that Captain America had too much brand value, even in spots like France that are leery of embracing Team America too...

Nik Rajokovic at Houston’s Channel 13 KTRH broke the story here. This PISSES. ME. OFF. I can barely get my thoughts together to type this post, but I’m not going to sit by and not speak up for those families who have lost a loved one and are having to now worry about submitting a written request for prayer to someone for approval. Last time I checked, this was the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free. Heads up, Director of the Houston National Cemetery. It still is. Thanks to the Berry Brigade, here is how YOU can...

EUGENE — An arsonist who avoided federal prison five years ago by helping lock up Earth Liberation Front activists is headed to state prison for selling heroin. ... He was on probation under a 2007 plea deal for his role in arsons by an ELF band known as The Family. Targets included a meat-packing company, car dealership, ranger station and lumber company. Ferguson is depicted as the leader of the group in the documentary "If A Tree Falls." He faces a probation revocation hearing July 14 in federal court.

TUCSON — In three separate incidents over a 24-hour period, Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents seized more than 1,940 pounds of marijuana with an estimated value of $970,000. Yesterday morning, Ajo station agents working northwest of Lukeville discovered 11 bundles of marijuana abandoned in the desert. The narcotics, weighing 569 pounds with an estimated value of $284,500, were seized and transported to the Ajo station for processing. Early Thursday, the Ajo station All Terrain Vehicle Unit discovered 14 bundles of marijuana abandoned in the desert northeast of Lukeville with assistance from a U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter. The narcotics,...

Well the commies at google have failed to acknowledge it's d-day, again. Every year I check to see if the commies and the LGBT crowd that will throw up a goofy graphic on every other national occasion would bother to ack d-day. Well they didn't, as usual.

NEW DELHI: Cousins of the special breed canines, which assisted the US Navy Seals in sniffing out Osama bin Laden from his safe haven in Pakistan , will now help Indian security forces in 'find and fix' anti-Naxal operations in dense forests and difficult terrains. The imported dogs are a specialized breed of the Belgian s h e p h e rd s, also called 'Malinois'. "This is the first time that security forces will be using canines in Naxal operations — a practice in line with Israeli and Nato forces operating in Afghanistan and other places," a senior officer...

While claiming the American flag represents racism and discussing today’s Progressive Movement’s efforts to defeat America both at home and abroad, including on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan to help their international “comrades,” Communist Tony Pecinovsky pulls the mask off today’s Progressive Movement in two new exclusive Big Government videos of a University of Missouri course offering, already much in the news.

Jerry Seinfeld, Robert De Niro and even Glenn Beck are among those distancing themselves from the possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination. It seems these days Donald Trump is ruffling the feathers of more than a few in Hollywood. The Celebrity Apprentice star, real estate mogul and possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination has upset several celebrities over his "birther" comments related to President Barack Obama, calling his birth certificate into question. Here are seven who have had harsh words for the outspoken billionaire: 1. Jerry Seinfeld: The actor-comedian last week pulled out of a charity event hosted...

Revolutionary Socialist Group Planing to Recruit Children in JR High School To Join and Become Leaders in The Movement

Revolutionary Socialist Group Planning to Recruit Children in JR High School To Join and Become Leaders in The Movement http://www.theblaze.com/stories/revolutionary-socialist-group-planning-to-recruit-children-in-jr-high-school-to-join-and-become-leaders-in-the-movement/