Free Republic

First lady Michelle Obama Saturday visited the Florida megachurch where one of President Obama's spiritual advisers is the pastor. She encouraged faith-based groups to join her campaign against obesity, saying "your bodies are temples given to you by God." "Sometimes folks won't do it if it wasn't said right here," she said, speaking to about 3,000 people from more than 120 congregations and organizations, representing over 15 faiths and denominations, at Northland, A Church Distributed in central Florida. The Rev. Joel Hunter, a spiritual adviser to President Barack Obama and who serves as senior pastor of the Northland church, introduced...

Millions of innocent souls perished at the hands of Nazism and Communism. These ideologies are undoubtedly responsible for the greatest crimes in all of world history. The question of which ideology should be considered worse is discussed in a May 15, 2005 article in the New York Times by columnist and author Roger Cohen. Cohen’s article, "1945's Legacy: A Terror Defeated, Another Arrives" (see http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E6DC1E30F936A25756C0A9639C8B63), analyzes the possible answers to this question without coming to a conclusion on the topic. He demonstrates the unique evils inherent in the history of both. He importantly points out that when it comes to...

Hungary is almost broke. That is the country's great tragedy. It needs financial help from the other members of the European Union (EU), who are already helping EU states in financial difficulties, and from the IMF. But both the EU and the IMF refuse to come to Hungary's aid because they dislike the new Hungarian Constitution and a series of new laws that came into effect on January 1st. Last week, the European Commission initiated legal proceedings against Hungary over its new constitution and legislation. It gave Hungary one month to enact changes with regard to the independence of the...

(CNSNews.com) - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says it was "wrong" for debate moderator Brian Williams to silence the "free speech" of the debate audience in Tampa. At the start of Monday night's debate, Williams said, "We've asked our invited guests here this evening to withhold their applause, any verbal reactions to what they hear on stage, so as to ensure this is about the four candidates here tonight and what they have to say." Never again, Gingrich told Fox & Friends the morning after: "I wish in retrospect I'd protested when Brian Williams took them (the live audience) out...

Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary, 40 percent to 28 percent, over Mitt Romney. He also won every Congressional district and, in doing so, won all of South Carolina’s 25 delegates. Now the battle heads to Florida, which holds its primary on Jan. 31. Here are five things to look for as the race heads to Florida. 1. Momentum versus organization Newt Gingrich will come into Florida with momentum, gained from winning South Carolina’s primary, which every Republican presidential nominee has won since 1980. But Romney has a head start in Florida. He has hundreds of thousands of absentee...

Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a "Reasonable Profits Board" to control gas profits. The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a "windfall profit tax" as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit. The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100...

The Democrats in Wisconsin will sink to any level to reestablish the union shakes down schemes cancelled by Governor Scott Walker’s agenda. They will join with anyone who hates Walker even Ian Murphy an anti-American blogger from Buffalo who is a hero to the left. Murphy reminds the unbiased reader of the dweeb in school who stood up and spewed four letter words at the teacher to suck up to the “cool” kids. Now he is attacking America to suck up to leftist Democrats like State Senator Tim Cullen who will run against Walker if the recall petitions are in...

The Kennedy Administration engaged in an unforgivable act of government intrusion when it wiretapped Dr. Martin Luther King. That view is baked into the history books, and Jimmy Carter was just reprising this theme in his eulogy to Coretta Scott King. But the truth is that the famous civil rights leader brought those wiretaps on himself. This is not an untold story, as much as it is a forgotten one. The Cold War was in full swing in late 1963 when Bobby Kennedy authorized the first King wiretap. On JFK's watch, Khrushchev had put up the Berlin Wall and had...

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: In 1995 William Ayers appointed Barack Obama as board chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which aimed to infuse students with a radical political commitment and emphasized social activism far more than academic achievement and test scores. Bankrolled by the billionaire publishing mogul Walter H. Annenberg and his charitable foundation, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) was a five-year school-reform effort created ostensibly to improve public schools in Chicago and elsewhere across the United States. Mr. Annenberg seeded this initiative with $500 million. School reform initiative in the 1990s Founded by William Ayers, the former Weather Underground...

The following is edited from remarks given at the Nov. 11, 2011 meeting of the Communist Party National Committee.2012 is a big election year and as we know the stakes are very high. The right-wing Republican opposition unashamedly defends the wealth and privilege of the 1% over the 99% that includes tens of millions who are struggling to survive. These self-proclaimed patriots are willing to wreck our country in order to defeat Barack Obama in 2012 elections. Our party and youth league are an active part of the great democratic mass that is standing against them. These so called patriots...

Pobre Fidelito. Being a dying dictator was his idea. But now Hugo Chavez has fat cancer, and Kim Jong Il went to ride his giant rabbits in the sky. Nobody's paying attention to the totally dead antics of Fidel Castro. He's like the fourth-grade girl who wore Silly Bandz before it was kewl. Now that everybody's got death, el jefe supremo grande con extra jalapeños just doesn't feel special anymore. But we believe that monitoring Castro's death level is of the utmost importance...

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Peru's government abused its authority by barring paroled U.S. activist Lori Berenson and her 31-month-old son from leaving the country to spend the holidays in New York City with her family, her lawyer charged Saturday. "Administratively, you can't block a court order," Anibal Apari said after Berenson told The Associated Press that she and her son Salvador were prevented from boarding a flight Friday night despite being granted permission in court.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) - The Inter-American Court of Human Rights Tuesday refused a request by American Lori Berenson to review its ruling that upheld her 20-year sentence in Peru for terrorism. In a decision issued in November, the Costa Rica-based court - the legal arm of the Organization of American States - rejected Berenson's arguments that Peru violated her rights in a 2001 civilian retrial. It was Berenson's last formal avenue of appeal. The former New York City resident has denied any wrongdoing and maintains she is a political prisoner whose concern for social justice was distorted by...

He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. The real reason we can't be trusted with the truth about Pearl Harbor; the reason we can't be allowed to know about the treason of FDR boils down to one current fact; the democrat Party is merely a front for worldwide Communism. If every school child learned the truth about FDR's treason, the democrat party would never win another national election.You may wish to bookmark this article because it's rather long because footnotes are used to document this most tragic chapter of American History....

<p>Good citizens of Atlanta, the Obamas were spotted heading off to church via foot from the White House, traversing Lafayette Park to get to St. John's Church for their Sunday services on December 11, 2011 in Washington, DC.</p> <p>The buzz is that President Obama’s stance on religion was on personal attack in a commercial launched by Rick Perry, that claims that Barack Obama has a supposed “war on religion.”</p>

APPLETON, Wis. - An Appleton native is the creator of the iconic "blue fist" graphic in the shape of Wisconsin used in spring protests at the state Capitol. Graphic artist Carrie Worthen graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She now lives and works in Los Angeles, but she kept in touch with members of the AFL-CIO and, in February, the union asked her to take the germ of the fist idea and make it stand out. "To me it needed to be bold and clear and loud and simple," Worthen told Wisconsin Public Radio.

History often repeats itself, and if you have lived two lives, as I have done, you may have a chance of seeing that reenactment with your own eyes. “Stealing from capitalists is our duty,” I repeatedly heard Nikita Khrushchev shout. “Don’t raise your eyebrows, Comrades. I intentionally used the word steal. We have a historical duty to steal from capitalists.” “Stealing from capitalists is our historical duty,” I also often heard my former boss, Nicolae Ceausescu, shout as he banged the table with true Khrushchev-like fervor. Both leaders rose to lead their countries without ever having earned a single penny...

Van Jones offered a prediction Wednesday for those who have been watching the Occupy Wall Street movement: “You haven’t seen anything yet.” The former Obama administration “green jobs czar” — an ardent supporter of the Occupy movement since its inception — said in an interview with CNN that the movement is ready to evolve into the areas of politics and policy-making, much like the Tea Party did in 2010. “You’re going to see an evolution now as you go from protests, keep the protests, but now expand into politics,” Jones said. “And if you thought there was an earthquake in...

From the massive student strike at OccupyCal in Berkeley to the police crackdown of the OccupyWallStreet movement's birthplace in New York City and dozens of actions and headlines in between -- from coast to coast, last week was an important, up-and-down week for the growing Occupy movement. Where the movement heads in the weeks and months to come, however, will be even more critical to the fate of this people's uprising -- and possibly to the fate of equality in America. So the eternal question presents itself again: what is to be done? After missing out on the fun of...

Vandalism, violence, burning and shutting down the nation’s fifth busiest port weren’t enough for Occupy Oakland. On Friday, the General Assembly for the group voted unanimously for “a coordinated shutdown of ports on the entire West Coast on December 12." According to a statement from Occupy Oakland, this move is in “response to coordinated attacks on the occupations and attacks on workers across the nation.” “We call on each West Coast occupation to organize a mass mobilization to shut down its local port.” Occupy Los Angeles had already called for action against one shipper at that port, stating, “occupation will...

With police clearing out many of the "Occupy" encampments, one might think that the Obama-approved protests will be over soon. However, at the national convention of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) last weekend, there was talk of how the protests will eventually expand and "take indoor spaces" such as city halls and state capitols, in order to "unite" with "mass movements against state and local budget cuts and in defense of public sector unions." DSA members across the U.S. have been actively participating in the Occupy movement. Such a strategy would put police officers, many of them members of...

Proposal for a Coordinated West Coast Port Shutdown, Passed With Unanimous Consensus by vote of the Occupy Oakland General Assembly 11/18/2012: In response to coordinated attacks on the occupations and attacks on workers across the nation: Occupy Oakland calls for the blockade and disruption of the economic apparatus of the 1% with a coordinated shutdown of ports on the entire West Coast on December 12th. The 1% has disrupted the lives of longshoremen and port truckers and the workers who create their wealth, just as coordinated nationwide police attacks have turned our cities into battlegrounds in an effort to disrupt...

Wind Farms Are Useless, Says Duke The Duke of Edinburgh has made a fierce attack on wind farms, describing them as “absolutely useless”. The Duke's views are politically charged, as they put him at odds with the Government’s policy Jonathan Wynne-Jones 19 Nov 2011 In a withering assault on the onshore wind turbine industry, the Duke said the farms were “a disgrace”. He also criticised the industry’s reliance on subsidies from electricity customers, claimed wind farms would “never work” and accused people who support them of believing in a “fairy tale”. The Duke’s comments will be seized upon by the...

As Oakland Mayor Jean Quan struggled recently with how to handle the Occupy Oakland encampment, her husband and daughter became increasingly involved with the movement. A group led by Quan's husband, Floyd Huen, worked closely with Occupy campers, and those efforts were stepped up after the first police raid of the encampment outside City Hall on Oct. 25. Huen's group was trying to persuade the campers to tone down the movement's more unruly elements. But after an Occupy camper was slain near the camp on Nov. 10, Huen, 64, and daughter Lailan Huen, 29, began actively encouraging campers and leaders...

Multinational UBS was under new management yesterday - at least in Hackney. Anti-cuts activists Occupy London made the surprise announcement that they had seized a four-story office block in Sun Street owned by the Swiss-based "global financial services" giant. Protesters lounged on windowsills and hung banners out of the windows on a brisk Friday afternoon as police looked on. It is understood armed officers were briefly called out following reports of a "disturbance" at another UBS office across the road. However as the site is a private commercial property the activists' trespass is a civil rather than criminal offence, meaning...

"...In New Hampshire on Thursday, [Herman] Cain accused the [OWS] protesters of "trying to destroy the greatest nation in the world" with plans to stop traffic and subway commuters. He accused them of trying "to infringe upon people's right and liberty to go to work."

My fearless friend Cliff Kincaid of America’s Survival attended the pro North Korean Workers World Party National Conference in New York on November 13. He recorded this video before he was kicked out. Watch WWP operative Teresa Gutierrez call for freedom for terrorist lawyer Lynne Stewart (now serving 10 years in prison for illegally assisting Islamic terrorist clients), Leonard Peltier (who killed two FBI agents), and five Cuban spies in prison in the U.S. Watch the crowd chant “Si Se Puede!”, Cesar Chavez’s old slogan, now a communist battle cry. Barack Obama’s campaign anglicized this in 2008, as “Yes we...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The loss of their camp at Zuccotti Park doesn’t seem to be slowing down the Occupy Wall Street movement as protesters are calling for “a national day of direct action” on Thursday. It all starts with a rally in Liberty Square starting at 7 a.m. to “put an end to Wall Street’s reign of terror.” They plan on gathering at 16 subways stations around New York City to take their message to the trains. Finally, they say tens of thousands of protesters will end the day in Foley Square followed by a march to the Brooklyn...

A Massachusetts law professor has created a campus firestorm with an email to colleagues that declares it would be “shameful” to send care packages to U.S. troops “who have gone overseas to kill other human beings.”

The National Lawyers Guild says it has obtained a court that allows Occupy Wall St. protesters to return with tents to a New York City park. The guild says the injunction prevents the city from enforcing park rules on Occupy Wall Street protesters. Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the city knew about the court order but has not seen it. He says the city plans to go court immediately.

Hours After Manhattan Residents March On City Hall, Bloomberg Responds [snip] "...The OWS movement in New York City had become a serious detriment to residents and business owners living and working in the area near Zuccotti. Bloomberg was constantly under siege from residents to do something about the noise and reports of unsanitary conditions, in addition to the negative impact the demonstrations were having on local businesses. Residents got so enraged they decided to do something about it on Monday by marching on City Hall. WCBS 880′s Marla Diamond On The Story (see link) “No, I’m not going to take...

I was an activist and organizer in the antiwar and civil rights movements of the 1960s and '70s - movements that are reborn today in the Occupy protests. I hope today's activists can learn from our experience. I was in Students for a Democratic Society and was affiliated with the Weather Underground. As a member of Weather's aboveground support network, I worked to forge bonds between clandestine and public activists. I ran bail bond money when people got arrested and the donors wanted anonymity. I helped a brave man find a place to hide from the police. I studied martial...

Communist/Anarchist OWS Demonstrators have been taunting the local police for HOURS on end to provoke them into a fight, and now the police in Oakland, with support by many other local agencies, appear to have had just about enough and appear ready to restore order to the streets of the city.Live Leftist Link Here6:00 a.m. Pacific/9:00 a.m. Eastern.

PORTLAND, Ore. – Portland police believe that some protesters inside the Occupy Portland encampments are building shields and makeshift weapons -- including nails hammered into wood -- in preparation for when authorities attempt to clear the parks this weekend, police said Friday. Occupy Portland organizers have repeatedly said the movement is nonviolent and have appealed to demonstrators to resist peacefully when the camps close at midnight on Saturday. They planned public marches and a potluck dinner before the deadline and hoped the public would take part. But police said as many as 150 anarchists may come to Portland to take...

The mayor of Richmond, Calif. plans to skip her city’s Veterans Day memorial events to attend an Occupy rally, a choice that’s prompting anger and criticism. Mayor Gayle McLaughlin will miss a Veterans Day salute Friday in favor of an Occupy Richmond “public speak out,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. McLaughlin defended her decision, telling the newspaper that the city is not sponsoring the Veterans Day event, and the rally she will attend will honor Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran injured at an Occupy Oakland rally last month. Richmond and Oakland, both in the San Francisco Bay Area,...

Rules for Radicals, p. 113, “The first step in community organization is community disorganization.” It’s no wonder that President Obama and other politicos on the Left have embraced the Occupy Wall Street movement. They do it, not in spite of the excesses, but because of the excesses. In true Alinsky fashion Obama finds affinity with a group of anti-capitalists who defecate on police vehicles. Obama is a product of his Alinsky training, and of the 1960′s counter-revolution. It is second nature for Obama to sanction the types of political dissent with which he is familiar. When he saw a peaceful...

Her (INS Agent Mill's) instructions: Locate Elian, get him safely into a waiting van, and stay with him and allay his fears until federal agents reunited him with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.After Elian was found in a closet, Mills told him in Spanish: ``I know this seems frightening to you now, but it will all be over very soon,'' said Russ Bergeron, director of media relations for the INS. ``She told him: `We're not going to take you to Cuba. We're not going to put you on a raft. We're taking you...

A pair of Southland street cart vendors who were forced to shut down their businesses after “Occupy” protesters vandalized their carts are hoping to get some help from local residents. KNX 1070′s Tom Reopelle reports a fundraiser in the Gas Lamp district in San Diego on Monday night is aimed at helping two vendors get back on their feet. The coffee and hot dog carts were located in Civic Center Plaza, the same location as the Occupy San Diego protesters. That group first settled in to the plaza Oct. 7 and set up a tent city which has since twice...

Tea Party advocates and members of Americans for Prosperity were attacked at the AFP’s annual “Defending the American Dream Summit in Washington DC by members of the Occupy movement, and several were injured. Some of those injured were elderly as the Occupy DC protesters blocked members from leaving the building. In one instance, the protestors shove a 70-year old Americans for Prosperity Foundation member down some concrete stairs. The protesters also formed roadblocks and surrounded the convention center and refused to allow any vehicle that appeared to be a luxury car along with children, and their parents, were caught in...

Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal, who goes on trial in France Monday, boasted in an interview with the daily El Nacional of committing more than 100 attacks that claimed up to 2,000 lives. Asked about civilian bystanders who lost their lives in his attacks, the Marxist-Leninist radical said: "There were very few. I calculated that they were fewer than 10 percent. "So out of 1,500 - 2,000 killed, there were not more than 200 civilian victims," . ... Asked if he believed that he had made mistakes, Carlos said his crimes were minor. He charged that former Cuban president Fidel...

The War Against the Poor: Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Financial Morality by Frances Fox Piven. Tom Dispatch: We’ve been at war for decades now -- not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news. Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed -- until now. The Occupy Wall Street movement has already...

Occupy DC protesters violently injured peaceful Tea Party go-ers (some elderly) and attemped to force entry into the Washington Convention Center on Friday (Nov 4, 2011), where Americans for Prosperity is hosting their "Defending the American Dream Summit." The protesters also formed roadblocks, surrounding the convention center and only allowing non-luxury cars to pass. Parents with their children were caught in the violence. Some injured... Auto/pedestrian accidents occured as Occupy protestors rushed into the streets hurling profanities at drivers and attempting to block drivers' paths. This has to stop...

What follows is a close look at the leftist lawfare campaign of uncivil agitation as it unfolded in Denver last week. Denver, like other cities that have Occupy manifestations, is faced by a core of protesters from anarchist groups, labor unions, and communist organizations, often obscuring their affiliations, mixed in with a mishmash of confused students, concerned citizen activists, children, and all sorts of evil clowns.

The Greek debt crisis may steal the show at the G20 summit but anti-capitalist protest voices are getting louder on the sidelines. Thousands of demonstrators against corporate greed and tax havens have taken to the streets of the French seaside resort of Nice and other resorts along the coast. The French Riviera is world famous for its rich and exclusive spots. Today much of it has been transformed into an exclusion zone by a massive ring of security, especially around the summit venue in Cannes. Crowds are being kept away from the main commercial centre. Security has been stepped up...

(VIDEO AT LINK) OAKLAND, Calif. - A protest that shut down the Port of Oakland to show the broadening reach of the Occupy Wall Street movement ended in violence when police in riot gear arrested dozens of protesters overnight who broke into a vacant building, shattered downtown windows, sprayed graffiti and set blazes along the way. --snip-- Protesters also threw concrete chunks, metal pipes, lit roman candles and molotov cocktails, police said....

Occupy Oakland protesters claimed victory after they shut down one of the nation's busiest shipping ports - escalating a movement whose tactics had largely been limited to marches, rallies and camps. In a five-hour stand-off protesters vandalised businesses and smashed bank windows, as they tried to shut down the city - and police appeared to respond using tear gas and flash bang grenades. The California demonstrators blocked operations at the city's port and stopped traffic on Wednesday in protests against economic inequality and police brutality, marred by scattered vandalism. Police in riot gear arrested dozens of protesters who had marched...

Markets Are Falling, As Papandreou Says That Euro Membership Itself Will Be In The Referendum Joe Weisenthal Nov. 1, 2011, 7:28 PM This is for all the marbles: Bloomberg is reporting that George Papandreou will put everything in the big Greek referendum, including, yes, euro membership itself. Despite major concerns about this referendum across Europe, and across the Greek government, it's clear he's really pushing for this move, and wants to put the question directly to the Greeks, rather than have them complain about austerity, while simultaneously wanting to remain in the EU. All that being said, we don't really...

Occupy Oakland organizers said Monday that they are calling for work stoppages, school walkouts and the closure of banks and corporations during a general strike and mass day of action that's planned for Wednesday. Speaking at a news conference at the intersection of Broadway and Telegraph Avenue in downtown Oakland, which was the center of the city's last general strike in 1946, Louise Michel said there has been "an overwhelming consensus" by the group's members to call a general strike. Michel said the strike goals are "solidarity with the worldwide occupy movement, ending police attacks on our communities and defending...

Scott Olsen is the Marine Corps veteran critically injured at Occupy Oakland Tuesday night, during a confrontation between the protesters and the police. The latest news is good: his condition has been upgraded from critical to fair and he is apparently conscious and able to respond to doctors and family members. I sincerely wish him a full recovery, and I also hope that a proper investigation is conducted to determine whether police misconduct is responsible for his injuries. But I ran across something this evening that may add a new dimension to this story. It has been widely reported that...

Protesters want government to punish Wall Street. Who’s next? Accolades are being heaped on the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators by the Left and their mainstream media cheerleaders. President Barack Obama proclaimed, "The protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works." Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "God bless them for their spontaneity!" The list goes on. OWS supporters paint the protesters as examples of what involved Americans should do. Since the original demonstrations began Sept. 17 the protesters have delivered numerous leftist socialist demands that would change our country, but they still been...