Free Republic

Three generations of economists immersed themselves in study of the Great Depression, determined to prevent a recurrence of the awful events of the 1930s. And as our current financial crisis began to unfold in 2008, policymakers did everything that those economists prescribed. Following John Maynard Keynes, President Bush and President Obama each offered a fiscal stimulus. The Federal Reserve maintained confidence in the financial system, increased the money supply, and lowered interest rates. The major industrial nations worked together, rather than at cross purposes as they had in the early 1930s. In other words, the government tried to do everything...

By David Paulin It was one of the strangest hit-and-runs police had ever seen in Austin, Texas. Early last September, officers answering a call at 4:19 a.m. found a young man dead along a highway. They surmised he was a motorcyclist. He was, after all, wearing motorcycle garb – a helmet, black-leather jacket, boots. A few hundred feet away, officers spotted a single skid mark running down the highway, and disappearing from sight. Oddly, no motorcycle could be found. A check of the victim's driver's license revealed his name: Eric M. Laufer. Laufer, 25, was a highly-regarded musician and...

Why Barack Obama Is Good For Israel By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem --- November 4, 2008...... Israel by its very nature is a conservative nation. With the threat of terror attacks and war taking place at any moment, Israel deserves that status. So when many of my Facebook friends ask me how can I as an Israeli vote for Obama, I understand where they are coming from. Just Obama's name is enough to scare anyone walking the streets of Tel Aviv, Haifa or Jerusalem. And Barack Obama has had many friends in the past who helped create an...

A college has renamed the traditional Christmas and Easter breaks in a bid to avoid offending students from other religions. The college's new calendar shows that both of the traditional holiday periods have now been re-branded as 'end of term breaks'. Critics have complained that the decision by Yorkshire Coast College is nothing more than 'political correctness'. Tory MP Robert Goodwill said: 'I have heard that some people refer to the Christmas period as the Winterval, which is worse. This is absolutely barmy. 'We are a Christian country and, to be honest, religious tolerance in this country is about respecting...

*Excerpt* Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases. The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence. Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through county courts or the country's High Court, a part of its Supreme Court system. Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims. Politicians and...

ROTTERDAM, 12/08/08 - Although polygamy is banned in the Netherlands, the marriages of Muslims who have several wives are recognised by Dutch authorities. Registrars in the major cities, in particular, record dozens of bigamous or polygamous marriages per year. These marriages are prohibited and an offence in the Netherlands. However, polygamous marriages that take place in countries where more than one wife is permitted, such as Morocco, are accepted, newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports. If immigrants with several wives settle in the Netherlands, the local authorities register all the marriages. However, the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS), where all marriages are...

You must be nicer to Muslims, Britain is told by UN human rights chiefs By Mail Foreign Service Last updated at 8:34 AM on 25th July 2008 Britain was told yesterday by a United Nations committee to take firm action to combat 'negative public attitudes' towards Muslims. The nine-member human rights committee also criticised some of the UK's antiterror measures. The body, which is composed of legal experts, said it was concerned ' negative public attitudes towards Muslim members of society' continued to develop in Britain. Be nice: Britain has been told to take firm action and combat negative public...

Japanese professionals in their thirties are killing themselves at unprecedented rates, as the nation struggles with a runaway suicide epidemic. Newly published figures show that 30,093 people took their own lives in 2007 — a 2.9 per cent increase in a year — leaving the country as the most suicide-prone anywhere in the developed world and rendering government efforts to combat the problem a failure. Suicide rates remained highest among men — at 71 per cent of the total — and very high among Japan’s rising population of over-60s. Geographically, most suicides took place in the prefecture of Yamanashi, where...

If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore needs a share in any religious establishment to reflect this. The progress of conservative Islam in the UK has been amazing, and it has come at a time of prolonged decline in church attendance that seems likely to continue. This progress has been enthusiastically assisted by this government in particular with its hard-line multi-cultural dogma and willingness to concede to virtually every demand made by...

THE HAGUE, 27/05/08 - The Amsterdam police corps is giving its officers a discount if they buy the Koran translation of writer Kader Abdolah. Officers should thereby be encouraged to get a better insight into Islam, according to a corps spokesman. Abdolah says he translated the Koran to make the book accessible to the Dutch. The book of the Iranian-Dutch author was published at the end of last month by publisher De Geus. Officers who buy the book pay half price. The other half is paid out of the Amsterdam police budget. Officers are not obligated to read the book,...

Amsterdam CDA municipal council member Lex van Drooge was recently asked to move to a different seat on a KLM flight from Istanbul to Amsterdam, since the Muslim woman sitting next to him had objections about sitting next to a man. The council member had been a work-trip to Istanbul together with a group of Amsterdam politicians. He says that at beginning of the trip back he was asked by a stewardess to move elsewhere in the plane. Later it turned out this request was from his original headscarf wearing neighbor. Van Drooge says that apparently we don't know how...

PARIS (Reuters) - French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers. Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros ($23,760) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts." Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim...

ROMAN CATHOLICISM: A DIFFERENT GOSPEL In their lust for unity the Emergent Church and post-evangelical “Protestants” are right now embracing the Roman Catholic Church as another Christian denomination. But the issue is simple: If, as taught the Church of Rome, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without “the new birth in baptism” then we are now in hopeless contradiction with the Gospel contained in Holy Scripture. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:8) Speaking The Truth In...

Anchor: PROJECT IMMIGRATION FOCUSES ON A COMMUNITY WITH A VERY HIGH CONCENTRATION OF IMMIGRANTS FROM EL SALVADOR... ANDREA MCCARREN TAKES US THERE. Andrea McCarren: THIS IS CHIRILAGUA, WHERE SPANISH IS WIDELY SPOKEN. RESTAURANTS FEATURE FOODS TYPICAL OF LATIN AMERICA AND LIVELY MUSIC DRIFTS FROM PASSING CARS AS WELL AS BUSINESSES. Evelin Urrutia/Salvadoran Immigrant: "When I get here, I just feel like I'm arriving to El Salvador. Everyone speaks Spanish. Almost every face you see is a Spanish person. The music is loud." TRACK: STORE SHELVES ARE LINED WITH TRADITIONAL SALVADORAN FOODS. SIGNS IN SPANISH ADVERTISE EVERYTHING FROM HAIRCUTS, TO TAX...

The price: 20 cents per word. The project: 30,000 words. The total expenses: $25,669.50 The goal: Translate civil and self-represented litigant forms into Spanish, Vietnamese and Arabic to help eliminate language barriers new Americans face when dealing with Nebraska’s court system. The project, Nebraska Efforts to Ensure Equal Access to Justice, will help the court system serve those who don’t speak English — or those who speak limited English — in civil and self-represented court issues, said Liz Neeley, a project organizer. Before this project, perhaps a dozen court documents were translated into Spanish, said Neeley, project director for the...

'We want to offer sharia law to Britain' By Clare Dwyer Hogg and Jonathan Wynne-Jones Last Updated: 9:22pm GMT 19/01/2008Page 1 of 3 Islamic courts meet every week in the UK to rule on divorces and financial disputes. Clare Dwyer Hogg and Jonathan Wynne-Jones report on demands by senior Muslims that sharia be given legal authorityAmnah is a modern British Muslim. She is dressed in a denim skirt and her head is covered in a hijab. Poised and self-assured, she has come to meet Dr Suhaib Hasan, a silver-bearded sheikh who sits behind his desk, surrounded by religious books. The...

A MUSLIM store worker refused to serve a customer buying a children’s book on Christianity because she said it was “unclean”. Shopper Sally Friday felt publicly humiliated at a branch of Marks & Spencer when she tried to pay for First Bible Stories as a gift for her young grandson. When she put the book on the check-out counter, the young assistant refused to touch it, declared it was unclean and summoned another member of staff to serve instead. Mrs Friday said she was so upset that she has now complained to the store’s management. Last night politicians and religious...

The deputy commander of the European Union's new border post was anxious. "Is the camera switched on?" he whispered to his colleagues. Heads shook. "Sort it out," he ordered them quietly, not realising he was being overheard. An officer hurried down a corridor of the small brick building, on the frontier between Hungary and Ukraine, to switch on a television monitor and look busy. Moments later, as The Sunday Telegraph was escorted into his office, he was in front of his screen, panning the camera across the drab Hungarian countryside, apparently searching for illegal immigrants attempting to sneak in from...

Hospital staff told to make sure Muslim patients' beds face Mecca five times a dayThe job of the nurse used to one of caring for the sick and needy. But not - it would seem - in today's politically-correct Britain. Now, nurses are being encouraged to spend valuable time turning around the beds of Muslim patients up to five times a day - so they can face Mecca. In a bid to promote cultural understanding, they are also expected to provide patients with running water so they can wash before prayer. And then, of course, they are required to turn...

As the nation settled down on Wednesday night to watch England play Croatia, I sensed an air of optimism in the land. A feeling that all would be well. I mean hey, England were holding their own against Brazil when Croatia didn’t even exist as a nation state. So what chance would these swarthy-looking Yugo-ruffians have? They were minnows in a tank of sharks. They weren’t going to be beaten. They were going to be eaten. Hmmm. I’m afraid I knew we were going to lose moments before the match began. I looked at our players mumbling their way through...