Free Republic

Those lucky enough to still be here to look back at history post Barack Obama will recognize the last sight-piggyback funeral dirge of the once noble Space Shuttle as the Obama Regime’s defining moment. Were an artist to paint a picture of a small boy looking at up at his flying kite as the space shuttle passed over Manhattan yesterday, no portrait of the story of America’s deliberate ruin at the hands of a single politician could ever come closer to the truth. [BIG Snip of text] Few will remember that it was on the fullest moon of the year...

MACON, Ga. - An annual Easter egg hunt in central Georgia has been canceled after organizers say parents became violent while trying to collect eggs for themselves and their children in past years. This will be the first time in years that the Easter Bunny won't be visiting children during the annual egg hunt at Central City Park in Macon, traditionally one of the largest Easter events in central Georgia.

The Obama Doctrine can be summed up as the assertion that for the United States to have influence and standing on the global stage, it must first abandon its interests and its allies. The doctrine is rarely described as bluntly as that by its proponents who employ euphemisms like multilateral policies and honest broker to mean much the same thing, denouncing the previous administration and all the preceding administrations going back to old Tom Jefferson for alienating the world by pursuing American interests and cutting deals with non-progressive allies. The easiest way to spot the problem with this approach is...

Government dependence index values Americans are more dependent on the government than ever, according to the Heritage Foundation.Heritage's index, which looks at government disbursements from health and welfare to farm subsidies, jumped 8.1 percent in 2011.The share of Americans who pay no taxes rose to a record 49.5 percent.A record 70.5 percent of government spending went to dependence programs. Heritage Heritage Heritage Heritage

The world’s first euthanasia film festival is being held in Amsterdam, sponsored by the Dutch Right to Die lobby (NVVE). This week, from February 6 to 12 is a "Week of Euthanasia" in the Netherlands, a celebration of a decade of euthanasia and assisted suicide. They were legalised on April 1, 2002. More than 35 old and new films and documentaries, from all over the world, from Hollywood to Bollywood are to be screened. They include Million Dollar Baby, Mar Adentro, The Barabarian Invasions, Las Buenas Hierbas, Igby goes down, Whose Life is it Anyway? and The Suicide Tourist. There...

Grand Rapids - A Michigan man knowingly had unprotected sex with thousands of people whilst diagnosed with HIV, hoping to spread the infection. Police in Rapid Springs, Michigan, have released information hoping to alert potential victims of a serial philanderer who deliberately had unprotected sex with thousands of people, in an effort to spread HIV. David Dean Smith, 51, turned himself in to Michigan police last week, confessing that he hoped to spread his infection to others.

To those who've declared European civilization dead due to demographics, I've often replied that in Europe, there are ents. In J.R.R. Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings" series, ents were extremely long-lived tree-like creatures who thought in terms of centuries, not years. They were painfully slow to act, but amazingly forceful when they do. What we're witnessing in Europe is a rebound of birth rates that is slow and incomplete, yet highly significant and growing. These rebounding birth rates are not due to Islamic and African immigrants. In many nations, the number of Islamic immigrants is much lower than perceived...

A couple who have adopted nine boys through the state Department of Children and Families since 2000 and run a dog breeding business out of their Glastonbury home have been charged with sexually assaulting two of the boys, police said.

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...

Barack Obama's badly flawed worldview and the incoherent foreign policy flowing from it have now disintegrated. Within the past few months, his media acolytes notwithstanding, the evidence has become conclusive: Obama's presidency is gravely wounding America and its friends. His response to virtually every significant threat or crisis has either complicated or worsened the problem, or, at best, left it essentially no closer to resolution. Obama has repeatedly highlighted his propensity to apologize for America's past transgressions (as he defines them), and his disinclination to be assertive on our behalf. Indeed, so radically different is Obama from any prior American...

There's a classic sequence near the end of the 1997 movie Titanic that depicts the ship's sinking. As the bow of the ship takes on water and slides beneath the ocean, the stern of the ship rises out of the water and ends up vertical. There's a pause as the stern just bobs there in the middle of the ocean leaving the remaining passengers afraid and confused. Then, after a brief pause, the ship quickly sinks. As I watch economic and political news unfold, I get the distinct impression that in 2008 the liberal ship Titanic hit an economic iceberg...

The post-war trend of falling birth rates has been reversed across Europe, according to a new study. However, despite an increasing emphasis on family and fertility policies in Europe, this recent development involves social, cultural and economic factors more than individual policy interventions. For some decades, couples have been having children later in life. But birth-rates among younger women have stabilised and the long-term trend towards lower fertility rates has been reversed. Politicians are still left to grapple with problems associated with an ageing population as Europeans live longer and birth rates remain below the level needed to dramatically change...

The flash mobs in America or the Blackberry mobs in London have one thing in common. It isn't race, though they tend to predominantly be minorities. It's identity. The counterculture has not changed dramatically since the 70's, but it has tossed aside any appearance of idealism. The new counterculture draws in two groups, disaffected upper middle class white youth and lower class black youth. Their goals are purely materialistic, looted iPods and government subsidies for housing, education and anything else they can think of. These are the children of the welfare state with little in common except a rejection of...

On Thursday, in honor of Barack Obama's 50th birthday, the Dow dropped 10 points for every year he has walked among us. It was the ninth-largest drop in history. We should be relieved he wasn't turning 80. The markets are apparently concerned that the entire global economy might be "stalling." You don't say? Observant fellows, these market chappies. And yet, in a certain sense, these are still the good times. At the end of the week, U.S. Treasury yields plunged to Eisenhower-era rates. America, explained Ethan Harris of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, "still gets the safe haven money." That's...

While it remains a bit premature to begin crowing over correct predictions, as of last night we have what appears to be the framework of a debt deal. (For those who missed it, Allahpundit had a summary of the details along with John Boehner’s Powerpoint presentation sketching it out fairly well.) Of course, as was pointed out during the more heated portions of the end game, nothing is agreed upon until everything is agreed upon. The rank and file on each side will still have to swallow this pill, and some folks – particularly on the left – aren’t exactly...

It has always been the case in history, when a particular event occurs that is significant, no one can actually know at the time the portent of the event in question. For instance, who could have known that the tyrannical excesses of King George during the Americas' colonization would eventually lead to a Revolution that would define free societies for the next two and a half centuries? Even better, who could have known that this same revolt against Great Britain would ultimately lead to the salvation of a latter day United Kingdom, if not the world, during both Germany and...

What does history predict for our reckless course? “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”– Abraham Lincoln, 1838 United States government debt now stands at $14.3 trillion, a sum nearly equal to our entire national gross domestic product (GDP). Sounds bad, right? Turns out, it’s worse. Much, much worse. According to a stunning new analysis by USA Today, the real total for America’s unfunded obligations is $61.6 trillion.You see the government, unlike a business, is not required to count...

The latest Social Security Trustees Report tells us that the program will be insolvent by the year 2037. The combined unfunded liability of Social Security and Medicare has reached nearly $107 trillion in today's dollars. That is about seven times the size of the U.S. economy and 10 times the size of the national debt. Those entitlement programs, along with others, account for nearly 60 percent of federal spending. They are what Congress calls non-discretionary spending. About half of discretionary spending is for national defense. Each year, non-discretionary spending consumes a higher and higher percentage of the federal budget. The...

At a gathering some years ago, I had a political conversation with a man who had recently arrived here from Denmark. He was advocating his home country's socialist system, which, of course, led to profound disagreement. He was good natured and cordial, however, so the debate ended on a polite note. Yet it also ended on an ironic one: When asked if he wanted to return home, his answer was no. This is a common phenomenon. We see it, for instance, in liberal northerners who move to the South for the lower taxes and cost of living and greater freedom...

Delaware will be the eighth state to allow civil unions or comprehensive domestic partnerships for same-sex couples. The state House of Representatives voted 26 to 15 Thursday night in favor of the measure. Governor Jack Markell, who has been a gay rights advocate throughout his public service career, has said he will sign the civil union bill, which gives gay couples the same rights, benefits, and responsibilities as heterosexual married couples. The Senate passed the bill last week. "We are tremendously proud that the Delaware House has passed civil union legislation," said Equality Delaware President Lisa Goodman. "The fact that...

America’s population of white children, a majority now, will be in the minority during this decade, sooner than previously expected, according to a new report. The Census Bureau had originally forecast that 2023 would be the tipping point for the minority population under the age of 18. But rapid growth among Latinos, Asians and people of more than one race has pushed it earlier, to 2019, according to William Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution who wrote the report about the shift, which has far-reaching political and policy implications. The single largest increase was among Hispanics, whose birthrates...

t is becoming increasingly clear that we in America are living through a period of transition. One chapter of our national life is closing, and another is about to begin. We can sense this in the tense volatility of our electoral politics, as dramatic "change elections" follow closely upon one another. We can feel it in the unseemly mood of decline that has infected our public life — leaving our usually cheerful nation fretful about global competition and unsure if the next generation will be able to live as well as the present one. Perhaps above all, we can discern...

Brazilian philosopher, Olavo de Carvalho is an expert on the Latin American Left and its ties to Islam, Russia and China. Olavo de Carvahlo In this interview, with Jeff Nyquist, de Carvahlo eloquently and forcefully states a theme I've long promoted on this blog - that Russia, China, Cuba, Iran radical Islam and the Latin American Left, co-ordinated by Cuba and Brazil through the Sao Paolo Forum, are working together to destroy the the United States of America. I emphasize - not to weaken, to marginalize, to impoverish - but to DESTROY the USA. As Carvalho explained, “The Russian-Chinese influence...

Official Congressional budget estimates understate the peril of rising debt, Fed chair Ben Bernanke told the Budget Committee on Capitol Hill today. Warning that our nation's fiscal health has deteriorated appreciably since the onset of the financial crisis and the recession, Bernanke called upon lawmakers to confront the long term fiscal challenges sooner rather than later. If lawmakers don't confront them, they'll find themselves confronted by them.

Fury as hospitals hit with outages while post-industrial collapse of America accelerates The rolling blackouts now being implemented in Texas and across the country as record cold weather grips the United States are a direct consequence of the Obama administration’s agenda to lay siege to the coal industry, launch a takeover of infrastructure under the contrived global warming scam, and help usher in the post-industrial collapse of America.

If I am pessimistic about the future of liberty, it is because I am pessimistic about the strength of the English-speaking nations, which have, in profound ways, surrendered to forces at odds with their inheritance. “Declinism” is in the air, but some of us apocalyptic types are way beyond that. The United States is facing nothing so amiable and genteel as Continental-style “decline,” but something more like sliding off a cliff. In the days when I used to write for Fleet Street, a lot of readers and several of my editors accused me of being anti-British. I’m not. I’m extremely...

About a year ago, I began to commit social suicide. It was a slow process, beginning as I spoke my mind to friends about the new convictions I was forming. If I ever was A-list, pretty soon I wasn’t anymore. I never had a t-shirt of Mao or Che, but if I did, I’d burn it in defiant protest. I love America, and I have come to realize that my only hope for freedom or equality – the things my friends say they all want – is to join together with those who want to protect Her, no matter how...

Energy: Keeping a campaign vow to bankrupt the industry, the administration revokes the permit for an approved, working coal mine in West Virginia. Guess those electric cars will have to get their energy elsewhere. We and others have warned that in the wake of November's "shellacking," the Obama administration would attempt to implement its agenda through regulations and rule making. As West Virginia's coal industry has found, it matters not even if you follow the rules. In pursuit of this agenda, the rules can be changed on the fly. The Environmental Protection Agency has revoked the coal mining permit for...

Dr. Jamie Glazov and his Canadian publisher, Mantua Books, have just published a new kind of “samizdat” which is the Russian word for self-publications written by dissidents and passed from hand to hand. “Self-publishing” (by hand, on typewriters, on printing presses) was a 20th century way of dealing with Soviet government censorship. The Russian authors and readers who were found with such writing in their possession were routinely subjected to harsh imprisonment. Westerners, (and this includes Israel), do not live in a Soviet Gulag and are not subject to political censorship, but we do face a new kind of Orwellian...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is setting aside 187,000 square miles in Alaska as a “critical habitat’’ for polar bears, an action that could add restrictions to future offshore drilling for oil and gas. The total, which includes large areas of sea ice off the Alaska coast, is about 13,000 square miles less than in a preliminary plan released last year. Tom Strickland, Interior assistant secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks, said the designation would help polar bears stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest threat is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change.

Sitting here comfortably in my Canadian living room and observing what is going on south of the border is like watching an Xtreme Fighting match for the championship of the world on a giant liquid plasma screen. American politics is high entertainment for those at a prophylactic distance and is crucially different from the bland predictability we are accustomed to here: a decent Conservative government prone to foot-in-mouth disease; Liberals slavering for power with a university intellectual who spent over thirty years out of the country as its leader; a socialist rump called the New Democratic Party playing the...

A New Breed of Home Marijuana Grower California -- Joanne Clarke, a legal secretary in her late 50s, leads the way down a pale green hallway in her modest Costa Mesa home, past a small guest room on the right and a blue tiled bathroom on the left. At the end of the hall, she opens a door, pushes aside a thick black curtain and ducks inside. "Isn't this wild?" she says, gesturing to the high-tech marijuana grow room she and her husband recently installed. "This used to be my daughter's bedroom." Wild is one word for it. Bright is...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has expressed a willingness to ban protesters from burning the Koran as the modern day equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater.The Supreme Court has ruled burning the American flag in protest is protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution.Breyer spoke to George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America today:But Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told me on "GMA" that he's not prepared to conclude that -- in the internet age -- the First Amendment condones Koran burning.“Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater,” Breyer...

Last Tuesday, Dr. Thomas Sowell was interviewed on The Rush Limbaugh Show by Walter Williams, who was serving as guest host.  During this interview, Williams inquired about Sowell's opinion of direction that America is heading in . "Are you optimistic or pessimistic?"  Williams asked. "Pessimistic, and I am fighting off becoming despairing," replied Sowell. [1]  Sowell's words should not be taken lightly. As a recent Investor's Business Daily editorial about Sowell said, "Doomsters are a dime a dozen. But when a leading economist who's been called "the nation's greatest contemporary philosopher" sees serious trouble ahead, we'd better listen up."    The...

At an Iftar dinner in the White House, Barack Hussein Obama proclaimed that he supports the building of the Ground Zero mosque as part of his "unshakable commitment to religious freedom". Which of course sounds very noble and good, until you ask a single question, Where is the religious freedom in the Muslim world? Obama has made the case for Islam in America, on the grounds that America's religious diversity promotes the religious freedom of all. Islam no less than any other belief system. Yet if introducing Islam into America promotes religious freedom, then why is there no religious freedom...

It's not often you see an obituary as snarky and bitter as the one written by British columnist Johann Hari announcing what he called the "slow, whining death of British Christianity" in the UK edition of GQ and online at The Huffington Post. Citing an unlinked ICM study, which is not available on the organization's website, Hari called on reader to "put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. My country,Britain, is now on the most irreligious country on earth." Hari called Christianity, "superstition," "weak," "cruel," and based on "intimidation." He predicted that, "As their...

Recently, I received a rare visit from my brother-in-law. He is a smart guy, having graduated valedictorian of his high school class and currently running a successful business. Unfortunately, his politics run 180 degrees counter to mine, as he grew up in the socialist environment of his Swedish homeland. As we talked about the weather and other neutral subjects, he stared into my library. Among my compilation of Holy Bibles and Vince Flynn novels, he noticed my Glenn Beck book collection. "Do you believe in that stuff?" he asked, giving me a repulsed look as though they espoused the philosophy...

Construction of 'Cordoba House', a.k.a. 'Ground Zero Mosque', draws ever closer. Cordoba, a city in Spain, was conquered by Muslims in the early 8th century. Upon capturing the city, Muslims began construction on the first 'Cordoba House'. Prior to that, Spain, at the time a Christian nation, was a symbol of western civilization. Once it had fallen to Islam, the first 'Cordoba House' became an Islamic symbol of conquest. Former Muslim terrorist Walid Shoebat, has made it his life's work to warn westerners about the true intentions of Islam and insists the Islamic mindset has not changed, even after twelve...

It was primarily Christians who sought freedom of worship by coming to the New World, but since then America has flourished with just about every hybrid of religion you can imagine. And we manage to get along pretty well. Of course we must ‘endure’ overly nice people with tracts and flowers or those who woo you with green Jell-O. But bottom line, if we don’t like it, we ignore it, we shut the door, we abstain. It’s our right as Americans because we’re free to worship…or not. Lately, there’s been a new kid on the American block. Sharia, an interpretation...

Nearly one in five American women in her early 40s is childless, according to a report that shows a striking increase in women who don't have biological children. The trend was much less common in the 1970s, when one in 10 women did not have children by 40 to 44, the age bracket researchers use to designate the end of childbearing years. The report, released Friday by the Pew Research Center, cites social and cultural shifts behind the change, including less pressure to have children, better contraceptive measures and expanded job opportunities for women. (snip) Overall, the report found that...

Bullying among school kids in the US has apparently risen to a new alarming level, and nowadays the kids are trying out a new act called ‘Sack Tapping’, which has turned common and can be seen in all the schools in the country. Just to make it clear, that the word ‘sack’ is not something that little kids bring to school for lunch, but we can figure it out what it really is. It was a terrible to witness the limit of this heinous act that was crossed at a school in Minnesota, when a boy was rushed into an...

In total 1,047 young people aged either 14 or younger had an abortion in 2009 the figures show, a slight drop on the previous year The figures were released just a day after the first advert for abortion was shown on British television. It also follows a recommendation that teenagers and other young women be encouraged to stockpile the morning after pill at home in case of emergencies by the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the Government’s public health body. There were 3,823 abortions performed on under 16s, and 17,916 on under-18s last year, the statistics, released...

Germany is shrinking — and fast. New figures released on May 17 show the birth rate in Europe's biggest economy has plummeted to a historic low, dropping to a level not seen since 1946. As demographers warn of the consequences of not making enough babies to replace and support an ageing population, the latest figures have triggered a bout of national soul-searching and cast a harsh light on Chancellor Angela Merkel's family policies.

With a $1 trillion bailout package for Greece and the other sick men of Europe, the EU and IMF spurred a huge global rally in stocks Monday, with the Dow rising 405 points, its biggest gain since March 2009. The massive bailout prevented "another systemic seizure of the global financial system" and, "in the short run, markets are happy we're not going to have another global meltdown like Lehman," says NYU professor Nouriel Roubini, co-author of Crisis Economics.

In the last few weeks, I have found myself debating on radio and TV programs whether various financial instruments have any social utility -- any "real world" purpose other than "speculation or gambling." (Disclosure: I give professional advice to a number of financial organizations.) My first instinct was to defend various derivatives as serving useful purposes: to hedge against various risks -- such as currency fluctuation or aviation-fuel price rises, to promote innovation, competition, efficiency and liquidity (paraphrasing Lawrence H. Summers, Alan Greenspan, Arthur Levitt and William J. Rainer from a 1999 Clinton administration report.) I pointed out that creating...

It started with a showing of "Shutter Island" and ended with a real life attempted murder charge. A 39-year-old Lancaster man accused of stabbing another moviegoer with a meat thermometer during a screening of the horror film was ordered Friday to stand trial on attempted murder and other charges. Lancaster Superior Court Judge Christopher Estes found sufficient evidence to require Landry Boullard to proceed to trial on one count each of attempted murder and being a felon in possession of a firearm and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Boullard is accused of stabbing the victim in the...

I am at a loss... are there ways to 'come out ahead financially' in a Socialist country?

President Obama is employing tactics right out of a textbook. It is evident for all to see as he systematically destroys the American economy and freedom itself in hopes of ushering in his glorious Marxist Revolution here in America. Having watched Barack Obama’s sole economic recovery strategy of spending hand-over-fist to “heal” our economic malaise and rampant deficits, we must ask if his theory is a cipher for the mythic phoenix? Is Barack a classical Marxist seeking to fix a broken society via torching our economy to ashes, confident it will arise again, healed by socialism and communism? During a...

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Obama's State of the Union address was "very troubling" and the annual speech has "degenerated to a political pep rally." Obama chided the court, with the justices seated before him in their black robes, for its decision on a campaign finance case. Responding to a University of Alabama law student's question, Roberts said anyone was free to criticize the court, and some have an obligation to do so because of their positions. "So I have no problems with that," he said. "On the other hand, there is...