Free Republic

The extension of the most recent Supreme Court case regarding gay marriage when applied to nudist couples clearly shows there is unrestrained freedom of stupidity The recent Supreme Court decision announcing that same-sex marriage is a Constitutional right is now viewed in many cases as an imprimatur over all aspects of homosexual demands on the rest of society. If a same-sex couple wishes to marry, the press and many left wing pundits now view this as having the right to demand of every citizen to do exactly what they’re told to do by every same-sex couple that walks in the...

As tensions mount over the December 30th shooting of 36-year-old Jerame Reid by police in Bridgeton, New Jersey, Reid’s family is saying thanks but no thanks to Reverend Al Sharpton.

Is it a coincidence that countries with healthy Jewish populations tend to enjoy far greater economic success than those without? King Edward I expelled the Jews from England in 1290. For about two hundred years prior, England's economy had been growing dramatically with Jews playing a significant role in the development of silver mining, currency and banking. With their departure, the English economy went into decline. In his wonderful book, History of the English Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill explains that as bankers and lenders Jews held the mortgages on a great deal of English land on which they had loaned...

There has been a lot of very good discussion on yesterday’s blog post on the banishment of “dirty dancing” at many school dances. Much of the discussion has centered on modesty. Modesty is a beautiful, essential and often diminished virtue in today’s “tell-all,” ”show-all” world. There are many good definitions of modesty. Websters dictionary defines modesty first as freedom from conceit or vanity and secondly as propriety in dress, speech or conduct. It is the second definition that concerns us. While the Websters definition of modesty is surely accurate I would like to say that the most beautiful and thought-provoking...

Income Gap: As President Obama laments America's growing income inequality, a new government report shows the futility of his calls for ever-more wealth redistribution. To deflect attention from ObamaCare's failures, the president this month trotted out his income inequality chestnut. "A dangerous and growing inequality," he intoned, "has jeopardized middle-class America's basic bargain." He argued, "as a trickle-down ideology became more prominent, taxes were slashed for the wealthiest, while investments in things that make us all richer, like schools and infrastructure, were allowed to wither." Apparently, nobody bothered to brief the president before he delivered this speech. Fact is, federal...

Why do negative ads work? Some people say the negative ads give them information upon which to base their decision at the voting table (those little four-legged stands we use in Marion County). A study from Stanford University says the information from negative ads generally is not accurate. Perhaps negative ads work in the same way as Big-Time Championship Wrestling (as it was called when I was young; whatever it is called now). No one doubts the efforts of the participants, and the world is made a much simpler place when painted in black-and-white (with slightly better resolution vis-a-vis the...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A Kansas church has decided to not protest at the funeral of a 9-year-old girl killed in a shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz. Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka says church members will skip Thursday's funeral of Christina Taylor Green in Tucson. Phelps-Roper says the church decided against the picket in exchange for airtime... Phelps-Roper says the group will picket the Friday funeral of U.S. District Judge John Roll and at the intersection where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others were shot. The Arizona Legislature unanimously passed a measure Tuesday banning protests at or...

A group known as Morality in Media is leading the charge in calling for Elena Kagan to be questioned extensively on her views regarding indecency rulings related to content standards for major broadcast television networks. As president and founder of Morality in Media, Robert Peters has an extremely vested interest in wanting to know how Kagan views the first amendment and particularly the part of freedom of speech. Peters, along with all of the other groups who signed on to his open letter to President Obama, believes that people have a right to be protected from indecency.

The most surprising and disappointing aspect of our politics is how little pushback there has been against the vile, extremist rhetoric that has characterized such a large part of the anti-Obama movement. President Obama's White House has largely ignored those accusing him of "fascism" and "communism," presumably believing that restraint in defense of dignity is no vice. Republican politicians, worried about future primary fights, have been reluctant to pick a fight with a radical right that seems to be the most energized section of their party. Their "moderation" has consisted of a non-benign neglect of the extremists and of accusing...

Take a conservative stand in the blogosphere, cable television and the mainstream media and you can count on being attacked in the rudest, crudest, and foulest possible language, much of it unprintable in a daily newspaper, by zealots on the Left. I ignore such stuff, knowing that Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" encourages the use of abusive, garbage language as a tool to isolate and discredit people and institutions. Perhaps that makes it easier to send those the commissars deem utterly evil or hopelessly ignorant to re-education camps, or worse. But I never expected to hear such language from people...

The Legion of Decency was formed in 1934 to combat immoral movies. People took a pledge, in church, against bad movies. They pledged not only never to go to any morally objectionable movie, but never even to go to any movie theater that had ever shown a morally objectionable film! This was very effective in discouraging Hollywood from making movies which would earn the disapproval of the Legion of Decency. And the Legion of Decency's ratings were very strict, much more strict than the modern Catholic Bishops' movie rating system (which has been sadly ineffective in influencing the making of...

Election Day 2008 must have been filled with rueful paradoxes for the sitting president. Iraq -- the issue that dominated George W. Bush's presidency for 5 1/2 bitter, controversial years -- is on the verge of a miraculous peace. And yet this accomplishment did little to revive Bush's political standing -- or to prevent his party from relegating him to a silent role. The achievement is historic. In 2006, Iraq had descended into a sectarian killing spree that seemed likely to stop only when the supply of victims was exhausted. Showing Truman-like stubbornness, Bush pushed to escalate a war that...

Just reported.

....Looking back today, through the smoking ruins of a political and financial culture which thought it had abolished the business cycle, I can see that we were co-opted into a form of social order which was dying. Job, saving, marriage, sucking up to potential lender: we were made to prove that we could be trusted in order to gain the privileges that trust brings. In a word, we were made respectable. As hard times return, could respectability return, too? Should it? Ever since the Romantic movement began more than 200 years ago, no concept has taken harder knocks from great...

The Dark Knight has no use for FISA By Sharon McGovern This is not a review, though I submit The Dark Knight kicks a** so very hard. Instead, this will be a brief look at themes employed in TDK; a sequel to Batman is a NeoCon. If you haven’t already contributed to the movie’s astonishing opening weekend take, you might want to decide right now if you want to read something that gives away a number of its plot points. The Dark Knight begins with “the bat man” having become a fixture in Gotham. He inspires resentment for the toll...

How could he? Oh, I get the call-girl thing, the other woman thing, in the Eliot Spitzer case. Many of our outsized political leaders are -- what's that strange and understated phrase we use in these situations today? -- "not perfect." I'm no longer shocked or disappointed because the straying politician becomes entangled with mistresses or prostitutes or who knows what for the same reason he plunged into politics in the first place: to fill the bottomless hole in his soul. A hole that's still there after the crowd heads home, the election is won, the legislative victory is achieved,...

Now boarding only the modestly dressed Some airlines are risking going down the slippery slope of becoming morality police by defining what is or isn't ''obscene,'' a judgment that, if the past is a guide, has confounded even the nation's best legal minds. Rather than decide arbitrarily what passengers can or cannot wear, airlines would be better off focusing on delivering good service. Clothing criticized What raises this issue are incidents on two recent Southwest Airline flights. In one case, a flight supervisor told a woman that her miniskirt and tight sweater were inappropriate, and asked her to cover up....

BBC Schedules Week of Pro-Gay Programs to Commemorate 1957 Sodomy Legalization By Meg Jalsevac BRITAIN, August 31, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In conjunction with the beginning of the LBGT History Month in the UK, the BBC has scheduled a week long roster of pro-homosexual television for its viewers.  The programming was scheduled in the first week of September to also coincide with the 50th anniversary of the release of the Wolfenden Report which legalized homosexuality in Britain in 1957. The week long extravaganza of gay-themed TV has been officially named the 'Hidden Lives Series'.  The programming will range from movies with...

Complaint Filed on Behalf of Firefighters Forced to Participate in San Diego "Gay Pride" SAN DIEGO, August 28, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced today that its West Coast Director, San Diego area attorney, Charles LiMandri, filed a sexual harassment and freedom of speech complaint in California state court on behalf of four respected San Diego firefighters. Charles LiMandri was also the Thomas More Law Center's lead counsel in the successful Mt. Soledad Cross case in San Diego. In July, four San Diego firefighters were ordered,...

Senate Committee Considers Tougher Decency Rules for TV by Jennifer Mesko, associate editor Bill would rein in networks that insist they have the right to air expletives. Last week, the Senate squelched an amendment by Republican Sam Brownback that would toughen rules against broadcast indecency. But the hope for new safeguards is not dead. A bill authored by Democrat John Rockefeller of West Virginia aims to clean up network television. Rockefeller’s proposal, introduced in the Commerce Committee, was fast-tracked by Chairman Daniel Inouye, also a Democrat. Known as the Protecting Children from Indecent Programming Act, Rockefeller press officer Steven Broderick...