Free Republic

The gangster state of North Korea became a nuclear power in 2006-2007, despite lots of foreign aid aimed at precluding just such proliferation -- help usually not otherwise accorded such a loony dictatorship. Apparently the civilized world rightly suspected that if nuclear, Pyongyang would either export nuclear material and expertise to other unstable countries, or bully its successful but non-nuclear neighbors -- or both. The United States has given billions of dollars in foreign aid to Pakistan, whose Islamist gangs have spearheaded radical anti-American terrorism. Since a corrupt Pakistan went nuclear in 1998, it has been able to extort...

Recent statements from various leaders within the Syrian rebel movement show that the rift between secularists and Islamists remains a key issue. A video released by a leading Islamist faction shows Islamist military leader Abu Bilal al-Homsi exhorting his followers to reject the largely secular Free Syrian Army, led by Salim Idris. According to Al-Homsi, Idris has said that the Free Syrian Army under his command is fighting for "democracy, secularism, communism, and the rights of minority groups", including Syrian Druze. Rebels must fight not for democracy or rights, but for Islam, Al-Homsi declared. From the beginning, the purpose of...

The assembly writing Egypt’s new constitution voted on Sunday against an article requiring parliamentary elections to be held before presidential elections, raising uncertainty about the country’s political transition timetable. Thirty-three members of the 50-member assembly named by interim President Adly Mansour voted against the article, meaning they will have to redraft it. … The disputed articles included one obliging the state to ensure fair representation of Christians, youth and peasants in parliament, and one regulating the coming parliamentary vote by stipulating it be held with two-thirds of the seats allotted to individual candidates and one third to party lists—reversing the...

Republicans and Democrats can debate which party has most abused the option, and which has been more hypocritical in changing its mind about the filibuster once it went from the majority to the minority or the reverse. Neither side has acted with selfless regard for the will of the people or the proper functioning of government. The change adopted by the Senate has been dubbed the "nuclear option," as though it were unimaginably destructive. But all it destroys is the capacity of the minority party to frustrate the operation of the legislative branch. And it applies only to executive and...

Midway through the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama was making references to lights shining down upon voters. He told them they would have an epiphany and that they would be told to vote for Barack Obama. His campaign rallies gained positive media coverage at a rate nearly three times higher than that of Republican candidate, John McCain. People even cried and fainted during his speeches. Americans believed that their savior had come. Obama wasn't just giving political speeches, he was giving spiritual sermons. Every word that came out of his mouth was deliberate, scripted, and vague. Obama's words were designed to...

The Senate vote Thursday to curb the use of filibuster against judicial nominees, over the objections of the Republican minority, can only be seen as a terrifying development. Why, next thing you know we could be deciding all sorts of things by majority vote. The average American may think deciding things by majority vote is the basic idea of our democracy. But say something like that, and you risk getting a lecture on how America is not a democracy but a constitutional republic, and that the framers took care not to give too much power to the people, and that...

Ever since Abraham Lincoln delivered his stirring Gettysburg Address at that great battlefield in Pennsylvania 150 years ago, people have been parsing it. Almost immediately, Sen. Charles Sumner compared it to great Greek literature, a thought echoed by historian Garry Wills in our time. But Lincoln’s words weren’t Greek to his audience, and they aren’t Greek to us. As historian Allen Guelzo explained recently, the address is an example of democratic speech, words aimed at his audience that they could easily understand. The crowd gathered that day would have appreciated that the address was so short -- just 272...

Lyle Denniston looks at a claim that interpreting an old document, like the U.S. Constitution, is a doomed attempt to apply outdated legal principles. THE STATEMENT AT ISSUE: “Professor Neuborne describes this dysfunctional democracy very well, but he does not give the real reason for that dysfunction – the reverence for the United States Constitution. Each of the Supreme Court’s iniquities he lists is based on the interpretation by five of nine high priests of increasingly irrelevant documents written by wealthy white men in an unimaginably different and distant world.” ... WE CHECKED THE CONSTITUTION, AND… One of the fundamental...

British establishment mouthpiece BBC leads the way again. This time it is about the biggest threat to democracy today. No, it is not terrorists. No, it is not Islamism. And, no, it is not the Western-Installed Dictator Regimes around the world. No, no, no, no, no. The new enemy is the conspiracy theorists. It is those who question their governments. It is those who find facts and confront the mainstream lies and liars such as BBC. Basically, it is you … and me. Allow me to wade through all the fillers and present you with a few telling excerpts from...

While thinking about the real problem with our culture I wondered about how much we need pro-life pregnancy centers where ever there is a culture of death center. I stumbled upon this site and immediately recognized it as a means to empower the individual, forget the republic. Libertarians have nothing on these people. Masters degrees in community organizing. Who'd a thought.

South Sudan Implements Major Diplomatic Reforms Planned by FM Barnaba BenjaminBy Joe Odaby South Sudan NewsJuba, South Sudan — October 14, 2013 (SSN) … South Sudan’s Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister Dr. Barnaba Marial Benjamin has announced that a major diplomatic reform is underway in the South Sudan Foreign Ministry. The move comes after national legislative assembly lawmakers from the south-governing Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) expressed concerns over the manner in which its embassies handle the country’s foreign affairs matters. “There remains a lot of work to be done and it is imperative that the ministry devise policies...

In my piece yesterday, I wrote about critics of the American system of government, among them Wonkblog’s Dylan Matthews. In the course of my essay, I explained that opponents of the Constitution tend toward the Wilsonian view of things: Hostility toward America’s rigid separation of powers has a rich, if unappealing, history on the Left. Woodrow Wilson — a man whose animus to the constitutional order that he had sworn to uphold approached almost treasonable levels — was savvy enough to recognize that the expansive long-term ambitions of the Progressive movement were simply incompatible with the country’s founding documents. In...

What is to be in Russia? I.A. Ilyin Translated from Russian by Annalex. Having weighed all that we had to say about the basics of popular sovereignty , every sober-minded and responsible democrat must sorrowfully admit that the Russian people after three decades of destruction, violence, poverty and corruption of every kind - will be unable to implement a democratic system, as long as it does not restore in itself honor, conscience, and the sense of national state. Now, all the basic and necessary foundations of popular sovereignty are undermined in its soul, desecrated, distorted – if not directly abolished...

At the core of America’s founding was a simple, yet literally revolutionary, idea: that all people deserve to be free because they are created by God in His image, and that our rights come from God, not government. This was articulated in the most important sentence in America’s founding, the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those 36 words are sometimes called the best-known...

South Sudan Breaks Oil Embargo Imposed By Moslem NorthBy Joe OdabyJuba — September 5, 2013 (SSN)... The visit by South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir to Sudan’s capitol Khartoum on September 3-4, 2013, might prove a turning point in both bilateral and regional terms. In the climax of the Summit, Presidents Kiir and Omar al-Bashir signed oil export agreement guaranteeing the South Sudanese oil exports will continue “without any impediments” across “flexible but secure borders” between the two countries. The agreement removes the immediate threat of economic strangulation and uncertainty by repeated Sudanese threats to close down the oil exports of...

Juba, South Sudan — August 24, 2013 (SSN) … More than 18,000 people with over 1,000 households in South Sudan have been directly affected and others displaced from their homes by devastating floods that ravaged the Maiwut County in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State. Over 48 people have been killed with severe damage to public buildings, including schools, clinics, offices, shops, markets and water and sanitation facilities. Roads in South Sudan have been inundated, disrupting transport. According to County authorities people are deeply suffering and lacking basic essentials. Women and children have mostly been displaced due to flooded homes. Médecins...

Excerpt (source - email) OBITUARY? In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy...

Today is Gun Appreciation Day at Starbucks! No it doesn't mean we're getting a Free coffee if we brandish our guns. Starbucks is only announcing this because in the past they did not support the rights of those to bear arms. Read more here westernshootingjournal.com/editors-blog/today-is-gun-appreciation-day-at-starbucks/

The West Has Failed South SudanBy Joe Odaby South Sudan NewsJuba — July 23, 2013 (SSN) … The Fashoda Institute, South Sudan’s leading think-tank, asserts in its latest analysis that the West has betrayed this young democracy. Two years ago, on July 9, 2011, the Republic of South Sudan became the world’s youngest nation. Independence came in the aftermath of more than two decades of genocidal liberation struggle and five years of failed stifling autonomy. The Fashoda Institute states that South Sudan has huge potential. The land is exceptionally rich. The Fashoda Institute points to the CIA’s World Factbook, South...

In every democratic country in the world, law-abiding citizens have the right to defend themselves, when they are being subjected to violent attack. When the shooting was initially reported to the police, the cops took one look at Zimmerman's injuries, and they realized that they did not have evidence to take the case to trial. The outcome of the trial was predictable. But, now, the Justice Department wants to put Zimmerman on trial afresh, for civil rights violations. Sen. Harry Reid is supporting calls for Zimmerman's prosecution: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/14/naacp-asking-obama-administration-to-pursue-zimmerman-civil-case/ Is America still a free and democratic country?