Free Republic

I often decry the laziness, incompetence and bias of the American press. Tuesday night in Sago, West Virginia, the press sank to an all-time low, in covering the mine disaster. Working on the Internet, with a 24-hour news channel running, I heard the announcement that the original reports were false. Instead of one miner dead and 12 rescued, the reverse was true. Only one was found alive where they had barricaded themselves in, to await rescue. An orgy of press coverage followed, in which reporters stuck microphones in the faces of grief-stricken survivors, seeking agonizing sound bites for the titillation...

CAMPBELL, Calif. (AP) - Seven weeks after a motorist intentionally killed a gaggle of ducks at a car wash, police say the case is going cold."We're reaching a dead end in the investigation," Campbell police Capt. Russ Patterson said Saturday An Aug. 5 surveillance videotape showed a man driving up and intentionally heading for the ducks, crushing several with his car. The driver mows down several more ducks before jumping out of his car and killing some with his hands. The attack went on for 16 minutes. Ten ducks were killed. Police received 50 to 75 calls a day in...

The “enlightened” leaders of the Episcopal Church don’t listen, as we have discovered from the recent events at Nottingham. They have locked onto their “enlightened” position and will not budge. Their behavior reinforces the image of the ugly American, for it is so American to insist that others should listen to you without making any effort to listen to others. I am reminded of a remark Bishop Stacy Sauls made to me when I expressed my disagreement with him over the consecration of V. Gene Robinson. He said, “Alice, you of all people, being an educator, should understand why this...

I am sitting here at my computer looking at the screen. I am wondering how do I express how I feel. The words that convey the magnitude of what I have read are not available in the English language. But, I will try anyway. I never envisioned what I would find when I embarked on the research about our educational system. The people that are involved and how each of their lives crossed one another. These people, in ways that you could not imagine, have touched our lives. The deceit and lies under the guise of education and patriotism with...

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, EVERY TEACHER A CRIMINAL? Jan 13, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.comby David H. Smith WAS PRESIDENT BUSH'S 'NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND' INITIATIVE BASED ON FALSIFIED DATA - AND DOES IT MATTER ANYWAY? Education and Newsbriefs Correspondent (With reports) The much-touted successes of the The Houston Independent School District (HSID) helped inspire the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act of 2002. Yet now it has been reported that HSID testing numbers may have been fudged. According to The Christian Science Monitor, The Houston Independent School District (HSID) is conducting an investigation of what it terms “suspicious” results on...

A researcher has revealed some disturbing trends regarding the sets of beliefs Christian students in public schools have about the most important issues in life. Dan Smithwick is the founder and president of the Nehemiah Institute, a group that provides a biblical worldview testing and training service to Christian educators. He is the developer of what is called the "PEERS test," a tool to assess the worldviews of young people, and says the majority of public school students from evangelical Christian homes consistently score in the "socialist" category on the test. According to Smithwick, this outcome should come as no...

Duane Clarridge is running a private probe, seeking evidence that France took prewar payoffs and that Russia received illegal Iraqi oil. WASHINGTON — After nearly two decades on the sidelines, Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, the legendary CIA officer who played a key role in the Reagan administration's secret war in Nicaragua, is back in the game — this time in Iraq and as a private citizen. Clarridge has launched his own self-financed investigation into alleged prewar financial dealings between Saddam Hussein's regime and France and Russia. And he has arranged to keep U.S. intelligence agencies briefed on what he uncovers. "It...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

Same-Sex Marriage and the Living Document March 4, 2004 “According to definition,” Hilaire Belloc wrote, “the ideal citizen of this Modern State must be free to act on his individual judgment of morals, must reach conclusions on all matters by private judgment, but must accept the coercion of any law whatsoever when it has been decided by a majority of such individual citizens so concluding.” That about sums it up. The Modern State, now called Democracy, has no moral principles, but we have a duty to obey it anyway. Why? Majority rule, you know. But sometimes the courts overrule the...

Historical Perspective: Intelligence and the 1944 Election [Title Not in Original] (On Screen): On December 7 1941, six Japanese aircraft carriers moving under strict radio silence reached a point northwest of Oahu and launched several hundred planes to make a strike against the American fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor. The strike leader radioed back "Tora Tora Tora", a predetermined message which meant that they had achieved surprise and the Americans were not ready. Two major strikes over the course of a couple of hours sank or badly damaged the majority of America's battleships in the Pacific, and caused much other...

It was the statement by Bustamente which certified it for us. When he threatened to punch out Arnold, we knew that Democrats in California are certifiable. We can see the movie. Patricia Neal takes a swing at Gort’s titaniium kneecaps and breaks her knuckles. The metal visor slowly slides up and the single electric eye becomes a pulsating laser which darts over Neal’s head and bounces against the side of a passing 1966 Caddy convertible. Into the sixteen coats of pink paint the following legend is burned: Hasta la vista, Bustamente! Arnold is Joe Camel driving an SUV. When he...

Then Came Federal AidDate: Friday, August 15 @ 16:40:43 Topic Letters to Editor THEN CAME FEDERAL AID by Margaret Brogley For over one hundred years the educrats have used the Hegelian method of creating a problem, then offering a solution that is worse than the original problem. Actually, the problem began in the early nineteenth century when public schools were first formed, but the more visible part came around the end of that century when John Dewey gained control. John Dewey was a dedicated socialist and a humanist. Read the three Humanist Manifestos to understand our problems and why...

Of 'Treason' & Tailgunner Joe Posted: July 16, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. In the 1968 campaign, when Hubert Humphrey said he would end the bombing of North Vietnam, Spiro Agnew said Hubert was "soft on communism." A media firestorm erupted over such "McCarthyism." Yet, in 1948, Harry Truman had so savaged Tom Dewey that the New York Times ran this headline: "President Likens Dewey to Hitler as Fascist Tool." Was Harry called to account? No. His "Give-'em-Hell-Harry" campaign remains a glorious episode in the archives of liberalism. Point: What the Left calls McCarthyism – smearing...

It took less than sixty years for the followers of John Dewey to change the American education system from being academically oriented to one which was driven by installing a social agenda. Starting as the head of the University of Chicago Education Department, Dewey introduced Laboratory Schools, which soon Spread across the United States. With every element of these "special" schools seeped in topics driven by the Dewey spirit of Socialism, they grew and mutated until today all of education is infected with educators who champion the extreme left. This was very observable in the anti war movement of the...

ODUM -- A picture of a snarling pit bull in front of a Confederate flag hangs over the desk in Dewey Barber's office in this tiny southeast Georgia town. "Protect Our Southern Heritage," it reads."I guess that's pretty appropriate," said Barber, the Dixie Outfitters dude who makes Rebel flag T-shirts.The 55-year-old Barber is bemused over his rising celebrity as an evangelist for a Southern heritage revival.CNN and People magazine have come calling, and Barber recently went to Washington to hire a publicist and an attorney."I'm a bit uncomfortable with it," he said.Five years ago, Barber's business was based in an...

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF PAPER by MALCOLM GLADWELL Looking for method in the mess. Issue of 2002-03-25Posted 2002-03-18 On a busy day, a typical air-traffic controller might be in charge of as many as twenty-five airplanes at a time—some ascending, some descending, each at a different altitude and travelling at a different speed. He peers at a large, monochromatic radar console, tracking the movement of tiny tagged blips moving slowly across the screen. He talks to the sector where a plane is headed, and talks to the pilots passing through his sector, and talks to the other controllers about...