Free Republic

While making an ass of himself, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates performed an invaluable public service by creating the circumstances in which the president of the United States again exposed himself as an elitist snob who can relate to the common man only as a caricature. When Obama said the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates – and lectured us on the epidemic of racial profiling – the mask of moderation slipped to reveal the arrogant, sneering elitist lurking behind it.

Patriotism isn’t a seasonal occupation – something to be packed away with the flags and bunting until next year – not if you care about your country. Defending America is a year-round, 24/7 cause that requires knowledge, stamina and commitment. Especially in our hour of peril, with a doctrinaire leftist in the White House, who is, at the very least, indifferent to his country’s fate (that’s America’s, not Kenya’s) – think Michael Moore on Slim Fast, think George Soros without the creepy, Transylvanian accent – now more than ever before, we need to raise up a new generation of patriots....

Last week, at age 50, Michael Jackson transferred to another dimension. He will be missed. The celebrity/side-show-attraction was the perfect metaphor for what America has become – the U.S. of Freak. ...... This is not to cast aspersions. America has become a freak show – where 15-year-olds have body-piercing, newly elected officials are assigned a personal parole officer, and celebrity is a synonym for nauseating. ......We have celebrity freaks, political freaks, freaky athletes who torture pit bulls and freaks with a short shelf-life (like the women who kill their children so they can party). ...... Toleration is hardly enough. We...

Director Mike Judge’s new animated television series “The Goode Family” is a send-up of a clan of environmentalists who live by the words “What would Al Gore do?” Gerald and Helen Goode want nothing more than to minimize their carbon footprint. They feed their dog, Che, only veggies (much to the pet’s dismay) and Mr. Goode dutifully separates sheets of toilet paper when his wife accidentally buys two-ply. And, of course, the family drives a hybrid. On Wednesday at 9 p.m., “The Goode Family” will have its premiere on ABC and become the first animated series on the network’s prime-time...

If the modern conservative movement has a patron saint, it’s Oscar Mayer. I recently attended a conference to address media bias. Present were representatives of several DC-based conservative groups. Some were hesitant about a counterattack on the mainstream media. Why bite the hand that bashes you? How can we expect them to work with us, if we begin by assailing them, they plaintively inquired? For a minute, I thought I’d wandered into the recovery room for male pups who’ve been clear-cut. Conservatives working with the liberal media? Swell idea! It would be like the Chief Rabbi of Berlin working with...

On March 11, I joined a growing fraternity – conservatives who’ve been prevented from speaking on college campuses. Student storm troopers have become the final arbiters of who may speak and what views may be expressed in academia – once dedicated to free inquiry and open discussion, now as intellectually open as a Stalinist gulag. The academic archipelago? I was invited by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Republicans and Young America’s Foundation to speak on hate crimes laws as a threat to free speech and religious freedom. That there is a national epidemic of hate crimes incited by hate...

UMass Protests Free Speech by: Bethany Stotts, March 19, 2009 “You know I feel like I’m in a time machine...I’m back at Boston University in 1969,” said Don Feder, editor of Accuracy In Media’s Boycott the New York Times, at a recent speaking engagement. “As I said, that’s it,” he said and left the microphone. Feder’s comments were quickly followed with cheers and cat-calls by students and protestors at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. According to the Socialist Worker, approximately 150 UMass Amherst students and community members celebrated their ability to frustrate a paid guest speaker whom they argued was guilty...

Campus Snapshots by: Malcolm A. Kline, March 19, 2009 From desecration of Christian icons to shouting down dissident viewpoints to penny ante smackdowns of candidates in student elections, America’s college campuses have become, if not fascistic, then at least places where fascism can happen. Cooper Union Crucifies Catholics When reports surface about the Koran being desecrated in a federal detention center, public outrage understandably follows. Yet most major media outlets do not deem it a story when Christian icons are violated. Similarly, few academics and cause groups deem it worth of collective indignation. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil...

Among those with useful insights on the New York Times’s refusal to cover the Chas Freeman controversy, Don Feder was blistering: “In a sane world,” he wrote, “Freeman wouldn’t even be allowed to read National Intelligence Estimates, let alone be responsible for generating them. The Times’s efforts to low-key this disastrous appointment is typical of its attempts to run interference for the administration.” The Grey Lady is a specialty for Feder, a longtime syndicated columnist and commentator. He edits a website called Boycott the New York Times, a project of Accuracy in Media. In the wake of the Freeman controversy,...

Yesterday’s New York Times story on Charles W. Freeman’s decision to withdraw his name from consideration for a top intelligence post was yet another instance of the paper trying to distance Obama from what could have been a disastrous personnel decision. Freeman, who was tapped to head the National Intelligence Council (which produces the National Intelligence Estimates that are vital to policy making), is not only rabidly anti-Israel, but has ties to hostile foreign powers that go way beyond questionable. The Times claimed, “When Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, announced that he would install Charles W. Freeman,...

Both sides wanted controversy, and both sides got it. In the Cape Cod Lounge Wednesday night, conservative pundit Don Feder took the podium after University of Massachusetts Republican Club president Greg Collins introduced him to a swarm of boos. The event devolved from there. Shortly before the speech began, a large group of protesters carrying “anti-hate” signs assembled and filed into the room, where they were met at the door by UMass police. From the start, the protesters made their voices heard. “There’s absolutely no room for hate speech on this campus,” said winter 2008 graduate Natalia Tylim. Her friend,...

The New York Times’ financial woes continue to mount, and that’s good news for America. To offset shrinking revenues, the paper plans to borrow $225 million by mortgaging its 52-story Manhattan headquarters. This should be a cause for celebration for patriots everywhere. The company’s stock lost half its value this year. According to the December 9 Financial Times, “advertising revenue at the paper fell sharply in November.” The Times owes $400 million on two revolving lines of credit. Analysts believe mortgaging its building is the only way to secure the capital it needs for 2009, which is expected to be...

An article in The New York Times reports that Attorney General Jerry Brown has asked the state’s Supreme Court to rule on the legality of a voter-approved constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. “The central argument in the recently filed lawsuits is that Proposition 8 is a significant enough revision to the State Constitution to require approval by the legislature,” the article stated. It also noted that the passage of Proposition 8 “has prompted protests across the country.” Here’s what the paper that makes all the news fit its agenda forgot to mention:...

If someone had told me last year that, come the fall of 2008, I would be praying for John McCain to become the next President Of The United States, I would have had three words for him – seek psychiatric help. (McCain is my kind of Republican the way “rap” is my kind of music.) But, in the last four months of the campaign, that’s exactly what I was doing – praying for a McCain victory -- – not because McCain is so good (any resemblance between the Arizona Senator and a conservative is purely coincidental), but because I would...

The New York Times is ecstatic over the election of Barack Hussein Obama, a candidate who is largely a creation of the mainstream media, The Times included. In this euphoric state, it both misrepresents the past campaign and, like its hero, offers exactly the wrong prescription for an ailing economy. In an editorial in today’s paper, The Times claims Obama won, in part, because John McCain “forsook his principles for a campaign built on anger and fear.” The media has been feeding us this line since the nominating conventions: mean old John McCain is cruelly campaigning on Obama’s connection to...

In an editorial in today’s paper, The New York Times misrepresents an anti-Obama message, which it claims amounted to “character assassination.” One of its targets is an e-mailing sent by a group of Pennsylvania Jewish activists to 75,000 Jewish voters in the Keystone state, warning of the dangers of an Obama presidency. According to The Times, the e-mailing equates “a vote for Barack Obama with the ‘tragic mistake’ of Jews who ignored the warning signs of the Holocaust.” This implies the communication suggested that Obama would somehow facilitate another Holocaust. It did no such thing. The e-mailing, from a retired...

Based on her interview with Sen. Joe Biden, we may assume that WFTV, Orlando Anchor Barbara West: 1. Did not graduate from a school of communications, 2. Will never receive an award from the Society of Professional Journalists, 3. Is unlikely to be employed by The New York Times in the foreseeable future, and 4. Will soon be working with Joe the Plumber, installing bathroom fixtures. Silly rabbit -- Didn’t West know that tough questions are reserved for Republicans? Yet, there she was asking old leaden-tongued Joe how his running mate’s spread-the-wealth platform differed from standard Marxist redistributionism (from each...

On June 30, Barack Obama gives a speech in Independence, Missouri, proclaiming his "deep and abiding love for this country," and daring anyone to question his patriotism. The July 7 issue of Time Magazine has a cover story ("The New Patriotism") asserting, "no matter how they define patriotism, Americans should tremble before insisting that any fellow citizen lacks it." If the mainstream media got talking-points from the Democratic National Committee, they could hardly be more on-message. The Time story was written by Richard Stengel, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Taking instruction on patriotism from Time and...

When someone starts yammering about transcending partisanship, renouncing “hatred and venom” and “bringing us together” – head for the hills. He’s talking capitulation on the right, with long lines of defeated, dejected conservatives in tattered uniforms being marched away to political POW camps. Former Bush flak Scott McClellan, author of a tell-all book on his White House service, is worse than a rat fink. He’s worse even than a fawning sycophant craving the establishment’s favor. He’s a defeatist who bids his party to stand with him in the middle of a four-lane highway at rush-hour. Can we say “road-kill”? Here’s...

In the long, dreary annals of judicial idiocy, perhaps the stupidest words ever uttered by a black-robed booby were contained in the recent California Supreme Court decision mandating homosexual marriage. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Ronald M. George declared: “In light of these circumstances, we conclude that retention of the traditional definition of marriage (a man and a woman) does not constitute a state interest sufficiently compelling, under the strict scrutiny equal protection standard, to justify withholding that status from same-sex couples.” Curiously, George is saying the government of California lacks any compelling interest in maintaining the integrity of...