Free Republic

We can’t rely on the media, even the alternative media. Free Republic is announcing a new initiative that gives you a platform. We want to leverage the most powerful minds on the right to make a difference. To do this, we want to bring a new level of activism, the citizen investigator. In the spirit of 1750’s The Pennsylvania Gazette published by Ben Franklin and of Andrew Breitbart. For the longest time, our primary focus has been on looking at what the media presents and investigating it or discussing it. We have been missing something, YOU! Jim has created a...

In more than 20 years I've spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics. That's because college football has no academic purpose. Which is why it needs to be banned. A radical solution, yes. But necessary in today's times. Football only provides the thickest layer of distraction in an atmosphere in which colleges and universities these days are all about distraction, nursing an obsession with the social well-being of students as opposed to the obsession that they are there...

Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, so often described as an impediment to his political prospects, might work to his advantage with one crucial segment of the electorate: Jewish voters. The very fact that his Mormonism makes him less popular among evangelical Christians almost certainly makes him more popular among American Jews. Academic analysis of the intersection of religion and politics suggests that Jews maintain a distinctly—and surprisingly—favorable view of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ When comparing these figures with the exit polls from major primaries, Romney fares much better among Republican Jews than he does among any...

New Mexico insiders from both parties describe Wilson, an Air Force Academy graduate, as a tough and disciplined campaigner, a strong fundraiser and someone whose broad support, including among Hispanics, is in the mold of former Sen. Pete Domenici (R). There’s also no better wingman in the state than Gov. Susana Martinez, a likely surrogate whom Wilson has known for about 20 years. “I think New Mexico is always going to be a swing state on races like this,” said Jay McCleskey, a GOP media strategist in the state and former regional political director at the Republican National Committee. “But...

If I had to pick a date when the mainstream media became fully vested in protecting Democratic interests, it would be March 11, 1992, the day Bill Clinton swept the Super Tuesday primaries and established himself as the party’s standard bearer. With a Republican in the White House for the previous twelve years, the media had been, if anything, overly inquisitive. Even during the Jimmy Carter years, the media had done their job well enough to make his life uncomfortable. Over the last twenty years, however, our media have descended from the merely partisan to the fully Orwellian. To commemorate...

Now we know that computers don't help children learn and that drugs don't help them concentrate, because the establishment mandarins who sold us the computers and drugs have conceded failure. In the January 29 New York Times, [1] a prominent professor of child development shows that attention-deficit-disorder drugs only harm the three million children who take them. One out of 10 American children have been diagnosed with so-called Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and most of them have been medicated. [2] Some months ago, the Times reported that test scores lagged in school districts that invested massively in digital education. [3] It...

It is, of course, reason to celebrate that Flagstaff is on track to finish 2011 without a single murder inside the city. Flagstaff is hardly Mayberry, RFD, but violent crimes of all types have plummeted in recent years, thanks to more community policing and better use of neighborhood-level police reports. We'd like to think that the absence of a murder so far this year is due, in part, to those initiatives by the police and community leaders. But we are also realistic enough to know that lethal violence in a state with lax gun laws is hard to keep at...

Americans need to know why the Energy Department approved a loan guarantee for Solyndra when the company was so clearly troubled. But politicizing this mess to smear the entire renewable energy industry won't help the country or the jobless. This industry is estimated to have doubled its number of American jobs in the past two years. Demonizing it could cripple its job-creating potential. San Jose's SunPower is the latest victim. Fox News has made a series of outrageous claims about it, calling its $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee a scandal "bigger than Solyndra." This is utterly baseless. Fox, without a...

To win in 2012, Obama's going to have to act a bit more like the tyrants he's so proud of toppling. Barack Obama can't get away from talking about dictators. Four years ago, candidate Obama controversially asserted that his administration would be open to negotiations with autocratic governments like Syria, Iran, and North Korea. Today, responding to Republican criticisms that he has been weak or hesitant on foreign policy, the U.S. president's supporters are more likely to trot out the fact that three longtime dictatorships have fallen under his watch. How much credit the president deserves for this is certainly...

Reporting from Ogallala, Neb.— On the edge of the Nebraska sand hills is Lake McConaughy, a 22-mile-long reservoir that in summer becomes a magnet for Winnebagos, fishermen and kite sailors. But officials here in Keith County, population 8,370, imagined this scene: an Al Qaeda sleeper cell hitching explosives onto a ski boat and plowing into the dam at the head of the lake. The federal Department of Homeland Security gave the county $42,000 to buy state-of-the-art dive gear, including full-face masks, underwater lights and radios, and a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar capable of mapping wide areas of the lake...

John Mueller and his students analyze the 33 cases of attempted [EDITED TO ADD: Islamic extremist] terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11. So few of them are actually real, and so many of them were created or otherwise facilitated by law enforcement. The death toll of all these is fourteen: thirteen at Ft. Hood and one in Little Rock. I think it's fair to add to this the 2002 incident at Los Angeles Airport where a lone gunman killed two people at the El Al ticket counter, so that's sixteen deaths in the U.S. to terrorism in the past ten...

People seem to act irrationally when they have nothing to lose. Often we observe in wars that the losing side expends more blood and treasure after its position becomes hopeless. The American South sustained most of its casualties in the Civil War after July 1863, when the dual defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg made its position untenable. Athens suffered its worst casualties in the Sicilian gamble at the end of the Peloponnesian War. The Spanish ruined their empire and depopulated their core provinces during the second half of the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648 rather than cede dominance to France....

When President Barack Obama announced an agreement to double fuel-economy requirements Friday, standing with him were industry executives and environmental, public health and labor leaders, all of whom, remarkably, had signed off on the deal. But the real credit for this historic achievement, which is expected to cut oil consumption by 1.5 million barrels per day and eliminate half of all carbon pollution nationwide, doesn't go to the White House. Instead, thank California. For decades the state has set the nation's clean-energy agenda; it's been the tip of the spear in the fight for higher fuel standards. Its huge automobile...

No man is an island, especially in the markets. Our consumption basket includes the efforts of hundreds of millions of people around the world, and our right to consume depends on our ability to sell to hundreds of millions of people around the world. During the present century the number of adults in affluent and productive countries will shrink by about a third. All of us will be poorer. There will be a third fewer people earnings profits for businesses, paying taxes to governments, buying homes or cars, or taking vacations. Starting around 2015 the adult population will start to...

The lies are flying fast and furious this weekend (and all last week for that matter) related to the "debt ceiling" and partisan wrangling has reached a fever pitch, with some representatives now claiming that the Republicans are "racist" for refusing to raise it.Let's look at the facts, and deal with them - because we really have no other choice here.  I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but there's simply no way to make it shorter.I'm going to start with some indisputable history.  We'll begin with this chart, because it tells us exactly what the outcome of...

In the wake of the recent memo from the Obama administration which announced “prosecutorial discretion” in dealing with illegal aliens, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents across the country have been speaking out what many of them are calling a “backdoor amnesty.” On Wednesday, ICE Union president Chris Crane told PRNewswire: “Any American concerned about immigration needs to brace themselves for what's coming. This is just one of many new ICE policies in queue aimed at stopping the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the United States. Unable to pass its immigration agenda through legislation, the Administration is now implementing it...

June 5, 2011Liberal vs Conservative: A Spiritual Battle By Lloyd Marcus Without beating around the bush, I believe the battle being fought in America today goes beyond politics; right vs. left.  It is a spiritual battle; good vs evil."For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."  Ephesians 6:12The mindset of the American left is a spirit of Antichrist which is man making himself God.Before writing me off as a Bible nut, please hear me out.  Understanding this reality will...

The New York Times print plenty of anti-Scott Walker pro-Union stories, Op-eds and the like, so why not give the Governor ot Wisconsin equal time? That's right, giving the Governor a chance to write on his own behalf would be fair and balanced. We know that their is only one media organization that's model is "fair and balanced," and it's not the New York Times! (see Op-ed below)

At least three White House advisers and officials, including President Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, have ties to an effort funded by billionaire George Soros to push for a new, "progressive" U.S. Constitution WND first reported last week that Sunstein's wife, Samantha Power, has been a champion of a Soros-funded doctrine, entitled "responsibility to protect," which was used by Obama to justify engaging in an international military alliance to bomb Libya. As the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, Power reportedly influenced Obama in his decision. Now it has emerged that Sunstein has maintained extensive ties...

In the weeks since Governor Walker introduced his reforms to balance the budget and protect middle-class taxpayers the New York Times has repeatedly used its editorial pages to opine on the reforms. All told there have been at least seven editorials, op-eds or columns in the paper about the Wisconsin reforms. Below is the Op-Ed that Governor Walker wrote that the New York Times chose not to run: -SNIP-

Best dozen Op Ed toons from around the USA this week... More Sunday Funnies at Reaganite Republican__________________________________________________Enjoy your weekend, FReeper patriots

Best dozen Op-Ed toons from around the country this week... More at Reaganite's Sunday Funnies Enjoy your weekend everybody~

THE DEATH of Delvonte Tisdale was haunting enough. Authorities believe the 16-year-old stowed away in the wheel well of a US Airways jet in Charlotte and then plummeted to the ground in Milton as the plane dropped its landing gear on approach to Logan Airport. But how he got on board raises fresh questions about airport security — or the continuing lack thereof. Tweet Be the first to Tweet this!0diggsdiggYahoo! Buzz ShareThis Last month, as public outrage was approaching the boiling point over the alleged indignity of full-body scanners and pat-downs, and just two weeks after package bombs nearly made...

But more than 70 percent of voters in Oklahoma still approved a state constitutional amendment to that effect, apparently persuaded by anti-Islamic activists, and a few cynical politicians, that Oklahoma was about to be brought under Islam’s heel. After Muslim groups challenged the constitutionality of the “Save Our State Amendment,” a federal district judge issued a temporary restraining order. Last Monday, the judge, Vicki Miles-LaGrange, held a hearing to determine whether to issue a preliminary injunction against the measure, and said she would make a decision by the end of November. A federal injunction is warranted to save Oklahoma from...

President Obama is engaging in a relentless assault on our freedoms and constitutional government. The growing backlash against the new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport screening procedures signifies that Americans finally may have had enough. There is a grass-roots revolt against state-sanctioned sexual harassment. And who can blame the protesters? Children are stripped of their shirts, and their private parts are touched. Nuns and old ladies are groped by intrusive TSA agents. Breasts have been fondled. Men's crotches have been patted down. Full-body scanners show images of people naked - a clear violation of privacy and civil liberties. The administration...

Finally, the gun lobby has filed two lawsuits in federal court in Lubbock, Tex., to compel the State of Texas to allow young people between the ages of 18 and 20 years old to buy handguns and carry them concealed in public places. The first suit challenges the longstanding federal law prohibiting licensed gun dealers from selling handguns to anyone under 21 years old. The second case contests a Texas law setting 21 as the minimum age for carrying a concealed weapon. As a legal matter, both lawsuits should fail. In its recent Second Amendment rulings, the Supreme Court struck...

Ah, the airport, where modern folk heroes are made. The airport, where that inspired flight attendant did what everyone who's ever been in the spam-in-a-can crush of a flying aluminum tube — where we collectively pretend that a clutch of peanuts is a meal and a seat cushion is a "flotation device" — has always dreamed of doing: pull the lever, blow the door, explode the chute, grab a beer, slide to the tarmac and walk through the gates to the sanity that lies beyond. Not since Rick and Louis disappeared into the Casablanca fog headed for the Free French...

Television reporters caught on tape appearing to discuss the possibility of "child molesters" making up the ranks of Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller's supporters were just bandying about "what-if scenarios," the station's manager said Sunday. But that kind of scenario might not be appropriate even for a brainstorming session, according to a prominent communication professor at American University in Washington, D.C. "If journalists are making bad jokes about what they hope to find at a rally, that sounds inappropriate," Jane Hall said.

Yesterday’s New York Time’s has an editorial titled “Drowning in Campaign Cash” that shamelessly repeats democratic talking points. The NYT seems to forget that in this election cycle the biggest spender was the union of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. No mention of that special interest, only those dastardly bogeymen known as “Republicans” and 501(c) organizations. This brings some points to mind. The liberal 501(c) organization moveon.org was extended a special rate by the New York Times for their disgraceful add “General Betray Us“. Liberal causes have been effectively using 501(c) organizations for some times yet there...

This newspaper makes the following recommendations for Tuesday's ballot. CONGRESS U.S. Senate David Vitter Much of Sen. Vitter's first term in the Senate came in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaches that left 80 percent of New Orleans under water. The senator fought hard to hold the Army Corps of Engineers accountable and to get recovery resources for South Louisiana, including vital funding for coastal restoration. He was a leader in the push to finally close the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, the corps-built waterway that contributed to the devastation during Katrina. He also played an important role in...

Twenty years ago this Sunday, East and West Germany reunited, capping one of the most extraordinary transformations in modern history. Communism in the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites had collapsed; the oppressed nations of Europe rejoined the “free world.”My generation was the last to straddle the two worlds, pre- and post-Soviet Union. When I was in elementary and high school, fear of atomic annihilation was real. The USSR was the great, looming adversary on the world stage. Debate over the strategy of “mutually assured destruction” was the ominous focus of international policy discussions.Suddenly, everything changed. Both grizzled Cold...

One of the guiding principles of the tea-party movement is based on a myth Wouldn't it be splendid if the solutions to America’s problems could be written down in a slim book no bigger than a passport that you could slip into your breast pocket? That, more or less, is the big idea of the tea-party movement, the grassroots mutiny against big government that has mounted an internal takeover of the Republican Party and changed the face of American politics. Listen to Michele Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota and tea-party heroine, as she addressed the conservative Value Voters’ Summit in...

Asymmetrical warfare was supposed to benefit the insurgents. For the price of a few flying lessons a gang of jihadis brought down the World Trade Center,a terrorist with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and powdered Tang can blow up an airplane,and a few pounds of plutonium can cripple a major city. Meet the Reverend Terry Jones, asymmetrical warrior. It appears that pinpricks can produce chain reactions in the Islamic world. The threat may be termed asymmetrical because Islam is more vulnerable to theological war than Christianity (or for that matter Judaism). As the youngest of the major religions (apart from...

Book burning is antithetical to American ideals. People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation – much like building a mosque at Ground Zero.

It was an $800 billion misadventure that will be wreaking havoc on the econ omy for years to come. No, not the war in Iraq, where an American combat-troop presence officially comes to an end tomorrow. We're talking about President Obama's economic-stimulus program. Remember the stimulus? The miracle cure Obama said would boost the economy and save millions of jobs? Well, the president's panacea turned out to be an $862 billion bottle of snake oil -- and it cost $100 billion more than the entire Iraq campaign to date. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the total Iraq tab comes...

It’s a classic movie plot. Think “Woman of the Year,” with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. At first the man and the woman hate each other, then they fall into each other’s arms? Well, feature the fight that has erupted between the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, and Governor Palin of Alaska. The leader of Big Labor went to Anchorage to give a speech and attacked Mrs. Palin, accusing her of doing everything from writing notes on her hands to coming out with conspiracy theories about President Obama and his “death panels” to getting close to calling for violence....

Sunday's Examiner editorial entitled "Time to admit Obamanomics has failed" was the most-read editorial ever published on this site. It's not hard to see why, considering two of the latest economic indicators made public at the same time. First, there is the continuing plummeting of consumer confidence, as seen in Rasmussen Reports latest Consumer Index: "The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures the economic confidence of consumers on a daily basis, slipped on Monday to 69.7. "That’s down nine points since release of Friday’s disappointing jobs report and the lowest level of confidence measured since December 2, 2009. Eight percent (8%)...

It was apparent last night why McCain has only agreed to participate in two Senate debates with JD Hayworth, because of the awkwardness attempting to explain his flip-flopping back to the right now that it is an election year. Both debates between the two candidates are taking place well into the primary, after McCain has had months to spend $6 million in smear attack ads against JD. $5 million of that was leftover from prior campaigning, including $1.1 million from convicted Ponzi scheme criminal Scott Rothstein - the top contributor to two of his 2008 presidential campaign funds. Unlike other...

McCain calls Hayworth a "pig." He desperately defends his flip-flops and record of voting for the billion dollar pork TARP bailouts which included $150 billion in earmarks, co-sponsoring amnesty with Ted Kennedy and cap and trade legislation with Joe Lieberman, and voting against tax cuts twice. Hayworth easily proves that he is much more conservative than McCain on the very things McCain has been attacking him on – pork and earmarks. In their second, and likely final, Senate primary debate, JD Hayworth again easily defeated John McCain. McCain avoided discussing real issues, where he has a record of flip-flopping in...

Last month, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., introduced a bill that might -- we're not really sure -- give the president the authority to shut down all or portions of the Internet in the event of an emergency. It's not a new idea. Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, proposed the same thing last year, and some argue that the president can already do something like this. If this or a similar bill ever passes, the details will change considerably and repeatedly. So let's talk about the idea of an Internet kill switch in general. It's a bad one....

Agency head complained of 'free ride' for online news readers Federal Trade Commission (FTC) leaders are attempting to distance themselves from controversial proposals published in a May 24 working paper on "reinventing" the media. The report presents a suite of options through which government could step in and supposedly rescue journalism, most notably by imposing taxes. A fee could be levied on websites such as the Drudge Report that link to the best news of the day, or a tax could be imposed on consumer electronics such as iPads, laptops and Kindles. Funds collected would be redistributed to traditional media...

In justifying its broad moratorium on deepwater drilling, the Obama administration emphasized that the measure was recommended by an Interior Department report prepared in consultation with scientists and industry experts. The May 27 report to President Barack Obama said the experts "peer reviewed" its recommendations, including the six-month moratorium and 22 safety measures. But eight of the 15 members of the review panel are charging that the administration misrepresented their position by suggesting they supported a blanket moratorium that they actually oppose. Their criticism, and the administration's response, are evidence that the six-month stoppage is based on politics rather than...

And on the 38th day he spoke. At long last President Barack Obama held a full-dress news conference - his first in 10 months - and finally answered questions about the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It was his mission to reassure residents of the Gulf region particularly that “from the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort . . . that BP is operating at our direction.”

Kirsten Gillibrand, New York's junior senator, doesn't just flip-flop on is sues as convenient -- she also revises her past. Voters, beware: Gillibrand is a chameleon on plaid, a woman who has and will do anything, say anything, forget anything, spin anything to get elected. Her 180-degree reversals on gun control, gay marriage and immigration -- making her one of the most liberal members of the Senate -- are old news. But that's far from the only way she remakes herself, as we discuss in our new book, "2010: Take Back America." Start with her habit of censoring her own...

Nuclear doctrine consists of thinking the unthinkable. It involves making threats and promising retaliation that is cruel and destructive beyond imagining. But it has its purpose: to prevent war in the first place. During the Cold War, we let the Russians know that if they dared use their huge conventional military advantage and invaded Western Europe, they risked massive U.S. nuclear retaliation. Goodbye Moscow. Was this credible? Would we have done it? Who knows? No one's ever been there. A nuclear posture is just that — a declaratory policy designed to make the other guy think twice. Our policies did....

We know about the angry outbursts against (mainly Democratic) lawmakers as Congress finished work recently on health care reform legislation. We know that protesters spat on at least one black member of Congress, yelled the “n” word at another and used homophobic slurs against a third. We know lawmakers’ home offices have suffered smashed and bullet-riddled windows.

An article by a conservative named Cliff Kincaid, who serves as editor of the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Report, provides a perfect example of how different libertarians are from conservatives and, well, for that matter, how there ain't a dime's worth of difference, when it comes to individual freedom, between conservatives and liberals. The article concerns the drug war and is entitled, "Dopey Conservatives for Dope." Ardently defending the continuation of the drug war, despite some 35 years of manifest failure, Kincaid takes fellow conservatives to task who are finally joining libertarians in calling for an end to the drug...

Would Obama dare tell Russian to make goodwill gestures toward the attackers? As Jews worldwide prepared for Seder night, the Russian capital was rocked by twin blasts that left 39 dead and scores wounded, some of them critically. Muslim terrorists in the Caucuses apparently blew themselves up during the morning rush hours with the aim of killing as many passersby as possible. Yesterday, two more explosions were detonated in Kizlyar, near the Dagestan-Chechnya border. As crowds gathered after the first car bomb went off, another was triggered to hit onlookers and rescuers. We in Israel are unfortunately no strangers to...

The path to the sweeping health care act signed by President Barack Obama Tuesday was long, convoluted and fractious. The product is massive and complicated. But the premise behind the Affordable Health Care for America Act is simple. As the president noted during the signing ceremony in the East Room at the White House: "Everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health." They should, and a nation as bountiful as ours should make sure that everybody does. The act signed Tuesday is imperfect, but it provides vital benefits to tens of millions of Americans. The bill...

What became quickly obvious while watching President Obama’s recent interview about healthcare reform with Bret Baier on FOX is that we’re still not getting straight answers about the proposed reforms — and this after a year of healthcare being the No. 1 priority at the Obama White House. On something even as elementary as making the exact legislation available to the public and to legislators in a timely manner prior to voting, we got more hype than candor from Mr. Obama. Said Obama, regarding the timing of the vote on restructuring one-sixth of the U.S. economy, “I hope it’s going...