Free Republic

Sarah Palin's visit to Salem has been moved. The City of Salem says the response to the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate's visit has been overwhelming and the rally will be moved outdoors to Salem Stadium.

The candidate of change, the shining proponent of a "new way" in national politics, says that you aren't allowed to bring a sign to his rally. So much for the right of free political speech. To add insult to injury, this rally was held at the publicly funded University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. So, now the government is lending the weight of its authority to squelch free speech. So, where is the hew and cry about this unAmerican activity? Did the media even note this heavy-handed policy? But, it is all true nonetheless. The rally was held and...

ABC’s Sunlen Miller, Matt Jaffe, and John Berman Report: The rain pouring down, his jacket off, his white dress-shirt clinging to his body, Barack Obama played to a crowd in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat since 1964. Obama and his running mate Delaware Sen. Joe Biden took the stage at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., before a crowd of 10,000 to 20,000 people who had been waiting hours in the mud to see them. The weather in northern Virginia has been awful the last couple of days. And not long after Joe Biden’s introduction, just...

Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) speaks during a campaign rally in the rain at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, September 27, 2008. REUTERS/Jason Reed (UNITED STATES) US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008 (USA)

Reader Ron e-mails that the Obama campaign has issued a decree banning all signs at a rally today at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia. It is a public campus on public property.The local newspaper, the Fredericksburg Free Lance Star is up in arms: NOT ALL COUNTRIES guarantee their citizens the right to virtually unbridled freedom of speech. The United States does. Would someone please tell the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama? And the dozing guardians of liberty at the University of Mary Washington?Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, is scheduled to speak at a rally at the...

CITY PRAYER POLICY UPHELD Fredericksburg Free Lance - Star Fredericksburg Virginia http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2008/072008/07242008/397448 Date published: 7/24/2008 BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE Fredericksburg City Council can keep Jesus Christ out of its prayers. The 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals yesterday upheld the city's right to start its meetings with nonsectarian prayers. Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor sat on the three-judge panel hearing the case and wrote the opinion. "She didn't feel my rights were being violated, but my rights are definitely being violated," said City Councilman Hashmel Turner, who filed the case. "It removed an opportunity for me to pray...

Researchers announced Wednesday that remains excavated in the last three years were those of the long-sought dwelling, on the old family farm in Virginia 50 miles south of Washington. The house stood on a terrace overlooking the Rappahannock River, where legend has it the boy threw a stone or a coin across to Fredericksburg.

Each day, I make the dreaded drive down Interstate 35 to go to work in Fort Worth. Each day, I slug through the snarl and sludge of ceaseless traffic, which intensifies my growing desire to commit hari-kari, or at least incites a vehement curse of the highway gods. Certainly, we in Texas need more lanes, more roads, more rails, more something to deal with the ever-expanding urban population and growing international commerce. Yet how do we solve our transportation needs without carving up the countryside like some congratulatory cake? Or should the construction of a superhighway-rail-utility corridor even concern us?...

WASHINGTON, DC - Trace Adkins isn't the typical, tweedy sort of fellow who often graces Civil War history events. But this son of the South, a platinum-selling country-music star, knows plenty about what he calls the War Between the States. He brought that passion yesterday to the National Press Club to help the Civil War Preservation Trust unveil its 2008 list of the 10 most endangered battlefields. "People say the Revolutionary War defined what we want to be," Adkins said. "I think the Civil War defined who we are, and who we want to be. That's what I'm trying to...

With Virginia considered Hillary Clinton’s best chance in the Potomac Primary, Bill Clinton packed his schedule with three stops Monday in the Old Dominion, where he tried to convince voters that his wife’s experience trumps Barack Obama’s “smoke and mirrors” candidacy. Clinton’s first stop of the day was at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, where he barely referred to Obama by name but alluded to him often as the lesser choice for the Democratic nomination, a candidate who has style but lacks Hillary Clinton’s substance. “You have to decide what this election is about,” Clinton told a room...

Today the President spoke about the economy at a Rotary Club meeting in Virgina. The First Lady met with UN Special Adviser on Burma Ibrahim Gambari. Secretary of State Condeleza Rice is in Paris for an international donors conference. Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island

STAFFORD, Va. - President Bush is coming to Virginia next week. The White House says the president will visit Stafford County to give a speech about the economy to members of the Stafford Rotary and the Fredericksburg Regional Chamber of Commerce. Chamber President Bob Hagan says the president's brief visit will put the Fredericksburg area in the national spotlight. President Bush will speak at the Holiday Inn North on Route 17. The event is not open to the public.

Battlefield District Supervisor Chris Yakabouski worries that Northern Virginia's illegal immigration problems will migrate south. "Will they come down to our area and should we be ready for it or are we just going to react to it?" said Yakabouski, who also is challenging Sen. Edd Houck , D-Spotsylvania, for the 17th District state Senate seat. "I see this coming our way and I want to be ready for it and not have to react after the fact." He plans to ask county staff, at next week's supervisors' meeting, if Spotsylvania can enact measures similar to those passed recently in...

I had to shake my head at Debbie Revely's letter concerning illegal aliens ["Illegal immigrants do the jobs too many won't do," July 25]. Sadly, Ms. Revely has fallen victim to two common misconceptions. First, they are "illegal aliens." That is the accepted term, the one used in congressional bills and legal writings. They are not migrant workers, temporary workers, displaced immigrants, or the like. They are illegal aliens, period. Second, this country was not magically produced. We managed to dig ditches, build highways, construct houses and skyscrapers and bridges--all without illegal aliens being paid pennies an hour. They do...

The sound and smell of the brutal cannon barrages at the Battle of Fredericksburg must have been overwhelming. The deep, rich booming of the 12-pound, smoothbore Napoleons. The high-pitched "crack, crack" of Parrott rifles. And the acrid, sulfuric stench of black powder at each explosion. "A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it," said a Confederate cannoneer atop Marye's Heights to Lt. Gen. James Longstreet as they looked down upon advancing wave after wave of blue-coated Union soldiers. Soon, visitors to the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park will get a taste of what it...

This Day In History | Civil War December 13 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia repulses a series of attacks by General Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg, Virginia. The defeat was one of the most decisive loses for the Union army, and it dealt a serious blow to Northern morale in the winter of 1862-63. Burnside assumed command of the Army of the Potomac in November after George McClellan failed to pursue Lee into Virginia following the Battle of Antietam on September 17. Burnside immediately crafted a plan to move...

Mansfield Threatened by Mining Company

Now that it's officially summer, here's my advice to parents who want to continue teaching their kids during the next two months and learn something themselves: visit Civil War battlefields. I probably overdid it with my own children, visiting about 35 in all, but here are my top five: 1. Gettysburg (July 1863) Much as I'd like to make a surprise choice, there's no avoiding Gettysburg's primacy and sadness, with over 50,000 soldiers becoming casualties over three days. Driving and walking this Pennsylvania battlefield explains much: the big rocks of Devil's Den were indeed devilish, and the awesome difficulty of...

<p>The acrid aroma of burned black powder hung in the evening air as four men in blue and gray fired their muskets over the grave of a long-ago fallen soldier.</p> <p>When a bugler sounded the somber notes of taps, a pelting rain ended and a beam of sunlight broke the gloom at Spotsylvania Confederate Cemetery.</p>

Elections encourage political high jinks. Neighbors gently torment neighbors with political proselytizing, and teens goad one another into minor vandalism. And it's not unheard of in an election season for political signs to go missing. But when a 4- by 8-foot "Veterans for Kerry-Edwards" sign was stolen from its place of honor in front of Joe Broderick's hardware store on State Route 3, the Lake of the Woods Democratic Women's Club didn't think it was funny. It was a major theft, and the club members decided that it wouldn't happen a second time. While club chairwoman Angela Turvey went searching...