Free Republic

Trayvon Martin continues to be a subject of intense interest for the academic elite. The Princeton University Orchestra and the University Concert Jazz Ensemble is set to debut “The Ballad for Trayvon Martin” today, NJ.com reports. The goal of the music, according to its composer, noted jazz artist Anthony D.J. Branker, is to pay homage to victims of racial violence.

Check if out for yourself--But bring a barf bag along!

Les Miles didn’t need to go to Michigan for a chance to coach a team to victory against Ohio State, Michigan’s archrival. The LSU Tigers, to whom Miles reaffirmed his commitment over the weekend, will play Ohio State for the BCS national championship. LSU (11-2) climbed five spots Sunday to No. 2 in the USA Today Top 25 Coaches’ Poll, enabling the Tigers to make the same jump in the BCS standings to set up a Jan. 7 date with the No. 1-ranked Buckeyes (11-1) in the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. “This is the most astonishing 36 or 48...

U.S. Exports Hate to Poland By LIBBY POST Friday, May 25, 2007 No longer content with the obscene political and monetary profits they realize in the United States, the radical Christian right is now exporting its number one product—homophobia—to Europe. A few thousand zealots from the United States and other countries converged on Warsaw, Poland’s Palace of Culture and Science in mid-May for the World Congress of Families, a gathering that focused on “natural families.” “Natural families”? Just more spin—another euphemism for degrading LGBT families. The usual cast of radical Christian right characters was on hand for this particular love-to-hate...

Can America's mayor win support from enough social conservatives to win the Republican nomination? Maybe not, but social conservatives should think long and hard before they decide to pass on Giuliani. This may be difficult advice to credit. Giuliani is thoroughly alienated from the dominant concerns of the social right. Mayor Giuliani delivered what they needed most. He reclaimed New York City from the toxic leftism of his predecessors but in the process identified himself with the moral elements of their leftism. social conservatives are concerned about social rot and Giuliani is one of the very few executives in the...

There has been a great to-do in recent days concerning the cartoons published by a Danish newspaper. A friend of mine I met at the gym was disturbed that other European nations were joining in with the Danes in insulting our beloved Prophet (peace be upon him). He was worried that Muslim countries would have to boycott the products of all European countries and not just Danish ones. I understand that this is a concern for many Muslims; therefore I will propose, for them, a suitable response to our European friends and allies. I do this, however, with the presumption...

Teresa Heinz Kerry has lashed out against the "scoundrels” and "sunshine patriots” who have criticized Rep. John Murtha for calling for an immediate redeployment of U.S. troops in Iraq. "The orchestrated assault on Murtha should alarm us all,” the Heinz family heiress – wife of Sen. John Kerry – writes in an opinion piece carried by the Johnstown (Pa.) Tribune-Democrat. "Just when you thought the debate could sink no lower, the politicians committed to staying the course in Iraq turned the fire hoses of smear and intimidation on this icon of national security. "They said he had given aid and...

Sat Oct 16, 6:34 PM ET Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), D-Mass.,visits the Village Grocery in Buchanan, Ohio, Saturday, October 16, 2004. He was there to buy a hunting license. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

AUSTIN, Texas — Living proof that the Democrats haven't gotten any smarter since the last time they ran a candidate for president. Much huffing (and a huffy Democrat is a terrifying sight) over the fact that George W. Bush used images of 9-11 and of the firefighters at Ground Zero to tout his candidacy in his first campaign ad. How crass, said the D's. Exploiting a national tragedy for political purposes — oh, how tacky. Dammit, the problem is not that the ad is in bad taste, the problem is that Bush screwed the firefighters in a famous case of...

Racists in America must be having a field day: At long last, they have found a world-renowned intellectual -- Harvard's Academy for International and Area Studies Chairman Samuel Huntington -- to rationalize their resentment against America's rapidly growing Hispanic community. Huntington, whose 1993 book The Clash of Civilizations was later credited for having foreseen the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, says in his forthcoming book Who We Are (Simon & Schuster) that the United States is threatened with national disintegration because of the soaring rate of Hispanic immigrants. ''The single most immediate and most serious challenge to America's traditional identity...

<p>"I like it because it's small, friendly and beautiful," Chappaqua resident and former President Bill Clinton said of his adopted hometown, before rattling off a few of his favorite local restaurants and shops: Starbucks, Lange's Deli, Takayama.</p> <p>The president's words are captured on a short videotaped interview on display at the Horace Greeley House in Chappaqua, where the New Castle Historical Society has constructed an exhibit titled "Bill Clinton: Our Neighbor." The exhibit opens tomorrow and will run until September, with a brief one-month interruption for a students' art show in May.</p>

<p>Two religions, two incomes, children from two marriages -- the lives of Democratic hopefuls reflect new times, not campaign fliers of old.</p> <p>DES MOINES - Dennis Kucinich, on the phone en route to a campaign event, is annoyed. The Ohio representative and presidential hopeful, twice divorced and currently single, is fresh off a date organized by a website trying to find him a wife. His romantic track record raises a fairly obvious, if irritating, question: Could Americans have a problem voting for a man who has trouble staying married?</p>

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Guerrillas fired more than a dozen grenades, rockets and mortar shells in Baghdad on Christmas Day,

Double standard? Pat Buchanan, in his Nov. 29 Other Views column, It's time to revolt against judges, on gay marriage, states: • ''It is time for elected representatives to take back powers that were never constitutionally granted to any court.'' • ''The Massachusetts court has just usurped the power of the elected branches, and they should slap the court down.'' • ''Time to go to the root of America's social crisis: the power usurped by judges and imposed against the will of the people and their chosen representatives.'' Why didn't Buchanan apply those same ideas after the 2000 presidential election?

Three years ago, Katherine Harris gave the Democrats headaches in Florida. Now she's doing the same for Republicans. The former Florida secretary of state and current Republican congresswoman helped hand the White House to George W. Bush during the Florida recount of 2000. Now she is seriously weighing a bid for the seat being vacated next year by retiring Sen. Bob Graham (D). Harris, who has less than a year of legislative experience in Washington under her belt, told The Miami Herald recently that she's "getting a lot of anecdotal evidence" that her candidacy would help Bush's re-election efforts. She...

The Starr report is among the strangest sex books even written. Its two main characters are an infatuated needy young woman and a middle aged man who tries time and time again to end the affair but allows his instinct to override his sense.(!)The story is ordinary, squalid and unhappy. What distinguishes this dreary tale from countless others of its kind is the unusual narrator.He is omniscient, hovering even in the bathroom. He sees everything, recording every sexual adventure bloodlessly. Every sexual enoucounter is footnoted.He is cloaked as an antiseptic clinician-pornography in a white labratory coat. The graphic detail is...

March 22, 2003 "Let FBI and CIA agents talk about links to terrorism" (snip) "If our government is serious about fighting terrorism, why won't it hear from its own FBI and CIA agents about terrorist acts in this country? What's wrong with letting them talk?" (end of snip) (snip) "Johnson, Woolsey and Vogel have tried to get the FBI and Congress to consider stark evidence that a former Iraqi soldier, who emigrated to the U.S. after the first Gulf War, was tied to a terrorist cell in Oklahoma City that was involved in the 1995 bombing there, but the FBI...

Bill Clinton is planning to help the Rolling Stones raise awareness about global warming. According to organisers, Clinton is scheduled to appear at a free Stones concert at Los Angeles' Staples Centre on Thursday. The ex-president, who sported sunglasses and played his sax on The Arsenio Hall Show during a 1992 campaign appearance, is not expected to perform with the band. Instead, he'll make a speech from the stage about the importance of fighting global warming, according to the Natural Resources Defence Council - the nonprofit group staging the gig. A spokesman for NRDC said: "The show was conceived as...

The Green Party State Convention did not feel like a state convention. The May 25 affair was held in the large but somewhat drab third floor of the Community School of Music and Arts. There were no entourages. There were no neck ties. There was just a guy, scribbling names and numbers on a dirty chalk board before a group of chairs, many of which were filled by bearded men from all over New York State. This convention was just pure politics, with a whiff of down-home, stripped-o'-the-frills democracy. No, the state convention did not feel like a state convention....