Free Republic

CS Lewis was baptised at St Mark's Church off the Holywood Road in east Belfast and attended it as a child. The old rectory beside it would also have been familiar territory to the author as it was once home to his grandfather, the Rev Thomas Hamilton, who was the first rector at St Mark's. A distinctive lion's head-shaped door knob on the rectory is even believed to have inspired the key character of Aslan ...

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“Then arose that do or die expression, that maniacal maelstrom of sound; that penetrating, rasping, shrieking, blood curdling noise that could be heard for miles and whose volume reached the heavens such an expression as never yet came from the throats of sane men, but from men whom the seething blast of an imaginary hell would not check while the sound lasted.” ~ Confederate Colonel Keller Anderson of Kentucky's Orphan Brigade There are few aspects of the Civil War which have been engrained in American culture and remembrance more than the Confederate soldiers’ Rebel Yell . . ."

News footage from 1989 has surfaced which shows Morris Dees, the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights organization that tracks hate groups, acknowledging that the Confederate flag was part of his southern heritage.

A stemwinder from last night’s debate in the South Carolina house, in case you missed it elsewhere. Jenny Horne’s position prevailed, of course; Nikki Haley’s set to sign the bill removing the flag in a formal ceremony sometime this hour.But the flag drama’s not done yet, my friends. Thanks to the congressional GOP, it’s just getting warmed up: Republican leaders on Thursday abruptly yanked an environmental spending bill from the House floor before a final vote amid a storm of protest over an amendment that would have allowed Confederate flags at federal cemeteries…Only the day before, Republicans had assented...

Oh. Well, my mistake then. Yesterday I thought he was saying something racist.What did this guy think his critics were accusing him of, if this is his “clarification”? A few fans have written wondering whether I intended to utter a racist remark by referring to Justice Thomas as a “clown in blackface.”“Blackface” is a lesser known theatrical term for a white actor who blackens his face to play a black buffoon. In traditional theater lingo, and in my view and intent, that is not racist. It is instead part of a racist history in this country.I feel Justice Thomas...

On the same day that Bobby Jindal announced he's running for president, The Washington Post published an article implicitly questioning why the Louisiana governor indentifies more as an American than an Indian American. Jindal's parents were born and raised in India before immigrating to the United States. "Yet many see him as a man who has spent a lifetime distancing himself from his Indian roots," Annie Gowen and Tyler Bridges reported from Khanpur, India. The article was reminiscent of Mark Halperin's interview of presidential candidate Ted Cruz in May. Halperin, of Bloomberg Politics, asked Cruz a series of questions seeking...

The Charleston church shootings have thrown the spotlight back onto the Confederate battle flag on South Carolina’s State House grounds in Columbia..... ....NAACP renews call for flag to come down The head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is calling the slaying of nine people inside a black church an act of “racial terrorism” and said the Confederate flag flying on the South Carolina capitol grounds needs to come down.

Legal Memorandum #4 on Trade and Economic Freedom Why Trade Promotion Authority is Constitutional By Edwin Meese III and Todd F. Gaziano - November 2001 Congress is expected to vote soon on whether to grant trade promotion authority (TPA) to President George W. Bush. Some critics of TPA have suggested that it might compromise national sovereignty and may actually be unconstitutional. But an important aspect of national sovereignty is the right to enter into international agreements and to participate in their enforcement. Being bound by agreements, such as mutual defense treaties, does not weaken sovereign power even though it obligates...

Richard Ingham, AFPApril 8, 2015 The Netherlands is the land of giants: on average, its women stand almost 5 feet 6 inches tall, and its men 6 feet tall. But how the Dutch became the world's tallest people has been somewhat of a mystery. After all, two centuries ago they were renowned for being among the shortest. What happened since then? A popular explanation is nutrition -- a calorie-stuffed diet rich in meat and dairy products. But that can't be the whole story, experts say. Other European countries, too, have enjoyed similar prosperity and a rise in living standards, yet...

Overlooked in the media coverage of and academic debate about physician-assisted suicide: it’s not the people most likely to receive it who are promoting it. “It’s the well off and healthy who are calling for it,” Farr A. Curlin, M.D., the Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities at Duke University School of Medicine said at the Heritage Foundation on March 30, 2015. On the same panel on which Dr. Curlin spoke, Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation noted that disability rights groups are actively opposing such measures. Moreover, Anderson pointed out, in Oregon, which has physician-assisted suicide, “95 percent...

During his press briefing on Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner said that he's "hopeful" the House will move on immigration legislation before the end of the year. With House Republicans sticking to the mantra of border security before amnesty, it's likely the chamber will soon act on H.R.1417, the McCaul-Jackson Lee "border security" bill. Our legislative analyst Grant Newman has dissected the legislation, and he reports that the bill won't secure the border and even weakens existing law. THREE WAYS H.R.1417 WEAKENS CURRENT LAW 1) Secures only part of the border - The Secure Fence Act of 2006 requires the...

Economic growth in this recovery has averaged only half the rate of past World War II recessions. Average wages haven't risen in seven years. And most Americans are worried that the economic future for their children will be worse, not better than now. What does the new Republican Congress in 2015 need to do to pump up growth? How should it reform the tax code? Join us as our panel of experts explores these questions and debates possible solutions moving into the new Congressional year. Hosted By Stephen Moore, Chief Economist Speakers: Carly Fiorina Former CEO, Hewlett-Packard Company, and President,...

The controversial panel included two of America’s leading Islamophobes. Could you imagine a panel on Jewish issues featuring Mel Gibson?Why has hate become a part of mainstream conservatism? We saw an example of this Monday at The Heritage Foundation, a one-time quasi-respected conservative think tank. It appears that those days are gone, as Heritage has now become a platform for people denounced by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center for their hate-filled rhetoric. So what happened Monday? You may have read Dana Milbank’s column in The Washington Post about the panel—on the “unanswered questions” around Benghazi—that turned...

Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post who serially exaggerates or distorts what he writes about. It’s just what he does. This has been established so many times by so many people that it’s disappointing to see he is still given prominent perch in his paper and that people who made it past their sophomore year in high school take him seriously. My contribution to the cataloguing of his hackery is “Dana Milbank Is Incoherent On Marriage,” which shows how he just made stuff up when covering a panel of women at the Heritage Foundation. Last night he...

We know you’re busy. And we’re quite certain you care deeply about the future of our country. We care, too. We care about your communities, your families, and how Washington’s decisions are going to impact you. More and more people are grabbing bites of news from mobile devices on the go – and they need a place where they can find digestible, trusted news on the most important policy debate of the day. That’s why the Heritage Foundation team created a digital-first, multimedia news platform called The Daily Signal. The Daily Signal provides policy and political news as well as...

We know you’re busy. And we’re quite certain you care deeply about the future of our country. We care, too. We care about your communities, your families, and how Washington’s decisions are going to impact you. More and more people are grabbing bites of news from mobile devices on the go – and they need a place where they can find digestible, trusted news on the most important policy debate of the day. That’s why the Heritage Foundation team is excited to announce that we’re creating a digital-first, multimedia news platform. After months of planning, on June 3 we will...

NEW ORLEANS — Few senators have sparked more excitement and debate in their first year in Washington as Sen. Ted Cruz. Today, the Texas Republican delivers the closing address at The Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank meeting. The Foundry will broadcast Cruz’s speech live at approximately 12:45 p.m. ET. Outside of Washington, Cruz is perhaps best known for his efforts to stop Obamacare before implementation began last fall. In recent months, he’s been an vocal supporter of conservative principles on a range of issues. Just this week, Cruz filed the American Energy Renaissance Act, legislation he’s sponsoring with Rep. Jim Bridenstine...

Machiavelli’s famous advice to politicians is that it is better to be feared than loved. Less often quoted is an equally valuable admonition: avoid being hated. Jim DeMint, the former senator-turned-Tea Party leader at the helm of the Heritage Foundation, never tried to win the love of the Republican establishment. He did, however, succeed over the past several years, first as the junior senator from South Carolina and since last year, as head of the GOP’s most prominent think tank, at being feared by his fellow Republicans. But now he finds himself in the position of being merely despised. Read...

Education savings accounts, or ESA’s, are like scholarships, where 90% of what the state would pay per student would be given to parents in a bank account-like program. The parents can use the additional funds to pay for private school tuition or other education expenses, which in Arizona amounted to about $3,000 per pupil. The program was initially started as one to help special needs students, but was expanded to adopted children, children of military families and students from failing public schools. The Heritage Foundation’s recent panel, “Education Savings Accounts: The Future of School Choice,” featured a panel discussion of...