Free Republic

Today the President did his job, and I say that in a non-complimentary fashion. He spoke before a nation that was still in mourning over the first terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, but he did so in a cowardly manner. At no point during his speech did he mutter any words that describe the enemy we continue to face. He spoke vaguely of "twisted logic" and "extremists", but failed to point the finger directly at Islam. If we didn't know any better, we wouldn't have a clue who or what he was talking about.

After giving a talk to a group of family values minded Freeport, Illinois area residents addressing three major threats facing the United States – which I term “The Perfect Storm,” and a solution to a problem that safeguards the US Constitution, I found myself personally and ideologically assailed by a letter-writer to a local newspaper, a Ms. Patricia Wemstrom. I take issue with her critique not only because she mischaracterized each and every point that I made at the event, but also because she wasn’t even in attendance. The critique was caustic and hateful in nature: “I am surprised by...

I reconfigured my settings a while back, and noticed a few days later that the Freeper Poll no longer showed up on the forum page. I went to the settings, moved the "opinion polls" section, and checked again. No polls ever show up. Of course, there is a chance that the "polls" category has nothing to do with the freeper polls, and is actually for posting of online polls. If that is the case, I'm not getting that, either. It's bad enough that I chose to put "GOP" on the end of my freeper name, long before I knew that...

WASHINGTON -- Reparation for the legacy of slavery and peonage may not come in the form of a check, but it must come, speakers said Friday at a forum sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Others said the apology for slavery that the House passed last year and the Senate passed this year were good first steps, and singled out U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who was on Friday's panel, for authoring the House resolution. "For him to stand up -- before even other people in the caucus stood up -- is remarkable," said Harvard Law School professor...

Hollywood and the media routinely offer up two standard portrayals of government officials -- inept and comical idiots or sinister characters. The latter is especially true of media depictions of NSA, CIA, and FBI employees, but both are quite typical of the reigning liberal elite's opinion of all government agencies and their employees: bureaucrats are either hilarious nincompoops or dangerous evil-doers, and amazingly enough, sometimes both at once. Hollywood seems to think that the government is either screwing up the country because it doesn't know what it is doing or it is destroying the country because it is trampling on...

Wow! Christmas, er, Chanukah came early this year. Back in June I wrote this post castigating pseudo-intellectual comedian Jon Stewart, who on his Daily Show declared that Fox News watchers were “extremists who view the world through s**t-colored glasses.” This is ostensibly in contrast to the moderate, intelligent, tolerant, and enlightened folk who call themselves “liberal” and vote Democrat. Lo and behold, this morning my comment box contained this tirade from “Samantha” from Canada (hence the “humour” spelling):

Sources say White House cadre bypassing agencies, jeopardizing security JERUSALEM – A small group of officials working mostly from the White House are tightly controlling U.S. foreign policy, bypassing other government agencies and making decisions without employing the expertise of those agencies, according to diplomatic sources speaking to WND. The sources said some of the decisions may be jeopardizing U.S. security. A senior Middle East diplomatic source said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently apologized to a Mideast leader, explaining to him U.S. policy regarding his country is being dictated by the White House and not her agency. The diplomatic...

A generation of teenagers know almost nothing about the history of Britain because schools are sidelining knowledge in favour of trendy topics and generic skills, a university academic has warned. Professor Derek Matthews, an economics lecturer at Cardiff University, was so concerned at his students' lack of historical knowledge that he decided to investigate by setting them five simple questions.

As part of his pledge to increase government’s transparency, presidential candidate Barack Obama promised to post all bills passed by congress on the Internet for a minimum of two days prior to signing them into law. The idea was to allow citizens the opportunity to scrutinize the would-be laws before they, in fact, became the law of the land. President Obama has routinely failed to keep this promise. This broken promise was cast as “an act of mercy” by the president. “People don’t have time to read these bills,” he contended. “Most of those in congress who voted for these...

Supreme Court Justice David Souter's impending retirement has triggered another tired debate over whether Barack Obama, in the President's replacement choice, will finally reveal his essentially moderate, pragmatic, and bipartisan proclivities. Based on his "get in their faces" style of governing over the last 100 days however, Mr. Obama will probably select a jurist bearing radical and divisive credentials. If Obama's campaign promises last year are to be taken seriously, here is what the current president intends to use as a litmus test for filling vacancies on the court: "We need [judges] who've got the heart, the empathy, to recognize...

Vacuous bullies on college campuses, who couldn't score in a debate with a Teletubbie, proclaim their feigned concern about "racism" and "bigotry" as an excuse to attack people expressing opposing beliefs. Likewise, Janeane Garafalo maligned Americans as "racists" for attending "Tax Day Tea Parties," and homosexual activist Perez Hilton attacked Carrie Prejean, "Miss California," as a "dumb b**** for speaking in support of traditional marriage. If any of these self-anointed "bigot" busters ever confronted real racism or unjust discrimination of any kind, they wouldn't trivialize it by using it so carelessly. Holocaust images were entrenched in my memory as a...

I’m not of the opinion that a person has to be perfect in order to point out the failings of others, but liberals take it to such an extreme that you have to wonder if they have any self-awareness at all. I mean, when someone like George Soros, who collaborated with the Nazis, compared George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler, am I the only one who wondered if he meant it as a compliment? Or take Janeane Garofalo, who says stupid things with such regularity you might take her for a sulky teenager even though she’s 44 years old. Because...

Stop the presses! Finally, after half a century of staunch disagreement with Fidel Castro, I see the Cuban dictator has rendered a judgment with which I heartily agree. Responding to the Prophet Obama's friendly conversation with his brother President Raul Castro at the Summit of the Americas in steamy Port of Spain, Mr. Castro, in the words of the Associated Press, "blasted the new U.S. president for showing signs of 'superficiality.' " After all the Hollywood stars Mr. Castro has hosted on his island paradise, you can rest assured he is a connoisseur of superficiality. Mr. Castro apparently was angered...

Socialism vs. Conservatism --- By Chappy Conservative An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an ...

We have a rock star president who for the first time in American history fired the President of a private corporation, General Motors, then immediately flew to Europe with an entourage of 500 courtiers and a worshipful media, bowed waist-deep to the King of Saudi Arabia, and proceeded to accuse his own country of arrogance. In Paris, of all places. Does anybody else think this guy is shockingly ignorant? I wonder if he has every really talked to a concentration camp survivor, or a Cuban refugee, or a boat person from Vietnam? Or a Soviet dissident. Or a survivor or...

Here's the post that inspired this thread... Obama wants you to pledge loyalty to him tomorrow: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2210534/posts After reading this I made a decision. I am not the kind to sit idly by and let a good crisis go to waste so I decided to act... this is what I found. Being the good citizen that I am, I signed on to the site (Using my pen name, of course... like they can’t figure that out). The area is http://my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/private. I’m not sure if that works if you’re not signed in. There is a spot on this page that has...

THE NEW WORLD DISORDER Canada joins Transatlantic Union effort Working along with U.S for free-trade deal with European Union Canada has decided to join the United States in negotiating a transatlantic free trade agreement with the European Union. According to Canada's daily Financial Post, Canada and the EU have come to an agreement on the areas they would like to negotiate in a free trade deal that Canadian government officials believe could expand Canada's economy by approximately $12 billion. The agreement announced last Thursday concluded "scoping exercises" between Canada and the EU that began Oct. 17. The exercises determined 14...

Dear IRS, I'm sorry to inform you that I'm not going to be able to pay the taxes owed on April 15th, but all is not lost. I paid these taxes, accounts receivable tax, building permit tax, CDL tax, corporate income tax, dog license tax, federal income tax, unemployment tax, gas tax, hunting license tax, fishing license tax, waterfowl stamp tax, inheritance tax, inventory tax, liquor tax, luxury tax, Medicare tax, city tax, school and county property tax up to 33% the last four years. Real estate tax, Social Security tax, road use tax, toll road tax, state and city...

...So what does Gordon Brown do? He comes to meet with the president and he gives him a set of pens made from the wood of the USS Resolute to match the desk that should be in a museum. He gives him a matching set of pens. Barack Obama hands him a basket -- I'm not kidding you, hands him a basket of DVDs that he can't play....Michelle Obama goes downstairs, grabs a couple of boxes of Marine One helicopter models and gives them to Mrs. Brown: "Here, this is for you." ....And the worst part of it is the...

I guess I shouldn't be amazed at the number of slacker ignoramuses who are up in arms about my frank review cutting down the absolute crap they worship a/k/a "The Watchmen", coming out in theaters late tonight. The e-mails they send me and the comments they make about how "deep," "edgy" and "profound" this vile piece of trash (which is none of these) reminds me of the blind statements of followers of Jim Jones. And we all know what happened after they drank he purple Kool-Aid. If only this movie could achieve that result, it would be the most fantastic...

Despite the troubled economy and plunging stock market, voters have put a tremendous level of trust in President Obama to dig them out of the morass. Two new polls show the public gives Obama high marks for his first month in office, putting him in the rare company of three presidents who started off well and all won second terms. Even with the deepening recession, Obama may have the time he needs to offer his solutions and wait for the economy to rebound, the polls suggest. Obama sits at 68 percent approval, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, or...

For over two centuries Americans proudly led the world in inventiveness, in scientific discoveries, in industrial growth. Our schools were envied throughout the world and studying over on these shores was a symbol of international prestige. That was, however, before our educational system was watered down to accommodate those that did not measure up; that was before it became an “educational necessity” to pass everyone no matter what, lest the student’s self esteem be hurt… I found the following video on youtube (H/T: The Sudanese Thinker), it is hilarious but it gave me no reason to laugh. The ignorance of...

Well the letters it seems has stooped. I told him I don't want to hear anymore of Normalais' BS so I blocked him. Not once did he give any intellectual arguments. All he did was scream, "YOU CONSERVATIVES SUCK! BLAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" I told him if socialism was so good for the economy that he should explain why Maine and Michigan are the worst places in America for jobs. His response was that the economy in Maine was great and that it was one of the richest in the nation. He couldn't have been more wrong. Maine has the worst business economy...

It's 9 a.m. on my only day off this week. I've got a few things to take care of this afternoon, but for now, I was enjoying a little time on the couch. A documentary about the dust storms across the midwest in the 30's was playing on the History channel, providing a little background noise while I dozed a little. It was nice. But that all changed with a phone call. I knew I should have turned off the ringer when I hit the couch. I croaked a "figures-you-would-have-to-call-just-when-I-was-falling-asleep" hello? The voice on the other end belonged to a...

On Youtube, there was featured a Fox News clip with Jonah Goldberg discussing in a book the similarities between fascism and liberalism in America. I got this nice message from a naive liberal named normalais. Probably just a teenage college student dabling in marxism. LIberal fascism? sounds like someones been watching fox noise channel too much. liberalism stands for individual rights and small government. fascism is a dictatorship that does not care about the rule of law and does whatever it wants: like torturing people. putting innocent people in secret prisons, wiretapping its citizens illegally, starting illegal wars. gee sounds...

TOKYO (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama's speeches are proving a best-seller in Japan -- as an aid to learning English. An English-language textbook, "The Speeches of Barack Obama," has sold more than 400,000 copies in two months, a big hit in a country where few hit novels sell more than a million copies a year. Japanese have a fervor for learning English and many bookstores have a corner dedicated to dozens of journals in the language, many of them now featuring the new U.S. leader's face. "Speeches by presidents and presidential candidates are excellent as listening tools to learn English,...

Leftwags [leftist enemy within against the government] --Americans that live a good but spiteful life in America -- would rather cover up for terrorists after they blew up New York and Washington, D.C. and killed thousands of Americans, than condemn the perpetrators’ savagery or defend their country against terror. They believed that 9/11 was an inside conspiracy and Al Qaeda was not to be blamed because Americans themselves – not the terrorists – had created this infamy! This foul anti-American mouthing is a favorite menu of the radical Media, especially leftist writers with a strong appetite for sensationalism, and therefore...

Marjorie Mather leaned her 91-year-old frame back, clutched the shoe with all her strength and then let it fly, hitting "President Bush" smack in the cheek and splattering paint across his visage."Wow, I didn't know that was going to be so much fun!" she said, throwing up her hands in victory.(snip)The Shoe Bush installation invited locals to slingshot shoes at an eight foot square painting of the president's face. City Councilor Eric Navickas — who opened the gallery with his partner Amy Godard — used a paint roller to slather a thick layer of red on the soles of the...

A test on knowledge of American history, politics, and economics found Americans’ getting low grades. The average score was 49 percent for ordinary citizens and 44 percent for elected officeholders. Apprised of these results, Maryland House of Delegates member Inez Noughton (D-Baltimore) called herself “liberated from the minutia of the past and free to soar to new heights on behalf of the people of Maryland.” You can take the 33-question quiz yourself at http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx.

I'm so sick of this guy. He needs to get out of Washington and see what ILLLEGAL, not legal, immigrations is doing to our country. I wish Fox would get rid of this jerk who's spent all most his whole life in DC. Every week he's complaining about the "anti-immigrant" faction of the Republican party. Hey Fred, live in CA for a while, visit the schools, visit the emergency rooms, and don't go to a posh rich area, go to a middle class area, and you'll see why we're all so mad.

How about a few civics questions? Name the three branches of government. If you answered the executive, legislative and judicial, you are more informed than 50 percent of Americans. The Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) recently released the results of their national survey titled "Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions." The survey questions were not rocket science. Only 21 percent of survey respondents knew that the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people." comes from President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Almost 40 percent incorrectly believe the Constitution gives the...

Two events in the same week may explain the strange asymmetry between the global threat of terrorism and America’s prevailing attitude toward it. In Mumbai, India, more than 100 people are slain by radical Islamists. Although the target is overseas, the principal targets are Americans, Britons and Israelis. President Bush sends Secretary of State Rice to India to do what she can to assist the Indians in their response while trying to prod the neophyte government of Pakistan – the presumptive origin of the plot – to get serious about investigating and apprehending the perps. On Long Island, New York,...

Now, let's not start screaming about the Second Amendment. To begin with, the amendment should be abolished -- a sensible interpretation of the amendment is that it was written to allow the people to raise a militia for protection and to hunt for food. Clearly no one needs to raise a militia these days, and those who hunt for a living can be licensed to do so. It would be nice if President-elect Obama had the time to focus his energies on repeal of the Second Amendment, but he first has to deal with a broken economy and the incredibly...

Voters Fail the Test By Kathleen Parker Wednesday, November 26, 2008; 12:00 AM WASHINGTON -- So much for the wisdom of The People. A new report from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) on the nation's civic literacy finds that most Americans are too ignorant to vote. [...] Both Shenkman and the ISI pose a bedeviling question, as crucial as any to the nation's health: Who will govern a free nation if no one understands the mechanics and instruments of that freedom? Answer: Maybe one day, a demagogue.

John Ziegler didn’t know the kind of fury the left would unleash on him when he unveiled his web video “How Obama Got Elected.” The ten-minute short featured 12 interviews he conducted with Obama supporters at Los Angeles polling stations on Election Day and the final product wasn’t flattering to liberals. His subjects couldn’t answer basic questions like “Who controls Congress” and “Who is Nancy Pelosi” or “Who is Harry Reid.” They could, however, correctly answer questions about GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and wardrobe budget without any problem. The web video spread like wildfire around the...

A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts. Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily IZVESTIA published on Monday: "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only...

America's ignorance of Obama 'disturbing' Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - November 24, 2008 A pro-family activist and former presidential candidate says a recent editorial in a leading business publication illustrates just how little the American voting public knows about president-elect Barack Obama. Two months before the presidential election, Investors Business Daily (IBD) published an editorial entitled "Michelle's Boot Camps for Radicals." It revealed that Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of a publicly funded non-profit organization known as Public Allies, but he resigned when his wife Michelle became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies...

I came across this watching Hannity and Colmes, and had to let you enjoy it too. A video survey of Obama voters displayed on HowObamaGotElected.com confirms the results of a recent Zogby poll: Obama won on the basis of shocking ignorance of the electorate, fed by shocking media bias. Everyone knew which candidate had had an "issue" with clothes, and which candidate had had a daughter get pregnant (Sarah Palin, for those of you whose sub-rock habitat gets bad reception), but the question of which party was in control of Congress was a much more difficult matter for them. Again...

Slavery still stalks the American consciousness, its wounds yet festering in many hearts. If Barack Obama were to set his mind to it, he could heal much of the damage this peculiar institution wrought on our national soul. This great and tragic error that must be given justice. Obama is the best person in the world who can recognize, remember and honor the deaths of 125 million and the enslavement of tens of millions of people. His unique qualifications can be found in his names. Until he was 20 years old, he went by the first name Barry. Then he...

My Scandinavian brothers and sisters in Norway and Denmark were raped by Nazi Germany during WWII. Finland was viciously attacked by the troops of Stalin, an army mostly consisting of young Russian farmer sons who never where told why they had to go to Nordic territory and have their throats slit in the cold winter night by a "puukko knife". These small countries, small even from my nation's perspective (I'm Swedish), fought back like hell and in the end they triumphed. Look at the performance of these countries of today. I'm not asking anyone to whine over the hardship the...

More than 50 percent of Britons believe that polygamy is legal in the United States; in fact, it is illegal in all 50 states. Almost one-third of Britons believe that Americans who have not paid their hospital fees or insurance premiums are not entitled to emergency medical care; in fact, such treatment must be provided by law. Seventy percent of Britons think the United States has done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000; in fact, America’s rate of growth of carbon emissions has decreased by almost ten percent since 2000, while that of...

Rapper turned fashion mogul P. Diddy, aka Sean Combs, is apoplectic that Republican presidential nominee John McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Diddy has decided to film a series of "Diddy-Obama Blogs" where he performs a soliloquy of sorts to Senator John McCain. The latest thing that has set off the rapper is Alaska. Diddy doesn't think there are any blacks in Alaska, and calls his decision to sign on Gov. Sarah Palin as "buggin' the f*** out." "She's a heart beat away...what in the HELL, Alaska?" he says. ...

CBSNews.com: So, Tom Ridge, who's been discussed. You think … Richard Land: That would be a catastrophe. CBSNews.com: Who’s on the list of people mentioned for VP that you think would most excite Southern Baptists and other members of the conservative faith community? Richard Land: Probably Governor Palin of Alaska, because she's a person of strong faith. She just had her fifth child, a Downs Syndrome child. And there's a wonderful quote that she gave about her baby, and the fact that she would never, ever consider having an abortion just because her child had Downs Syndrome. She's strongly pro-life....

Is it 297 or 643 times we've heard Barack Obama toot: "I turned down more lucrative jobs and went to work for a group of churches"? As the Church Lady herself remarked: "Well, isn't that special?" Young Obama nobly sets forth in 1983 for a paltry $12,000 plus a $2,000 old car. Blessed be he. And ignored be these: the 2,929 who graduated that same year from West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy -- people every bit as bright, from schools at least as selective and even more demanding than Obama's Columbia alma mater, and making, almost to...

Nearly two-thirds of Egyptian men admit to having sexually harassed women in the most populous Arab country, and most say women themselves are to blame for their maltreatment, a survey shows. The forms of harassment reported by Egyptian men, whose country attracts millions of foreign tourists each year, include touching or ogling women, shouting sexually explicit remarks, and exposing their genitals to women. "Sexual harassment has become an overwhelming and very real problem experienced by all women in Egyptian society, often on a daily basis," said the report by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights. Egyptian women and female visitors...

July 11, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Black-Hole SpeechThe will-to-power masquerades as tolerance. By Jonah Goldberg At a recent meeting of city officials in Dallas County, Texas, a small racial brouhaha broke out. County commissioners were hashing out difficulties with the way the central collections office handles traffic tickets. Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield found himself guilty of talking while white. He observed that the bureaucracy “has become a black hole� for lost paperwork. Fellow Commissioner John Wiley Price took great offense, shouting, “Excuse me!� That office, the black commissioner explained, has become a “white hole.� Seizing on the outrage, Judge Thomas Jones...

Paul Zachary Myers, a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris, has pledged to desecrate the Eucharist. He is responding to what happened recently at the University of Central Florida when a student walked out of Mass with the Host, holding it hostage for several days. Myers was angry at the Catholic League for criticizing the student. His post can be accessed from his faculty page on the university’s website. Here is an excerpt of his July 8 post, “It’s a Frackin’ Cracker!”: “Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” Myers continued by saying, “if any of...

BERLIN (AFP) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel has slammed a request by Barack Obama to give a speech this month before the Brandenburg Gate as inappropriate, her deputy spokesman said Wednesday. The conservative leader said that while she would be pleased to meet the US Democratic presidential hopeful, it would be wrong for him to hold a "campaign rally" at the historic symbol of German unity. "It is unusual to do electioneering abroad," spokesman Thomas Steg told reporters. "It is unusual to hold election rallies abroad. No German candidate for high office would even think of using the National Mall...

My dear friends at PETA are at it again. I must say, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals certainly spares no expense in pushing its cause. Over the years I’ve received dozens of mailers and packets about how we should be nice to animals and not eat meat. As a certified meat eater, I usually toss them. The latest mailing came in the form of a packet including pages of documentation and a DVD. This one caught my interest because it included 30 reasons to go vegetarian. I thought I would share some of these reasons with you, along...