Free Republic

Representative Alcee Hastings (D-Fla) has introduced legislation (H. R. 645) authorizing the establishment of “national emergency centers” on military installations throughout the nation. The facilities would be intended to “house individuals and families when the president declares it a matter of national security requiring it.” Hastings dismissed fears that these centers would be abused to stifle opposition to the government. “The decision on when or who will be housed in these facilities will not be made by a miscreant president like Bush or Nixon,” Hastings reassured his critics. “I have the utmost confidence in President Obama’s humanitarian instincts. If someone...

LONDON (AP) -- The threat of homegrown terrorists attacking Britain is greater now than any time since the Sept. 11 attacks, a British Sunday newspaper reported, citing a leaked intelligence document. More than 2,000 British-based Islamic terrorists are believed to be plotting attacks, according to a government threat assessment prepared this month that The Sunday Telegraph said it had seen. "The scale of al-Qaida's ambitions toward attacking the U.K. and the number of U.K. extremists prepared to participate in attacks are even greater than we previously judged," the newspaper quoted the document as saying. It said the document was being...

Muslims Seek Prayer Room At Twin Cities Airport (AP) Minneapolis The seven Muslim men drew a few stares as they laid down their prayer rugs and knelt on the hard rubber floor at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. They might draw less attention, they told airport officials Friday, if they had a separate room in which they could say one of their five daily prayers to Mecca. "When we pray, we don't want a problem. We don't want what happened last week," said Abdulrehman Hersi, an imam at Darul-Quba mosque in Minneapolis, referring to the group of six Muslim clerics...

Last week, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner addressed the Reform Club Media Group. Nothing like the 'establishment' sticking together is there? The meeting was conducted under Chatham House rules, which mean that no one attending is supposed to divulge what is said. But one person present was so appalled at Sir Ian's attitude and authoritarian stance that he has revealed to me an alarming - and seemingly off the cuff - remark made by Sir Ian at the event. Sir Ian said the British people should 'brace themselves for a truly appalling act of terror'. He said that following this act...

HUNT, Idaho - The National Park Service wants Congress to remove the word "internment" from the name of a national park commemorating a World War II prison camp for Japanese-Americans. In a management plan for the Minidoka Internment National Monument finalized this week, the Park Service says the term legally means imprisonment of civilian enemy aliens during wartime and does not accurately reflect the government's forced relocation of thousands of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent. The agency wants the name changed to Minidoka National Historic Site, which would match with the only similar prison camp under its protection, California's Manzanar...

by Mark Finkelstein June 16, 2006 As this op-ed column from today's Los Angeles Times illustrates, the MSM and the left-dominated American academy continue to side, in the name of 'human rights', against measures designed to protect us from another 9/11 and with those who might potentially do us harm. Author David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and volunteer attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, was co-counsel to the plaintiffs in Turkmen vs. Ashcroft. He condemns the district court ruling in that case, which, as described in this article from Jurist, held: "The US government can detain...

The internment of the Japanese Americans of Washington, Oregon and California will never happen again. But our constitutional rights are always at risk when we believe we are under threat of attack, which is why the internment remains a live issue.In 1942 the federal government interned 112,000 ethnic Japanese, most of them U.S. citizens and most of them for the duration of World War II. The ostensible reason was that they could not be trusted. Most historians say it was done from hysteria and racial fear. That is also the view I heard from my Seattle family, and the...

A chorus of democrats has begun to sing a song written by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, whose lyrics included a line suggesting that we should close the Guantanamo Bay detention center because of alleged failings in how we treat the prisoners' holy books. First, we gave them food, then clean clothing, then supplied all the prisoners with copies of the Koran, one for each prisoner. We gave them the time and place to bathe, to ponder and to pray. Then, it comes out that one, two, maybe three times over a span of three years (that would be...

During a discussion with minority leaders and journalists on Monday, Howard Dean declared that Republicans are “a pretty monolithic party. They all believe the same. They all look the same. It’s pretty much a white Christian party.” He further stated that “the Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people” and Democrats are “more welcoming to different folks, because that’s the type of people we are.” Dean continued to defend his remarks as recently as Thursday. Dean’s comments clearly suggest that the GOP is, if not hostile to a demographic broader than white Christians, at least cool toward...

Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and author of two books, of which her latest is In Defense of Internment (New York: Regnery Publishing, 2004). In it, she provides a defense of "threat profiling" already taken or contemplated since September 11. Ms. Malkin's earlier book was Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores (New York: Regnery Publishing, 2002). Her syndicated column appears in nearly 200 papers nationwide. Ms. Malkin addressed the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, on December 2, 2004. Millions of American schoolchildren have been taught that there was no evidence...

Detention of foreign terror suspects without trial will be replaced with a range of new powers including house arrest, Charles Clarke has proposed. The home secretary's planned "control orders" would also cover UK citizens. They follow a law lords ruling that the detentions broke human rights laws. Twelve men are currently held under the existing powers, introduced after the US terror attacks on 11 September 2001. Deals are already being sought to deport some of the men. Most of the detainees are in Belmarsh Prison in London. Mr Clarke said efforts would continue to deport them to their countries of...

In this DUmmie THREAD titled, “WTF? Protesters(behind 10 ft. fence) pepper sprayed,” the denizens of DUmmieland actually act outraged that they are not free to pelt the President’s limo. They act like this “restriction” on their freedom to act like thugs is yet another sign of impending fascism. They are lucky. If it were up to me, the DUmmies would have been sprayed with ice cold water whenever they tossed anything at the presidential limousine. So let us now read of DUmmie outrage in Bolshevik Red and the commentary of your humble correspondent in the [brackets]: WTF? Protesters(behind 10...

For years, it has been my position that the threat of radical Islam implies an imperative to focus security measures on Muslims. If searching for rapists, one looks only at the male population. Similarly, if searching for Islamists (adherents of radical Islam), one looks at the Muslim population.And so, I was encouraged by a just-released Cornell University opinion survey that finds nearly half the U.S. population agreeing with this proposition. Specifically, 44 percent of Americans believe that government authorities should direct special attention toward Muslims living in America, either by registering their whereabouts, profiling them, monitoring their mosques, or infiltrating...

During World War II, the U.S. government interned about 120,000 ethnic Japanese living in America, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. This is almost universally regarded as a shameful blot on America’s history, a cautionary tale of racism, paranoia, and wartime hysteria. In 1988 President Reagan called it "a grave wrong" and signed legislation authorizing $20,000 in reparations to each surviving internee. In 2000 another eminent conservative, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, assailed his colleagues’ ruling striking down Nebraska’s late-term abortion ban by likening it to Dred Scott and Korematsu, the rulings which upheld the constitutionality of, respectively, slavery and...

As you are reading this, there are 14 major conflicts taking place on the globe. Of those 14, on at least one side of each are Muslims, or "practitioners of the religion of peace." As far as I'm concerned, the only truth stretching GWB has committed thus far was his proclamation of Islam as a "religion of peace, case closed." Sure, there are some kooky things in the Bible, but I don't see radical Christian fundamentalists running out to kill indiscriminately as a result of whatever it might be that they believe. Minus an abortion doctor here or there, it...

I'm new at this, so my thoughts are in the "body of comment" area. Ok. Whatever.

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Kitsap County — This island's identity is inextricably linked with the World War II internment of its Japanese-American residents. Most locals are passionate in their feelings that it was grossly wrong. It was here that 227 men, women and children of Japanese descent boarded a ferry at the Eagledale dock March 30, 1942, and were sent to the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the California desert, under the orders of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And it was here that feisty newspaper editor Walt Woodward denounced their removal as a civil-rights violation. His was a lone newspaper voice in...

They Must March Against - Not For! 4RWW When Alan began to cry from hunger, Dzandarova was allowed to join several other mothers in an adjacent room, which had its own water and was several degrees cooler. After a former local political leader visited the school Thursday, the women in the adjacent room were told there was "good news": They would be released. "They said, 'Pack your things quickly, and take your babies with you,' " Dzandarova said. Shortly after, she learned that she would have to choose between taking her son or her daughter. Dzandarova had both Alan and...

Sixteen years ago, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, proclaiming it "a great day for America." It provided $1.65 billion in restitution to 82,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry who had been subjected to evacuation, relocation and internment during World War II. Although it was almost universally hailed at the time, the decision was one of Reagan's biggest blunders. In a rare capitulation to political correctness, Reagan ignored the advice of his own military and legal experts who opposed wartime reparations for ethnic Japanese evacuees and internees. The road to reparations was paved with injustice, intellectual dishonesty and incompetence....

“Congress shall have the power to…declare war…”-- US Constitution, Article I, Section 8 In her book, In Defense of Internment, Michelle Malkin makes a case for the interning of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II on grounds of national security, i.e. among those interned were many genuine Japanese spies. Ms. Malkin’s intent is to explore the possibility of racial and religious profiling during America’s war with the Islamunists. The purpose of this essay is not to enter the fray on either side as to the appropriateness of what happened during World War II, but to explore the...