Free Republic

Sticks and stone may break your bones - but words can destroy. Think about the Swift Boat campaign and what it did to John Kerry in 2004 and what rumors of a secret love child did to John McCain's bid for the White House in 2000. ~~snip~~ The Internet is making it easy to set these little fires and fan them into a blaze of untruths, and this election has become so intense that groups wanting to undermine the other guy have sunk to a new level. Unregulated attack groups like the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, called 527s...

There is the story about a motorist evacuating New Orleans at the onset of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The motorist ran out of fuel on a crowded expressway. When later asked why he did not turn off the motor to conserve fuel, he replied, "Why would I do that? I needed the air conditioning." The story illustrates a fundamental obstacle in our country's critical need to conserve energy and use it wisely. "Even when you are running for your life, with no fuel supply in sight, people do not make the connection with the fact that their fuel tank contains...

Dear Readers, I've received so many messages about my review of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" that, frankly, I don't see how the Answer Man can process them. I could print a dozen or a hundred, but that would lead us into an endless loop. Many are supportive. More are opposed to the movie and just about everything in it, and are written by people who have not seen the movie and will not see it for a variety of reasons, including the theory that it is "liberal propaganda." What I fail to understand is why global warming should be...

ST. PETERSBURG - A six-hour period of black on white violence 19 months ago has earned St. Petersburg an unflattering distinction in a new state report: the city with the most hate crimes in 2004. Police Chief Chuck Harmon cut short his holiday vacation to hold a news conference about the numbers, contained in an annual report by Attorney General Charlie Crist. The figures were an aberration, Harmon said, largely the result of one evening of civil unrest on May 12, in which a group of about 125 people, mostly black, threw bricks and bottles at drivers, mostly white. One...

An era defined by defiance Joy Powell, Star Tribune Staff Writer January 17, 2005 It was 1968 when 17-year-old Larry Clark led about 400 students in a sit-in at St. Paul Central High School. Some sang, some played cards, some listened to transistor radios blaring the likes of Jimi Hendrix. The era was one of defiance for many young people in the Twin Cities area and throughout the nation. But Clark and his friend Ronald (Ronnie) Reed went far beyond sit-ins, some say, to an extreme that allegedly included the ambush slaying of a St. Paul police officer. Reed and...

A Guide to Imposing Your Morals on Others Without Feeling Guilty About It By: Editor, Family Reporter "You can't impose your morals on other people!" These days you can't participate in a political debate without hearing that argument. Those who lack any religious convictions commonly pull out this popular but unreasoned slogan as a "trump card" to shut down any argument informed by Judeo-Christian principles. And far too often, those of us who hold to faith-based moral principles fail to appreciate the intellectual justification for our advocating that government enforce our view of morality. Too often we feel guilty for...

The executive editor of The New York Times outlined a series of steps yesterday that he said the newspaper would take to prevent any recurrence of journalistic fraud, in reaction to revelations of extensive plagiarism and fabrication by a reporter. In an e-mail message to the newspaper's staff yesterday, the editor, Howell Raines, announced that a committee would be formed to address what went wrong. He also said that two top editors would examine what repairs needed to be made to the paper's systems for managing expense accounts and keeping track of reporters' locations. And he said he would be...

The following is a response I received from Eric Alterman of MSNBC.com regarding a thread that got pulled recently which bashed the president. Maybe some of you will want to respond to Mr. Alterman. I asked: Why not ask me or all my friends and family and all the members of Free Republic.com for our opinions? His reply: because my guess is you're all idiots, but thanks

Mexico, U.S. must cross divide By MARY SANCHEZ The Kansas City Star TIJUANA, Mexico - Mothers clutch infants to their breasts and tug toddlers by the hand as they scurry through the long lines of stalled cars and trucks. It is a dash of humanity at one of the busiest points on the United States/Mexican border. The women dart between cars, hurrying ahead of immigration officials, usually Mexican ones who give chase on bicycles. It is a race to see who can first cross the yellow-dotted line that is the border separating San Diego from Tijuana. The women are heading...