Free Republic

A group of 100 faculty members at UC Irvine signed a letter asking the Orange County district attorney to drop criminal charges against 11 Muslim students who disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States. The group, including five deans, said the Muslim Student Union was wrong to disrupt the speech last year by Ambassador Michael Oren but that the students and the group had already been disciplined by the university. Orange County prosecutors announced last week they were charging the students with two misdemeanor counts, including conspiracy to disrupt the speech. If convicted, each faces up...

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign. The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public –...

"Where would Jesus drill?" That sounds almost like it could be the opening of a tree hugger's bad joke, but instead it's the lede in a recent Associated Press story written by John Flesher about a so-called "Green religion movement." Efforts to make environmentalism its own sort of religion have been underway for some time now. But the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has sparked a new push to take what has been traditionally a political phenomenon, the American environmentalist movement, and make it part of the religious spectrum. ...more (w/video)...

It's patently obvious HLN host Joy Behar has a disdain for the conservative point of view. But is it because she is ideologically liberal, or perhaps does she just think it is "cooler" to be liberal? On CBS's "Sunday Morning," CBS correspondent and sometime fill-in "Evening News" anchor Russ Mitchell interviewed the HLN host of "The Joy Behar Show." He asked her about views and where this view came from. "Her unabashed liberal opinions often lead to some heated debates with her ‘View' co-hosts ... especially with the politically conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck," Mitchell said. "Where did this liberal streak come...

According to Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor, Americans are just not intelligent enough to understand what Obama was trying to say in his speech Tuesday evening.  He says that Obama speech was written to a 9.8 grade level of understanding.  I guess us hicks in the hinterland just don't git wat Obama were trying to tell us unejacated folk out here.  Despite using slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, Payack says that because Obama used 19.8 words per sentence, that our ability to go comprehend what he was saying went right over our heads. Payack...

Where professors rule, life is cruel. That is the bottom line for the average American in this, the transformative age of the president the New York Times and Washington Post has called "Professor" Obama, who "schools" the ignorant at home and abroad. Never before have so many with so little humility gathered together in our government, each believing he "is the smartest guy in the room." This is an administration stuffed with academics. And not just any academic: These are educators from elite universities, the kind of experts prized by a political and media elite seeking confirmation of a worldview...

The Next American Civil War: The Populist Revolt Against the Liberal Elite Lee Harris Remember those rowdy Town-Hall meetings last summer sparked by President Obama’s proposed health-care reform? Harris wants to make the case that those eruptions of populist anger could prove to be the beginning of the next American civil war. Yes, that kind of civil war. Drawing from a wealth of history and political philosophy, he contends that the philosophical divide between the Tea Party populists and the liberal intellectuals is so deep that nothing short of a “civil breakdown” is likely to mend the rift. And he...

Like a lot of progressives, I've been puzzling over the Tea Party phenomenon. Many on the left choose to believe that the hundreds and sometimes thousands who attend the group's rallies are the same old extreme rightwingers who always have been around — usually content to remain isolated individuals or small groups in the shadows but this time encouraged out in the open by incitement from the FarRight media. While no doubt, there's a large truth in that observation, I think it's a mistake to interpret the Tea Party phenomenon mainly in that reductive, generic way. There are, it appears,...

TUCSON, Arizona — You know we’re in trouble when a New York Times headline says, “Obama Team Split on Tactics Against Terror,” and you think that means the health care aftermath. Democracy worked in Washington, finally. But out here in the bushes where zealots abandon reason and spoil for action, America is starting to feel a little like Pakistan. In just one small sign of new times, someone smashed the office windows of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. A Democrat, she was guilty of committing democracy. Later, I dropped by the Arizona Gun Show at the Pima County Fairgrounds, a slightly more...

You can’t spell “hate” without “T,” “E” and “A.” This has been the media meme on the Tea Party movement from the beginning. Since the day of Rick Santelli’s cable-TV rant in support of capitalism, the default assumption of the left has been that Americans who show up to protest the Obama administration are all just one pillow case and pair of scissors away from joining the Klan. If it were merely poor reporting, that would be bad enough. But the cry of racism is being used against these concerned citizens, not because it’s true, but because it’s an effective...

Author Kurt Andersen came out swinging this week in New York Magazine against democracy in action! He hates the Tea Party Movement in particular. Andersen, a novelist who at one time was New York Magazine’s chief editor, prefers when “a calm club of like-minded wise men (and women) in Washington” is calling the shots, not the people. Andersen agrees with Elitist-in-Chief President Barack Obama who believes the opponents of his far-left policies should just sit down and shut up. Andersen liked the good old days when: the elite media really did control the national political discourse…Until fifteen years ago, presidents...

If Americans had any doubt how the liberal elite (Democrats in Congress, the press, the entertainment industry) felt about them before this month’s congressional recess, surely they must understand it now. Hard-working taxpaying Americans have been relatively complacent until recently, understandably occupied by their jobs, their finances, their families, and their personal responsibilities. Americans have had a largely unspoken but abiding faith in the enduring principles of American government, the fidelity of their elected representatives to those principles, and the vigilance of the press in defending both.Oops. The past few months have been eye-openers, haven’t they?As awareness of Obama’s true...

Robin Katz is a "sexy 25-year-old financial planner working at Chase's Midtown headquarters," according to the New York Post, who allegedly ripped off a client to the tune of $110,000 so she could spend it "shopping" and "going out." Katz is a graduate of Smith College, and to judge by her Facebook friends—who hail from Yale, Harvard, Wellesley, Princeton, the Phillips Exeter Academy, etc.—she is pretty firmly ensconced in the ranks of America's elite youth. She certainly seemed pedigreed and trustworthy enough for her clients to entrust her with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mistake! Because she is also a...

...On Wednesday, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin implied that the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision to uphold the Second Amendment was revolutionary: “When I was in law school...the idea that you had a Second Amendment right to a gun was considered preposterous....But the Supreme Court [in Heller]...said that...individuals have a personal right to bear arms.”...Anchor Wolf Blitzer raised the Second Amendment issue with Toobin, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and the others on their panel analyzing the hearings.... [and] asked...what were the nominee’s “positions, specifically on the federal obligation to support the Second Amendment, as opposed to local communities..?” The CNN...analyst...

Elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance. Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get. The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my...

One of the things liberals love to do when making shrills against conservatives is to claim that they are backed by big business corporate capitalist elitists. Conservatives they say are interested in advancing the agenda of the rich against the poor. Conservatives are champions of the rich while they crap all over the poor. They only want to protect the privileged and elite. They give tax cuts to the super rich by cutting programs and putting our nation in debt. Also according to liberals, by electing Barack Obama, we would undo this and require that the rich pay their share....

Alleging misconduct, Artorius Castus and a number of private entities have filed papers with the SEC pushing for an investigation into the burgeoning IndyMac scandal. Next week, one these entities will be filing papers and producing evidence to the Department of Justice requesting an ivestigation into Schumer's leaked memo.

There’s something about General Petraeus that brings out the most quotable in liberals. Most recently it was LA Times wine critic Matthew DeBord who must have been auditioning for a fashion column as he critiqued Petraeus’s uniform and, especially, his many tacky, tacky medals awarded for service to his country. Righteous indignation about that from Uncle Jimbo, hilarious sarcasm at Iowahawk. Take your pick. That was yesterday. Today it’s talk show host Dick Cavett, who I’m glad to learn is still alive, getting all hot and bothered about General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker in the New York Times. Petraeus commits...

For the demographic reality is that, in America, the Democratic party is the new “party of the rich”. More and more Democrats represent areas with a high concentration of wealthy households. ... Democrats now control the majority of the nation’s wealthiest congressional jurisdictions. More than half of the wealthiest households are concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats control both Senate seats. I have speculated before that this seemingly counter-intuitive reality may reflect the hyper-wealth of modern America - these voters may be so rich they simply aren’t sensitive to tax increases anymore. Whatever the reason is, ideologically they are...

Finally, after nearly a year we get to the bottom of the story. Last spring, you were held up as a parody of environmental correctness when you proposed restricting the use of toilet paper to one square per bathroom visit. What was that about? I think it’s a fantastic and eye-opening example of how the media is operated by political figures, of how Karl Rove was humiliated in the media and how, within 24 hours, he was able to humiliate me and take any sort of credibility away from me. What are you saying? You think Karl Rove leaked the...