Free Republic

As usual, left-wing media outlets only make money when they’re being liquidated. Founded in 2005 by Al Gore, Current TV quickly made a name for itself as a go-to source for environmental incoherence, Democrat lunacy, and far-left diatribes. If providing an outlet for liberal kooks was the goal, it succeeded admirably. However, if it was trying to attract viewers, well, it’s had some difficulty. Now, it’s up for sale. CEO Joel Hyatt recently told the New York Post that “Current has been approached many times by media companies interested in acquiring our company. This year alone, we have had three...

California Professor: I agree wholeheartedly with President Ahmadinejad. There was no such a thing as the "holocaust" Do you know what America’s young people are being taught in colleges and universities throughout this country? If the statements of Dr. Abdullah Mohamed Sindi are in any way representative of what is being taught then I think many people are in for a big surprise. Dr. Sindi has worked as a professor of political science and international relations at American universities and colleges including the University of California at Irvine, California State University in Pomona, Cerritos Community College, and Fullerton Community College....

Book Review of: Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, By David Horowitz, Regnery Publishing, Inc. 2004. 296 pp. The nature of political doublespeak never changes and its agenda is always the same: Obliteration of historical memory in the service of power…. Only a restored memory can demolish totalitarian myths and make men free. (David Horowitz, in Big Lies, Center for the Study of Popular Culture, 2005) At first sight, a merger of the secular political left and the Islamist radical believers is an anomaly. But this book carefully dissects the secret of their partnership: their shared hatred of...

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of affirmative action in college admissions. But the political controversy surrounding affirmative action, and the limits placed on its use by the Supreme Court as well as by various state entities, has had a major impact on graduate education, according to a report released Wednesday. According to the report, from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, many of the groups that support minority Ph.D. students have broadened their programs to include other students as well. As a result, the report warns that the cohort of new Ph.D.’s — and in turn...

By now you’ve all heard about the Ward Churchill flap at the University of Colorado. You might have found yourselves wondering how a conservative in the Colorado public university system would be treated if he made controversial statements. Well, wonder no more. Back in 1997 Luis Chavez, a history professor at Pikes Peak Community College, satirized the proliferation of ethnic studies programs by submitting a mock proposal for a "Gringo American Studies" program. He was suspended. But wait, there’s more! Chavez appealed the decision, and it was overturned, but when his department chair, Katherine Sturdevant, testified on his behalf at...

Just over a week after the cancellation of Ward Churchill's visit to Hamilton, The Margaret Bundy Scott Professor of Comparative Literature Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz has announced that she is stepping down as director of the Kirkland Project, effective immediately. Rabinowitz announced her decision in a press release sent to The Spectator late Thursday evening. "Hamilton College finds itself in the midst of a crisis that is deeply rooted in the institution's history and set against a backdrop of increasing political and cultural tension. Much of the resulting media attack has been directed personally at me as Director of the Kirkland...

As the sordid controversy of University of Colorado (UC) professor Ward Churchill plays itself out, what is perhaps the most damaging aspect of it has largely escaped notice, campuses' double standard in First Amendment matters. Churchill, as widely reported, compared the World Trade Center victims on 9/11 to Nazis and praised their murderers as "gallant…combat teams." In the ensuing national uproar, Hamilton College in New York, which had invited Churchill to speak, decided to cancel the event, stating it had received threats of violence against Churchill and college officers. The college's president, Joan Hinde Stewart, covered her back with bogus...

Hamilton College believes that open-ended and free inquiry is essential to educational growth. As our Faculty Handbook says, “The right to search for truth, to express both popular and unpopular opinions, and to criticize existing beliefs and institutions, is the foundation of intellectual life in a democratic society.” Last summer, Ward Churchill, Chair of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, was invited to campus by the Kirkland Project to give a lecture on February 3 about prisons and Native American rights. After the invitation was extended by the Kirkland Project and accepted by Churchill, statements he had made about...

A University of Colorado professor has sparked controversy in New York over an essay he wrote that maintains that people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were not innocent victims. . . . Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War. The essay contends the hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 were "combat teams," not terrorists. . . ....

BOULDER, Colo. -- The University of Colorado said Thursday a professor who compared the victims of the World Trade Center attacks to Nazis doesn't reflect the views of the school but that he has a right to express his opinion. Also Thursday, a Colorado congressman called the comments "outrageous" and urged the professor, Ward Churchill, to resign while the brother of a man who died at the World Trade Center called Churchill a "nut case." Churchill, chairman of the ethnic studies program at CU, has been invited to speak next month at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., where news of...

CLINTON, N.Y. -- An outspoken professor who's drawn widespread criticism for comparing the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center to Nazis has ignited protests on a college campus where he's been invited to speak. Ward Churchill, an expert on indigenous issues and chairman of the ethnic studies program at the University of Colorado-Boulder, will take part in a panel discussion Feb. 3 at Hamilton College, a liberal arts school in upstate New York that's been a lightning rod for controversy in recent years. In a treatise titled, "Some People Push Back," written after the attacks,...

OF ALL THE sapheaded excuses we have heard for expelling Christmas from a public school, the lamest came from right here in New Hampshire last week. At Hampton Academy Junior High, a seventh-grade student was refused entry to the holiday dance when he arrived in a Santa Claus costume. The reason? Allowing him in would be unconstitutional. Principal Fred Muscara was quoted in the Hampton Union as saying, "It was a holiday party. It was not a Christmas party. There is a separation of church and state. We have a lot of students that go to Hampton Academy Junior High...

TIME Magazine has named George W. Bush as their Person of the Year, and the issue also features this great quote from Bush’s father: Michael Moore’s got to be the worst for me. I mean, he’s such a slimeball and so atrocious. But I love the fact now that the Democrats are not embracing him as theirs anymore. He might not get invited to sit in Jimmy Carter’s box [at the Democratic Convention] again. I wanted to get up my nerve to ask Jimmy Carter at the Clinton thing [the opening of Bill Clinton’s library], “How did it feel being...

Harvard Law School has always been in the vanguard. It is America’s oldest law school; it pioneered the case method of teaching law, and was the first to adopt a loan forgiveness program for those who enter the public interest field. Once again last week, the law school made news for being in the vanguard. But this time, it is in a way that is unworthy of its venerable heritage. After a ruling from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania, Harvard became the first school to reinstate a ban on military recruitment on campus. Until this ruling, the...

Since Election Day, there has been a lot of predictable moaning and groaning about the future of the Democratic Party. Particularly predictable are the suggestions that we need to be more like Republicans in order to win. Democrats need to learn by our previous mistakes - we have tried being “Republican-lite” and it does not work. It is a mistake to run away from the things we believe and I think we can win in the so-called Republican states by being real Democrats. We have to realize that there are no red states and no blue states, just American states....

LOS ALTOS HILLS, CA –Dec 02, 2004. Yesterday, Foothill College Political-Science Professor Joseph Woolcock tried to intimidate student Ahmad Al-Qloushi into seeing a therapist because of a Pro-American essay he wrote in Woolcock's class. The thesis of Al-Qloushi's essay is that the US constitution was a very progressive document, which has contributed to freedom beyond America's borders. The Foothill College Republicans are using this opportunity to make sure that intellectual diversity is respected on campus, by lobbying to have the “Academic Bill of Rights” as an official Foothill College policy. "This is not an isolated case," said Cori Jenab, Vice-President...

The hiring of a former political radical and ex-convict at Hamilton College is sparking controversy on campus. There's mixed opinions after the hiring of Sue Rosenberg, a former political radical who spent 16 years in federal prison. Rosenberg was arrested in 1984 for the possession of explosives and granted executive clemency by President Clinton in 2001. "She's being hired on a one month residency as part of our Kirkland Project on campus. The program that hired her was aware of her background but they were particularly interested in teaching a course on writing memoirs," said Faculty Dean David Paris. The...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Going easy on prostitution didn't go over well in Berkeley, but easing up on marijuana smokers was just fine in Oakland. Condemning the war in Iraq was an obvious choice for many San Franciscans, but they were less certain about allowing noncitizens to elect school board members. In Marin County, wine and cheese lovers decided to ban genetically modified crops, while voters in three other counties decided differently. These and other social experiments filled ballots in Northern California. Berkeley's prostitution measure, which sparked fierce debate in a city known for its live-and-let-live values, lost with just 36...

Exit polls indicate that for 22 percent of voters in Tuesday's election, moral values ranked as the top issue -- above Iraq, the economy, taxes or terrorism. And among those voters, nearly 80 percent said they voted to re-elect President Bush. Less than a week after the election, we coast dwellers who think of ourselves as moderates may wonder just who are these "moral" voters and how they can oppose what we view as choice, civil rights and medical research. Simple, they answer: They oppose what they view as killing of unborn children, codifying sexual deviancy and breeding humans for...

Here is the video clip of Rather's infamous comment to Ed Bradley about the White House having used the blogosphere with great success during the campaign and speculating that it would now unleash this same sinister force to pressure Kerry to concede even though the network had not yet called Ohio.