Free Republic

Another one of those “studies” showing that guns might be unsafe (who knew?) has come out. Here’s a quote: “Over 70 percent of families surveyed reported not storing their firearms safely in their residence,” said Robert DuRant of the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. “This concerns us a great deal because having guns in the home increases the likelihood that they will be used in a suicide or unintentional injury.” The good doctor would have also wanted to point out, I am sure, that, if a family didn’t have a gun in the house, then of course that missing...

The Arab immigrants that started to call themselves (in the 1960's as) "palestinians" The Arabs in the Holy Land - Natives or Aliens? Unknown to most of the world population, the origin of the "Palestinian" Arabs' claim to the Holy Land spans ...http://www.ldolphin.org/palestinians.html   The True Identity of the So-called Palestinians.The current myth is that these Arabs were long established in “Palestine”, until the Jews came and “displaced” them. The fact is, that recent Arab immigration into the Land of Israel displaced the Jews. That the massive increase in Arab population was very recent is attested by the ruling of...

HALTOM CITY -- The Birdville school district superintendent will apologize in writing to a student offended by a lesson on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and teachers will get cultural sensitivity training. Those were the agreements reached Wednesday after a 90-minute meeting between school officials, 17-year-old Ibrahim Mohamed, his parents and a coalition of activists offended by the teacher's repeated use of a racial slur that is in the text of the classic 1884 Mark Twain novel. The school district has removed the book from the Richland High School student's class and has allowed him to enroll in a different...

Please Help me find the Mark Twain passage where he deals with the 'redemption' of a drunk and the bliss and hopes pinned on the success, and the obvious falling back into alcoholism of a town drunk. (I remember it being a few pages...) I've spent HOURS trying to find it. Thanks, Sarah

As often as possible, I share time well-spent with America’s greatest humorists and philosophers. This week it is Mark Twain and Thomas Sowell. That combination is not as odd as it first seems. Philosophers dig down to basics, to find and state the truth. Think about it, humorists do the same, but faster. Humor is truth by surprise. Mark Twain wrote: “When I arrived in Virginia City, there were eleven saloons, five jails, and some talk of building a church. It was no place to be a Presbyterian, and I did not remain one long.” In those two sentences, he...

Mark Twain has been dead for a number of years. He often voiced his opinion that Members of Congress were not the sharpest tools in the shed, but he hasn’t actually made such a comment in more than a century. Still, an issue arose last week which allows me full permission to condemn Congress again in Mark Twain’s name. This concerns the sailing of the Delta Queen. Practically everyone, even in land-locked states, knows the Delta Queen. She is the last surviving original-style paddlewheel boat to sail on the Mississippi. She was built in 1926 for use on the West...

Well spoke Mark Twain when he said: "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself." The truth be told not, only are they idiots, but many of them are the worst examples of humanity – and none is a better portrait of same than Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., but I am getting ahead of myself. I justly brand these carrion the worst kind of human beings because of their relentless attacks against our military men and women. Theirs is not simply over-the-top foolish comments, they are personal, ad-hominem attacks directed at men...

This column was inspired by Michelle Malkin, whose work I much admire. Her latest article is, “It’s the Jihad, stupid.” I’ll explain home-grown terrorism in the US, Canada, England, France, and a few hundred other nations around the world, in terms even the dumbest Member of Congress should understand. I won’t name names, just initials: There’s RD in the Senate (Ohio) and CMcK in the House (Georgia), for example. Imagine that Presbyterians were running amok all over the world. Bombing restaurants, kidnaping people, cutting off heads, and making videos of all that for the Presbyterians who weren’t there and missed...

Two excellent human beings died this week, long before their time. One thing connects Kirby Puckett, baseball player, and Dana Reeve, actress and widow of Christopher Reeve. It is Ernest Hemingway’s immortal definition of heroism, “grace under pressure.” This man and this women were both heros. Kirby Puckett was a Hall of Famer, one of the finest athletes in Minnesota in any sport. As an outfielder and slugger for the Minnesota Twins, he made the impossible seem natural with his skills. There’s an article in the Pioneer Press, “Weren’t the Cheers Only Yesterday?” which captures the magic of his ability....

Given recent revelations in the news regarding the 'Left' doing everything possible to suppress the contents of the "Barrett Report", I seriously doubt that the  perfect irony  of the below news photo... (and the included original Reuters caption immediately below it) ...will be lost on ANYONE.   http://www.seadogbytes.com/sbimages/HillaryHonest.jpg  

What follows is the lede from a Baltimore Sun article today (Sunday) about Army recruitment as reprinted in The Day in New London, Connecticut. It demonstrates, again, the truth of Mark Twain’s dictum, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” "Washington — The Army met its recruiting goal for November by again accepting a high percentage of recruits who scored in the lowest category on the military's aptitude tests, Pentagon officials said Thursday, raising renewed concerns that the quality of the all-volunteer force will suffer. "The Army exceeded its 5,600 recruit goal by 256 for November, while the Army Reserve...

Even today, sources on inventions list six by Franklin that are still in active use today. One of those sits in my back hall, cheerfully and economically heating the back of my home – the Franklin stove. Another sits on the bridge of my nose as I write this – a pair of bifocals. But this is about Franklin’s greatest invention, one that the lists never mention because it is mere words, not a physical object. Franklin made seven trips to Europe, as a diplomat and scholar. He was welcomed into all the learned societies that existed in Europe then....

Last week the Washington Post along with ABC News put out the results of a national poll on a wide variety of issues. I read the poll, and several articles about the poll. Clearly, Mark Twain’s famous quote, “lies, d*mned lies, and statistics” applies here. This is not a matter of differences of opinion, nor of editorial judgments. This is bald-faced lying by the newspaper and network editors. They published statistics that any competent college graduate would have known were false. Many in the MSM republished the Post-ABC poll without an independent review to see if the poll’s results were...

Pierce Flanigan, Jr. died this week, aged 93. But this is about his hat, not his death. And it is about the absurd series of questions asked of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice by Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Russert’s effort to pin her down on whether she is running for President in 2008 spanned five straight questions. Pierce, III has been my good friend since we went to school together, and later were college roommates. Along the way, Dr. Carl Zapfee of Troop 35 made us both Senior Patrol leaders in the troop. He assumed, correctly, that...

News doesn't need to be current to be relevant. Apparently, San Francisco Democrats have not changed in 141 years. Unfortunately, neither have Californians -- they're still voting for Democrats. _____________________________________________________ The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 1864 DEMOCRATIC RATIFICATION MEETINGSeveral hundred men and boys of all political colors, were gathered at the Plaza last evening to see the sky rockets, look at the pictures and hear the music and speeches. It was expected, of course, that all the apostles and prophets, saints and martyrs of the peace makers and the Constitution preservers would display themselves, no matter how diverse...

A Quote

1) Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. ............Mark Twain 2) I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. ........Winston Churchill 3) A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. .............George Bernard Shaw 4) A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. ............G. Gordon Liddy...

"France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes." ---Mark Twain "I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." --- General George S. Patton "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." --Norman Schwartzkopf "We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it." Marge Simpson "As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure" ---Jacques Chirac, President of France "As far as France is concerned, you're...

There are two ways to tell when a political party thinks it is losing an election. The obvious one is where the candidates are choosing to campaign. If they’re stumping in their own backyards and shoring up their bases, while the other side is on the attack, that’s a clear sign. But so is the level of lying. When all is almost lost, the unethical campaign will haul out the lies – the bigger the better. Others have commented on the political geography of where Bush and Kerry are respectively campaigning in the closing days of this campaign. This comments...

Ah, the French. How to think of them? There is an easy default answer: kindly and gratefully. After all, they helped us in the Revolutionary War, gave us Alexis de Tocqueville and the Statue of Liberty, and to this day feel a keen republican spirit in harmony with America's own. Sure, we have had our spats. But when the chips are down, you can count on France to be on our side, more or less, and to supply some great wine if it is needed. ...Before 9/11, 77% of Americans held a favorable opinion of France. By March 2003, only...

Before the first zionist congress Twain wrote "The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then . . . passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts. … All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?"

I have to admit that the first sentence caught my eye. It's not often that you find a scientific article that begins, "Can relief from pain be a pleasure?" When I started reading, however, I soon discovered that this was not research in the long and honorable tradition of Kinsey. There wasn't a dominatrix to be found. No one dressed in leather. In fact there was no sex at all. You can imagine my relief. Instead of some lurid tale of domination and submission, the article was all about fruit flies - their pain, their pleasure and what neurological pathways...

Reflections of Great Minds on Government 1) Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. . . But I repeat myself. Mark Twain 2) I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. Winston Churchill 3) A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. George Bernard Shaw 4) A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to...

Mark Twain frequently used the title quote to introduce himself to civic associations where he spoke. It seemed the proper beginning to an article about Congress in general, and about why I am not running for the House – in 2004. The “trade” that Twain referred to was extracting ill-gotten gains from the unsuspecting public. Eight years after the first Americans established our new government under the Constitution, we divided into two major political parties: the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. Both they and their allied newspaper editors then turned the denigration of their congressional opponents into a cottage industry that...

Lately I’ve been reminded constantly of a remark that James Lileks made to me in an e-mail regarding the Writing of Essays and Other Deep Thoughts. He’s a perfectly ripe mango of annoyance, that fellow; if the man weren’t so funny and spot-on I’d like and despise him far less. But no – my admiration for him continues to grow and soon murder will be the only way for me to adequately express it. We were talking about this process in an e-mail exchange, and he said that when we chase the rabbit down the hole we never know where...

<p>William Robinson, 18, claims a teacher at Cousino High School in Warren used the word when reading from the book and during later discussions about it. He said he was offended. Robinson's mother, Theda Harris, said the family plans to file a lawsuit against the district. A spokesman for the district pointed out that the slur is in the book.</p>

<p>Although right-minded Missourians cling to him as their favorite son, the celebrated man from Hannibal exhibited a penchant for leaning left.</p> <p>Missourians have always been a rather conservative lot. How strange, therefore, that Missourians so cherish and champion their most famous native son, Mark Twain, who died 93 years ago Monday. Twain's work was not just liberal, it was often radical, as a cursory examination of his pronouncements on various subjects will show.</p>

As they get closer to their season opener in Japan, the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners are jittery. They're not the only ones - with war possible, major league baseball is wondering whether now's the time to play ball so far from home. There were no plans Monday for the teams to call off their trip to Tokyo. The A's and Mariners are supposed to leave in a couple of days and scheduled to play a two-game series beginning March 25. But commissioner Bud Selig and baseball officials were busy talking to the State Department, the FBI and other government...

"France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes." --Mark Twain "I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." --General George S. Patton "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." --Norman Schwartzkopf "We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it." --Marge Simpson "As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." --Jacques Chirac, President of France "As far as France is concerned, you're right."...

From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk, Published 2/14/2003 8:05 PM HIGHLANDS, N.C., Feb. 14 (UPI) -- This here's the 337th Report ta the Folks Back Home from the (More er Less) Honorable Billybob, cyberCongressman from Western Carolina. I lernt a lot inna one room schoolhouse unner Miss McGillicuddy, what has stood me in good stead. In fack, I could rat this hole Report from that. But as ma Close Personal Assistant, Felicity Fahrquar, once sed, "Yer twaddle makes ma head hurt." So I'll turn this over ta ma able assistant, J. Armor, Esq. Using the Old NoodleMany subjects that...

Hey all -- I need help turning up a quote by Mark Twain relating to how presidents and other statesmen need to be more ethical than the general populace in order to lead. Googles searches have been unsuccessful. For those who may have watched it, Twain's quote was mentioned in a recent PBS documentary on his life. Hal Holbrooke mentioned the quote in apparent reference to the Clinton Administration, then said, "Ouch."