Free Republic

More than 70 people were injured in clashes in Madrid on Wednesday as Spanish police used rubber bullets and batons to disperse anti-austerity protesters, witnesses and emergency workers said. Protesters, including a group of miners who have marched on the capital, are demonstrating against Spain's government and the cuts it is imposing as it seeks to curb the country's debt crisis. Hundreds of people quickly moved out of the area as police moved in, with witnesses reporting the use of rubber bullets and batons by officers. Madrid's ambulance service said 76 people were injured in clashes at or near the...

From the diseased mind of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: (Emphasis added where appropriate. Snarky comments from me are in [brackets].) *** "Every American deserves to have a clean, safe and healthy environment. Today, we understand better than ever before that our health is not only dependent on what happens in the doctor’s office but is determined by the air we breathe, the water we drink and the communities we call home. Over the past two years, the Administration and our agency have taken unprecedented steps to ensure strong protection from environmental and health hazards for all Americans. There’s nothing more...

Capitalism is in crisis across the globe – but what on earth is the alternative? Well, what about the musings of a certain 19th-century German philosopher? Yes, Karl Marx is going mainstream – and goodness knows where it will end

The United Nations on Thursday called for a tax on billionaires to help raise more than $400 billion a year for poor countries. An annual lump sum payment by the super-rich is one of a host of measures including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, currency exchanges or financial transactions proposed in a UN report that accuses wealthy nations of breaking promises to step up aid for the less fortunate. The annual World Economic and Social Survey says it is critical to find new ways to help the world's poor as pledged cash fails to flow. The report estimates that...

Every American knows we will be celebrating the 4th of July on Wednesday; not enough of us remember why. Few of us truly grasp the profound significance of the separation between the American people and our government. We are a nation of self-sovereign individuals, and as the term implies, our government has no authority over our private affairs and no claim over our property. That’s what makes this country unique…or did. Our elected officials all talk about “the American people” like we were undifferentiated; they would have us believe what is good for us is just one thing and they...

If you’ve been following my rants (and you three know who you are), you know how I feel about the current Marxist mess laughingly referred to as the government schools. While there are some exceptions, due to the homogenization of teacher training, textbooks, curricula, the threat by the DOE (which MUST be abolished!) to deny “federal money” (whatever that is) for not toeing the DOE mark, etc., they are very rare. Let’s flashback a few decades to a remark made by that radical Christian conservative/constitutionalist Dr. Gary North. It was he who opined – correctly based on recent events –...

Yes, we won the Cold War, but unlike other wars the Cold War did not end with an act of surrender and with the defeated enemy throwing down his weapons. But no, we are not fighting Marxism in our country, because the American people have not yet been warned that their country is being contaminated by Marxism. ...

French President François Hollande's popularity has fallen by two percentage points to 59 percent, a poll published on the Journal du Dimanche's website showed on Saturday. The survey by pollster Ipsos was conducted between June 14 and June 22, a few days before and after the second round on June 17 of France's parliamentary election, which gave a large victory to Hollande's Socialist Party. Hollande's prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault had an approval rating of 65 percent, unchanged on the previous. …

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday announced a $20 million partnership between the United States and African nations to boost clean energy projects. The aid money is part of the United States' contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All initiative, which was launched last year. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon announced during this week's Rio+20 U.N. summit on sustainable development that 50 countries have pledged $50 billion to the effort, which aims to double the share of global renewable energy by 2030. “This initiative is already mobilizing significant action from all sectors of society,” Ban said...

In response to my “Why We’re Forced to Choose Between a Bad President and an Even Worse President,” a reader said that Obama "has just one fault he cannot quit spending,” and said that, consequently, “he MUST GO!” This basic Republican charge against Obama is a blatant Republican lie, as I shall here document conclusively. The document, “Fiscal Year 2013 Historical Tables,” was recently published by the Federal Government, and it shows (pages 22-23) that the Government’s actual “Outlays” have remained essentially flat since the 2009 budget, which was submitted under George W. Bush. In fact, Obama’s first budget, 2010,...

Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde told The Hill that Democratic Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin is a communist. "I fundamentally disagree with Tammy on almost everything," Hovde told the Hill, a congressional newspaper, "She has a more liberal voting record than almost anybody in Congress. Her philosophy has its roots in Marxism, communism, socialism, extreme liberalism — she calls it progressivism — versus mine, which is rooted in free-market conservatism." Baldwin's campaign took sharp issue with Hovde. Spokesman John Kraus told the Hill that Baldwin has worked with Republicans to protect manufacturing in tghe United States against unfair trade practices by...

Here’s a very personal story that illustrates just how radically America’s attitude toward Marxism and communism has changed during our lifetime. It’s about one of our nation’s top rocket scientists – my dad, Vahey S. Kupelian, who if he were still alive would be 100 years old June 23. Ads by GoogleSolar Panels (Pay No $) Go Solar for $0 Down + Save $1,000! Free No Obligation Quote, Call Now. VerengoSolar.com/Free_QuoteTravel in BC Top 100 Moments in Beautiful BC. Don't Miss a Moment This Summer. 100BCMoments.comAs a little boy, my dad survived the horrific Turkish genocide of the Armenians that...

"This is just so unprecedented and outrageous, that you have to ask the question, would the right-wing president be doing this if we had a white president there?" MSNBC guest and Democratic strategist Julian Epstein said on the channel this afternoon. "I think it's a very important question because I think this is the first African-American president. We've never had a white president been told by the opposing party to shut up in the middle of a major address to the Congress. We've never had a president like this heckled so disrespectfully. We've never had this otherness afforded to any...

This may be the post that gets me zotted, and if so, so be it, but it would be a nice sign of respect for free speech, and just plain old maturity if that doesn’t happen. I won’t lose sleep either way though. All through the Clinton years FR played a key role in helping me really come to appreciate the wisdom of the founding fathers as Clinton violated their principles in so many ways. I found here a large community of wise, informed posters from a diverse background that added depth and clarity to the news of the day....

The Obama campaign apparently didn't look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, "Forward" — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism. Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called "Forward (generic name of socialist publications)." "The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications," the online encyclopedia explains. The slogan "Forward!" reflected the conviction of...

While life expectancy in many parts of the United States is dropping, it has increased by 10 years in Manhattan since 1987. Researchers largely attribute that rise — the fastest in the nation — to a crackdown by the New York City health department on unhealthy behaviors. Manhattanites can now expect to live to the ripe old age of 82, and the average life expectancy across all five New York City boroughs is 80.6 years. That's three years beyond the national average, and a striking turnaround since the city's low point in 1990, when life expectancy there trailed the U.S....

This month the U.S. federal government has officially endorsed America’s fourth “Gay Pride Month” in the last dozen years. President Bill Clinton originally declared June “Gay Pride Month” in June of 2000, and President Barack Obama has continued that tradition ever since June 2009.[1] These declarations foreshadowed his announcement shortly before Mother’s Day last month which made him the first President in the history of the United States to executively communicate moral and political support for changing the historical, common law, statutory and biblical definition of marriage to sanction the ability of two men or two women to marry. But...

...many of the greatest scientists in history have been metaphysical dualists who accepted the existence of matter and spirit. Why this idea should be considered “unscientific” is never fully explained. It is sufficient to know that materialism is the dominant philosophy of today’s scientific establishment. Any scientists who dare to publicly disagree with materialism aren’t going to gain any career advantage. Materialism, in fact, has become a political power in the academic world

Barack Obama gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Dolores Huerta, an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. During the ceremony today President Obama admitted he stole her slogan “Yes we can!” for his 2008 campaign. (Video at link) ---snip---...Dolores Huerta, an 82-year-old labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union. Huerta is also an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. DSA describes itself as “the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.” Huerta has claimed, “Republicans hate Latinos,” and has spoken fondly of Hugo...

Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, by Blaine Harden (Viking, 224 pp., $26.95) Explaining why socialism failed to gain traction in the United States, German academic Werner Sombart famously noted: “All socialist utopias came to nothing on roast beef and apple pie.” Fat and happy aren’t the ingredients for a socialist revolution. A century after Sombart’s observation, Shin Dong-Hyuk shows why starving and miserable aren’t the ingredients for keeping the people in a people’s republic: all socialist dystopias come to nothing on tree bark and barbecued rat. Shin’s amazing...