Free Republic

'Chuck' bucks have run dryJust 3G in donations for 'Rangel' school By MELISSA KLEIN and ISABEL VINCENT Last Updated: 6:42 AM, November 8, 2009 Donors have contributed just $3,315 to the Rangel Center at City College since the Harlem congressman became enmeshed in scandal last fall. The center -- which critics have derided as a "monument to me" -- needs $30 million to renovate a derelict building in Harlem and fulfill its mission to prepare minority students for public-service careers. But data provided by the college shows Rangel's pet project has amassed just $6.6 million in pledges, and only $650,000...

The Kenyan Government plans to build a Sh112 million cultural centre in honour of US President Barack Obama at his ancestral home in Kogelo. The Sunday Nation has learnt that the proposal to construct the Obama Cultural and Leadership Centre, will be part of discussions by permanent secretaries during a meeting at Nairobi's Harambee House on Monday. The project is meant to attract a large number of tourists from across the world, who may be interested in visiting the ancestral home of the man who surmounted racial barriers, to become the president of the world’s most powerful nation. Ironically, the...

To celebrate its revival after the 1995 earthquake, the city of Kobe held the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the "life-size" statue of Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Tetsujin #28 ("Ironman #28" or Gigantor) robot on Sunday. Minoru Yada, the 78-year-old voice actor of Tetsujin #28's fictional inventor Dr. Shikishima, led the the 28 people who cut the ribbon by yelling out "Tetsujin-28-go!" Yada was holding a mockup of the trademark remote control that the manga and anime's hero, schoolboy Shoutarou Kaneda (Jimmy Sparks), carried to control the robot. MBS News, Jiji Press, and The Kobe Shimbun all posted video reports from the ceremony. The...

The monument "African Renaissance" under construction near Dakar International Airport in Senegal(photo taken on Aug. 10.) The monument, 50 meter high, is to be completed in coming December. N. Koreans have been building it since last year.

Ronald Reagan's birthplace, a second-story apartment over what was once a small-town tavern in Tampico, Ill., is today marked by a museum. John Adams' birthplace is a national park. Even Rutherford B. Hayes, whose birthplace is today covered over by a BP gas station, merits a metal plaque commemorating the location. But while most of America's 44 presidents have tourist attractions or monuments of some kind marking their birthplaces, President Barack Obama – for several reasons – may not be granted the honor. Three obstacles in particular stand in the way: First, though Obama maintains he was born in Honolulu,...

WASHINGTON, June 12, 2009 – A granite monument dedicated to 40 U.S. servicemembers who perished in an air crash in Australia during World War II has found a permanent home at Fort Myer, Va. Left to right, retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Bruce A. Wright; Australian Air Vice-Marshal Kym Osley, head of the Australian embassy’s defense staff; U.S. Army Secretary Pete Geren; Harry McAlpine, president of the Returned and Services League’s Washington, D.C., sub-branch; U.S. Army Col. Laura J. Richardson, garrison commander of the Fort Myer Military Community; Robert S. Cutler, executive director of the Bakers Creek Memorial...

Watch video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJGFFNJOBtk We recommend touring Washington, D.C. during the brief period of cherry blossoms. We made this video, highlighting the Washington Monumement, Jefferson and FDR Memorials, on a day with clear skies.

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 500,000 acres in the Mojave Desert would be off-limits to wind or solar energy production under legislation Sen. Dianne Feinstein intends to introduce. The land is coveted by companies seeking to develop alternative energy, setting up a potential clash with one of the more powerful members of Congress. The land would seem ideally suited for solar energy production. Nineteen companies have submitted applications to build solar or wind facilities on the property, but such development would violate the spirit of what conservationists had intended when they donated much of the land to the public, said...

Yet it remains Raleigh's most prominent piece of public art, a signature symbol with an ugly past representing values and ambitions that no longer reflect who we are.

Proposed location: our collective asses.

President Barack H. Obama’s biographers will need to know a little more than is currently known about his birth. After all, the presidential birthplace should be a national monument. Preparations should be started now to preserve it. Where is the house in which he was born? Or was it a hospital, I can’t remember? Since Obama is one of our youngest presidents, the midwife who assisted the birth should still be alive. Historians and journalists would like to interview her. Wait, was it a doctor who attended the birth of our first black president? What was his name? Oh, you...

The artist plans to create a gigantic face of Obama sculpted from gravel and sand, which will cover nearly 2.5 acres (1 hectare) of Barcelona beachfront before the U.S. elections.

How Did One Small Man Move 1,100 Tons of Stone to Build a Marvel of Engineering? Like the ancient wonders of Stonehenge or the Great Pyramids of Egypt, there is an incredible and mysterious creation right here in the United States. Coral Castle, in Homestead, Fla., just south of Miami, is an intricate rock garden made of enormous pieces of coral, many of them weighing several tons. But more amazingly, Coral Castle was built entirely by one man  Latvian immigrant Ed Leedskalnin, who stood just 5 feet tall and weighed 100 pounds. To this day, no one knows how...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - When vandals sprayed black paint on the faces and hands of statues on the Capitol's Confederate monument and left a reference to a rebellious slave's hanging, many assumed it was the work of blacks looking to make a statement.< snip >But the apprehension of three white 17-year-olds raised questions Monday about the motive and whether they should be charged with a hate crime as originally proposed. < snip >The letters and numbers "N.T. 11 11 31" were also written in black paint on the monument's limestone base, an apparent reference to slave Nat Turner who was hanged...

Monument to Che Guevara destroyed by Venezuelans ETHAN MCNERN A GROUP of Venezuelans shattered a glass monument to Cuban hero Che Guevara built by the government of leftist President Hugo Chavez, an area mayor told state TV yesterday. Jesus Espinoza, a municipal mayor in the mountain state of Merida, said: "A group from outside the municipality inconsiderately destroyed the monument to Che Guevara." Local media said a group identifying itself as the Patriotic Command of the Plateau took responsibility for ruining the 8ft glass monument inscribed with a message to honour the icon of Cuba's 1959 revolution. "We do not...

WASHINGTON - The selection of a Chinese sculptor to carve a three-story monument to Martin Luther King Jr. on the National Mall is raising questions about what part of his legacy should be celebrated. King promoted peace and understanding among all people. His primary fight, however, was to win particular opportunities for blacks in the United States by juxtaposing the plight of an oppressed people against a message of freedom and democracy. A loose-knit but growing group of critics says a black artist — or at least an American — should have been chosen to create the King memorial between...

World Monuments Fund favours garnering public support on this ancient bridge Government can make it a tourist attraction, say experts World Monuments Fund, an international preservation organisation that brings out World Monuments Watch List of endangered sites, has said that the Government of India should be made to realise that it's more valuable to preserve Ram Setu or Adam's Bridge than demolishing it. Marilyn Perry, chairman of the fund, said in an interview on the sidelines of the function to release the list of endangered sites of the world in its New York Madison Avenue office that the Federal Government...

Unrecognized: The World’s Oldest Monument 27/04/2007 By Osama al Eissa Jerusalem, Asharq Al-Awsat- Approximately two kilometers away from Jericho’s city center lies Tel es-Sultan (Sultan’s Hill), the oval-shaped mound that the oasis of Jericho, the oldest city in the world, is famous for. The world’s earliest settlement was located at Tel es-Sultan, which stands in the form of several layers of habitation that make up today’s mound. And yet despite its importance and its ability to attract the world’s greatest researchers, it is not included on the World Heritage List, which is precisely what the Palestinian Authority’s Department of Antiquities...

Authorities arrest man in vandalism to Confederate Monument In a follow-up to a story we first reported in June of 2005, on Monday, Portsmouth Police arrested a man and charged him with vandalizing the Confederate Soldiers' Monument located in the downtown area of the city.  The suspect was identified as 20-year-old Troy Capps of Portsmouth. Police say he was involved in defacing the monument on Court and High Streets by spray-painting the faces of the soldier with black paint. The monument was badly damaged, and crews worked for months to restore it. Capps was charged with a Class 6...

Defaced statue of WWII soldier in Shelbyville, TN A swastika has been painted on the helmet of the soldier's statue standing over Veterans Memorial Plaza on the south lawn of the Bedford County Courthouse. American Legion Commander Roy Bartlette noticed the vandalism on Monday. "I was up there, laying bricks this morning and I looked up and saw something that didn't look right, so I climbed up on the base to see if it was wet. It wasn't," Bartlette said. "I've called the sheriff about it. That's county property." It took veterans six months to get approval for the statue's...

Arizona Builds Moonbat 9/11 Memorial Have Your Duct Tape Handy Before Reading this Story By Leon H Wolf Posted in Liberals — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment » This is one of those stories that is so outrageous that you almost assume it's fake - but in this case, there are pictures, so I'm going to go ahead and operate on the assumption that it's true. First things first, I came across this story at the indispensible Ace of Spades HQ (be advised: Ace does not have a no-profanity policy), and he's got...

US President's letter on Homo Homini Monument 31.08.2006 US President George Bush has sent a letter of greetings and best wishes to those who will attend the unveiling of the Homo Homini Memorial in Kielce, Poland. The monument will be unveiled on September 11 in honor of the victims of the terrorist attacks in New York of 2001 and will be a symbol of protest against terrorism. "This memorial is a fitting tribute to the men, women, and children who lost their lives to terrorism and a wonderful reminder that the best hope for peace is the expansion of freedom...

And Subjective Justice For All By Jenni Vinson Trejo August 19, 2006 William S. Mosher lived in Harris County in Houston, Texas. Mosher was a prominent Houston businessman and philanthropist who had been a long-time active and supporter of a local Christian charity, the Star of Hope Mission, that provided food and shelter to indigents. William Mosher died in 1948. In 1953 the president of the Star of Hope Mission approached the Harris County Commissioners Court and secured permission to erect a memorial to Mosher on the Courthouse property. Morris testified that Star of Hope selected a location in front...

A federal judge on Friday said a Ten Commandments monument outside a courthouse can stay, rejecting arguments that it promotes Christianity at the expense of other religions. U.S. District Judge Ronald A. White in Muskogee, Okla., ruled that Haskell County did not violate the Constitution by erecting the monument. The county did not "overstep the constitutional line demarcating government neutrality toward religion," he wrote.

Judge allows Ten Commandments monument By JEFF LATZKE, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago A federal judge on Friday said a Ten Commandments monument outside a courthouse can stay, rejecting arguments that it promotes Christianity at the expense of other religions. U.S. District Judge Ronald A. White in Muskogee ruled that Haskell County did not violate the Constitution by erecting the monument. The county did not "overstep the constitutional line demarcating government neutrality toward religion," he wrote. The county argued that the monument outside the Stigler courthouse was part of a historical display that included other monuments recognizing war veterans,...

A SMALL building project in Brittany has hit the buffers with the discovery of a buried "menhir" or Neolithic standing stone. A little more digging by archaeologists uncovered around 50 other stones that date from between the 5th and 3rd Century BC. The site is near the village of Belz, in the south of Brittany, and the area is known for other standing stone formations, but this one is already being heralded as the most interesting ever discovered in France. A team from the Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques (Inrap) is slowly revealing a large quantity of remains such as...

FORT HOOD, Texas (Army News Service, Aug. 8, 2006) – The Purple Heart Medal will have its own monument at the 1st Cavalry Division Museum at Fort Hood next month. The announcement came on Purple Heart Day, Aug. 7. In its 85-year history, thousands of First Team Soldiers have earned the Army’s oldest medal. Nearly 2,000 Purple Hearts were awarded during the division’s last rotation to Iraq. “This monument on the museum grounds will give units a nice, shaded area to hold ceremonies,” said Carrie Cutchens, a museum staff member and collection specialist. The monument is slated for dedication during...

The monument is sponsored by Les Jésuites de Sudbury.'' No service of faith without promotion of justice. No promotion of justice without dialogue with other traditions.'' (34th General Congregation 1995, Society of Jesus)''From the beginning to the end WORKING TOGETHER FOR PEACE'' ALPHA AND OMEGA Peace represented by a dove, a Christian Cross and the symbols in each of the letters A(lpha) and O(mega) represents the 12 current religions. You can visit the monument of peace on the right hand side of the alter where Mass is celebrated on the Grotto Mountain.

By Diana Leone dleone@starbulletin.com The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council will ask for continued commercial fishing in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, despite a presidential order yesterday that will ban it in a large region declared as a monument, a council member says. Westpac council member Edwin Ebisui said the council thinks fishing is "palatable and consistent with a monument or reserve." "Westpac's position is and has been that the two fisheries going on up there (bottom-fish and pelagic) have been for years absolutely consistent with marine protection," Ebisui, Hawaii member of the council, said yesterday by telephone from a meeting...

By Diana Leone dleone@starbulletin.com President Bush is expected to announce in Washington today that he wants to make the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument. In doing so, Bush would establish permanent protection for the 1,400-mile-long, 100-mile-wide section of the Hawaiian archipelago and coral reefs, a move that environmental groups, native Hawaiians and others have been seeking for years. "Building on all the work that was done in the last five years under the marine sanctuary process, the president has decided to elevate the designation of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands area to national monument status," said a statement released yesterday...

Purple Heart Park in Southeast Tucson has a new monument to honor the park's namesake. The city has replaced the crumbling Purple Heart statue in the park on East Rita Road in the Rita Ranch community with a new monument honoring those killed or wounded in combat. The 12-foot-long brick monument, about 5 feet high, features a heart in the middle made of squares of purple glass, said Jim Conroy, the East District administrator of the Parks Department. He called the monument very well done. Mike Dyer, chaplain for the local chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart,...

Reason disputed for monument By Sheila K. Stogsdill The Oklahoman MUSKOGEE - A Stigler resident testified Tuesday that religion in the form of a Ten Commandments monument has no business on government property. "The Ten Commandments have nothing to do with our law," said Sharon Nichols, an American Civil Liberties Union member and self-described naturalist. "The Ten Commandments is a historical document with limited significance to Haskell County." Nichols said she was offended by the monument, erected on the Haskell County Courthouse lawn, because she is not a Christian. She also testified she was offended by the words "In God...

Tourists take in the new landscape changes to the Washington Monument, Saturday, April 1, 2006, in Washington. The Monument reopened to the public after several months of security renovations. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson) WASHINGTON — In landscape architect Laurie Olin's mind, the approach to the most soaring of the capital's monuments had to be friendly and simple _ and safe. The Washington Monument stretches more than 555 feet in the air from the National Mall. But for years there was nothing grand about the asphalt walkway that led to the obelisk. And adding jersey barriers in the age of terrorism diminished...

Subject: A history lesson: LAUS DEO LAUS DEO: A little history lesson you may enjoy. I thought that you and others may like to see this. One detail that is not mentioned, in DC, is that there can never be a building of greater height than the Washington Monument. With all the uproar about removing the ten commandments, etc... This is worth a moment or two of your time. I was not aware of this historical information. On the aluminum cap, atop the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, are displayed two words: Laus Deo. No one can see these words....

BRUNSWICK, Maine --Firefighters will be allowed to erect a memorial that features a poem with a reference to God and language that some town councilors viewed as sexist. The poem, "A Fireman's Prayer," was written in 1959 by Kansas firefighter A.W. Linn and is found on memorials across the country.

INTERNATIONAL ZONE, Iraq — Against a backdrop of a victory arch of two hands holding cross swords put up by Saddam Hussein to celebrate his self-declared victory over Iran years ago, an American soldier swore to continue defending freedom. Sgt. Troy Lust raised his right hand and re-enlisted in an area where former Iraqi dictator Hussein reviewed quasi-goose-stepping members of his Republican Guard. The former Marine, who said he spent eight years during peace time in the Corps and five years as a soldier in a country at war, signed up for another half-decade of military service. Before having the...

MUSKOGEE, Okla. (AP) -- The Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against Haskell County, demanding that a Ten Commandments monument be removed from the courthouse grounds in Stigler. Haskell County commissioners had no immediate comment on the lawsuit. It alleges the display violates constitutional protections against government endorsement of religion and entanglement of government with religion. The ACLU brought the complaint on behalf of Jim Green, a retired veteran and a longtime resident of Haskell County. He objects to the monument because he believes the display violates the U-S Constitution and trivializes religion.

A federal court judge Tuesday ruled that a marker engraved with the words of the Ten Commandments may remain on city of Everett property. The monument stands in front of the Everett police station, the old city hall site, near the intersection of Wall Street and Wetmore Avenue. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik denied a request by Everett resident Jesse Card, an agnostic, who sought removal of the monolith, a six-foot high granite structure. Card said its presence violated the principle of separation of church and state. However, in a written opinion, Lasnik ruled that the city display "poses...

A stone monument of the Ten Commandments stands in front of the City of Everett Police Station at the corner of Wetmore Avenue and Wall Street in Everett. A U.S. District Court judge in Seattle has ordered that a monument of the Ten Commandments outside the Everett police station and City Council chambers can remain there and that it doesn't violate the First Amendment. In a summary judgment for the City of Everett, Judge Robert Lasnik said the Everett case was "remarkably similar" to a Texas case against a Ten Commandments monument outside the state capitol. The Supreme Court ruled...

Monument Alternative Like Napoleon Dynamite, I lack skills. Numbchuck skills, computer hacking skills, graphical artist skills... but it is supposed to look like a cross. NOT a Christian cross, of course. Any resemblance is purely coincidental!!! Anybody who wants to take this idea and run with it has my blessing.

I'm sure they never even dreamed the US would honor them so! Click here to see the Flight 93 Memorial Project overlayed with an Islamic crescent. "WTF?!?" was my first reaction. But the architect says I shouldn't jump to conclusions... it is a crescent, yes, but that doesn't mean it represents Islam! Don't be so paranoid!!! A bunch of liberals echoed that sentiment, so I began to question myself. Well, it certainly could be a coincidence. Weird symbol to choose for basically random reasons- I mean why choose a crescent at all... but okay, fair enough. It isn't like that...

A monument to Hitler soldiers has been standing for 11 years in central part of Moscow 09/05/2005 16:05 The monument was unveiled in 1994, in the period of liberalism and democracy's wild outburst, when money was the strongest instrument It has become some sort of a fashion to call things politically correct or incorrect. Today, not only Americans but also Europeans and people in Asia are anxious about the liberal ideas standing for the rights of different minorities and other aggrieved people. It seems strange at first that today many countries in Central and Eastern Europe, those where the Soviet...

On Friday, July 1, in Budapest, Hungary, the city council approved placing a monument of former President Reagan in the capital city park. It is the first time a former Soviet bloc elected government has voted to erect a monument in honor of the President for his role in ending the Cold War and freeing Eastern Europe from Communist oppression. Népszabadság, Hungary's largest national newspaper (and the former Communist Party mouthpiece), reported that the support for the monument crossed all party lines, a rarity in Hungarian politics

Berlin Outrage: Checkpoint Charlie Monument to be Bulldozed July 4th We didn't think it could get much worse in Germany...well, it just did. Davids Medienkritik recently learned that the Berlin city government, made up of a coalition between the SPD (Gerhard Schroeder's Social-Democrats) and the PDS (former SED party that ran Communist East Germany), has decided to allow the razing of the Checkpoint Charlie monument by court order. And get this: The monument, which consists of over 1,000 crosses adorned with the names of those murdered attempting to escape Communist East Germany for freedom, will be bulldozed on the 4th...

VLADIVOSTOK, June 13, (RIA Novosti's Anatoly Ilyukhov) - A monument to the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese war's victims will be unveiled in the city's Pokrovsky park on the 60-th Victory Over Japan (VJ) Day anniversary. Professor Gennady Turmov, rector of the Far Eastern State Technical University and member of the Primorye territorial legislature, suggested building this monument. "Architect Yury Likhansky drew this monument," Turmov said. The design was completed by the Far Eastern Naval R&D Institute. "This will be a rectangular obelisk adorned with a globe symbolizing our planet," Turmov said. Each side of the obelisk will feature the inscription "To the...

The following is an event June 25th that although is not sponsored or endorsed by the United American Committee may be of interest to many of our members. I will be there and if you can make it, you are all welcome to join me: There is a monument in the city of Baldwin Park in the L.A. area that is paid for by tax payers money and has inscribed on it the following text:"This land was Mexican once, was Indian always and is, And will be again."And on the other side of the monument it reads:"IT WAS BETTER BEFORE...

CUSTER, S.D. - Nearly six decades have passed since work began on the Crazy Horse Memorial, a granite mountain being carved into a colossal sculpture of the Sioux warrior, arm outstretched toward his ancestral homeland, astride a stallion more than two football fields long. When it's finished - and no one is predicting when that will be - the sculpture will be 563 feet high and 641 feet long. It will be taller than the Washington Monument, and so large that the four presidential heads on Mount Rushmore, 17 miles away, would fit inside the nine-story-high warrior's head.But with $17...

Vet is shepherding war-dog honor By Mike McPhee Denver Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 31, 2005 A Vietnam War veteran and Denver-area native is on a mission to create a national monument in Washington, D.C., to the dogs that soldiers used in combat. John Burnam, who served two tours of duty as a war-dog handler in Vietnam during the 1960s, presented his case Wednesday to the Colorado legislature, which passed a resolution supporting his efforts. More than 4,000 dogs, mostly shepherds, were used in Vietnam for scouting, finding hidden explosives and tracking. Most died in Vietnam, with only about 250...

The Georgia Guidestones have been part of the landscape in Elberton, Georgia for a quarter of a century. Tourists flood to Elberton each year to see the 19-foot-tall granite monument, often posing for pictures standing beside it. After 25 years, a Christian organization named The Resistance is calling for the monument’s immediate removal. "The satanic Georgia Guidestones must be destroyed," insists John Conner of The Resistance. "The Guidestones should be smashed into a million pieces, and then the rubble used for a construction purpose." The notion of hacking the monument into smithereens for construction scrap has a certain appeal, given...

The NAACP would like the Confederate soldier memorial removed from the Courthouse on the Square lawn and placed in a museum, the organization’s Denton County president confirmed Tuesday