Free Republic

In the wake of fresh U.S. and European sanctions against Iran, activists gathered at Powell and Market streets in San Francisco Saturday afternoon to protest a potential war against the Middle Eastern nation. Organized by The World Can't Wait and other anti-war groups, the rally coincided with similar protests in 80 other U.S. cities in a national "day of action" against a possible U.S. attack on Iran, according to World Can't Wait SF organizer Stephanie Tang. Organizers estimated that more than 300 people attended Saturday's rally and march down Market Street. The event follows an increased Western military presence in...

On Monday, militant Ron Paul supporters joined forces with Occupy Wall Street protesters to harass former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. Fox News reported that Gingrich was forced to cancel an appearance at his New Hampshire campaign headquarters when Ron Paul supporters and Occupy Wall Street protesters swarmed the entrance: About 40 protesters showed up Monday evening carrying placards reading "Ron Paul" and "Occupy." One played speeches by presidential candidate Ron Paul from a loud speaker. Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond says the former House speaker's private security detail decided to cancel the event because of...

DOWS, Iowa - He has set himself apart from the rest of the Republican field as the candidate who believes the United States should shed its role as the world’s policeman and focus instead on its internal economic problems. Representative Ron Paul of Texas says he would cut a trillion dollars out of the federal budget his first year as president, in part by ending all foreign wars and foreign aid, including to Israel. Many conservatives characterize Paul’s foreign policy stance as extremist, isolationist, and anti-Israel, calling it a weakness that caps his support. Nearly half of those polled by...

College Republicans at Iowa State University encouraged students to send gifts to American men and women in uniform serving overseas. Bad idea, says one faculty member. Do I really need to say anything about these absurd comments from Thomas Walker at Iowa State University, where he is a lecturer “in the intensive English and orientation program”? I read in Tuesday’s Iowa State Daily that the College Republicans have begun collecting sundries for U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why? Doesn’t the U.S. Army victual its soldiers? Don’t their families send them yuletide goodies? Aren’t GIs paid enough to buy...

I read in Tuesday's Iowa State Daily that the College Republicans have begun collecting sundries for U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why? Doesn't the U.S. Army victual its soldiers? Don't their families send them yuletide goodies? Aren't GIs paid enough to buy what they need, and even what they want? "As Republicans we believe in charity," stated Jeremy Freeman, a member of the College Republicans. Donating toiletries, boxed and canned foods, socks and beanies to U.S. soldiers who can already deodorize themselves, who eat better than the poorest Americans and who are gallantly garbed, is an eleemosynary travesty....

Former U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Jayel Aheram served tours in Iraq and Southeast Asia with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit to protect the freedoms of Americans. Aheram, who was honorably discharged in early 2010, was arrested on suspicion of unlawful assembly on Nov. 1 during a police crackdown at a week-long encampment at Palm Desert's Civic Center Park as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The 27 year old, who also goes by the name Jack Lee Noftsger, told Patch in a jailhouse interview on Wednesday that he believes there is something wrong with a system that punishes him...

Forty two years ago, Oakland mayor-to-be Jean Quan was a U.C. Berkeley student-activist rallying for a movement dubbed the Third World Liberation Front of 1969. That movement would later give birth to the university's Ethnic Studies Department and influence universities across the country to integrate such a unique discipline. The department studies represent the history and experiences of marginalized people, especially people of color. Quan went on to become many things: union organizer, Oakland Board of Education member, Oakland City Council member, Chabot Space & Science Center board chair. As she tells on her own website jeanquan.org, in the beginning...

I'm James Kvaal, the new policy director for President Obama's 2012 campaign. You'll be hearing from me occasionally about the President's policies and those of our opponents, and how we can all help bring about change for our country. Yesterday, we accomplished one major change when President Obama announced that all American troops in Iraq will be home before the holidays. With that action, the Iraq war will end. And one of the President's central promises will have been kept. Both as Americans and as supporters of President Obama, this is something for us to reflect on, and be proud...

The Occupy Iowa movement, connected to those ongoing protests on Wall Street have sprung up again. The protestors were back at the capitol occupying again Monday, despite more than 30 people being taken away in handcuffs last night. Katlyn Alves was planning on spending her night sleeping in a tent outside of the State Capitol. Instead she spent it at the Polk County Jail. "Exhausting," Alves said. "It was very cold and hard cement floors. It was very awkward and I couldn't sleep because of nerves." Alves was part of the hundreds who gathered at the State Capitol Peoples Park...

Ridiculing the Occupy Wall Street, Occupy San Antonio and other “occupation” protests is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. Some of the protestors fit the stereotype of aging hippies trying to relive their glory days and aimless graduate students speaking truth to corporate power — when they’re not using the restrooms at McDonalds or hitting the nearest Starbucks for a wireless connection and a latte. The demands of the protesters, to the extent that they can be discerned, range from the merely utopian — “Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment” — to the downright silly — “Debt...

US President Barack Obama says he understands the frustration and anger of anti-Wall Street protests. He was asked yesterday for his opinion of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement growing in New York and around the country, after occasional violent clashes between protesters and police on Wednesday night. "I have seen it on TV and I think it expresses the frustration that the American people feel," president Obama said in a White House news conference. President Obama argued that people disliked top bankers and financial firms which caused the crisis trying to fight regulation. "You're still seeing some of the same...

Rush Limbaugh contends that President Barack Obama is "setting up riots" through the Occupy Wall Street protests that are spreading across the country. “There’s no doubt in my mind that the White House is behind this,” he said. “Obama is setting up riots. He is fanning the flames.” The “anarchists” and “union thugs” who are rallying against corporate greed are Obama’s constituents, Limbaugh said. “Occupy Wall Street is his base,” he said. “Those are his foot soldiers.” Calling Obama’s news conference about the American Jobs Act this morning “incompetence on parade,” Limbaugh said the nearly $450 billion spending package has...

Dear MoveOn member, Will the Arab Spring be followed by an American Autumn? It's sure starting to look that way. Thousands of protesters are taking to the streets—in Boston and Los Angeles, at Occupy Wall Street in New York, and in dozens of other communities across the country. What do the protesters want? A solution to the jobs crisis, corporate money out of politics, fairer tax rates, and policies that work for 99% of Americans instead of the 1% at the top.1 In short, many of the things that thousands of us came together to write into the Contract for...

Barack Obama seen nodding in approval. FRANCES FOX PIVEN: “I teach at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. I am here because I am so enthusiastic about the possibilities of this sit-in, over the marches that are occurring over postal worker issues, the sister demonstrations that are starting in Chicago and Los Angeles, and maybe in Boston. I think we desperately need a popular uprising in the United States. None of us know. I study movements. None of us know the exact formula for when those movements erupt, but it could be. And if that is...

A horde of Wall Street demonstrators shut down the Brooklyn Bridge for 2 1/2 hours this afternoon, halting traffic and clashing as cops arrested as many as 700 on the famed span’s roadway. About 100 cars were left stranded as the loud, angry crowd covered the crossing from end to end in an inflamed day of demonstrations against high unemployment, bank bailouts and financial pain for the masses. One irate driver, a Ground Zero construction worker, blasted the pedestrians. “I work my *ss off all day, and these g-d hippies close down the Brooklyn Bridge so I can’t get home?”...

Leading black-skinned representatives of the “hegemon”, as Cynthia McKinney calls President Barak Obama and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, could hardly expect to win any votes from the standing-room-only crowd at her anti-war tour last night at Calvary Church in Philadelphia. Speaking before nearly 300 people--two-thirds of them black, the remainder white and hispanic--in her T-shirt proclaiming that “war kills”, the former U.S. congresswoman said: “We need someone in the White House who thinks like us and not just one who looks like us. We have to act like we’re free if we want to be free. We have to liberate...

Liberal GOP congressman Ron Paul has become the surprise choice by conservative Republicans to be the party’s presidential candidate for next year’s elections. The Texan took 30 per cent of the votes cast by the American Conservative Union, beating Mitt Romney into second place on 23 per cent. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich got a mere five per cent - but that was more than Sarah Palin, who managed just three per cent of the ballots. It was the second year in a row that Mr Paul had topped the CPAC vote, suggesting that support for him could be building...

"If guns are outlawed, how will we shoot the liberals?" -- T-shirt sloganConservatives have long cried "creeping socialism," but what ails America is creeping fascism. Fascism slavishly serves the wealthiest interests in society. If 10 percent of Americans own 90 percent of America, American fascism would be the dictatorship of that 10 percent. Yet, fascism displays a populist face. In Germany, for instance, Hitler had a man-of-the-people image. Think Sarah Palin: "Why, she`s just a soccer mom who loves to hunt. Gosh, Sarah is just one of us--only with better cheekbones!" Yet, as New York magazine revealed, Palin is now...

Amy Hagopian, a professor of Global Health at the University of Washington, has been on a crusade to end military recruitment at local high schools. In 2005, she was behind the first successful effort in the U.S. to ban military recruiters on a high school campus. And these days, under the guise of scholarship, she has co-authored an article for the American Journal of Public Health that compares military recruiters to child sex predators. Hagopian is pictured below at Seattle's Garfield High School, which banned military recruiters in 2005 as a result of her efforts. Hagopian's recent article that compares...

For help understanding the foreign policy headlines of the past few days, let's return, briefly, to the spring of 1983, when Barack Obama was a student at Columbia University. What were the burning international issues of that time? Well, first was the "nuclear freeze" movement, which was prompting mass demonstrations around the world by people worried about the standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States. Obama published an article about it in a campus magazine in which he invoked the vision of "a nuclear free world." The Middle East, meanwhile, was still reeling from the 1982 Israeli invasion...

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, will campaign for Republican legislative candidates and speak at the University of Iowa Friday, Oct. 29, at 7:45 p.m. The group organizing Paul’s speech, the university’s Young Americans for Liberty and Campaign for Liberty, are billing the event as “fueling speculation that he may challenge other Republican presidential hopefuls in Iowa’s 2012 primary.” “Dr. Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign threw him into the national spotlight as a different kind of Republican,” said Ani DeGroot, president of the Young Americans for Liberty chapter. “He has called for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a...

Last Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the United Nations, accusing the United States of secretly perpetrating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, prompting American and European delegates to walk out. Hours later, Ahmadinejad sat down for an hour-long chat with 13 Yale students.

New York, NY - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met here, September 21, with 100 leaders and representatives of anti-war, labor, alternative media and Iranian and Palestinian solidarity organizations. Among the participants were Sarah Martin, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Margaret Sarfehjooy, board member of the Minneapolis-based Women Against Military Madness, former attorney general Ramsey Clark, former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Sara Flounders from the International Action Center, Brian Becker of the ANSWER coalition, Ramona Africa of the Free Mumia Coalition and Amiri Baraka, poet and activist. The meeting was called by the president of Iran with the hope that a frank and...

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan delivered an impassioned speech on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, claiming allegiance with those who believe the terrorist attacks of that day were orchestrated by the United States government for political gain. “I am a 9/11 Truther,” Sheehan told a large crowd at the All Souls Church on the upper East Side of Manhattan, who endorsed her with a long standing ovation. “I do think it was an inside job,” Sheehan said. “We just don’t know – I don’t know – how far inside it went. But, you know, I’m sure Dick Cheney had...

TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) - Michael Moore, a longtime defender of Canada, has slammed the Great White North for its treatment of U.S. war dodgers. "It is absolutely shameful how Canada has behaved toward those who have resisted this (Iraq) war. It's not the Canada we used to know," the U.S. documentary maker said during a panel discussion at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The nonpartisan City Club Missoula became a seminar in conservative-bashing Friday at noon, with a pioneering female politician taking swings at another visiting the Garden City this weekend: Sarah Palin. Pat Schroeder, the 11-term Democratic congresswoman from Colorado, got a rousting round of chuckles from a packed room at the Holiday Inn Parkside, taking credit for opening doors to women in the political realm but lamenting that "you can't control who goes through them." "I'm leaving for Bozeman this afternoon because I don't think Missoula is big enough for both Sarah and I," said Schroeder, City Club Missoula's guest speaker...

The message of peace pedaled into Pueblo on Saturday. Riders with Bike4Peace, including former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, who ran for president in 2008 on the Green Party ticket, stopped in Pueblo on a cross-country trek to the White House. "We started at the House of Common Sense in Oakland (Calif.) and we're going to end at the White House, which needs some common sense," McKinney said Saturday at the Unitarian Universalist Church on the East Side, where the bikers were treated to a potluck meal. McKinney and five others cyclists are biking across the U.S. promoting peace...

Ron Paul has some surprising news for the Tea Party: You’re being taken for a ride. At least this is what many libertarians like Ron Paul believe when they see someone like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin trying to lead the Tea Party at the “restoring honor” rally this weekend. In fact, Ron Paul believes, if you’re looking for real freedom, you should really go back to the core of the constitution and the bill of rights, which Beck and Palin do not fully endorse when you really look at their beliefs. Whether it be Palin’s support for starting more...

There has been plenty of speculation about which Republicans will enter the race to challenge President Obama in the 2012 presidential elections. But on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" yesterday, Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell threw a curveball into the discussion when he suggested that Mr. Obama could face a challenge from within his own party if he were to escalate U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. While the governor didn't point to any specific potential primary challengers, he implied that Mr. Obama would need to keep his word on beginning to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in July 2011 to avoid a challenge from...

When 15,000 vibrant and politically engaged people gather in one spot for five days and organize themselves into more than 1000 workshops, dozens of major plenaries and late night parties across five major cultural hot spots, no one article can claim to give a full account and get away with it. But an event on that scale livened up Detroit, Michigan during the week of June 22-26 at the U.S. Social Forum (USSF), when Cobo Hall and several nearby universities were buzzing with thousands of people trying to shape a new world. I won't even try to capture it all....

J Street, the pro-peace process political action committee and lobby, already had a lot on the line in Pennsylvania’s hotly contested Senate race, where it has bet heavily on Democratic nominee Rep. Joe Sestak. But the ante was raised this week with the creation of a new group including Republican heavy hitters William Kristol and Gary Bauer that launched with hard-hitting television ads accusing Sestak of being hostile to Israel. Sestak, who beat Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary in May, is “a perfect example of an elected official running for higher office who uses these rote, throwaway phrases...

Pat Buchanan’s attempt to defend Republican National Committee Chairman (RNC) Michael Steele fails. Miserably. Steele, of course, recently insisted that Afghanistan is “Obama’s war,” which cannot be won and should never have been waged. Pat defends Steele on free-speech grounds. “A majority of Americans oppose the Afghan war,” Pat cries. And the point made by Steele about the futility of fighting in Afghanistan has been made by columnists George Will and Tony Blankley, ex-Rep. Joe Scarborough, Ron Paul and antiwar conservatives and moderates. When exactly did supporting Obama’s war policy become a litmus test for loyal Republicans? Pat misstates the...

“Today is a Great Day to Smash Imperialism” It was an old poster – “Today is a Great Day to Smash Imperialism” – in 1989 when I saw it on the refrigerator in a doctor friend’s kitchen. It made me incredibly nostalgic because it captures so perfectly the boundless optimism, exuberance and irreverence of a movement led primarily by people under 35. To me that was the magic of the sixties – young people were at the forefront of the revolution that was drawing the masses into the streets throughout the western world. The magic of being in your twenties...

President Obama's ties to far left progressives have been a secret. As he expressed his views in favor not only a larger federal rule in the lives of Americans long before he took office. For example, in this 2001 Chicago public radio station WBEZ interview where he was quoted by the Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily. True democracies were "People's Democracies" and "People's Republics" where the economy was controlled by the government in the name of the people and for their benefit - and redistributive justice ("social justice") assured that each received what they rightly deserved. It is...

Stanley McChrystal is no Douglas MacArthur or George McClellan. But President Barack Obama has treated him like one. Harry Truman sacked Gen. MacArthur, commander of American forces in the Korean War, for publicly attacking his acceptance of a divided peninsula. Abraham Lincoln fired Gen. McClellan, commander of the Union Army, for a lack of aggression against the Confederate forces. McClellan didn't help his case by avoiding the president, refusing to disclose his campaign plans, and privately referring to Lincoln as "nothing more than a well-meaning baboon," a "gorilla," and "ever unworthy" of the presidency. By all accounts, Gen. McChrystal, who...

General Stanley McChrystal’s interview in Rolling Stone Magazine will do a lot to damage further President Obama’s standing among liberals and Democrats and will undermine his chances of keeping control of Congress in 2010. To conservative voters and commentators, his comments underscore doubts about Obama’s competence. To the Administration’s spokespeople, the interview shows a lack of proper subordination in the chain of command. But to the voters of the left, the key import of his comments is that the general in charge of the war in Afghanistan basically said the war is not being won, and perhaps cannot be won....

At noon, people gathered at the San Francisco Israeli Consulate and marched to Powell and Market where they joined a larger protest at 1 pm. A few people held a counter-protest across the street. Five activists from the Bay Area were on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Already, there are more protests scheduled on Tuesday, June 1st at the Israeli Consulate, and Friday and Saturday at City Hall.

Former Weather Underground leaders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, as well as Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, helped organize the Free Gaza Movement, which launched the six-ship flotilla from Turkey to Israel that ended in a violent clash with Israeli Defense Forces, BigGovernment.com reported. In January, the trio were spotted in Egypt attempting to stir up crowds on the streets with 1,400 other left-wing activists after the Egyptian government refused to allow Free Gaza Movement members to enter the Gaza Strip. About 100 marchers were eventually allowed to cross the border, where they were met by former Hamas prime minister...

HAIFA, Israel - Israeli Navy commandos attacked at least one of the six ships carrying pro-Palestinian activists and aid for blockaded Gaza, killing 10 and wounding several dozen on board, according to an Israeli TV network and a lawyer for the activists' group. Channel 10 said the final death toll could be higher as Navy commandos who boarded the convoy were still conducting searches and encountering often violent resistance from pro-Palestinian activists. Responding to accusations that Israeli commandos assaulted the ships guns blazing, Israel's Army Radio later said that passengers had tried to grab weapons away from soldiers boarding the...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas decided on Wednesday to reward all the activists on board the flotilla aid ships by giving them Palestinian citizenship. Abbas announced the decision during a speech before the Palestine Investment Conference, which was launched in Bethlehem. He also announced that the name of the conference has been changed to the Conference of Freedom after the Free Gaza flotilla. Abbas accused Israel of waging “state terrorism” and called on the UN Security Council, the Quartet and other international bodies to provide protection for the Palestinians and to work toward lifting the blockade on the Gaza Strip....

On Monday, Gaza flotilla “activists” used brutal violence masquerading as peace. Nonetheless, a disturbingly massive portion of the world has dubbed the events a “massacre” and an IDF atrocity. Yet the facts are simple and straightforward: The IDF warned those aboard the Marmara that their presence in the area was not welcomed, in line with international law. The army encouraged the flotilla to sail safely, along with all of its humanitarian aid, to a different port. Yet the flotilla sailed on, and the IDF boarded the ship, as would any naval force contending with this situation. Navy soldiers were greeted...

Israel has been maintaining a blockade of arms and support material to Hamas due to the terrorist organizations continued rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. “Hamas forces violated the laws of war both by firing rockets deliberately or indiscriminately at Israeli cities and by launching them from populated areas and endangering Gazan civilians,” according to Iain Levine, program director at Human Rights Watch. Under the laws of war, those who willfully authorize or execute deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians are committing war crimes. Hamas has an official policy which states that Israel has no right to exist and does not...

Recent accounts attacking Israel for action taken toward “humanitarian activists,” as they like to call them, have been all but factual. Israel has been victimized by anti-Semitic activists sent to “break” the barrier for the passage of weapons (likely originating from Iran) to the Gaza strip. With outside help, these terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, have been able to launch attacks on innocent Israeli citizens and IDF troops including over 12,000 small rockets. One accurate report said it best: “Under international law, Israel has the right to protect the lives of its civilians from Hamas attacks, and, consequently, has...

Today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, a bogus celebration of the environment and the green movement. Of course the liberal mainstream news media has been touting Earth Day for weeks. Cable networks such as Nickelodeon and MSNBC have been busy promoting Earth Day television specials and constantly airing commercials with celebrities preaching environmental messages. One of the central messages is that Americans use too much energy and have too much of a carbon footprint. Corporate giants like Entergy have tried to capitalize on the environmental hysteria by offering programs to match and even double the carbon credits purchased...

SARAH Palin may be a darling of the political Right, but another outspoken critic of big government has emerged as the favourite of many mainstream US conservatives for the Republican Party's presidential candidate in 2012. Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas known for his strong libertarian views, won the annual straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington yesterday with 31 per cent of the 2400 votes cast. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who has topped the poll three times previously, finished second with 22 per cent. Ms Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate in 2008, came...

Ron Paul Wins CPAC 2012 Presidential Straw Poll

Ron Paul 31% Mitt Romney 22% Sarah Palin 7% Tim Pawlenty 6%

It turns out that crackpot Ron Paul’s son Rand can understand why poor, innocent Iran might want nuclear weapons—they feel “threatened” by big, bad America (hat tip to Rand Paul: Too Kooky for Kentucky for the video): Watch it at NRB - sorry, can't embed videos here at FR.

During her speech to the first ever National Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Saturday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin discouraged the very idea of a national organization, urging the movement to stay leaderless and decentralized. This was the most important and valuable part of Palin’s speech. As for the rest of it–Sarah sounded pretty much like the same old Republican Party. Despite the many independents that make up the movement, the tea parties in large part represent a long overdue reexamination of conservative principles. A big-spending Democratic president seems to have awakened grassroots conservatives enough to finally lament the...