Free Republic

Apparently, it’s become fashionable to wonder whether fissures in the GOP might eventually grow into a schism, with tea party candidates mounting independent challenges to the GOP in the 2014 elections. Last night, David Frum went a step farther, writing that a tea party exodus might actually help Republicans by freeing them of Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, allowing the GOP to slide back to the political center. It's a centrist fantasy. If Republicans think they have a pathway to victory without the tea party, they’re sorely mistaken. The tea party is not some small, fringe element of the Republican...

Barney Frank spent 32 years in the U.S. House before retiring in January. In recent years, he helmed the House Financial Services Committee during the 2008 financial crisis, became the first member of Congress to marry a same-sex partner while in office and helped lead the charge for a ban on anti-gay firings (so far stymied) and post-crash financial reform (that law now bears his name). He’s currently writing a book. In a Monday afternoon interview, Frank predicted the endgame of the debt-ceiling showdown and defended his push in Congress for an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would have left out...

You don't go on television during a shutdown and tell the world that your party is shutting down the government. You don't go out and take vicious shots at other Republicans for advocating the strategy your party is engaged in, especially when you don't have the cahones to go after Democrats the same way. If conservative Republicans like Justin Amash and Tim Huelskamp were punished for not being deferential enough to leadership, how is it that establishment Republicans can actively work to undermine the Republican Party during a shutdown fight and get a complete pass? If these mediocrities are so...

FOX Sports Southwest hired former NFL running back Craig James as an on-air analyst only to fire him days later. The move came after statements he made on gay marriage while campaigning for the Senate resurfaced. "People choose to be gay," he said during an April 2012 campaign stop. "I think it's a choice, I do. Same-sex marriage, if someone chooses to do that, that's done. And God's going to judge each one of us in this room for our actions. And in that case right there, they're going to have to answer to the Lord for their actions." James...

About two million Muslims from around the world prayed at a desert hill in Saudi Arabia on Monday, joined in their faith and desire to purify their souls at the start of the annual hajj pilgrimage. It is here on Mount Arafat, marked by a white pillar, where Islam's Prophet Mohammed is believed to have delivered his last sermon to tens of thousands of followers some 1,400 years ago, calling on Muslims to unite.

The “I agree with his goals but not his tactics,” crowd has been out in force since Ted Cruz’s made his historic and courageous stand on the U.S. Senate floor against Obamacare’s destruction of the American health care system. What these Republican quislings fail to mention is what realistic tactics they would recommend. Washington, D.C. Is Crying Wolf Yet Again, But No One Is Listening Capital Flows Capital Flows Contributor So, What Do We Tell Our Kids About The Government Shutdown? Capital Flows Capital Flows Contributor Don't Like Obamacare? Here Are 3 Ways To Get Around Its Most Onerous Rules...

Redoubt: Northwest a Haven for Dismayed Americans By Chuck Holton CBN News Reporter Monday, October 14, 2013 NORTHERN IDAHO -- You don't hear the word "redoubt" used very much anymore. It means a "fortress" or a "safe, protected place." Some conservative American Christians are so dismayed with direction of the country that they're looking for a safe place for their families. They call it the "American Redoubt." Alarm over the future of America can be seen almost daily in the headlines and on cable news. The loss of privacy, constitutional freedoms, and out-of-control government spending are just a few of...

Dave Ramsey has been speaking financial sense to millions of people for years. He has taught Americans that credit is not the beautiful thing that banks and credit card companies have tried to make it out to be. He has taught Americans that spending more than you make is never a good idea. He has taught Americans that now is always the right time to fix your spending habits and get your financial house in order. A few days ago, Mr. Ramsey decided to share his wisdom with people of all political affiliations on how the Obamacare legislation would affect...

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2013 to Eugene F. Fama University of Chicago, IL, USA Lars Peter Hansen University of Chicago, IL, USA and Robert J. Shiller Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA "for their empirical analysis of asset prices”.

The view of academia from outside the gates may be bleak, but from inside, it’s much worse. “I asked a job candidate what he thought about Western Civilization,” Bradley C. S. Watson of St. Vincent College remembered in remarks to the Philadelphia Society last weekend. “’Western civilization?’, he asked, ‘what’s that?,’ with an emphasis on the ‘that.’” Watson currently serves as Chairperson of the Department of Politics and Co-Executive Director of the Center for Political and Economic Thought. He holds the Philip M. McKenna Chair in American and Western Political Thought and Professor of Politics at Saint Vincent. “Academic institutions...

When you cover ersatz intellectuals day in and day out as we do here at Accuracy in Academia, it is refreshing to meet genuine scholars. About the only opportunity we get to do so is at meetings of the Philadelphia Society, a group of conservative intellectuals formed in 1964 in the wake of the defeat of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. The ladies and gentlemen who belong to the society gathered in Atlanta in October for a regional meeting. Among the many insights shared by the august line-up of speakers who addressed the gathering, here are a few highlights: “Whenever I...

What kind of leader wants a military more loyal to himself than to the rule of law? And why? These are two questions to ponder when considering the strange happenings in the armed forces since Barack Obama took office. Let's start with a hypothetical. Let's say you were a hard-left-wing commander in chief who wanted the military firmly in your corner. You'd certainly note that our armed forces have been a bastion of conservatism and Christian faith, and you'd know that its members generally weren't very fond of you. So how would you go about changing this? Some years ago...

Four men have been arrested in London in a counter-terrorism operation, the Metropolitan Police have said, according to the BBC. Scotland Yard said they were held under the Terrorism Act 2000 on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. Armed officers were involved in the arrests, which took place Sunday evening in the Whitechapel, Bayswater and Peckham areas, according to the report. Police said searches were taking place at six addresses. In a statement the Met said the arrests were made during a "pre-planned, intelligence-led operation." The men have been taken to a south London police...

Award-winning journalist and author Jake Tapper says most reporters’ bias comes from being out of touch. In an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit today, Tapper wrote: “I think there are a lot of hard-working reporters in NYC and DC who have never fired a gun, or never worked a 9-5 manual labor job, or lived in the middle of the country, or worried about their next paycheck, or have anyone in their family who serves in the military and I think that creates a cultural bias. But I also think there are a lot of reporters who work to...

In the wake of the insurrection against the living, personal God of Revelation that began during the Renaissance eventuating in the proclamation of the death of God and cataclysmic eruptions of fire, brimstone and rivers of blood during the 20th century, ex-atheist Alexander Solzhenitsyn said the world had never before known, "...godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely...

Editor's note: Compiled from responses submitted to reporter Rick Bella, who asked readers to share their stories and observations about getting a concealed handgun license and carrying concealed weapons. Submissions have been edited for length and clarity. Watch for Bella's full report Tuesday on Oregonlive and Wednesday in The Oregonian. Ed Hurtley Portland I have had a Multnomah County-issued CHL for about 2.5 years now. I took a class with an instructor that was a referral from a friend. The class was very well run, and had a mix of people; white, minority, male, female, liberal, conservative. I have only...

Why should American Jews bother to be Jewish? According to a new Pew Research Center survey of the American Jewish community, more and more American Jews have reached the conclusion that there is no reason to be Jewish. Outside of the Orthodox Jewish community, intermarriage rates have reached 71 percent. Thirty-two percent of Jews born since 1980 and 22% of Jews overall do not describe themselves as Jews by religion. They base their Jewish identity on ancestry, ethnicity or culture. Whereas 73% of Jews say that remembering the Holocaust is an essential part of being Jewish, only 19% said that...

Justice Scalia: 'Devil at Work' in US Society CBNNews.com Tuesday, October 08, 2013 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says Satan is at work in American society. In an interview with New York Magazine, the longest-serving high court justice warned that even though the devil isn't doing the same things from the Bible, he's still very active. "What he's doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He's much more successful that way," he said. Will this Court term help shape the future of American politics? Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, explains more on...

A 9-year-old boy believed to have stowed away on a flight to Las Vegas last week was the same kid that stole a cube truck in downtown Minneapolis and led police on a chase through the city just days before, according to one of the victims of the escapade.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. Winston Churchill

Help Me Stop Facebook-Approved Religious Harassment Facebook is turning a blind eye to religious harassment on its social network. Christian ministry pages on Facebook are being targeted for profane harassment, and Facebook is turning a blind eye. Would you help me send them a message?Last year, I documented Facebook’s glaring double standard when it came to allowing all kinds of obscene, Jesus-mocking Facebook pages (along with pages encouraging anti-Israel violence) while shutting down Christian pages that differed respectfully with homosexual activism (in this case, the page devoted to discussion of my book A Queer Thing Happened to America).Thankfully, after bringing...

If the nation is lucky, this October will mark the beginning of the end of the tea party. The movement is suffering from extreme miscalculation and a foolish misreading of its opponents’ intentions. This, in turn, has created a moment of enlightenment, an opening to see things that were once missed. Many Republicans, of course, saw the disaster coming in advance of the shutdown. But they were terrified to take on a movement that is fortified by money, energy and the backing of a bloviating brigade of talk-show hosts. The assumption was that the tea party had become invincible inside...

Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité! is the national motto of France. Liberty, equality and brotherhood were first employed as watchwords for the French Revolution, during which very little of these virtuous ideals were employed by the revolutionaries toward any group but themselves. Here in the U.S., our Revolution used similarly noble words to express our national identity: 'Live Free or Die,' 'No Taxation Without Representation,' 'Don't Tread on Me' and later, 'All men are created Equal.' And to be sure, for most of its history, America has embodied those sentiments, when unrestrained by a government originally instituted to support them. Sadly, it...

Good news from Mark Skousen: Important Announcement and some good news: It looks like government may be starting to adopt my new macro model, based on my concept of Gross Domestic Expenditures (GDE), rather than the old GDP, which is what gives the false impression that consumption, rather than production and investing, is what makes the difference in the economy. Skousen has long argued that standards measures in the income and product account provide a very misleading picture of actual economic activity – a picture not consistent with a structure of production understanding of the economy.In Skousen words: Here’s why...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Eager to exploit divisions among Republicans, Democrats have hammered the message that the U.S. government shutdown is the work of a small segment of House of Representatives Republicans on the far right. In fact, support for the tactic that led to the shutdown - now in its fourth day - has proven to be far more solid and widespread among House Republicans than the Democratic portrayal. That is because the far right, after the 2010 and 2012 congressional elections, is not a small segment at all - it represents probably 69 percent of the House Republican caucus....

Imagine watching an interview on television and hearing a bald, blind, deaf, wrinkled, hunched-back, bedridden man claim that he is 130 years old. Although you might doubt such a claim, if ever there was a man in modern times to live 130 years on Earth, he likely would have looked as worn out as this man appeared. Imagine, however, if a quick-witted, muscular, marathon runner with fair skin, thick, dark hair, low blood pressure, and a good memory, claimed to be 130 years old. What reasonable person would believe such a claim? Everyone would doubt the statement, especially the doctors,...

Take a look at the following list and tell me if anything strikes you: Prudence Justice Temperance Courage Faith Hope Charity Viewing these, the Seven Cardinal Virtues, anything make an impression? Okay, now try the Seven Heavenly Virtues of: Chastity Temperance Charity Diligence Patience Kindness Humility Anything? What strikes me is that equality is not among them. Scour great works, such as the Bible, and you won't find much talk of equality – that is, unless you consider The Communist Manifesto a great work. One thing about virtues – which are defined as "good moral habits" – is that their...

Anthony Blunt and the Cambridge Spies By Tracy R. Twyman Originally written for Dagobert’s Revenge Magazine, Copyright 1998 (Does not necessarily represent author’s current viewpoint.) In the years preceding World War II, four young Englishmen known as “the Cambridge Spies”� were used by the KGB to infiltrate British intelligence. They had been recruited from the university’s Trinity College, chosen for their keen minds and their Marxist sensibilities. Their names: Donald Maclean, Harold Adrian Russell “Kim”� Philby, Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess, and Anthony F. Blunt, the man this article is concerned with. All but one of them – Philby –...

Rereading some early history books concerning the centuries-long jihad on Europe, it recently occurred to me how ignorant the modern West is of its own past. The historical narrative being disseminated today bears very little resemblance to reality. Consider some facts for a moment: A mere decade after the birth of Islam in the 7th century, the jihad burst out of Arabia. Leaving aside all the thousands of miles of ancient lands and civilizations that were permanently conquered, today casually called the "Islamic world" -- including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and parts of India and China...

A trip through a major Holocaust museum will tell you most of what you need to know about the mindset of the fiends who murdered millions in the middle of the last century. Poster-size images of death-camp inmates – all staring blankly – attest to the monstrous worldview of the prisoners’ tormentors. What, though, really explains the Nazi capacity for murder? How could “regular people” slaughter children? What possessed – pun intended – Hitler’s willing executioners to butcher women and old men? I think Jerry Bergman has figured it out In a new book, “Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview,”...

I had a teacher once who called his students "idiots" when they screwed up. He was our orchestra conductor, a fierce Ukrainian immigrant named Jerry Kupchynsky, and when someone played out of tune, he would stop the entire group to yell, "Who eez deaf in first violins!?" He made us rehearse until our fingers almost bled. He corrected our wayward hands and arms by poking at us with a pencil.

Take a look at the following list and tell me if anything strikes you: Prudence Justice Temperance Courage Faith Hope Charity Viewing these, the Seven Cardinal Virtues, anything make an impression? Okay, now try the Seven Heavenly Virtues of: Chastity Temperance Charity Diligence Patience Kindness Humility Anything? What strikes me is that equality is not among them. Scour great works, such as the Bible, and you won't find talk of equality. Not one bit -- that is, unless you consider The Communist Manifesto a great work. One thing about virtues -- which are defined as "good moral habits" -- is...

A Response to Richard Dawkins Tuesday, October 01, 2013 This past Friday CNN conducted an interview with Richard Dawkins, the British biologist most widely known for his polemics against religion and on behalf of atheism. Asked "whether an absence of religion would leave us without a moral compass," Dawkins responded: "The very idea that we get a moral compass from religion is horrible." This is the crux of the issue for Dawkins and other anti-religion activists -- that not only do we not need religion or God for morality, but we would have a considerably more moral world without...

One thing often heard in media commentary on the shutdown: what must the Chinese think when the US can't even keep its government open? The correct answer: who cares? China's a communist state – its government never sleeps. America's a democracy – if it has an honest disagreement with itself then it debates it openly within the context of law and the Constitution. If things must shutdown for a bit, so be it. The Founding Fathers divided the US government in order to keep it limited. No, they never thought things would break down quite this way, but then they...

It's hard to keep up with the mind-numbing flood of putrid malfeasance gushing from Barack Obama (or whatever his name is), the communist Democrats and the detestable "RINO" Republicans in Congress. And while we try to monitor the constant barrage of lies, anti-Americanism and criminal behavior of these people, it's easy to lose sight of what's going on at the state and local levels. Who has time to chronicle everything? So, it's no surprise that living down here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I missed news of the June mayoral election up in our state capital, Jackson. While I can...

Sixteen students from Nigeria studying in Moscow have been arrested for thrashing a conference hall in their country's embassy in the Russian capital after an apparent dispute over financial aid issues, a Moscow police source said Tuesday. According to the source, police received a fax message late Monday from the Nigerian embassy asking for assistance in dealing with a crowd of enraged students who refused to leave the embassy building after a discussion on financial issues. The students are said to have destroyed the furniture in the conference hall and threatened further destruction in other sections of the embassy. Police...

Sunday, 29 September 2013 16:30 Salon Acknowledges "Elites' Strange Plot to Take Over the World" Written by Charles Scaliger Every once in a great while, someone in the globalist camp makes a spectacular admission against interest, to the effect that there really is — as patriotic organizations like The John Birch Society have long maintained — a plot to set up world government and to subordinate to it the sovereignty of all independent nations, including the United States. In the 1960s, it was Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley’s revelations about a secret international organization laying plans for world federalism...

The sex jihad is back in the news. Last Thursday, during an address to the National Constituent Assembly, Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Bin Jeddo announced that Tunisian girls who had traveled to Syria to perform “sex jihad” had returned after being sexually “swapped between 20, 30, and 100 rebels and they come back bearing the fruit of sexual contacts [from pregnancies to diseases] in the name of sexual jihad and we are silent doing nothing and standing idle.” Several video interviews with Tunisian females who went to the sex jihad further testify to the veracity of this phenomenon. For example,...

Molly Ball of The Atlantic is a very good political reporter. (For example, she's exactly right about the pipe dream that wrecking the economy will wring the crazee out of the Republican House.) The only advantage I have is that I'm a lot older than she is, and I've seen enough to know that her piece over the weekend about the intellectual decline of the Heritage Foundation is a little thin on historical memory. To be sure, ever since Jim DeMint took over, Heritage has been less obviously about "ideas" -- and we'll get to those in a minute --...

The adverse impact of “political correctness” on American culture cannot be overstated. Its sinister influence has been monumental and subversive in the extent to which it has reshaped American values, literally driving the population farther away from its Christian moorings, and redirecting civilization toward hedonism, socialism, atheism, humanism, and a host of other anti-Christian philosophies. As Chicago University Professor Allan Bloom rightly documented in his bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind, the average college student in the last 50 years has been brainwashed to accept the notions that truth is relative, absolutism is therefore wrong, and that the only...

While writing my latest book, Killing Jesus, I knew I would catch hell once it hit the marketplace. Your mom was right when she told you never to discuss politics and religion because emotions run so high in those arenas. Especially religion. Even before Killing Jesus was released, the mail began pouring in. And some of it was very nasty. Brent in Texas opined: "O'Reilly, you are not someone who has the right to write a book about Jesus." Eric in South Carolina: "You are helping to deceive people with your ignorance about Jesus." Al in Louisiana: "Bill, what do...

What in the world is going on? When travelling and presenting at churches, CMI speakers explain why the creation issue is so important for Christians. They often present information about the loss of young people from churches and their belief in moral relativism. Many times, older congregants seem dumbfounded by the loss of morality and Christian ethics in western society. Confronted with statistics such as two thirds (more in many cases) of our ‘churched’ young people falling away, many seem flabbergasted at the extent and rapidity of our cultures abandonment of Christianity. Some of the older people know this only...

The Armed Citizen Project, a Houston-based nonprofit providing training and arms to women and others for personal empowerment and self-reliance, has provided arms training to 150 citizens as of this month, mostly women.  The group, headed by Kyle Coplen, has released a video showing their most recent training of 50 women and providing personal stories.

Dear Friends, On Friday, I joined members of both parties in supporting a key procedural motion - known as "invoking cloture" - to prevent a stalemate in the Senate that could have led to a government shutdown. Had this vote not succeeded, debate in the Senate would have come to a halt - making it harder to prevent a government shutdown. As you know, I fully support defunding, repealing and replacing Obamacare. I outlined the negative impact this law is having on New Hampshire in a speech on the Senate floor this week. In that speech, I also stated my...

United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll finds that contrasting racial attitudes loom as an ever more powerful force in politics.Immigration isn't the only issue that represents a hurdle for Republicans hoping to improve their performance among Hispanics, Asians, African-Americans, and other minority voters. This week's United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll tested attitudes about two of the most incendiary issues now dividing the parties in Washington: health reform and gun control. While the survey found substantial convergence between whites and minorities on some fronts, it also underscored the consistent tendency of minorities to support a more activist role for Washington...

The cover of the December 16, 2008 issue of The Advocate, the flagship gay publication, proclaimed boldly that, “Gay is the New Black,” stating that this is “The Last Great Civil Rights Struggle.” But whenever I mention this topic on my national talk radio show, asking my listeners if they believe it is fair to equate the black Civil Rights movement with today’s gay rights movement, I am flooded with African American callers who take strong exception to this comparison. Some of them remind me of the public lynchings, of blacks being hosed down with fire hoses and attacked by...

Events have failed to fulfill the prophecy. Preachers have suddenly been struck dumb by uncertainty. Believers are understandably nervous and some, under their breath, are abandoning the dogma. These sentences could have been written at the end of the day on October 22, 1844, about the Millerites, a religious sect started in upstate New York. Preachers had told their followers that Jesus would return to earth that day. He failed to show. But the subject here is not Millerism, but another kind of religious faith: the faith of the global-warming alarmists. And while it’s not likely to have the impact...

According to evolutionary theory’s assumption-based dating methods and circular reasoning (see DeYoung, 2005), for well over 100 million years large sauropod dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Antetonitrus allegedly lived more than 200 million years ago, Apatosaurus 150 million years ago, and Argentinosaurus 95 million years ago—about 30 million years before dinosaurs are said to have gone extinct. Note that these dinosaurs supposedly did not flourish on Earth for just hundreds or thousands of years, but for multiplied millions of years. Evolutionists contend that dinosaurs inhabited Earth at least 500 times longer than “modern humans.” Consider the connection between the vast time...

Just a month ago, Sessions expressed deep doubts about the tactic. "I'm not sure it’s the best viable way at this point," he said on Bill Bennett's radio show in August. "I've looked at it really hard, I’ve talked to Mike, and I certainly respect what he's doing, but I’m not convinced right now that this is going to be a way that will be successful and effective." By Tuesday, Sessions had become convinced, even though he took care to express respect for colleagues who sided with leadership. "I didn't sign the letter, and I've got some great friends who...

I've properly taken to task Republicans who--in the heat of the present battle--are still attacking Ted Cruz and thereby effectively adding their voices to the Democrat choir that would blame Republicans for a government shutdown. (Their defeatist prophecy is sadly self-fulfilling.) For that criticism, I've lately been accused of calling for a "purge" of impure Republicans. Of course, I've never called for a purge, but the talk of purges makes me wonder if perhaps I and others like-minded should "purge" ourselves from the Republican Party. No matter what you think about the current CR/Obamacare battle, it seems undeniable that the...