Free Republic

On April 24, 1885, the legendary female sharpshooter, Annie Oakley (Phoebe Ann Mosey), was hired by Nate Salsbury to perform in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. She could perform a wide range of tricks with a rifle, such as shooting cigarettes out of people’s mouths. Shooting was a way of life for Oakley, as she grew up hunting and providing food for herself and six siblings. Her father died at a young age and her mother had difficulty taking care of the family, so Oakley had to be independent. Oakley was the first woman to be hired as a trick...

Roman Catholic leaders are calling for two weeks of public protests against President Barack Obama's policies as they intensify their argument that the administration is engaged in a war on religion. The days between June 21 and July 4 have been set aside by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops which has sought to end the administration's contraception mandate, among other policies. The protests against the Obama administration’s policies could be “the game-changer” in the presidential election, one leading lay churchman told Newsmax on Tuesday. The protests, dubbed “A Fortnight for Freedom” will be an “unprecedented, aggressive attack” against policies...

India deports Jewish writer connected to Islamist groups Susan Nathan is the author of 'The Other Side of Israel', and has been associated with banned Islamist groups in India. Sunday, April 22, 2012 By Spero News Controversial British-born Jewish writer Susan Nathan was deported to Israel by the district authorities following a Kerala High Court ruling, officials said. The high court issued an order on March 16 for the deportation of 63-year-old Nathan, after the state government informed the court that she had connections with banned Islamic outfits like Students Islamic Movement of India and the National Development Front. Nathan,...

North Korea Issues Threat of Annihilation RICHARD_DUDLEY APRIL 24, 2012 06:00 For the past several days, North Korea has directed a string of increasingly hostile threats at South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and his conservative administration. As usual with the North’s public pronouncements of doom, it is often difficult to separate reality from simple bombastic rhetoric. Such is the case with this latest round of promises of mass destruction. The most recent threats from the North differ from past announcements in that they have added a specific timeline and indicate that whatever is being planned will be executed in the...

Marxist Dreams and Soviet Realities Mises Daily: Friday, April 20, 2012 by Ralph Raico The sharp contrast that Alexis de Tocqueville drew in 1835 between the United States and Tsarist Russia — "the principle of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude"[1] — became much sharper after 1917, when the Russian Empire was transformed into the Soviet Union. Like the United States, the Soviet Union is a nation founded on a distinct ideology. In the case of America, the ideology was fundamentally Lockean liberalism; its best expressions are the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the...

Voice of the Martyrs' Tom White's Death an Apparent Suicide Following Molestation Investigation Leader of prominent persecution ministry was being investigated by police on allegations of molesting a young girl. Jeremy Weber | posted 4/20/2012 06:17PM This week's death of a prominent persecution ministry leader is now being described as a possible suicide in the wake of a molestation investigation by local police. Tom White, executive director of The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM), was found dead Wednesday morning in a warehouse at the ministry's headquarters in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, according to Tulsa CBS affiliate News on 6. Court records indicate...

Link Only.

Institutionalizing Atrocity Prevention Won’t Make Up for Obama’s Lack of Will to Act Jonathan S. Tobin 04.23.2012 - 11:27 AM In his speech at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum this morning, President Obama once again said all the right things. Though speaking without the passion that can animate his utterances when he is talking about things he feels the most strongly — such as demonizing his domestic opponents — the president sounded many of the right notes about support for the state of Israel and preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons as well as the need for the United...

Bureaucratization Mises Daily: Monday, April 23, 2012 by Ludwig von Mises [Liberalism (1927)] There is yet another sense in which it is commonly said that the necessary conditions for the realization of the liberal ideal of society no longer obtain today. In the big businesses made necessary by progress in the division of labor, the personnel employed must increase more and more. These enterprises must, therefore, in their conduct of business, become ever more like the government bureaucracy that the liberals in particular have made the target of their criticism. From day to day they become more cumbersome and less...

Author’s Note, April 23, 2012: I have removed the word “gated” from my description of the Twin Lakes community per the following link: “According to Ryan Julison, assistant to Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump, Twin Lakes is actually not entirely gated. There is also no guard at the gate, there are no high fences. The community is just modest condos, Julison says, not protected with the electronic equivalent of a castle moat. So the Gate Access Form provided by The Retreat at Twin Lakes Homeowners Association could be considered somewhat misleading.” – J. Neil Schulman On February 26, 2012 George...

Though the tea party wasn’t particularly enthused about Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy during the primary, one tea party leader who was present at the inception of the movement says the tea party will get behind the former Massachusetts governor going into the general election. “Absolutely, the tea party can and will support Mitt Romney in the general election, and with great energy in the door-to-door ground game,” said Michael Patrick Leahy, co-founder of The Nationwide Tea Party Coalition and author of the recently released book, “Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement.” “It’s important also to...

President Obama attacked Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget as “nothing but thinly veiled Social Darwinism.” That is not surprising. What is surprising is that the chairman of a major committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops launched a similar scathing attack against Ryan, a faithful Catholic who says his budget work is informed and guided by the social teaching of the Church. Using Obama’s campaign rhetoric, Bishop Stephen Blaire, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, recently wrote to Congress declaring that Ryan’s budget “fails to meet [the Church’s] moral criteria” because it does not require...

Did you ever think you’d live to see the day when you could make a Venn diagram for ultraconservative commentator Ann Coulter and historic Black leader Malcolm X? Well, if you’re reading this, you’ve lived to see that day. In an interview on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News program last week, Coulter said that, in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, African-Americans should begin arming themselves. Here’s the full context of the conversation: Coulter: We are going to have a trial, but I was just making the point that if what [MSNBC] is claiming happened — that George Zimmerman stalked...

April 23, 2012The Left’s ‘Colonel Kurtz’ Summer For the self-aware Leftist, a Court ruling against Obamacare will — must — result in a terrible realization.David SteinbegThe complexity of a proposed solution can suggest great intellect, but if the problem is summing one and one, only a mid-century German philosopher would suggest a sufficiently complex solution could get us to three. And so goes Obamacare, and with it much of the Left’s ideology.The upcoming Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare cannot bury Leftism in a moment’s time; perhaps it will not even precipitate Barack Obama’s defeat. But do not ignore the potential:...

In a sign of what may be coming, residents of a Chicago condo building located near the site of next month’s NATO summit have been asked to leave for the event or risk being caught in a storm of rioters. WND first reported in August 2011 that radicals, some with ties to President Obama, were planning to riot during the NATO summit. FOX Chicago News reported the people living in the 17-floor Library Tower building at 520 South State Street were warned in a letter from condo management that “we are STRONGLY recommending that all residents find places to stay...

The Marriott hotel chain is known for its comfortable rooms and amenities. But in addition to a plethora of appeasing services, the popular company also offers value packages to individuals who are gay. Curiously, numerous hotels within the Marriott chain offer what they call “OUT” packages. At the Renaissance Washington Marriott in Washington, D.C., for instance, the deal includes chocolate covered strawberries, sparking wine upon arrival and a copy of NaviGaytour Magazine, among other benefits. ... The main thrust of the deals seem to be predicated upon an urge to attract a gay customer base, while distinguishing the company as...

A leading conservative politician said on Thursday that Islam did not belong in Germany, fuelling tension at a conference on integrating Muslims that also debated a controversial Salafist campaign to hand out copies of the Koran across the country. "Islam is not part of our tradition and identity in Germany and so does not belong in Germany," Volker Kauder, head of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives in parliament, told the Passauer Neue Presse. "But Muslims do belong in Germany. As state citizens, of course, they enjoy their full rights," he added. His remarks added to a highly charged nationwide debate about...

Please read this story. The Washington establishment is trying to defeat conservative insurgents. We need to work together to level the financial playing field for Don Stenberg, Ted Cruz, and Mark Neumann. ------------------------------------- Washington Examiner | April 18, 2012 K Street and Tea Party again fight for soul of GOP By Timothy P. Carney Big business and the Tea Party are at swords' points once again, with GOP Senate primaries for the second straight election becoming proxy battles in the war over the soul of the Republican Party. Conservative insurgents pose serious threats this year to establishment Republicans in at...

DNA and RNA molecules are the basis for all life on Earth, but they don't necessarily have to be the basis for all life everywhere, scientists have shown.

25. Billions of Lives At Risk“Will Billions Die from Global Warming?” — ABC’s on-screen graphic from the January 31, 2007 Good Morning America. 24. Who Needs Tanks, When You’ve Got the EPA? “And yet, Congresswoman Schneider, in 1989, fiscal 1989 as we say in America, the Environmental Protection Agency got $5.1 billion dollars and the Defense Department got $290 billion dollars. What’s that tell us about our priorities?” — ABC anchor Peter Jennings on the September 12, 1989 Capital to Capital special “The Environment: Crisis In the Global Village.” 23. $6 a Gallon Gas Will Save the Earth! “You’re also...