Free Republic

New Yorks archbishop has got the score only half-right. Bigotry is alive and well -- and it goes far beyond the Catholic Church. When Comptroller and failed mayoral candidate Bill Thompson this week heard a slur spat against Jews on a radio show, his reaction rang out loud and clear into the wilderness: He greeted the bigoted caller with total silence. When actress and social nitwit Janeane Garofalo was asked about tax protesters, she slimed thousands of white Americans as racist "rednecks" -- with brain damage. Again, the reaction was plain: Near total silence.

October 29, 2009The following article was submitted in a slightly shorter form to the New York Times as an op-ed article. The Times declined to publish it. I thought you might be interested in reading it. FOUL BALL!By Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan Archbishop of New York   October is the month we relish the highpoint of our national pastime, especially when one of our own New York teams is in the World Series!   Sadly, America has another national pastime, this one not pleasant at all: anti-catholicism.             It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a...

President Obama has not made significant progress in his plan to infuse federal courts with a new cadre of judges, and liberal activists are beginning to blame his administration for moving too tentatively on what they consider a key priority. During his first nine months in office, Obama has won confirmation in the Democratic-controlled Senate for just three of his 23 nominations for federal judgeships, largely because Republicans have used anonymous holds and filibuster threats to slow the proceedings to a crawl. But some Democrats attribute that GOP success partly to the administration's reluctance to fight, arguing that Obama's emphasis...

Gunslingers twice rejected from family dining establishments First, they were turned away from Fuddruckers, then Idaho Pizza Company, farther out. But here at Shari's, just west of the Idaho State Police building in Meridian, John Carter and Mike Ludlow are finally able to sit down to dinner, black Glocks still strapped to their hips. The evening, up to this point, had certainly taken on a no-room-at-the-inn feel. Their objectives were simple: to sit down in a restaurant with their handguns clearly hanging in hip holsters, and to enjoy dinner with other like-minded and explicitly armed individuals. Carter and Ludlow are...

After World War II, the U.S. government invested an enormous amount of money in medicine; medical research, medical procedures and medical technologies. This investment made contemporary scientific medicine into American medicine, characterized by a continuing flow of new treatment possibilities. These advances raised all kinds of ethical questions. Some were personal and individual, others were social and political. Both type questions are addressed by a new academic discipline called bioethics. The first attempt to develop a scientific medicine took place in Greece in the 5th century B.C. It was called Hippocratic medicine. Closely linked with this first scientific medicine was...

Prejudice in Paradise Hawaii Has a Racism Problem By Larry Keller Celia Padron went on a Hawaiian vacation last year, lured by the prospect of beautiful beaches and friendly people. She, her husband and two teenage daughters enjoyed the black sand beach at Makena State Park on Maui. But a Hawaiian girl accosted her two teenage daughters, saying, "Go back to the mainland" and "Take your white ass off our beaches," says Padron, a pediatric gastroenterologist in New Jersey. When her husband, 68 at the time, stepped between the girls, three young Hawaiian men slammed him against a vehicle, cutting...

The more I watch and listen to the things going on around me in our country, the more I am drawn to God's word. I find myself spending more time in prayer and feeling a conviction I have never experienced. The Holy Spirit is conjuring up something within my soul that I am afraid is about to awaken a new emerging desire of fulfilling God's will. I have this energy within me that is bubbling about, stewing, wrestling, and rising. I opened my Bible last night and began reading in Galatians chapters one and two. I had finished my other...

Here it is, a fascinating glimpse into the actual attitudes and beliefs of a segment of American society, the part that strongly disapproves of Obama, the Palin base, the Fox News core. The full email from Boston police officer Justin Barrett is after the jump. I note two things that stand out to me. The first is the crudeness of the racism. "Banana-eating jungle monkey" is the baseline description of Gates, coupled, as it always is, with "I am not a racist". He also thinks it's real cool to use "ax" instead of "ask". Then this description of policing in...

BOSTON -- A Boston police officer was placed on administrative leave after he allegedly used a racial slur when referring to Henry Louis Gates Jr. In a mass e-mail, Officer Justin Barrett, 36, called Gates a "jungle monkey," according to Elaine Driscoll, a spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department. Gates, a black Harvard scholar, was arrested at his home earlier this month on a disorderly conduct charge after he tried to budge open the door of his Cambridge home. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis found out about the e-mail on Tuesday and immediately stripped Barrett of his gun and badge,...

Thank the Good Lord that there is at least one branch of our government which is not crazy left. Not yet. Say No to Soto.

Robert Bork says choosing Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court was 'a bad mistake.'Excerpt: His name has become a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary: if you've been blocked from appointment to public office, you've been "borked." Robert Bork was derailed in 1987 by a hostile Senate. Bork sat down with NEWSWEEK for a rare interview. Pres Obama has spoken of empathy as his key standard for choosing judicial nominees. What do you think of that approach? .......at a minimum it means you want a judge who will depart from the meaning of the constitution when a sympathetic case...

It seems one man’s religious freedom is another man’s “ridiculous prejudice.” One government official fumed that Catholic doctors were refusing to perform abortions-abortions that were perfectly legal. He wrote in a memo: “After all, these scruples are in most cases nothing but ridiculous prejudices . . . One is tempted to ask: where does state authority come in these cases, or else, is the state, perhaps, not anxious to assert its authority in this particular instance?” Well, Nazi Germany was seldom hesitant to assert its authority, even over religion and individual conscience. As described in the June/July issue of First...

Concluding a Thursday NBC Nightly News story on summer movies, correspondent George Lewis previewed the new Star Trek film, set to open on Friday, and found it relevant to highlight how “some Trekkies have compared the Spock character, the product of a mixed marriage between a human and a Vulcan, to President Obama.” Those “some Trekkies” would be Newsweek's Steve Daly, author of last week's cover story, “We’re All Trekkies Now,” who proposed in a soundbite: “In a certain sense, Spock the character has dealt with some of the same prejudices and problems that our new President does.” In...

Vacuous bullies on college campuses, who couldn't score in a debate with a Teletubbie, proclaim their feigned concern about "racism" and "bigotry" as an excuse to attack people expressing opposing beliefs. Likewise, Janeane Garafalo maligned Americans as "racists" for attending "Tax Day Tea Parties," and homosexual activist Perez Hilton attacked Carrie Prejean, "Miss California," as a "dumb b**** for speaking in support of traditional marriage. If any of these self-anointed "bigot" busters ever confronted real racism or unjust discrimination of any kind, they wouldn't trivialize it by using it so carelessly. Holocaust images were entrenched in my memory as a...

I know that prejudice still exists. I know that in some communities racism still exists. But, I do think that our country has made incredible strides to rid our country of both. I am not trying to say that past actions by so many were not reprehensible, they certainly were. But I wonder, why is reverse discrimination still ok? In other words, if we truly want to eliminate discrimination or racism, why do we allow preferential policies that favor historically-discriminated groups? We are told over and over, in school, in the media, in daily conversation that prejudice is wrong, that...

So here I was - taking my daughter to school this morning (She is a high school sophomore) and she was telling me of a discussion she and the other kids were having about Black History Month. One kid suggested that - to be fair - there should be a White History Month. He was quickly chastised; "Whites don't deserve a special history month due to the racial prejudices they've committed over the years". My daughter related some of the "Rosa Parks" types of incidents as evidence of why there should be no White History Month. It was early. I...

In the UK, Lord Ahmed - a Muslim, Peer for Life, asks that British Jews who served in the Israeli Forces be tried and imprisoned upon their return. He sees no contradiction between such a request and his having made no similar pronouncement about those Muslims who are British subjects and are training with terrorist forces or who are members of such groups or raise funds for IslamoFascist terror organizations, anywhere in the world. After all they are Muslims, they couldn’t possibly a threat to Lord Ahmed’s designs on a future UKistan! Geert Wilders, a democratically elected member of the...

An academic version of NBC’s NASCAR stunt from a few years ago. They went looking for prejudice — and darned if they didn’t find it. Hailey Woldt put on the traditional black abaya, expecting the worst… “I expected people to say, ‘What is this terrorist doing here? We don’t want your kind here,’ ” said Woldt, a 22-year-old blue-eyed Catholic, recalling her anticipation before stepping into a local barbecue joint. “I thought I wouldn’t even be served.” Instead, Woldt’s experiment in social anthropology opened her own eyes. Apart from the initial glances reserved for any outsider who might venture through...

I am no jurist and, I’ll admit, I may be reading too much into Judge Scoles’ specific ruling. However, gentle reader, the language used by the honorable judge has certainly raised my eyebrows. Does His Honor really mean to imply that, as a Jew, Mr. Rubashkin is a bigger flight risk than if he were not a Jew?!?!? I wonder if this very Honorable judge would have thought, for example, of making a ruling denying bail to some Imam whose pronouncements were too incendiary for inciting to shed infidels’ blood? Don’t you think that CAIR, ISNA, ICNA and others would...

Matthew and I were recently criticized (an increasingly regular occurrence these days) for what one commenter saw as unfair hyperbole in the criticism of Barack Obama. One recent post that was cited as an example of such unhelpful hyperbole was when Matthew used the famous poem First They Came to critique Obama, his policies, and the blind eye we turn to the culture of death in his post When Obama Came For Them. A little context may be in order. First They Came was written by Pastor Martin Niemöller, an early supporter of Hitler who eventually realized his serious error....

North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole's campaign is refusing to take down an ad that accuses her Democratic rival, Kay Hagan, of accepting money from "godless Americans," after Hagan demanded that the Republican incumbent "cease and desist." The two campaigns are in a nasty dispute over the commercial, which began running statewide in North Carolina Tuesday. Hagan sent Dole a letter Wednesday demanding she take down the ad, and held a press conference in the morning at which, according to prepared remarks, she called it an attack on her "Christian faith." The ad accuses Hagan of attending a "secret fundraiser" hosted...

What Brand Makes You Feel Comfortable? The role ofan unexamined prejudice in modern lifeWe all know the categories of prejudice that are discussed, and re-hashed endlessly, in contemporary life: racism, sexism ageism. We have made a secular liturgy of discussing these issues, and, no doubt, some good has come from it. As a tail-end baby-boomer I absorbed the principle, taught very early on, about the dangers of stereotyping. If our generation wasn't going to get anything else right on the ethical/moral front, we were going to end prejudice--at least end the sort of prejudice that was directed against the approved...

Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings on Wednesday warned two minority groups to beware of Sarah Palin because “anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks.” Hastings, who is black and a Democrat, made the comment in Florida at a panel discussion hosted by the National Jewish Democratic Council.

The chair of the Connecticut College history department, Catherine McNicol Stock, has suggested that Sarah Palin is somehow associated with Pacific Northwest hate groups such as Posse Comitatus and the Aryan Nations. Her proof? Well, because Palin lived in areas with low "diversity." I kid you not. Here is the professor's "learned thesis" presented in a Philadelphia Inquirer opinion column melodramatically titled, "Intolerance thrives in Palin's Pacific Northwest" (emphasis mine): Despite her efforts to portray herself as an average, small-town, "folksy" American, Sarah Palin's political views - ardently pro-gun, pro-censorship, antichoice and antigay - make John McCain's conservative credentials pale...

July 23, 2008, 12:32 pm Is Anti-Catholicism Dead? By Sewell Chan When Gov. Alfred E. Smith ran for president in 1928, his candidacy was derailed in large part by anti-Catholic prejudice. It has been nearly 48 years since John F. Kennedy became the first (and so far only) Roman Catholic president, but experts say that anti-Catholic sentiment — much of it originating in, or as a response to, immigrants in New York — remains an enduring force in American culture.

ScienceDaily (Jun. 11, 2008) — Expecting to be treated with prejudice may be part of a self-fulfilling prophecy, according to new research led by a University of Toronto psychologist. The groundbreaking study was done using a series of computer-animated male and female faces expressing a range of looks, from rejection to acceptance. Researchers created a slide show where the expressions on the animated faces morphed from looks of rejection to looks of acceptance, and study participants were asked to identify the point at which the expressions changed.

It's up to the good people in Indiana and North Carolina to do the right thing: They should ignore the political mischief and judge Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on their visions for America, which has played out during this primary. Looks like Clinton has gotten a lift from the fear-mongering, and is now slightly ahead of Obama in Indiana, and has narrowed his double-digit lead in North Carolina. Polls in Indiana show Clinton now leads Obama there by four points among likely Democratic voters, 48 percent to 44 percent. Eight percent of voters there remain undecided, according to an...

Deep within our subconscious, all of us harbor biases that we consciously abhor. And the worst part is: we act on them "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson once told an audience, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” Jackson’s remark illustrates a basic fact of our social existence, one that even a committed black civil-rights leader cannot escape: ideas that we may not endorse—for example, that a black stranger might harm us but a...

An invitation to a "diversity workshop" sent to Sandia Labs employees last week by labs management has drawn complaints because of its suggestion that white people are inherently racist. "Recent studies suggest whites' lack of awareness about other cultures has to do with whites' commitment to maintaining higher social status, or 'white privilege,' '' the invitation said. It also said whites "are likely to persist in racist behaviors unless persuaded to abolish the privileges they receive as members of the white race." Sandia staff received a dozen calls from employees upset about the wording, labs spokesman Michael Padilla said. He...

Ken Yost, 61 Kirkwood’s longtime public works director was quiet and didn’t ruffle easily, friends said. “He was always on top of things. … I mean this was a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy,” said Tim Fischesser of the St. Louis County Municipal League. Yost was active in the First Presbyterian Church of Kirkwood, where his wife, Cathy, is on the staff. They led three Hurricane Katrina relief missions to Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss.

One in two believes racism is increasing By Christopher Hope, Home Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 2:06am GMT 18/01/2008 Record numbers of people believe racial prejudice is worsening, according to Government figures. However, the study of views of 15,000 people in England and Wales found that more than eight out of 10 people feel a strong sense of belonging to Britain, despite evidence of growing nationalism. For the first time, more than half of people surveyed in the Citizenship and Communities survey said racism had become more of a problem in the previous five years. In the poll conducted from April...

A politically progressive friend of mine always seemed to root against baseball teams from the South. The Braves, the Rangers, the Astros -- he hated them all. I asked him why, to which he replied, "Southerners are prejudiced." The same logic is evident in the complaint the American political left has with conservative voters. According to the political analysis of filmmaker Michael Moore, whose perception of irony apparently does not extend to his own words, "The right wing, that is not where America's at . . . It's just a small minority of people who hate. They hate. They exist...

What if our prejudices could be transformed into a force for good? A Harvard scholar suggests a new way to think about social relations. IN A WORLD FRAUGHT with ethnic, religious, and sectarian tensions, "tolerance" is a familiar mantra. Diversity training sessions in schools and workplaces try to instill it. Mitt Romney, in his recent speech on faith, praised our nation's embrace of it. The UN has even designated an International Day for it. (The date - mark your calendars - is Nov. 16.) Across the political spectrum, extolling tolerance is as obligatory as condemning terrorism. more stories like thisOf...

Marine Gabriel Keith Fired By Minnesota Community And Technical College Newspaper After Making Noose Which In No Way Could Be Understood To Be Racist. Fax the Student College News at 1-612-659-6825. Squads Of "Noose Nosers" Crawling Over Most College Campuses.Story Is Here: http://www.startribune.com/191/story/1559420.html Below Fax Sent To Disinterested Parties At MCTC and Student Newspaper Racism Under Every Rock, A Noose On Every Limb Could you please explain to me how much longer you can continue to be such patsies for these pseudo victim complaints? Whenever an "unprivileged" minority tells you to jump, you instinctively ask, "how high"? and then proceed...

When scientists first decoded the human genome in 2000, they were quick to portray it as proof of humankind’s remarkable similarity. The DNA of any two people, they emphasized, is at least 99 percent identical. But new research is exploring the remaining fraction to explain differences between people of different continental origins. Scientists, for instance, have recently identified small changes in DNA that account for the pale skin of Europeans, the tendency of Asians to sweat less and West Africans’ resistance to certain diseases. At the same time, genetic information is slipping out of the laboratory and into everyday life,...

Source: Association for Psychological Science Date: September 26, 2007 Why Few People Are Devoid Of Racial Bias Science Daily — Why are some individuals not prejudiced? That is the question posed by a provocative new study appearing in the September issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors investigate how some individuals are able to avoid prejudicial biases despite the pervasive human tendency to favor one's own group. Robert Livingston of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Brian Drwecki of the University of Wisconsin conducted studies that examined white college students...

Irish railroad grave mystery solved Scientists in Pennsylvania believe they have found a mass grave containing the bodies of 57 Irish immigrants who died 175 years ago. The men from Donegal, Tyrone and Londonderry had made the journey across the Atlantic in the summer of 1832 to work on the railroads, but their time in the US was tragically short. Mystery still surrounds the question of how they met their deaths just six weeks after getting off the boat - a cholera epidemic was blamed, but foul play has never been ruled out. At the time, a cholera epidemic was...

There is evidence for intelligent design in the universe." This does not seem like an especially radical statement; many people believe that God has revealed himself through creation. Such beliefs, however, do not conform to politically correct notions in academia, as Professor Guillermo Gonzalez is learning the hard way. An astronomer at Iowa State University, Professor Gonzalez was recently denied tenure—despite his stellar academic record—and it is increasingly clear he was rejected for one reason: He wrote a book entitled The Privileged Planet which showed that there is evidence for design in the universe.& nbsp; Dr. Gonzalez's case has truly...

Some people just don't like Mexicans -- or anyone else from south of the border. They think Latinos are freeloaders and welfare cheats who are too lazy to learn English. They think Latinos have too many babies, and that Latino kids will dumb down our schools. They think Latinos are dirty, diseased, indolent and more prone to criminal behavior. They think Latinos are just too different from us ever to become real Americans. No amount of hard, empirical evidence to the contrary, and no amount of reasoned argument or appeals to decency and fairness, will convince this small group of...

US to outlaw corporate prejudice based on genes 10:00 06 May 2007 From New Scientist Print Edition. Soon it will be illegal to deny US citizens jobs or insurance simply because they have an inherited illness, or a genetic predisposition to a particular disease. On 25 April, the House of Representatives voted 420 to 3 to pass the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). The Senate is expected to endorse the act within a few weeks, which is also supported by President Bush. "I am so stunned by the majority," says Sharon Terry, president of the Genetic Alliance, a charity lobbying...

Members of the men's Duke lacrosse team: I am sorry. Surely by now you know I am sorry. I am writing these words now, and in this form, as a bookend to 13 months of Duke lacrosse coverage, my role in which started with a March 27 column that began: "Members of the men's Duke lacrosse team: You know. We know you know." That was when Durham police and District Attorney Mike Nifong were describing a "wall of silence" among the men who attended the now-vaunted lacrosse party at 610 Buchanan Blvd. Nifong, now described by the state attorney general...

A survivor of the Virginia Tech massacre has been describing how a colleague died to protect others. Although badly injured, graduate student Waleed Shalaan distracted gunman Cho Seung-Hui to save another person from his bullets. Waleed saved another student's life.The surviving student, who wishes to remain anonymous, told of Waleed's heroics through an email to his supervisor. He describes how he was left uninjured after Cho's initial round of shots. Meanwhile, Waleed had been wounded but was still alive. However, when Cho later returned to the classroom to inspect for signs of life among his victims, the surviving student struggled...

Newsrooms tend to follow a conventional story line on social issues. As the late commentator and editor Michael Kelly wrote, "most journalists learn to see the world through a set of standard templates into which they plug each day's events." The most obvious templates concern race — whites are oppressing blacks, gender — men are oppressing women, and class — the privileged are oppressing the poor. Since all three of these templates were in play during the Duke race case, how surprising is it that this triple high tide resulted in some of the worst journalism of the decade? Howard...

On Friday March 30, 2007 at around 3:00pm, Mr. Kuldip Singh Nag, a Sikh American who was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in the U.S. Navy during the first Gulf War, was at his home in Joliet, IL when a local police officer noticed that a van parked on Mr. Nag’s private property had expired registration tags. Upon being confronted with this, Mr. Nag’s wife, Vera Kaur Nag, informed the officer that the van is parked on their driveway and was inoperable.

ROME, APRIL 2, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Adolf Hitler's No. 1 enemy was the Vatican's secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII, according to documents recently found in Europe. In an article published last Thursday by La Repubblica, reporter Marco Ansaldo announced that he has a dossier on Pius XII that complements documentation found in the Vatican Archives. According to the newly discovered documents, Pius XII was considered an enemy of the Third Reich. Memos and letters unearthed at a depot used by the Stasi, the East German secret police, show that Nazi spies within the Vatican were concerned at...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Blond, blue-eyed Westerners probably can't be as successful at Middle East diplomacy as Japanese with their "yellow faces," Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso was quoted by media as saying in a weekend speech. "Japan is doing what Americans can't do," the Nikkei business daily quoted the gaffe-prone Aso as saying in a speech on Sunday. "Japanese are trusted. If (you have) blue eyes and blond hair, it's probably no good," he said. "Luckily, we Japanese have yellow faces." Foreign Ministry officials were unable to comment on the report, which said Aso elaborated by saying Japan had never...

BOSTON (Reuters) - As he seeks to become the first Mormon U.S. president, Republican Mitt Romney faces a dilemma in courting conservative Christians who often dismiss his religion as a cult but now could decide his political fate. ADVERTISEMENT Should he address his religion head-on in a speech, as John F. Kennedy did in 1960 to Texas Baptists while campaigning to become the first Roman Catholic U.S. president? Or should he resist debate over a religion that evangelicals, who are key to winning the Republican primaries, often view with suspicion? "It's a delicate balance, but I don't think the strategy...

HOUSTON, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Business has been booming for Houston area landscaping company that refused to work for a gay couple. Garden Guy Inc. owners Sabrina and Todd Farber were flooded with threats, hate mail and letters of support after their e-mail was circulated on the Internet, The New York Times said Saturday. Sabrina Farber said the company eventually picked up about $40,000 in new business while losing only two customers with about $500 each.

A city worker was under fire last night for penning an essay that uses ethnic slurs to describe Polish-Americans and calls their Brooklyn enclave in Greenpoint "even uglier than the morons who work there." David Langlieb, a 23-year-old Parks Department project manager, defended his work as "satire." "I live in Greenpoint, I'm half Polish, I have nothing but love and fondness for the Polish community," he said. "If you take what's there out of context, of course it's incredibly offensive." But Frank Milewski of the Polish-American Congress, who read Langlieb's entire essay, called it an "an out-and-out insult" and was...

I have found that a reliable way for me to choose authors is by word of mouth. That is, if people whom I share values, or people with whom I enjoy conversation, tell me about an author they like, I often find that I like that author as well. What is odd about this is that we often end up liking the author for completely different reasons from each other. Or, sometimes, after I read the author, I dislike much of what they say, but there is enough I do agree with that I am able to share those things...