Free Republic

Eight years ago today, our homeland was attacked by fanatical Muslims inspired by Saudi Arabian bigotry. Three thousand American citizens and residents died. We resolved that we, the People, would never forget. Then we forgot. We've learned nothing. Instead of cracking down on Islamist extremism, we've excused it. Instead of killing terrorists, we free them. Instead of relentlessly hunting Islamist madmen, we seek to appease them. Instead of acknowledging that radical Islam is the problem, we elected a president who blames America, whose idea of freedom is the right for women to suffer in silence behind a veil -- and...

"Four hundred parents lost a child, 46 parents lost their only child, 65 women were widowed, 11 men lost their wives, 140 [people] lost a parent, seven lost both parents." -- Scottish prosecutor Colin Boyd at the 2001 trial of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi flew home Thursday to his wife and children in Libya. Scotland's justice secretary, Kenny Mac-Askill, freed al-Megrahi only eight years into his life sentence for murdering 270 people, 189 of them Americans. A flag-waving crowd greeted al-Megrahi when his Afriqiyah Airways jetliner landed at Tripoli. More warm welcomes may follow: When an...

President Obama says the GOP has a lot of "nerve" for criticizing Obama's handling of the economy after they got the country in this "fiscal hole."

Shadegg: This legislation will affect the livelihoods and lives of every single American, yet it will have been impossible for any Member of Congress to have read before the vote occurs.Today, Congressman Shadegg (AZ-3) released the following statement regarding House consideration of the Majority’s so-called “Cap-and-Trade” bill: “Late this afternoon, during floor debate, the Speaker Pro Tempore of the House acknowledged that the 300-page manager’s amendment adopted by the Rules Committee at approximately 4 a.m. this morning was still being “integrated” into the 900-page bill by the House Clerk. The Speaker Pro Tempore noted that this task was being done...

Bishop: Obama at Notre Dame 'day of shame' BY DANA MASSING Published: May 15. 2009 1:15AM Erie's Catholic bishop has added his voice to those opposing the University of Notre Dame's invitation to President Barack Obama to speak at Sunday's commencement and receive an honorary degree. In a statement released this week, Erie Bishop Donald W. Trautman called Obama "a relentless advocate of unrestricted abortion" and said it was a "bad decision" by Notre Dame officials to give him a platform. The U.S. Catholic bishops, in their 2004 statement "Catholics in Political Life," had said that "the Catholic community and...

For years, critics joked that the White House of George W. Bush was encased in a massive bubble that kept out all discomfitting information. Now that Bush has exited, this bubble has found a new home at 1001 I Street in Sacramento, headquarters of the California Air Resources Board. No matter what is happening with the economy, no matter how reasonable are the pleas from affected businesses, no matter if even the respected Legislative Analyst's Office raises concerns, nothing will deter the air board from its central mission: implementing two very costly regulatory schemes adopted in December. One would impose...

For example, Dr Eugenie Scott of the staunchly anticreationist National Center for Science Education (NCSE) revealed their agenda when she said: “ … I would describe myself as a humanist or a nontheist. I have found that the most effective allies for evolution are people of the faith community. One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day! … What we [such clergy and atheists] have in common is that we want to see evolution taught in the public schools … .”4

“The sexual act on young recruits aged between 16 to 19 was a means to urge them to commit suicide operations…that “intense social stigma and fear of more gay sex attacks leaves Muslims prepared to die.” Apparently, a suspected 22 year-old terrorist bomber was killed in an attempted attack on a security installation in the Tizi Ouzou province of Algeria last month. The ongoing autopsy has revealed that he may have been raped. “There was a large tear in the anus of the terrorist, (as well as semen), which confirms the sexual abuse.” We can’t say we didn’t know, that...

Gay Pride. Jewish Pride. Black Pride. Hispanic Pride. Multiculturalism. Ethnic pride. Minority rights vs. tyranny of the majority. For a generation, America has been awash in the celebration of minorities and minorities celebration of themselves. At the same time, the majority group in America - white Christians - have been allowed to celebrate very little. Rather, they have been constantly reminded of what they should be ashamed of - racism, sexism, homophobia, patriarchy, and xenophobia - real or imaginary. But what about minority shame? Why does one almost never hear expressions of group shame from members of any American group...

Barack Obama’s senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week’s election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

In what the publisher said was a bid to ensure that every eligible vote is cast, the Tennessee Tribune published the names and addresses of persons registered to vote, but who had failed to cast ballots in the last election. Rosetta Miller-Perry, president and publisher of the Tennessee Tribune justified what many have called “an invasion of privacy” and “an invitation to fraud.” “The failure to cast a ballot is a blot on the community,” she contended. “We’ve got to do whatever we can to get the vote counts up.” This isn’t the first time this paper has done this....

This column requires a caveat: I am not an American citizen and therefore neither a Republican nor a Democrat. But as a German residing permanently in the United States I believe I have a duty to opine on at least one aspect of the upcoming elections - the question whether years from now Americans will have to wrestle with collective shame, just as I have had to deal with collective shame over what has happened in Germany in my childhood for my entire life. It was West Germany's first postwar president, Theodor Heuss, who coined the phrase, "collective shame" contrasting...

"SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Shanghai police will post photos and videos of jaywalkers in newspapers and on TV in a bid to shame them out of breaking traffic rules, local media reported on Thursday. Offending pedestrians, moped riders and cyclists would be snapped at selected intersections and their images put in regular columns and on special television programs set up by police, the Shanghai Daily said. " "The scheme had come under fire from lawyers who said public humiliation was too steep a punishment for jaywalking and warned of defamation lawsuits against police."

A council publishing 'Wanted' photographs of alleged litterbugs insisted today that it has a legal right to identify suspects - even if they are eventually cleared. As town halls face a growing revolt over new powers to issue on-the-spot fines and access people's personal data, one authority has already handed cameras to litter teams who patrol the streets for anyone dropping so much as a matchstick. The crackdown has been launched by Colchester Borough Council, which claims it has been checked and approved by their lawyers and the police. Its team of six 'street care officers' will now photograph everyone...

Huge protest sign to be taken down By Joanna Nasar and Kristi Morhbacker Special to the Rocky Originally published 12:43 p.m., August 26, 2008 Updated 12:43 p.m., August 26, 2008 GOLDEN - Officials are working to remove a gigantic protest sign unveiled this morning in Golden that is visible from downtown Denver. The American Right To Life Action unveiled a sign on North Table Mountain with dimensions the groups says set a new record for protest signs as measured by the Guinness Book of World Records. The group hopes delegates, journalists and convention-goers will be able to see the sign...

By now, just about everyone has heard former Sen. John Edwards' non-apology apology for his affair with a former campaign aide. It turns out that despite his repeated, emphatic denials, he's a bigger hypocrite than even we imagined. But in gaining entry to that growing, bipartisan fraternity of immoral politicos, he exhibited especially despicable behavior for which he and his enabling wife, Elizabeth, must be condemned. Simply put, they exploited her breast cancer to cultivate his phony family-values image and cash in on the public's sympathy to advance their political ambitions. Mrs. Edwards' battle against an incurable disease and his...

When I tried to respond on that particular thread, this popped up: This thread has been locked, it will not receive new replies. Locked on Thursday, July 31, 2008 12:17:39 PM by Admin Moderator, reason: Rationalize murder on some other forum.

South Africa is taking stock after two weeks of xenophobic riots. By the latest count, 50 people have been killed and thousands injured. Over 600 rioters have been arrested as the violence spread through all nine of the country's provinces. The images are shocking. Large, well-armed mobs of black people rampage through the townships, even the center of the commercial capital, Johannesburg. The necklace (burning tire) style of killing, so familiar from the civil strife that swept the country in the early 1990s, has made a horrific return. The plight of the foreign Africans has been desperate, with some 30,000...

At a United Steel Workers union hall tonight, filled with steel workers, Obama launched on his own "shame on you" tirade against Clinton, for hitting him hard and repeatedly on his comments that small town Pennsylvanians "cling to guns," and religion and anti-immigrant sentiment because government hasn't served them. Clinton, who over the past two days has touted her family's roots in Scranton, PA as working class and church-going, has also portrayed herself as a defender of the 2nd Amendment. Tonight, Obama questioned her commitment, saying that her espousal of the issue was politics at work and said she was...

Obama outburst in Pennsylvania Shame, shame, shame TRIBUNE-REVIEW By Salena Zito ABC News is reporting that Barack Obama launched into a fiery offensive tonight in a speech before the United Steelworkers Union in Steelton, Pa. Obama, in response to Sen. Hillary Clinton criticisms of his 'bitter' remarks, said "Shame on her, shame on her, she knows better."

Had New York Governor Eliot Spitzer reached out for the Gideon Bible in his fancy Washington, D.C., hotel room instead of, allegedly, a high-priced prostitute, he might have been forewarned of the dangers in such liaisons. Such as: "A prostitute is a deep pit; an adulterous woman is treacherous. She hides and waits like a robber, looking for another victim who will be unfaithful to his wife." (Proverbs 23:27-28) And: "For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword....

There were days, and they were not that long ago, when Zionism was about something different. Days when Zionists could articulate what the purpose of Jewish Statehood was, days when Israelis understood that having a state was about changing the existential condition of the Jew. Not anymore. Hayyim Nachman Bialik, writing in 1905 shortly after the slaughter in Kishinev, understood that the very essence of Jewish existence had to change. What else could he possibly have been saying in his epic poem, "The City of Slaughter" (scroll down to the two paragraphs that begin with the lines "Descend then, to...

CINCINNATI -- Today, Hillary Clinton aggressively went after Barack Obama, criticizing him for playing similar political games to Karl Rove and at one point saying, "Shame on you, Barack Obama." Speaking to reporters following a rally at a community college here, Clinton slammed Obama and his campaign for distributing mailings to Ohio voters attacking Clinton’s universal health care plan and her position on NAFTA. “Today in the crowd I was given two mailings that Senator Obama’s campaign is sending and I have to express my deep disappointment that he is continuing to send false and discredited mailings with information that...

The Loss of Shaming and the Rise of Youth Crime - with Implications for Schools (and ceremonial events) The Pasadena Pundit - August 31, 2007 Excerpted from John Braithwaite, Crime, Shame and Reintegration, 1989. 1. Crime is committed disproportionately by males. 2. Crime is perpetrated disproportionately by 15-25 year old males. 3. Crime is committed disproportionately by unmarried people. 4. Crime is committed disproportionately by people living in large cities (or highly impersonal downtown settings). 5. Crime is committed disproportionately by people who have experienced high residential mobility and who live in areas characterized by high residential mobility (where there...

Spielberg Mulls Quitting Olympics to Pressure Chinese on Darfur Activists Look to Famed Director to Lean on China By RUSSELL GOLDMAN July 26, 2007 — Steven Spielberg, under pressure from Darfur activists, may quit his post as artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, unless China takes a harder line against Sudan, a representative of the film director told ABC News. China, Sudan's largest oil customer and perennial defender, has come under renewed scrutiny in the lead up to the Olympics, as the country juggles its need for cheap energy with its desire to host a trouble-free games. As celebrities-cum-activists...

WASHINGTON -- When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid picked up his ball and went home following his staged all-night session last week, he saved from possible embarrassment one of the least regular members of his Democratic caucus: Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Reform Republican Sen. Tom Coburn had ready a Defense authorization bill amendment to remove Nelson's earmark funding a Nebraska-based company whose officials include Nelson's son. Such an effort became impossible when Reid pulled down the bill. That Reid's action would have this effect was mere coincidence. He knew that Sen. Carl Levin's amendment to the Defense bill mandating...

WASHINGTON -- Mike Nifong, the Durham County, N.C., district attorney made infamous by his own hand, has been shamed, disbarred and let out the back door for his unethical conduct of the so-called Duke University lacrosse team rape case. It couldn't have happened to a more-deserving fellow, but the case doesn't end here. Nifong's legacy, which ultimately may hurt women more than the falsely accused men, will be long-lived. And the politically correct culture that allowed his charade to persist remains securely in place, while those who enabled Nifong walk scot-free.

Mike Nifong just resigned in tears as the DA of Durham NC during his bar trial.

<p>Cox News Service BEIJING — The U.S. pet food scare has raised the specter that surging imports from China and other nations with poor sanitary standards are outpacing U.S.</p> <p>To improve its export controls, Beijing has added food inspectors in recent years, but officials examine only a tiny fraction of exports, Chinese experts said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced last week that wheat gluten contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical used in plastics and fertilizers, had been imported from the southern Chinese city of Xuzhou and ended up in dozens of pet food brands sold in stores across North America. At least 16 cats and dogs have died in the United States, and thousands more have been sickened.</p>

The New Holocaust Deniers by: Don Irvine, April 06, 2007 British schoolteachers have become the latest Holocaust deniers by dropping the subject from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim students according to a newly released government backed study. The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills is entitled "Teaching Emotive and Controversial History" focuses on as the name implies, history teaching in British primary and secondary schools. Some of the findings from the study: • Teachers that are reluctant to cover the Holocaust for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. • Holocaust courses being dropped...

British humiliation becomes disgrace Posted by Toby Harnden at 09 Apr 07 09:58 So now they can sell their stories? The Ministry of Defence believes the Tehran 15 should be treated like troops who have won the Victoria Cross. Britain's political and military leaders hail their "dignity" - and then give them the green light to profit from their abject capitulation. Rather than courts martial for the top brass, expect gongs for the ex-hostages. The Government and Royal Navy seem to think they can wash away the humiliation in a sea of sentimental twaddle. Iran is laughing. Has Britain gone...

'We feel no shame' - the brothers who killed their sister for honour Tragic tale highlights scale of beatings and murder of women in countryside Declan Walsh in Donga Bonga, Pakistan Wednesday February 7, 2007 The Guardian (UK) Maqbool Ahmed and Muhammad Aslam, who beat their sister to death. Photograph: Declan Walsh Shackled together at the wrist, the two brothers awaited their fate at the lonely jail in Donga Bonga, a cotton-farming backwater near Pakistan's sealed border with India. They were poor men, barefoot farm labourers with pinched cheeks and calloused hands. But when they spoke, their bloodshot eyes flashed...

BEIJING--Beijing authorities on Monday defended their campaign to confiscate unregistered and oversized dogs, saying it was launched in response to public complaints about barking and biting. Officials also took several dozen Chinese and foreign journalists to inspect a dog pound on the outskirts of the city where some 600 abandoned, oversized and confiscated dogs are housed. The tour was an apparent attempt to ease public anger over the campaign, which dog owners and animal rights groups say is cruel. Critics say owners should be given more time to register their dogs or find them new homes and argue that the...

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, had a way with words. In 1922, she wrote a book chapter titled "The Cruelty of Charity." Charity toward the poor, especially toward poor immigrants, she opined, only "encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others, which brings with it … a dead weight of human waste."

Pulaski County - The Pulaski County Sheriff is found in contempt of court Friday by a Little Rock District Judge. This after the jail would not accept repeat traffic offenders because the jail was closed. Late Friday afternoon an appeal was filed in circuit court by the County Attorney Karla Burnett. Friday District Judge David Steward heard testimony as to why several repeat offenders were not picked up and taken to the Pulaski County detention facility as ordered by District Judge Vic Fleming. (Judge David Stewart, District Judge) "It’s a financial problem a legal problem and a constitutional problem and...

<p>A DOCTOR and witnesses have told of the desperate efforts to save Australian icon Steve Irwin after the Crocodile Hunter was struck in the chest by a stingray barb today.</p> <p>Irwin, 44, died this morning after being fatally injured while filming a nature documentary off Queensland.</p>

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A new MTV cartoon depicting black women squatting on all fours tethered to leashes and defecating on the floor is drawing fire from several prominent African Americans who call the episode degrading. Critics say MTV showed especially poor judgment because the weekly animated program, "Where My Dogs At?", appeals to young teens and airs at an hour, 12:30 p.m. on Saturdays, when many children are watching television. The show just completed its initial eight-episode run on MTV2, a spin-off channel of the music video institution that recently celebrated its 25th anniversary

Gentle reader, do you know that Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon? Israel has ordered all the villagers to clear out. Israel then destroys their homes and murders the fleeing villagers. That way there is no one to come back and nothing to which to return, making it easier for Israel to grab the territory, just as Israel has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians. Do you know that one-third of the Lebanese civilians murdered by Israel’s attacks on civilian residential districts are children? That is the report from Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator for the...

LEAVE IT TO the good people of Philadelphia, whose football fans once famously booed and threw snowballs at Santa Claus, to come up with the perfect takedown of the most inflated (in more ways than one) superstar in contemporary sport. With the visiting Barry Bonds at the plate and needing just two home runs to tie Babe Ruth’s iconic 714 lifetime homers, the banner was raised: “Ruth did it on hot dogs & beer.” The target of this concise discourse on the roots of greatness has been booed lustily in every major league city he’s played in outside his hometown...

AN EXASPERATED father has discovered, at his expense, that cyberspace is not the ideal arena for family feuds. Two weeks ago Steve Williams became so fed up with his daughter's messy bedroom that he built a website featuring pictures of his slothful offspring's lair in an attempt to shame her into action. However, the public humiliation, proved to be a short-lived victory. While it did spur his daughter, Claire, into tidying her room, it also whet her appetite for revenge. With the help of her father's friends, the 20-year-old business student has now set up a rival website that displays...

<p>Leadership: What possesses a former vice president of the U.S. to travel to the birthplace of Islamist terrorism and denounce his country? Only a special breed of demons, apparently, can explain Al Gore.</p> <p>The chief demon, of course, surely must be Gore's continuing quest for the presidency. Embittered he may well be by his loss of the highest office six years ago. But showing such supreme disloyalty to his country, as he did in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, cannot be condoned as an honorable means of pursuing the prize once more.</p>

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - If Europeans and the United States succeed in referring Iran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council, sanctions or other enforcement actions would be a long way off, if imposed at all. But at a minimum the West is counting on a political and diplomatic embarrassment for Tehran, which this month removed U.N. inspection seals on uranium enrichment equipment, deepening suspicions it is seeking nuclear arms. Otherwise Tehran would not be fighting a referral, diplomats and other experts say. "Iranians are very proud and don't want to become a pariah state like North Korea," said Edward...

Senate Democrats have scrapped a "good-faith" agreement they made two months ago to allow the Judiciary Committee to vote today on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. "This is a new low in our confirmation process," said Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican. "Not only because it is virtually unprecedented, but also because it reflects a breach of trust." According to Judiciary Committee rules, either party can stall a nomination in committee for only one week, meaning that Judge Alito's nomination will likely be approved by the panel during an executive committee meeting next Tuesday. The entire...

The United States will pay Russia $US21.8 million ($29.17 million) per astronaut for a lift aboard a Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station, the US space agency NASA has said. The fare is slightly more than the world's first "space tourists" forked out for a ride into space with the Russian craft. With its shuttle fleet grounded and no other vehicles available to serve as space station rescue boats, NASA had no choice but to pay Russia for transportation or abandon the half-built orbital outpost. Congress last year lifted a weapons proliferation ban so NASA could buy Russian space...

I recently renewed my NRA membership. I was sent, as a gift, a replica .458 WinMAg bullet. It is very nice and bears Wayne LaPierre;s signature. What saddened me, though was the sticker on the little pouch it came in. MADE IN CHINA I've already emailed them and told them what I thought. Doug

It's very interesting to go to RadioBlogger's july 2005 archives and read what Mr. Hewitt was saying about the SC back then. Here's a small sample. I'll put them all together, the perfect ingredients for a ** sandwich: Hugh Hewitt on why federal judicial experience and a track record do matter: You see, I've tried to explain to people about Judge Janice Rogers Brown, that she has not been a federal judge. And my concern over her and Priscilla Owen is, that federal judges just do different things than state judges. And I want to see a little bit from...

NASHVILLE: Nashville star Chris Cagle revealed on his Web site he has learned he is not the biological father of his girlfriend's new baby. The singer of "Anywhere But Here" and "Chicks Dig It" told the Nashville Tennessean in August that impending fatherhood had inspired him to quit drinking. Cagle posted a statement Tuesday acknowledging the baby born during the weekend to Tammy Wheeler was not his. "As many of you are aware, I had been anxiously awaiting the addition of a new baby to my life," the statement says. "The baby has been born and both mother and child...

Blanco receives no Katrina questions; Senators agree to her request... Currently this is on the drudge report without a linked story.

Lynndie England, the US soldier pictured holding a leash to a naked Iraqi inmate at Abu Ghraib prison in a scandal that prompted global outrage, was sentenced on Tuesday to three years in prison and given a dishonorable discharge. In sentencing testimony just hours before, England, who had faced a maximum nine years behind bars, apologised for her actions and said she remained an American patriot. "After the photos were released, I've heard that attacks were made on US armed forces because of them," she said. "I apologise to coalition forces and all the families," England, speaking slowly, told the...