Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO – Bernie Ward, the popular radio talk-show host disgraced by federal child-pornography charges, was sentenced Thursday to seven years and two months in prison. Ward, who is married and has four children, was fired in December 2007 from KGO-AM in San Francisco after a grand jury indictment accused him of actively uploading and sharing images of child pornography on the Internet. His KGO-AM shows included the Sunday morning “God Talk” program.“I feel very sorry for you and your family,” Judge Vaughn Walker told Ward. The judge said he was troubled by Ward’s hypocrisy — while the former priest...

I have come to realization that when I throw out the term Marxist or socialist, the majority of those eligible to vote haven’t a clue as to what that means thanks to our dumbed down public school system that’s been in place for the past 40 years. I know that most of you who read my posts understand these terms, you understand what’s at stake, unfortunately though, there are too many who don’t, especially the younger class, the twenty and most thirty somethings. And then there’s the class who just don’t follow politics at all know nothing of what Marxism...

CAC DOCUMENTS LINK BARACK OBAMA TO 1960'S TERRORIST AYERS UPDATE: Newly Released Documents Highlight Obama’s Relationship With Ayers Fox News hat tip Carolyn Obama’s association with Ayers, who now teaches at the university, has become an issue in the Illinois senator’s presidential campaign. The Weather Underground took credit for several nonfatal bombings on targets that included the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, and critics accuse Obama of rubbing elbows with an unabashed 1960s radical. Obama has said that, although he knew Ayers as a professor involved in community outreach efforts in Chicago, he doesn’t share Ayers’ extreme views. The massive...

Biden's political games have made him Tehran's favorite senator. As Gen. David Petraeus struggled to unite Iraqis across the ethnic and sectarian divide, Iran's Press TV seized on Biden's plan for partitioning Iraq and featured his statements with the headline "US plans to disintegrate Iraq." Biden's attack-dog statements about U.S. policy failures emboldened Iranian hard-liners to defy diplomacy. In the Dec. 7, 2007, official sermon, Ayatollah Mohammad Kashani speaking on behalf of Iran's supreme leader, declared, "This Senator [Biden] correctly says Israel could not suppress Hizbullah in Lebanon, so how can the U.S. stand face-to-face with a nation of 70...

One of many sayings I remember from my grandmother is, "If the hiss doesn't tell you it's a snake, then the fact that it slithers on its belly in the dirt should." And to that point, if the company Barack Obama has kept (read the dirt he has aligned himself with) doesn't tell you he is a Marxist reparationist, then the words from his mouth, i.e., his hiss, certainly should. Obama repeatedly told the NAACP, "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where 'economic justice' is being served. And as president, we'll ensure that 'economic...

If Ronald Reagan said, for example, that he believed in fair play, he would have meant that every individual, without affirmative action, is entitled to an equal opportunity and equal treatment under the law. When liberal-progressive-socialists like Senator Obama, and the ruling element of the Democrat/Socialist Party, say that they are in favor of fair play, they mean something very different: that the government should intervene in the normal processes of human activity in order to give special treatment to favored economic and social classes and to redistribute income in the name of social justice. It is undeniable that, for...

S. Rep. Robert Wexler is Florida’s only member of Congress who does not own a home in his congressional district. The Democratic congressman ostensibly from Boca Raton or Delray Beach is under fire this week after he admitted on national TV that the only house he owns is in Maryland, and that he uses his in-laws’ home in a senior-only community in Delray to meet residency requirements. Wexler said in a statement that such an arrangement was “common.” However, a South Florida Sun-Sentinel survey of Florida’s 25 members of the U.S. House and two in the Senate found that all...

The political correctness thought police won’t tolerate what you’re about to read. I’m throwing the “bogus” flag upon the presidential bid of Marxist-Socialist turned Democrat Senator from Illinois, Barack Hussein Obama. Somewhere around 75 or so years ago, from out of nowhere a stealth politician arose. He too sought the nomination for his nation’s highest office; refreshingly different from other politicians of the era. This Austrian born wallpaper hanger’s background is too much like our Illinois lawyer’s. Both reared in single parent households; neither brought much of a resume on the campaign trail. The one hung wallpaper the other hung...

Attend a Local Office Opening The Campaign for Change is opening offices across the Commonwealth this Saturday, July 19th. Show your support by attending one of these events. Most office openings are from 10am-2pm, except for our Charlottesville and Norfolk offices. Please check below for the exact time and address of the office nearest you: Blacksburg 216 South Main Street 276-494-4332 10am-2pm Bristol 1009 W. State St., Suite 1-D 276-494-4144 10am-2pm Castlewood 2 Right Miners Drive 276-494-4186 10am-2pm Charlottesville A & N Building at 422 E. Main St. 804-306-5823 7pm-9pm Danville Riverside Center, 3228 Riverside Dr. 434-378-2160 10am-2pm Fairfax City...

BERLIN (AFP) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel has slammed a request by Barack Obama to give a speech this month before the Brandenburg Gate as inappropriate, her deputy spokesman said Wednesday. The conservative leader said that while she would be pleased to meet the US Democratic presidential hopeful, it would be wrong for him to hold a "campaign rally" at the historic symbol of German unity. "It is unusual to do electioneering abroad," spokesman Thomas Steg told reporters. "It is unusual to hold election rallies abroad. No German candidate for high office would even think of using the National Mall...

Obama showed his gratitude by going to socialist conferences and selecting Marxist professors as his friends in college. Barack Obama’s patriotic tour has run into a snag. More evidence of communist backing for the candidate has surfaced. The latest to emerge publicly in Obama’s camp is Joelle Fishman, the chairman of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Political Action Commission. In a column titled, “Big political shifts are underway,” Fishman says that Obama could lead “a landslide defeat of the Republican ultra-right” this November and that he is “ready to listen” to the “left and progressive voters” backing him. Fishman makes...

<p>Lake became a laughingstock for expressing doubts as to whether Alger Hiss, the founder of the United Nations and a top State Department official, was a communist spy. Lake’s doubts led to a controversy that caused him to withdraw his nomination as Clinton’s CIA director.</p>

The de-racialization of US politics has implications that go far beyond the possibility that we’re about to elect an African-American president. Fervent supporters of Barack Obama like to say that putting him in the White House would transform America. With all due respect to the candidate, that gets it backward. Mr. Obama is an impressive speaker who has run a brilliant campaign -- but if he wins in November, it will be because our country has already been transformed. Mr. Obama’s nomination wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago. It’s possible today only because racial division, which has driven US...

Barack Obama told a group of Florida donors Friday night that Republicans will try to make voters afraid of him, and suggested they would use his race to scare up votes for John McCain. Apparently girding for a nasty general election fight, the Illinois senator has in recent days predicted that independent GOP groups are waiting in the wings to attack him, and said his presumptive GOP rival is already “fear-mongering” when it comes to foreign policy. But his comments Friday night in Jacksonville, Fla., seemed to reflect elevated concerns that his campaign to be the first black president would...

The Democratic Socialist Party of the United States of America Some people think I'm too strident an anti-leftist. Some people say I'm wrong to place the Democrats on the continuum of the left, with their position on that continuum nothing more than a measure of the distance they are from socialism's ideological provenance.Sorry, but the Democrats are proving that belief right more and more each day:House Democrats call for nationalization of refineriesHouse Democrats responded to President's Bush's call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. This was at an on-camera press conference fed back live. Among other things,...

"Another Failure on Climate Change," the June 11 editorial about the recent Senate debate on global warming legislation, was off the mark. Questioning the scheduling of the debate because of high gas prices makes little sense. If gas prices don’t go down, should we never address global warming? Of course not. Many Republicans used gas prices as a reason not to act, even though the long-term solution to gas prices lies in the new green technologies that will come to the fore once we do act. In addition, our bill sets aside more than $2 trillion that can be...

For religious conservatives at the Texas Republican Convention, even the song list at Friday's prayer rally suggested dark days ahead for the GOP. "We're going to support McCain," he said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. "He may not have been all of our first choice, but he is our choice." "I'm going to support McCain and try to help people see the reality of the total picture and how dangerous Barack Obama is," said state Sen. Dan Patrick, a conservative talk-radio host with a strong evangelical following. "There is no other choice."

There's an axiom in Recovery (as in from addiction) circles which asserts that addictions are but symptoms of deeper emotional or psychological problems. Leaving aside the debate as to whether this holds water, I submit that the tremendous success of Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama is but a symptom of the broader disease: The establishment media (which includes broadcast news and print sources as well as the entertainment media) has finally subverted enough of the collective mind of America to usher in the era of socialism toward which the far Left has been maneuvering us for the last 40 years....

Like Davey Crocket and company at the Alamo, there are a number of steadfast conservatives who are holding out against John McCain, even in the face of what amounts to unvarnished socialism in the person of Barack Obama. Most of these individuals are committed, principled, conservatives, which means their allegiance to the Republican Party depends on the frequency and degree with which the Republican Party faithfully, fully, resolutely and competently fosters conservative ideals of governance. Quite simply, John McCain isn’t their man. Far more the maverick, compromising, bipartisan, sometimes-conservative, McCain has repeatedly raised the ire of conservatives not for his...

Finally, a politician who gets it. Comrade Barack is here to save us. Yesterday, in a little group of selected supporters, Imam Obama announced that what America needs from the federal government is a credit-card rating system. Exactly. At long last, someone who has walked in our shoes and felt our pain. What we regular folks need from Uncle Sam is a government program to let us know if a credit-card offer is any good. Forget gasoline prices and Saudis flying planes into buildings. Never mind that the Democrats are eviscerating our economy in the name of the global-warming cult....

Barack Obama's political career boasts a long list of firsts. He is the first presumptive presidential nominee to be a native of Hawaii and the president of the Harvard Law Review. He's also the first candidate with more than 1 million contributors. ADVERTISEMENT Obama, an Illinois senator, is the first presumptive presidential nominee in modern times to have a father who wasn't a U.S. citizen, the first to earn an undergraduate degree from Columbia University in New York and the first to have attended Occidental College in Los Angeles. ``Obama's nomination would be historic in almost every respect that you...

It's not what the alleged pastor Michael Pfleger, whom Barack Obama declared "a close associate, a spiritual adviser and a key source of spiritual guidance," said at Obama's now-former church – it's what the people of said church did, and what they did not do, in response. What they did was to applaud, cheer and shout "amen" to Pfleger's vitriolic diatribes. What they didn't do was walk out. It isn't difficult to understand why not one congregant condemned the message spewed forth from the pulpit that day. It isn't really difficult to understand why there hasn't been a mass exodus...

... Democrat Representative Maxine Waters experienced a Freudian slip and uttered the secret fraternity password that identifies her Party. She spoke the word all members of her party know must be hidden from every rational thinking citizen. While addressing oil executives during a House hearing on May 22, 2008 Waters threatened to nationalize the oil industry if it failed to do something to stop the ever-escalating price of gasoline at the pumps. In a harsh exchange with Shell Oil President John Hofmeister, the California congresswoman demanded that oil companies guarantee consumer prices will fall if drilling is allowed off U.S....

Just saw Maxine Waters trying to grill the oil company execs and end up falling flat on her well made-up face. She threatened to nationalize the oil industry, and admitted that she was a liberal and a socialist (shocking!) Shep Smith cut to the Fox reporter and asked how the remark about nationalization went with the execs. The reporter said that the chairman of Shell responded by comparing Maxine to Hugo Chavez. I'm loving it.

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said. From this story: WASHINGTON (AFP) — Barack Obama set his sights on November's general election Saturday as he campaigned in Oregon, where he hopes to declare victory in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.Obama has said Tuesday's primaries in Oregon and Kentucky could mark the end of his drawn-out battle with rival Hillary Clinton, and his campaign pressed home that message by...

“I am a part of all that I have met.” Ulysses by Tennyson The Obama-lovin’ media wants you to believe that the Reverend Wright earthquake has passed. Some would have you believe that Obama turned a negative into a positive with his embarrassing public contortionism defending Wright and giving us a history lesson on American racism from Plymouth Rock to the Freedom Riders, as if Reverend Wright’s inexcusable hate needs a context. Nothing is further from the truth. There is much to be told about Reverend Wright, Obama’s mentorship with this hate-monger, and the larger implication this relationship has for...

BEIJING, May 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese citizens must register their identities when they buy potentially deadly knives, Xinhua quoted the Ministry of Public Security on Tuesday as saying. The new regulations come as China steps up security ahead of the Beijing Olympics. The targeted daggers include those with blood grooves, lock-knives, and knives with blades measuring over 22 centimeters, the ministry said in a circular posted on its website, www.mps.gov.cn. Police departments at all levels should check knife manufacturers for illegal production of deadly weapons, it said. Regulations concerning knife tools used by China's ethnic groups are to be set...

Stand Up to big Oil -- 04/30/2008 As energy prices soar and the middle-class continues to shrink, Exxon Mobil has made more profits in the past two years than any other corporation in the history of the world. Last year alone, Exxon Mobil made $40 billion in profits, and rewarded its CEO Rex Tillerson with $21 million in total compensation. (Several years ago they provided their outgoing CEO Lee Raymond with a $400 million retirement package). Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell and BP also have posted record profits. In fact, the five largest oil companies in this country have made $595 billion...

Return to the Article April 27, 2008Another Obama MarxistBy Lance Fairchok Barack Obama has a thing for Marxists. He befriends them, listens to their counsel, and he even hires them to work in his campaign.  And they seem to feel the warmth.  President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who led a revolution there in 1979,  says Barack Obama's presidential bid is a "revolutionary" phenomenon, and Americans are "laying the foundations for a revolutionary change." A captured computer revealed that an unknown person chatted with Marxist FARC guerillas on Obama's behalf (they believed), stating he would be the next President and US policy...

Barack Obama, stubbornly clinging to his right to be charismatically shallow, at first complained that Hillary Clinton was unfairly criticizing him for being all flair and fluff with no substance. Now he's upset that Clinton and the media won't let him discuss substance. Based on some of his speeches lately, I'm thinking he ought to be grateful for the diversion because his policy proposals might not survive serious scrutiny. Maybe it's unfair to interpret literally Obama's repeated stump speech assertion that we Americans aren't perfect but are "perfectible" and conclude he possesses a New Age or secular humanist worldview rather...

Barack Obama, meet John Adams. Adams noted during the Boston Massacre trial that “Facts are stubborn things.” And it appears that, for the moment, the facts have caught up with Obama here in Massachusetts. How else to explain the amazing, astounding and unthinkable results of the latest SurveyUSA presidential poll: Republican John McCain is tied with Barack Obama in the Bay State. The last Republican to win Massachusetts? Ronald Reagan. The last Republican before that? Dwight Eisenhower. Even George McGovern managed to carry Massachusetts in 1972, the one Democratic holdout in Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide. Replace “McGovern” with “MoveOn.org” and...

Violent chickens roost on candidates' shoulders: exploring the liberal/Marxist nexus Wes Vernon April 21, 2008 Last week's Clinton/Obama debate opened a new door on an old coalition: What is it about Marxists (violent or otherwise) that attracts liberals (well-meaning or otherwise) to their defense? What is their common goal (to the extent that they have one)? The counterculture sixties Here is the mantra of the Weather Underground, as enunciated by one of its leading disciples: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents. That's where it's really at." Who said...

I haven’t read much Karl Marx since the early 1980s, when I taught political philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Still, it didn’t take me long this weekend to find my copy of “The Marx-Engels Reader,” edited by Robert C. Tucker — a book that was assigned in thousands of college courses in the 1970s and 80s, and that now must lie, unopened and un-remarked upon, on an awful lot of rec-room bookshelves. My occasion for spending a little time once again with the old Communist was Barack Obama’s now-famous comment at an April 6 San Francisco fund-raiser. Obama was...

Other than the honor of holding the most far left voting record in the U.S. Senate as a freshman law maker and former black activist from Chicago who has spent the last twenty years supporting the anti-American, anti-white hate sermons of Rev. Wright, we know very little about Barrack Hussein Obama… until now! (snip) Letter from Africa “Thanks for sending out an alert about Obama. We are living and working in Kenya for almost twelve years now and know his family (tribe) well. They are the ones who were behind the recent [2007] Presidential election chaos here. Thousands of people...

Obama, speaking to a group of supporters in San Francisco, CA. , recently said: "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment...

Kansas City voters on Tuesday approved a ballot measure to ban smoking from the city’s bars and restaurants. With results from all but one precinct, the smoking ban won by a 52 to 48 percent margin, with voters both north and south of the Missouri River signaling their support. The measure also calls for Kansas City’s casino gaming floors to go smoke-free when casinos in neighboring cities approve similar bans. Health-care advocates and civic leaders countered that business rights stop when they infringe on nonsmokers’ rights to breathe clean air. Those supporting the ban said they were especially concerned about...

America has a growing enemy within. This enemy is referred to by experts as America’s Fifth Column. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the term Fifth Column refers to “A clandestine group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s solidarity [unity] by any means at their disposal.” As Britannica notes, the term is credited to Emilio Mola Vidal, a Nationalist general during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). As four of his army columns moved on Madrid, the general referred to his militant supporters within the capital as his “fifth column,” intent on undermining the loyalist government from within....

BARACK OBAMA (D-IL) Top Contributors (for 2006) 1 University of Chicago $156,054 2 Kirkland & Ellis $143,138 3 Henry Crown & Co $79,500 4 Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal $74,950 5 Northwestern University $72,930 6 Exelon Corp $71,850 7 Sidley, Austin et al $71,432 8 Mayer Brown $69,960 9 Jenner & Block $62,710 10 Soros Fund Management $61,605 11 Goldman Sachs $61,500 12 Clifford Law Offices $59,550 13 Simmons Cooper LLC $58,500 14 Tejas Securities $57,250 15 JP Morgan Chase & Co $56,600 16 Ariel Capital Management $55,650 17 Skadden, Arps et al $54,071 18 Winston & Strawn $52,450 19 Piper...

Arriving in the Port of Oakland at 6 a.m. last Thursday, the grey-blue colossus auto carrier Century Highway No. 3 carries enough cars to fill all the parking lots surrounding the Giants stadium — a mere fraction of the average 368 million annual tons of autos, toys, and other goods moving through the 29 ports along America's Pacific coast. Could there be a force of man or nature powerful enough to interrupt this perpetual merchandise tsunami? Would you believe — San Francisco radical peaceniks? On May 1, the usually bustling ports along the West Coast will become still, as members...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary and Bill Clinton are again teaming up on Barack Obama -- this time saying the first-term U.S. lawmaker, whom they have derided as inexperienced, would be a strong running mate on a Democratic presidential ticket headed by the former first lady. In talking up a joint ticket, the Clintons may be seeking the upper hand, attempting to put her in consideration for the top of the ticket when she so far has failed to win the votes necessary to assure that she would face Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the November election. The maneuver may...

Lawmaker: Terrorists to cheer Obama win By JAMES BELTRAN, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 7, 10:33 PM ET DES MOINES, Iowa - An Iowa Republican congressman said Friday that terrorists would be "dancing in the streets" if Democratic candidate Barack Obama were to win the presidency. Rep. Steve King based his prediction on Obama's pledge to pull troops out of Iraq, his Kenyan heritage and his middle name, Hussein. "The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida ... would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror,"...

Quiz GUESS WHICH COLLECTIVIST SAID IT... ... and find out on which side of the gulag fence you'll be tomorrow. (Warning: some questions are more equal than others, and some answers will make you want to slap yourself upside the head with a shovel).

WASHINGTON - Lawmakers confronted corporate executives Friday about how they managed to take home hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation while their companies were taking a financial nosedive from the subprime mortgage crisis. "It seems that CEOs hit the lottery when their companies collapse," House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said at the opening of the hearing. "Any reasonable relation between their compensation and the interests of their shareholders appears to have broken down." Appearing before the panel were Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest mortgage lender; Stanley O'Neal, formerly of Merrill...

A major airline is under fire from environmentalists for flying an aircraft across the Atlantic with only five passengers on board. The flight from Chicago to London meant that the plane, a Boeing 777, used 22,000 gallons of fuel. It led to American Airlines being accused of reckless behaviour by green lobby groups. The latest "eco- scandal" flight took place on February 9 after American was forced to cancel one of its four daily services from Chicago to London. While it was able to find places for nearly all the passengers on the fully-booked flight, five still had to be...

Barack Hussein Obama is an African-American who has not shared the black American experience and was, by birth and blood, a Muslim for at least 27 years. His politics are rooted in Marx, socialism and Alinsky. He is a master at shaping his own mythology and completely unqualified to be Commander in Chief...

Obama: Sermon on Mount Justifies Same-Sex Unions By Terence P. Jeffrey CNSNews.com Editor in Chief March 03, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told a crowd at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sunday that he believes the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions. He also told the crowd that his position in favor of legalized abortion does not make him "less Christian." "I don't think it [a same-sex union] should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state,"...

After watching the Obama-Clinton debate ... I came away convinced that both candidates ...want to run this country like Argentina... In that country, Juan Peron-inspired labor syndicates ...dominate the economy... have ensured Argentina's isolation from international commerce and investment, and a slow but steady decline in living standards... If an American lost a job in the past decade, the charge goes, it's because in Mexico business has no labor obligations. This claim is not only untrue, it is the opposite of reality. Mexico is home to militant, high-powered unions and the most burdensome labor regulation in North America... Nafta has...

Hans Janitschek, an Austrian journalist who spent years as a U.N. consultant and also served as secretary general of the Socialist International organization, died suddenly at U.N. headquarters. He was 73. His wife, Friedl, said Friday that Janitschek died last week and the cause of death was believed to be a heart attack. Janitschek became foreign editor of Austria's largest daily newspaper, Kurier, in 1959. He joined the Austrian Foreign Service in 1964 and was sent to the United States as director of the Austrian Information Service. He was appointed special assistant to Bruno Kreisky, then-chairman of the Austrian Socialist...

If you are among those who are seriously considering casting your vote for Barack Obama either in an upcoming primary or, should the occasion arise, in the general election in November, it's a good idea to do a little homework first. Questionable Connections Rightly or wrongly, people are often judged by the company they keep, but the media has been strangely quiet on a few of Obama's connections, both personal and political. One of Obama's self-professed mentors is Frank Marshall Davis, a known former member of the Communist Party USA, a party that not only had tens of thousands of...