Free Republic

By Mr. Curmudgeon:When television reporter Brian Ross erroneously reported that the Colorado "Batman" shooter was a Tea Party member, Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News, said, "Our mission is to tell people everything we can that is relevant about a person who has just committed a terrible crime. If, in the course of our sweeping everything we can about the person, part of it turns out that he was a member of a particular club, a member of a particular organization, he has a particular hobby, if we judge that it is journalistically relevant to a profile, a rich profile...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:They called themselves the Hydra Club, a group of underpaid writers whose literary genre earned them no more than a penny a word. Their passion was writing science fiction.In the documentary film "Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth," the sci-fi author recalls that "the Hydra Club was a writer's drinking and schmoozing society. They would get together once a week, or once every two weeks ... and they would just talk ..."He remembers one meeting in the early 1950s with writers Lester Sprague de Camp and L. Ron Hubbard in attendance. "Ron was complaining that he was breaking...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:Not all Republicans are happy with Mitt Romney's choice to make Rep. Paul Ryan his running mate. David Frum, former speech writer for President George W. Bush, is beside himself."At every turn, the party has demanded, 'More ideology! I gotta have more ideology!'" laments Frum in a column appearing on CNN.com. "With the selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney has now acceded to that wish. The least ideological Republican candidate since 1968 has committed himself to the most ideological Republican program since 1964."Actually, it was the least ideological Republican candidate since 1968 - Sen. John...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:Republicans have cornered the market on compassion - the real and not politically contrived variety. Monday, House Republicans petitioned a federal court to uphold their subpoena requiring that the Justice Department turn over documents pertaining to the sale of weapons to Mexico's deadly drug cartels by the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives.In doing so, the House GOP speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves: The hundreds of innocent souls killed because of a cynical program designed to gin up gun violence south of the border as a pretext for enacting more stringent gun legislation here...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:In accepting the vice presidential spot on the Republican ticket, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan said, "America is more than just a place ... it's an idea ... Our rights come from nature and God, not government."That single remark is simple yet profound. That single remark separates those who embrace the tumultuous uncertainties of freedom from those who seek security at the expense of individual liberty. That single remark is what divides the Founder's philosophy of limited government from the Progressive project's march toward authoritarian dictatorship. That single remark differentiates two stark visions of man in relation to his...

Today is the first day in the rebirth of America. With the exception of maybe Senator Marco Rubio, no other candidate for vice president has the ability to satisfy the base, energize the Tea Party, and appeal to Independents quite like Congressman Paul Ryan.If the Democrats and the left underestimate Paul Ryan, they do so at their own peril.Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this article, I will heed a warning to Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. If we allow the left to define Paul Ryan through vicious and unscrupulous attacks, then WE do so at...

"Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity...

 [caption id="attachment_57176" align="alignleft" width="259"] Emmanuel tells us what he thinks of Constitution picture source: freerepublic.com[/caption]Does anyone get the impression that the American left will use anything and anyone to further its cause? Today it's the gay flash mob tomorrow who knows what it will be. The end result will be total failure but at what price?Without a shot being fired, is it that they want to launch a coup against the United States? Maybe calling it a coup is too much for those who cannot deal with reality. Maybe we should call it a soft coup the dream of the progressive...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:While Team Obama presses on with its campaign to frighten anxious Americans away from freedom and its residual energy, capitalism, Obama's anti-free market ethos is etching an indelible mark on our society.Friday, the "official" unemployment rate in America bumped up to 8.3% from its previous 8.2%, and the Department of Labor Statistics' U-6 number (the jobless rate for Americans who have run through their unemployment benefits and still cannot find work) stands at a staggering 14.9%.The Labor department also broke down the jobless U-6 figures for the states: Nevada (Harry Reid's state) 22.1%; California 20.3%; Rhode Island 18.3%;...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:Americans ate a whole lot of chicken on Wednesday; in particular, Chick-fil-A chicken. Here in South Florida, where I live, the area's powerhouse talk-radio station provided updates from listeners who reported standing in long lines around the fast-food chain's various locations."They are making a lot of noise," Celio Fonseca of Boca Raton told the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel of the gay lobby's attempt to intimidate the fast-food chain's president, Dan Cathy, for stating that his organization's corporate culture is Christian as are its values. "But they are in the minority," continued Fonseca, "Everyone has the right to express...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2hzRPLVSm4&version=3&hl=en_US][caption id="attachment_56761" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Hope and change means millions of homeless kids in Obama's America picture source: freerepublic.com"][/caption]What is the "hard times generation?" That is the official name of the 16 million kids living homeless and in poverty in Obama's government sponsored society. Whereas during the tenure of President Herbert Hoover, Hoovervilles were Depression era shanty towns of the poor peppering the country, President Obama now has his own version of Hoovervilles in the " hard times generation." How utterly disgraceful especially when we are told by President Obama that his plans are working and that he is succeeding...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:A U.S. District Court ruling supports the House Republican's claim that Attorney General Eric Holder is a contemptible withholder of evidence and the Obama administration's cover-up artist extraordinaire.Since the news of Operation Fast and Furious broke, Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrell Issa, has buried the Justice Department in enough subpoenas to wallpaper every office in the joint.To date, Holder has failed to provide House investigators the names of Justice Department personnel responsible for selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels and high-level Justice officials privy to the operation.Now, the first controversy to embroil...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:It's difficult for supporters of the smartest man in the world to admit he makes gaffs. Instead, President Obama's acolytes insist his detractors take him "out of context."When conservative talk radio and Mitt Romney pilloried Obama for saying "the private sector is doing fine," Obama's main man in Chicago, David Axelrod, said, "They're more eager to have a debate over an out-of-context clause in his [Obama's] remarks than the substance of what he said," he told CNN.Axelrod failed to enlighten the paltry CNN audience as to Obama's context, changing the subject instead. "We need to accelerate job creation...

AMERICAN SOCIALISMBy Nathan TuckerPresident Obama's infamous remarks at Roanoke are premised in socialism-the conviction that government action is needed to make the free market fairer and more equitable.  It is the mistaken belief, shared by far too many politicians today, that individual rights are the citizens' dutiful sacrifice on the alter of a collectivist utopian society achievable only by government planning.Socialism in Western democracies is often cloaked in the mantra of compassion-the desire to produce greater equalization of outcomes by protecting individuals from the vicissitudes of the free market.  It is the conviction that government intervention is necessary to make...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:Adolf Hitler's first official act as the new German Chancellor was to end the centuries-old tradition of independent local governments. In 1933, he sent armed SS thugs to arrest small town politicians and install handpicked National Socialist commissioners. And so began the Führer's remaking of German society. It was a simple first step on the road to convincing his people they were a super race of beings descended from the survivors of the lost continent of Atlantis - Aryans.When we think of World War II, we tend to think of it in political and military terms. Historians give...

By Mr. Curmudgeon: The Windy City has always felt a little like a second-class citizen when compared to the Big Apple. That's why Chicago's other nickname is the Second City. But the greatest force in the universe - stupidity - is helping to level the playing field.After the Aurora, Colorado, shooting, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on CNN to speak with host Piers Morgan."I don't understand why the police officers across this country don't stand up collectively and say, 'We're going to go on strike. We're not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:As even the most casual observer of the news knows, the Obama administration's sale of weapons to Mexican drug cartels was intended to support the president's contention that American guns are chiefly responsible for the ongoing war now waging between drug gangs and the government south of the border. If not for the revelations regarding the Justice Department's Operation Fast and Furious, the massacre of Mexico's innocents would have provided Obama and his gun-grabbing Democrats the ammunition needed to reinstate the U.S. assault weapons ban, which lapsed during the presidency of George W. Bush.However, the killing spree that...

Rush: 'Blaming Guns For Murder Is Like Blaming Forks For Obesity' ["God and guns are the government's number one and two enemies making the individual irrelevant source of picture: freerepublic.com"]Imagine if the Aurora gunman knew that people were carrying weapons in the theater like at a gun club. That would have put a lot of ice water on his passion to commit homicides en masse This author can't recall a single story where there was a massacre like in Colorado at a gun club. He can't even recall any kind of killing by a deranged gunman at any gun club.We...

Rush: 'Blaming Guns For Murder Is Like Blaming Forks For Obesity' [caption id="attachment_56418" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="God and guns are the government's number one and two enemies making the individual irrelevant source of picture: freerepublic.com"][/caption]Imagine if the Aurora gunman knew that people were carrying weapons in the theater like at a gun club. That would have put a lot of ice water on his passion to commit homicides en masse This author can't recall a single story where there was a massacre like in Colorado at a gun club. He can't even recall any kind of killing by a deranged gunman...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:"We consider health reform to have been an important battle and a success of his government," Cuban dictator Fidel Castro said of President Obama shortly before ObamaCare's passage into law, "It is really incredible that 234 years after the Declaration of Independence ... the government of that country has approved medical attention for the majority of its citizens, something that Cuba was able to do half a century ago."Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's 110th Democratically-controlled Congress agreed, passing the measure unread.Monday, Venezuela's socialist leader, and candidate for president, attacked his rival, Henrique Capriles, for being too much like Republican...