Free Republic

Activists Already Planning RNC Disruptions MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ― Shrouded in black, with a bandanna masking her face, the self-proclaimed anarchist slips into her combat boots and dashes through town, tossing a Molotov cocktail here, launching a bowling ball there. The YouTube video is more parody than threat: The flaming cocktail ignites a charcoal grill, and the bowling ball knocks down pins instead of crashing through a Navy recruiting office window. But as the video fades to black, the message onscreen is clear: "We're getting ready. What are you doing?" With less than 10 months to go before the Republican National...

ATF Commerce in Firearms PDF Report The Gun Control Act of 1968 established the first comprehensive Federal licensing system for importers, manufacturers and dealers in firearms to the retail level. That system requires licensees to maintain detailed records on transactions in firearms, and subjects their business premises to inspection by the ATF. From 1968 to 1993, THE PROCESS TO OBTAIN A FEDERAL FIREARMS LICENSE WAS OVERLY SIMPLE. (emphasis added) The annual fee WAS ONLY $10 for a license that authorized the person to ship, transport and receive firearms in interstate commerce and engage in retail sales. The statue required ATF...

OK, perhaps the sixty-fifth anniversary of the Day of Infamyâ„¢ deserves more than a snarky hit piece on nutty 911 conspiracy theorists. Sixty five years after Pearl Harbor, it feels now like ancient history, despite the fact that we still have troops in Japan and Germany. I wonder how many people understand the implications of this date in history, or are even aware that it is a date in history? Many who have personal recollections of the event (my parents' and grandparents generation) are passing, or passed, from the scene. I was at the Arizona memorial a few weeks ago,...

Since the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq the Democrats’ Leninist core, the leftwing MainStream Media Party and the left’s Hollywood collaborators have been doing everything in their power to demoralise the troops, delegitimise the President, subvert the war on terror and sabotage victory over the terrorists in Iraq. In other words, they have behaved like traitors. Yet when Bill Clinton continuously bombed the Serbia from a height of 15,000 feet without UN permission he was overwhelmingly hailed by the left as a great humanitarian and liberator. President Bush liberates 50,000,000 Muslims from tyranny and he’s Adolf Hitler. America’s cause in...

Today, Muslims reign as the Number 1 Death Cult on the planet, closely followed by America’s Democrat Party. In 1,400 years of terror Muslims have slaughtered hundreds of millions forcing their faux religion on others. They are in the process of murdering 500,000 Dafurian Muslims because they are black. They recently murdered 2 million Southern Sudanese because they were Christian. Muslims are a “Black Plague” on this Earth. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot were sick despots who ordered millions killed. Democrats are more subtle, they killed more than any one of them under color of “higher” cause. Democrats have murdered...

In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it's the past that is always changing. -- old Soviet dissident joke As a graduate student in international affairs at Columbia University, I specialized in the study of totalitarianism, especially, though not only, the communist variety. I found the subject fascinating, but I never for a moment imagined that any expertise gained in this field would prove relevant to American life. Sad to say, it has turned out to be the most valuable subject I could have studied. The totalitarian temptation is not confined to Nazis and communists; it can rear its...

In the course of researching paramilitary drug raids, I’ve found some pretty disturbing stuff. There was a case where a SWAT officer stepped on a baby’s head while looking for drugs in a drop ceiling. There was one where an 11-year-old boy was shot at point-blank range. Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It’s happened with all five.) Yet among hundreds of botched raids, the ones that get me most worked up are the...

<p>Thanks to John McCain, Free Republic will shut down tomorrow at high noon for 30 days. No non government approved electioneering messages may be transmitted over the internet for the 30 days immediately preceding a primary election.</p> <p>That is all.</p>

In the old days, along with such colonial powers as France, Spain, Holland and Germany, England indulged in what you might call unenlightened self-interest. The prevailing practice was to gut their colonies in Asia and Africa of all the natural resources they could get their hands on while the folks who mined the coal, picked the crops, and dug for the diamonds, lived in abject squalor. It may not have been nice, it may have been selfish and even brutal, but it made perfect sense. When some English noble stoked his fire, he probably never gave a second thought to...

Who is/was the WORST U.S. PRESIDENT EVER? Carter? Clinton? Make your choice and state your reasons.

June 17th, 2005 WASHINGTON (APUPI) Amidst growing outrage at his comparisons of US troops to Pol Pot's regime, Nazis and Stalin's Gulag, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin backed off from his earlier comments today, reading from a prepared statement outside his office that he hadn't meant to directly compare the situations: "I realize that my comments unjustly slandered many people in southeast Asia and other places who were simply trying to achieve a better society, and did not intend to compare what they did to the horrific atrocities that were occuring, and continue to occur, in Guantanamo. I wish to deeply...

When opponents of the “Real ID” legislation announced a rally for illegal immigrants and their allies in Montgomery County, MD, there was one immigration-related group I was absolutely certain would not show up: The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the people responsible for actually enforcing our immigration laws. Casa de Maryland and others claimed 5,000 people would gather on Saturday to protest the “Real ID” Act working its way through Congress, and many of these people would be illegal immigrants themselves, we were told. If I were looking for immigration criminals, it’s exactly where I would be. That’s why...

STEVENS POINT, Wis. (AP) Despite defeating a proposed smoking ban at city restaurants and bars, a group of businesses is continuing its suit against a college professor for offering extra credit to students who helped promote the ban. University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point professor John Munson sent an e-mail from his university account in November to students urging them to patronize non-smoking establishments and collect signatures to put an anti-smoking referendum on the ballot. In exchange, he wrote, the students would get up to 1,500 extra credit points. Although the referendum lost at the polls by 1,000 votes on April 5,...

A few days ago the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez declared himself a socialist in his customary negative style. Talking about the nature of his regime he said: "If not capitalism, then what?" as in "if not day, it must be night." His coming out of the political closet is another move in close imitation of Castro's own ideological striptease, which took place more than 40 years ago. Even more so than in the case of Castro, the main reason behind Chávez's embraced socialism is not really concern for the poor and the underprivileged. It is resentment of the rich and...

<p>In the autumn of 2000, while working as a reporter in Bangkok, I was sent to Laos for a story. Since I knew I would be spending several days in the somnolent capital, Vientiane, I called an acquaintance who lived there, a smart woman who I hoped might take a romantic interest in me. We met one evening and she suggested that we find one of the quaint stands overlooking the broad Mekong river and sip cold beers.</p>

"The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse--that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it."                                    H. L. MenckenLast week, while most Washingtonians were  focused on the ongoing effort by Democrats to seize control of the office of governor, Governor Locke last week jumped the gun and released a proposal for new water legislation that gives a preview of life under a Gregoire Administration, where every fervid fantasy of Seattleites can become legislative reality.  The proposed water law amendments, breathtaking in scope and audacity, replace centuries of...

A leader of one of the major protest groups planning to disrupt the GOP convention said Monday she will not instruct her members to refrain from violent attacks against New York City police, delegates or city residents during a planned 250,000 person march on the night before the convention. Referring to planned protests as "a battle," Tanya Mayo, national coordinator for the protest group "Not in Our Name," told radio host Sean Hannity that her group alone has 30,000 members, but that other groups could swell that number by hundreds of thousands during a planned march up 7th Ave. to...

Just reported on Fox News

NEW YORK -- A Queens man has been jailed secretly since April on suspicions he joined a Pakistani terrorism cell in a plot against targets in London, officials said Wednesday. The suspect, Mohammed Junaid Babar, was detained by the Joint Terrorism Task Force on April 10 as a material witness, according to two law enforcement officials. Babar has been in custody since then at the Metropolitan Detention Center in lower Manhattan. One of the officials, who both spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, alleged Babar aided a plot to "blow up pubs, restaurants and train stations" in...

Terrorists turn to drug trafficking, forgery and credit card fraud after usual sources of funding are frozen LONDON - Al-Qaeda members are turning increasingly to criminal activities to fund their terror campaign. Faced with a crackdown on their usual sources of financing, they have turned to drug trafficking, counterfeiting, forgery and credit card fraud. Law enforcers are still uncertain how to tackle this new aspect of the terrorist threat. After the US-led war in Afghanistan overthrew the Taleban regime in late 2001, Al-Qaeda was forced to scatter. The freezing of about US$130 million (S$225 million) of alleged terrorist funds worldwide,...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi security forces and police surrounded a house in the capital Wednesday, Saudi security officials said, and intermittent gunfire was heard. Police surrounded the entire district of Al-Badeaa, in southwestern Riyadh, and officers at a checkpoint about a half-mile away diverted traffic to other routes. Gunfire could be heard late into the night and more security forces were seen arriving. The operation came as Saudi Arabia has stepped up the search for the kidnappers of Paul Johnson, an American who was taken hostage Saturday. Witnesses who had been diverted from the area by police speculated...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda had originally planned to crash hijacked planes into 10 targets in the United States and carry out simultaneous attacks in southeast Asia, the panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks said on Wednesday. The commission issued a report saying that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the main planner of the Sept. 11 attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people, had originally drawn up a more-extensive scheme in which he would also pilot a hijacked airplane. Al Qaeda had drawn up a list of targets that originally included the sites hit on Sept. 11 -- the...

President Reagan's death brought to the fore his outstanding accomplishment of ending the Cold War. Like American presidents before him he led the U.S. in the charge against the "evil empire" by forging alliances and sending troops to remote theaters at high cost in blood and treasury. What makes Reagan's vision for victory particularly remarkable is that it stemmed from the belief in the power of technology as both a force multiplier and a game changer. For the three and a half decades that preceded Reagan's presidency, Americans lived in the ominous shadow of a thermonuclear war that threatened to...

(snip) The proposed French law prohibiting the wearing of religious symbols in public schools was initially interpreted to include Islamic headscarves, Jewish yarmulkes and large Christian crosses. Those were the three items singled out last month in a speech by President Jacques Chirac and in a report by a blue-ribbon commission on religion and the state. Then the issue of the turban worn by Sikhs was raised, as France's tiny Sikh community protested that its boys would quit school before removing their turbans. Today, Luc Ferry, the Minister of National Education, went further. He told the National Assembly's legal affairs...

"...They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe..." As the British Empire declined so too did the reputation of Rudyard Kipling. A great story teller, he was, as George Orwell noted, the poet laureate of empire. Gradually Kipling came to be viewed as anachronistic and archaic. A more liberal and supposedly more tolerant view became the dominant one amongst English speaking wordsmith intellectuals, so that by the time Kipling died in 1936, socialism, communism...

David Duke To Speak Against Iraq War In Virginia This Saturday: Richmond Meeting Will Denounce Jewish Influence Over U.S. Foreign Policy By Overthrow.com Overthrow.com | February 17, 2003 2/18/03 10:28:15 AM EURO Press Release Richmond, Virginia -- David Duke to speak against Iraqi war in Richmond, Virginia, this Saturday. Says Israel, not Iraq, is a threat to world peace and American security. Richmond, Virginia, February 17, 2003 . European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) National President David Duke will speak in Richmond, Virginia, Saturday, February 22, 2003 against the war with Iraq and the need to end support to Israel....

"Lib'rals!!" (To be sung to the Rolling Stones' "Some Girls") Lib'rals steal yer money...Lib'rals steal yer souls!! Lib'rals just crave Power...o'er lives that ain't their own!! Lib'rals love their "Programs"...Lib'rals love to TAX!! Lib'rals, we give most our bread to...We won't ever git it back!! Lib'rals they LOATHE Liberty...DemRATS, They Love POWER!! Lib'rals hide behind children...each time they beg fer MORE!! So give'em all YER money...Do Just What Yer Told!! Left takes more'n half of what I own... But it's Right who's doin' the Chores!! BigGuv'ment takes yer money...Leftists Corrupt Yer Souls!! Lib'rals tax the shirt off yer back...and tell...

Radical Islamists are in complete control of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and a handful of smaller states where a breakneck effort is underway to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. They have exported their radical revolution by supporting terror and propaganda in moderate Islamic states, insurgencies in Russi, China, the Philippines, the Balkins, and sub-Saharan Africa, and with the influence that huge worldwide financial investments bring to bear. The Islamists are aiding in the mass murder of innocent civilians in Israel, India, Pakistan, and Africa. Genocide against Christians has been going on for years in southern Sudan. Terrorists are lying...