Free Republic

.. US filmmaker Sean Stone, son of Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, converted to Islam on Tuesday in Iran, where he is making a documentary, he told AFP. "The conversion to Islam is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism, which I was born with. It means I have accepted Mohammad and other prophets," he said in a brief telephone call from the central Iranian city of Isfahan, where he underwent the ceremony. Sean Stone's famous father is Jewish, while his mother is Christian. The 27-year-old filmmaker did not say why he converted. According to Iran's Fars news agency, Sean Stone had become...

<p>I was taking photographs of the police arresting Occupy Wall Street demonstrators at the December 12 Winter Garden flash mob, which had been organized in solidarity with the port shutdowns on the west coast, when I found myself targeted. "That one," I heard a voice say in a brutal "New Yawk" accent, realizing that a senior police official was pointing me out over a row of people, "he goes. He goes."</p>

Occupy Oakland has called for a city-wide strike and rally on Wednesday to protest income inequality, and several businesses, including Men's Wearhouse and the Grand Lake movie theater, have closed their doors in support... The store's decision will likely meet with approval from the corporate HQ: George Zimmer, founder and chairman of Men's Wearhouse, has repeatedly donated to Democratic candidates in multiple election cycles, including progressives like 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean and Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.).

(Reuters) - U.S. officials have met members of the Muslim Brotherhood's political party, a U.S. diplomat said, after Washington announced it would have direct contacts with Egypt's biggest Islamist group whose role has grown since U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was ousted.

<p>One day, at the height of her fame in the mid-Seventies, Jane Fonda turned up on the doorstep of her ex-husband, Roger Vadim. She was lugging a bulging sack.</p> <p>Vadim’s glamorous new girlfriend let her in, thrilled to meet the movie icon at last. But her excitement soon turned to disbelief. The star of Julia, Klute and The China Syndrome had come to do her laundry. Why? Because her second husband, Tom Hayden, a Left-wing activist with a bulbous nose and acne-scarred cheeks, had forbidden her to have either a washing machine or dishwasher. Far too bourgeois.</p>

You saw it here first, folks! Clueless?Over at the American Spectator, the great Jeffrey Lord writes that “almost to a person … prominent pre-Ron Paul non-interventionist “Paulist” politicians of the 20th century were overwhelmingly not conservatives at all. They were men of the left. The far left.” From three-time Democratic presidential nominee and Woodrow Wilson Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan to powerful Montana Democratic Senator Burton K. Wheeler to FDR’s ex-vice presidential nominee Henry Wallace to the 1968 anti-war presidential candidacy of Minnesota Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy to 1972 Democratic presidential nominee (and Henry Wallace delegate in 1948) George...

National Popular Vote is good for conservatives, the GOP, and public policy. Period. Having been active in support of the initiative for over a year now, I have met and talked to hundreds of conservative leaders, activists, and elected officials. I have found most of those who reflexively oppose it do so because they think it is a process to amend the Constitution, don’t understand how it works or how it would affect outcomes, or are convinced of some grand conspiracy to turn America into a permanent Democrat hegemony. The reality is the current system disenfranchises millions of conservatives from...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will appoint Democratic Sens. Patty Murray of Washington, Max Baucus of Montana, and John Kerry of Massachusetts to the new super committee tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in additional deficit reduction by November 23, according to a senior Democratic aide familiar with Reid’s decision, which is expected to be made public as early as Wednesday. Additionally, Murray is expected to co-chair the committee, officially named the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, along with a still unnamed House Republican. A spokesman for Reid did not respond to a request for comment. Reid’s decision to...

Here's Frank Schaeffer, the David Brock of the religious right, on Rachel Maddow characterizing all conservatives as dangerous nutjobs. Rachel Maddow guest, author Frank Schaeffer, summarizes The Right Wing

The moral bankruptcy of the Left – epitomized by its backing of Islamic dictators and extremists over moderate Muslims – saw it defeated across Europe in recent EU elections. From what I read yesterday, the Huffington Post, and American liberals, might want to take a lesson from that. In one op-ed piece, Frank Schaeffer tells us that “the real lesson of Iran” actually has nothing to do with Iran, and everything to do with American conservatives. Neoconservatives and the religious-Right are – so we’re told – trying their best to establish a Christian, pro-Israel dictatorship, replete with Old Testament law....

As we watch the horrors in Iran, it makes us wonder if anything like that could happen in America. In Iran, the mullahs control everything and feel justified in any injustice they commit because of a belief in the rightness of their own actions. Is there anyone like that here? In an answer to that question, Frank Schaeffer wrote a column for the Huffington Post entitled “The Real Lesson of Iran — Beware America’s Republican Mullahs.” Reading it and the comments to it, I came to a realization: people who think the religious right are just like Iranian mullahs are...

The earth bursts with life. Far right exclusionary religion bursts with death. If there is a creator of life He/She/It must hate fundamentalist religion. The countries in the world that are the most fundamentalist and religious, and/or those whose identity is most religion-based, are the world's greatest troublemakers. Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA, Vatican City and the state of Israel come to mind. Just take one example of religion’s baleful influence: President Woodrow Wilson’s messianic religion-inspired intervention in World War One. "My life would not be worth living” Wilson wrote, “if it were not for the driving power of...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie delighted conservatives last week when he pledged to withdraw his state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) of Northeastern states. Conservative delight, however, quickly turned to frustration as Christie emphasized he was merely taking issue with the political and economic mechanisms of RGGI, but did not disagree with the notion that humans are causing a global warming problem that needs to be addressed. "[W]hen you have over 90% of the world's scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it's time to defer to...

BREAKING: United States will apologize for burying Osama bin Laden at seaA U.S. delegation consisting of President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, and Admiral Gary Roughead will make an emergency visit to Cape Sounion in Greece to apologize for burying Osama bin Laden's body at sea. It was revealed that the State Department received a very strongly worded complaint along with thinly veiled threats of retaliation against the United States Navy. Although it is generally not the policy of the United States to respond to any threat, the Administration felt it prudent to resolve...

"Mr Moore said: 'We've lost something of our soul here in this country, and maybe I'm an old-school American, who believes in the American justice system, something that separates us from other countries. 'We say everybody has their day in court, no matter what sort of person, no matter what piece of scum they are."

Osama bin Laden wasn't killed by a Navy SEAL team, he was straight up executed, Michael Moore told TheWrap on Wednesday. The "Fahrenheit 9/11" director has been setting Twitter aflame Wednesday afternoon urging the Obama administration to come clean about the circumstances surrounding the terrorist leader's death -- particularly in light of the White House's shifting account of last weekend's firefight in Abbottabad. The Oscar-winning director has been tweeting about his belief that Bin Laden should have received a trial, and his theory that Pakistan was keeping the Al Qaeda head under house arrest.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Mitt Romney offered a tepid defense of the Massachusetts health care law, suggesting to an audience last night at the Granite State’s first forum of the 2012 presidential campaign that he would sign it again if given the chance.

In NH, Romney praises Obama for bin Laden’s death (Ignores Pres. Bush and VP Cheney) NASHUA, N.H. — Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney says President Barack Obama deserves credit for authorizing the military operation that resulted in Osama bin Laden’s death. Before starting a round-table discussion with New Hampshire business owners today, Romney thanked Obama, U.S. military forces and the intelligence community for finding and killing the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Rashard Mendenhall has created a stir with comments made on his official Twitter page regarding Osama bin Laden’s death. The Pittsburgh Steelers running back on Monday tweeted: “What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…”

"He may be dead, but in a way, he won. We gave up our rights. We passed a PatriotAct. We spent trillions on needless wars. Fear now rules us." "BREAKING: All Repub candidates drop out of 2012 race, citing "aversion to losing badly." Would u make Pleasantville play the South Bronx?" "The monster we created-yes, WE-in the 1980s by ARMING, FUNDING, &TRAINING him in the art of terror agnst the USSR, finally had 2 b put down."

On the same day that a family of five were being murdered in their home in Israel, Harvey Weinstein ran a self-congratulatory promotional piece for his company’s terrorist propaganda flick, Miral... So it is with perpetrators and victims. The innocent children and the fat ugly men who profit from trafficking in the narrative of their killers. Harvey Weinstein denounces Peter King and urges him to go watch Miral. But perhaps it is Harvey Weinstein who should drive to a small town lost in the Samarian Mountains and retrace the steps of the murderers in the name of the nationalistic mythology...

Janet Napolitano appeared on Capitol Hill to answer questions about “Operation Fast and Furious,” the ATF “gun-walking” scheme that allowed guns to flow across the border into Mexico in an attempt to pin drug-cartel warlords with weapons trafficking charges. The operation literally blew up in the ATF’s face when the cartel used the weapons to kill American agents. Not only did Napolitano not know about the ATF operation, she claims, she still doesn’t know today whether the allegation that the two agents were only allowed beanbag guns to protect themselves is true or not,

The 2011 Super Bowl was between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers—two squads whose monikers speak to their roots as factory teams in the industrial heartland. As these teams prepared to face off in the almighty spectacle that is the Super Bowl, the game’s pre-game show involved a salute to Ronald Reagan on his hundredth birthday. Considering how Reagan gutted the aforementioned industrial heartland, a more appropriate pre-game show would have been an intimate meeting at the fifty-yard line between a Reagan-disguised tackling dummy and fearsome Steeler James Harrison. (The Black Eyed Peas at halftime, however, made me...

It started innocently enough, like many encounters with obscenity on the internet. I was just surfin’ away, minding my own business, looking for something I don’t even remember now on Google… when up popped something utterly profane. It was a search result with this intriguing line: Help me build a library of lefty kids books – Do you know any good left wing propoganda for toddlers? (I know, I know. This individual should master English before he hits the “propaganda” too hard… his spelling and punctuation skills leave a bit to be desired.) ANYWAY. Allow me to drag you over...

Liam Neeson has caused controversy by suggesting that Aslan, the Christlike character in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, could represent the prophet Mohammed or Buddha. The actor who voices the lion in the film adaptations of the books has angered some fans of the stories, who claim he is distorting Lewis’s intentions to be “politically correct”. Aslan the lion features in all seven Narnia books, guiding children away from evil and harm and encouraging them to do good. Lewis was clear that the Aslan was based on Christ, and once wrote of the character: “He is an invention giving an imaginary...

Mark Ritchie File 4 hereMinnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie is regarded as a "non-party friend" by the Communist Party USA. So highly does the Communist Party regard Mr. Ritchie, that he has been allowed to attend an high level "not to be publicized" Party meeting in Minneapolis. Some of the Communist Party members at this meeting, later supported Ritchie in his Secretary of State election campaigns. One of them, labor leader Mark Froemke, went on to support two of Ritchie's Democratic - Farmer - Labor - Party colleagues - Al Franken and Mark Dayton in their respective election campaigns....

The American political climate for achieving change is “very, very ugly,” according to Bruce Springsteen, as he launched a staunch defence of Barack Obama. "There's a widespread political consciousness that's perhaps deeper in Europe than it is in the States,” he told the Sunday Times magazine. “The climate [in America] is very, very ugly for getting things done. The moderate reforms President Obama fought to make are called Marxist, socialist. “I mean, the most extreme language is put into play to describe the most modest reforms that would move the economy back towards serving a majority of its citizens.” The...

Bush on bin Laden tape: ‘It sounded like he was plagiarizing Michael Moore’ By Alex Pappas--The Daily Caller 12:02 PM 11/09/2010 ADVERTISEMENT Former President George W. Bush in his new book compares the words of terrorist Osama bin Laden to those of liberal activist and filmmaker Michael Moore. Bush reflects in “Decision Points” that the October surprise of his 2004 presidential campaign against Sen. John Kerry was an Oct. 29 Osama bin Laden tape “mocking my response to 9/11 in the Florida classroom” — something Moore did in one film — as well as warning Americans of another terrorist attack....

Today, at a groundbreaking ceremony for subsidized housing to be run by Central Boston Elder Services, a non-profit organization funded mainly by state and Federal money, the proceedings were brought to a close by Abdullah Farooq, the louche imam of the louche Boston Mosque, the history of which includes such piquant details as the sale of city land, arranged by a Muslim member of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, at far below market prices, and the subsequent travels -- with city funds, apparently -- of that same BRA member to Saudi Arabia, to raise more money. He delivered a Muslim prayer,...

Unusual request: A senior American official has openly asked for Iranian cooperation in thwarting al-Qaeda terror plots. Daniel Benjamin, the counter-terrorism coordinator at the US State Department, charged that al-Qaeda's headquarters in Pakistan's Waziristan, close to the border with Afghanistan, is involved in plots to strike Europe. In an interview with the London-based Arab-language newspaper al-Hayat, he said that American officials are aware that al-Qaeda activists are passing through Iran.

I Came across a liberal article today that was steeped in total and utter ignorance "Top ten Reasons why liberals are better than conservatives." HAH! After two years of Obama and the Democrats, you must be blind not to see the fallacy of this statement. Add to this the trashing of our constitutional rights by Democrats for decades. With this in Mind, I decided to refute it with something of my own. Why Liberals are really WORSE than Conservatives. BTW, this guy claims to be centrist. He certainly is not. 10) Liberals prefer to be sensitive to the issues of...

Meghan McCain apparently thinks there will be a "bloodletting" in the GOP in the next election, because the party has no room for controversial socially liberal figures like her. Appearing on CNN's "American Morning" Thursday, McCain criticized the current state of the Republican Party, which she believes is too conservative and narrow-minded... (snip) When the subject of "RINOs" (Republican-In-Name-Only) surfaced, McCain asserted that conservative icons Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan "would both be called that today." In addition, McCain had dark predictions for the GOP in the "next election," predicting a party purge of sorts. (snip) CNN co-anchor Kiran Chetry...

Comedian Steve Colbert blustered his way through a four-minute speech about immigration reform in front of a House subcommittee. His message was, "Working on a farm is so hard that Americans don't want to do it, so immigration and labor laws should be reformed to allow illegal crop workers a clean path to citizenship."

Boy, I really hate it when American judges try to impose harsh Islamic sharia law. You know, with all those grisly lashings, stonings and beheadings. What's that you say? No such thing is happening, and you wonder where I got such a crazy idea? Why, Newt Gingrich told me. On Saturday, speaking at the conservative Values Voter Summit, Gingrich issued a thunderous call for action against an imminent threat that exists only in his fevered imagination -- or, perhaps, in his political machinations. "We should have a federal law that says sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in...

Sometime back in the eighties, 1984 I think it was, some genius at the Coca-Cola company thought it would be a good idea to re-brand the number one selling soft drink. Calling it “New Coke”, the disastrous marketing ploy lasted a hair longer than Cher’s marriage to Greg Allman.

Margaret Atwood is many things. She's a "National Treasure", and recipient of countless subsidies from the Canadian government, but she endorsed the separatist Bloc Quebecois in the last election. She natters on about the environment, but jet-sets like a rock-star. I'm guessing it's not coach class, either. She's a socialist millionaire. And she's the vice-president of International PEN, the writers free speech group, and a censor herself. Here's my story in the Sunday Sun newspapers. Atwood's free-speech flopCanadian author Margaret Atwood is a free-speech activist. She is the vice-president of International PEN, the advocacy group for imprisoned writers. As a...

9/11/10 Koran burning at Ground Zero captured on video.

by Fareed Zakaria September 04, 2010 Nine years after 9/11, can anyone doubt that Al Qaeda is simply not that deadly a threat? Since that gruesome day in 2001, once governments everywhere began serious countermeasures, Osama bin Laden’s terror network has been unable to launch a single major attack on high-value targets in the United States and Europe. While it has inspired a few much smaller attacks by local jihadis, it has been unable to execute a single one itself. Today, Al Qaeda’s best hope is to find a troubled young man who has been radicalized over the Internet, and...

The culture of America is always under siege. Countless new arrivals have transformed American culture over the generations. Muslims from places as diverse as Morocco, Albania and Malaysia will change American culture, too. Whoever follows them will change it again. The idea that a handful of Islamic radicals can destroy a nation of 300 million people protected by the world's largest military is absurd. But questions about the Muslim world and its intentions toward the United States deserve answers, and I don't mean the ignorant rants polluting cyberspace. Fortunately, we have Karen Armstrong, a former Roman Catholic nun and an...

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has arrived in Boston with an American held for seven months in North Korea. Aijalon Gomes, 31, who had crossed the border illegally on a one-man peace mission, flew from Pyongyang with Mr Carter, who had travelled to the North Korean capital three days earlier to negotiate the release. A plane carrying Mr Gomes and Mr Carter landed on Friday at Logan International Airport. Gomes appeared thin while walking off the plane. He hugged the former president and his mother before family and friends circled him. In a statement released earlier Friday, the family...

Self-styled environmental activist Jonathan Lee(age:13,) a Korean-American from Mississippi, visits N. Korea and had his picture taken with a N. Korean female soldier.

LOS ANGELES – Mexican-American actor Richard Anthony "Cheech" Marin is slamming the Arizona immigration law as little more than an attempt to hold on to “white culture.” “It’s ridiculous; it’s the last gasp of white culture,” he told Pop Tarts at the Los Angeles launch last week of Disney Pixar's online "World of Cars." “Reactionaries and Congress (are to blame) only because they think that's the way of getting votes. We'll stir up the rabble! If you take the Mexicans out of Arizona, Arizona is going to collapse the next day.” But it’s not only the immigration law with which...

For the last week or so, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart has presented relentless coverage of the Ground Zero Mosque issue. All of the coverage was in favor of the Mosque. Comedy Central are even pleadingly presenting the Muslim generated straw-man arguments. CC insists that it is not a mosque, it is a 'cultural center' (yeah right) and Muslims are good honest people and only Al Quiada is bad. We know that the Left uses, so called, 'comedy', to say what they really believe and to attack people personally in the most vulgar way possible. The Daily Show is...

Is it "the economy, stupid" or is it just that the economy makes people stupid? Either way Matt Yglesias, ThinkProgress.org blogger extraordinaire, believes the economy is what's driving conservative furor over the "Ground Zero Mosque." On MSNBC's August 9 broadcast of "Countdown," Yglesias did his best to psychoanalyze people that are upset a mosque is being built in the shadow of Ground Zero, where over 2,600 people died in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. According to Yglesias, whose blog, ThinkProgress.org, is a function the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, opposition to the plan had nothing to do with sensitivities...

Mayor Bloomberg said he doesn't know where the planners of the proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero will get the money to build -- and he doesn't care. "People say, well, you know, 'Do they have the money? Can they raise the money? Where does it come from?' " the mayor said Friday on his WOR-AM radio show with John Gambling. "I don't know, and government shouldn't -- do you really want every time they pass the basket in your church and you throw a buck in, they run over and say, 'Okay, now, you know, where...

Howard Zinn (1922 to 2010) is the left's favorite contemporary historian. As an historian he is a child of the Beardian revolution yet he has for decades been able to straddle that line between legitimate historical observer and anti-American leftist. America's intellectual society, in both the social movement and universities, have looked to him as a paragon of American virtue. He's always been held up as just the right mixture of American leftism coupled with true scholarship. But those of us on the right that have paid attention understand that he is not American in outlook and never was. Until...

Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat, appears to think security on our borders is not an important issue. The Golden Gate Minutemen posted video of an exchange during a recent town hall meeting on June 26 in Fremont, where the congressman asked a border security advocate in attendance, "Who are you going to kill today?" Mr. Stark continued to heckle and mock the town hall attendees who reacted in disbelief as the congressman disrespected his own constituents. (all emphasis is mine) Mr. Stark made such outrageous statements like: "If you knew anything about our border, you would know that's not the...

Sergio "El Shaka" Vega, a Mexican musician famous for his songs about drug barons, was murdered Saturday night while driving in his red Cadillac to a concert in Sinaloa state in northwest Mexico. Only hours before the attack, the 40-year-old Mexican singer had publicly denied rumors that he had been murdered, reports the BBC. "It's happened to me for years now, someone tells a radio station or a newspaper I've been killed, or suffered an accident," Mr Vega told entertainment website La Oreja according to the BBC. ...the musician was gunned down by unknown men who were following him while...

Did you know that deep down inside (when he’s not silencing his opposition, supporting the FARC, sponsoring drug trafficking, and courting Hezbollah and almost every other enemy of the West) Hugo Chavez is a good, admirable man? Yup, he is—according to Leftist filmmaker Oliver Stone. The filmmaker, along with the upcoming release of his “Wall Street” sequel, has a new documentary called “South of the Border” that praises Chavez, Castro, their allies, and highlights other South American leaders. But, apparently the Venezuelan people aren’t as hot on the near-dictator as Stone is: The documentary is bombing in the country. Personally,...

I love the World Cup. And I love America — it’s my hometown! But I would not love to see America win the World Cup. Frankly, we don’t need another feather in our already overstuffed cap. And considering soccer is the world’s game — and most of the world is at odds with America at any given moment — I think it might be a nice idea for Uncle Sam, in an effort to promote world harmony, to lie down in South Africa. Now, in all likelihood, the U.S. is not going to be in a position to win...