Free Republic

A Trip Down Memory Lane 31 March 2010 Not too long ago, taking to the streets to protest your government was considered a patriotic act.It’s true!But it seems that publicly airing your grievances stopped being patriotic right around noon on January 20th, 2009.Once President Obama was sworn in, protesting became incitement to violence.If you’ve opened up a newspaper or watched a cable news program in the past week or so, you’ve probably seen members of the media painting Tea Party activists as dangerous bigots. That’s because disagreeing with President Obama on issues like government spending and high taxes makes...

When confronted with acts of stunning atrocity, such as the attacks of September 11th, the Madrid train bombings, the two attacks in Bali, or the synchronized bombings in the London underground, many navel-gazing Westerners are prompted to ask, "Why do they hate us?" Although there's something off-putting about the implicit blame-the-victim mentality in a question like that, it nonetheless is a legitimate question to ask. Some people ask that question rhetorically: to them, the answer to "Why do they hate us?" always leads one place: it's our fault. To these people, any horrific act anywhere in the world is a...

Meet the Right-Wing Michael Moore By Damian Thompson The Daily Telegraph 13 August 2005 Evan Coyne Maloney - Colgate smile, V-necked T-shirt, hint of gel in his hair - could have jumped out of a Gap poster. He's sitting in the Starbucks at a bookshop in Union Square, Manhattan, typing nonchalantly into his laptop. At 32, he is just old enough to have burnt his fingers on a dotcom, but he still exudes optimism. "Very cool to meet you," he says.

President Bush's re-election left some Americans distraught and depressed. And with Inauguration Day set to rub salt in those still-healing wounds, I decided to act in the interest of national unity and extend an olive branch across the great Red/Blue divide. The election may not have gone the way the Inaugural protesters wanted, but at least I could make sure they didn't leave Washington empty-handed; thanks to the folks at HeroBuilders.com, I had some nice consolation prizes to give away. Would my overtures of peace be rebuffed? Can simple kindness stave off the revolution that some disgrunted Democrats predict?

United Press International recently reported the discovery of documents from Saddam Hussein's oil ministry that show the Iraqi dictator "used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq." And according to ABC News, allies of Saddam Hussein profited by pocketing the difference between the price of oil under the U.N.'s "Oil for Food" program and the price of oil on the open market. Some of these allies included "a close political associate and financial backer of French President Jacques Chirac", "Russian political figures" including "the Russian ambassador to Baghdad" and "officials in the office...