Free Republic

Every day, the blue star banner hangs in the window, the yellow ribbon is draped across the front porch light, and the Flag waves in the prairie wind. But the one for whom the Flag waves cannot see it; she is fighting in Iraq. I suppose one could say it is an exercise in futility - after all, if she cannot see it, why should the homefront be dressed as if every day is Veteran's Day? Perhaps it is because I am filled with the knowledge of her mission, and want the world to know I support it. Or perhaps...

Terri Schiavo is about to go without food and water, so those of us who have pledged to go on Hunger Strike are going to go without food and water as well. In order to demonstrate and protest the real nature of Terri's death, we are going to simulate her conditions in ourselves, and blog the whole thing. We're going to bring it out into the light, and make the world watch us go without. I'm a woman, about Terri Schiavo's age. I have the same organs, the same type of body. I have the same nervous system. I'm going...

A set of ancient medical books rests on a redwood shelf in a corner: they belonged to my Grandfather, at the turn of the last century. Upon opening them, one finds the hopes and dreams of human beings committed to ending the suffering of the sick and disabled - not by killing them, but by healing them. Through all the books, like a golden thread, is the unbreakable, unshakeable ideal that Life is to be chosen over Death... Now, lay down the books, and pick up the newspaper. Read the new order, the new way of doing Medicine - the...

Yesterday, just as the dawn of Democracy was breaking in Iraq, I visited the grave of PFC Stephen Wyatt. He lies peacefully by his mother in an East Texas meadow, embraced by pine trees and the rolling green hills; there is only quiet and healing there. His epitaph is simple, befitting a soldier so young, and it echoed the poignancy of his life - the date of a nineteen-year-old soldier's death in Iraq. A little red, white and blue plaque had been recently left nestled at the base of his headstone, and new flowers graced an urn next to his...

Somewhere, in the arms of a starry winter night, a little 9-year-old boy is resting. His mind is filled with the new and wonderful, led on to things he has always wanted to see, things that were always just beyond the fence. But behind him, just on the other side of the adventure, people are searching, praying, looking for him. For out in the wonderment, beneath the stars, Logan Mitcheltree is missing. The runners and the dreamers never understand what it is that makes us fear so for them; they only know that the world is a marvelous, moving...

Get ready for a real trip down memory lane - no, not the an LSD trip, we mean a nostalgia trip for the old days and the old folks kind. Ah! Nothing reminds one of people stuck in the sixties like the smell of patchouli and three-day body odor, and that smell will be present at George W. Bush's second Presidential Inauguration. These wizened weedwhiffers will once again crawl out of their Vanagons and totter to protest publicly for whatever reason they are hallucinating about this time - in this case, to turn their back on the President at the...

It's a great question: why don't we have enough armor? Kind of like it's great to see a contestant win a lot of money on a game show - but it's a LOT better when it's not manufactured. Fixed. Staged. Chroreographed. Whatever you want to call it, the news is always better when the reporter doesn't insert himself into the mix, as Edward Pitts has supposedly done. According to Drudge: From: EDWARD LEE PITTS, MILITARY AFFAIRS Sent: Wednesday, December 8, 2004 4:44 PM To: Staffers Subject: RE: Way to go I just had one of my best days as a...

The Groningen Protocol has left little doubt - there are those humans whose lives are so worthless they are deemed disposable. These useless, undesirable babies are better off dead because their doctors say they must be culled from our midst. Defective babies must be killed when their parents want them killed - and sometimes even when they don't want them to be killed: Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for...

After two weeks of watching the Left melt down, I have come to one conclusion: My head hurts. They no longer make sense in any liberal sense. I remember liberals; we called them "hippies". They still exist in some parts of the country - ambling, gentle dinosaurs who believed in openness, tolerance, equality, spending money, and a little free love. The voices I've heard coming from the left this week sound nothing like liberals "hippies" - they sound more like SpaceGhost's Brak screaming incomprehensibly to "Metalhead". The only difference is, Brak actually has some joy in his caterwauling, and the...

The Old Media does not understand why it cannot reach it's "audience" - they are continuously amazed at their falling numbers, and they do not understand why they are losing credibility and followers at an alarming rate. But in the story of Kevin Sites, the reporter who filmed - and condemned - a Marine shooting an insurgent in a Mosque, we find the answers illustrated vividly. It is a cautionary tale of writers and reporters whose only "audience" is themselves... In Kevin Sites' Blog, we find accounts of war, stories of Marines at rest, and the subtle undercurrent of identification...

Thanks be for Al-Jazeerah, who leads us from the darkness of our hypocrisy and into the light of Holy Journalism! Yea, verily, without them NBC, ABC, and CBS would have no ethical equal... Al-Jazeera - and their minions, the American News Networks - will not air the slaughter and dismemberment of their Holy Insurgency's female hostage. They will not show the hours and hours of footage of torture and beheadings left behind by their Holy Rebels. They will not interview the emaciated surviving hostages, left beaten and in chains. That blood is offered freely, by their own agents, and so...

Indeed, another election has come and gone; the winner has once again been declared "Republican" and the loser has been declared "Democrat". Now is traditionally the time for the Right and the Left to come together, presumably out of mutual love for America. We on the Right have reached out in the past in an attempt to shore up the sagging walls of our venerable two-party system, viewing it as necessary to the Republic. And so it is with deepest feeling that I reach out to the Democratic Left and say: You Bastards. It was not enough that you blamed...

So the Guardian claims that that the final sentence of Charlie Brooker's "Assassination Column" was an "ironic joke". What. Absolute. ROT. Irony isn't irony when there is no counterpoint; there isn't any counterpoint even remotely made in this spittle-flecked screed. It's all rant and wretch: the words are not so much typed as vomited. To review: The Guardian UK: Charlie Brooker Saturday October 23, 2004 "On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four...

When John Kerry went out to kill innocent geese today, he managed to stay incredibly clean. He's not just "clean" - he's KERRY KLEAN! Now, I'm all for cleanliness. But have you noticed that John Kerry, in the middle of a muddy field, has absolutely NO MUD ANYWHERE on his body? Not even the tops of his shoes? Not even on his hands. His soft, soft hands... Now, let's compare Kerry's outfit to the outfit of his manservant beside him... notice that weird clay-colored substance on Jeeves' knees? Just above his shoes? On his shoes? On his coat? That's MUD....

If the name of a "Big Money" Political Party Donor with ties to Enron were discovered on the Saddam's Coalition of the Bribed, what do you think would happen to the Candidate of that party? What if that Candidate of that Party was John Kerry? Newsweek drops a bombshell on the Kerry Campaign: Texas Oil Baron and Big-Time Democrat Donor Oscar Wyatt has received perhaps as much a $22 million dollars in profits through oil allocations bought illicity from Saddam Hussein. From MSNBC: United Nations: Oil-for-Food Fiasco?"Law-enforcement sources say Americans who participated in alleged oil-for-food scams also may face further...

What is the biggest threat to the United States? According to John Kerry, it's not terrorism, but nuclear proliferation - and not just foreign weapons programs. He means OUR nuclear weapons programs... DEBATE TRANSCRIPTLEHRER: If you are elected president, what will you take to that office thinking is the single most serious threat to the national security to the United States? KERRY: ...Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense. You talk about mixed messages. We're telling...

I light the candles, as I have all the nights before, setting the stage - the pink night-shirt, the furry slippers, the rose-scented ungent with which I anoint my fingers. I loosen my waist-length hair from its clasp and approach the keyboard with anticipation. Who will it be tonight? Bush? Cheney? Kerry? Edwards? They all present delights, but it's not so much the man as the act of campaigning itself that thrills me so. Memories of Reagan suddenly stir - ahh, that brings a jaded tear. How innocent that first fling seems - The bedroom door bursts open; my husband,...

Tonight, there is a picture on the mantle - and no one will ever take it down. If. in some distant time another asks "What was it he did? Why did he die?", someone will take the picture in their hands and hold it, as if to bring him back from the arms of death. Then they will speak him again into life... "What was it he did? Why did he die?" If I could see what he saw with his eyes that day, I might know what it was he saw with such beauty. I only know that he...

It is clear - what the John Kerry and the Democrats are doing is NOT patriotism, it's treasonous MURDER. Why are we so hesitant to say this? Why are we apologetic when we should be outraged? Ralph Peters of illuminates this brilliantly in his New York Post editorial: ----- DEAD SOLDIERS"September 23, 2004 -- Taking comfort from Kerry: Celebrating in Baghdad under the black flag of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi's group around a burning U.S. tank. AFP IMAGINE if, in the presidential election of 1944, the candidate opposing FDR had insisted that we were losing the Second World War and that,...

Once again, CBS continues to carry water for the Kerry Campaign - even going so far as to "partner" with a Soros-funded 527 designed to push polls for John Kerry. MTV's "CHOOSE OR LOSE" - ROCK THE VOTE 2004 - Poll Gives Kerry Big Lead Among Voters Under 30 09.21.2004 11:53 AM EDT Younger voters think the country is heading in the wrong direction and that President Bush does not share their priorities, but they like Bush personally and are unsure about John Kerry. Overall, Kerry has a substantial lead among voters under thirty, a reversal of the Bush's nine-point...