Free Republic

Yesterday at the White House, Paul McCartney received the Library of Congress Gershwin Award for Popular Music and performed in the East Room. During his acceptance speech, Mr. McCartney managed to throw in a dig and slander former president George W. Bush. McCartney stated, "After the last eight years, it's great to have a president who knows what a library is." Who is this foreign reprobate to come to our country and slander one of our ex-presidents! This act is the height of arrogance and disrespect. It is quite remarkable that Mr. McCartney was surrounded by the Music Industry’s finest...

Boy, did I open a can of worms today at the press conference for "Rescue Me," the great Denis Leary comedy. It's back (soon) for a fifth season, and in watching the second episode I noticed the show drifting back to the 9/11 memories theme it explored at length in the first season. So I grabbed a microphone and pursued that questioning with the producers, and I asked a couple of the actors to chime in as well. One person I asked was Daniel Sunjata, who plays Franco on "Rescue Me." I asked him because there is this fascinating, where-did-THIS-come-from...

One of the oldest phenomena of American elections — criticism of one's opponent — has in recent times been stigmatized by much of the media as "negative advertising." Is this because the criticism has gotten more vicious or more personal? You might think so, if you were totally ignorant of history, as so many graduates of even our elite universities are. Although Grover Cleveland was elected president twice, he had to overcome a major scandal that he had fathered a child out of wedlock, which was considered more of a disgrace then than today. Even giants such as Lincoln and...

Barack Obama attended Occidental College from fall 1979 through spring 1981 and then transferred to Columbia University in New York. He is not a graduate of Occidental, however, the Occidental College bylaws state that anyone who completes at least eight courses of undergraduate work (or a year of graduate studies) is eligible for alumni status. Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations protect the privacy of student education records. We, therefore, cannot disclose students’ classes, grade point averages, majors or other such information.   Neither Obama’s image nor name appear in any Occidental yearbooks or weekly student newspaper for the...

Muhammad Sven Kalisch is an Islamic researcher at the University of Münster. He is also the first person in Germany to hold a Chair of Islamic Religion. Kalisch's recent public admission that he is unsure whether the Prophet Muhammad was actually a historical person has got him into hot water. The plan to train teachers to teach Islamic religious education at German schools has suffered a major setback in recent days. The Co-ordination Council of Muslims in Germany (KRM), to which the four largest Muslim organisations in Germany belong, has discontinued its co-operation with the Centre for Religious Studies at...