Free Republic

"Just 90 miles from here in 1619, the first indentured servants from Africa landed on our shores in Ole Point Comfort," Northam said Embattled Virginia Governor, Ralph Northam (D-VA), referred to people that came to America as slaves from Africa as “indentured servants from Africa” during an interview with CBS News’ Gayle King on Sunday. Northam sat down with King for his first interview since the Virginian-Pilot published a photo from Northam’s medical school yearbook showing “two men, one in blackface and one in a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood, on the same page as the governor.” King asked...

There's one huge takeaway from Tuesday's primaries results: Ted Cruz overperformed in a state where conventional wisdom says he shouldn't have had a chance, namely Michigan. His overperformance - edging out John Kasich for second place, in a state where Kasich should naturally be stronger - is way more significant looking forward than his once-again second place finish in Mississippi, which is another of those southern states that Cruz's campaign based their dubious "evangelicals who don't vote because no one is conservative enough" strategy upon. Of the "not Trumps" still standing, Senator Cruz is closer to what I'd like to...

Iowa caucuses are dominated by religious social conservatives who go nowhere in New Hampshire. That means a Trump victory against polls will be all the more dramatic. He gets to frame his victory as the people vs. the dishonest media/establishment and their BS polls. The media will go unhinged and into pandemonium. If he wins Iowa, there is no stopping Trump. He rolls into NH, South Carolina, SEC. Game Over. He wins. Keeping expectations in check for Trump in Iowa is to his advantage. It also takes A LOT OF HEAT off of Trump. With being the front runner, Cruz...

“When also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers; and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which He had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger...they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths." Judges 2:10-13 In his book “New Evangelicalism: the New World Order,” Paul Smith,...

No matter the reluctance of neo-conservatives to engage in this type of egotism, the fact remains that there does exist a movement of intellectuals who share similar commitments to a strong national defense and a recoupling of politics with traditional morality. And, for better or for worse, the world knows this movement as neo-conservatism. But what the world generally fails to recognize is that this philosophy has made the neo-conservatives, the only real moderates in American politics and political philosophy, the eternal purveyors of centrist common sense.

Scientists find a fingerprint of evolution across the human genome The Human Genome Project revealed that only a small fraction of the 3 billion “letter” DNA code actually instructs cells to manufacture proteins, the workhorses of most life processes. This has raised the question of what the remaining part of the human genome does. How much of the rest performs other biological functions, and how much is merely residue of prior genetic events? Scientists from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and the University of Chicago now report that one of the steps in turning genetic information into proteins leaves genetic...

Dresden vs. Auschwitz By Aviva Lori In February 2005, Dr. Gilad Margalit visited Dresden. The winter of 2005 was cold, but at the events marking the 60th anniversary of the Allied bombing of the city it was hot. Very hot. About 5,000 neo-Nazis descended on Dresden from all over Germany and from throughout Europe for the big demonstration on February 13, a Sunday. It was a colorful, violent demonstration that sought to carve out territory in the streets and especially in the national consciousness. The massive physical presence of the demonstrators only heightened the growing recognition in Germany in recent...

Our columnist, who has opted to have a termination since the birth of her two children, argues that it is a moral duty not to bring unwanted offspring into the world: On Wednesday, More4 broadcast Travels with My Camera — A Matter of Life and Death, a “personal journey” by the journalist Miranda Sawyer. This was heralded by a piece in The Observer, written by Sawyer, explaining the purpose of her quest. Sawyer’s dilemma has been that, until recently, she had been a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying, pro-choice feminist. After the birth of her son last year, however, she began to have...

George W. Bush on Immigration President of the United States, Former Republican Governor (TX) Our economy could not function without the immigrants We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy, even though this economy could not function without them. All these are forms of economic retreat, and they lead in the same direction, toward a stagnant and second-rate economy. Source: 2006 State of the Union Address Jan 31, 2006 Support a humane guest-worker program that rejects amnesty Keeping America competitive requires an immigration system that upholds our laws, reflects our values and serves the interests of our...

Relatively few people are aware that during the Civil War, Confederate leaders put forth a proposal to arm slaves to fight against the Union in exchange for their freedom. In his new book Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2006), UCSC history professor Bruce Levine examines the circumstances that led to this startling and provocative piece of American history. In the process, he sheds new light on a little-known but significant story of slavery, freedom, and race during the Civil War. The idea for the book came to Levine in...

Harriet Miers will be confirmed. As the reality of the Miers nomination and the near-inevitability of her confirmation sinks in, we are left only to look for positive signs that she will pleasantly surprise us. What else is there to do? I am done complaining. (God knows, I have done my share of complaining.) That said, I have a working theory that Miers may turn out to be a reliable conservative vote on the Supreme Court.My reasoning goes like this:The Three Most Critical Considerations 1. President Bush has consistently nominated top-notch conservatives to various benches. His track record is very...

I suspect that President Bush was shocked to find such an uprising against his choice for a Supreme Court nominee. Why? Because it is coming not from the Liberal Left, but rather from his own base. Even George Will ran an opposition piece against Harriet Miers. Conservatives have complained, in the past, about the elitists in the Democrat party as being the most liberal group and seemingly in a consistent state of launching snob attacks at everything this “cowboy” (as they call him) does. I think that the Conservative-Republican cause also has its own share of these elitists, those who...

There is no question about Miers good character and temperament to be a judge. There is a question as to whether Miers is sufficiently smart and knowledgeable about Constitutional issues to be qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. That is why I am undecided. The above concern is not however really a conservative versus liberal issue. Assuming Miers does well at the hearings as to matters of her basic competence, on what basis would “conservative” pressure groups of senators oppose Miers? That she does not have a paper trail? That they are not sufficiently confident that she will vote...

Since I’m sure there are still many conservatives out there who are still upset and whining about Bush not nominating who they wanted, I’m wondering. Do you wish Bush had nominated who you wanted, even if it meant them not being confirmed and Bush being forced to pick a milk toast? I don’t think anyone can argue about the fact that the Republican majority in the Senate haven’t exactly acted with a spine or any kind of united strong conservative voice the four years they’ve been a majority. And it seems the larger their majority gets, the more its spine...

To hear the howls from conservative commentators following President Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers, you would think that Bush just sold a seat on the Supreme Court to someone who’s a cross between Ann Richards and Barney the White House pet. Half the critics aren’t certain that Ms. Miers shares their views or will vote the way they want on key issues. The other half complain that Ms. Miers has no qualifications to be on the Court, having been neither a judge nor a scholar. All of the critics assume that it is more important that their preferences for appointment...

MIERS' EXPERIENCE [Jonah Goldberg] I get a lot of email making this point, which I think is fair as far as it goes: I did a quick review of the bios of the current Justices. If you leave out the departing O’Connor, the only Justice with any significant private practice experience left on the Court is Kennedy, at about 14 years. Souter and Scalia had a handful of years right out of law school; believe me when I tell you that doesn’t count. Thomas had a couple of years in-house at Monsanto between government positions. Roberts had 10 years at...

In the blue corner were the Democrats. Utterly bereft of issues, the old guard of the party had been usurped by the likes of Michael Moore, Geroge Soros, Cindy Sheehan and Howard Dean. All they could do was whine and complain, their every move contributing further to a reputation of stagnation, false posturing and utter wuss-hood. In the red corner were the Republicans. They didn’t look as fit as they had a few years previous, a visible paunch and a few bruises were evident, but for the most part the oddsmakers bet 100 to 1 that the right cross would...

“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” --Matthew 5:5 And so they have. A quiet public servant, who has toiled for years in veritable obscurity, immediately calls her pastor and asks him to pray for her. An unassuming Texas lady, who for years went unnoticed and didn’t make anybody’s short or long list, is stepping into the biggest limelight America can offer a legal mind, the Supreme Court. Her name is Harriet Miers and people like Rush Limbaugh are fuming. The conservative right feels let down. Betrayed!! They are suicidal, depressed, disappointed and “demoralized”. In short, they...

Why Filibusters Should Be Allowed By George F. Will Sunday, March 20, 2005; Page B07 With Republicans inclined to change Senate rules to make filibusters of judicial nominees impossible, Democrats have recklessly given Republicans an additional incentive to do so. It is a redundant incentive, because Republicans think -- mistakenly -- that they have sufficient constitutional reasons for doing so.

My teammate X was sprawled on the hotel bed, muttering "Why? Why?" as he contemplated the failure of his legal genius. X was the smartest member of my law school's moot court team. He wasn't the finest of public speakers and his legal writing style wasn't textbook perfect, but who could question his monumental intellect? He won the award for highest first-year GPA. He read abstruse law and philosophy journals for fun. He debated with professors after class, exercising a subject mastery that left onlookers slack-jawed. And when he proudly announced to his moot court teammates that he had found...