Free Republic

African-American law professors and critical race theorists are urging the United Nations to order America to pay millions of dollars to each black citizen, reports the London Daily Mail. That would cost America over $200 trillion, many times the size of its economy. Some left-wing legal scholars claim reparations are required by international human-rights treaties signed by the U.S. or by customary international law. Their effort reflects the reality that reparations are very unpopular among American taxpayers, so there is little chance that the federal government will pay reparations, unless it is ordered to do so by the UN. 63...

ormer Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that the nation needs to move past celebrity candidates for president. Host Shannon Bream asked, “Would a President Pompeo do a better job at managing the defect and debt than President Trump did?” Pompeo said, “I think a President Pompeo or any conservative president will do better than not only we did during the four years of the Trump administration, but Barack Obama, George Bush. The list is long, Shannon, of folks who come to Washington on one theory and, aren’t prepared to stand up...

GENEVA—This week, a panel of Bible scholars issued a joint statement clarifying that the Mark of the Beast is actually “$6.66”—the price of gas at the end of latter days. “Deeper study has revealed that we were misreading this passage—it’s not 666 or 616, it’s $6.66 for your basic Unleaded Petroleum Gasoline!” French Bible scholar Pierre LeGault spoke for the panel of academics that had gathered at Geneva to redress and correct the historic interpretation of the mysterious number in Revelation 13. “Numerology is tough and we’ll be the first to admit we botched this one—but we’re here to make...

s Trump won primary after primary in 2016, a rattled John Brennan started claiming to colleagues at the CIA that Estonia’s intelligence agency had alerted him to an intercepted phone call suggesting Putin was pouring money into the Trump campaign. The tip was bogus, but Brennan bit on it with opportunistic relish. Out of Brennan’s alarmist chatter about the bogus tip came an extraordinary leak to the BBC: that Brennan had used it, along with later half-baked tips from British intelligence, as the justification to form a multi-agency spy operation (given the Orwellian designation of an “inter-agency taskforce”) on the...

SCHOLARS SUPPORTING THE POLICIES OF DONALD J. TRUMP FOR RENEWING AMERICA Dear Michael Matt, We are sending the following Appeal and Petition to you, with the hope that you might give it some additional publicity as soon as practical. As you will see, it is a plea for scholars and writers and academics to join us in pledging their support for the agenda advocated by presidential candidate Donald J.  Trump. Among the signatories are a number of traditional Catholic academics, and we hope to enlist additional names. We believe the viciously anti-Catholic positions of Hillary Clinton and her program to...

Here's one of the reasons we do what we do. Even when the remaining journalists on the education beat bend over backwards to cover a story fairly, they still wind up giving it the educational establishment spin. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently covered the conservative scholar program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Writer Courtney Kueppers took note of the program’s success. Nevertheless, she claimed, "There simply aren't enough qualified conservatives in higher education for more colleges to try a program like Colorado's." She follows this assertion with a quote from one of the scholars, Steve Hayward, that...

Heavy hitters in U.S. media joined prominent First Amendment scholars to file two amicus briefs challenging last summer’s jury verdict that favored former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura in his defamation trial in St. Paul. The friend-of-the-court media brief, filed with the 8th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals, characterizes the $1.3 million jury award to Ventura as unprecedented, with no basis in common law. The scholars’ filing faults U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle’s instructions to the jury. The briefs support Taya Kyle, widow of Chris Kyle, author of the best-selling memoir “American Sniper.” Ventura’s lawyers convinced the jury in a 10-2...

. . . . For centuries, the English have been taught that the late medieval Church was superstitious, corrupt, exploitative, and alien. Above all, we were told that King Henry VIII and the people of England despised its popish flummery and primitive rites. England was fed up to the back teeth with the ignorant mumbo-jumbo magicians of the foreign Church, and up and down the country Tudor people preferred plain-speaking, rational men like Wycliffe, Luther, and Calvin. Henry VIII achieved what all sane English and Welsh people had long desired ­– an excuse to break away from an anachronistic subjugation...

Islamic scholars and clerics were divided Monday over whether it was appropriate for American forces to bury Osama bin Laden at sea, a decision that added an ambiguous coda to a life that had been clouded in ambiguity and secrecy over the past decade. Bin Laden, who left a legacy of death and destruction upon sites around the world, has no final burial place. American officials on Monday stressed that the sea burial was arranged according to Islamic custom, but some clerics objected that Bin Laden should have been buried on land in a simple grave.

A recent article in The Times described the fears in France of a brain drain to the United States, as top French scholars move to American universities to teach and do research. A study by the Institut Montaigne found that academics constitute a much larger percentage of French émigrés to the United States today than 30 years ago..Why would France's leading scholars and researchers want to leave a place that reveres intellectuals? More money, more freedom, more competitive energy -- what really drives the global academic marketplace? Brain drains to U.S. universities are nothing new. The globalization of universities means...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — If Andy Schlafly has his way, there will be no socialists or snake handlers in the Bible. No woman caught in adultery. And, definitely, no Stephen Colbert. Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia.com, wants to save the Scriptures from liberals with his latest venture, the Conservative Bible Project. He says translations like the New International Version have added socialist ideals to the Good Book. But his rewrite of the Bible has drawn criticism from biblical scholars, liberals and conservatives.

Vatican City, Nov 6, 2008 / 02:38 pm (CNA).- At the conclusion of the Catholic-Muslim Forum which took place at the Vatican, the participants issued a joint statement underscoring, among other themes, the importance of the defense of life as a gift from God to each person, religious freedom and the promotion of common moral values.The text states that Christians and Muslims believe that “human life is a very precious gift from God for each person, and therefore it should be preserved and honored in all of its stages.”After noting that the dignity of the person lies in having...

Archaeologists, scholars dispute Jesus documentary POSTED: 2151 GMT (0551 HKT), February 26, 2007Filmakers and researchers claim these stone boxes may have once contained the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. JERUSALEM (AP) -- Filmmakers and researchers on Monday unveiled two ancient stone boxes they said may have once contained the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but several scholars derided the claims made in a new documentary as unfounded and contradictory to basic Christian beliefs. "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," produced by Oscar-winning director James Cameron and scheduled to air March 4 on the Discovery Channel, argues that 10 small...

I. For nearly 50 years, worries about a nuclear Middle East centered on Israel. Arab leaders resented the fact that Israel was the only atomic power in the region, a resentment heightened by America’s tacit approval of the situation. But they were also pretty certain that Israel (which has never explicitly acknowledged having nuclear weapons) would not drop the bomb except as a very last resort. That is why Egypt and Syria were unafraid to attack Israel during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. “Israel will not be the first country in the region to use nuclear weapons,” went the...

Stories about the controversy over the Pope’s remarks on Islam have featured the views of Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, who has a regular show on the Al-Jazeera television network. Demanding a personal apology from the Pope, Qaradawi declared on Al-Jazeera that “Muslims have the right to be angry and hurt by these comments from the highest cleric in Christianity.” Yet, Qaradawi, a supporter of violent Jihad, is living proof of what the Pope was warning about. Tracy Wilkinson of the Los Angeles Times said that Qaradawi’s broadcasts on the Arabic TV network, which now wants to expand into the U.S. through...

As one of Stanford University's most respected Middle East scholars, professor Joel Beinin knows what terrorism looks like. So it was a shock when he saw his own face on the cover of a new book titled ``Campus Support for Terrorism,'' linking him to radical Islam. He's suing the book's publishers in what is the first counteroffensive by a professor against a growing campaign by conservative groups targeting left-leaning college educators. Conservative groups acknowledge they are watching scholars like Beinin in an effort to combat what they believe are inaccuracies perpetuated by liberal faculties on college campuses. But while many...

Scholars unearth mysteryVilla of Roman emperor raises new questions for researchers on dig in Italy Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius is depicted on a coin. Print By Jim Erickson Rocky Mountain News February 13, 2006 In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon portrays the pagan emperor Maxentius as a licentious youth and "a tyrant as contemptible as he was odious." Historians have long assumed that the reviled Roman emperor lived part-time at an 80-acre suburban villa complex until he was killed by his rival Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in A.D. 312....

Concern is mounting that the US government is using antiterror laws - namely, the Patriot Act - to revive a now-discredited practice common during the cold war: the prevention of foreign intellectuals who are critical of administration policies from entering the country and sharing their views with Americans. The practice, called ideological exclusion, became illegal in 1990. But a recent lawsuit - brought by the American Association of University Professors, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the PEN American Center under the Freedom of Information Act - is asking the Bush administration to explain its decisions to revoke or deny...

For 23 years, the Socialist Scholars Conference was a big tent under which leftist activists and academics took shelter in an increasingly conservative America. Last June, however, seven of the group's 16 board members resigned, "in protest of the lack of democratic and participatory governance procedures." As a result of the split, the group's annual conference has been canceled, at least for this year. Meanwhile, the seven who quit the board quickly formed a new organization, the 2005 Left Forum, which has scheduled its debut conference for this weekend at the CUNY Graduate Center in Midtown Manhattan. The new group...

In 2000, Michael Bellesiles published what the nation took to be a groundbreaking work of history. His book, Arming America, argued that Revolutionary Americans disdained gun ownership. He said the idea that individuals had a right to bear arms came from a myth created in the post Civil War era in order to justify the new boom in gun ownership. The book was an instant hit. Walter Wink of Christian Century flatly stated that the book "debunks this myth [of widespread gun ownership]" (March 21, 2001). In Insight on the News, Phillip Gold called it "a brilliant history with unintended...