Free Republic

Toxic ideologies often start around family dinner tables. It's not just an uncle saying a racist joke, or a grandmother determining her xenophobic ideas as “a part of her time.” These comments seep into how we make decisions in voting booths, how judges rule in their chambers, how teachers guide students in school classrooms, how employment decisions are made, and how police react in high-stakes situations. After a year of relentless atrocities that don’t always make for easy conversation at the dinner table, it's important to make Thanksgiving preparations beyond the tablescape and the menu. This year, I want you...

Do you see the Pilgrims as folksy people in funny hats? The true story of the Pilgrims’ great journey to America was one of courageous faith, daring escape, and tenuous survival. Theirs is the story of refugees who fled intense religious persecution. Bible Gateway interviewed Jay Milbrandt (@JayMilbrandt) about his book, They Came for Freedom: The Forgotten, Epic Adventure of the Pilgrims (Thomas Nelson, 2017).As a lawyer and historian, how have you joined those two elements in writing this book?Jay Milbrandt: A lawyer is a storyteller. It’s our job to understand and explain the facts. I see my role as...

Thanksgiving Day is approaching and we are spending the day at our son's house with his family. Our other son and his family will be there as well. Usually I bring the wine, some whites for the Ladies and Reds, for us. For the red I usually bring a merlot based Bordeaux from my modest collection. Problem this year: Included in the festivities will be my sons father-in-law, a very likable guy and we get along great. The issue is, he prefers his Red, with a couple of ice cubes in it. I cringe at the thought of ice going...

does anyone have a nondairy, low carb thanksgiving dish or casserole recipe?

Recently, the Lee Valley gardening newsletter featured a great Turkey Pot Pie recipe, to make delicious use of your leftovers: http://www.leevalley.com/us/newsletters/Gardening/3091/Article2.htm*************************************************** Freeper 'Nopardons' shared with me her recipe for Cranberry Sauce; the additions of liqueur and walnuts make an elegant and interesting twist. (I think that NP still says ‘ice box’ when referring to ‘refrigerator’, just as I do :-) Cranberry Sauce Chez Nopardons 1 package of Ocean Spray cranberries, rinsed and picked-over 1 cup granulated sugar 1 cup water 1 cup ( more or less...by taste ) of chopped ( I don’t chop them, I just break them up...

"It's the worst of times." The words are Charles Dickens', from the opening paragraph of a novel set in the 1790s, but the sentiment is familiar today. Americans are divided as never before, we are frequently told, angrily at odds with one another, polarized politically, economically, culturally and in our entertainment preferences. Family elders fret about getting through Thanksgiving and the holidays without violent arguments, and more parents than ever say they'd be upset if their children were to marry across political lines. But are things really so bad? Last week's ceremonies commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the end of...

The article also includes also a list of resources for educators and family members that help them teach Thanksgiving in a “socially responsible” way. One of the resources suggested was “Ten Ways to Make Your Thanksgiving about Social and Environmental Justice,” by Eve Bratman. . . “Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers,” the group’s website says. “Thanksgiving day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands, and the relentless assault on Native culture.”

The First Thanksgiving, Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, 1914 When we were first married and hosting our first Thanksgiving dinner together, my husband and I salt-water brined our first Thanksgiving turkey. We were very pleased with the difference this made, and continued to do it. However, a few years ago we learned about the ‘Judy Bird’ - named after Judy Rodgers of the Zuni Cafe in San Francisco, who used the technique for chicken. This involves dry-brining the turkey in salt, and does away with the need to fill your refrigerator with a giant container of water right when you need...

A senior Justice Department official was demoted on Wednesday amid an ongoing House intelligence committee investigation into his contacts with Fusion GPS, the firm responsible for the Trump dossier, according to Fox News. Bruce G. Ohr, who was until Wednesday associate deputy attorney general, met during the 2016 campaign with the author of the dossier, Christopher Steele, according to evidence obtained by committee investigators. Ohr also met “shortly after” the election with Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, investigators also found. Congressional sources told Fox News that Simpson and Ohr met sometime around Thanksgiving last year, when President-elect Trump was...

MSNBC has been caught faking the silliest piece of news. The network attempted to trick viewers that the hosts of “Morning Joe” were hard at work on Friday, airing a “live” morning after Thanksgiving show. In reality, the show was pre-recorded.As reported by the Washington Post, Mika Brzezinski, cohost along side Joe Scarborough, opened the show with playful banter.  “Day after Thanksgiving! Hoo! I’m stuffed. I always cook the turkey with the guts in it !” said Brzezinski.“Joe didn’t notice. He ate the bag,” joked co-host Willie Geist  “It was good! Well, you know, the game made up for it...

Former San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick took his woke SJW act to Alcatraz Island Thursday to take part in what has become an annual event among Native American activists: the Alcatraz Indigenous People's Sunrise Gathering, also known as "Unthanksgiving Day." Kaepernick made a surprise appearance at the event, telling the crowd, “[O]ur fight is the same fight. We’re all fighting for our justice, for our freedom. And realizing that we are all in this fight together makes us all the more powerful.” [Does one need to point out the absolute absurdity of people "fighting for freedom" in what is already...

First of all, hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and secondly, what was going on with the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants last night? Yes, the DC team ended up beating the Giants 20-10 but that was a terrible game on Thursday Night Football. A game that saw more national anthem protests as Giants defensive end Oliver Vernon took a knee during the Star Spangled Banner. Otherwise, were it not for some worthy moves by the Redskins’ QB Kirk Cousins, there wouldn’t have been a lot to see from NBC and the NFL on the holiday night. Which...

I’ve enjoyed Thanksgiving as an American living in Ohio, North Carolina and New York. And now I enjoy living in Australia – a wonderful place except … Aussies don’t celebrate the wonderful holiday. This is quite understandable, given that Australia is a place far, far away – where back in the 1600s there were plenty of kangaroos, but neither Native Americans nor Pilgrims. What do you think of when you smell apple cinnamon and pumpkin spice? It’s something we don’t even have to think about as Americans, right? The holiday season, of course I’m willing to bet you’re getting a...

Title only: LA Times

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American readers. Here are a few Thanksgiving thoughts from me over the years. First, from on the radio with Hugh Hewitt exactly a decade ago:HUGH HEWITT: "Thanksgiving," you write, "excepting the premature and somewhat undernourished Canadian version, is unique to America." You write that Europeans really just don't get this. MARK STEYN: No, it's very strange that Europeans don't quite understand what the Thanksgiving holiday is all about. You know, holidays in countries tend to be ancient religious holidays, obviously Christmas and Easter, or ones named for battles, or dead kings or queens, or whatever....

It's that time of the year again. That's right - it's time to hide your Thanksgiving turkey before your four-legged friend finds it first. Despairing dog owners in the US have been shaming their greedy pooches on social media with signs detailing their crimes. In one photo, a hungry Rottweiler is shamed after taking a sizeable chunk out of a turkey while it was being roasted over a fire. In another, a brazen mutt called Scotty is seen cowering beneath a blanket next to a sign reading: 'I ate all the leftover turkey, peed on the bathroom mat and pooped...

Providing the American military with a reasonable facsimile of the traditional Thanksgiving feast, wherever our forces are deployed around the globe, is a longstanding practice of our Defense Department. Yesterday, the Pentagon served up nearly 100,000 pounds of turkey, plus all the usual trimmings, to U.S. military personnel in countries around the globe, including war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq. Some presidents have visited the troops serving in harm’s way—back in 2003, George W. Bush showed up in Baghdad by surprise to serve turkey to our troops—but Donald Trump, for his first presidential Thanksgiving, was content to address our military...

This time of the year, whether in good economic times or bad, Americans gather with their families and friends and enjoy a Thanksgiving meal together. It marks a remembrance of those early Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the uncharted ocean from Europe to make a new start in Plymouth, Massachusetts. What is less appreciated is that Thanksgiving is also a celebration of the birth of free enterprise in America.They wanted to erect a New Jerusalem, built on a foundation of communal sharing and social altruism.The English Puritans, who left Great Britain and sailed across the Atlantic on the Mayflower in...

Cool ideo at Link

No sooner had it become a national holiday than America’s Jews took to its growing repertoire of rituals with gusto. Thanksgiving was a day in which “all classes and masses participated and delivered the same Yankee Doodle with slight variations,” observed one San Francisco Jew in 1884. Much like their neighbors, America’s Jewish citizens prepared a sumptuous repast at home and saw to it that the underprivileged among them, especially those of their coreligionists in orphanages and old-age homes, were treated to a turkey with all the trimmings. [snip] Focusing on what they had in common rather than on the...