Free Republic

As the Liberal government goes to negotiate a new climate agreement in Paris, polling shows that climate change is a low priority for most Canadians. When presented with a long list of policy issues, only 13 per cent of Canadians chose climate change as one of their top three worries, according to an Ipsos poll provided exclusively to Global News. Forty per cent of Canadians chose health care, and 39 per cent chose unemployment. Climate change even ranked below crime and education. “There are important issues and there are urgent issues,” said Mike Colledge, president of Canadian public affairs at...

Following last week’s controversial U.S. Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare and gay marriage, voters believe more strongly that individual states should have the right to turn their backs on the federal courts. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 33% of Likely U.S. Voters now believe that states should have the right to ignore federal court rulings if their elected officials agree with them. That’s up nine points from 24% when we first asked this question in February. Just over half (52%) disagree, down from 58% in the earlier survey. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided. (To see survey...

Harvard Law professor David Barron is a former acting assistant attorney general in the Obama administration. While in President Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel he wrote memos justifying the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen abroad. Last year, the president nominated Barron to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and a vote on his nomination is expected this week. I am going to fight this nomination, because I believe Barron has disqualified himself from serving as a federal judge. I’ve read the Barron memos concerning the legal justification for killing an American citizen overseas...

York County, Va. – The man dubbed the “fake-beard bandit” has hit more than 30 businesses on the Peninsula. Each time, the MO is the same: He walks in, flashes a gun and takes off with the cash. But this time, an AutoZone employee decided he was going to take action! “I was in fear of my life as soon as he walked through the door and I see the gun. Your heart just starts pounding,” says Devin McClean, a former Auto Zone employee. Devin McClean decided to take action after recognizing the Fake Beard Bandit. “I waited for him...

TROUTDALE, Ore. -- Police say they have identified 12 teens who ransacked a grocery store in Troutdale Saturday night as part of a 'flash mob.' Sgt. Steve Bevens, spokesman for Toutdale police, said the 'flash rob' happened Saturday around 11:15 p.m. at the Albertsons store on Southeast Stark Street and Southeast 257th Avenue in Troutdale. Bevens said 30 to 40 black teens, all minors, rushed the store to cause chaos, overwhelming employees as they ran through the store throwing things from shelves, stealing items, throwing produce on the floor. "We are working to get more information and have put a...

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - Owners and managers of swimming pools at hotels, city recreation centers and public parks are scrambling to install mechanical chair lifts to comply with new federal requirements that all public pools be accessible to disabled swimmers. Some hotels fear the cost of the equipment or fines for noncompliance could put them out of business, and an industry lobbyist says others may close their pools this summer if they can't upgrade in time, though the government can offer more time to those having trouble paying for it. Swimmers with disabilities say the changes are overdue. "I couldn't...

Last night, I linked to the story about Arby’s blocking conservatives on Twitter for protesting the company’s protest of conservative talk show giant Rush Limbaugh. Today, the Right Sphere notes that Arby’s president is a big Democrat donor.Here’s the bottom line on this latest manufactured attempt by the Hush Rush mob to make it appear that he and the radio stations that carry his show are suffering economic harm because of Soros monkey-directed pressure.It’s complete bull. Total Kabuki theater. Arby’s is not and has not ever been a national sponsor of Rush’s program. In the radio industry, advertisers can buy...

(NEWSER) – Anheuser-Busch InBev is desperate to turn its sales around. Sure, it's still the biggest beer company in the US, but shipments have fallen for three straight years, thanks to the growing popularity of small, independent craft brewers. But this year Budweiser's got a plan, president of North American operations Luiz Edmond tells the Wall Street Journal: It's going to produce more beers, while leaning on distributors not to carry the competition. Anheuser will introduce 19 new products this year, its biggest rollout since the InBev merger. Some will aim to compete in the craft market, like additions to...

The Republican underdogs may be gaining ground on Mitt Romney. Support for the former Massachusetts governor dipped to 29 percent this week while Ron Paul's fanbase grew by 5 percentage points, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. Paul is now in second place among the candidates vying for the GOP presidential nomination, ahead of Newt Gingrich who went from 20 to 19 percent and Rick Santorum, whose support jumped 5 points to 18 percent. Meanwhile, President Obama's support is on the rise, up to 48 percent from 47 in January. However his disapproval rating has remained at 49 percent since...

Security footage of Sen. Rand Paul after he refused a full body pat-down at the Nashville International Airport on Monday does not show the Kentucky Republican acting “irate,” as the police had described him, according to a report. n the videos, released by the Metro Airport Authority and posted on The Nashville Tennessean, Paul can be seen standing and sitting in a waiting area as he speaks on his cell phone. The Tennessean reported Thursday that the police incident report describes officers responding to a “passenger being irate,” but the footage offers no visible evidence of that behavior. Paul had...

Republican Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and John McCain (Ariz.) battled on the Senate floor Tuesday over a proposed amendment to the pending defense authorization bill that could allow American citizens who are suspected of terrorism to be denied a civilian trial. Paul argued the amendment, which is cosponsored by McCain, "puts every single American citizen at risk" and suggested that if the amendment passes, "the terrorists have won." “Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well then the terrorists have won," Paul argued, "[D]etaining American citizens...

NEW YORK -- A Brooklyn teenager is facing two-years in prison for killing her brother's pet hamster. Monique Smith, 19, is charged with one felony count of aggravated cruelty to animals for allegedly killing the 4-ounce hamster during a family dispute last June. Witnesses say the girl grabbed the hamster, choked it and threw it outside the house. Authorities say the teenager suspected her brother of killing her own hamster earlier in the day. "Sadly, very often, pets find themselves in the middle of these situations," said ASPCA Assist. Dir., Joe Pentangelo. "A family will have a disagreement and unfortunately...

There was a hail of gunfire Wednesday morning around 3:30 in the 4000 block of Bonanza Drive Northeast in Salem. Several people called 911 to report the shooting. 30-year-old Ellis Bellack was asleep on a couch when the shooting happened. One of the bullets broke through a window and hit him in the arm. He was treated at Salem Hospital and released. Detectives are trying to determine the number of rounds fired and who was behind the shooting. No information has been released about suspects.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates supports the income-tax initiative and will vote for it, according to the I-1098 campaign. Sandeep Kaushik, a spokesman for Yes on 1098, said Gates' father, Bill Gates Sr., had a long conversation with his son on the matter and confirmed his support for the ballot measure. Gates Sr. helped draft the income-tax initiative and is the public face for the measure, appearing in a recent television commercial for the campaign. This is the latest in a string of announcements since Monday showing where some of the richest and most powerful people in the state are lining...

Please pray for the repose of the soul of my mother, Cora, who passed away last night.

Imagine a Google executive demanding a tax on software, or General Mills asking for a tax on wheat. That's where we now are in the U.S. auto industry, with Ford CEO Alan Mulally believing he has little choice but to seek a tax on the very fuel that powers his products. Mr. Mulally was a guest recently at this newspaper's ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, where he outlined his efforts to revamp the struggling car maker. He said one problem is that America didn't have an "integrated energy policy." On the one hand, the government "regulated" smaller cars by "mandating...

Want to save General Motors? How about Ford and Chrysler, too? It’s a tall order, as the Big 3 have a lot of problems: huge pension and medical costs, unrealistic union contracts, poor image, etc. Most of the proposed solutions I’ve heard involve dumping billions of dollars into these companies without any fundamental changes, which would merely result in the disappearance of that money. One thing that could be done, that wouldn’t cost anything, is to immediately remove or suspend some of the regulation which makes it more difficult for these companies to recover. How about junking CAFE (Corporate Average...

If John McCain during the second debate was, as Mark Steyn famously called him, Yosemite Sam when the dynamite failed to go off, the post-election Barack Obama is shaping up to be Daffy Duck. Like Daffy, he is not suffering from a self-esteem deficit. As he announced early in the campaign, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for!” When he made his acceptance speech, he was careful to remove anyone who might detract attention from himself, like his running mate and his family. But things often go awry for Daffy, despite his supreme confidence. And Obama got off to...

All of the frenzied recriminations and strategizing you are seeing are for naught. Before the conservative movement can even think about regaining political power, it must reform itself. Not by abandoning conservatism, but by reestablishing its principles.What is it we as conservatives believe? Until we can answer that question clearly and convincingly, we will largely be on the sidelines.We need not try to find candidates for the next electoral cycle at this time, because we have to discuss our principles first, and come to an agreement on them that the various factions within conservatism can agree on. If I were...

In late-night returns, voters in Lane County and Oregon on Tuesday were rejecting four of the five state ballot measures sponsored by antitax activist Bill Sizemore. But voters were approving restrictions on government paycheck deductions, as well as approving a non-Sizemore effort, Measure 56, which does away with the double-majority requirement for money measures in May and November elections. Voters by wide margins were rejecting Sizemore’s Measure 58 (restricts non-English instruction in public schools), Measure 59 (makes federal taxes fully deductible on state returns), Measure 60 (requires merit pay for teachers), and Measure 63 (loosens building permit requirements). But Measure...