Free Republic

WASHINGTON — The surprise sweep for marriage equality efforts at the polls in 2012 came after a dramatic shift in the television ads their backers ran — a change that came about after a year-long research effort to crack the code of previously successful ads run by marriage equality opponents that focused on "gay marriage" being taught in schools.Among the key changes: A shift away from talk of "rights" to a focus on committed relationships; a decision to address "values" directly as being learned at home; and an attempt to give voters "permission" to change their minds, according to...

A city that kept in the dark about finances is facing a budget deficit of over $3 million. City manager Rick Daniels finally admitted the red ink this week.

According to its engineers, this will be the tallest skyscraper in the world by the end of March of 2013. Its name is Sky City, and its 2,749 feet (838 meters) distributed in 220 floors will grow in just 90 days in Changsha city, by the Xiangjiang river. Ninety days! It's not a joke. According to the construction company, the skyscraper will be built in just 90 days at the unbelievable rate of five floors per day. It's hard to believe, but they claim the building has been designed by some of the engineers who previously worked at the Burj...

For those of you that have followed my writings for the past 7 years on my blog, theUndergroundInvestor, you are well aware that I have been advocating conversion of the majority of fiat currency savings into physical gold and physical silver as a means of combating the system of financial enslavement that the bankers have tried to impose upon the people in every country around the world. The bankers are now entering the second phase of their enslavement through the imposition of austerity measures on people that can least afford this imposition. Though we, at SmartKnowledgeU, have been advocating the...

A Rock Hill, South Carolina, a middle school teacher was placed on administrative leave after her school received a complaint about remarks she posted on her personal Facebook page. The remarks criticized the Food Stamp program. Rawlinson Road Middle School spokesperson Elaine Baker said the suspension was initiated after the school heard from a local Democratic Party official. “In our view, the teacher used poor judgment,” Baker said. “It is inappropriate for a person employed by a public school to be observed criticizing any duly authorized public policy, especially right now. The country has been through a contentious election campaign....

President Obama had his best run of media coverage during the final week of the campaign, while positive coverage of Mitt Romney dwindled, according to a study released Monday from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Between Oct. 29 and Nov. 5, 29 percent of stories about Obama were positive, compared to 19 negative, while only 16 percent of Romney’s stories were positive, compared to 33 negative. It was Obama’s best week of media coverage since the Democratic National Convention, and only the second time in the cycle positive stories outnumbered negative ones for the president. The...

With ObamaCare in the wings, the traditional forty- or fifty-hour work week will soon be replaced with a less than thirty-hour week for many American workers. To wit: many businesses, including ones that previously received ObamaCare waivers, are trying to avoid paying onerous fines for not providing employees with health coverage as mandated by the new law. President Obama recently said that he won't allow the budget to be "balanced on the backs of the middle class." He sure did give the appearance of truly caring about these "folks," but he failed to disclose the fact that, even if taxed...

It is only two weeks since his re-election, and his second term remains two months away, but Barack Obama is already blundering again on the world stage, with the kind of gaffes that would have been plastered on the front page of The New York Times if they had been committed by George W. Bush when he was in the White House. Obama's first term was littered with foreign policy gaffes, and there is every chance the second term will be more of the same. On his trip to Asia this week, President Obama struggled to pronounce the name of...

The disintegration of an economy and a society can take two courses. One course is like rust. It is slow and barely perceptible. The other is a sudden collapse. The first course, if left untended, eventually turns into the second. The US economy is now rusting away. Arguably it has been for decades. For anyone interested in looking, the signs are there. They will soon become unavoidable for even the most disinterested of our citizens. Dan Amoss correctly described what is happening as a result of Washington's overbearing involvement in the economy: ******* All government-directed economic activity grows at the...

The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury is preparing a personal plea to traditionalists in the Church of England to “go forward” with the idea of women bishops next week in an attempt to end years of wrangling over the issue.In what could be one of the most decisive interventions of his leadership – even before he takes over as Archbishop – the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev Justin Welby, will urge doubters to back the measure in the name of unity. The vote at a special session of the Church’s General Synod in London will be the first test of...

Just as the details were emerging of a sex scandal involving Gen. David Petraeus that the media was calling “explosive,” Staff Sgt. Kenneth Wade Bennett took what bomb disposal experts call “the lonely walk” toward an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. Bennett was on his third combat tour there and this time he had left behind a pregnant wife and a 2-year-old daughter. A snapshot taken of him and his daughter, Lila, just before he deployed in September showed the two of them walking hand in hand away from the camera.

The great minds at Harvard University just can't seem to get this diversity, pluralism and multi culti thing right. Not to mention inclusiveness. And when combined with something as difficult as food--well, Harvard just seems to collapse. Recently, Harvard succumbed after an Arab student went on a hate filled rant, complaining that hummus wasn't Israeli but Arab, or at least Mediterranean; labeling it Israeli was another sign of Israeli domination. Then Harvard University Dining Service (HUDS) decided that because kosher food is more expensive than non kosher food--and it is--only Jews should be allowed to eat in the Harvard Hillel...

Eight years ago the European Parliament denied towering Italian intellectual Rocco Buttiglione a position as European Commissioner for Justice because of his faithful Catholicism. Asked in a hearing if he agreed with the Catholic Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are sinful, he said yes, he agreed with the teaching, but this would not prevent him from faithfully carrying out the laws of the European Union related to everyone including homosexuals. This was too much for the sexual left firmly ensconced in the European institutions, and Buttiglione was voted down. The event caused a scandal in Catholic circles and turned Buttiglione,...

An Iranian 150-ton freighter departed Bandar Abbas port Sunday, Nov. 18, with a cargo of 220 short-range missiles and 50 improved long-range Fajar-5 rockets for the Gaza Strip, debkafile's intelligence sources report. The ship turned toward the Bab al-Mandeb Straits and the Red Sea. The new Fajar-5s have a 200-kilo warhead, which packs a bigger punch than the 175 kilos of explosives delivered by the rockets in current use with the Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip. To extend their range to cover the 85 kilometers from Gaza to Tel Aviv, Hamas removed a part of their payloads to make...

(CBS News) WASHINGTON - CBS News has learned that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) cut specific references to "al Qaeda" and "terrorism" from the unclassified talking points given to Amassador Susan Rice on the Benghazi consulate attack - with the agreement of the CIA and FBI. The White House or State Department did not make those changes. (snip) However, an intelligence source tells CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan the links to al Qaeda were deemed too "tenuous" to make public, because there was not strong confidence in the person providing the intelligence. CIA Director David Petraeus,...

Realistic Republicans understand that President Obama and the Democrats head into fiscal-cliff negotiations in a far stronger bargaining position now than in 2011. When voters were asked on November 6 whether they favored raising taxes to reduce the deficit, a total of 60 percent said yes (47 percent favored increasing taxes for those who earn $250,000 or more, and 13 percent approved tax increases for all). So taxes will be going up. As a matter of political strategy — not to say survival — Republicans will have to agree to raise taxes on those defined as rich. It’s more than...

In antiquity the Mediterranean peoples despised the yokels of northern Europe. The “masters of the fairest and most wealthy climates of the globe,” Gibbon says, “turned with contempt from gloomy hills assailed by the winter tempest, from lakes concealed in a blue mist, and from cold and lonely heaths, over which the deer of the forest were chased by a troop of naked barbarians.” The barbarians avenged this contempt when, coming down from the northern forests, they sacked the Mediterranean cities. Yet the northern man — whether Goth, Visigoth, or Vandal — was willing to learn from the Mediterranean man...

Just a few weeks ago, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Accordingly, there has been a good deal of commentary from historians, theologians and even from the handful of bishops and experts who actually participated in the Council five decades ago. I was particularly struck by an observation made by Fr. John O'Malley, the Jesuit historian who penned, some years ago, an influential book called What Happened at Vatican II? The Second Vatican Council, he said, was the largest meeting in the history of the world. Indeed, some 2,600 people -- bishops, theologians,...

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (KABC) -- Families in Scottsdale, Arizona have the opportunity to take holiday portraits with Santa Claus and a machine gun. Every year, the Scottsdale Gun Club hosts a photo opportunity, including Saint Nick and some serious fire power. Rory Collins and his wife Kaprice Collins posed with a machine gun for a family photo with their 2-year-old twin boys.

Lord, To Whom Shall We Go?The 2012 campaign is over, and the dust is settling. After asking me how our recovery from Hurricane Sandy is going, most folks these days then inquire about how I think “the Church did” on election day. Such a question usually triggers a mini-catechism lesson from me, as I reply that, actually, “the Church” wasn’t on the ballot, and the election was hardly a referendum on “the Church.” The Church, I go on, was founded by the one who stated that “My kingdom is not of this world,” and whose members consider the statement of...