Free Republic

I would like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting and standing by me in this crucial election. I am glad to report that we were victorious on Election night by securing over 61 percent of the vote in my new district. Yet, with the election a few weeks behind us, we are now facing a serious challenge in front of us as we try to make some sense out of the disappointing presidential election outcome. One of the lessons that we should take from this experience is that capitulation on our values and principles...

The sense of living in an occupied country has been growing on me for several decades now. I live in Canada, and am thus “a voice from America’s crazy attic” (Robertson Davies’ phrase, somewhat extended). I was born into a different kind of country. Yet all my life I have been watching the transformation, watching the politicians at work, watching the incremental social fallout, without fully grasping the extent. [....] I wonder how many Americans, on the morning of November 7th, got up feeling something terrible had happened. From a number of my Republican friends, I got this impression. It...

Tightly spun accounts of when and what the president and top administration officials knew and did prior to, during and following the deadly 9/11 terrorist attack on our Benghazi consulate are unraveling at warp speed. While the mainstream media has previously ignored the entire debacle, don’t necessarily expect that selective indifference to continue.  Now, with the election over and their candidate victorious, the seductive allure of key party sex and security scandals are already becoming irresistible news features. As Congressional investigations and a rising torrent of informed leaks continue to reveal disturbing new information, there are some major questions that...

The Bright Side Of Hell:Obama’s win has its good points by Daniel Clark In the wake of President Obama’s reelection, conservatives are reacting as if America as we know it will no longer exist. And you know what? They’re right. Obama promised to “fundamentally transform” America in 2008, and he’s got the job well underway by now. The question is, why does that have to be a negative? Evidently, a majority of voters don’t think it is, so maybe they’ve got a point. If you can’t understand how, just take a minute to consider the following list of reasons why...

In the south African nation of Namibia, a bizarre muppet-like beast has been shot and killed. Unlike its distant relatives — the abominable snowman, bigfoot, and the chupacabra — this one has been caught on film. Locals in Namibia were escorting a shooting party through the country when they found the body of the strange muppet-like beast, and they picked it up and brought it back to the town with them, according to the Telegraph. Witnesses to the event said that locals saw the creature scavenging for food. One member of the shooting party shot and wounded the beast, and...

At Forbes.com, Larry Bell offers a nice summary of the unanswered questions surrounding the Benghazi-Patreaus controversy. He asks (and addresses) the following: “Did the White House blackmail General Petraeus to support a cover story?” “When did the President really learn about the Petraeus affair?” “Why weren’t repeated precautionary consulate security requests heeded?” “If the President ordered that personnel be secured, why weren’t they?” “Are even larger cover-ups being hidden from Congress?” 

BOSTON (CBS) – Two women have been placed on unpaid leave from their jobs after their photo at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia angered thousands of people on Facebook. An edited version of the controversial Lindsey Stone Facebook photo. Lindsey Stone was visiting the Tomb of the Unknowns last month on a business trip when she posed for a picture next to a sign that reads “silence and respect.” In the photo, Stone is pretending to yell and she’s showing her middle finger. The photo, taken by co-worker Jamie Schuh, went viral and sparked thousands of angry comments. Some of...

Well, it didn't take long, I just received a call from a Rick Santorum donation Pac. "Are upset by the election results?...So am I...blahh blah , blah.... with Your CASH, We can stop Obama..... we can make history....." Uhh, wasn't that have suppose to happen TWO WEEKS AGO!!!!!!!!! (that was a scream from the roof top). I read another Freerers thread mentioning how the GOP seems to hand out "POTUS Turns" to these guys. It was Bushs turn, then McCain, Then Romney, what now, Santorum? COME ON MAN!! I AM THROUGH WITH GOP!! The next person up for 2016 is...

About 125 employees of North Shore Mining will be laid off Jan. 5 when the taconite operation idles two of its four pelletizing lines, according to an announcement issued Monday by the mine’s owner and operator, Cliffs Natural Resources. The pending layoffs will affect people working at North Shore’s mine in Babbitt in addition to those working at the production facility in Silver Bay, but the exact breakdown of how many jobs will be trimmed at each location has not yet been determined, according to Sandra Karnowski, Cliffs’ district manager of public affairs. North Shore Mining currently plans to operate...

The US government can create an appropriate level of energy independence by causing up to four million barrels per day of additional transportation and heating fuels to be produced from North American energy sources by auctioning long-term financial hedges (Contracts for Difference) to firms offering the best terms for building appropriate conversion facilities. An appropriate level of energy independence is one that a) greatly reduces volatility of worldwide oil markets, b) eliminates the perceived need for political and military intervention in the Middle East and other unstable regions, and c) allows sensible and transparent competition among alternate sources of basic...

Full Title Media Myth Alert:Fact-checking, Getting It WrongNewspapers ‘not dead yet’: But a slow death, still The venerable and often-contrarian Economist magazine this week offers an intriguing if superficial defense of the newspaper, declaring in an editorial that they’re “not dead yet.” Indeed, the Economist asks with a hint of snark, “Whatever happened to the death of newspapers? A year ago the end seemed near.” It adds: “The recession threatened to remove the advertising and readers that had not already fled to the internet. Newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle were chronicling their own doom. America’s Federal Trade Commission launched...

UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is implemented worldwide to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all information, and all human beings in the world. INVENTORY AND CONTROL. Have you wondered where these terms 'sustainability' and 'smart growth' and 'high density urban mixed use development' came from? Doesn't it seem like about 10 years ago you'd never heard of them and now everything seems to include these concepts? Is that just a coincidence? That every town and county and state and nation in the world would be changing their...

Several dozen members of the House have introduced a resolution that calls on President Obama not to sign the United Nations's Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). It also demands that if Obama does sign it, the government should not spend any time or money on implementation until the Senate approves it.

In a (video) presentation to the Nevada Association of Counties, Representative Ken Ivory (American Lands Council) talks about the inequitable treatment of the States West of the Mississippi by federal failure to dispose of the public lands into private ownership as promised in State Enabling Acts. Ivory/ALC proposes legislation to return lands to the Western States for lease or disposal into private ownership. Sale could provide revenue to discharge the National Debt.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes killed three Palestinian journalists in their cars Tuesday, a Gaza health official and the head of the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV said. Israel acknowledged targeting the men, claiming they had ties to militants. The strikes came on the seventh day of Israel's offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers. A number of journalists have been killed over the years while covering fighting between the Jewish state and the Palestinian militant group, but not in targeted strikes Israel acknowledged. Two of those killed were cameramen working for Al Aqsa TV, the centerpiece of a growing...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — This year's drought is consistent with predictions that global climate change would bring about weather extremes including more frequent droughts, said a report released Monday. The Iowa Climate Statement updates the 2010 report, reflecting the year's lingering drought and the belief that it signifies what many scientists have predicted — increasing instability in weather patterns will lead to extremes during both wet and dry years. ... The report was signed by 138 scientists and researchers from 27 Iowa colleges and universities. They said they wanted to release the updated report now while the drought is...

This past weekend, Congressman Mike Rogers, who is chairman of the House intelligence committee, said that the talking points used to explain what happened in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012 were changed by political appointees in the Obama administration. Rogers pointed specifically to the deputies’ committee at the National Security Council. Now we have another version of how the talking points evolved: 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 Ambassador Susan Rice on the Benghazi consulate attack...

Nowhere in the charter of the United Nations is there any mandate for the U.N. to stack the deck in favor of terrorists. Yet that is exactly the effect of the current U.N. furor over conflict between Israel and the terrorists who control Gaza. When terrorists in Hamas-run Gaza busied themselves in recent years launching well over 2,000 rocket and mortar attacks on Israel, including hundreds of attacks in recent months, the U.N. shrugged it off as business as usual. That’s not to say that the U.N. ignored the attacks entirely. As the bombardments went on, and on, a few...

If you voted this election season, President Obama almost certainly has a file on you. His vast campaign database includes information on voters’ magazine subscriptions, car registrations, housing values and hunting licenses, along with scores estimating how likely they were to cast ballots for his reelection. And though the election is over, Obama’s database is just getting started. [snip] The database consists of voting records and political donation histories bolstered by vast amounts of personal but publicly available consumer data, say campaign officials and others familiar with the operation, which was capable of recording hundreds of fields for each voter....

For one reason or another, this economy is going down. As everyone must know by now, a fiscal cliff looms ahead. Unless current law is changed, the U.S. economy will take a $600-billion hit starting next year. Taxes will go up by $500 billion, while spending will have to be slashed by $100 billion. These are big numbers for a healthy economy to absorb, much less one that’s in the shape this economy is in. It amounts to at least 4% of our gross domestic product — enough to push the fledgling recovery back into recession. In an attempt to...