Free Republic

Sen. Dick Durbin said today that his Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate should be willing to address entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid in deficit reduction negotiations. “From my side of the table, bring entitlement reform into the conversation,” Durbin said on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” “Social Security — set aside … doesn’t add to the deficit. But when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, protect the integrity of the program, but give it solvency for more and more years.” But Durbin ruled out raising the age of Medicare eligibility as a potential reform. “We’ve got to...

BOULDER, Colo. - Colorado's new segregated "gun dorms" for students with valid concealed-carry permits have attracted zero students. The Daily Camera newspaper reports that since the University of Colorado's Boulder and Colorado Springs campuses began segregating dorms for students with valid concealed-carry permits this year, not a single student has asked to live where guns are allowed. On Aug. 16, CU announced it would establish residential areas for students over age 21 with a permit to hold a concealed handgun. In all other dormitories, guns are banned.

This Upper West Sider is going to war for her peace symbol. Brigitte Vosse, 58, has been irking neighbors for more than a year with her own personal protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: a neon peace sign hanging in her living-room window at the Ansonia, a beloved, Beaux-Art style Broadway building once home to Babe Ruth.

Israel held a four-day conference aimed at giving young Russian-speaking Jewish communal leaders in Europe a training in social media that should enable them to promote the country’s image and to reverse anti-Israeli attitudes. The conference, held on November 21-25 in Maastricht, Holland, was organized by The Jewish Agency for Israel, and the Ministry for Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs. Over 200 Russian-speaking young Jewish leaders between the ages of 20 and 30, who have been involved in Jewish Agency programs in recent years, attended the event. During the conference, the participants developed technical skills for working with online and...

Yay!!!! Just got my computer back, woohooo!! Been without it since the whore of babylon sandy took me out. FR on an i phone (my sister made me do it and paid for it as my b-day present) just isn't the same! I am still absolutely in despair regarding this election. At least now I can talk to my "peeps"...or "FReeps" in my normal fashion.

Many of us hold assumptions about things for which we don’t have all the facts. I hear something from a trusted source, and I assume it is fact. That seems to be true about our local immigrant community. I decided to check into some beliefs about immigrants that get bantered about, and borrowed an information sheet I received from Centro Latino, a local nonprofit organization whose mission is to respond to critical needs of Latinos and to bridge the cultural gap between Spanish-speaking and non-Spanish-speaking members of our community I addressed issues with more current data I found online. Undocumented...

Jerusalem-To understand the latest escalation of violence between Israel and Gaza.....

Stocks shook off their post-election slump Monday, in part because of optimism that the president and Congress will reach a compromise on the nation's budget by the end of the year. If they don't, there will be automatic tax increases and huge cuts in federal spending -- that so-called fiscal cliff. It's a time bomb, according to Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, and one of the world's most influential bankers. His message to Washington? Make a deal.

To call Greece First World may be a stretch, but Greece has defaulted once already, and it is only a matter of time until Greece defaults again. Welcome to default-o-rama, the next chapter in the First World's struggle for fiscal sustainability. Japan is piling up debt in the manner of a nation beyond hope. France, Belgium, Spain and Italy are defaults waiting to happen unless Europe can somehow generate the kind of growth that has eluded it for decades. America's fiscal cliff is an artificial crisis. We have no trouble borrowing in the short term. But at some point the...

What's to stop the next Republican president* from walking into the oval office and using executive fiat to immediately close the EPA, defund and/or cripple Obamacare, and phase out the foodstamp program, among other things? Or at least make the requirements insanely strict for foodstamps and disability to make sure it's only used by the truly indigent? Is it just that he/she would become insanely unpopular among 47% of people? Or is there some legal reason he/she couldn't? Because it seems Obama's administration has nothing stopping them from doing similar things. *assuming he/she would be willing to do this

The Likud primaries were back on track by early Sunday evening, and by 8:45 p.m., 40% of registered members – 49,322 in total – had voted. However, a serious malfunction in the computerized voting system earlier in the day made it necessary to extend the voting by two hours, to midnight – and there is possibility of a further extension. The Likud's Election Committee was to meet again at 10:00 p.m. and decide whether voting would continue for another day. Various news sources estimated that the committee would decide to continue the voting until Monday at 10:00 p.m. There have...

While many of you have probably seen it, Ben Still's "The Secret of Oz" (The Federal Reserve and Solutions for a Broken Economy) was a shattering and unexpected eye-opener for me. I saw it for the first time yesterday, and can't stop thinking about how blind I was. If you haven't watched this documentary, I encourage you to do so. It has completely changed my view of the U.S. monetary system and the ideas surrounding monetary reform that promise to cure the current economic mess we find ourselves. You can watch Ben's (1:57:52 long) award-winning film * Here * ....

Let us turn from the post-Thanksgiving scenes of inflamed mobs clubbing each other to the ground for a discounted television set to the comparatively placid boulevards of the Middle East. In Cairo, no sooner had Hillary Clinton's plane cleared Egyptian air space then Mohammed Morsi issued one-man constitutional amendments declaring himself and his Muslim Brotherhood buddies free from judicial oversight and announced that his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, would be retried for all the stuff he was acquitted of in the previous trial. Morsi now wields total control over Parliament, the Judiciary, and the military to a degree Mubarak in his...

The Florida sheriff's office that investigated Caylee Anthony's death confirmed Sunday that it overlooked a computer search for suffocation methods made from the little girl's home on the day she was last seen alive. Orange County sheriff's Capt. Angelo Nieves said the office's computer investigator missed a June 16, 2008, Google search for "fool-proof" suffocation methods. The agency's admission was first reported by Orlando television station WKMG. It's not known who performed the search. The station reported it was done on a browser primarily used by the 2-year-old's mother, Casey Anthony, who was acquitted of the girl's murder in 2011....

The day after Hamas agreed to a ceasefire with Israel, the terrorist group's TV station aired this "Death to Israel!" music video on its station: "Destroy the throne of Zion, the house of absolute evil," the song goes. "Raise the banner of victory. Be like the fire of a volcano. Repeat in the name of your Jihad: Death to Israel! With blood and fire, resist until freedom. Defeat the soldiers of aggression the enemies of humanity." The tune is illustrated with video of rockets being launched from Gaza, presumably, into Israel, the Zionist state, as well as other war scenes....

About eight years ago, I wrote a book called “What if George Bush were a Black Man?” The book was designed to analyze the vast impact that skin color has on our outcomes in a historically racist society. The summarized conclusion of the project was that disparities in the educational, economic and criminal justice systems give black men a much smaller margin of error than the one they would receive if they were white. A white kid in college caught using dope in a frat house gets a slap on the wrist. A black kid in the projects doing the...

<p>With all bad news on the tape now having a suitable "explanation", be it a prior president, a tropical storm, the weather being too hot, the weather being too cold, the weather being just right, but never, ever someone actually taking blame for the fact that life is what happens when corporate CEOs (and sovereign presidents) are busy making "priced to perfection" plans. So it is with what is now a confirmed flop of a Black Friday, which according to ShopperTrak saw sales drop by nearly 2% to $11.2 from 2011, which in turn was a 6.6% gain over 2010 (and would be revised to far lower once all the refunds and exchanges to cash took place in the two weeks later). This occurred despite a 3.5% increase in retail foot traffic to 307.7 million store visits. The nominal drop in retail sales also occurred despite a nearly 1% increase in the total US population over last Thanksgiving, and a 2% Y/Y inflation. But fear not: the ad hoc excuse for this "surprising" loss in purchasing power is already handy: it is all Black Thursday's fault, or the latest idiotic attempt by retailers to cannibalize their own future sales by diluting the exclusivity of Black Friday, and which will force all retailers to follow the sovereigns in a race to the bottom, as soon every day will be the equivalent of Black Friday. But at least retailers have another 364 years worth of excuses for the conceivable future to excuse any and all store weakness. Next year: it's all Black Wednesday's fault.</p>

Some of you may remember the picture above and the post that went with it. The picture was taken at the train station in Bologna, Italy on August 2, 1980. I missed being there by a couple of days. Italy thought it had a deal with the PLO not to carry out terror attacks on its soil. It was wrong. The European Union is about to repeat the mistake. The EU may declare Hezbullah a designated terror organization, but only if they reach the conclusion that Hezbullah was behind the terror attack at a Bulgarian airport a few months ago....

Being cruel to Anglicans is about as low as kicking a puppy. The Anglican Church does a lot of good for a lot of people and its presence in British public life forces debates about politics and social policy to be a bit more reflective than they would otherwise be. It is also capable of profound beauty. Village churches are arks of Englishness: neatly stacked Books of Common Prayer, hard wooden pews, a perfume of human breath and burning wax, a Union Jack hung above a shrine to the fallen. I pray that the Church of England is never disestablished,...

America faces a Fiscal Cliff in January. Well, no, actually, it doesn’t. In politics, alarmist language – like elections – can have real consequences. Political spin can be deceitful. Shakespeare asked “What’s in a name? A rose is a rose is a rose. That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” This may be thought-provoking and controversial: Yet the Tea Party should embrace the “Fiscal Baby Step” coming on January 1, 2013. Republicans should do absolutely nothing and sit on their hands. One exception: When the next vote comes up to raise the debt...