Free Republic

Pre-ordering for the Atlas Shrugged Part II Special Edition DVD and d'Anconia Copper Blu-ray today. Now available for pre-order, delivery Feb. 19, 2013. (click link for details)

On 12/07/12, We the People, WhiteHouse.gov wethepeople@whitehouse.gov wrote: Your petition “rescind invite to Gangnam Style rapper PSY to perform for Pres. Obama at Christmas party over troop killing song lyrics” has been removed from the We the People platform on WhiteHouse.gov because it was in violation of the We the People Terms of Participation. This petition was removed for the following reason: o The petition was outside the scope of We the People. Learn more about the We the People Terms of Participation: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/how-why/terms-participation Learn more about the We the People Moderation Policy: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/how-why/moderation-policy If you would like to request...

David Axelrod finally oversaw a campaign in which he was happy to end up the loser. President Barack Obama’s senior strategist shaved off his trademark mustache on live TV Friday, fulfilling a promise to slash his 40-year-old ’stache to help raise $1 million for epilepsy research. “We're cutting it off because there are people who have lost a lot more than a mustache to epilepsy,” Axelrod said. …

The gleaming UPMC letters atop the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s corporate offices downtown might as well be a bull’s-eye for all the attention being generated by the biggest labor organizing effort in the system’s history. The Service Employees International Union represents janitors at Harvard University, home care workers in Los Angeles and employees at HCA, the biggest for-profit hospital chain in the country. Now, the union is going after UPMC, Pennsylvania’s biggest hospital network. To prevail, the health system has to convince employees they’re better off without a union at a time when the health care industry is undergoing

We have a lost generation of Americans. We who make up the baby boom generation still talk about the American dream. For the lost generation, the American dream is now dead. Who are the lost generation and why is the American dream nothing but a myth to them? The lost generation is the group we call “Millennials.” They are the people under 30. Why is their generation lost?

It’s been 40 years since a human being last set foot on the Moon, and the Golden Spike Company wants to go back – routinely. The space startup announced their plans at a press conference today. Their plans were unveiled by its Chairman of the Board, Gerry Griffin, and its President and CEO, Dr. Alan Stern “We’re a startup and we’ve been at this for two years,” he said. “But we don’t have anything built yet but an interesting business plan.” Stern emphasized to me that they are at a “very early stage” in their plans. But those plans, he...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- New rules issued by Pope Benedict XVI for the governance of Catholic charities will not prevent such charities from accepting government funding, so long as the funding does not entail conditions that conflict with church teaching, said the second-highest official of the Vatican office in charge of applying the new legislation. Msgr. Giovanni Pietro Dal Toso, secretary of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, spoke to Catholic News Service about the pope's apostolic letter on the "service of charity," issued "motu proprio" (on the pope's "own initiative") Nov. 11, and released by the Vatican Dec. 1. The...

EAGLE ROCK (CBSLA.com) — Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa [aka Tony Vilar] and the Department of Water & Power have signed an agreement to purchase power from a solar panel project built on Native American tribal land. KNX 1070′s Pete Demetriou reports the city will join Sempra Energy and the Moapa Band of Indians to develop long-term renewable energy sources. Villaraigosa was joined by DWP Board Chairman Tom Sayles at the Solar Array project at Occidental College on Thursday for the signing of two city ordinances that approve large long-term solar power purchasing contracts for the DWP. The development of the K-Road...

JACKSON, Ky. THIS is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability. Many people in hillside mobile homes here are poor and desperate, and a $698 monthly check per child from the Supplemental Security Income program goes a long way — and those checks continue until the child turns 18. “The kids get taken out of the program because the parents are going...

The amount of money spent on welfare programs equals, when converted to cash payments, about "$168 per day for every household in poverty," the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee finds. Here's a chart detailing the committee's findings:[see link] "Based on data from the Congressional Research Service, cumulative spending on means-tested federal welfare programs, if converted into cash, would equal $167.65 per day per household living below the poverty level," writes the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee. "By comparison, the median household income in 2011 of $50,054 equals $137.13 per day. Additionally, spending on federal welfare benefits,...

The left consistently takes the moral high ground, and the right is left grasping at air. In order to prevent this happening, conservatives need to be secure in the values they stand for, but they also need to understand the twisted psychology behind the left’s celebration of victimhood. Romney has been roundly beaten up over his now infamous 47% comment regarding the culture of entitlement that afflicts our country. He was then beaten up again for his comments about the Obama administration in effect bribing sections of the voting community with ‘extraordinary gifts’. Never mind that both comments were patently...

Most preppers should be familiar with the ‘rule of three’ – this means having one main method of an important function and a backup for it and a backup of the backup. It doesn’t necessarily entail 3 versions of the same thing but distinctly different ways of accomplishing a priority task. In the case of personal security arrangements, the main or level 1 version would be firearms within easy reach within a structure. These would be the primary weapons used for hunting and defence. And while it’s been said that the time to hide weapons is the time to bring...

Rick Santelli sees no signs of strength in the November jobs numbers and rejects arguments the economy wouldn't be hurt by higher tax rates.

People wonder why conservatives moan endlessly about what they label “the mainstream media”. One reason is that it often displays a subconscious prejudice against religion. Catholics, for example, are sometimes presented as misogynistic cultists with the blood of millions on their hands. To anyone who occasionally attends Mass, this can come off as rather insulting. Sorry, but we’re sensitive that way.Take the tragic case of Savita Halappanavar, who died earlier this year in a hospital in Galway, Ireland. Here’s how The Guardian reported the story:Ireland's near-total ban on abortion has come under renewed scrutiny amid an outcry over the death...

Republicans have attacked President Barack Obama’s consideration of Anna Wintour as America's next ambassador to Britain, with some claiming that the party’s Senators would move to block her appointment. Obama is believed to have placed Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, on a shortlist of candidates to replace Louis Susman, who this week confirmed he was stepping down as US envoy to the Court of St. James. Conservative critics described the potential appointment of Wintour, whose only political experience is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Obama’s re-election campaign, as “ludicrous” and “a non-starter”. …

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT Rand Paul on the Kudlow Report, CNBC, last night. "What do you think of Boehner's idea, cap deductions, get $800 billion in revenues. Make any sense to you?" PAUL: Why don't we let the Democrats pass whatever they want. If they are the party of higher taxes, all the Republicans in the House vote present and let the Democrats raise taxes as high as they want to raise 'em. Let Democrats in the Senate raise taxes. Let the president sign it, and then they can own a tax increase, and when the economy stalls, when the economy sputters,...

The family of a nurse who has died in a suspected suicide just two days after transferring a hoax call about the Duchess of Cambridge have told of their sadness at her death. Mother-of-two Jacintha Saldanha, who was working on the switchboard at the King Edward VII Hospital when 2DayFM obtained intimate details about Kate, was found dead this morning. In a brief statement, the mother-of-two's family said: 'We as a family are deeply saddened by the loss of our beloved Jacintha.

NBC sportscaster Bob Costas brought the sports world some unexpected controversy this weekend: As every NFL fan and a lot of others now know, Costas used the lofty perch of NBC’s Sunday Night Football halftime show to deliver an emotion-fueled diatribe against guns and by implication, gun owners. His rant came a day after Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins dead and then committed suicide, leaving their child an orphan.Costas is paid to analyze and report. He should deal in facts and reason, but but he was clearly doing something else when he quoted from Fox...

Hillary Clinton has called for an end to “unacceptable” violence in Northern Ireland as she visited the region amid a revival of sectarian tensions. The US Secretary of State said she was “distressed” to hear about a death threat to Naomi Long, the East Belfast MP, and the discovery of two unexploded bombs. … Mrs. Clinton landed in Belfast as part of four-day European trip, just hours after police seized an unexploded bomb from suspected Republican dissidents in Londonderry. A second device was found in a postbox. …

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 6, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) — In a strongly worded judgment a federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit from the Archdiocese of New York against the Obama administration’s HHS mandate may proceed. The Obama administration had argued that the archdiocese’s lawsuit was premature, since the administration may still make adjustments to the mandate that would stop it from having any effect on the archdiocese. After announcing the mandate in February, the Obama administration had announced a “safe harbor” that would prevent the mandate from applying to certain religious employers until August 2013. However, Judge Brian Cogan slapped...