Free Republic

“Washington is a fine place for journalists to live as well as to brown-nose. It has plenty of the only type of people who can stand journalists -- other journalists -- and plenty of the only kind of people journalists get any real information from -- other journalists. — P.J. O'Rourke” All the media is an echo chamber and all its reporters are merely mimes. This truism was confirmed by my friend Brian Patrick, a tenured professor of communications and the charming chap who penned the academic foreword to my book Shooting The Bull. Brain speaks eloquently about the “cloud...

Italian government bond yields jumped on Monday after Prime Minister Mario Monti’s decision to step down early raised worries over the future pace at which the heavily indebted country reforms its economy. While investors are clearly nervous about Mario Monti’s resignation as PM of Italy, investors seem to be signalling increased optimism about Venezuela’s Chavez’s return of cancer. Venezuelan bonds surged, sending benchmark yields to a five-year low, as speculation mounted that President Hugo Chavez will be unable to complete his third term after he acknowledged a recurrence of his cancer. I am sure that Hugo Chavez would have preferred...

Is mass migration from Mexico to the United States a thing of the past? At least for the moment, it is. Last May, the Pew Hispanic Center, in a study based on U.S. and Mexican statistics, reported that net migration from Mexico to this country had fallen to zero from 2005 to 2010. Pew said 20,000 more people moved to Mexico from the United States than from there to here in those years. That's a vivid contrast with the years 1995 to 2000, when net inflow from Mexico was 2.2 million people.Because there was net Mexican immigration until 2007, when...

Destroying the sovereignty and freedom of United States citizens is well underway with a new doublespeak plan called Seven50, just another euphemism for Globalism through Regionalism. Flying under the radar, federal bureaucrats and alphabet agencies have joined with local politicians in 7 Florida counties in imposing The Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI), a United Nations created plan which divests Americans of Constitutionally guaranteed liberty by introducing social collectivism. Vero Beach County Commissioner Bob Solari warns that the Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI) being pushed by HUD, the EPA, and the USDOT is representative of a culture which believes “government can never be...

The Republican Party and stupid statements by some candidates are to blame for GOP losses in last month’s congressional elections, the former leader of a tea party group said Monday. Dick Armey, who until recently led the conservative group FreedomWorks, said some GOP candidates said “stupid things” that party leaders should have taught them to avoid saying. He said Republicans had a lot of candidates who did “dumb things” during their campaigns. Armey, a former Republican House majority leader from Texas, did not specifically mention controversial comments about rape by GOP Senate candidates in Indiana and Missouri that contributed to...

A German power utility specialising in renewable energy was hit by a serious cyber-attack two weeks ago that lasted five days, knocking its internet communications systems offline, in the first confirmed digital assault against a European grid operator. “It was a DOS (‘Denial Of Service’) attack with a botnet behind it,” Boris Schucht, the CEO of 50Hertz told EurActiv on the fringes of a Brussels renewables conference. “It blocked our internet domains so that in the first hours, all email and connectivity via the internet was blocked.” DOS attacks involve thousands of requests being sent to a server each second...

<p>On Monday Circuit Judge Debra Nelson heard testimony in the case of James Fraleigh, a Casselberry man who is accused of striking a neighbor with a shovel. Fraleigh says he did so in self-defense after the neighbor, Dylan Wells, attacked him.</p>

As you read this, know that by the time you finish, somewhere in America a fellow citizen will use a gun to stop a crime and save a life. Opining on the Kansas City Chief football player who murdered his girlfriend and then blew out his own brains in front of his coach, the otherwise great sports announcer, Bob Costas, blamed the murder-suicide on easy access to guns. He lives in a strange fairyland of ignorance and denial. If there were a free speech penalty for blundering ignorance, a penalty flag would have been tossed at Mr. Costas. Just as...

Christmas in the Park at Plaza de Cesar Chavez, San Jose (CBS) SAN JOSE (CBS SF) — A 14-year-old boy was injured in a stabbing at San Jose’s Christmas in the Park event on Saturday night, a police spokesman said. Officers responded to reports of a stabbing at Plaza de Cesar Chavez near Almaden Boulevard and Park Avenue at about 8:50 p.m., San Jose police Officer Albert Morales said. Arriving officers found a teenage boy who had been stabbed at least once, Morales said. The victim was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not expected to be life...

<p>The Obama administration is proposing a new way to finance the health law’s insurance exchanges: A fee levied on the insurers who sell in the marketplace.</p> <p>Health and Human Services will operate a health insurance exchange in all states that decline to set up the marketplace themselves. In order to finance the exchange’s operations, new draft regulations released Friday envision health plans paying a “user fee” if they want to sell in that space.</p>

Asia News recently reported how the misogynist crime of female genital mutilation (FGM) continues to be a “widespread traditional practice” in “rural areas and more remote areas of Indonesia, particularly the island of Java.” The story makes sure to remind us, naturally, that while this crime is being perpetrated in a Muslim country, the crime “is not a rule set in a rigid manner by the precepts of Islam.” It is only widespread, we are consoled, because of the actions of “the more extreme and integral fringe.” In her coverage of this news report, freedom fighter Pamela Geller shrewdly asks...

With the downward spiral of society and the economy ensured by Obama's narrow reelection, I am now looking at gear to ensure, or at least greatly improve, my family's survival when TSHTF.I have 3-4 months supply of food including canned goods, dried goods, MREs and stuff we use regularly. I have ammunition and firearms to protect it and a couple of alternative escape plans just in case. I also have a hand-crank radio and lighting to ensure communication and illumination. Last election season also helped us define which neighbors would be potential allies, most of them military veterans including a...

...gambling, rock music, etc, etc? Now, this thread isn't about debating what is sin and what isn't or what constitutes sin or doesn't. Please don't hijack this thread over the issues that I listed. Thank you. This thread is about our changing culture - and let's face it, more and more denominations/churches are ever so slowly moving towards tolerance and/or acceptance of homosexual marriage. The rest in the list (following gay marriage) that I included in the thread were put there to show that if you look back far enough at various denomination's church bylaws some churches were once against...

Robert Spencer has started an illuminating new daily series at Jihad Watch: Hatred and Violence in the Qur'an Awareness Month. Running through the month of December, it was inspired by the Pat Condell video above, which utterly destroys the trumped-up and manipulative propaganda concept of "Islamophobia Awareness Month." Toward the end of the video, Condell says that a Hatred and Violence in the Qur'an Awareness Month would be much more appropriate, and Robert took him up on it. Spencer explains: "After all, November was Islamophobia Awareness Month, and certainly the hatred and violence in the Qur'an kills many, many more...

Another Christmas card from the White House that has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. No mention whatsoever on this 'Holiday' card. Compare that to the card sent out by the Bush White House

Here's a link to a page with a nice video from Nova, about Viking swords, for all you Viking history buffs out there... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/secrets-viking-sword.html

Announcement marks first time major franchise will carry technology Staples, the popular office supplies store, has announced that its Printing Systems Division will work with Mcor Technologies Ltd. to launch a low-cost, full-color 3D printing service called “Staples Easy 3D”. The program will be hosted online and offers everyone from architects to engineers to parents the ability to create photo-realistic 3D printed products. All that’s needed is an electronic design file be uploaded to the online Staples Office Center. After that, the user can head down to the store to pick up the finished model, or otherwise opt to have...

Quelle surprise!  Lady M went classical for the Christmas in Washington celebration party last night! Roman tunic style. (snip)likely it was inspired by Quo Vadis: (snip)Anyway, it was another great holiday extravaganza. (snip)with The Christmas Song performed by the man-of-the-moment, South Korean Neon-rapper PSY. (snip)Some people considered it inappropriate for him to perform(snip)due to the "inflammatory and inappropriate language" he used during anti-U.S. protests(snip) Then I found out that he went to college in the U.S. – say no more - he gets a pass. He must have learned his history and grievance politics right here in the good old...

Google avoided about $2 billion in global income taxes last year by shifting $9.8 billion in revenue into a Bermuda shell company, Bloomberg reported. That level is almost double the total from three years ago, Bloomberg said, citing a Nov. 21 regulatory filing by a Google subsidiary in the Netherlands. And it allowed Google to cut its overall tax rate almost in half. Google's action -- moving about 80 percent of its total pretax profit from 2011 to tax-free Bermuda -- isn't illegal. On the contrary, many companies have taken similar steps in recent years to avoid paying steep taxes....

If it were not so serious there would be something ludicrous about the reaction of the green lobby to the discovery of big shale gas reserves in this country. Here we are in the fifth year of a downturn. We have pensioners battling fuel poverty. We have energy firms jacking up their prices. We have real worries about security of energy supply – a new building like the Shard needs four times as much juice as the entire town of Colchester. Our nukes are so high-maintenance that the cost of disposing of their spent fuel rods is put at about...