Free Republic

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), libertarian hero and constitutionalist congressman, will end the last term of his political career as the number two conservative in the House of Representatives behind Jeff Flake (R-AZ), according to a ranking system of all members of congress created by two political science professors. The "DW-Nominate" ranking system, created by University of Georgia political science professor Keith Poole and New York University professor Howard Rosenthal, ranks all 636 legislators in the House and the Senate and is available on Voteview.com. According to the rankings, Paul held the number one spot for multiple years, despite being behind...

The following thread is a listing of every recipe posted on the Free Republic Recipe threads for the past year...since our last online cookbook posting from 2011. Postings by scores of FReepers on the weekly threads over the last year have collected 380 recipes and they will all be listed on this post with an (hopefully)easy way to quickly link to the recipes on the different threads for the year.

French and Israeli intelligence sources affirmed Saturday, Dec. 29, that, contrary to reports appearing in the United States Friday, Iran has accelerated rather than slowed down its 20-percent grade enrichment of uranium and is racing toward a nuclear weapons capacity. Furthermore, for the moment, there is not the slightest indication that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has any intention of accepting the Obama administration’s latest plan for a nuclear deal. This plan would require Iran to discontinue production of 20-percent enriched uranium (which can be quickly converted to weapons grade material), and confine itself to producing low 5 percent uranium...

"I've been preaching this since long before Gary Taubes' books came out. That's because I have a colleague who studies the physiology of insulin. From what I know, Taubes is right. A quote re Dietary Incorrectness at Powerline:...Taubes disputes the connection between dietary fat and high cholesterol. He challenges the thesis that dietary fat is detrimental to our health. He rejects a balanced diet. He advocates a high-fat diet. He opposes dieting. He doesn’t object to exercise, but he asserts that it makes you hungry. It’s almost funny. He is the dietary equivalent of politically incorrect.

Jesco von Puttkamer, a NASA engineer who helped launch the first astronauts to the moon, died Thursday (Dec. 27) at the age of 79 following a brief illness.

Gen. Carter Ham is head of the U.S. African command. An Army brigade from Fort Riley, Kan., will begin helping train African militaries beat back a growing terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida. An Army brigade from Fort Riley, Kan., some 4,000, soldiers, will begin helping to train African militaries. The idea is to help African troops beat back a growing terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida. The American troops will head over in small teams over the course of the next year. The Dagger Brigade returned to Kansas last year from a deployment to Iraq, where it trained and advised that...

So, I got this neat little digital camera for Christmas, see .. and

Two interesting infographics were published recently that make it so easy to see the decline of the West, even a caveman can do it.The first is from the Brookings Institute, which has released an interactive map showing economic growth data for the largest 300 metropolitan areas in the world– from New York and London to Okayama, Japan and Wulumuqi, China.The Brookings map ranks each of these cities based on economic performance over three distinct periods, measuring both GDP growth and employment trends.The first time period is the last full year of data, 2011-2012. The second time period is that particular...

French president François Hollande suffered a damaging setback yesterday when France’s highest court ruled his proposed 75% “supertax” rate unconstitutional. The measure, which is blamed for an exodus of wealthy French abroad, was a pillar of the Socialist leader’s successful Spring election campaign. But in an unexpected blow, France’s Constitutional Council ruled that the tax band did not guarantee equality for taxpayers because two households with the same total revenue could end up with different tax bills. Although the tax would have hit only around 1,500 people, it was seen as the totem in Hollande’s political manifesto, which said it...

In interview, Palestinian leader's widow says Arafat decided to launch Intifada after Camp David, according to research institute. Yasser Arafat's widow Suha admitted that the late Palestinian leader premeditated the Second Intifada, in an interview with Dubai TV earlier this month, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “Immediately after the failure of the Camp David [negotiations], I met him in Paris upon his return.… Camp David had failed, and he said to me: ‘You should remain in Paris.’ I asked him why, and he said: ‘Because I am going to start an Intifada. They want...

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was crowing. "The number of murders this year will be lower than any time in recorded city history," Bloomberg said Friday in a statement announcing that homicides in the city this year had fallen to 414 — the fewest since it started keeping such statistics in 1963. About the same time Friday, Chicago police were trying to get the message out that their city hadn't actually recorded its 500th homicide this year, as was being reported. A few hours later, they had to backtrack and acknowledge that, yes, in fact, "the city has seen its...

Movies like Promised Land sometimes make me ashamed to be a liberal. Gus Van Sant’s heartland drama about a natural-gas company trying to take over a small town wants to make the personal political and vice versa, to use its protagonist’s indecision and lack of identity to make a broader point about the corporate, "just doing my job" ethos. But it collapses on all fronts, delivering hot-button platitudes and just-add-water character development. The protagonist in this case is Steve (Matt Damon, who co-scripted, with John Krasinski, from a story by Dave Eggers), who works for a giant energy company seeking...

The state is immune from most lawsuits, which is why Pinsky must ask for permission to even file the suit. No decision has been made whether or not the suit will go through.

(NaturalNews) The reports are absolutely true. Facebook suspended the Natural News account earlier today after we posted an historical quote from Mohandas Gandhi. The quote reads: "Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." - Mohandas Gandhi, an Autobiography, page 446. This historical quote was apparently too much for Facebook's censors to bear. They suspended our account and gave us a "final warning" that one more violation of their so-called "community guidelines" would result in our account being permanently deactivated. They then demanded we...

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has been busy working his way through the 282 bills passed by the Legislature during the final weeks of the 2012 session. The governor's office said he signed 53 bills on Friday and vetoed four. He has acted on a total of 186 bills and 95 are pending review.

The one thing I am always afraid of in budget negotiations is that virtually nothing is done, or worse yet, something counterproductive is done. Obama's latest Fiscal Cliff "Mini-Deal" Proposal is exactly the kind of counterproductive nonsense I am talking about. Assuming the above Atlantic Wire article is correct ...   The deal would delay or replace the vast majority of spending cuts called for in the automatic sequester. The deal would extend unemployment benefits The deal would stop planned cuts to Medicare reimbursements Out of the blue, and probably an attempt to buy farm-state votes, the deal purportedly would include...

The site where Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting is building a new meetinghouse was damaged by arsonists during Christmas week, and police are now "absolutely" sure the attack was the result of a dispute between members of a Philadelphia construction union and the project's nonunion contractor.

Matt Damon's film is set to intensify debate on fracking As one of Hollywood's highest-paid actors with a reputation for straight-talking, he has made little secret of his willingness to confront thorny political and social issues. Now Matt Damon is facing off against one of America's most powerful institutions - the oil and gas industry - in a film that represents a new battleground for environmentalists' campaigns against fracking. Promised Land, which goes on nationwide release in the US this week, is set to intensify debate on the controversial drilling technique to such an extent that the industry has...

A hallmark of the inside the beltway, cronyism style of government is the protection and promotion of incompetent political hacks within its own ranks. (2) An independent review board reported that the murders at Benghazi on September 11, 2012, were the result of “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies” at the State Department. But of course, “…the Board did not find that any individual U.S. Government employee engaged in misconduct or willfully ignored his or her responsibilities.” The fix was in even before the State Department announced, the very next day, that Secretary Clinton had accepted the resignation of...

Yelena Nikolayeva with her newborn son who became the Earth's seven billionth resident, in the labor ward of the Kaliningrad Perinatal Center, Russia. Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister has announced some optimistic news regarding the country’s demographics, which shows that initiatives by the Kremlin may be beginning to bear fruit. ­The annual birth rate in Russia is expected to eventually hit 2 million, which is good news for the nation’s demographic and social outlook, Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets said in remarks at a conference on demographic issues. After years of dismal demographic rates, the news comes as a relief for...