Free Republic

Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook, America has debated desperately for an appropriate response to match the weight of its outrage... In the midst of media frenzy, Finkelhor’s statistics are comforting. Sandy Hook is an anomaly; school shootings are extremely rare to begin with and have actually fallen since the 1990s. According to Finkelhor, Sandy Hook is unusual in many ways, but he stressed that the knowledge we may get from analyzing this case will not necessarily be useful in terms of the things the nation needs most in order to keep children safe. “I’m not saying that there are...

He Withholds No Good Thing Today's Scripture For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. Psalm 84:11, NIV. Today's Word from Joel and Victoria What do you need from the Lord today? Do you need peace, provision or guidance? The Word of God promises that no good thing will He withhold from those who walk blamelessly before Him. Now you may be thinking, “Joel, I’m not perfect. How can I have a blameless walk?” The Good News is that when...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Will You Go Out Without Knowing? "He went out, not knowing where he was going" —Hebrews 11:8 Have you ever “gone out” in this way? If so, there is no logical answer possible when anyone asks you what you are doing. One of the most difficult questions to answer in Christian work is, “What do you expect to do?”You don’t know what you are going to do. The only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing. Continually examine your attitude toward God to see if you are willing to “go out” in every area of...

Likud Knesset Member candidate Moshe Feiglin, indicted for trying to prostate himself on the Temple Mount, wants to pay each Palestinian Authority Arab $500,000 to leave Israel. He unveiled the proposal at a “Sovereignty” conference sponsored by the Women in Green and which is discussing ideas for annexing Jewish area in Judea and Samaria as part of Israel and removing it from military control, as Israel did with the Golan Heights and areas in Jerusalem that were under the Jordanian occupation before the Six-Day War in 1967. “The country pays 10% of its gross national product every year to maintain...

The grounding of Shell’s Kulluk drilling rig amid a fierce storm in the Gulf of Alaska raised the specter of a fuel spill in the region and provided fresh fodder to drilling foes who insist Arctic oil exploration is too risky to allow. The episode also cast doubt on whether Shell Oil Co. will be able to resume its hunt for Arctic oil this year. The 29-year-old Kulluk conical drilling unit was unmanned when it plowed into rocks on the southeast side of Sitkalidak Island Monday night in Alaska, and there were no major injuries. But Coast Guard and Shell...

The Taliban Wednesday likened the planned withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan to America’s pullout from Vietnam, calling it a “declare victory and run” strategy. … “They want to flee from Afghanistan just as they turned tail and ran from Vietnam,” the Taliban statement said. “When America faced utter destruction in Vietnam, they came up with the formula ‘declare victory and run’ and want to utilize the formula of ‘transfer security and run’ here in Afghanistan.” …

Intel is reportedly on the cusp of delivering something that consumers around the world have been wanting for a long, long time. Kelly Clay at Forbes reports Intel is going to blow up the cable industry with its own set-top box and an unbundled cable service. Clay says Intel is planning to deliver cable content to any device with an Internet connection. And instead of having to pay $80 a month for two hundred channels you don't want, you'll be able to subscribe to specific channels of your choosing.

Egyptian security officials say two men have killed a technician and a principal at a school in the southern city of Luxor, slitting their throats with a knife. … The officials said an initial investigation indicates that one of the suspects is the father of a student who was allegedly sexually harassed by one of the victims. …

The longest lived among us aren’t necessarily those who are of normal weight, says a new study. According to new research this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers say that being overweight may lead to a longer life. The somewhat surprising conclusion comes from an enormous, detailed review of over 100 previously published research papers connecting body weight and mortality risk among 2.88 million study participants living around the world. The new research confirms that obese people, and particularly those who are extremely obese, tend to die earlier than those of normal weight. But the...

Most of America's problems are cultural. Even our economic problems stem from the cultural rejection of personal responsibility and the acceptance of collective responsibility. And none of our problems would be as bad if the church was still shaping the culture instead of merely responding to it. I was reminded of this during my annual holiday trip home to The Woodlands, Texas. I've attended Christmas Eve services four out of the last six years at the Woodlands Church (formerly Fellowship of the Woodlands), which is a Southern Baptist mega church that keeps its Baptist affiliation well hidden from the general...

As the edge of the fiscal cliff approaches and then recedes, like an imagined desert isle appearing and disappearing admit the waves, the process that has brought America into the tyranny of debt goes on. The national debt, like our annual deficits, is a symptom of the true problem. Irresponsible behavior is a symptom of irresponsible thinking. Bad choices come from the failure to understand consequences. Power is not just an aphrodisiac, it numbs one to the understanding that there even are consequences. The centers of people in a nation are the last to feel the cold and their decisions...

Long time gun owner HowardStern reiterates his opposition to assault weapons in the wake of the Newtown tragedy.

"While I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they’ve passed..."

American President Barack Obama’s step-grandmother underwent emergency eye surgery in an Israeli-run hospital in Equatorial Guinea last week. Sarah Onyango Obama, the president’s father’s third wife, lives in the remote Kenyan village of Nyang’oma Kogelo and suffered from an unspecified optical ailment. … The procedure was successful and Obama is making a full recovery, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Sunday. …

President Obama is headed to Hawaii. Again. The White House announced late Tuesday that Obama — who was forced to cut his Christmas vacation short last week to return to Washington — would be traveling back to Hawaii, where he would be reunited with the first family.

In the short time since President Obama was re-elected, government has issued hundreds of new regulations. The bureaucrats never stop. There are now more than 170,000 pages of federal regulations. President Obama wants still more rules. Cheering on increased financial regulation, he said, "We've got to keep moving forward." To the president, and probably most Americans, "forward" means passing more laws. It is scary to think about a world without regulation. Intuition leads us to think that without government we'd be victims of fraud, as I explain in my latest book, "No, They Can't!" But our intuition is wrong. Consider...

President Obama will kick off the new year the same way that he kicked off the old year: by demanding that the wealthy pay their "fair share" in taxes. But while millions of small-business owners, struggling entrepreneurs, inventors and investors brace for a double whammy of fiscal cliff tax hikes and new Obamacare taxes, the class-warrior in chief's richest pals are getting a pass. It's a Golden Pass for liberal millionaires and billionaires who support higher Obama taxes for everyone but themselves. Meet the Democratic tax evaders of the year. -- Google. The left-wing Internet giant provided Silicon Valley's biggest...

Gov. Bob McDonnell has certified health regulations that impose strict hospital construction standards on Virginia abortion clinics —triggering the next step in a multitiered approval process that could make the revised rules permanent by this summer. Unlike the public relations ballyhoo that accompanies many executive actions, McDonnell, an anti-abortion Republican, certified the regulations and had them posted to the Virginia Town Hall website without a public announcement on the Friday between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. The signoff comes more than three months after the rules were adopted in September by the state Board of Health at a contentious...

For Grover Norquist, the Senate-backed fiscal cliff bill on its way to the House floor Tuesday is a tax cut that House Republicans can vote for and defend to their constituents without violating their anti-tax increase pledges.