Free Republic

What if the threat of a voluntary default by the United States could be erased by simply turning one tiny scrap of platinum into a coin? That's right. No debt ceiling problem. No bickering in Congress. No market jitters. The only thing needed is for the Treasury Department to mint a platinum coin with a face value of $1 trillion. Of course, this is not going to happen. Creating money out of thin air is hardly a solution. It could lead to even more concerns from those worried about inflation. Critics of the Federal Reserve's monetary easing programs would likely...

The disastrous 2012 election and embarrassing fiscal cliff standoff has brought forth one principal conclusion from establishment Republicans: They have a primary problem.The intra-party contests, or threat thereof, have become the original sin that explains many of the party’s woes in the minds of GOP leaders. It’s the primaries that push their presidential nominees far to the right (see “self-deportation” and “47 percent”); produce lackluster Senate candidates (Todd Akin has almost become a one-word shorthand); and, as seen most vividly in the last two weeks, dissuade scores of gerrymandered House members from face-saving compromise while politically emasculating their speaker.What to...

A German minister is calling for children to be given the vote, it was reported on Thursday. He said that excluding the country’s 13 million under-18s was “absurd”, triggering a backlash from other politicians. Dirk Niebel, Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development told the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), “We must give children a voice—in elections as well.” The current age limit on voting in Germany is 18, which, he said, was “completely inappropriate”, although he was not specific about when he wanted children to be given suffrage. On a practical level, the Free Democrat (FDP) politician said that parents could...

The National Jewish Democratic Council are getting their panties in a bunch over the selection of Rand Paul to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, claiming his anti-foreign aid position is anti-Israel (no comment from them though on their President's belief that much of the Jerusalem area should be Judenrein). You would think that a press release that "expresses outrage" over someone who is a "radical ideologue" with a "deeply disturbing record" would have more to say about that person than he wants us to send less money overseas. No money quotes? No taking the side of Hezbollah in the Israel-Lebanon...

A radical new kind of airship funded by the US military is about to make its first test flight - and it looks uncannily like the Thunderbird 2 craft from the classic TV show. The Aeroscraft airship will carry three times as much as the biggest military cargo planes over thousands of miles, use a third of the fuel, and it doesn't even need a landing strip. It could also have major implications for cargo haulage, and almost everything now laboriously transported across the planet's surface by boat, train and lorry could within years be carried through the skies, its...

Middle-class workers will take a bigger hit to their income proportionately than those earning between $200,000 and $500,000 under the new fiscal cliff deal, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Earners in the latter group will pay an average 1.3 percent more - or an additional $2,711 - in taxes this year, while workers making between $30,000 and $200,000 will see their paychecks shrink by as much as 1.7 percent - or up to $1,784 - the D.C.-based think tank reported. Overall, nearly 80 percent of households will pay more money to the federal government as a result of...

A newspaper based in White Plains that drew nationwide anger after publishing the names and addresses of handgun permit holders last month is being guarded by armed security personnel at two of its offices, the publisher said Wednesday. The increased security comes as the newspaper, The Journal News, has promised to forge ahead with plans to expand its interactive map of permit holders to include a third county in the suburbs of New York City, and local officials there have vowed to block the records’ release. The armed guards — hired from local private security companies — have been stationed...

Republican Bruce Castor who has expressed interest in taking on Gov. Tom Corbett in the 2014 GOP gubernatorial primary said Wednesday's announcement a lawsuit against the NCAA over Penn State's sanction "smacks of political gamesmanship and ‘too little too late.'" The lawsuit filed in U.S. Middle District Court seeks to have the court lift the sanctions that were imposed on Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

HARTFORD — Josemaria Islas, an undocumented immigrant from New Haven, had his deportation case continued for two months Thursday as advocates continue to push for the government to let him remain in the country through the use of prosecutorial discretion. Islas, who came here from Mexico, has been living and working in New Haven for the past seven years, contributing to the support of his sister’s family, which includes three children.

Alliance Defending Freedom recently settled a lawsuit brought on behalf of Julea Ward, a former graduate student at Eastern Michigan University who was expelled from her counseling program after refusing to violate her religious beliefs. Media reports have unfortunately suggested that Julea’s lawsuit involved her refusal to counsel a client because he identified as gay: this is untrue. Instead, her case involved her religious objection to being forced to provide counseling about sexual relationships outside of marriage, an objection which applies equally to homosexual and heterosexual clients. Her objection is to providing counseling on certain topics, not to counseling any...

ADOLF HITLER'S PLOT TO BOMB NEW YORK Newly discovered papers reveal the Nazis’ most bizarre plan – sending manned rockets into space to attack America. The head of the Luftwaffe Hermann Goering banged his fi st on the table in anger. He needed a dynamic new scheme to catch the Fuhrer’s eye. In the warped world of the Third Reich, competition between the German army and the German air force – the Luftwaffe – was fierce. Under Adolf Hitler’s power-crazed dictatorial leadership senior Nazis vied and tussled for infl uence throughout the Second World War. At the end of 1941,...

On New Year’s Day, several on-duty plain clothes officers were dining at a Belleville, Ill. Denny’s, when a customer complained to the manager that one of the officers was carrying a gun. The Denny’s manager told the officer she would have to leave or put the gun in her car, as guns are not allowed on their premises. “It’s absolutely a slap in the face I totally agree it’s completely disrespectful,” Belleville Police Captain Don sax said in a KTVI Fox2 report. “I’ve never known anybody that didn’t want a police officer present in an establishment in a business...

Gay clergy in civil partnerships will be allowed to become bishops if they are sexually abstinent, according to new policyThe Church of England has agreed that gay clergy in civil partnerships can become bishops so long as they remain sexually abstinent, a decision that looks set to reopen one of the church's most bitter internal debates. The decision was taken in mid-December by the House of Bishops, the section of the General Synod which is responsible for church teaching. A summary of the meeting was placed on the church's website on 20 December but the change to policy was buried...

A key state lawmaker is pressing for stronger pool safety measures in Connecticut schools following the deaths of 2 students in swim classes last year. The Hartford Courant reports that state Rep. Stephen D. Dargan a West Haven Democrat who is House chairman of the Public Safety Committee, is introducing legislation to establish a uniform policy on school pool safety to reduce hazards. The newspaper said its review last year found that safety standards in children's swim classes vary throughout Connecticut. They range from stringent requirements governing state-licensed organizations and youth camps to more vague guidelines in public schools. Manchester...

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced two reparations resolutions on the first day of the 113th Congress. The first, H.R. 40, is “to acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.” The second, H.R. 98, is “to provide a remedy for...

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A nation coming apart at the seams, rent by strife and factionalism. Founding principles are jettisoned, replaced by a cynical “will to power” that engenders graft and corruption. The people, having rejected moral traditions and embraced relativism, become obsessed with sex, heartily applauding sexual anarchy and perversion. Monogamy is disregarded, and marriage as an institution begins to disintegrate. A declining birthrate threatens eventual extinction as the use of contraceptives and abortion abounds as a means to limit the number of children. Unemployment grows and a flagging creative spirit haunts a once robust economy. All these symptoms of a sick society...

Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to the director of Central Intelligence, and vice chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.  He is widely credited as having been the first senior official to predict the fall of the Soviet Union. He’s also, written a number of good books (including How to Analyze Information: A Step-by-Step Guide to Life’s Most Vital Skill, and The Cure for Poverty: It’s the Free Market: History’s Greatest Invention), plus he often speaks to groups of business executives. Recently he took time out of his busy schedule to sit down across a Skype connection with me,...

The odd-year gubernatorial election of what now feels like a solidly purple Virginia (…dagger) could potentially serve as a bellwether of which way the national attitude is trending after almost a year into President Obama’s second term, and conservative Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli will be facing former DNC chief Terry McAuliffe in what will likely be a pretty rough race.One of the items on which the Obama administration has already started moving “forward” in the more politically safe second-term-secured atmosphere is all of the regulations on which they were rather conspicuously holding back before the election, with the Environmental Protection...

An unruly passenger who got drunk and belligerent on a Kennedy Airport-bound intercontinental flight yesterday was subdued by passengers and taped to his seat the rest of the way, according to witness reports. The passenger, who was on an Icelandair flight, “drank all of his duty-free liquor on the flight,” tried to “choke the woman next to him” and was “screaming the plane was going to crash,” according to passenger Andy Ellwood, who snapped the man’s photo and posted it to his blog.