Free Republic

Barack Obama, frustrated with continued construction in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, has reportedly become “inured” to the issue and has begun telling colleagues that Israel is acting against its own best interests. If accurately reported, such comments, expressed by the head of state of the country Israel considers its closest ally, may represent a new low in relations between this US administration and Jerusalem, which in recent years have suffered strains over the Palestinian and Iranian issues. According to the report by Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg published Tuesday morning, Obama last month began repeating the mantra that “Israel...

A longtime substitute teacher in Phillipsburg, NJ, has been fired after he shared a Bible verse with a student – and upon request gave the child a Bible. The Phillipsburg School Board voted Monday night to terminate the employment of Walter Tutka. He was accused of breaking two policies – distributing religious literature on school grounds and another policy that directs teachers to be neutral when discussing religious material. “It’s unfortunate the Phillipsburg School District chose the path of religious hostility and intolerance against a retired man serving his community and simply responding to a student’s intellectual curiosity,” Hiram...

With the administration’s debt ceiling deadline fast approaching, House Republican leaders are considering a four-year debt limit increase that would take the issue off the table for the rest of President Barack Obama’s presidency. The plan would, however, come at no easy price for Obama, who pledged as recently as Monday morning not to negotiate with Republicans on a debt ceiling hike. Republicans would demand major tax and entitlement changes — the latter of which has been anathema to many Democrats — and they could also ask for movement on the sequester and an expiring continuing resolution that must be...

The federal government will hit the statutory limit on its debt within the next two months, and further borrowing would require congressional action. Almost everybody recognizes that such action will need to take place, since no one has proposed a way to end all deficit spending immediately. But Republicans want to make sure that as Congress takes that action it both highlights the problem of overspending and takes steps to address it, while Democrats want to make sure that the problem receives neither attention nor remedy. To achieve its end, each party has focused on a different element of the...

A Swede who gained worldwide fame for having his love of hard rock classified as a disability says he remains addicted to heavy metal music five years after being granted social security benefits for his affliction. "I'm still very addicted," Roger Tullgren, 47, told The Local this week from his home in Hässleholm in southern Sweden. "I listen to heavy metal music 24 hours a day."

Would you like to save $20,000 this year? Of course you would. Here’s how: Plan a month-long vacation to Disneyland, and budget $20,000 for the trip. Then don’t go. Presto! You just “cut” your family budget by 20 grand. This sounds absurd—because it is. Yet that is precisely how Washington operates. A couple of weeks ago, President Obama claimed on national TV that “I cut spending by over a trillion dollars in 2011.” But as many people quickly pointed out, in fiscal 2011 federal spending rose from $3.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion. Nevertheless, the President repeated the claim on Jan....

SALT LAKE CITY - A book about a lesbian couple raising children has returned to a Utah school district's library shelves, amid a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union. Officials with the ACLU of Utah say they were informed of the district's decision Monday, two months after the suit was filed.

The 92-year-old music store become the latest high street casualty of the credit crisis and called in administrators. Some 4,350 jobs are at risk if the chain closes. The blow follows the recent collapses of camera trader Jessops and electrical retailer Comet that together cost more than 8,000 jobs. Today restructuring giant Deloitte will be confirmed as administrator and will look to trade HMV’s 230 UK stores and find a buyer. But experts said that at BEST a profitable “core” of stores will remain trading. It is understood HMV has emailed all stores telling staff not to accept gift card...

Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III declared in an exclusive Newsmax TV interview that President Barack Obama could easily be impeached if he bypassed Congress and enacted gun-control legislation by executive order.

Gun control alone will not solve the complex problem of guns and extreme violence. We have an access problem. The mentally ill should never have access to guns. Eight of the nine killers in mass shootings in the United States in 2012 had a history of mental illness or suffered from untreated mental illness. Their families, friends, classmates, teachers or coworkers knew something was wrong. The mass murders (defined by the FBI as four or more murders during one incident) occurred across the country -- including one right here in Minneapolis -- and targeted schools, movie theaters, stores, religious facilities...

I was disappointed with the clear implication in your Meet The Press interview that those of us, in the GOP who defend life, protect traditional marriage and advance religious liberty are intolerant. It was obvious to anyone who watched the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, that NO! had it. There was no way the convention chairman could have heard a two-thirds vote for the YES! position. Three times the chairman asked them to vote. Three times they denied God. Denied Him Thrice! What has happened to the Democratic Party that,in the 1960's, provided such leadership for the cause...

QUESTION: HOW MANY GUNS PROTECT THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT IN CHIEF? When I was active duty, there was a minimum of about 30 guns around the POTUS, established in 3 "rings of security". Senators and Congressmen in active service were assigned a minimum of 2 guns (men) each, and, when retired were assigned one each. They carried large magazines of ammo and a minimum of 3 magazines each. So how many gun that the ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT IN CHIEF wants to outlaw, along with the magazines he wants to outlaw, does he have protecting him every day? The United States Citizens KNOW...

An '11 or 12 year old' victim of a child sex ring was forced to miscarry after her attacker used an 'instrument' on her in a home abortion when she became pregnant, a court has heard. A gang of nine men face accusations of grooming and horrifically abusing vulnerable girls from the age of 11 - making their lives a 'living hell. The men, all from Oxford, allegedly plied six girls with alcohol, cocaine and heroin before repeatedly raping them. Kamar Jamil, 27, Akthtar Dogar, 32, Anjum Dogar, 30, Assad Hussain, 32, Mohammed Karrar, 38, Bassam Karrar, 26, Mohammed Hussain,...

GOLDMAN: Hide Your Kids, The Sequester Is Coming Joe WeisenthalJan. 15, 2013, 5:15 AM Goldman's Alec Phillips writes in a note that the automatic spending cuts required by the so-called "Sequester" (the spending caps imposed by the 2011 debt ceiling deal) are now a matter of "when" and not "if." He examines the sequester as part of the broader fiscal triple threat that we're seeing right now: Debt ceiling + ongoing budget resolution + sequester. While the debt ceiling has the potential to do the most damage, from a probabilistic standpoint (because the debt ceiling is unlikely to be breached)...

China's Smog Is So Bad No One Noticed A Factory Was On Fire Adam TaylorJanuary 15, 2013China's smog problem is reaching historically high levels, with air quality in parts of the country now 40 times higher than standards set by the WHO. There's also serious visibility problems — and these can have real ramifications. State news agency Xinhua reported Monday that a fire in a 1,000 square foot factory in China’s Zhejiang province went unnoticed for 3 hours as locals couldn't tell the difference between the smoke and the smog blanketing the area. By the time anyone noticed, the fire...

The Republican-led House Rules Committee late Monday approved a rule for a massive Hurricane Sandy relief package that shuts out most GOP proposals to pare back the size of the bill. The main bill provides $17 billion in relief, and an amendment made in order would add another $33.7 billion, for a total of $50.7 billion. Late last week, Republicans offered amendments that would trim the bill significantly, but few of those were made "in order" by the Rules Committee on Monday. For example, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) proposed amendments that would have slashed $22 billion from the total package,...

When President Obama’s autopen turned the fiscal cliff deal into law, Americans might have thought that the federal government had begun to walk down the road to a balanced budget. But the 157-page American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 is business-as-usual. The backroom deal, chiefly engineered by Vice President Biden, fed the special-interest well while leaving the federal budget in crisis. The final bill includes some $68 billion in favors over the next ten years. The fiscal irresponsibility continues unabated. A look at the energy provisions alone shows why. For starters, the cliff deal renewed the twenty-years-and-counting “temporary” tax credit...

Exclusive: Joseph Farah stresses absurdity of expecting police to protect you Maybe you’re one of those people who doesn’t think you’ll ever need a gun – or want one. After all, all one has to do in 21st century America is call 911 when you’re faced with danger, right? The first time I realized I needed a gun was as a young man living in a nice section of Los Angeles. It was not the kind of neighborhood in which one expected to experience a home invasion. Yet, one night, that’s what I was faced with. It started with a...

The National Park Service does not usually approve of graffiti. "It's a federal offense," said Marcus Koenen, site supervisor for Alcatraz, the former prison that is now part of a national park. However, the government has made an exception for graffiti left behind during the Indian occupation of the island - and it helped restore signs painted by hand on a landmark water tower. "PEACE AND FREEDOM WELCOME HOME OF THE FREE INDIAN LAND," the writing says in red letters 4 and 5 feet high. "We restored it because it has a social significance," Koenen said recently. "It is part...

VERNAL — When George Burnett first set up shop in Vernal, he knew he had to find away to connect with his adopted community if his custom seat cover business was going to survive. So, armed with a sandwich board emblazoned with the phrase "Honk If You (Heart) Drilling!," Burnett took to the corner of 500 East and Main Street and began his one-man crusade to boost the spirit of a community that was getting its first glimpse of another oil and gas bust. Fast-forward nearly five years and Burnett — now a local celebrity for his tireless support of...