Free Republic

Chicago has moved to the top spot of a list no city wants to be a part of: the most treatments for bed bug infestations. Pest control company Orkin said Tuesday it did more business in Chicago than any other city last year. Chicago had been second on the list in 2011 behind Cincinnati. ... Chicago in 2012 was ranked just ahead of Detroit, Los Angeles and Denver

Islamist militants attacked a gas field in Algeria on Wednesday, claiming to have kidnapped up to 41 foreigners including seven Americans in a dawn raid in retaliation for France's intervention in Mali, according to regional media reports. The raiders were also reported to have killed three people, including a Briton and a French national. An al Qaeda affiliated group said the raid had been carried out because of Algeria's decision to allow France to use its air space for attacks against Islamists in Mali, where French forces have been in action against al Qaeda-linked militants since last week. The attack...

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system. 2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system. 3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system. 4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks. 5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full...

Just as moderates are completely unrepresented in a Democratic Party that's dominated by liberals, movement conservatives often don't feel represented by the Republican Party. At first glance, this seems rather odd since most Republicans in Congress are conservative. However, it's a natural reaction to the Republican establishment that has its hands welded to many of the GOP's levers of power. The Republican Party may be mostly conservative, but there are a multitude of reasons that you can't trust the establishment Republicans as far as you can throw them. 1) They have supreme confidence without supreme competence. Conservative talk show hosts,...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) strongly criticized President Obama's push to introduce new gun laws on Wednesday. Rubio's comments on the Laura Ingraham show came shortly before Obama unveiled the specifics of his new efforts to reduce gun violence. Rubio, often mentioned as a likely 2016 presidential candidate, said it would have been better if Obama had decided to announce his proposals without being accompanied by children. Obama was joined at the press conference by children who wrote to the president in response to the December shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that resulted in 28 dead....

Featured Term (selected at random):RUBRICS Originally red titles of law announcements. They are the directive precepts or liturgical provisions found in the Missal, including the Sacramentary and lectionary, and in the ritual, to guide bishops, priests, or deacons in the Eucharistic liturgy, the administration of sacraments and sacramentals, and the preaching of the Word of God. Rubrics are printed in red and are either obligatory or merely directive, as the context makes amply clear. (Etym. Latin rubrica, red earth; title of law written in red; hence law instruction.) All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic...

I would bet that the gun manufacturers and ammo manufacturers are balanced on a thin line between wanting to expand to take advantage of the demand and holding off so as to not be holding massive inventory when the mania tapers off. If they keep production as it is, prices stay great and no risk of over extending themselves. I hope the quality hold up. It makes me wonder if a gun manufactured in early 2013 might have some corners cut to get them out the door?

As President Obama takes steps to reduce gun violence there is a chance he could use executive action and bypass the involvement of Congress. Nebraska’s 2nd District Congressman Lee Terry says this violates the process of the issue being addressed by elected representatives in the House and Senate. He says if both chambers decide that plan doesn’t work that is “not a green light for the President to go ahead and do it”. Congressman Terry says any steps that have been taken to counter gun control regulations have been blocked by Attorney General Eric Holder who is against guns owned...

The following is a list, provided by the White House, of executive actions President Obama plans to take to address gun violence. 1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system. 2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.

The Prime Minister’s plans for gay marriage could leave churches facing legal action unless they agree to same-sex unions, it emerged today.Legal advice reportedly sent to David Cameron warns that church could be sued under human rights legislation if they refuse to allow the services to proceed. Exemption granted to the Church of England by the Coalition Bill to prevent it having to conduct gay marriages is “eminently challenge-able” in the European Court of Human Rights. It also warns that the Government's insistence that protections put in place for other religious groups who don't want to marry homosexuals could be...

Since the December 14th murder of 27 people prevented by law from defending themselves, the American left has worked overtime to intimidate, embarrass and harass 2nd Amendment supporters into relinquishing their God given right to keep and bear arms. Gun and accessory bans, sales by private citizens outlawed, imminent threats of confiscation, millions in new taxes and fees and countless, law abiding citizens menaced with being summarily pronounced felons—all of these threats have been brought to bear on the American public by self-righteous hypocrites. Yet a full month has gone by since the grisly, Sandy Hook killings and the far...

Inmates in eastern Poland are learning to paint religious iconography, as part of a scheme aimed at engaging their talents.

Syracuse, NY -- A Playboy magazine playmate appeared in federal court this morning on charges of trying to smuggle her Canadian boyfriend across the border last summer. Colleen Shannon, 34, of Los Angeles, was charged in August with helping to smuggle Robert Skojo and transport him after he sneaked across the border by boat through the Akwesasne Mohawk Indian Reservation, which straddles the border.

Maybe the Pentagon’s legendary $600 toilet seat was a bargain. The personal bathroom used by the secretary of the Interior is so swanky that its renovation cost $222,000. No detail was overlooked: It has a $3,500 sub-zero refrigerator (hey, if you’re going to have a fridge in the bathroom, it might as well be a good one) and a $689 faucet. At least the “vintage tissue holder” was cheap: just $65 bucks. The renovation was done in 2007 under President George W. Bush’s Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, but is only now coming to light, thanks to the dogged reporting by...

Henderson County Sheriff Charlie McDonald cringed when he heard that President Obama planned to make an announcement today about sweeping gun-control proposals... "I can see where this could be a real nightmare," McDonald said... McDonald doesn't believe that limiting the size of magazine clips and banning assault rifles is the answer. "I don't think you're going to change people's behaviors by adding laws to the existing laws that we have already," he said. "You're trying to regulate the criminal element through laws which they broke in the first place. "Limiting the rights of free, law-abiding Americans because of the transgressions...

President Barack Obama's broad effort to reduce gun violence will include proposed bans on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as more than a dozen executive orders aimed at circumventing congressional opposition to stricter gun control. Obama was to announce the measures Wednesday at a White House event that will bring together law enforcement officials, lawmakers and children who wrote the president about gun violence following last month's shooting of 20 young students and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, CT. But before the president's plan even reaches Congress, a Missouri lawmaker wants to make...

JERUSALEM – Israel's national museum said Tuesday it will open what it calls the world's first exhibition devoted to the architectural legacy of biblical King Herod, the Jewish proxy monarch who ruled Jerusalem and the Holy Land under Roman occupation two millennia ago.

General audience, Benedict XVI defines the Incarnation as "something unimaginable, the face of God can be seen, the process that began with Abraham is fulfilled." The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, he asks "for the great gift" to "proclaim together that Jesus is the Savior of the world."Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "The desire to know the face of God is in every man, even the atheists," but this desire is only realized by following Christ, in whom, in the Incarnation, "something unimaginable took place, the journey that began with Abraham is fulfilled. He is the Son, the fullness of...

For those of us following The Won's address to his subjects.

SNIP "Most Americans agree that a president's children should not be used as pawns in a political fight. But to go so far as to make the safety of the president's children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly," White House spokesman Jay Carney said