Free Republic

With a dreary predictability, Senator Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) shared with yesterday’s Senate hearing his “fire in a theater” argument for gun control. Schumer, as anyone who follows his exploits will be aware, is fond of this line. Adumbrating his opposition to the allegedly pernicious influence of Citizens United, the senator made the underlying point explicit: “I believe there ought to be limits because the First Amendment is not absolute. No amendment is absolute.” In an op-ed on December 23 of last year, he moved his attentions a little farther down the Bill of Rights: “While the First Amendment...

An upcoming squirrel hunt fundraiser for Orleans County's Holley Fire Department is attracting attention from animal lovers all over the world. And not in a good way. There are online petitions circulating against it, a United Kingdom newspaper wrote about it and a psychologist even blogged about it for Psychology Today, calling the fundraiser "pure barbarism"; There's even a Facebook page against it that had more than 200 "likes" Wednesday evening. But organizers of the squirrel hunt say critics have their upcoming competition all wrong, and are asking those who object to "respect the freedoms and rights of those who...

Geraldo contemplating run for Senate By Jonathan Easley - 01/31/13 02:02 PM ET Television personality and radio host Geraldo Rivera announced Thursday he’s “truly contemplating” a run for Senate in New Jersey. “I mention this only briefly, fasten your seatbelt,” Rivera said on his radio show. “I mentioned this only briefly to my wife ... but I am and I’ve been in touch with some people in the Republican Party in New Jersey. I am truly contemplating running for Senate against Frank Lautenberg or Cory Booker.” 
New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D), 89, is up for reelection in 2014 but...

One day before the biggest shooting range in Colorado opens to the sounds of gunfire, top El Paso County officials are promising to protect residents’ Second Amendment right to bear arms. El Paso County Commissioner Peggy Littleton on Tuesday introduced a resolution that states the board will not “enforce any statutes, edicts, Presidential Directives, or other regulations and proclamations which conflict — and are expressly preempted by — the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings” on the Second Amendment. The resolution refers to a 2008 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s rights, rather than...

President Barack Obama in his second inauguration address called for new action to “respond to the threat of climate change.” Taking advantage of the bully pulpit and a huge national audience, Obama mustered his best possible arguments in a brief case for why addressing global warming is supposedly necessary. Unfortunately for global warming alarmists, Obama’s case was exceptionally flimsy. Then again, Obama did not have much to work with, as the overall case for global warming alarmism is exceptionally flimsy.

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Former San Francisco 49er Kwame Harris has been charged with felony domestic violence and assault charges from an August beating involving a former boyfriend, a prosecutor and defense lawyer said.</p>

With the revelation that All Nippon Airways replaced defectivelithium ion batteries 10 times,Japan Air Lines replaced“quite a few,” andUnited Airlines replaced “multiple batteries,” in the months preceding the smoke emergency that grounded their Dreamliners, is there anything that can be said about the technology that can overcome its now-horrible reputation? Boeing has worked on the 787 for 10 years or so, with an ample amount of time to determine what kind of battery technology would be functional with the“super-efficient” jet with “exceptional environmental performance.” Had the Chicago-based manufacturer –and its airline customers – concerned themselves more with achievable plans that...

Police in Mesa, Ariz., reported finding a man with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound who matches the description of a suspect in a Phoenix shooting. Phoenix police Sgt. Steve Martos said a person matching the description of the suspect, 70-year-old Arthur Douglas Harmon, was found Thursday with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, KTVK-TV, Phoenix, reported. "Mesa Police have informed us they have located the suspect vehicle involved in yesterday's [Wednesday's] incident," Martos said in an email distributed to media outlets Thursday. "In addition, they have located an individual matching the suspect description nearby with what appears to...

Riverside, California, January 16, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Seventh-day Adventist website ADvindicate has recently drawn attention to the fact that La Sierra University has named a new economics centre after abortionist and gambling magnate Edward C. Allred, who in 1980 claimed to have personally aborted a quarter of a million babies in twelve years. In 2010, La Sierra, a Seventh-day Adventist University in Riverside, California, established the Edward C. Allred Center to promote free market economics among high school students. The centre’s abortionist namesake founded the Family Planning Associates Medical Group in 1969, a chain of abortion clinics that reportedly...

Why is stealing wrong? Is it wrong because it’s illegal? Or is stealing wrong because individuals have a God-given or natural right to their own property? To some people, that’s like asking, “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?” — in other words, they think the answer is unknowable. But there’s an essential difference here: Unlike the chicken-and-egg question, we know that our God-given/natural rights precede government — both logically and historically. As our country’s Declaration of Independence so eloquently states, we are all endowed “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of...

The was a large print of economic news this morning. The most important prints for the housing and commercial real estate markets are personal income (which rose) and Consumer Comfort (which fell again). Personal surged in December by 2.6% versus the expectation of 0.8% by economists. quarter of 2008, a report showed yesterday. Some companies paid dividends and employee bonuses earlier than usual before tax rates went up this year. The Commerce Department estimated about $26.4 billion of the increase in incomes last quarter was attributable to early dividend payments and another $15 billion reflected bonuses and other types of...

Migrants working in the United States sent a staggering $120 billion back to their families last year, it was revealed today. The amount of money being sent by migrants across the entire world reached $530 billion last year, making it a larger economy than Iran or Argentina, the data from the World Bank showed.

Bay State taxpayers are doling out a staggering $25 million a year to welfare recipients who may not even be eligible to collect, according to a blistering new report from one of the state’s top fraud fighters. The report, focused on families with at least one child, 
estimated that almost 10 percent of the 51,311 families on welfare are able to collect benefits from the Department of Transitional 
Assistance without having to provide the right documentation. The inspector general’s eye-opening study found the welfare department is awarding benefits to recipients who: • work outside jobs — a welfare violation that...

One student was shot, according to Channel 2 Action News. A teacher has been injured. One suspect is in custody.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz displayed a flair for showmanship this afternoon at the Senate’s gun violence hearing as he sought to puncture the argument for a proposed ban on assault weapons.“What it bans, I would suggest to you, are scary looking guns,” he said.With a life size photo of a Remington 750, a popular hunting rifle used — as Cruz said, by millions of Americans – the senator argued that the proposed ban focuses on “cosmetic features” such as pistol grips that in no way change the lethality of a weapon.He produced a plastic pistol grip and held it to...

France Is Dead Broke, But At Least Its GDP Came In Positive Economics / FranceJan 31, 2013 - 08:27 AM GMT By: Raul I Meijer US GDP came out today and it was a stinker: -0.1%. Enter a choir of 10,000 pundits who all figured out that all that bad smell was the result of one thing only: cuts in military spending. That's the sort of thing that tells me - or more correctly: confirms - that the optimism bias has become so strong and infectious it's no longer worth even discussing. And that's before I notice - caveat: I...

So much of science fiction's core topics intersect with war, one way or the other. Rapid social change and technological innovation both get supercharged during wartime, and some of our greatest explorers are also warriors. So it's not surprising that many of science fiction's most well-known authors served in the military at some point — especially during the era when we had a compulsory draft. But how did serving in the military shape these writers' books? Here's a look at 15 of the authors who served in the armed forces, and how their work reflects that experience.

Clashes between rival militant groups in the tribal region next to the Afghanistan border has reportedly claimed more than 70 lives since fighting broke out last week. The area lies near the Khyber Pass, a main route for NATO supply trucks to Afghanistan, making it pivotal to the US war effort there and to Pakistan's revenues. Fighting flared after a third militant group – the Pakistani Taliban – moved into an area already being fought over by two other outfits and the Pakistani military. On the run from its traditional strongholds in another part of the tribal belt, the Pakistani...

<p>On a hot July night six months ago, 89 House Republicans joined more dovish Democrats to do the unusual for Washington: cut $1.1 billion from the GOP’s proposed budget for defense in 2013.</p> <p>Then came Hurricane Sandy and the New Year’s Day tax bill, and as many as 157 House Republicans voted Jan. 15 to endorse a much bigger cut, taking nearly $10 billion from the Pentagon to help pay for disaster aid. It was a huge swing by any measure and one followed this week by a Monday night Senate vote in which the overwhelming majority of Republicans endorsed their own across-the-board defense cut worth tens of billions of dollars over the next nine years.</p>

Nine current or former Philadelphia Traffic Court judges surrendered today to face corruption charges after a three-year FBI probe into ticket-fixing in the beleaguered court. A 77-count indictment returned Tuesday but sealed until Thursday, said judges and their assistants routinely shredded documents, used code words and practiced "a well-understood conspiracy of silence" that turned the court into two systems: One where the average citizen paid for their infractions, while the connected saw tickets disappear, costing the Commonwealth an untold amount. "For years, even beyond the conspiracy charged, there existed a culture of ticket fixing at Traffic Court," the indictment said....