Free Republic

TAMPA — Gunfire rang out shortly after Melissa Kunkel and Gary Webb said “I do” on Sunday. Relax. The shots — aimed at heart-shaped bulls-eyes on paper targets — might have been among the friendliest fire in history. Following a wedding ceremony attended by about 50 people in a banquet room at Shooters World on Fletcher Avenue, the newlyweds took aim and fired. After an initial volley of shots that left holes around the bulls-eye, Melissa Webb pierced the paper heart with two bullets. “It’s an unusual experience, but it couldn’t have turned out nicer,” said the bride’s father, Tom...

Remember “peak oil”? We were solemnly lectured that the world was running out of hydrocarbon energy sources, so we must immediately lower our standard of living and reduce energy consumption. But as with all Malthusian predictions of shortage, that forecast failed to reckon with human ingenuity and the wonder of the price system stimulating new supply. The sky-is-falling faction turned to equally fallacious predictions of global warming as a means to bludgeon others into reducing their standard of living (while the warriors like Robert Kennedy and President Obama keep their private jets). Meanwhile, in the real world, energy supplies, in...

Do you remember Trump University? Probably not – it didn’t really catch on. And one big reason it didn’t catch on is because it was a total scam, say a slew of former students in complaints that were filed to the Federal Trade Commission and were recently unearthed by a Freedom of Information Act request from Gizmodo, writes Ethan Wolff-Mann for TIME. It is not only former students who have called into question the legitimacy of Trump University, which was founded in 2005. The New York Department of Education sent Trump a letter in 2010, accusing the operation of misleading...

How many firearms are lost or destroyed in the United States?  Is the number of guns in the U.S. increasing or decreasing? The current estimate of the private stock of firearms in the United States is about 363 million (16 million were added in 2013).  That number was calculated by the cumulative addition of domestic manufacture plus imports minus exports.  This does not count guns shipped to the U.S. military.   The figures are rounded to the nearest million. Firearms manufactured before 1899 are not included.  The starting figure in 1945 is 47 million. The numbers do not account for...

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is doing his best Sheila Broflovski from South Park imitation by shouting “Blame Canada!” and suggesting a wall along the northern border is a “legitimate issue.” He told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that people along the northern border are interested in a wall. Is northern border security a lot different than the security on the southern border? Absolutely, but there are plenty of reasons for it. The U.S. has a much different relationship with Canada, than it does with Mexico. Canada has drug cartels, but they appear to be focused on distributing product in...

Conservative luminaries have been warning that Donald Trump poses a threat to the Republican party and to the political future of conservativism. Charles Krauthammer has called him “political poison.” Fred Barnes says Trump has “made the GOP’s future dicey.” George Will thunders characteristically that “every sulfurous belch from the molten interior of the volcanic Trump phenomenon injures the chances of a Republican presidency.” All this may be true. Trump is indeed a braggart who goes out of his way to antagonize people — not a winning approach in electoral politics. And he’s shown little real commitment to conservative principles —...

PORTSMOUTH, R.I. — A Benedictine monk who works at a private Rhode Island school has discovered that finding solitude is no easy feat, even 175 feet in the air. Brother Joseph Byron was recently relaxing atop the Portsmouth Abbey School’s wind turbine — as he often does — when a drone zoomed in. Video taken by the drone, owned by a Californian on vacation, shows Byron sprawled across the turbine’s flat surface, with views of Narragansett Bay in the background. The footage was posted online this week.

“The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties.” And “The work of the committee continued to decline in importance throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s until the committee itself was renamed the House Internal Security Committee in 1969, prefiguring its eventual abolition in 1975.” We all know of what many believed as overreach and showmanship by Joe McCarthy during the life of this committee. McCarthyism is the term born from that era, and a...

i posted the link to his website because... "Trump Supporters Anonymous" This episode has been blocked by YouTube.

Recently, I asked my 87-year-old dad: "Was it a dream, or did you and Mom allow a man dressed like a woman to run through our home and out the back door?" Dad replied, "Wow! How on Earth could you possibly remember that?" I was a toddler then, now in my sixties. Dad said the man was being chased by the police, and my mom felt sorry for him. Today, transvestites are celebrated, awarded for courage. And yet, more Americans than ever view themselves as victims. A caller on a radio show said people are fed up with both sides...

IRS drops a bomb on small employers » Annual tax would be $36,500 per worker for noncompliance with Obamacare Employers with fewer than 50 employees were promised a break by not having to provide group health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. But now the IRS has served notice that under the rule that has been in effect since July 1 such employers are subject to $100 per worker per day excise tax if they help their employees with their health-care costs. That could amount to a staggering $36,500 per worker annual tax. “We were told over and over during...

A pugnacious, television-savvy, anti-trade, anti-illegal-immigration candidate comes out of nowhere, attracts intense enthusiasm from an angry Republican grassroots, gets denounced by a disgusted media, and suddenly endangers the hopes of a presidential frontrunner named Bush. That was Pat Buchanan early in the 1992 presidential election; that is Donald Trump today. Buchanan is one of the most significant figures in modern Republican history, but he’s been a perpetual outsider since leaving the White House in 1987. Once a trusted adviser to Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, he never held office himself, though he ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 1992 and...

Republican presidential hopeful and Texas Senator Ted Cruz holds a town hall event on military and veterans issues in Milford, New Hampshire.

Out of the poll of 1,563 registered voters conducted Aug. 20-25, a full 71 percent said they are dissatisfied with how matters are in the country, and 41 percent said they are "very dissatisfied," reports Politico. Only two percent of the voters said they are "very satisfied, and 26 percent said they are "somewhat satisfied." The poll, which carried a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points also showed: 27 percent are "angry," compared with 49 percent who expressed dissatisfaction, but not anger. 21 percent said they were satisfied with the government but not enthusiastic. 2 percent trusted the government...

California lawmakers hope to tackle major issues in the state’s health care program for the poor over the next two weeks, starting with how to ensure the state doesn’t lose $1 billion in federal funding. The potential billion-dollar loss comes as critics say Medi-Cal is already struggling to meet the needs of the 12.5 million people who rely on the system.

A flight was diverted to Denver International Airport on Friday because of an unruly passenger who wanted to see her comfort cat. Passengers resumed their flight on Saturday after a 24-hour delay. A passenger on the flight to Germany from Las Vegas shot video of a clearly agitated woman, described at a European model, taken off the Condor Airlines flight that landed prematurely in Denver. The female passenger was reportedly demanding to be seated with her comfort cat. “That lady wasn’t happy with the crew putting their cat in the lavatory and then everything went wrong. She started screaming and...

Three of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s fundraising consultants have left the campaign, Fox News confirmed Saturday. The consultants are Kris Money, Trey McCarley and Debbie Alexander, and they voluntarily left the campaign Friday, according to multiple sources. Politico first reported the departures and suggested they were the result of personality conflicts and concerns about the strength of the campaign. However, a Bush campaign source attempted Saturday to minimize the impact of the departures by saying the consultants remain involved in multiple projects outside of the campaign. In addition, Bush spokesman Tim Miller told Fox News: "Governor Bush has the...

Say goodbye to “Mt. McKinley.” The highest U.S. peak is getting an official name change: http://t.co/I9FfurdnmRpic.twitter.com/6UD9N4knc1— CNN (@CNN) August 31, 2015 Continuing to flex his executive muscle during his final term as commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama announced Sunday that Alaska’s Mount McKinley was being renamed Denali.The president used his executive power to restore the mountain to its “Alaska Native name, which has deep cultural significance to the tallest mountain in North America,” reports The New York Times. The move came on the eve of Mr. Obama’s trip to Alaska, where he will spend three days promoting aggressive action to...

Barack Obama has decided to hand out Social Security numbers to (illegal immigrants) Let's face it. Black Ovomit has decided he's above the law. With the Obama amnesty, or Obamnesty, he declared with a series of "presidential memos," TeaParty.org lawyers analyzing the action have concluded Obama simply "nullified" existing immigration laws to the detriment of those millions that stand in line, follow legal procedures, and become citizens. Barack Obama has decided to hand out Social Security numbers to maybe 5 million illegal immigrants simply because they are parents to a child that has U.S. birthright citizenship or legal U.S. residency...

ESPN last week suspended its lead baseball analyst, Curt Schilling, not for talking games to death, but for a social-media message equating Nazis with current, extremist Muslims. Despite their master-race genocidal crusade, the Nazis, during World War II, recruited, inducted, trained and armed at least 25,000 Balkan Muslims into an Islamic arm of the SS. Tens of thousands more eastern Muslims fought for Nazi Germany. Their mutual attraction was a shared desire to murder Jews. After the war, “rat lines” that provided escape and sanctuary to Nazi war criminals led to safekeeping in Islamic countries, especially Egypt and Syria. And...