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On April 4, 1996, the subject of my radio show in Kansas City was Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown. He and 34 others had died the day before when their Air Force plane crashed into a Croatian mountainside. Not one to shy from exploitation of a tragedy, President Clinton was busily profaning the memory of Martin Luther King – who had been killed on April 4, 1968 – by comparing King’s mission to Brown’s. What Clinton did not say was that Brown had gone to Croatia to broker a sweetheart deal between the neo-fascist strongman who ran Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, and...

If you’re glued to the trashy, monotonous 2016 horserace, just like the presidential candidates still insisting they will end Common Core you will have missed that the cornerstone of President Obama’s education policy has already become a tombstone. That’s right: Common Core is dead. The big postmortems will roll out in a year or two, but it’s already clear this education monstrosity is eking out its last gasps. Not that many normal people paid much attention to the biggest shift in U.S. education for decades, to hear Buzzfeed tell it in the recent video below. To recap, Common Core is...

Tech startups love millennials. Tasty, tasty millennials who get underpaid, overworked, churned up and turned into nourishment for venture capitalists. Millennials are the Soylent Green of the tech world. As each batch gets mashed up, there’s a long line of new hires eager to be made into the next meal for the execs and their billionaire backers, as tech survivor Dan Lyons shows in a scathingly funny new book, “Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble” (Hachette Books). Lyons became a strange kind of celebrity a decade ago when he began posting nutty but funny insights as “Fake Steve Jobs.”...

Winston Moseley, who stalked, raped and killed Kitty Genovese in a prolonged knife attack in New York in 1964 while neighbors failed to act on her desperate cries for help — a nightmarish tableau that came to symbolize urban apathy in America — died on March 28, in prison. He was 81.

Following yesterday’s knife attack in Rosh Ha’ayin in which a 30-year-old mother of three was wounded, the Arab Israeli suspect’s mother denies the incident was a terror attack, claiming that the knife her daughter was brandishing was “for making salad." The mother, a resident of the town of Kfar Qassem close to the scene of the attack, told Channel 2 that her daughter wasn’t a terrorist, and decried the media for rushing to judgment. “She’s dieting. She always carries fruit and a knife with her in her bag to make salads,” she said. In the attack, the terrorist had a...

Smaller House, Larger Life Making the choice to live small in a yurt or tiny house is no quick decision. However, if you want to be reduce your carbon footprint, connect closely with the people you live with, be one with nature, cut down on material possessions, or want to live a more green and sustainable existence, the lifestyle might be perfect for you. Intrigued? These experienced tiny dwellers have a lot of useful insight into the experience of inhabiting tiny structures like yurts and tipis to make the most out of living in them. Kenton Whitman (http://www.rewildu.com) Living in...

MADISON, Wis. — Senator Ted Cruz of Texas on Monday warned the Republican Party against pushing an “uber-Washington lobbyist” as a possible nominee at a contested convention, insisting that only he or Donald J. Trump should be chosen. Mr. Cruz has long pressed Gov. John Kasich of Ohio to leave the race and argued that establishment favorites — like Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan, whose prospective selection was the subject of intense chatter in a Politico article on Monday morning — could not be considered under existing rules. “If over 80 percent of delegates are Cruz delegates and Trump delegates,...

One of the Left’s malicious portrayals of conservatives is that we are intolerant and prone to violence. Alas, the evidence is quite to the contrary. Edie and David Delorme own Kern’s Bake Shop in Long View, Texas, and are members of a local Baptist church. On Feb. 17, 2016, a homosexual couple, Ben Valencia and Luis Marmolejo, came to the shop and asked to buy a cake for their wedding. When Edie realized it was for a same-sex wedding, she politely refused. Edie told Fox News: “We don’t do cakes that might conflict with our spiritual convictions. It was not...

The Legacy Lives On! Mark’s Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation “Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.” --Mark Levin in Liberty and Tyranny Welcome to “The Levin Lounge”… Step in and have a virtual FRink.Taking the country by storm, one radio station at a time – and kicking the BUTTS of the competition! Welcome all, to the most FUN LIVE THREAD on FreeRepublic.com! You can call Mark’s show: 1-877-381-3811

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump has taken a 10-point lead over Sen. Ted Cruz in Wisconsin in the final hours before the critical primary on Tuesday, a new poll released on Monday afternoon shows. The bombshell new polling data, from American Research Group (ARG), show Trump’s 42 percent towering over Cruz’s 32 percent in the Badger State. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, for whom it is already mathematically impossible to win the nomination outright before the GOP convention in Cleveland in July, lurks back at 23 percent...

Quickly and quietly, the People’s Republic of China is transforming itself into a 21st Century military superpower to be reckoned with. Case in point: China’s latest-generation Dong Feng (“East Wind”) intercontinental ballistic missile, the DF-41, is months away from deployment. This newest nuclear missile, touted as the world’s longest-range missile, is reputedly capable of striking anywhere within the continental United States. Unlike its predecessors, the DF-41 will not be confined to stationary missile silos, but will be launched from mobile platforms. This formidable new weapon will probably be deployed to the People's Liberation's Army's (PLA's) Strategic Rocket Forces bases this...

When Missouri parents Tiffany and Anthony Swearengin saw their children weren’t making progress in school, they followed the lead of millions of American families: They notified the school, took their kids out of class and started homeschooling. Then the Swearengins received a letter from Rose Pursell, the chief deputy juvenile officer in the Douglas County, Missouri, court system, notifying them “to appear before the Truancy Court of 44th Judicial Circuit, at the Juvenile Court Center.” The letter threatens the parents with the “above named juvenile be[ing] placed in the legal custody of the Missouri Children’s Division.” But no such court...

Sam Patch is one of those local legends that's just there, part of our early childhood storytelling world, like Paul Bunyan or Johnny Appleseed... A couple of months ago, we heard a talk about Sam at the neighborhood library branch, setting the stories in historical reality. The circus-like character with the swashbuckling costume and the pet bear and the showy leaps, the character he presented on posters to advertise his famous jumps over waterfalls, was only the performance persona... He began jumping over waterfalls as part of a community of daredevil workers, young men showing off and letting off steam....

Gun sales broke records yet again in the month of March. The FBI performed 2,523,265 firearms-related background checks between March 1 and March 31, according to the agency’s records. That’s a new record for the month. It’s nearly 35,000 more checks than the previous record set in March 2014. Despite the new record, March saw the fewest checks of any month so far in 2016. The March record is the eleventh straight monthly record for background checks. The unprecedented streak, which began in May 2015, has included all-time records for both monthly and yearly sales. With 7,682,141 checks processed through...

I was surfing FR this afternoon and suddenly was unable to access any page on FR and the error stated the server could not be found. I located the IP address, 209.157.64.200, of the server and then added an entry into my PC's host file and I can now see FR again. I still do not see a DNS entry for FR, and that is interesting.

So I asked Bitey the Dog about her views on NATO, and she responded by growling and attacking my sock. In doing so, she offered a more comprehensive, insightful, and sane commentary on this vital alliance than the putative Republican frontrunner. Yes, it’s been a bad couple weeks for Donald Trump. Let’s review: · His skeevy attacks on Ted Cruz’s wife confirmed his status, in the eyes of women, as America’s nightmare first husband. · His transparent plant of the bizarre “Ted Cruz, Sex God” story in his pal’s pseudo-paper offended anyone who doesn’t require a drool bib. · He...

A very up to date poll that backs up the ARG poll just posted on FreeRepublic.

Sergei Roldugin is Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest friend. They met when Putin was training to become a KGB officer at school, where Roldugin's brother was one of Putin's classmates. Roldugin introduced Putin to his future wife, Lyudmila, and the couple made him the godfather of their eldest daughter in 1985. ...Roldugin is not the only friend and confidant of Putin's mentioned in the Panama Papers. The reports mention Putin’s judo sparring partners, the wives of Putin’s spokesman and a governor, sons of economy and deputy interior ministers,...

Heading into the final months of the presidential primaries, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton and her team seem to be increasingly fed up with the Sanders campaign, which has remained competitive since the first votes were cast in Iowa, and continues to dog Clinton from the left. Early last week, Clinton’s chief strategist Joel Benenson remarked that if Sanders wanted another debate, he would have to “tone down” his “very negative” campaign, which — as I discussed in a previous article — is an absurd allegation, considering the Clinton camp has held a virtual monopoly on negative campaigning. (True, there are...

Charles Koch is confident House Speaker Paul Ryan could emerge from the Republican National Convention as the party’s nominee if Donald Trump comes up at least 100 delegates shy, he has told friends privately. Koch believes Ryan would be a “shoo-in” at a contested convention, should the campaign get to that point. Though Koch's wealth gives him significant influence within the Republican Party, it does not necessarily translate into skill in political prognostication. Still, he and his brother David are fond of Ryan. As a source close to the brothers told the Huffington Post, they appreciate the agenda he has...