Free Republic

Former GOP Rep. Ryan Costello (Pa.) is signing on to work for a group pushing a business-backed proposal to fight climate change with a carbon tax. Costello, less than a week out of the House, announced Monday in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that he’s the new managing director of Americans for Carbon Dividends. The group is the advocacy affiliate of the Climate Leadership Council, pushing a plan by former GOP Secretaries of State James Baker and George Shultz to tax carbon dioxide emissions and return the money to individuals and families on a quarterly basis. “I understand the...

The $750,000 worth of television ads say "House Republicans want to fix the immigration problem." House Republicans looking to garner support for leadership's immigration-reform principles are about to get a little help from a group with ties to Mark Zuckerberg. Americans for a Conservative Direction is the GOP arm of pro-immigration reform organization FWD.us, which is backed by the Facebook chief executive. And they will be airing roughly $750,000 worth of television and radio ads across the country, according to a source with knowledge of the ad buy. The ads, which will air for 10 days on radio and cable...

A pet dog that fell overboard in rough seas off Australia has been reunited with its owners after surviving alone on an island for four months, reports said. Sophie Tucker, apparently named after a late US entertainer, fell overboard as Jan Griffith and her family sailed through choppy waters off the northeast Queensland coast in November. The dog was believed to have drowned and Griffith said the family was devastated. But out of sight of the family, Sophie Tucker was swimming doggedly and finally made it to St Bees Island, five nautical miles away, and began the sort of life...

A group of reputed Jewish leaders met in New York last week to devise a strategy to deal with what kosher Chicken Littles like the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman see as the emerging threat of the Religious Right. If Christian conservatives are the menace Foxman and Friends believe, the problem is much worse than they imagine. According to a late November FOX News poll, most Americans are what Foxman and Reform Jewish leader Eric Yoffie would call a clear and present danger to democracy and pluralism. To wit: 59 percent of Americans think Christianity is under attack here; 81 percent...

I never thought I'd live to see the day that Christmas would become a dirty word. You think it hasn't? Then why is it that people are being prevented from saying it in polite society for fear it will offend? Schools are being forced to replace "Christmas vacation" with "winter break" in their printed schedules. At Macy's, the word is verboten even though they've made untold millions of dollars from their sympathetic portrayal in the Christmas classic, "Miracle on 34th Street." Carols, even instrumental versions, are banned in certain places. A major postal delivery service has not only made their...