Free Republic

Taxes: The president may try to satisfy both environmentalists and pro-growth blocs by tying the shovel-ready project curiously left out of the State of the Union to just-introduced carbon-tax legislation. Having failed to lower the sea levels in his first term, President Obama, in the first SOTU of his second term, highlighted the need for fighting climate change and proposed an Energy Security Trust Fund to siphon off money from those who actually produce abundant and useable energy to fund alternative energy sources which constitute a rounding error in the percent of energy produced by various sources. Two days later,...

Energy: The president's proposed Energy Security Fund will stifle the private energy sector boom and provide permanent funding for future Solyndras and electric cars that nobody wants. And what about that pipeline, sir? A nonexistent crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and in justifying his proposal for a cap-and-tax scheme, President Obama claimed in his State Of The Union that "the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15." He was lying. The fact is, according to new data released quietly last October by Britain's Met Office, the world's natural post-Ice Age warming trend stopped...

Energy: The further review the administration said was needed is done, with a Nebraska environmental agency saying it's safe to build the pipeline that will bring oil, jobs and revenue from our friendly northern neighbor. After kicking the Canadian oil barrel down the road, the Obama administration may soon be forced to approve the Keystone XL pipeline or come up with another excuse to block it after a report from the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality declared it would have "minimal environmental impacts" on the state and its sensitive aquifers. Friday's report triggered a 30-day deadline for Nebraska Gov. Dave...

It’s a decision President Barack Obama put off during the 2012 campaign, but now that he’s won a second term, his next move on a proposed oil pipeline between the U.S. and Canada may signal how he will deal with climate and energy issues in the four years ahead. Obama is facing increasing pressure to determine the fate of the $7 billion Keystone XL project, with environmental activists and oil producers each holding out hope that the president, freed from the political constraints of re-election, will side with them on this and countless other related issues down the road. On...

Now that the election is over, nine Republican and nine Democrats have asked the president to stop making excuses and build a job-creating pipeline that will close the revenue gap through economic growth. The truly bipartisan group of senators, led by Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and powerful chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and John Hoeven, a North Dakota Republican, wrote President Obama on Friday urging him to quickly issue a permit for the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring over 830,000 barrels of crude from Canada's oil sands to American refineries every day. "Setting...

Now that the election is over, nine Republican and nine Democrats have asked the president to stop making excuses and build a job-creating pipeline that will close the revenue gap through economic growth. The truly bipartisan group of senators, led by Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and powerful chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and John Hoeven, a North Dakota Republican, wrote President Obama on Friday urging him to quickly issue a permit for the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring over 830,000 barrels of crude from Canada's oil sands to American refineries every day. "Setting...

CALGARY, Alberta, August 10, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A 13-year-old boy is awaiting sentencing in Calgary after pleading guilty to raping a four-year-old boy in his foster home. The teen, identified as T, told police after his arrest on Jan. 3rd that the idea for the assaults, which occurred over the course of a year, came from watching “gay porn” on his foster parents’ home computer. T’s assaults were discovered when he was caught in the midst of an attack by a neighbor who could see in the bedroom window from his office next door. The neighbour called 911, and when...

DCA is an odourless, colourless, inexpensive, relatively non-toxic, small molecule. And researchers at the University of Alberta believe it may soon be used as an effective treatment for many forms of cancer. Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the U of A Department of Medicine, has shown that dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast, and brain tumors. Michelakis and his colleagues, including post-doctoral fellow Dr. Sebastien Bonnet, have published the results of their research in the journal Cancer Cell. ..... Until recently, researchers believed that cancer-affected mitochondria are permanently damaged and that this damage is the...

Energy Policy: Buoyed by White House inaction, China's state-owned oil company has made a multibillion-dollar bid for a Canadian company with interests in Canada's oil sands — North American oil for the lamps of China. 'Do we really want to be buying our oil or Canadian oil back from the Chinese?" asked Sen. John Hoeven on Thursday as he reacted to news that China's state-owned oil company, CNOOC Ltd., had launched a $15.1 billion takeover bid for Canada's Nexen Inc., a company with operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Our answer would be no. But it may happen, thanks to...

Travis Baumgartner, 21, had no passport, tried to enter U.S. with Alberta driver's licence, according to U.S. border officialsThe man wanted in connection with a deadly armoured-car heist at the University of Alberta had over $330,000 in cash in his vehicle when he was arrested at a U.S. border crossing adjoining British Columbia, U.S. border officers say. Travis Baumgartner, 21, was stopped at the border crossing in Lynden, Wash., near the U.S.-Canada border southwest of Abbotsford, B.C., Edmonton police said Saturday. Border security was alerted when his licence plate was scanned by an automated system and set off an alarm...

Shots rang out just after midnight this morning at the HUB mall in the University of Alberta. It is still very early and the information is sketchy, but what we do know is three security officers from G4S Cash Solutions, the armoured division of the company, are dead and one officer is clinging to life in hospital.

Barring any weekend surprises, it looks like Wildrose leader Danielle Smith will be Alberta's next premier. Several polls have come out over the past 72 hours putting Smith's upstart Wildrose Alliance ahead of the governing Progressive Conservatives both in terms of popular vote and seat distribution in the provincial election. -excerpt- Regionally, according to the Abacus poll, the Wildrose Party has a commanding lead in Calgary with 44 per cent support followed by the PCs at 29 per cent, the Liberals at 13 per cent, and the NDP at 12 per cent. In Edmonton, the PCs continue to lead with...

The federal Conservatives used to be called the Progressive Conservatives. Not anymore-they legally changed their name to the Conservatives. Its more accurate. In the remaining eight days that the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta will exist, let us be equally accurate and call them the Progressives. Its more accurate that way, too. Under their liberal leader, Alison Redford, the Progressives have tried something new this election. They've run against Alberta. That has worked for political leaders before. But they've usually been federal liberals running against those scary western rednecks. It was safe for Jean Chretien and Paul Martin to run...

Energy: While our president sleeps on the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada’s prime minister is in Beijing signing a series of trade deals to ship additional petroleum to China. Halftime in America? We need a new quarterback. While Clint Eastwood, in that thinly disguised infomercial for President Obama's re-election campaign, was promising that the world would soon hear the roar of our engines, China's economy will soon be revving up with petroleum that should and could be flowing south in a pipeline the Obama administration won't build. Prime Minister Steven Harper is making good on his warning that Canada would seek...

Energy Independence: As our enemy Iran threatens to close a vital waterway for the shipping of oil, plans for a secure, job-creating supply from our ally Canada gather dust on the president's desk. The blustering threat from the quite mad Iranian mullahs and their supremely mad leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may be just a bluff, but then again it might not. It may just be an attempt to intimidate and poke the eye of an American president perceived as weak and whose failure to support and exploit the "Iranian Spring" of 2009 may come back to bite us. These are not...

THOUSAND OAKS (CBS) — A toxicology report found that the 18-year-old son of a former NFL quarterback died from a heroin overdose, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office said. Thousand Oaks High School backup quarterback Griffen Kramer was found dead in his Agoura Hills home on Oct. 30. Friends told investigators that Kramer began foaming at the mouth while doing heroin with them. Authorities say one of his friends took him home and hoped he would sleep it off. Police have arrested five people in connection with Kramer’s death. Griffen Kramer’s father, Erik, played in the NFL for 12 years.

Jobs: The president says that extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut will create more jobs than an oil pipeline from Canada. There are at least 20,000 members of the 99% who would disagree. You can see why the economy is in trouble. Vice President Joe Biden, the stimulus sheriff, says he turned first to MF Global's Jon Corzine for economic advice and President Obama thinks 20,000 people getting extended unemployment benefits does more for the economy than 20,000 people getting paychecks to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. In the president's view, extending the payroll tax cuts...

A judge has acquitted a controversial pro-family activist from a July 2008 charge of trespassing at a Canadian university. William (Bill) Whatcott was arrested by campus security at the University of Calgary and put into a holding cell for distributing a pamphlet that addressed the “harmful consequences” of homosexuality. Whatcott, in an email to LifeSiteNews, called the ruling a “victory for all Canadians who value freedom of expression and religious liberty on our university campuses.” Judge J.D. Bascom ruled from the Provincial Court of Alberta on November 15th that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms “applies” to the University...

Story of the Week WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG, BAD WOLF? MamamaMEEE!! This wolf was shot recently in Drayton Valley , Alberta.which is near Edmonton about 3 hours North of Calgary. The wolf weighed over 230 lbs smashing the previous record of 175 lbs. Wouldn't want to run into this puppy in the woods. Apparently a bear hunter witnessed this wolf chase off a big black bear at his baiting station..

September 12, 2011 (UnmaskingChoice.ca) - On April 13, 2005, 19 year old Katrina Effert secretly gave birth to a baby boy in her parent’s home. She then strangled the child with her underwear, and tossed the corpse over the fence into the yard of one of the neighbours. On September 9, 2011, CBC reported that Ms. Effert’s conviction for this murder had been ‘downgraded’ by an Edmonton Court of Queen’s Bench judge to infanticide, and in lieu of jail time she will merely serve a suspended sentence. In her argument, the judge stated that “while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion...