Free Republic

There are very real consequences to the Environmental Protection Agency’s continued efforts to undermine America’s coal industry. Those consequences were recently spotlighted in an industry-produced video, embedded above. Maria Tworek owns a sports bar in Omaha, Nebraska. “Our energy bills are sky-high,” Tworek explains. The bar has to keep its cooling facilities running 24/7 to keep all of its beer cold. If “we can’t cool our product, we don’t make money,” Tworek says. “It’s as simple as that.” The bar is Tworek’s livelihood. “This is how we live,” she says. “This is how we support our family.” Nebraska is a...

In the closing hours of World War 2, the Japanese found themselves in a fix. Increasingly Japanese citizens, who had been assured by their mainstream media that the war was practically won, emerged from the shelters after the latest bombings of their cities, and asked themselves, "If the week before last we annihilated the all of American carriers in the battle of Saipan... And last week we sank all of their remaining few ships off-shore of Iwo island. And yesterday we decisively destroyed their poorly defended airfields, then exactly why... today, is it us who are eating grass and burying...

"They are 'Precious Snowflakes', wrapped in cotton wool from day one," said Paul French, the founder of Access Asia, a China-based research company. "Nothing is ever quite right for them. It is always either too hot or too cold and they are all hypochondriacs. ~snip~ "The first generation, the Little Emperors, were quite tough: fat little thugs always stuffing themselves full of McDonald's," said Mr French. "The new generation is very concerned with things like air quality, which the Little Emperors never bothered about. "They only drink Evian and are scared of food unless it is imported. Their parents tread...

A top oil industry official delivered a clear warning to President Obama Wednesday: approve the Keystone XL pipeline or face “huge political consequences.” American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard urged Obama to quickly approve the pipeline, which would carry oil sands crude from Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Gulf Coast. A payroll tax cut package signed into law by Obama last month includes a GOP-backed provision requiring the president to make a final decision on the pipeline within 60 days.

Two teenagers who spotted a five-year-old girl sleeping in a stolen car have told how they were arrested for 'doing the right thing' when they called police. Tyler Thompson and Connor Roderick were held in custody for four hours and had their DNA and fingerprints taken. Their clothes were also kept by police following the incident in St Helen Auckland, near Bishop Auckland, County Durham. Now Tyler,16, and 18-year-old Connor plan to submit a complaint to the authorities about their treatment. The teenagers were on their way to a shop to buy milk at about 10.15pm nine days ago when...

Apple could face disruption to its iPad sales in China after a court rejected its claim to own the iPad trademark in the country and a rival sought to halt sales of the tablet device in two Chinese cities. The developments are the latest in a long-running dispute between Apple and Proview Technology (Shenzhen), a struggling Taiwanese-owned company that registered trademarks for the name IPAD in many countries long before Apple conceived its smash hit tablet computer. >SNIP< Huizhou Intermediate People’s Court has scheduled a hearing in the other for January 7. “We are starting with these two cities, and...

Just when you think that the Obama administration hasn’t annoyed the American Jewish community quite enough or publicly insulted our democratic ally Israel sufficiently, along comes an administration figure willing to stick his finger in the eye of the Jewish state. On Friday, that task fell to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Speaking at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute, Panetta mouthed some nice words about the two countries’ relationship. Platitudes were not in short supply: “[I]n this time of understandable anxiety, I would like to underscore one thing that has stayed constant over the past...

A Long Island man was stunned to find out that his 4-year-old twins weren’t an accidental pregnancy at all — his desperate girlfriend secretly stashed away his sperm and used it for an in-vitro procedure, he charges in a lawsuit. Elmont resident Joseph Pressil, 36, wasn’t planning on having children with Anetria Burnett, with whom he was in a relationship for six months in 2007, he said. So she took matters into her own hands, he told The Post, in order to remain in his Texas house and make a legal bid for half of his possessions. -snip- The real...

A former China-desk Army intelligence analyst and co-author of a new book about Chinese-American relations, told HUMAN EVENTS November 15 that the strange giant white lines drawn in western China's Gobi Desert were most likely practice targets for Chinese space weapons. “Usually when we think of space weaponry, we are talking about horizontal targeting by satellites firing on other satellites—to take your eyes out,” said William C. Triplett II, who with Brett M. Decker, wrote Bowing to Beijing: How Barack Obama is Hastening America's Decline and Ushering A Century of Chinese Domination. The former analyst said at first he was...

All the ingredients are here. We have a potentially powerful politician, a hopelessly flimsy accusation of sexual misconduct and a predictable media, desperate to fill broadcast hours. Was there really ever any doubt that alleged civil rights attorney Gloria Allred would get involved? After all, whether she’s demonstrating anal sex using a baseball bat, buddying up to bereft pornstars or inserting herself into the life of Chaz Bono, she’s proven that her proper place is in front of a camera,

Obama won the 2008 election by default, but believed he won with a mandate to implement progressive dreams. In pursuing an aggressively leftist agenda, he has done these United States a profound service; he has clarified the fundamental ideological battle at the heart of all politics -- statism vs. individualism -- and dramatized the results that flow from such statist public policies. As a result, the American people are angrier than ever with politicians of both parties. As I say, this is a very positive development. More Americans are focused on issues of Constitutional principle than ever before. They have...

Three days after leaving China—where he pledged to work for peace—Kim Jong Il threatened to wage war against South Korea (Yonhap News Agency, May 30). The highly provocative comments from the North Korean regime at the end of May were interpreted as a sign of Chairman Kim’s defiance of Beijing, after a week-long visit that Korea watchers termed “disastrous.” Indeed, there are moments when Beijing and Pyongyang do not see eye to eye—such as this May during Kim Jong Il’s trip—but in essence the North Koreans know that the Chinese have to support them. That is why Kim felt confident...

'A deep-rooted hatred of the British': How Israelis 'armed junta' in Falklands conflict Israel secretly provided arms and supplies to Argentina during the Falklands conflict, according to revelations in a new book. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin had such a deep-rooted hatred of the British that the Jewish state covertly became the biggest supplier of military equipment to the Argentine military junta. Gas masks, radar alert systems, air-to-air missiles and fuel tanks for fighter bombers were sent from Tel Aviv to arm General Galtieri’s forces. The most audacious deal involved supplying 23 French-built fighter aircraft – Mirage IIICs – which...

With fighting intensifying between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, the Arab League on Sunday announced plans to ask the UN to impose a no-fly zone over Gaza. Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/305545#ixzz1JDWz1jI1

After 20 years and two children together, Laura Munson’s husband told her that he wanted to leave their farmhouse home. Laura suppressed the urge to rage at his selfishness – and her restraint had surprising consequences…

Fools and Their ConsequencesIsaac Newton is known as a great mind of science who has influenced the minds of men in many disciplines. What many do not realize is he was also a great influence in the realm of theology. Mr. Newton while not flawless in the religious realm has created some excellent commentary upon God’s truth from the Bible. Mr. Newton is well noted for his observation and recording of three laws of motion. It is the third of these from which application to this final article regarding fools will be drawn.Newton’s Third Law of Motion: To every action...

Sluthood wasn't always considered a virtue. Most normal, rational people look at sleeping around as something sad and wrong. It's not healthy, physically or mentally, it can be damaging to a young girl's reputation, and it can also be incredibly dangerous. Women that sleep around oftentimes end up feeling used and regret their choices when they get older and decide to settle down. Other women end up contracting STDs, which may or may not be treatable. For these reasons and more, being a slut is understandably looked down upon -- it can be genuinely harmful. Today's pseudo-feminists, however, have...

NEW JERSEY (WPIX) — A freshman at Rutgers University is believed to have committed suicide after he was secretly taped by two other students during a sexual encounter, police said. The video was allegedly broadcast on the internet.

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has notified customers that it will drop its Medicare Advantage health insurance program at the end of the year, forcing 22,000 senior citizens in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine to seek alternative supplemental coverage. The decision by Wellesley-based Harvard Pilgrim, the state’s second-largest health insurer, was prompted by a freeze in federal reimbursements and a new requirement that insurers offering the kind of product sold by Harvard Pilgrim — a Medicare Advantage private fee for service plan — form a contracted network of doctors who agree to participate for a negotiated amount of money. Under current...

If you were going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a higher education, would you want the end result to be known as a "D+" education?

Some major health insurance companies have stopped issuing certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday. Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said in his state UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have stopped issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state have done likewise.

It's believed up to 77 million people have been exposed to toxic levels of arsenic from contaminated drinking water in Bangladesh. The Lancet medical journal reports the high arsenic exposure is the tragic result of a community development project in the 1970's that went terribly wrong. The UN's World Health Organisation is describing Bangladesh's arsenic crisis as "the largest mass poisoning of a population in history." Presenter: Matt Abud Speakers: Dr Dipankar Chakraborti, head of School of Environmental Studies, Calcutta's Jadaypur University; Arif Ahamed, project team leader, World Bank . ABUD: Over twenty percent of all deaths in the study...

Twin nine-month-old girls were being treated at a London hospital on Monday after being mauled in their sleep by a fox. The animal apparently entered the house and climbed stairs before attacking Lola and Isabella Koupparis in their beds while their parents watched television, according to reports. (snip) In urban areas of England there are an estimated 27 foxes per square mile, living in close proximity to humans.

Sometimes you have a headline that makes the rest of the story superfluous, but here's the background. Actor Lance Baxter, otherwise known as "D.C. Douglas," currently known as the man who informs you how much GEICO can save you on car insurance, left a message last month with FreedomWorks in which he asked the group how many "mentally retarded" people it had on staff and what it would do when a tea partyer "killed someone." On April 14, FreedomWorks put his voicemail online. Today, Douglas reports he's been dropped from GEICO's campaign. His dramatic news release is here; he claims...

In 2007, outside Bangalore, India, an explosion decapitated an industrial worker, hurling his body through a brick wall. In 2005 a routine procedure at a manufacturing plant in Taiwan caused a spontaneous explosion that killed a worker and ignited a blaze that ripped through the factory, shutting down production for three months. Both incidents shared a common cause—silane, a gas made up of silicon and hydrogen that explodes on contact with air. And both incidents occurred in the same industry—solar power. Among other environmental black marks, the process of manufacturing photovoltaic (PV) cells from silicon relies on this dangerous pyrophoric...

Glenn Harlan Reynolds: Progressives can't get past the Knowledge Problem By: Glenn Harlan Reynolds Contributor April 4, 2010 "If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" -- President Reagan, Jan. 20, 1981. Economist Friedrich Hayek explained in 1945 why centrally controlled "command economies" were doomed to waste, inefficiency, and collapse: Insufficient knowledge. He won a Nobel Prize. But it turns out he was righter than he knew. In his "The Use of Knowledge In Society," Hayek explained that information about supply and demand, scarcity and abundance, wants...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Your next credit card statement is going to contain an ugly truth: how much that card really costs to use. Now, thanks to a long-awaited law that goes into effect Monday, you'll know that if you pay the minimum on a $3,000 balance with a 14 percent interest rate, it could take you 10 years to pay off. "Jaws will drop," said David Robertson, publisher of The Nilson Report, a newsletter that tracks the industry. "I don't doubt for a nanosecond that it's going to give a lot of people a sinking feeling in their stomachs."...

Despite the wrongheadedness behind the SEC's decision, some unintended good may come of it.

downloadable .pdf file of possible results if New Madrid fault lets go.

Why God Hates Haiti The frustrating theology of suffering. By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK Published Jan 15, 2010 From the magazine issue dated Jan 25, 2010 Haiti is surely a Job among nations. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere: half its population lives on less than a dollar a day. With 98 percent of its forests felled and burned for firewood, Haiti is uniquely vulnerable to flooding from hurricanes. In 2008 four storms in as many weeks left a million homeless. Haiti has an infant-mortality rate worse than that of many African nations, and its people are...

<p>GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Some Wisconsin communities that have installed high efficiency traffic lights are discovering the energy-saving bulbs are a hazard in a snow storm.</p> <p>City officials say the LED lights use less electricity and don't give off enough heat to melt ice or snow. So when the snow falls and the wind blows, the traffic lights are obscured.</p>

A series of events over the past few months have made me consider the logic of third world politics. I am not talking about killing people or imprisoning detractors. That is what happens in places like Cuba, China and Iran. What I am thinking about is the prosecution of the prior ruling party by the new ruling party.

Keith Olbermann calls Rush Limbaugh an "asshole" after the talk show host called Jimmy Carter the nation's hemorrhoid.

Michigan's unemployment rate for June of 2009 jumped to 15.2%. That's a 1.1% increase over the prior month. Rates usually climb or fall by a few tenths of a percent. It's rare to see such a substantial increase or decrease. But experts say the struggling economy combined with the ailing auto market means Michigan has been hit harder than other states. We'll have much more on the numbers and what it means for Michigan tonight on 6 News at 5 and 6.

No matter how you slice it, this is a case of bad governing. Earnest, hard-working teenagers who thought they had steady employment for the summer now have none; camps that have traditionally been positive outlets for youngsters and life-savers for working families during summer months have been closed or cut back; the city's recreation director, an able man with plenty of experience, faces perhaps the most challenging two months of his career. All this because Paterson Mayor Jose "Joey" Torres and his administration used dollars targeted for use under the federal stimulus program not to create jobs but to create...

Every year the Shia Muslims make pilgrimage to one of their main religious sites in Iraq. And it is quite a sad spectacle to behold indeed. A goulish / gastly site of folks beating themselves, whipping themselves, and cutting themselves till blood flows. Many have inflicted themselves with serious injury as a result. While Islam has not been around since ancient times, [ 7th century], horrible and dispicable practices similar to what was just described were engaged in by heathen cultures. A notable account of this is the confrontation between Elijah, the prophet of the Lord, and the false prophets...

The Acceptable Conditions? The present conditions produce unacceptable problems which are finding greater acceptance. We are living in an ever-expanding mental, moral and social swamp. We are working from a faulty foundation consisting of evolution (man is a meaningless accident of nature, evolved from what?), communism (man is matter in motion and nothing more) and psycho-babble (man is told over and over again that he is not to be blamed for his actions; that he is not responsible). The ever-expanding swamp is further encouraged by needles for drugs, condoms for sex, counseling for irresponsibility, abortion for eliminating the unwanted, euthanasia...

Female U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have more to fear than roadside bombs or enemy ambushes. They also are at risk of being raped or sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers. "The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq," a book based on 40 in-depth interviews, recounts the stories of female veterans who served in combat zones and tells of rape, sexual assault and harassment by male counterparts. Some were warned by officers not to go to the latrine by themselves. One began carrying a knife in case she was attacked by comrades. Others said they...

FBI InfraGard warns of a crescendo of public concern about Obama's eligibility April 05, 2009 11:14 Tasked by the FBI to provide "informational analysis" on conditions which could be construed as potentially harmful to civil order and national security, InfraGard, of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), issued an unclassified Protective Intelligence Communication report in March 2009 regarding the "crescendo" of public concern about Obama's presidential eligibility. Authored by Dr. Lyle J. Rapacki, Protective Intelligence Specialist and Agent, the report summarizes the substance of legal challenges to Obama on the question of his constitutional eligibility and concludes that if...

Something to contemplate: Assuming Republicans eventually stop acting like wimps, and win an election again - are socialists in their usual megalomanic over-reach, so stepping in it?

I currently manage a medium sized hedge fund (long/short equity). The current populist uproar is absolute insanity. I don't know how else to say it. You are never going to legislate away greed. Period. It is part of the human psyche. That's all there is to it. You can either fight it, or use it. Incentives work. This is why. Let's step back a minute and think about why and how this happened: 1. Starting back in the 1970s Congress addressed discrimination in mortgage lending (which was really a serious problem) with the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975. This...

MIAMI (Reuters) – UBS AG (UBSN.VX) (UBS.N) warned Friday that it could go out of business if it complied with an order to reveal the names of thousands of suspected U.S. tax dodgers with secret offshore accounts at the Swiss bank. In papers filed in federal court in Miami, attorneys for UBS said a U.S. government lawsuit filed Thursday could force it to violate Swiss criminal law by turning over information protected by Swiss financial privacy laws. Such a violation would expose UBS employees to "substantial prison terms" as well as fines, penalties and other sanctions," the lawyers said. They...

Intelligent leadership is not determined by eloquence alone - instead it is measured by one’s ability to foresee unintended consequences and act accordingly. Many have remarked on the intelligence of President Obama, and early on he has been hailed as the perfect candidate to usher in a new era of change. It is encouraging to witness his ability to bring people together and his ability to inspire confidence but at the end of the day, he must enact policies that will solve the current crisis without creating new ones. Let’s take a closer look at some unintended consequences alive and...

WASHINGTON -- Like pebbles tossed into ponds, important Supreme Court rulings radiate ripples of consequences. Consider a 1971 Supreme Court decision that supposedly applied but actually altered the 1964 Civil Rights Act. During debate on the act, prescient critics worried that it might be construed to forbid giving prospective employees tests that might produce what was later called, in the 1971 case, a "disparate impact" on certain preferred minorities. To assuage these critics, the final act stipulated that employers could use "professionally developed ability tests" that were not "designed, intended or used to discriminate." Furthermore, two Senate sponsors of the...

Those of you not familiar with Mike's work should go here to read prior excerpts from his upcoming novel. Those of you who have will enjoy this piece. Please pass it along as you can.

If you ask most supporters of Sen. Barack Obama why they so fervently want him to be elected President, they will tell you about their deep yearning for "change." And that, of course, has been the theme of the Obama campaign from its inception -- "change." It is the word found on nearly all the placards at Obama rallies. It is the word most often cited by the candidate himself. But for all its ubiquity and for all the passion of its advocates, what this change is about is not entirely clear. Of course, Obama himself often has spoken about...

The earth will warm about 2.4 degrees C (4.3 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels even under extremely conservative greenhouse-gas emission scenarios and under the assumption that efforts to clean up particulate pollution continue to be successful, according to a new analysis by a pair of researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. That amount of warming falls within what the world's leading climate change authority recently set as the threshold range of temperature increase that would lead to widespread loss of biodiversity, deglaciation and other adverse consequences in nature. The researchers, writing in the online edition of...

We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of religion -- intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of "heretics," holy wars. Though far from the whole story, they are, nevertheless, true. There have been many awful consequences of religion. What one almost never hears described are the deleterious consequences of secularism -- the terrible developments that have accompanied the breakdown of traditional religion and belief in God. For every thousand students who learn about the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, maybe two learn to associate Gulag, Auschwitz, The Cultural Revolution and the Cambodian genocide with secular regimes and ideologies....

With Columbia Gorge turbines pumping out extra electricity, the agency had to quickly adjust its hydro generation Columbia Basin river managers had a close call this week when they were forced to cut back on hydropower after a surge in wind energy blasted through the system. The surge forced them to spill more water over dams, risking the health of migrating fish. For the first time, it also exposed serious kinks in a plan that was supposed to deal smoothly with just such emergencies. As it turned out, the spills weren't heavy enough to harm fish. But the federal Bonneville...

Farewell the age of reason, welcome the idiocracy. Only George Orwell could have invented - and named - the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) that came into operation yesterday. It is the latest in a long line of measures intended to ease the conscience of the rich while keeping the poor miserable, in this case spectacularly so. The consequences of the RTFO have been much trumpeted on these pages. It says enough that one car tank of bio petrol needs as much grain as it takes to feed an African for a year, or that a reported one-third of...