Free Republic

Recent row during a Turkish parliamentary commission meeting spoke volumes. “We are cleansing everybody,” said the legislative body’s chairman, a member of the Justice and Development Party. “Everybody” means all who disagree with the AKP. “Cleansing” is the pattern established by the party of dismissing “everybody” from state institutions, public office. With Turkey in the third year of the post-coup period, the purge has not slowed. Discontent is being voiced. “Look, esteemed chairman,” roared Kurdish MP Meral Danis Bestas, “when the time comes and when you become subject to criminal charges, I and my friends will not hesitate to come...

As promised, the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. appealed to an expanded panel of a federal appeals court in San Francisco today to allow it to keep operating at Point Reyes National Seashore. The oyster farm and owner Kevin Lunny asked an 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a decision in which a smaller panel of the court ruled against the company by a 2 to 1 vote in September. In that ruling, the smaller panel upheld a federal trial judge’s denial of a preliminary injunction that would have allowed the oyster harvesting to continue...

Plenty of new swing-state polling this morning, and almost all of it looks bad for Barack Obama. Business Insider looks at NBC/Marist and CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac polling and concludes, “President Barack Obama has lost his advantage across the electoral map.” Let’s start with the NBC take on their swing-state polling: Romney saw his largest gain in Virginia, where he now edges the president 48 percent to 47 percent, a 3-point reversal from last week’s poll, released the day of the first presidential debate. The spread is within the poll’s margin of error. In Florida, before the debate, it was a 1-point race...

CNN was down double digits across the board in July. Compared to July 2011, the network is -20% in Total Viewers and -23% in A25-54 in Total Day. In primetime, CNN is down -23% in Total Viewers and -26% in the demographic. [Snip] Compared to the July 2011, Erin Burnett‘s 7pm hour — home last year to “John King USA” — is down -21% in both Total Viewers and younger viewers. “Piers Morgan Tonight” is down -18% in Total Viewers and -24% in A25-54 viewers. The 10pm edition of “Anderson Cooper 360″ is down -34% in Total Viewers and...

(CNSNews.com) - Speaking in Jackson Hole, Wyo., yesterday at an economic symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that the economic recovery in the United States had proved to be “even weaker” than the Federal Open Market Committee had originally thought it was. Bernanke also reiterated that the committee had recently lowered its expectations for economic growth in the coming quarters. “[I]t is clear that the recovery from the crisis has been much less robust than we had hoped,” Bernanke said. “From the latest comprehensive revisions to the national accounts as...

The dangerous U.S. heat wave of July 2011 will continue to bring another day of exceptionally humid heat to over 100 million Americans today, with 33 states plus the District of Columbia currently under heat advisories. The heat index--how hot the air feels when factoring in both the temperature and the humidity--exceeded 100° in twenty states in the Central and Eastern U.S. on Wednesday, peaking at 123° in Council Bluffs, Iowa. At least 22 deaths are being blamed on the heat in the Midwest. The extreme humidity that has accompanied this heat has made it a very dangerous one, since...

Underneath headlines about Libya, the Japanese disaster and the Republicans’ dainty attempts to nip around the edges of our massive federal debt, the culture war is raging. The left is lobbing nukes into the institution of marriage and the military. Obamacare is going forward, complete with funding for abortion and massive increases in the size of the already enormous Department of Health and Human Services. Defunding this increasingly unpopular power grab should be in every budget bill - but it’s not. Using a combination of judicial activism, executive malfeasance and

Since the beginning of the last recession (December 2007) the private sector workforce has shrunk by 6.6% while shedding more than 7.5 million jobs. Over that same time period, the federal government workforce (excluding Census and Postal workers) has grown by 11.7% while adding 230,000 jobs. This trend has continued throughout the Obama Administration. Since President Barack Obama was sworn into office, the private sector workforce has shrunk by 2.6% while shedding 2.9 million jobs while the federal workforce (excluding Census and Postal workers) has grown by 7% while adding more than 144,000 jobs.

A larger-than-expected exodus over the past 10 years reduced the population of Chicago to a level not seen in nearly a century. The U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday that during the decade ended in 2010, Chicago's population fell 6.9% to 2,695,598 people, fewer than the 2.7 million reported back in 1920. Blacks remain the most-populous race in Chicago, Mr. Frey said, while the number of whites fell during the decade by about 52,000 to just under 855,000 and Hispanics' ranks rose by about 25,000 to just below 780,000. The population of Cook County, which is dominated by the city of...

CHICAGO—A larger-than-expected exodus over the past 10 years reduced the population of Chicago to a level not seen in nearly a century. The U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday that during the decade ended in 2010, Chicago's population fell 6.9% to 2,695,598 people, fewer than the 2.7 million reported back in 1920. Chicago's Exodus View Interactive ..After peaking at 3.62 million people in 1950, Chicago underwent a half century of decline that ended only when the 1990s boom years produced a small gain in the 2000 count. At that time, the city loudly celebrated its comeback. But the recent recession accelerated...

ABC News continues to behave like they are working hand-in-hand with the Obama Administrations’ health care take-over message machine. The latest effort came from ABC News Political Director Amy Walter as she offered a harsh warning to Republicans: Don’t mess with ObamaCare (video below). In 2009, ABC News reporter Linda Douglass was named the Director of Communications for the White House Office of Health Reform. Her infamous warning against mis-information from the right about ObamaCare with her plea for Americans to report their fellow citizens who spread the conservative message on the health care legislation to “Flag@WhiteHouse.gov” got most of...

BAUMHOLDER, Germany, Oct. 26, 2009 – The noncommissioned officer corps often is considered the backbone of the Army, but defining what it means to be a part of that brotherhood is not as easy as it sounds. A wounded warrior now serving in the plans, training, mobilization and security directorate at the U.S. Army garrison here believes that attaining NCO status does not automatically make a soldier a leader. Army Sgt. 1st Class Chris Edwards, a wounded warrior, chose to remain on active duty and continues to lead soldiers at U.S. Army Garrison Baumholder, Germany. U.S. Army photo by Ignacio...

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – Sudan's government is still supporting genocide in Darfur, including through rape and holding up humanitarian aid, the International Criminal Court prosecutor said Wednesday. "Genocide continues," Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the UN Security Council, accusing Sudan of refusing to cooperate with the court. "Rapes in and around the (refugee) camps continue. Humanitarian assistance is still hindered. More than 5,000 displaced persons die each month," he said. Moreno-Ocampo urged the 15 Security Council member nations to be prepared for the possibility of an ICC-issued warrant for the arrest of Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir. In July Moreno-Ocampo asked the ICC...

FALLUJAH — Marines geared for war walk in tactical columns through the once mean streets of Fallujah, ready for what may lay around the next corner. “Mister, mister shokalata! Shokalata!”shout exuberant children from a crowded neighborhood as Marines and Iraqi police pass out candy. Marines with Company B, Police Transition Team 8, Regimental Combat Team 1, have been working diligently over the past few months to help train Iraqi police to take over their respective areas and become self-supportive in day-to-day operations in the city. Recent increases in the number of Iraqi police have drastically subdued the violence in the...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2007 – Stabilizing Iraqi communities is the way forward in combating the insurgency in Iraq, the commander of coalition efforts in Ramadi said today. (Video) Speaking to Pentagon reporters via teleconference from Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, Army Col. John Charlton, commander of 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, said counterinsurgencies are fought and won “neighborhood by neighborhood, with the focus on protecting the population and improving conditions in the community.” Charlton commands a true joint and combined force in central Anbar province. His brigade combat team consists of about 6,000 Army, Marine,...

BAGHDAD — Military officials discussed current efforts in Iraq at the Combined Press Information Center Wednesday. U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman; Paul Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business transformation, and Philip Reeker, counselor for public affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, discussed economic and political efforts underway to assist the government of Iraq. Bergner opened the conference by talking about the building “tactical momentum” in the sixth week of the surge. Operations from Iraqi and Coalition forces made progress in a number of fronts, he said. “We continue to target the networks and...

BRISTOL - Trinity Episcopal Church could be called a house divided: Its defrocked pastor led a heavily attended prayer and song service at the church Wednesday night, while Episcopal Bishop Andrew Smith tried to muster parishioners to meet with a new pastor at a church in Plainville. Smith promoted his meeting in a letter to parishioners last week as a way to discuss the dispute between Trinity and the Episcopal Diocese and "begin to identify new leadership for the parish so that we can move forward in our life in Christ within the doctrine, discipline and worship of The Episcopal...

WASHINGTON, July 3, 2007 – Operation Phantom Thunder enters its third week with coalition forces operating in and around Baghdad, Diyala province and Anbar province, in Iraq, a Joint Staff spokesman said here today. Army Brig. Gen. Perry Wiggins also said that the Taliban has not been able to launch a serious challenge to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Wiggins said U.S. servicemembers are experiencing a tough fight against a fanatical enemy, but they are making progress against the terrorists. The fighting against al Qaeda and Shiia militias in Iraq is in areas where such groups long have...

WASHINGTON, May 3, 2007 – Though they face daily challenges that will continue, U.S. forces remain dedicated to the fight in Iraq and are making steady progress, the deputy director for operations on the Joint Staff said here today. Three of the five additional combat brigades slated for the Baghdad security plan have arrived and are operating with Iraqi security forces, Army Brig. Gen. Perry L. Wiggins told Pentagon reporters in a news conference. “We are seeing early indications of steady progress. It’s not often flashy, but it’s the sort of progress that can make a difference over time,”...

WASHINGTON, April 27, 2007 – Progress continues in Iraq despite headline-grabbing enemy attacks, a top U.S. general in Iraq said yesterday. “There’s some areas that we need to work a little bit harder at,” Army Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott said of the Baghdad surge strategy. He pointed to vehicle-bombs as a primary area of concern. Scott, deputy chief of staff for strategic effects for Multinational Force Iraq, told online journalists in a conference call that while there has been a slight increase in the number of “spectacular” car-bomb attacks around Baghdad, there has also been positive movement as a...