Free Republic

The Langevin Block, the building across from Parliament Hill that houses the Prime Minister’s Office, was evacuated Wednesday morning amid reports of a suspicious person and package in the area. Prime Minister Stephen Harper was not in the building. Police also closed Wellington Street, the street in front of the Parliament Buildings, for two blocks, and taped off roads in the area. RCMP officers were questioning a man who was put into a police cruiser. A joint RCMP-Ottawa police team that deals with potentially hazardous materials was called to the scene. The Conservative government’s throne speech was to be delivered...

Parents of high school students in Montgomery County School District in Maryland were outraged recently by a survey given to sophomores under the new Common Core education standards. The survey asked numerous intrusive questions that a school has no business asking students. Among them were questions like "what is your sexual orientation," "what's your religion," "what's your parents' political affiliation" and "should assault rifles be banned?" Angry parents notified the news website The Blaze about the survey, and shortly after a Blaze reporter began to ask about it, the survey disappeared from the Poolesville High School website. According to The...

Let's start the count down. I hope I make it that long financially, emotionally and physically.

What do America’s college students want? They want to be oppressed. More precisely, a surprising number of students at America’s finest colleges and universities wish to appear as victims — to themselves, as well as to others — without the discomfort of actually experiencing victimization. Here is where global warming comes in. The secret appeal of campus climate activism lies in its ability to turn otherwise happy, healthy, and prosperous young people into an oppressed class, at least in their own imaginings. Climate activists say to the world, “I’ll save you.” Yet deep down they’re thinking, “Oppress me.” In his...

Love Wins in Wake of Zamboanga War Aftermath By Lucille Talusan CBN News Asia Correspondent Friday, October 11, 2013 After three weeks of fighting between Philippine troops and Muslim rebels, the fighting in the southern city of Zamboanga is over. And throngs are Muslims are looking to Christians for help. Now, leaders face the difficult tasks of rebuilding their community and helping traumatized residents move forward. Surprisingly, it's area churches that are reaching out to the mostly Muslim victims. Zamboanga resident, Cristina, is still shaken. She recounted how God miraculously saved her from being taken hostage at the height of...

One pocket of internal Republican opposition focused on Boehner’s plan to slash government contribution to health insurance for Capitol Hill aides. Boehner and his top lieutenants had already proposed that lawmakers, Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and political appointees at executive-branch agencies should lose the subsidy. But when Boehner expanded that ban to thousands of Hill staffers, a solid bloc of GOP lawmakers told Boehner they would oppose the bill. Boehner still tried to press on. Another rebellious faction believes repealing the medical-device tax was nothing but a giveaway to corporate America, not a part of Obamacare that should be...

Ministries File Class Action Suit over HHS Mandate CBNNews.com Wednesday, October 16, 2013 The Southern Baptist Convention's GuideStone health plan and two other non-profit religious groups are suing the Obama administration over its contraception coverage mandate. That Obamacare mandate forces all employers to provide birth control coverage to employees, including drugs that may cause abortions. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is suing the Obama administration on behalf of GuideStone, the Oklahoma-based Reaching Souls International, and Truett-McConnell College in Georgia. Their class-action lawsuit actually includes more than 100 ministries that participate in GuideStone's health benefits plan. "The very purpose of...

Referring to his plan to preemptively send the Senate a House-passed bill, Speaker John Boehner told his conference this morning that he’d “rather throw a grenade than catch a grenade.” But with his right-wing troops abandoning him again, it was the speaker who was left holding the bomb. After a day of furious negotiating with fellow Republicans over how to tweak a bill he had unveiled in the morning, it was left to stunned members of his leadership team to confirm to reporters that the vote had been canceled. “They’re trying to work it out,” said Representative Greg Walden, the...

The Department of Defense this month took what almost certainly will be the most telling symbolic act the Obama administration ever takes. "The doors to the Kings Bay Chapel were locked on Oct. 4, 2013, with the Holy Eucharist, Holy water, Catholic hymn books and vessels all locked inside," says a lawsuit filed Monday by the Thomas More Law Center. "Father Leonard and his parishioners ... were prohibited from entering." Catholics believe Jesus Christ is present in this world in many ways, but uniquely and most especially in the Eucharist. "In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist, the body...

This week, massive crowds of veterans descended onto Washington, D.C., to protest the Obama administration's vindictive shutdown of open-air memorial sites -- sites that require no guards but were fenced off simply to make Americans miserable as a bargaining chip in the government shutdown negotiations. Veterans, including many wheelchair-bound veterans from World War II, overturned the barricades placed at memorials by the administration and proceeded to carry them to the White House. The media covered the men and women who attended the so-called Million Vet March by suggesting that they were racists and terrorists and hoping that politicians allied with...

If the near-collapse of the ObamaCare computer system were temporary, that would be bad enough. But the real problem isn’t the computer system — it’s the law itself. -snip The problem is as it always was: America’s health-care system is vastly complicated and enormously expensive. But it worked fairly well for most people, with some 80 percent saying they were satisfied. That was before ObamaCare, which twists, squeezes and taxes the whole system as part of an incomprehensible plan to “fix” it. The law won’t work because it can’t. It fails for the same reason that all massive utopian plans...

The preliminary investigation indicates the husband and wife were separated. The woman went to her former home to exchange some sort of property. A dispute erupted and the husband shot the wife. She made it into the front yard before collapsing. A neighbor, armed with a handgun, rescued the woman from the yard and moved her to safety.

The nannycrats in Brussels and the IMF keep pressuring Spain to hike the VAT and Spain does every time. The results are easily predictable. Via translate from El Econimista, please consider VAT Rise is "Catastrophic" Anged, the "Association of Large Distribution Companies" suffered a 7.2% drop in sales through August, the biggest drop in sales since the crisis began. Anged companies include El Corte Ingles, Carrefour, Auchan, Tesco, Ikea, Media Markt, Leroy Merlin and Toys R'Us. Employer, Alfonso Merry del Val, said the increase in VAT has been "catastrophic". Data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) show that sales in...

Many can remember as youngsters doing something wrong, for which they knew punishment was deserved. In order to avoid the punishment, they would try to create a diversion of some type in order to distract the attention of parents or teachers who, hopefully, would not notice or would forget about the original infraction. The PC world of the secular progressives still uses this tactic quite effectively when they try to refocus attention on an individual or organization that opposes their agenda. This was certainly the case last week, when at the Values Voter Summit in Washington D.C., I stated that...

Ted Cruz and his followers represent Jacksonian America: angry... More than a decade ago, before the post-9/11 national fervor set in, Walter Russell Mead published an insightful essay on the persistent "Jacksonian tradition" in American society. Jacksonians, he argued, embrace a distinctive code, whose key tenets include self-reliance, individualism, loyalty and courage. Jacksonians care as passionately about the Second Amendment as Jeffersonians do about the First... --snip-- Many frustrated liberals, and not a few pundits, think that people who share these beliefs must be downscale and poorly educated. The New York Times survey found the opposite. Only 26% of tea-party...

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Bill Clinton. In part, that’s because economic freedom increased and the burden of government spending was reduced during his time in office. Partisans can argue whether Clinton actually deserves the credit for these good results, but I’m just happy we got better policy. Heck, Clinton was a lot more akin to Reagan that Obama, as this Michael Ramirez cartoon suggests. Moreover, Clinton also has been the source of some very good political humor, some of which you can enjoy here, here, here, here, and here. Most recently, he even made...

(HOUSTON) -- Sen. Ted Cruz’ hometown newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, wishes it could take back its endorsement. The Chronicle’s editorial board, which endorsed Cruz, R-Texas, in his 2012 race, now says it misses his predecessor, former Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. “When we endorsed Ted Cruz in last November’s general election, we did so with many reservations and at least one specific recommendation -- that he follow Hutchison’s example in his conduct as a senator,” the Chronicle said. “Obviously, he has not done so." “Cruz has been part of the problem in specific situations where Hutchison would have been part...

There were five justifiable homicides in Saginaw from 2000 to 2010, though the Federal Bureau of Investigation only knows that one of those cases was justifiable. The killing is one of 117 civilian justifiable homicides that took place from 2000 to 2010 in Michigan, according to FBI statistics, though an MLive investigation has shown those numbers are incomplete. Saginaw Police Department Detective Sgt. Joseph Dutoi said the agency reports to the state whenever there is a homicide, and the department is supposed to file another report when the homicides are determined to be justified. 

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on Wednesday morning said members of Congress are like the parents of everyone in the country and said these "parents" need to act quickly to protect their toddlers from the possible fallout of a debt default. "We, as custodians of this great nation, members of the United States Congress, are like parents," she said on the House floor. "And therefore I ask any parent that is listening: How long do they wait before they see a toddler fall, or do they leap toward that toddler so that they know the strength of that parent is...

Four decades ago this month, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) launched an oil embargo against the United States in retaliation for our steadfast support of Israel in her hour of need. As the Jewish State fought off the Soviet-backed Egyptian and Syrian armies in what would become known as the Yom Kippur War, the OPEC cartel’s actions sent the price of oil soaring and our economy into a recession. Sadly, 40 years later, we have not learned the appropriate lesson from that experience: We must disconnect our oil-dependent transportation sector from OPEC and the...

U.S. Army Ranger Cpl. Josh Hargis was lying on a hospital bed in Afghanistan, hooked up to a breathing tube with his right hand heavily bandaged when he was awarded a Purple Heart for his valor in the battlefield. None of that, however, stopped Hargis, 24, from following military protocol and lifting his bandaged hand to salute the Ranger Regimental Commander who pinned the Purple Heart to his red, white and blue blanket. "Grown men began to weep and we were speechless at a gesture that speak[s] volumes about Josh's courage and character," one of the officers present in the...

The first time Andrew Botwin said "Daddy," his mother gulped. Was this the moment Shari Botwin had anguished about ever since deciding, at age 38, to have a baby on her own? Was this the time to begin explaining about "choice mommies" and "donor daddies"? But Andrew didn't seem worried, Botwin recalled. He wasn't asking a question. He was trying out the new word with a 2-year-old's exuberance, the same way he yelps "Dora!" while watching television or "broccoli!" when naming his favorite foods. Botwin breathed: The Conversation could wait. She knows it's just a matter of time, though, until...

Moscow's migrant workers have seen this story before and they believe they have reason to be afraid. When an unidentified man -- believed to be from the Caucasus -- stabbed and killed a young ethnic Russian on October 10, triggering the capital's worst ethnic riots in three years, police made hundreds of arrests. By late on October 13, they had wrested the southern district of Biryulyovo from Russian nationalists, who had overturned cars, smashed windows and stormed a vegetable warehouse looking for migrants. But by October 14, nearly all the rioters had been released from custody. And now, the authorities...

Fifty-nine percent of front-line fast-food workers in Texas rely on public assistance programs such as food stamps and Medicaid to support their families, according to a report released on Tuesday. Nationally, more than half – 52 percent – of the families of front-line fast-food workers use at least one public assistance program, compared with a quarter of the total workforce, according to the report. The research was sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Urban & Regional Planning.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A Pacific Island man trying to flee rising seas and environmental risks caused by global warming in his home country of Kiribati asked a New Zealand court on Wednesday to let him pursue his claim as a climate change refugee. The low-lying South Pacific island nation has a population of more than 100,000, but its average height of 2 m. (6-1/2 feet) above sea level makes it one of the countries most vulnerable to rising waters and other climate change effects. Ioane Teitiota, 37, asked New Zealand's High Court in Auckland to let him appeal a decision...

The World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 3 Somalis are mentally ill due to their country’s constant violence and abuse of the Khat narcotic. Somali science however came up with a surefire cure for the crazies. Lock the patient up in a room with a hyena and wait for the ugly beast to see the demons causing the madness and drive them out. Somali medicine, like American medicine, however suffers from rising health care costs. A session with a trained psychiatric hyena costs 560 dollars in a country where the average national salary is 190 bucks putting a Mogadishu...

MRCTV's Dan Joseph had a question on his mind that he couldn't shake: who bears the brunt of the blame for the government shutdown? Who really is responsible for the mess we're in right now? Is it President Obama or former President George W. Bush? He decided to take these questions to the heart of our misery: Washington D.C. Despite the fact that "Dubya" has been out of office for the past five years, most of the respondents said former President George W. Bush is to blame for the shutdown.

The New York Times’ recent 6,000-word major opus, “Children and Guns: The Hidden Toll ,” is the latest installment in the paper’s self-described series on “the gun industry’s influence and the wide availability of firearms in America.” In this article, it took the authors 75 paragraphs before they acknowledged that federal statistics, in fact, show a dramatic 30-year downward trend in accidental deaths involving firearms. But that’s not the impression that the Times wanted to leave with its readers. The article focused dramatically on case vignettes involving the accidental deaths of children from firearms, which we all agree are tragic...

Psst. Anic-Pay! Bloomberg‘s Megan McArdle (who has been on an incredible roll lately**) takes issue with the idea that the Obama administration needn’t panic about Obamacare, as long as it can get its glitch-plagued health care exchanges up and running by the end of the year. Wrong, she suggests. It’s time to panic. Now. Why? Because the exchanges are the way to sign up young, healthy people and prevent the fabled “death spiral,” in which only older, sicker people sign up for insurance, causing rates to rise and healthier people to drop out, causing rates to rise even more, etc....

To help you keep track of where both sides stand in the BART contract negotiations, here are our best estimates of current average salaries by bargaining unit based on the 2012 Public Employee Salary Database. This page will be updated as new contracts are proposed. Last updated 5:26 pm Oct. 14 to reflect the latest contract proposal by BART management.

A New York Times investigative article based on two dozen interviews with industry insiders and confidential Obama Administration documents reveals that the catastrophic $500 million Obamacare rollout "has deeply embarrassed the White House" and has the technology companies involved "publicly distancing themselves" from the Obamacare fiasco. "These are not glitches. The extent of the problems is pretty enormous," an insurance executive who participated in Obamacare conference calls told the Times. "At the end of our calls, people say, 'It's awful, just awful.'"

The Sheriff did not return phone calls, so details are scarce. At this point, we know two burglars tried to break into a home Saturday just outside Rockport City limits. Sources say the homeowner shot at the burglars, but its not clear if they were hit.

UPDATE 10/15/13 @ 4:50 p.m. PORTSMOUTH, Ohio (WSAZ) -- A man has died after being shot in what police say was a home invasion. Officials at Cabell Huntington Hospital say Keith Richards, 31, of Portsmouth, died Monday evening after being taken off life support. Portsmouth Police say Richards broke into a home in the 1000 block of 23rd Street Sunday night. Family members of the deceased homeowner say the home was also broken into the night before, so they had someone at the house Sunday, keeping an eye on it. They say Richards was crawling through a window at the...

Tulsa, Okla. — A homeowner returns from a walk Saturday evening and finds an intruder inside his home near Skelly and Lewis. Police say they received the call around 6 p.m., but not just for a burglary.

Some tasks are occasionally necessary, though unpleasant. (Oops. My mind just drifted to that plastic bag you must carry with you when walking your dog.) Hunting down that roach your wife is just absolutely certain she saw scampering across the bedcovers would be one; talking to Harry Reid might be another. I’ll leave the roach to you. That’s what the Yellow Pages are for. Unfortunately the Yellow Pages are going to be of no help if you find yourself trying to make sense out of, or talk sense into, Harry Reid. Now Harry likes to throw around a lot of...

A pit bull attacked at least two children on a neighborhood street, wounding one, before someone fatally shot the dog Sunday afternoon, police said. The dog got loose in the 2400 block of North Genevieve Street (map) and began attacking people about 2:40 p.m., a San Bernardino police lieutenant told NBC4. The pit bull bit a child's thigh. Someone arrived with a gun and fatally shot the dog, the lieutenant said.

"Think for a moment about the term 'Redskins,'" NBC Sports commentator Bob Costas exhorted viewers in his halftime tirade during Sunday's Cowboys-Redskins game. "Ask yourself what the equivalent would be, if directed [at] African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, or members of any other ethnic group. When considered that way, 'Redskins' can't possibly honor a heritage or a noble character trait, nor can it possibly be considered a neutral term. "It is an insult, a slur, no matter how benign the present-day intent," Costas continued. This is ludicrous. I say this not as someone who has particular love for the Redskins...

A new memoir by his ex-girlfriend sheds light on the cult of Steve Jobs. Albert Watson Chrisann Brennan first met Steve Jobs in 1972, while they were both students at Homestead HS in Cupertino, Calif. Over the next five years, they dated off and on throughout their teens and early 20s. The two were living together with their friend Daniel Kottke, a computer engineer and one of the earliest employees of Apple, in 1977, when the company took off. The two finally ended their romantic relationship for good in late 1977, after Brennan became pregnant with their daughter, Lisa. Brennan...

The government shutdown has made it abundantly obvious that the anti-conservative news media and the anti-conservative Republican establishment have joined together to the point where it's almost impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. Some might say they merge every day on the set of "Morning Joe." The media have designated as Public Enemy No. 1 a recalcitrant bloc of tea party stalwarts who have declared their intention to stop Barack Obama's statist juggernaut from imposing the Obamacare monstrosity, running up trillion-dollar deficits year after year and in so doing destroying the private sector. Amazingly, liberal Republicans...

A lot of people are wondering when the stock market will get back to fundamentals now that Janet Yellen has been named to replace Ben Bernanke. I won't really, or at least not in the way traditionalists look at such things.

As the realities of Obamacare continue to sink in, more and more people are getting letters from their health insurance providers telling them that their plans no longer comply with federal requirements under Obamacare. We just brought you the story of “Trick Shot Titus” and his family facing significant increases in the cost of their health care plans. Now, a community blogger on the far-left Daily Kos website has penned a blog post complaining that both he and his wife are facing a nearly 100 percent increase in their monthly premiums. He claims he is canceling his insurance and refuses to pay any “f***ing...

Last week's column discussed the political trade-offs made by black politicians and civil rights organizations that condemn whole generations of black youngsters to failing schools (http://tinyurl.com/6mmlsf). Similar political trade-offs in labor markets condemn many blacks, particularly black youths, to high rates of unemployment and reduced economic opportunities. Let's look at this, starting with a few historical facts. Today white teen unemployment is about 20 percent, while that for blacks is about 40 percent and more than 50 percent in some cities. In 1948, the unemployment rate of black 16-year-old and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent, while that of whites was...

These days, being seen as a victim can be useful. You immediately claim the moral high ground. Some people want to help you. Lawyers and politicians brag that they force others to help you. This turns some people into whiners with little sense of responsibility. Joe Biden's niece was arrested recently for throwing a punch at a cop. The New York Post says she's addicted to alcohol and pills, but rather than take responsibility for her actions, she blamed them on the "pressure she faces" because her uncle is vice president. Give me a break. America was founded by people...

A 17-year-old North Andover High School student was stripped of her captain's position on the volleyball team and suspended for five games after she went to a party to pick up an intoxicated friend, reports The Boston Herald. Erin Cox received a call from a friend, who was allegedly intoxicated, and asked her to pick her up from a party on Main Street in Boxford. Being a good friend, Erin went to pick her up, but instead met police just as they arrived at the house, the newspaper reports.

Testing, 1, 2, 3, testing. Jihadists never go on furlough. While shutdown theater preoccupies Washington, terror plotters remain on the clock. The question is: Will America keep hitting the post-9/11 snooze button? At Los Angeles International Airport, two dry ice bombs exploded this week, and two others were found in a restricted area of the airport. According to the Los Angeles Times, the devices "appeared to be outside the terminal near planes where employees such as baggage handlers and others work on the aircraft and its cargo." That reminds me: It's been more than a year since watchdogs warned Capitol...

Prosecutors have dropped a driving under the influence charge against the wife of former Miami Heat superstar Alonzo Mourning.

JERUSALEM — The goal was merely to promote clean energy in Israel — but television ads starring a pair of male puppets called "plug" and "socket" have instead unleashed a debate about gay pride. The puppets, named Sheka and Teka in Hebrew, have appeared in ads for the state-owned Israel Electric Corp. for more than a decade. Israelis have long playfully questioned whether they might be gay. But the arrival of a baby puppet in the new campaign set off fresh speculation about their sexual orientation.

My Sunday column focused on ways people could lower their 2014 income enough to qualify for tax-subsidized health insurance on a state-run exchange. Today's column is for people with the opposite issue - their income is too low to buy an exchange policy with a tax subsidy. Unless they increase their income above a certain threshold, their options are to enroll in Medicaid (called Medi-Cal in California) or pay full price for health insurance. The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid to a large group of people who were previously ineligible, but expansion was voluntary and not all states adopted it....

Abdellah Taia, the only openly homosexual Moroccan writer, was in Venice to present his debut film, “Salvation Army”, adapted from his autobiographical novel about growing up gay in Morocco. FRANCE 24 sat down with Taia for an interview. By Jon FROSCH (text) In an edition of the Venice Film Festival notable for the prevalence of works grappling with global and societal woes (unemployment, terrorism, pollution, war), perhaps no film has blended the personal and the political as strikingly as Abdellah Taia’s “L’Armée du salut” (“Salvation Army”). A promising directorial debut presented in the independent “Critics’ Week” category on Wednesday, the...

Women's rights have advanced across the world, and legislation is catching up with the times. In most modern countries, gender equality has been codified into the system. But not everywhere. Unfortunately, some retrograde legislation against women persists — and some laws are just downright incomprehensible. 1) Driving in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia's long-standing driving ban hit headlines recently, after conservative Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan announced that driving "harms women's ovaries" on a popular news site. "If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity, that could have negative physiological impacts as functional and physiological medical studies show...