Free Republic

Rice’s recent speaking gigs on college campuses and her ascension to the board of the file-sharing company Dropbox have sparked protests calling for her to be disinvited, cashiered and generally isolated and shamed --snip-- When the University of Minnesota invited her to give a lecture Thursday as part of a series marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the herd of independent minds that is the school’s faculty roused itself. Roughly 200 of them demanded that the invitation be revoked, mostly for her association with George W. Bush’s interrogation and detention policies, but also because she is unfit...

~Favorite "Time" Songs~ *Video* Time To Say Goodbye Sarah Brightman Andrea Bocelli [Sarah:] Quando sono sola sogno all'orizzonte e mancan le parole, si lo so che non c'è luce in una stanza quando manca il sole, se non ci sei tu con me, con me. Su le finestre mostra a tutti il mio cuore che hai accesso, chiudi dentro me la luce che hai incontrato per strada. Time to say goodbye. Paesi che non ho mai veduto e vissuto con te, adesso si li vivrò. Con te partirò su navi per mari che, io lo so, no, no, non...

An ex-con who spent most of his adult life behind bars on Thursday got what he said he wanted for robbing a suburban Chicago bank. The 74-year-old gets to go back to the place he called home—prison. Telling Walter Unbehaun he frightened a teller by showing her a revolver tucked in his waistband during the 2013 heist, a federal judge imposed a 3½-year prison sentence, citing a rap sheet that includes crimes from home invasion to kidnapping. “This is not the first time you’ve inspired fear,” Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman said, scolding the high-school dropout and part-time bathtub repairman. As...

Rachel Maddow talks to Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, about how jihadist violence dominates the media in a way that home-grown, right-wing terror does not.

President Obama stepped out at the White House daily briefing today to again berate Republicans for challenging Obamacare — in what appeared to be an attempt to get politicians to stop talking about the law’s negative effects before midterm elections. Obama announced “as more data comes in, we now know that the number of Americans who’ve signed up for private insurance in the marketplaces has grown to 8 million people.” “Before this law added new transparency and competition to the individual market, folks who’ve bought insurance on their own regularly saw double-digit increases in their premiums. That was the norm....

Vestal, NY (WBNG Binghamton) Standing just feet from a cement trail leading to Binghamton University's East Gym, biologist Ralph Garruto demonstrated how he has found ticks hiding in plain sight. "If you have a picnic table out over there, under a tree like that or just off to the edge, ticks are in this kind of leaf litter," Garruto said. Garruto has been studying tick behavior since the pests arrived in Broome County en masse six years ago. Through his research, he's found more ticks living around building and in man-made environments than in the deep woods. Recently, after testing...

PETA Enlists Kids To Tell First Lady Easter Egg Policy is Rotten ABC News By Alexander Mallin 5 hours ago While the annual White House Easter Egg Roll celebration isn't one typically embroiled in controversy, three young girls are letting First Lady Michelle Obama know they aren't happy about it. Well, three young girls on behalf of PETA, or the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed," says one girl, in the YouTube video released by the group this week titled, "Michelle Obama, We Need to Talk." After some deep sighs and shaking of...

Portland's newest bridge across the Willamette River is now officially called "Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People." The new name was announced in a ceremony along the waterfront Wednesday at around 10:30 a.m. --SNIP-- Tilikum Crossing: Referencing a Native American term for 'common people.' --SNIP-- The bridge is part of a new $1.5 billion, 7-mile Portland-Milwaukie light rail line. The bridge will be the largest in the nation to carry transit, pedestrians, bikes but no private cars or trucks. The bridge was estimated to cost $134 million and was expected to open in Sept. of 2015.

Can Obamacare be fixed? Vulnerable Democrats are pot committed to this idea. They say most Americans do not want to repeal Obamacare and therefore the only way to make it work is to reform it. They accuse Republicans of not having a viable alternative and wasting billions of dollars on failed efforts to defund it. As a consequence, some Democrats are urging the party to stand firm on this issue, and to stop running way from a law many of them voted for. The AP reports: Republicans already were pushing their luck by vowing to "repeal and replace" the health...

Where leftist dreams have all come true.Barack Obama and the Democratic Party insist they are not really socialists, because in socialist countries the government controls all the means of production. My rejoinder to that would be that U.S. Democrats have a goal at all times of controlling as much of the economy as they can - definitely including the means of production (what do you think "climate change" is really all about?) - and if you want to examine what the result would be if all their policy goals were realized, I present to you, the wonderful but tragically troubled...

After the emotional trial of slain teenager Trayvon Martin's killer George Zimmerman last year, justice is being demanded for the unlawful killing of another teen by a New York police officer. A "Justice for #RamarleyGraham" campaign has launched in hopes of indicting the man responsible for taking an 18-year-old's life. The Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney's office have the power to take over the case and hold Ramarley's killer accountable. Join us in demanding the DOJ and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara conduct a thorough investigation and bring federal charges against Officer...

For the first time, scientists have discovered an Earth-size alien planet in the habitable zone of its host star, an "Earth cousin" that just might have liquid water and the right conditions for life.

... Kristine, 44, told a 911 operator that Richard, 47, was hallucinating, scaring their three kids, and asking to be killed; she said he may have consumed edible marijuana and that their gun was locked in a safe, 9News reports. At 9:32pm, dispatchers reported domestic violence to two officers, adding that Richard had been smoking marijuana, the Post reports. ...

Western Washington University sent a questionnaire to students asking them for advice on how the administration could succeed at making sure that in future years, “we are not as white as we are today.” The question notes that WWU’s racial make up does not perfectly reflect the nation at large, and asks students to consider strategies that other universities have used to focus on skin color as the paramount indicator of a student-applicant’s worth. The president of WWU has stated that his explicit goal is to reduce the white population on campus, according to Campus Reform. “I’ve said before and...

There is an unfortunate tendency in the West to downplay the threat from Jihad. This is especially true when the acts of Jihad occur in the Third World and especially when the victims are non-white and poor. This week has provided us with prime examples of this in Nigeria, where Boko Haram has continued its Jihadist terror with horrific attacks which have been little more than an afterthought in US and other Western media. 72 killed, 133 wounded, 129 young schoolgirls kidnapped, all since Monday...had this happened in Europe or the US, it would have stopped all activity. But it's...

Well, if this isn't a burgeoning political headache for the party of “tolerance” and “inclusiveness,” I don't know what is. An Arkansas Democratic gubernatorial candidate has filed two complaints against state organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party. She claims Arkansas Democrats snubbed her at a dinner by refusing to let her speak, and on a separate occasion, referred to her primary opponent as “the next governor of Arkansas”…as she sat and listened. From ABC’s affiliate KATV: Arkansas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dr. Lynette Bryant has filed a complaint against the Democratic Party of Arkansas and the Saline County Democratic Party...

Speaking from the White House late Thursday afternoon, President Obama announced there are now 8 million people enrolled in Obamacare, a small jump up from 7.1 million at the beginning of April and after former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has left office. "Eight million people," Obama said. "Thirty-five percent of people who enroll through the federal market place are under the age of 35. All told, independent experts now estimate that millions of Americans who were uninsured have gained coverage this year." The White House has still not produced numbers detailed how many people have paid for...

According to Obama, repealing Obamacare would increase the deficit. You’re probably just as shocked as I am to hear this bold statement seeing as the public relations for Obamacare alone cost taxpayers millions of dollars more than anticipated and states such as Maryland are completely overhauling their websites—a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. Somehow the White House continues to spin Obamacare in a positive light—as a money saver rather than a job crushing law that has caused nothing but hardship for millions of Americans. It is important to point out that for years before Obamacare took effect, taxes had been...

Jesus sells. That’s why they have cover stories on Him in magazines and TV specials, even if some of them offer strange theories to try to explain away things like the original Easter. I’ll never forget the evolution of a famous TV newsman, the late Peter Jennings, the anchor ABC’s nightly news broadcasts. In 2000, Jennings hosted a special, “The Search for Jesus.” He never found Him because he relied almost entirely on liberal Bible scholars who dismissed the reliability of the Gospel accounts. The special, though well done, needlessly cast doubt on all the basics about Jesus. But in...

WASHINGTON — Driven by a last-minute flood of enrollments, particularly in California, sign-ups for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s online marketplaces hit 8 million in the law’s first year, President Obama announced Thursday. That beats the forecast by 1 million people and caps a remarkable comeback from a disastrous rollout last fall that gave rise to predictions the law would collapse in its maiden year. Instead, the health law, often called Obamacare, has helped bring about the largest increase in insurance coverage in the U.S. in half a century. “This thing is working,” Obama said from the White...