Free Republic

1. There are bigger, more pressing problems than climate change No, really, there are. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), the congressman who is boycotting the papal address because he thinks the Pope is behaving “like a leftist politician” gives some excellent examples here. Foremost, surely, is the persecution and murder of Christians (and other minorities) in Africa and the Middle East by Islamist groups such as Boko Haram and ISIS. If the Pope isn’t going to stick up for his flock in times of crisis what exactly is the point of the Papacy?

Fellow Conservative, John Boehner’s days are numbered. The bronze and quick-to-cry Speaker of the House has been put on notice. American conservatives aren’t going to take it anymore. This isn’t really news. We’ve known for weeks that a few dozen brave Conservatives were going to try to over throw Boehner. But here’s what we didn’t know last week: Democrats have agreed to save Boehner. That’s right, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have agreed to vote with Boehner not only to save Planned Parenthood’s funding, but also to save John Boehner’s job. You know Boehner’s a RINO when even the Democrats...

House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)is under fire from Conservatives. While on a fund raising trip, he told a Politico reporter that dealing with them is part of his job. “Garbage men get used to the smell of bad garbage. Prisoners learn how to become prisoners, all right?” Boehner said in a phone interview this weekend from Seattle during a fundraising trip to the Pacific Northwest, referring especially to the grind of constant travel. “You can teach yourself to do anything, especially if you’re committed to a cause. I came to Washington to fight for a smaller, less costly and...

Pope Francis today suggested to reporters during an airborne press conference that he is not a left-winger. “Some people might say some things [I said] sounded slightly more leftish, but that would be a mistake of interpretation,” the Pope said to journalists, according to Time.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is again stoking racial division, but this time his primary target isn't white Americans.In several social media posts and a "private video" for black "street organizations" in Charleston, S.C., Farrakhan chastises black Christian leaders for being too close "to their former slave masters" and being fearful of gangs.Farrakhan had intended to travel to Charleston to promote his upcoming "Justice, or Else!" rally in Washington, D.C., on the National Mall, Oct. 10. He found, however, that black Christian pastors in the city were not interested in his message of racial discord after the shooting of...

Speaker John Boehner's future was on Rep. Henry Cuellar's mind when he was speaking with fellow House Democrats last week. The question they were mulling: Would they throw Boehner a lifeline and save his job if he needed their votes to survive? "Heck yes!" Cuellar said in an interview when asked if he'd consider it. The Texas Democrat is one of more than a dozen House Democrats who told CNN they'd be willing to vote to keep Boehner in place if he faces a rebellion from the tea party wing of his caucus this fall. In interviews, a number of...

Monday at the White House press briefing press secretary Josh Earnest reacted to Republican presidential candidate, neurosurgeon Ben Carson saying he believes a Muslim would not be qualified to be president by attacking the entire GOP field.

The bad reviews of Common Core keep pouring in, and not just from the right of center. “Among bilingual educators there has been much debate about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS),” Jeff Bale writes in the Fall 2015 issue of Rethinking Schools. “Some of the most respected scholars of bilingual education have endorsed the Common Core and are working hard to make it relevant for English learners.” “Others have been more suspicious. Not only do the standards focus on English-only, critics note, but they were bankrolled by the Gates Foundation, pushed on states in a way that amounts to...

Occasionally, students actually notice when they are in a biased course. “I felt a certain idealistic giddiness upon enrolling in ‘Prisons & Punishment,’ a government course introduced during my senior year of college,” Danny Funt writes in the September/October issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. “It was exciting to attach a resonant cause to academic inquiry, and about 95 percent of my classmates—Republican and Democrat—identified as supporters of criminal justice reform.” “Our professor had a childhood friend who was wrongfully imprisoned for murdering his parents and then exonerated 17 years later. ‘This will be the most important course you take...

Mike Gillette said Clancy called him Monday and said he was “very sorry,” and that the agency “did not handle the situation well.” A spokeswoman for the Secret Service confirmed that Clancy made the call. According to Gillette, Clancy offered to come to one of the group’s events to apologize in person and offered to have some of the children come to one of the agency’s training facilities in Maryland for a tour. ... In a statement e-mailed late Sunday, Brian Leary, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said the closures on Pennsylvania Avenue and Lafayette Square were “put into...

The pope has become a political football. Republicans want to use Pope Francis’s visit to Congress this week — the first-ever by a pontiff — to highlight their opposition to abortion rights. Democrats, meanwhile, hope the pope will lend new momentum to their efforts to address climate change, reform immigration law and win public approval for a nuclear deal with Iran.

When Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) became the 34th vote in favor of the Iran Deal, it was touted as sealing the support for the President Obama’s signature foreign policy initiative. It was fascinating for two reasons. First, that such a major policy was being adopted despite bi-partisan rejection. Second, the analysis started to flow of how the powerful lobbying organization, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), had lost such a major political battle. More importantly, what will AIPAC do now that the deal has been backhandedly approved? Once the Iran deal was approved by the negotiators many supporters of Israel...

The left had a triple whammy of self-congratulation this week when Texas teenager Ahmed was arrested(!) for bringing a bomb to school. The problem is, allegedly, he had brought to school a digital clock he built, to show to class. So this was allegedly a case of Texas being racist and anti-Science™! Except most of the facts were wrong. He didn’t build the clock, and the school had reason to believe it looked like a bomb. Anthony at Art Voice has taken down the situation thoroughly... Anthony...found that the clock Ahmed allegedly built, was originally sold at Radio Shack. Pictured...

The left-wing CNN was taken to task Saturday by no less than the left-wing Washington Post after CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was caught red-handed lying about Donald Trump. On his show Friday night, the increasingly shrill Cooper claimed that Trump said, “[W]e’re going to be looking at that, we’re going to be looking at the Muslims in America.” That’s a lie. Trump said no such thing. Not even close. And Anderson Cooper know this because the video of the exchange between Trump and a questioner who was obviously misled by Hillary Clinton’s lies about Obama’s faith has already been played...

In a mixed decision, a federal appeals court on Friday struck down as unconstitutional several strict gun registration laws in the nation's capital, but upheld other restrictions aimed at public safety.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that the city cannot ban gun owners from registering more than one pistol per month or require owners to re-register a gun every three years. The court also invalidated requirements that owners make a personal appearance to register a gun and pass a test about firearms laws. 

Today gun owners in the District of Columbia won a partial victory over the city’s stringent gun registration laws. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit noted that the city has the right to establish a gun registry, but tossed some provisions, specifically re-registration requirements (via the Hill):

<p>Vice President Biden offered a glimpse earlier this week into how the White House, deeply frustrated by the gridlocked and bitter state of American politics, has come to view Pope Francis’s visit to the United States.</p> <p>“The most popular man in the world is about to come to the United States of America,” Biden told a group of Hispanic Americans who had gathered at his residence. “The single most popular man in the world.”</p>

President Obama, in a historic first for the Pentagon, has chosen to nominate Eric Fanning to lead the Army, a move that would make him the first openly gay civilian secretary of one of the military services. Fanning’s nomination is the latest in a series of actions taken by the administration to advance the rights of gays and lesbians throughout the federal government. The Obama administration has overhauled internal policies to provide benefits to same-sex partners, appointed gay men and lesbians to the executive branch and the federal bench and ended the 18-year ban on gays serving openly in the...

President Obama, in a historic first for the Pentagon, has chosen to nominate Eric Fanning to lead the Army, a move that would make him the first openly gay civilian secretary of one of the military services.

DURHAM, N.H. -- Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham on Friday denounced Republican front-runner Donald Trump for not challenging an audience member in a rally Thursday night who said that President Obama is Muslim and "not even an American." “I was appalled,” Clinton told reporters following an appearance at the University Of New Hampshire. "He should have from the beginning repudiated that kind of rhetoric, that level of hatefulness in a questioner in an audience that he was appearing before." Clinton said had she been in Trump’s place, she would have “called out” the questioner. “That has no place in political...