Free Republic

Last week, masked men in camouflage garb with no insignia, dressed and equipped like Russian special forces, started taking over police stations and other government buildings in the Donets basin in Eastern Ukraine. They appeared to be working in tandem with local militias in defying the Ukrainian government. This week, the Ukrainian government has responded by sending in military forces to counter these actions. There has been shooting and violence. But Ukraine's military doesn't seem capable of asserting control. So Vladimir Putin's Russia, with some 40,000 troops massed just outside Ukraine, seems to have taken effective control of a significant...

Common Core State Standards could be the under-the-radar issue of the 2014 campaign. Business leaders and politicians had their hearts in the right place. We are a highly mobile society. People are likely to move more than once for jobs. Often they move their whole families to new school districts. Sometimes families move across the country. Children, particularly children whose parents are in the military, are prone to be disadvantaged in education if they move around. A school in one part of the country may be ahead of, behind or on altogether different subjects than a former school is. Because...

I quoted the story as it was written some hours ago. But they've changed it, without acknowledging the change. WAS: Pushilin acknowledged the flyers were distributed by his organization but he disavowed their content, according to the web site Jews of Kiev, Ynet reported… NOW IS: Pushilin acknowledged that fliers were distributed under his organization's name in Donetsk but denied any connection to them, Ynet reported in Hebrew. This is a major change in reporting -- from Pushilin admitting his men to handing them out, to a mere acknowledgement that he's aware of leaftlets purporting to come from his organization....

Russia's willingness to violate Ukraine's territorial sovereignty is the gravest challenge to the European order in over half a century. The conflict pits a vast nuclear power against a state equal in size to France, an autocratic regime against a revolutionary government. The Russian intervention in Ukraine raises questions about the security guarantees that the West made to Ukraine after the country gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994, and it flies in the face of many Europeans' belief that, in recent years, a continental war has become all but impossible. The end result may be the emergence of a...

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...

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...

EL Pais reports Spanish Public Debt Threatens to Exceed 100% of GDP in 2014 Via translation General government debt accumulated through February was 987.945 billion euros, an amount that represents 96.5% of gross domestic product (GDP). This represents a new record in the amount of money the state, communities, and the municipalities have to return to financial institutions and investment funds. In February alone, the government liabilities increased by 8.130 billion, up 8% from the previous month. The debt problem is not just that you have to pay, but the difficulty to stop the frenzied pace to growing-has risen from...

I heard a rumor that some sensitive folks on the religious right are concerned about the possibility of the GOP 2016 convention being held in my beloved hometown, that den of iniquity known as Las Vegas. I have to admit, I’m puzzled. Sure, there’s sin in Vegas, but last time I checked, there was sin in Dallas, Cleveland and even (gasp) River City. Believe it or not, there are hundreds of churches and hundreds of thousands of Christians in Vegas. We can and DO live the same lives people live anywhere. We work, go to school and church, take...

Listening to Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama address Al Sharpton’s National Action Network 16th annual convention last week, one would think Americans were living in the year 1964 not 2014. Holder pulled the race card blaming Republicans for criticizing him and Obama, merely because they’re black. Speaking prior to Obama, Holder suggested to the all black crowd that both he and the president had been treated badly by Republicans because they are black. “It has nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president...

I was listening to a financial guru/talking head of one of the local radio money shows recently. He was pontificating about the opportunities that were being presented in the stock market if only you knew where to look. What caught my attention, however, was his pronouncement about the problem with recent IPO offerings, most notably Ally (formerly the bankrupt GMAC). He kept warning people away from this stock which put him in my camp. However, when a caller asked him if they should short the stock he immediately went to my “Are you kidding me?” list. It wasn’t whether...

As a supporter of genuine capitalism, which means the right of contract and the absence of coercion, I don’t think there should be any policies that help or hinder unions. The government should simply be a neutral referee that enforces contracts and upholds the rule of law. Similarly, I also don’t have any philosophical objection to employers and employees agreeing to “defined benefit” pension plans, which basically promise workers a pre-determined amount of money after they retire based on factors such as average pay and years in the workforce. After all, my money and property aren’t involved, so it’s not...

On the first part of the journey I was looking at all the life There were plants and birds and rocks and things There was sand and hills and rings The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz And the sky with no clouds The heat was hot and the ground was dry But the air was full of sound.-America The year 1985 saw the beginning of a new dawn in technology, which would see the exploitation and evolution of a defense department project, develop into the worldwide web - the Internet. Building out the pipes and...

WASHINGTON -- Last week a national treasure spoke. That would be Charles Krauthammer, syndicated columnist, television commentator and all around public sage. He also is a chess player. Krauthammer noted that two months ago a petition bearing the signatures of some 110,000 tyrants was sent to the Washington Post -- from where did it come, I would like to know -- demanding that the Post discontinue publishing articles that deny global warming or -- who knows -- take even a skeptical view of global warming. Yet Krauthammer assures us that precisely a day later his column containing the exact heresy...

Darkness fell across the land and the man they thought would be their savior cried out in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Soon after, he breathed his last. The people standing at the foot of the cross beat their breasts and stumbled away. From a distance, his mother and friends watched in silent despair. His disciples were broken in spirit—no doubt confused, hurting and angry. They had followed this man for years, left their work and their families for him. They thought he would change everything. But in the course of one day,...

Remember when colleges prided themselves on the diligence and depth of their research? Frederick Lawrence, president of Brandeis University, apparently does not. He offered an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Then, at the last minute, he rescinded the offer because, he claims, he became aware of “past statements” by her “inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.” Hey Scholar-in-Chief, ever hear of Google? Ms. Hirsi Ali, of course, is an intrepid women’s rights advocate who has focused on Muslim women, raising questions, as she has phrased it, on “the role of Islam in legitimizing” female genital mutilation, “honor killings,” forced...

Attorney General Eric Holder said hate crimes are an affront to what the United States stands for in comments at a memorial service Thursday for three people killed in a shooting at a Jewish community center in Kansas. “Every alleged hate crime, no matter the intended target, is an affront to who we are – and who we have always been – both as a country and as a people,”

Yesterday President Obama gave a speech in Oakdale, Pennsylvania with Vice President Joe Biden about skill training. Last week, just thirty miles away in Murrysville, a student went on a mass stabbing rampage at Franklin Regional High School. Twenty people were severely injured in the incident, making it one of the worst mass stabbing events in U.S. history. But despite being close to the scene of the tragic and horrifying event, Obama failed to mention the incident during his nearly 30 minute long remarks. I have a feeling if there had been a recent tragedy that involved a gun at...

Hawks in the wild tend to be solitary creatures. But those in Washington, D.C., often appear in noisy flocks. As Russian President Vladimir Putin continues his predatory activities in Ukraine, conservatives here are unanimous on how the Obama administration should respond: by emulating the Bush administration. A favorite demand is reviving the European missile defense that George W. Bush began during his final months in office. "We could go back and reinstate the ballistic missile defense program that was taken out," Dick Cheney said. "Obama took it out to appease Putin." Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., agreed that "we should definitely...

WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group is planning to release, through its liberal sister imprint Convergent Books, a manuscript paradoxically titled God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships. Is the Christian world about to suffer through another World Vision moment? The book’s author, Matthew Vines, is a homosexual activist and Bible revisionist known for manipulating Christian terminology to advance the counter-Christian homosexualist agenda. Despite his frequent use of a Christian-like lexicon, Vines surprisingly admits to running an apostate enterprise that he calls The Reformation Project. An unabashed denier of Biblical teaching on sexual morality, Vines has...