Free Republic

OPEC is pointing the finger at speculators as well as Non-OPEC countries, but especially US shale producers for the crude price crash. Let's explore that idea in a series of charts. But first let's take a look at the allegation. The Wall Street Journal reports Gulf Oil Exporters Blame Non-OPEC Producers for Glut. Gulf oil officials on Sunday defended OPECÂ’s decision last month to keep its production ceiling intact, blaming producers outside of the group for the glut of oil on the market that has depressed prices. Speaking at an energy conference in Abu Dhabi, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi...

Cause and effect. The president, governor, mayor and Reverend Al all say that the cops are a bunch of racist bastards. Somebody, aggrieved by what these leaders have said, walks up and kills two cops in cold blood. Cause and effect. A leads to B leads to bagpipes and “Amazing Grace.” And when they’re trying to hose the blood out of a precinct car it’s a little late to distance yourself from it. The claims of Sharpton and his crew that they disavow any violence, and that this has nothing to do with their protests and speeches, are, well, just...

When Gabby Giffords was shot in Arizona, the left went into a frenzy blaming Sarah Palin. In fact, when I was on CNN, I went on TV with Cornell Belcher and he was livid when I suggested leftwing rhetoric could be as hostile and divisive as rightwing rhetoric, if not more so. John King was apologetic for using war metaphors for politics and promised to stop. Wolf Blitzer, at one point, did a profile of Democratic congress critters who’d had death threats against them. Mind you, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Jim DeMint, and other Republicans had had the same, but...

We are in the midst of a war on rape. From American campuses to British courthouses, from newspaper op-ed pages to the weird world of online petitions, ‘zero tolerance’ of rape has been declared. And who could possibly be against it? No one is ‘pro-rape’. So surely everyone will cheer a war on rape. Not so fast. Wars on rape have been declared before, and often for deeply reactionary reasons, having the effect of harming society rather than helping women. Consider the ‘war on rape’ declared in America’s Deep South in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the KKK...

Two New York City cops, Wenjian Liu (38) and Rafael Ramos (40), were murdered Saturday afternoon sitting in their marked car parked near what in New York is known as "a project" - typically a high-rise, low cost housing structure - where they were attempting, by virtue of their visibility, to protect the residents. That very visibility led to their deaths as a gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, walked up to the passenger side of the car, fired, and killed them both before running down into a subway entrance and shooting himself on the platform. Brinsley is apparently from the Baltimore area...

<p>Decades ago, I taught at a community college. The bunch of us treated our shared office as if it were the neighborhood bar. We’d hang out for hours. That beat going home to our cheap apartments or our parents’ basements and watching TV, which was all we could afford on the pittance adjunct professors are paid. James was a jazz musician. Mo’s nose was always to the grindstone. Patrick was enthralling. I wish I had had a video camera recording our every conversation. His words glittered.</p>

I left Washington state about 20 years ago for Arizona. A Washington native, I had become fed up with the left-wing politics of Seattle. A couple of years ago, I moved back to the Pacific Northwest. A lot had changed while I was gone, and very little for the better. The only “improvement” I noticed was more greenery everywhere. The environmentalists had gotten so many restrictions passed on logging and burning dense forestation that the Evergreen State had started to look like a jungle. Everything else had gone downhill. The roads and traffic had become horrendous, especially in the Puget...

A lynch mob is all fun and games until someone actually gets lynched. At first everyone has a good time marching around and shouting “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe.” The police are accused of being racist killers by the defenders of actual racist killers like Mumia Abu Jamal. Every community organizer within a thousand miles shows up to brandish signs claiming cops are randomly killing innocent black men even as he spits and throws bottles at any cop within reach. Not to mention engaging in the occasional act of convenience store redistribution. The Mayor of New York City...

Homeless American veterans shiver in the bitter cold while illegal immigrants receive subsidized four-year degrees. At midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold, Christ was born in a stable after his parents were turned away by every innkeeper. Joseph and Mary did not respond with entitlement: “If you don’t shelter us, then you’re racist.” Rather, they used their ingenuity to find an alternative birthplace for their son among friends—farm animals, shepherds, kings, and angels—beneath the light of an extraordinary star. “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because...

Just about every year at this time, "A Christmas Carol' shows up somewhere on TV, as do headlines about how one Republican or another is the modern equivalent of the tale's greedy miser, Ebenezer Scrooge. "The GOP's sad Scrooge agenda." "GOP Protecting Ebenezer Scrooge." "Maher Likens Republicans to Ebenezer Scrooge." "Republicans play the role of the stingy Scrooge." You have to wonder if these folks have actually read "A Christmas Carol" or spent any time pondering what Scrooge actually says and does. Because if you do, you come to realize that Scrooge more closely resembles a modern liberal than a...

I was intrigued by an article posted by Dan Mitchell from Cato here over the weekend that in part said that how Republicans treat reform at the Joint Committee on Taxation (and the CBO) as a kind of an IQ test. As Mitchell notes “when JCT does revenue estimates, the bureaucrats grease the skids for anti-growth tax policy by overstating revenue losses from lower tax rates and overstating revenue gains from higher tax rates.”And indeed they do. In fact, both the CBO and the JTC act as giant Ways and Means committees for higher taxes and bigger government. But that’s...

AFTER FIVE YEARS in a Cuban dungeon, American aid contractor Alan Gross was finally freed Wednesday, his release part of a deal to restore full diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba. But there will be no freedom for the many thousands of Cuban citizens locked in the Castros' prisons — not even after a US embassy is reopened in Havana. The United States has always had diplomatic ties with nasty regimes. In that sense, President Obama's announcement last week that he intends to normalize relations with Cuba merely adds another to the list. But Cuba isn't just another...

It's shameful that a company like Sony would go groveling to a deceitful, tyrannical, un-American thug, but this column is not about Sony’s sucking up to Al Sharpton. This column is about a tort system that is dedicated not to justice but to making lawyers richer, and it comes not only at the price of American prosperity but at the cost of our liberty as well. Certainly, Sony has a yellow streak as wide as Seth Rogen’s gut. Its creepy supplication to that race-hustling, MSNBC troll shows its true cowardly character, since Sharpton – unlike North Korea – doesn’t have...

The climate of hate in Dallas was real,and it had real consequences,”wrote former New York Times columnist Frank Rich in response to a letter to the editor criticizing his 2011 New York Magazine essay titled “What Killed JFK.” So the obvious question:New York City’s current police commissioner Bill Bratton said this past Saturday night of the cold-blooded murder of NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos:“They were, quite simply,assassinated—targeted for their uniform,and for the responsibility they embraced.”.................Whether it’s inviting the infamous race agitator Al Sharpton to the White House dozens upon dozens of times(Obama)or giving speeches in which the message...

Outgoing CNN host Candy Crowley sat down with President Barack Obama for his final interview of the year on Friday in which she probed him over his government’s response to the North Korea-linked cyber-attack on Sony Studios. Crowley asked if the administration considered the costly and dramatic attack on the livelihoods of American citizens, complete with ultimatums warning of future attacks unless Sony behaved in a manner preferred by the attackers, represented an act of war. “No, I don’t think it was an act of war,” Obama said. “I think it was an act of cyber-vandalism that was very costly,...

Since a delicious feminist folly occurs nearly every day, I had a hard time picking the sweetest of the cherries off the cupcakes. But here goes, more or less in descending order of absurdity: The “gang rape” hoax at UVA ... Wendy Davis ... Rotherham ... #Shirtstorm ... Hobby Lobby ... The Nine West shoe ad ragefest ... The Great Spider-Woman Sexist Derriere Scandal ... F-Bombs for Feminism ... Amanda Marcotte ... “Ban Bossy”

Since last month’s election, the President has been a busy fellow. He’s traveled to China, heralded what he called a “turning point” in American military affairs, “signed a Presidential Memorandum that prohibits future oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Bristol Bay” and land areas near it and announced a new director for the White House Council for Strong Cities, Strong Communities, to boot.FRC takes no formal position on these issues, or on those that follow (with one exception). Rather, they are listed to make the point that Mr. Obama is not going suddenly to become an inactive Chief Executive. He...

Question 4: Is it permissible to have intercourse with a female captive? It is permissible to have sexual intercourse with the female captive. Allah the almighty said, “Successful are the believers who guard their chastity, except from their wives or captives and slaves…for then they are free from blame.”                                                                                                  IS (The Islamic...

Two years ago, I jumped on USA Today for stating that the 112th Congress was the “least productive” since the end of World War II. My argument was very straightforward. It’s better to have no legislation than bad legislation. Here’s some of what I wrote about USA Today’s hypothesis. …it does blindly assume that it is productive to impose more laws. Was it productive to enact Obamacare? What about the faux stimulus? Or the Dodd-Frank bailout bill? Wouldn’t the headline be more accurate if it read, “This Congress could be least destructive since 1947?? …To be sure, not all legislation...

Looking over the final voter tallies, the winners and losers for state and federal offices, there remains one undecided gubernatorial contest: Vermont. Unlike other states, if a gubernatorial candidate, whether incumbent of challenger, fails to win a simple majority, the state legislature appoints the next governor out of the top three contenders. Incumbent Democrat Peter Shumlin, won by 2,000 votes, yet got less than half the total vote in the 2014 election. Presently, the legislature sits firmly in the Democratic camp, although Republican gained a few seats. Still, Shumlin has weathered some troubling controversies in Vermont. In his 2014 State...