Free Republic

Taking direct aim at the oil-and-gas industry, President Obama on Wednesday put forth long-awaited regulations on methane emissions, setting an ambitious goal of reducing those emissions by 45 percent over the next decade. The move comes just days before the State of the Union address and underscores that, in the final two years of presidency, Mr. Obama is looking to cement his legacy on climate-change and environmental issues...

On Tuesday, three Republican Senators joined three Democrats to introduce legislation that would expand the number of guest-workers for the tech industry even though there is a surplus of American high-tech workers. The Immigration Innovation (“I-Squared”) bill, introduced by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), would also enable companies to hire an unlimited number of workers with advanced degrees from U.S. institutions in science, technology, engineering and math, which critics have said would turn some universities into diploma factories for foreign students. Currently, the first 20,000...

Durham, N.C. — A weekly call to prayer for Muslims will be heard at Duke University starting Friday, school officials said. Members of the Duke Muslim Students Association will chant the call, known as adhan or azan, from the Duke Chapel bell tower each Friday at 1 p.m. The call to prayer will last about three minutes and be “moderately amplified,” officials said in a statement Tuesday. “The adhan is the call to prayer that brings Muslims back to their purpose in life, which is to worship God, and serves as a reminder to serve our brothers and sisters in...

LITTLE ROCK — Republican Asa Hutchinson has been sworn in as Arkansas’ 46th governor. The ex-congressman and former federal Homeland Security official took the oath of office at the state Capitol Tuesday, succeeding Democrat Mike Beebe. Hutchinson took office a day after lawmakers convened for the start of the 2015 session. Hutchinson has said he wants lawmakers to move quickly on his campaign promise to cut taxes for the middle class by $100 million a year. He’s also expected to announce later this month whether he’ll supporting continuing the state’s compromise Medicaid expansion. Beebe, who was first elected in 2006...

After the killings at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo last week by Islamist extremists, other news media, including web-based outlets, chose to republish some of its cartoons that many Muslims found so offensive. Some American newspapers, including The New York Times, did not. They drew criticism from some free-speech advocates who called the decision cowardly in the face of a terrorist attack. American newspapers are confronting a variation of that choice: whether to republish the cover-page cartoon of the new Charlie Hebdo print edition, due out Wednesday. It shows a tearful caricature of the Prophet Muhammad holding the by-now...

Boehner, authorities say Published January 13, 2015 FoxNews.com Facebook6 Twitter19 livefyre31 Email Print A former Ohio country club bartender -- who told authorities that he was Jesus Christ -- threatened to murder House Speaker John Boehner last fall because he believed the Ohio congressman was responsible for Ebola, according to a published report. Michael Robert Hoyt, 44, who worked at the Wetherington Country Club in West Chester, also told authorities he wished he had poisoned Boehner's drink before he was fired in October, WCPO.com reported. U.S. Capitol Police Special Agent Christopher M. Desrosiers told the outlet that Hoyt said he...

The House will quickly begin considering broader immigration legislation in weeks ahead even as Republicans are likely to remain mired in conflict with President Obama over a far-reaching executive action that extended amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, Speaker John Boehner announced to members at a closed-door meeting this morning. “We’re going to get an immigration bill moving pretty quickly,” one GOP lawmaker told Breitbart News. Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) said the outlines of the specific legislation that will be considered are still unclear, but he said he expects in time that Boehner will bring bills addressing border security, visa...

... “The Kalashnikovs, the identity cards the [killers] supposedly left behind, it was all staged,” said Boular, as his friends nodded in agreement. “It was a conspiracy designed by the Jews to make Muslims look bad. We’d rather just stay where we are." ... (Another said) The man, who gave his named as “Mohamed,” also said he was a devout Muslim but then changed his demeanor and added, grinning, that he was also “a delinquent.” Then he said he was a drug dealer and without prompting, invited the reporter into the (also very clean) gas station to show an array...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem, Israel — January 12, 2015 … As one who has lived in Israel for over 25 years, served in a combat unit in the Israel Defense Forces and has consulted the Israeli government at varying levels, I have never been so proud of an Israeli leader. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu read with sadness of the murders of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo in Paris by members of Islamic terror groups. Netanyahu’s eyes swelled with tears as he heard that a Jewish market had been attacked and Jewish hostages were being shot dead...

Emergency crews responded to a three-alarm fire early Tuesday morning at Penn Station, according to the FDNY. The fire happened just before 2:30 a.m. at the station, located at West 33rd Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, the FDNY said.

Muslim leaders from across America will gather in Texas this weekend to hold the annual Stand With the Prophet in Honor and Respect conference, a weekend forum that is being billed as a “movement to defend Prophet Muhammad, his person, and his message,” according to event information. The Saturday event, which seeks to combat “Islamophobes in America” who have turned the Islamic Prophet Muhammad “into an object of hate,” according to organizers, comes just a week after radicalized Islamists in France killed 17 people. The victims died in events that began with the shooting attack on French newspaper Charlie Hebdo...

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a rare admission of error, the White House said Monday that President Barack Obama or another high-level representative should have joined dozens of world leaders at an anti-terror rally in Paris. While leaders from Europe, the Middle East and Africa linked arms for Sunday's march through the boulevards of Paris, the United States was represented by its ambassador to France. Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris for security meetings but did not attend the march. "It's fair to say we should have sent someone with a higher profile," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. The...

The L'Enfant Plaza Metro station has been evacuated due to smoke in the station. Metro says trains are bypassing the station and the station has been temporarily closed. Metro says the source of the smoke has not been determined and it has activated tunnel fans to ventilate the area.

From Politico this morning, in an article entitled, “GOP hopes it’s cracked the abortion code: Republicans unite around a push to ban the procedure after 20 weeks of pregnancy”: … GOP leaders plan to vote on a federal 20-week abortion ban on Jan. 22. That’s the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade and falls on the same day as the March for Life…. In the House, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) opted to tie the upcoming vote to the March for Life event after meeting with leading anti-abortion groups and Republicans who have long been vocal opponents of abortion. McCarthy...

Leaked internal training documents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reveal Border Patrol agents are now receiving guidelines instructing them that the vast majority of illegal immigrants in the U.S. are off limits to federal agents and are substantially immune to detention and deportation. A trusted federal agent in the CBP provided exclusive copies of the documents to Breitbart Texas and also agreed to an interview on the condition of anonymity. According to the source, these training documents were required training for U.S. Border Patrol agents and each agent was required to sign their name to confirm receiving the...

Secretary of State John Kerry called criticism that no top U.S. officials attended Sunday's massive march against terrorism in Paris "quibbling" Monday, even as he announced a trip to the French capital later this week for talks on countering Islamist violence. Kerry announced his plans at a press conference in the Indian city of Ahmedabad, where he had made a long-scheduled appearance at an international investment conference Sunday ahead of President Barack Obama's planned visit to that country later this month. "I would have personally very much wanted to have been [in Paris]," Kerry said, "but couldn't do so because...

'A Muslim shop worker has told how he saved "15 to 20" customers at a Jewish supermarket attacked by terrorist Amedy Coulibaly. Lassana Bathily was out of the gunman's view when he stormed the Hypercacher store in eastern Paris with guns blazing. A number of shoppers fled down stairs at the back of the shop, where they ran into the 24-year-old assistant, who thought the group could hide in a cold storage room in the basement. He has been credited with helping the hostages - including a father and his young son - to survive the siege, in which four...

(CNN)French law enforcement officers have been told to erase their social media presence and to carry their weapons at all times because terror sleeper cells have been activated over the last 24 hours in the country, a French police source who attended a briefing Saturday told CNN Terror Analyst Samuel Laurent. Ahmedy Coulibaly, a suspect killed Friday during a deadly Kosher market hostage siege, had made several phone calls about targeting police officers in France. The alert came as the lone remaining suspect wanted in connection with a terrorism spree -- Hayat Boumeddiene -- entered Turkey on January 2,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans in Congress and a state supreme court have thrown the political hot potato known as Keystone XL straight back onto President Barack Obama's lap. So loath is Obama to making a decision about the proposed oil pipeline that deliberations have entered their sixth year — a period nearly as long as Obama's time in office. He's blamed the seemingly endless delays on bureaucratic formalities and parochial issues in Nebraska, even when skeptics claimed that the politics of the next election were giving the president cold feet. Now the election is over, the Nebraska issue is resolved,...

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (Reuters) - President Barack Obama promoted a proposal to offer two years of free community college tuition to students on Friday but the plan and its $60 billion pricetag over 10 years immediately faced skepticism from Republican lawmakers. Obama floated the education idea on the third and final day of a tour to promote agenda items being prepared for his Jan. 20 State of the Union address, a speech that will be his first to the U.S. Congress since Republicans won the Senate in November elections.