Free Republic

On Thursday in his weekly appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, National Review columnist Mark Steyn explained what was to be learned from Jake Tapper’s decision to leave ABC, where he had been the network’s White House correspondent, for an anchoring position at CNN. Steyn, author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” said that while the rest of the reporters in the briefing room at the White House have very uninspiring approaches to their questioning of the president, Tapper is the exception. “People think it’s odd that Jake Tapper, who is nobody’s idea of a right-wing nut or anything,...

In the standoff over the fiscal cliff, all the discussion has been about the Bush tax cuts. There has been no discussion about the ObamaCare tax increases. That's a mistake. Five of the tax increases Americans will face on January 1 are new taxes created under the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). And they are not just for the very rich. Three of the five will hit people who are solidly middle class.The new ObamaCare taxes will hit everything from dividends and capital gains to day care and services for special needs children. They will increase the tax bill for those...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture improperly inflated the numbers of jobs created or saved by the 2009 economic stimulus, according to the agency’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG). “[We] identified job numbers that were inflated because award recipients reported cumulative job numbers instead of the number of jobs created or saved during the quarter being reported. In other instances, job numbers were under-reported,” according to an OIG audit released Dec. 13. The report claims that without accurate job figures, it is “difficult” to know whether the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was effective in creating or saving jobs....

Famed attorney Melvyn Weiss, who made millions of dollars by filing class-action suits against some of the country’s largest corporations, now finds himself facing DUI charges after a traffic stop in Boynton Beach early this morning.

(This Dec. 3, 2012 file photo shows Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington.) (CNSNews.com) – For the last two years, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the nominee to be the next secretary of state, has called for “immigration equality” to prevent the deportation of illegal alien same-sex partners of legal U.S. residents. In May, shortly after President Barack Obama announced his support for homosexual marriage, Kerry and 16 other Democratic senators sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The letter pointed to...

The Archbishop of Canterbury backed stricter gun controls in the wake of the Sandy Hook school massacre, saying the ready availability of weapons in a society where fear is already "rampant" pushes people to extreme violence. Delivering BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day, Dr Rowan Williams also warned that Britain had "better not be complacent" about the gang-related gun and knife crime affecting its own youngsters. A minute's silence was held in America on Friday to remember the 20 children and six adult victims of the Connecticut shootings which have thrust the fraught gun control debate back into the...

There are now calls from the Left for gun control legislation in response to Adam Lanza's unconscionable mass killing of innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary. However, very few people seem to be asking the most basic question of all before getting started: What gun control legislation could have stopped Adam Lanza? The answer is "none." Let's consider a few alternatives: 1) The school was already a "gun free zone;" so obviously that wasn't effective. Of course, the sort of people who would respect a "gun free zone" in the first place are the very ones you wouldn't have...

April 16, 2000 Marking the first anniversary of the shooting deaths at Columbine High School, President Clinton announced $120 million in new federal grants Saturday to place more police officers in schools and help even the youngest kids cope with their problems. Clinton also unveiled the $60-million fifth round of funding for "COPS in School," a Justice Department program that helps pay the costs of placing police officers in schools to help make them safer for students and teachers. The money will be used to provide 452 officers in schools in more than 220 communities.

Unbelievable - During funeral for Senator Daniel Inouye, Obama diverts remembering Inouye for by speaking of himself for about 10 minutes

We need a new foreign policy and we need to spend a lot less money. That’s the message stock market is telling us. It’s a message painted in big bold letters and we’d be wise to read it. We need a foreign policy that uses the proven lessons we learned from the Cold War; a policy that pares back our commitment of troops to combat operations. We need a fiscal policy that we learned during the 30 years from the 1960s to 1990, when our economy only did well as we restrained government spending to an amount affordable by our...

Anyone offended by public displays of Christmas needs to see a psychiatrist. Are we clear on this? You are a loon if the sight of baby Jesus arouses anger or sadness in you. Get help. This brings us to the governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee. He recently told me on national television that the reason he will not use the word "Christmas" in describing the state Christmas tree is that the word might offend non-Christians. The governor calls the state-purchased symbol a "holiday tree." My reply to the governor was that by excluding the word "Christmas," he might...

A Marine veteran jailed for months in Mexico after trying to carry a family heirloom shotgun across the border has been freed, U.S. officials and his lawyer said late Friday. The attorney for 27-year-old Jon Hammar tweeted Friday night that his client had been released from a detention center in Matamoros, Mexico. “Jon is out, going home!” Eddie Varon Levy tweeted. … An aide to a legal representative of the Mexican attorney general’s office had told U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s staff about the pending release after the Florida Democrat’s office got word from Hammar’s mother, according to a press release...

A Conservative MP who served as a soldier in Northern Ireland has questioned the need for prosecutions in the Bloody Sunday killings. On Thursday, it was revealed that a team of 15 detectives will head up a murder investigation into the 1972 shootings. They will be led by a senior investigating officer who will be based in Londonderry. Patrick Mercer said he is “confused” by this latest development and does not know what prosecutions will achieve. …

Vincent Banks, 44, from Smithfield, Dublin was brought before the Irish Special Criminal Court in Dublin on Wednesday where he was charged in connection with the murder in November of Northern Ireland prison officer David Black. Banks was charged with membership of an unlawful organization styling itself as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on December 18th, 2012. Banks was also charged with withholding information in relation to the murder of David Black. …

Infighting and bureaucratic jealousies between the State Department and the Pentagon may have played a role in lax security arrangements prior to the deadly attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, congressional sources said. Evidence of the bureaucratic rivalries, not previously reported, is contained in unpublished documents being studied by congressional investigators and is referred to in a classified version of a report on the attacks in Libya, which was turned over to Congress earlier this week, the sources said. Two sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the friction between the Defense and State departments included, but...

San Francisco officials are planning to ban the possession of hollow-point bullets and require notification of the police for any single purchase of more than 500 rounds of ammunition. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, City Supervisor Malia Cohen is introducing the ordinance in response to last Friday’s deadly shooting in Connecticut of 20 school children. …

BEAVER FALLS (KDKA) – Two teens wanted in connections with a fatal shooting in Beaver County earlier this month have been arrested. According to police, Todavia Cleckley and Marcus Velasquez, both 14, were arrested Tuesday night by the United States Marshals Fugitive Task Force. The teens were wanted in connection with the shooting death of 22-year-old Kayla Peterson outside of her Beaver Falls home. Beaver County’s District Attorney tells KDKA that Facebook photos posted by two suspects after the homicide are also now part of the criminal investigation. D.A. Anthony Berosh said photos surfaced on Facebook after the killing. The...

(Reuters) - An international peacekeeper killed three other peacekeepers before killing himself in the Darfur region of Sudan, the U.N.-led international peacekeeping force (UNAMID) said on Friday. The shooting happened at a UNAMID site in Mukjar in West Darfur on Thursday, UNAMID spokeswoman Aicha Elbasri said, adding that the gunman had shot himself and another comrade had been wounded. The African Union-United Nations force initially had said the peacekeeper killed four comrades. "The mission is currently investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident," Elbasri said, declining further comment. Despite the presence of the world's largest peacekeeping mission, fighting between Sudan's armed...

<p>Where do you stand on the Gun Ban and why?</p>

Two unidentified masked men shot Mursal Isse Siad, 55, outside his home in Beledweyne, 206 miles (332 kilometers) north of Mogadishu, for leaving Islam, Muslim and Christian sources told Morning Star News. The assailants fled immediately after the murder. Siad’s oldest daughter (name withheld), 15, said her father was killed “because he failed to attend the mosque for prayers and used to pray at home. He used to share with us about Jesus.” She said that he had received messages on his mobile phone stating, “We know what you are doing, and you must stop, otherwise you risk your life.”...