Free Republic

The deal to avoid the fiscal cliff is done as the House passed the Senate version in a late night session on Tuesday. The vote was 257-167. The fact that only 85 Republicans (out of 241) supported the deal calls into question Speaker Boehner's leadership in the next congress, although it is doubtful anyone has the fortitude - or the stature - to challenge him. All but 20 Democrats voted for the bill. Gone is the payroll tax holiday, which means 77% of American households will experience a tax increase in the new year. Taxes on dividends and capital gains...

Phone features LCD display on one side, e-ink screen on the other Well, here’s something you don’t see every day: A Moscow, Russia-based mobile phone company is getting ready to reveal a new type of phone that, if successful, could usher in a whole new generation of smartphones. Their novel concept: a two-sided smartphone that features a full-color LCD screen on one side, and an electronic-paper display on the other.The YotaPhone, by Yota Devices, features an LCD screen on one side, and electronic-paper display on the other. The company, Yota Devices, believes that the two-screen device — aptly referred to...

How much money will Uncle Sam allow you to keep from your paycheck in 2013 in the form of federal income taxes? Thanks to the so-called "fiscal cliff" standoff in Washington D.C., the answer, for now, is exactly the same as you would have taken home in 2012. That fact will hold true even if the reported deal struck and passed in the U.S. Senate early on 1 January 2013 is passed by the House of Representatives later in the day. That's because President Obama has previously directed the IRS to not issue any change in the directions it provides...

The House approved legislation on Tuesday that would block a pay increase for federal workers and members of Congress scheduled to take place in March. Members voted 287-129 in favor of the bill from Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.). Just two Republicans opposed the legislation, and 55 Democrats supported it. Republicans brought the bill up under a suspension of the rules in order to allow for quicker consideration, although that move also required a two-thirds majority vote. The bill is a response to an (executive order) last Friday from President Obama that would end the two-year federal worker pay freeze, and...

The New York newspaper that sparked controversy after publishing the names and addresses of nearby gun permit owners is now taking up arms in an apparent response to threats. The Journal News has reportedly hired a team of armed guards to patrol the paper's headquarters in West Nyack. The paper caused a stir on December 23 when it listed thousands of pistol permit holders in suburban Westchester and Rockland counties just north of New York City in an interactive map on its website. The Rockland County Times reported on Tuesday that Journal News editor Caryn A. McBride hired gun-toting security...

Chris Williams, a Montana medical marijuana grower, faces at least five years in federal prison when he is sentenced on Feb. 1. The penalty seems unduly severe, especially because his business openly supplied marijuana to patients who were allowed to use it under state law. Yet five years is a cakewalk compared to the sentence Williams originally faced, which would have kept the 38-year-old father behind bars for the rest of his life. The difference is due to an extremely unusual post-conviction agreement that highlights the enormous power prosecutors wield as a result of mandatory minimum sentences so grotesquely unjust...

It was all about peace on earth and goodwill to all men last week. Today itÂ’s about oil, nationalism and long-term beefs. The Self Defense Force of Japan was forced recently to scramble an F-15 in response to China flying a cargo plane over disputed islands at the center of a brewing conflict. Thus far the saber rattling has been confined to economic boycotts and some physical violence aimed at Japanese workers living in China. But this thing is heating up to the point where neither side will be able to back down and save face at the same time....

Scarborough himself lamented the mismanagement of the Republican leaders and proclaimed himself "bitter" over the botched negotiations. Then Time magazine's Mark Halperin ripped Paul Ryan in the cruelest way possible saying he “Could be a strong candidate for president in 2016 as a Democrat.”

Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity predicted a Mitt Romney landslide in the presidential election. When that didn’t happen, Hannity’s audience abandoned him in droves. According to Nielson numbers, Hannity has lost about half of his audience since the election. This sort of drop is not unusual. News shows generally have higher ratings in the months leading up to elections. But compare Hannity’s numbers to Fox colleague Bill O’Reilly’s. O’Reilly lost about 30 percent of his audience. Both Hannity and O’Reilly still have numbers that top 2 million viewers per night, so they’re still cable powerhouses. But Rachel Maddow on liberal...

One item within the bill that was hurriedly passed in the wee hours — presumedly without reading it — was a one-year extension of a tax credit for wind energy. For new installations, it gives the industry a 2.2-cent credit per kilowatt-hour of energy produced for the first 10 years the installation is in operation. In a related story, Breitbart.com reported an extension of a tax incentive favoring the film industry. Section 317 of the freshly approved legislation includes an extension for “special expensing rules for certain film and television productions.” Congress first enacted production tax incentives favorable to the...

"......as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle. Romney lost because he didn’t get enough votes to win. That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious...

Alison Redford’s cabinet is expected to decide in January whether the government will spend $10 million to study the idea of building a rail line to ship oilsands products from northern Alberta to a port in Alaska. The money would help pay for a $40-million study that will investigate the feasibility of a proposed 2,400-kilometre rail line to carry landlocked oilsands products from Fort McMurray to Delta Junction, Alaska. From there, Alberta’s oil would flow through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline system to the Valdez Marine Terminal, and on to booming Asian markets. The proposal has been in the works for more...

The Los Angeles Police Department held a so-called gun “buyback” the day after Christmas, reportedly taking in over 2,000 firearms at two locations. Disregarding for a moment that Chief Charlie Beck once more trotted out an inert tube and presented it as an active rocket launcher to awe the “Authorized Journalists” who don’t know any better (and it still hasn’t been established if it’s the same one he trotted out at a previous photo op), disregarding that Beck himself is armed and men under his command routinely deploy with firearms he describes as “weapons of war, weapons of death [that]...

IÂ’m not sure I could pick out a significant victory for human freedom in 2012. Maybe IÂ’m missing something, but the only good policy thatÂ’s even worth mentioning was the decision in Wisconsin to rein in the special privileges and excessive compensation for government workers.But there definitely have been lots of sad developments.The hard part is picking the most disappointing story.1. Was it the craven decision by John Roberts to put politics before the Constitution and cast the deciding vote for Obamacare? This certainly could be the most disappointing event of the year, but technically it didnÂ’t represent a step...

As Christmas was approaching, one newspaper, the Journal News of White Plains, New York, decided to take on Scrooge's personality of mean-spiritedness. They printed an interactive map that included the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties. Each red dot represented an individual gun owner. They were able to obtain this information because New York state law allows it to be part of the public record. American Thinker was able to interview a few of these gun owners about how they felt about being "outed" by this newspaper. In clicking randomly on the red dots,...

A sense of insecurity has gripped the female population in parts of India. As the ashes of the New Delhi gang rape victim were scattered over the Ganges River, hundreds of Indian women applied for firearm licenses and joined self-defense classes. ­Since the news of the brutal gang rape and murder broke in December, 274 Delhi women have applied for gun licenses, Delhi police said. Some 1,200 more have called the licensing department to inquire how to obtain one. “These include not only the average working woman, but even students who travel long distances to colleges and even their concerned...

George W. Bush left office in January 2009 with one of the lowest job-approval ratings for a president (34 percent) since Gallup started compiling them — as compared to Harry Truman’s low of 32 percent, Richard Nixon’s of 24 percent, and Jimmy Carter’s of 34 percent — and to the general derision of the media. At times the venom accorded Bush in popular culture reached absurd — and even sick — levels. Alfred A. Knopf, for example, infamously published Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint, a pathetic riff on shooting Bush. Gabriel Range’s unhinged 2006 “docudrama,” The Death of a President, focused on...

President Obama will kick off the new year the same way that he kicked off the old year: by demanding that the wealthy pay their “fair share” in taxes. But while millions of small-business owners, struggling entrepreneurs, inventors, and investors brace for a double whammy of fiscal-cliff tax hikes and new Obamacare taxes, the class-warrior-in-chief’s richest pals are getting a pass.It’s a golden pass for liberal millionaires and billionaires who support higher Obama taxes for everyone but themselves. Meet the Democratic tax evaders of the year.Google. The left-wing Internet giant provided Silicon Valley’s biggest campaign-finance boost to Obama, with...

Progressivism in America has always been a thuggish ideology. It rests on the notion that laws require no evidence to support their implementation, that intentions are all that matter and that those who oppose "change" of the sort progressives like are morally deficient. Progressivism requires Americans to separate off certain groups in American life as evil -- the rich ("greedy!"), gun owners ("hooligans!"), traditionally religious people ("sexists!"), Constitutional government advocates ("bigots!"). It requires that certain Americans be cast as good -- racial and ethnic minorities, low income earners and women ("victimized!"), irreligious people ("rationalists!") and big government advocates ("experts!"). Progressivism...

Newspaper Hires Armed Guards After It Enraged The Community By Publishing Info On Local Gun Owners Abby RogersJanuary 2, 2013Caryn McBride, Journal News Rockland Editor A New York state newspaper is taking drastic steps to protect its staff after it enraged gun owners in two counties. The Journal News, a Gannett-owned newspaper in Westchester, N.Y., published a map showing the names and addresses of licensed gun owners in Westchester and Rockland counties. The Journal News tried to do the same for Putnam County, but the newspaper's request for records was denied because of the outrage the map had already caused...