Free Republic

Iranian space officials announced Monday (Jan. 28) that they have successfully launched a live monkey into space, inching closer to the Islamic republic's goal of a manned mission, according to news reports.The space capsule, called Pishgam, which means "pioneer" in Farsi, reportedly returned the monkey alive after a suborbital flight to space and back, according to Iranian news agencies.

With corporate profits at record levels and stocks regaining the ground lost during the financial crisis, Wall Street anxiously anticipates the return of the individual investors to equity markets. It may be a long wait, because the little guy may have concluded stocks are a sucker’s bet. Investors, as opposed to traders, buy stocks in companies whose profits they expect to rise. The conventional wisdom says stock prices will follow profits up, but over the last two business cycles, that simply has not happened. In March 2000, the S&P 500 first closed above 1500. Since corporate profits are up 135...

Conservative policies have greatly benefited urbanites. Why won’t Republicans seek their votes?After the presidential election in November, New York Times exit polls found that Republican candidate Mitt Romney had received only 29 percent of the big-city vote to President Obama’s 69 percent. That gap prompted Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, to conclude that it was “the turnout especially in urban areas” that “gave President Obama the big margin to win this race.” Ryan was right: the GOP has an urban problem. And it’s partly a self-created one. The party, nationally and even locally, has focused on winning suburban and rural...

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — An arsonist was sentenced to death on Monday for killing five men who died of heart attacks during a wildfire that ripped through the hills east of Los Angeles a decade ago. Superior Court Judge Michael Smith had the option of sentencing Rickie Lee Fowler, 31, to the harshest penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Rupert Murdoch apologized on Monday for a “grotesque” cartoon in his London-based Sunday Times newspaper depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a bloody wall trapping the bodies of Palestinians, after complaints from Jewish groups. The image, which shows Netanyahu holding a trowel dripping blood, was published on Holocaust Memorial Day and carried the caption “Israeli elections. Will cementing peace continue?” The Board of Deputies of British Jews said the cartoon was “shockingly reminiscent of the blood libel imagery more usually found in parts of the virulently anti-Semitic Arab press”. The so-called “blood libel”—accusations that Jewish peoples murder children and...

<p>A group of sideshow drivers briefly shut down all northbound lanes of Interstate 880 near the Coliseum in Oakland on Saturday afternoon while they burned rubber and did doughnuts.</p> <p>Participants filmed the minutes-long stunt and posted it to YouTube. The videos show at least a half-dozen souped up cars stopping traffic.</p>

Be it resolved that any person legally competent to posess firearms shall, by posessing such arms, be obligated to muster under authority of legally elected officers, to recieve training in firearms laws and firearms qualification and basic militia tactics, and shall have assigned duties during times of national or state emergencies, to include invasion by foreign powers, insurrection or natuiral disasters. Such duties shall include, but not be limited to community policing, assisting in evacuationn and other relief actions and securing of basic infrastructure. Such assigned duties shall take into consideration the physical limitations of the member. Persons found mentally...

Over the weekend, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer spoke at the National Review Institute Summit in Washington, D.C. During a question-and-answer session, he was asked if he thought President Barack Obama would attempt to hand-pick his successor in order to help guide the country down a path to “socialism.” ... Krauthammer said it was less important whether Obama chose his successesor and more crucial what kind of groundwork he would lay for him or her ... Krauthammer urged conservatives to make a case for liberty and its benefits in order to defeat the President’s agenda ...

The Milwaukee Teacher’s Education Association is promoting a series of workshops to help heal teacher’s infected with racism. The “Healing Racism Workshops” provide college credit for educators who enroll in the class. “We have all been assigned a race by America’s pervasive socialization process,” read a flyer promoting the workshop. “This racial conditioning permeates the fabric of our inter-personal and inter-group relations, taking little account of laws and statutes, and reaching deep into the hearts and minds of individuals.” But critics of the class said it smacks of blame and victimization. “Here we go again,” said Kyle Olson, founder of...

State Rep. Dan Muhlbauer's declaration that he stands firmly behind the U.S. Constitution's gun-rights amendment drew a strong challenge at the Carroll Chamber of Commerce's first legislative forum of the Legislature's 2013 session Saturday morning. Muhlbauer continues to draw heat for comments he made in an interview with the Times Herald soon after the shooting massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school in December. In that interview, Muhlbauer, D-Manilla, suggested strong gun-control measures, including possible confiscation of particularly high-powered weapons, and received nationwide media attention. At Saturday's forum attended by about 40 people in the New Hope activities building, Muhlbauer...

The Russian government says it aims to raise its sovereign credit rating this year to an A, where top countries are rated AAA and the lowest are D, and has called in Goldman Sachs to help improve its image to investors around the world. ... "Russia is an open country, safe, we are part of the global economy and global political processes," Medvedev said.

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) issued the following statement regarding today’s bipartisan immigration reform proposal: I appreciate the good work that senators in both parties have put into trying to fix our broken immigration system. There are some good elements in this proposal, especially increasing the resources and manpower to secure our border and also improving and streamlining legal immigration. However, I have deep concerns with the proposed path to citizenship. To allow those who came here illegally to be placed on such a path is both inconsistent with rule of law and profoundly unfair to the...

Michel Sapin made the gaffe in a radio interview, which left French President Francois Hollande battling to undo the potential reputational damage. “There is a state but it is a totally bankrupt state,” Mr Sapin said. “That is why we had to put a deficit reduction plan in place, and nothing should make us turn away from that objective.” The comments came as President Hollande attempts to improve the image of the French economy after pledging to reduce the country’s deficit by cutting spending by €60bn (£51.5bn) over the next five years and increasing taxes by €20bn.

Nazis Would Be Proud of Sunday Times Racist, Anti-Semitic Israel Cartoon(photo) The Sunday Times runs Nazi style cartoons attacking Jews. By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem --- January 28, 2013 … One has to ask The Sunday Times in London just one question. Which Arab state paid you to bash Israel? To take a punch at the Jews? Why would any newspaper in any free democracy take a racist shot at Israel, at every Jew around the world? As over 60,000 civilians are murdered in Syria, as Iran declares its intention to build nuclear weapons for use against the Infidels...

Nikki Y. McNeil, 33, was trying to leave an Ocala residence Saturday evening when Lamark D. Tucker Sr., 36, her ex-boyfriend -- and father of her three children -- took away both McNeil’s car keys and cell phone, according to a news release from the Marion County Sheriff's Office. McNeil then used spare keys to leave, but as McNeil pulled away, Lamark jumped onto the hood of the car and held on while continually threatening McNeil as she drove nearly ten miles, the release stated. McNeil, deputies said, stopped at least twice asking people for help.

The UN appealed to the international community for money to help the millions of Syrian devastated by the violent civil war engulfing the country. With the goal of raising $1.5 billion, the organization appealed for donations at an aid conference in Kuwait, saying it has raised just 3 percent of that...

The White House strongly condemned the wave of violence... President Barack Obama called on Egypt's leaders to declare that violence is totally unacceptable. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Washington welcomed the call of President Mohammed Morsi to hold a national dialogue.

Conservatives instinctively ground all of their ideas and policies in time-tested philosophies of man and of government. Most successful Republican candidates also paint a picture of what they can do and how their ideas are better than their opponents. This is why people evoke the memory of Ronald Reagan so often; because he is the last Republican candidate for president to conduct his campaign explicitly and consistently within this framework. During the presidential campaign, Romney did talk about what he could do and what he would do as president, but he never presented his ideas and policies in the context...

Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told Newsmax TV over the weekend that “when it comes to common-sense restrictions on abortion, the American people are with us.” “When you talk about common-sense restrictions on abortion—parental consent and notification, waiting periods, bans on partial-birth abortion, bans on late-term abortions, women’s right-to-know laws—those are all overwhelmingly popular,” Reed told Newsmax on Saturday at the National Review Summit in Washington. “In fact, about 80 percent of voters who identify themselves as pro-choice oppose abortion in late periods of pregnancy and oppose abortion after the child can survive outside the womb....

If there is ever a contest for the law with the most grossly misleading title, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 should be a prime candidate, because the last thing this Act protects is the welfare of Indian children. The theory behind the Indian Child Welfare Act is that an American Indian child should be raised in an American Indian culture. Based on that theory, a newborn baby of American Indian ancestry, who was adopted immediately after birth by a white couple, was at 27 months of age taken away from the only parents she has ever known and...