Free Republic

Three years after the White House arranged a hero's welcome at the State of the Union address for the Fort Hood police sergeant and her partner who stopped the deadly shooting there, Kimberly Munley says President Obama broke the promise he made to her that the victims would be well taken care of. "Betrayed is a good word," former Sgt. Munley told ABC News in a tearful interview to be broadcast tonight on "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline." "Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," she said. "In fact they've been neglected."...

-snip- "I mean, it's horrible. There's no running water. There's no power. They are having to use the restroom in buckets and bags." "It's like a bunch of savages on there," he added. "If you get on the blogs, they're saying that people are fighting over food and stuff." Toby Barlow told CNN that his wife, Ann, a passenger on the ship, texted that the plumbing failed and people were defecating in bags and urinating in showers. She also told him there's "sewage running down the walls and floors," he said.

The Real State Of The Union Is Bleak James Kunstler, Kunstler.comFebruary 12, 2013, 8:56 AMThe fog of chatter about Federal Reserve money-printing shenanigans, currency wars, fiscal intransigence, exchange rates, and alphabetized rescue operations conceals the central reality of the historical moment: that all industrial economies now face epic contraction, even rip-roaring China in its absurd and spectacular bid to become the latest drive-in utopia. The so-called advanced nations of the world are all sliding toward something less than they wish to be, and the so-called developing nations will backslide further into poverty and anarchy where development will never happen. The...

Multiple foreign corporations that have bypassed or attempted to bypass United States and European Union sanctions against Iran are funding the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank chaired by defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel. One council sponsor, Italian oil company Eni, has vehemently defended its trade with Iran, saying it was “proud” of its cooperation with the regime. “Given the existence of foreign pressures, implementation of most projects in Iran is challenging and complicated,” Eni’s Executive Vice President Guido Michelotti told reporters during a 2011 visit to Iran. “Yet, we have always been interested in cooperation with the Iranian side...

The attention-grabbing test came on the same day Obama is scheduled to deliver the annual State of the Union address to Congress. Obama's full statement on the nuclear test follows:

Our politics have become so polarized and corrupted that a president of the United States cannot even attend an event devoted to drawing people closer to God and bridge partisan and cultural divides without being lectured about his policies. Last Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., Dr. Ben Carson, director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and a 2008 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, broke with a 61-year-old tradition and publicly disagreed with some of the president's policies, such as "Obamacare," taxation and the national debt. Disclosure: I have attended this event...

Fraud and abuse grow after subsidized telephone program expands A federal program subsidizing phones for the poor increased from 6.8 million to 18 million recipients from 2008 — the year it was expanded to include cell phones — to May 2012. And fraud and abuse from the expansion have been far more extensive than expected, to the extent that tougher enforcement of long-existing rules is projected to bring in enough money to finance the expansion of the program to provide low-income users with free Internet service, according to the Federal Communications Commission report released last week. Up to 15 percent...

Four months before the next presidential election, Iran's conservative establishment is facing a security threat: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Four years ago, a controversial election that reinstated President Ahmadinejad brought millions of Iranians into a face-to-face confrontation with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now, it is Ahmadinejad who is coming face-to-face with the very man who lifted him out of obscurity and granted him worldwide fame and unparalleled support against all pillars of the Islamic Republic. During an unprecedented debate at the parliament, which ended in mayhem and the dismissal of the labor minister, Ahmadinejad played a video that implicated the powerful...

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas man has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting at a crash scene of a suspected drunken driver who authorities say plowed into his sons as they helped push their family's broken-down pickup truck along a dark, narrow, rural road. David Barajas, 31, and his sons, 12-year-old David Jr. and 11-year-old Caleb, were about 50 yards from their Houston-area home when a car crashed into them. David Jr. died at the scene, while Caleb died later at a hospital. Neighbors said they heard gunshots minutes after the Dec. 7 crash near Alvin, about 30...

Germantown, Maryland – A young mother and her baby both died last week at the hands of a notorious abortionist who has licenses in several states across the country. Reports state that 29-year-old Jennifer McKenna Morbelli of New Rochelle, New York died on Thursday following complications from a botched abortion. Morbelli was 33 weeks pregnant with a baby girl that had been named Madison Leigh. According to sidewalk counselors outside of abortionist LeRoy Carhart’s Germantown Reproductive Health Center in Maryland, Morbelli had traveled to the abortion facility the previous weekend for a late-term abortion. It is believed that the woman...

This image shows the Columbia Glacier in Alaska, one of many vanishing around the world. Glacier retreat is one of the most direct and understandable effects of climate change. Courtesy of NASA/USGS Landsat 5 successfully set the new Guinness World Records title for 'Longest-operating Earth observation satellite’ as stated in an e-mail from Guinness World Records sent to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. Outliving its three-year design life, Landsat 5 delivered high-quality, global data of Earth's land surface for 28 years and 10 months. NASA launched Landsat 5 from Vandenberg Air Force base in Lompoc, CA....

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz attempted a bit of deception Monday in an effort to criticize GOP rising star Marco Rubio ahead of his State of the Union rebuttal Tuesday night. But on this occasion, the press wasn't falling for it. In a conference call Monday, Wasserman Schultz enlisted the help of Annette Capella, described by party officials as a "Medicare recipient from Florida," to warn of the "extreme budget priorities," they believe Rubio is likely to outline in his televised response to President Obama's address. -snip The truth was uncovered when the call was opened up to...

I haven't been able to pilfer an advance copy of the president's State of the Union address, but I hereby offer some guesses as to what he'll say tonight. The president will assert, against the evidence, that the state of our union is strong. He will boast that during his first term, we averted another great depression, achieved history-making reforms of health care and banking, saved the auto industry and began to conclude two wars. He will caution though, that we face great challenges. Obama will acknowledge that our economy is not as vibrant as it could be and will...

There have been 65,376,373 background checks completed for Americans purchasing firearms since February of 2009, the first full month of Barack Obama's presidency. According to data compiled by the FBI, the number of Americans purchasing guns has skyrocketed since Obama was elected. In 2009, there were 13,984,953 background checks for Americans buying firearms. If we subtract the 1,212,860 checks completed in the month of January, the total checks for the year under Obama were 12,772,090. For 2010, background checks totaled 14,320,489. In 2011, checks were 16,336,732, and in 2012, 19,463,832. Background checks for the month of January 2013 were 2,483,230....

Environmentalists often call oil from Canada’s tar sands the dirtiest fuel on Earth, because the complex process of extracting it spews huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. But by that standard, some of the crude oil pumped in California is just as dirty. In a few cases, it’s even worse. Several California oil fields produce just as much carbon dioxide per barrel of oil as the tar sands do, state data show. A handful of fields yield even more. All of them are fields that have been pumped for years and now need injections of steam to squeeze...

HIGHLAND • Debi Keeney says she was only trying to save her sister's life when she shot a man who had forced his way into her apartment. She says her sister, Donna Carlyle, 47, was gasping as the man demanded money and put Carlyle in a choke hold after breaking in early this morning. "All I could see was Donna's face going blue, like her life was being choked out of her," Keeney, 55, said in an interview this afternoon. The alleged intruder, 33, is being treated at a local hospital for multiple gunshot wounds and is listed in critical...

OK....is it time, finally, for Term Limits? It seems the only way we can BEGIN to get some control over our "public servants." Here is a Gallup poll (FWIW) that says 75% of Americans would approve Term Limits. http://www.gallup.com/poll/159881/americans-call-term-limits-end-electoral-college.aspx Could we make it happen? Would you support it?

MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Police said a Mooresville woman shot a man who was breaking into her apartment. They said she shot the man twice in the leg Sunday morning on Colonial Ridge Circle.

After dedicating nearly eight years and $5 billion to the quest, Shell’s plans to continue hunting for Arctic oil this summer are in jeopardy, as company officials on Monday confirmed they will tow two drilling units to Asian dry docks for repairs. Although Shell Oil said the firm has not ruled out drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska this summer, it appears unlikely the vessels will be able to make the two-to-four-week treks to those Asian ports, undergo repairs, clear U.S. inspections and return to those Arctic waters in time for the drilling season that begins...

NORMAN, Okla.—The family of a man who was questioned by police for a shooting Saturday afternoon says he shot another man in self-defense. Police were called to the 4000 block of Mayfair Dr. around 10 a.m. Saturday, regarding a fight. While officers were on their way to the scene, the fight intensified to a shooting. Authorities took the suspected shooter, 47-year-old Todd William Hoss into custody at that time. After investigating the shooting, police learned that Hoss may have fired the weapon in self-defense.