Free Republic

The United States should absorb as many as 11 million immigrants each year into its economy, NPR “Planet Money” founder Adam Davidson writes in The New York Times Magazine. “Few of us are calling for the thing that basic economic analysis shows would benefit nearly all of us: radically open borders,” he writes.His proposal would double the current U.S. population in only 29 years to over 637 million people.

Americans for Prosperity, the most prominent arm of the Koch brothers' organization, put Republican lawmakers on notice Thursday, setting out a conservative agenda for Congress. AFP leaders say it will be pushed by the group's grassroots supporters in 34 states. Tim Phillips, president of AFP, said at a Washington press conference that congressional Republicans "failed miserably" a decade ago, especially on cutting the federal budget. "They've been given a second chance by the American people," he said, "and we're going to hold them accountable. We're determined about that." The agenda covers three areas: taxes, including repeal of the estate or...

All of the hallmarks of National Public Radio – the cosmopolitanism and the sexual progressivism – come together in the subject of abortions worldwide. On New Year’s Eve, NPR.org posted a photographer’s record celebrating an abortion clinic in a primitive part of eastern India, titled “A Haven In A Land Of Unsafe Abortions.” NPR sent documentary photographer Poulomi Basu to spend time at the clinic in Khunti for a window into the world of legal and safe abortion in this remote part of India. Palo Khoya agreed to be photographed during her visit. It may be hard for a Westerner...

After the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, it didnt take long for environmentalists to cry gloom and doom and for the media to hype those claims. From caribou dying to earthquakes to all hell breaking loose, there was no shortage of catastrophic predictions though the Alaska pipeline now boasts great success roughly 30 years later.      Construction on the pipeline began in 1975, and oil first moved through it on June 20, 1977. Former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton summed up its success in 2003 that Today the pipeline produces 17 percent of our domestic petroleum. It...

June 7, 2011NPR defends Palin? Aaron Gee While coming home I often listen to our local NPR station. This afternoons "All Things Considered" asked the question "How Accurate Were Palin's Paul Revere Comments?" The story started out with; "Sarah Palin is defending her knowledge of American history."  Here we go again, I was prepared for the usual "Palin is a moron" storyline. Surprisingly that didn't happen. What I got was Robert Allison, a professor and historian at Suffolk University, tell the NPR host that Palin basically got it right. The interviewer, Melissa Block, tries to cajole a different narrative...

On page 261 of the paperback edition of Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama's (ghost written) book The Audacity of Hope, he wrote "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." In what must be an effort in his mind to keep the political winds from shifting, in an NPR interview Obama said: They [Iran] have a path to break through that isolation and they should seize it. Because if they do, there's incredible talent and resources and sophistication inside of - inside of Iran, and it would be a very successful regional power...

US President Barack Obama acknowledges that Iran would become a “very successful regional power” if a long-term nuclear agreement is reached. “They have got a chance to get right with the world,” Obama said in an interview with NPR News, which was taped at the White House on Dec. 18 and aired on Monday. More than a year ago, Iran agreed to an interim agreement to suspend 20-percent uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions pending on a long-term deal. Despite progress in the talks, Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council...

In the fall of 2007, President Bush offered an interview on race relations to National Public Radio correspondent Juan Williams, but NPR declined the invitation. Ellen Weiss, the news boss at the time (who was deposed in the controversy after she fired Williams three years later), demanded that an NPR anchor do the interview. The Williams interview with the president aired on Fox News, and not on NPR. That sense of feisty independence does not extend to President Obama. When he grants an interview to an NPR anchor, it has all the dramatic tension and hostility of a cappuccino klatch...

President Obama isn't ruling out the possibility the U.S. could one day reopen an embassy in Iran. Obama was asked in an NPR interview whether he could envision opening an embassy there during his final two years in office. Obama replied, "I never say never," but said ties must be restored in steps. Obama says Iran is different from Cuba, where the U.S. plans to open an embassy. He says Cuba is small and poses no major threat to the U.S., while Iran is large, has sponsored terrorism and has sought nuclear capabilities. Still, Obama says he hopes the U.S....

Following her much-publicized opposition to the omnibus spending bill last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tried to dampen any talk about her running for president in 2016 and challenging presumptive Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep Monday morning, Warren said on three separate occasions she will not be running to occupy the White House in 2016. Rather, the newest member of Senate leadership said her focus is fighting for “hard working families who just want a fighting chance.” “Would you tell these independent groups, ‘Give it up!,’ you’re just never going to run,” asked NPR’s Inskeep....

Yes, we know the 2008 presidential election is years in the past and will not come around again. The question is, does Sen. Ted Cruz know this? The question arises because the junior senator from Texas, in hot pursuit of the presidency, has chosen a trail blazed by Barack Obama six years ago. Obama was in the midst of his first Senate term when he barged into a field that featured Hillary Clinton, then a second-term senator from New York, and several other seasoned veterans of national politics. The word was audacity, and it was right there in the title...

Consider this warning that recently greeted viewers of ABC's political soap opera, Scandal: "The following drama contains adult content. Viewer discretion is advised." That label was slapped on the episode because of scenes like the moment when trained torturer Huck prepared to ply his trade on colleague (and soon-to-be girlfriend) Quinn Perkins. "Normally, I'd start with the drill or a scalpel," he told Perkins, who was bound and gagged, looking on in terror. "Peeling off the skin can be beautiful. Or removing fingers, toes; I like the feeling of a toe being separated from a foot. ... I'm so sorry,...

According to NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen, Russia’s myriad intelligence agencies, which now include the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the military intelligence directorate, or GRU, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), and the Federal Protective Service (FSO) are working directly with European environmental groups to fund anti-fracking campaigns. Putin is doing this to slow the spread of the U.S. shale revolution across the Atlantic so Russia can hold on to its monopoly of the European natural gas market. Europe’s energy insecurity – its dependence on Russian gas – has proven to be Putin’s favorite tool of geopolitical...

For The Walking Dead, it was less like a conversation between two characters and more like a mini manifesto. The moment came during an episode called "Four Walls and Roof," as Bob Stookey spoke to hero Rick Grimes about a central theme this season: keeping your humanity in midst of a zombie apocalypse. "We push ourselves to let things go, and then we let some more go and some more ... and pretty soon there's things we can't get back," he tells Rick. "And if you let too much go along the way, that's not gonna work." "This is the...

NPR and Sen. Ted Cruz are natural enemies. On Friday's journalists' weekly roundup on The Diane Rehm Show, Politico reporter Alex Burns mocked Cruz for acting like a stereotypical bar bully and a man who always seeks to go "as far to the right of his party as possible." Rehm thought he sounded ridiculous. DIANE REHM: And what about Senator Ted Cruz and what he had to say yesterday? ALEX BURNS: Well, this is sort of a moment tailor-made for Ted Cruz, right? [Laughter.]There's nothing better for him than a moment where he can go as far to the right...

How many days in and they are only mentioning his name?

The liberal myth surrounding the hypercompetent Barack Obama faded long ago, but the liberal myth of "cultural icon" Jon Stewart is only getting stronger. Stewart's tour of interviews for the new movie he directed, "Rosewater," has created a parade of flatterers, sycophants, and every other synonym in the thesaurus for obsequious. Roy Sekoff at The Huffington Post stands out by insisting the movie only polishes this walking statue: "In finding this format, in this form, you have become obviously a cultural icon, maybe one of the dominant figures in the political discourse." But Sekoff was surpassed in syrup by NPR...

Bill Cosby was asked on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday whether he had anything to say about the resurgence of allegations that he sexually assaulted multiple women years ago. He didn't. Instead, he shook his head, and refused to say a word. Cosby's long comedy career and pedestal as one of America's favorite TV dads have been overshadowed in recent days, as the allegations have gained new attention, though they are not new. One of his accusers wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post on Thursday, an attempt at a Cosby meme generator was overrun with negative comments and Cosby's scheduled...

SAN DIEGO — Patrick Butler, public television’s chief advocate on Capitol Hill, wants to reassure broadcasters who are nervous about the incoming Republican majority, particularly on the powerful Senate side. In a speech at the annual American Public Television Fall Marketplace, Butler said that he “detected some anxiety in the public television industry that we will be going to hell in a handbasket now that Republicans control the entire Congress” after this month’s midterm elections. “I’ve come to San Diego to tell you that it ain’t necessarily so.” Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, reminded the crowd...

Around 9:00 last night, the TV pundits realized that it would no longer do to say that it was an anti-incumbent year: The vast majority of the incumbents losing — all of them in the Senate — were Democrats. Nor could the election be chalked up to red-state reaction. Republicans took Senate seats in Iowa and Colorado, which voted for Obama twice apiece, and governorships in Maryland and Illinois, which last voted Republican in 1988. The wave gave Republicans a larger Senate majority than all but the most confident among them had expected, and added to the ranks of their...