Free Republic

<p>States across the country are being told to stop the supplemental nutrition assistance program for the month of November, pending further notice.</p> <p>That’s according to a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fox 13 obtained a copy from the Crossroads Urban Center in downtown Salt Lake City. Crossroads says if Utah families don’t get food stamps, they’ll turn to the local food pantries, which are already strapped due to the government shutdown. Homeless people Fox 13 talked to, some who use SNAP, say losing food stamps would mean going hungry.</p>

<p>States across the country are being told to stop the supplemental nutrition assistance program for the month of November, pending further notice.</p> <p>That’s according to a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fox 13 obtained a copy from the Crossroads Urban Center in downtown Salt Lake City. Crossroads says if Utah families don’t get food stamps, they’ll turn to the local food pantries, which are already strapped due to the government shutdown. Homeless people Fox 13 talked to, some who use SNAP, say losing food stamps would mean going hungry.</p>

The troops will get paid on Tuesday, but the check after that could come in the form of an IOU if the nation defaults on its debt obligations, Treasury Department officials said. Default on top of the government shutdown would cancel out the hastily-crafted legislation that brought back furloughed Defense Department civilian employees and allowed for the payment of back pay, death benefits, incentive pays, re-enlistment bonuses, veterans disability benefits and survivor benefits. All would be eliminated if Congress and the White House fail to reach agreement on raising the debt ceiling to avoid default on Oct. 17, Treasury Secretary...

FOX NEWS ALERT! The barricades are back up!

We are constantly told that the Constitution’s First Amendment mandates “a separation of church and state,” on the basis of which prayers are forbidden in public schools, and the Ten Commandments removed from court houses across America. So why is it that an agency of the United States federal government — the Department of the Interior’s National Park Service — has produced a series of videos defending and extolling the Islamic religion? ______________________ Note: The words “separation of church and state” are not in the First Amendment, but are words from the phrase, “wall of separation between church and state,”...

Remember how the Democrats reacted when the Bush Administration started replacing U.S. Attorneys? At least they were actually political appointees employed at the will and whim of the President.

A car bomb exploded outside the Swedish consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi on Friday, damaging the exterior of the building, but causing no injuries. A car bomb exploded outside the Swedish consulate in the restive Libyan city of Benghazi on Friday, seriously damaging the building but causing no casualties, a security official said. "A powerful explosion in front of the Swedish consulate caused serious damage to it and neighbouring buildings but no casualties," Colonel Abdullah Zaidi said. The Swedish mission is one of the few remaining diplomatic offices remaining in Benghazi, the cradle of the 2011 uprising that...

<p>A "very disturbed" President Obama has ordered his top aides to restore death benefits today for families of military service members killed in action.</p> <p>"The president was very disturbed to learn of this problem," said White House press secretary Jay Carney. "The president expects this to be fixed today. He was not pleased."</p>

Please note that the current debt limit is $16.699 trillion. Debt to the Penny Interestingly, the US Treasury website Debt to the Penny and Who Hold It shows the current public debt as 16,747,429,285,635.12 (the same as Nick shows in the above chart). Treasury Stops Updating National Debt You do not have to be a math genius to figure out that "debt to the penny" already exceeds the debt limit. I asked Nick about that and he replied ... Since mid-May, "debt to the penny" hasn't been rising. When they postponed raising the debt limit they stopped showing any increase...

When I first saw this story, I assumed that it almost had to be a hoax. After the previous incidents with veterans and the added expenditures involved in closing open spaces to keep veterans from paying their respects to the Honored Dead one would assume that even a novice politician would move to staunch the bleeding. But instead, it seems that the White House is doubling down, as reported at The Weekly Standard. Via William Jacobson, NBC’s affiliate in Washington, D.C. reports that police ordered tourists and Vietnam war veterans who were visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall to leave...

SNIP Like the hundreds of World War II veterans who came to National Mall to pay their respects this week, a group of Vietnam veterans found a barricade blocking the way to their memorial Friday. News4's Mark Segraves said two U.S. Park Service Rangers manning the gate asked that the group respect the government's shutdown but moved aside. Segraves described the exchange as pleasant and respectful. The veterans then moved the barricade and walked down to the wall to pay their respects. But a flood of tourists followed even though the memorial is closed to the general public. U.S. Park...

Unbelievable! Barack Obama brought out the German Sheperds today to threaten US veterans at the Vietnam Memorial. He’s using attack dogs against our veterans! Vietnam Wall entrance is open to all. Guard dog and guards are solely for intimidation. Go in. God Bless 'em pic.twitter.com/O7XSjOzbtj — Steve King (@SteveKingIA) October 5, 2013

Day 4 of shutdown: Vets are going to need wire cutters to visit WWII memorial.The fences/barricades were not wired shut when I was here on Tuesday.

President Barack Obama repeatedly complained on Thursday that the public is skeptical about his decision to shut down the government rather than accept the GOP’s Obamacare reform proposals. “When this gets reported on everybody kind of thinks, well, you know, both sides are just squabbling; Democrats and Republicans, they’re always arguing, so neither side is behaving properly,” he maintained. But “the only thing that is keeping the government shut down… is that [Republican] Speaker John Boehner won’t even let the bill get a yes-or-no vote, because he doesn’t want to anger the extremists in his party,” Obama said during a...

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s drugs, bodies, or how large the group is, our agents are being ordered to stand down by Border Patrol management,” said Moran. "I have received reports from our agents in every single sector from San Diego to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas that they are receiving these orders." "They are not being relieved in place, they are simply being told that someone else is being dispatched, but none of us have seen that occur," he explained. "We are simply being ordered to stand down and stop tracking and trying to apprehend the criminals.

Park ranger breaks down "sometimes you just want to punch these congressmen in the face."Park ranger "you know who was moving these barricades in the first place? The damn congressmen."

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) reported being the victim of a minor assault outside the Capitol Wednesday night. The congressman told U.S. Capitol Police he was walking from the Longworth House Office Building for votes when "a random individual, unknown to the congressman, began screaming at him and grabbed his arm," according to Duffy's spokeswoman. A spokesman for Capitol Police said they are investigating. Duffy was unharmed in the incident, according to his office. "He reported the incident in compliance with House security procedures," Duffy's spokeswoman said. "Congressman Duffy has requested no further action be taken and there will be no...

Need health care coverage? Just dial 1-800-F**KYO to reach Obamacare’s national hotline Need health insurance? The Obama administration has you covered. Simply dial 1-800-FUCKYO to reach the next available health-care provider. Far from being a mistype, that’s the official number that Health and Human Services wants Americans to dial when seeking health care. Obamacare’s national call center really did list its number as 1-800-318-2596, helpfully spelling out President Barack Obama’s tendency to blatantly flip the bird in plain view. After allowing for the lack of letters attached to 1 on a traditional American telephone keypad, the number spells out a...

The Obama administration’s credibility on intelligence suffered another blow Wednesday as the chief of the National Security Agency admitted that officials put out numbers that vastly overstated the counterterrorism successes of the government’s warrantless bulk collection of all Americans’ phone records. Pressed by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing, Gen. Keith B. Alexander admitted that the number of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA’s huge database of every phone call made in or to America was only one or perhaps two — far smaller than the 54 originally claimed by the administration. Gen. Alexander...

If the site is hosted internally, then what costs are there to leave the site up with no changes? If it's externally hosted then hosting fees are paid for in advance

An iconic Cambridgeshire cem­e­tery has been closed to members of the public as a result of the US government's shutdown. Around 3,800 US military personnel are buried at the American Cemetery at Madingley, and the site attracts thousands of visitors every year. However, tourists are now being turned away after funding was cut amid the on-going dispute between President Obama and the Republicans in Washington. The cemetery has subsequently been closed until further notice.

WASHINGTON — After a public backlash to government spying, President Barack Obama called for an independent group to review the vast surveillance programs that allow the collections of phone and email records. Now, weeks before the group’s first report is due, some lawmakers, technology organizations and civil liberties groups are concerned that the panel’s members are too close to the Obama administration and its mission too vague to provide a thorough scrubbing of the National Security Agency technologies that have guided intelligence gathering since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------snip---------------------------- The members of the review group are Richard Clarke,...

The White House is rushing to organize a Sunday memorial service for victims of the Navy Yard shooting, leaving top defense officials worried that it will not properly honor the 12 people shot dead on Monday. The White House gave Navy Yard brass less than 12 hours to assemble a 2,500-person guest list composed of service members and contractors affected by Monday’s mass shooting, according to exclusive emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. “Urgent tasking in support of Sunday’s Memorial Ceremony. By 0730 tomorrow we need an estimate of how many employees want to attend the NAVSEA Memorial Ceremony,”...

A top Iranian military commander said that President Barack Obama will “see the return of the U.S. soldiers’ corpses” should he decide to launch a military strike on Tehran’s disputed nuclear sites, according to regional media reports. The commander’s threats to kill American servicemen comes just a day after the White House announced that Obama had written a friendly letter to Iranian President Hassan Rowhani asking that the two countries sit down for talks. “If the Americans, for any reason, embark on a foolish act against the Islamic Republic of Iran, certainly, what they will witness won’t be the return...

NEW ORLEANS — Citing “grotesque prosecutorial misconduct” on the part of federal lawyers here and in Washington, a judge on Tuesday threw out the 2011 convictions of five former police officers who had been found guilty in a momentous civil rights case of killing two citizens and engaging in an extensive cover-up in the days after Hurricane Katrina. In a heated 129-page decision, Judge Kurt D. Englehardt of Federal District Court here declared that federal prosecutors had created a “prejudicial, poisonous atmosphere” in making anonymous online comments before and during the trial at nola.com, the Web site of The Times-Picayune,...

WASHINGTON - President Obama says a tumultuous month as commander in chief, when his policy toward Syria took a number of unexpected turns, may not have looked "smooth and disciplined and linear," but it's working. "I'm less concerned about style points. I'm much more concerned with getting the policy right," Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview on "This Week." Obama said his surprise announcement on Aug. 31 that he would seek congressional authorization for U.S. military strikes against Syria, then the abrupt cancellation of a vote this week and pursuit of a diplomatic plan led by the...

The US will drop its insistence that a UN resolution on Syria must be backed by military force, officials say, after strong objections from Russia. US and Russian diplomats say the two sides are edging closer to a deal on Syria's chemical arsenal, as talks in Geneva enter a third day. They are thrashing out the technical details of the disarmament process.

Japan-China: Two Chinese navy ships sailed through the international waters between Okinawa and Miyako in the Ryukyus. Yesterday two bombers flew between the two islands. Syria: The fighting has continued with no let up. The government has made small gains in multiple areas. However an al-Qaida-affiliated group of the al Nusra Front drove government forces from the village of Maaloula. This is one of the three villages in the world that still speak a variation of Western Aramaic, which is the language thought to be closest to the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth. As occurs whenever a Christian village is captured,...

National Day Of Service And Remembrance Lorton, VA - September 11, 2013 In memorial for September 11, visit Mason Neck State Park in remembrance and help us with a shoreline clean up. Help by volunteering to pick up garbage along the trails and beach to help make the park a more beautiful place. 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Meet at the Visitor Center.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters have began forcing the roughly 15,000 Christian Copts of Dalga village in Egypt to pay a jizya tax as indicated in Koran 9:29, author and translator Raymond Ibrahim reported on Sunday. Jizya is the money, or tribute, “that conquered non-Muslims historically had to pay to their Islamic overlords ‘with willing submission and while feeling themselves subdued’ to safeguard their existence,” Mr. Ibrahim explained. According to Fr. Yunis Shawqi, who spoke yesterday to Dostor reporters in Dalga, all Copts in the village, “without exception,” are being forced to pay the tax. “[The] value of the...

A powerful blast on the main street in the Libyan city of Benghazi early Wednesday damaged a foreign ministry building and a branch of the Central Bank of Libya, an eyewitness said. The explosion comes on the anniversary of the September 11, 2012, assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Eyewitness and Benghazi resident Sami Berriwen told CNN he saw no casualties as a result of the blast in the eastern city, which occurred at about 7 a.m. (1 a.m. ET.) Berriwen, a university student, said that if the blast had happened...

In a parliamentary system, a rejection of a war authorization pushed by a prime minister could easily turn into a vote of no confidence and the end of a government. In the American system, it might just mean the end of the President’s credibility — and a historic humiliation for the Commander in Chief. Chuck Todd tells Today that this is what is driving desperation at the White House, as Congress grows increasingly hostile to hostilities: Will the public buy the “patriotism” argument? That it’s our duty to intervene in the Syrian civil war because, er, America? Not only will...

A black man shouted 'I'm going to punch the first white man I see!' before bashing Jeffrey Babbitt, 62, who fell backward and hit his head on the ground. 'The prognosis is not good and it does appear that the victim will likely die,' Manhattan Assistant District Attorney John Temple said.

The White House isn't taking offense at decisions by several leading Russian human rights activists not to show up for a meeting with President Barack Obama in St. Petersburg after the session was repeatedly rescheduled. "Because of scheduling changes, some of our invited guests couldn't make it, which we of course completely understand," a White House official who asked not to be named said Thursday.

President Obama arrived in Russia today to find the already failing relations with his host in even worse condition. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to provide his Syrian allies with a missile shield in the event of U.S. airstrikes further complicates Obama’s flagging effort to win international support for an attack on Damascus. As the Guardian reports, Putin’s warning that an attack without UN backing would provoke military aid from Russia may drive away the handful of international partners for Obama’s proposed attack.

Syrian rebels beheaded a Christian man and fed his body to dogs, according to a nun who says the West is ignoring atrocities committed by Islamic extremists. The nun said taxi driver Andrei Arbashe, 38, was kidnapped after his brother was heard complaining that fighters against the ruling regime behaved like bandits.

Syria hailed an "historic American retreat" on Sunday, mockingly accusing President Barack Obama of hesitation and confusion after he delayed a military strike to consult Congress. "Obama announced yesterday, directly or through implication, the beginning of the historic American retreat," Syria's official al-Thawra newspaper said in a front-page editorial. Syria's deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad accused Obama of indecision. "It is clear there was a sense of hesitation and disappointment in what was said by President Barack Obama yesterday. And it is also clear there was a sense of confusion as well," he told reporters in Damascus.

rest of headline:...had nothing to do with race. Obama Rodeo Clown Tuffy Gessling has chosen to come forward after he’s been deemed a hater by so many to explain that his performance that night had nothing to do with race or hate; it was just entertainment as they’ve done with past presidents. He also talks about some of the death threats he’s received.Video:

(Editor’s note: Colin Flaherty has done more reporting than any other journalist on what appears to be a nationwide trend of skyrocketing black-on-white crime, violence and abuse. WND features these reports to counterbalance the virtual blackout by the rest of the media due to their concerns that reporting such incidents would be inflammatory or even racist. WND considers it racist not to report racial abuse solely because of the skin color of the perpetrators or victims.) Videos linked or embedded may contain foul language and violence. A Chicago police officer is hospitalized in serious condition with a fractured skull, a...

AN Oklahoma court has been told how one of the boys accused of murdering Melbourne baseballer Chris Lane danced and laughed as he was being taken into a police station to be charged. James Edwards, 15, was treating the murder as a joke, District Attorney Jason Hicks told a hearing in the town of Duncan on Tuesday (Wednesday morning AEST). Mr Hicks told the court that Edwards has previously been in contact with police, and that he "an attitude of total disregard for law enforcement" when he was being charged over Lane's death. "He thinks it's funny, and it's all...

Here are pictures of three teenagers accused in the thrill-kill murder of a college baseball player in Oklahoma. The senseless slaying of Christopher Lane, 23, has sent shock waves from the Sooner State to the victim’s native Australia. “They followed him, shot him in the back and drove off,” Duncan, Okla., police chief Danny Ford said yesterday. “When asked why he [a 17-year-old suspect] did it, he said, ‘We were bored and decided to kill somebody.’ ” The suspects have been identified as as Chancey Luna, 16, James Edwards, 15, and Michael Jones, 17. Lane died Friday afternoon after he...

Yesterday we heard the horrific news of Australian baseball player Chris Lane being allegedly murdered in the street after three black teenaged thugs, Chancey Allen Luna, James Francis Edwards Jr. and Michael Dewayne Jones, went on a killing joyride because they were "bored." Three teenage boys were charged in the killing of an Australian university student in Oklahoma "for the fun of it," prosecutors said on Tuesday Christopher Lane, of Melbourne, was found dead of a gunshot wound on Friday, according to police in Duncan, Oklahoma, about 80 miles south of Oklahoma City. “They followed him, shot him in the...

CNN has only part of this story. Three teenage boys - 2 black and one white - apparently targeted an Austrialian citizen who was attending a local college in Oklahoma on a baseball scholarship for murder because they were "bored." Chris Lane was walking down the road when the teens came up behind him and shot him in the back: A random act of violence has left a promising 23-year-old college baseball player dead, a family devastated and two countries half a world apart rattled. Christopher Lane, who was from Australia, was gunned down in Duncan, Oklahoma, while he was...

<p>An Australian family was Monday struggling to come to terms with the "senseless" death of their baseballer son in a random drive-by shooting by three teenagers in the United States.</p> <p>Chris Lane, 22, was in the US on a baseball scholarship and was jogging in the small town of Duncan in Oklahoma when he was shot in the back on Friday and left to die on the side of the road.</p>

Former Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer, in reaction to the tragic murder of baseball player Chris Lane in Oklahoma last Friday, has decried the incident as a direct consequence of organizations that support gun rights such at the National Rifle Association. Fischer claimed that the murder is "the bitter harvest and legacy of the policies of the NRA that even blocked background checks for people buying guns at gunshows" and added that, "People should take this into account before going to the United States." Fischer's comments are disgraceful in myriad ways. To advance one's political agenda by tapping into...

A Duncan, OK father says that the three teens accused of shooting Chris Lane in the back were gang members who were trying to recruit his own son. James Johnson, 52, called the police to tell them that the accused killers were hiding in the car park of the Immauel Baptist Church car park at about 5pm, two hours after they allegedly shot Lane. “My son called me and said, “They’re saying they’re coming to kill me,” so I called the police and they got here within about three minutes,” Johnson told the Herald Sun. Mr Johnson claimed that Edwards...

When news of the three teens who went out for a thrill-killing and shot and killed an Austrailian jogger in the back reached former Florida GOP Congressman Allen West, he took to the social media and called out, among others, President Barack Obama. Melbourne, Australia native Christopher Lane, 22, attended Oklahoma’s East Central University on a baseball scholarship when he was senselessly murdered “just for fun.” While Australia’s former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer blames the U.S. for the killing and has called for a boycott, West notes the sound of crickets emanating from the White House — especially after...

Josh Earnest, principal deputy White House press secretary, said he was not familiar with the murder of Australian jogger Chris Lane during Wednesday’s White House briefing. When asked by Fox News chief White House correspondent Ed Henry about the Chris Lane case, Earnest responded, “I’m not familiar with it, actually.” Henry explained the case in brief to Earnest looking for reaction to the Oklahoma shooting death of Lane at the hands of “bored” African-American teens who thought it would be “fun” to kill somebody. “This sounds like a pretty tragic case. I wouldn’t want to get ahead of the legal...

As two of the teens involved in the tragic shooting of Australian baseball player Chris Lane in Duncan, Okla., were charged with first-degree murder, a post at PJ Media said Tuesday one of the shooters appears to be a member of the "Crips," a predominantly black street gang. According to reports, the teens targeted Lane as he was jogging and shot him in the back out of boredom. Bryan Preston said he "looked at the Facebook and Twitter feeds of James 'Lilbuggy' Edwards," one of the boys involved in the shooting, and found posts that "suggest strong interests in rap...

Five days after an Australian college student was gunned down by a trio of “bored” Oklahoma teens, the political and social reverberations continue to build across the nation and abroad. While there’s been disgust and disbelief at the senseless death of Christopher Lane — who was studying in the U.S. on a baseball scholarship and visiting his girlfriend in Duncan, Okla., when he was shot while jogging on Friday — some former lawmakers and pundits say there’s a clear double standard in how President Obama and other political leaders, leading civil rights activists and the media have reacted to the...