Free Republic

If the United States wants to avoid falling like the Roman Empire, it must avoid “overconsumption” and distribute resources equally, according to a study funded by NASA. “The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent,” reads the NASA-funded report published in the Ecological Economics journal. “Two important features seem to appear across societies that have collapsed,” the study adds. “The stretching of resources...

“Maybe we can reach a point of reconsideration” on Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Kerry said during a forum at the State Department. The Ugandan president committed to meeting with American “experts” on homosexuality to try to change his mind about the Anti-Homosexuality Act signed into law last month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday during a forum at the State Department moderated by BuzzFeed. Museveni claimed to have signed the law, which imposes up to a lifetime prison sentence for homosexuality, after being convinced no one is “born gay.” “I talked personally to President Museveni just a few...

You’d think conservatives Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are outspoken enough without liberal media sources having to lie about their words. But you’d be underestimating the unscrupulous partisanship of political “journalists." Case in point: the dishonest reporting of the comments from both GOP senators at the Susan B. Anthony Campaign for Life Summit in Washington, D.C. on March 12. An AP report appearing on The Dallas Morning News, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, U.S. News and World Report and several other organizations cherry-picked and twisted statements from Sen. Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Lee (R-UT) from the pro-life event.  Here’s what Sen. Cruz actually said: (More after video.)...

SANTA BARBARA – A department of feminist studies professor has been accused of going berserk after coming across a campus prolife demonstration that used extremely graphic displays, leading a small mob of students to chant “tear down the sign” before grabbing one of the signs, storming off with it, then allegedly engaging in an altercation with a 16-year-old prolife protestor who had followed the educator to retrieve it. Much of the scuffle was recorded on a smartphone by the 16-year-old, Thrin Short. The yet-to-be-released video is now in the custody of Santa Barbara law enforcement officials, who are investigating the...

The homosexual lobby is now putting a full-court press on the Massachusetts Legislature to pass H3909 which would change the state's school "anti-bullying" law -- to completely silence any negative discussion of those behaviors and threaten schools and administrators that do not comply. Their stated goal is to use the anti-bullying laws to "change the overall climate and culture" in the every school in the state by "addressing bigotry and discrimination." In other words, the goal is not to reduce bullying per se, but to punish opinions by students and staff that are critical of homosexual or transgender behaviors, or...

Can banning one school-yard word really change the world? Sheryl Sandberg says yes. Sandberg -- the chief operating officer of Facebook and author of the best-selling book "Lean In" -- is spearheading the launch of a campaign today to ban the word "bossy," arguing the negative put-down stops girls from pursuing leadership roles. "We know that by middle school, more boys than girls want to lead," Sandberg said, "and if you ask girls why they don't want to lead, whether it's the school project all the way on to running for office, they don't want to be called bossy, and...

A Jihad Watch reader attended the Georgetown University presentation on “Islamophobia” last week and kindly sent in this report. I wrote about this presentation here before it happened, saying that it would not be a true academic inquiry, amassing the facts and training the student to make an informed judgment, but an exercise in propaganda, attempting to manipulate attendees into holding certain opinions and skewing the presentation to ensure that those opinions would be the only ones anyone could come away with. This report shows that that was indeed what it was, with professors Daniel Varisco and John Esposito openly...

I just refreshed my Yahoo! homepage, and there is not one story visible on page one about Ukraine.Obviously the journo-list-ers have decided that the story was hurting King Barack I, so poof! no more Ukraine news!Isn't nice we live in a country under the firm hand of our Glorious Leader, the Hindmost, where we don't have to be disturbed by such upsetting stories?

MSNBC should really Czech its facts. The American TV network has invited ridicule by stuffing up a map that was supposed to help explain the escalating crisis in Ukraine. Look just to the west of Ukraine on the map above and you’ll see a country labelled “Czechoslovakia”. Of course, Czechoslovakia hasn’t existed since 1993, when it split into two nations. MSNBC’s map should have included Slovakia and the Czech Republic instead.

(big time BARF ALERT!)When I was a little kid, I used to hear my brothers, cousins, and friends say things like “That’s so gay!” on a pretty regular basis. I would usually laugh along, hoping with all my might that they didn’t know my secret. My parents and other adults in my life would tell me things like “Boys don’t cry” or “Be a man!” which essentially was their way of telling me that being emotional was forbidden or a sign of weakness. When I was a teenager, there were a few boys at my high school who ridiculed me,...

Just read this and weep for our future. David Wise is at the top of his sport. He’s always smiling among his friends and competitors, however, he’s not like the rest of the field. He is mature. Not to say the rest of the freestyle skiers of halfpipe are not mature, but Wise is mature far beyond his years. At only twenty-three years old, he has a wife, Alexander, who was waiting patiently in the crowd, and together they have a two-year-old daughter waiting for them to return to their home in Reno, Nevada.At such a young age, Wise has...

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday ordered the cancellation of a plan by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to develop a national license-plate tracking system after privacy advocates raised concern about the initiative. The order came just days after ICE solicited proposals from companies to compile a database of license-plate information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers. Officials said the database was intended to help apprehend fugitive illegal immigrants, but the plan raised concerns that the movements of ordinary citizens under no criminal suspicion could be scrutinized.

Muslim Wonder Woman Redesign Puts Diana in a Headscarf Artist flowercrownprincess envisions Wonder Woman as a hijab-wearing Muslim superhero, who is ready to battle evil in both armor and a headscarf.

Is communism making a comeback? On its face, the question seems more than a little absurd. The Berlin Wall came down over 24 years ago. We are more than 22 years removed from the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. All that remains are the Stalinist museum pieces of North Korea and Cuba, the former an isolated country known mainly for its absurd dictator and starving population, the latter a beautiful island stuck in a 1950s time warp due to backwards economic and social policies. Even China, the one major power still ruled by...

Patients who have had a ‘fair innings’ could be denied life-saving drugs under proposed health reforms. The plans would mean experts taking into account whether there is a ‘wider societal benefit’ to giving a patient crucial medicines. The NHS rationing body, Nice, fears the Department of Health proposals could see younger people deemed a higher priority for drug treatments because they have more years ahead of them – potentially contributing more to the economy – than the elderly. Doctors, MPs and campaigners last night condemned the plans as ‘barking mad’. The move will also fuel fears that the elderly are...

ABC chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl says many of Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s fellow Republican senators despise him — like, really, totally hate him. “The Republicans in the Senate had this all set. This was going to be able to pass with only Democratic votes. He stands up, says ‘I’m going to filibuster’, suddenly they need 60 votes,” Karl explained on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, speaking of last week’s vote to increase the debt ceiling. “I’ll tell you, Ted Cruz is so hated among his Republicans now — more so than even during the shutdown — that at...

According to a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, about 20 percent of the population is attracted to their own gender. That’s nearly double the usual estimates of about 10 percent. The authors explain that their methodology might have something to do with it: Participants were randomly assigned to either a “best practices method” that was computer-based and provides privacy and anonymity, or to a “veiled elicitation method” that further conceals individual responses. Answers in the veiled method preclude inference about any particular individual, but can be used to accurately estimate statistics about the population. Comparing the two...

Lefties bash late Republican star, smear her as ‘roaring racist’ Nate Igor Smith @drivenbyboredom Follow Twenty years from now most of the Republican Party will be dead. Shirley Temple was just another old conservative who now can't vote. Joe Szalai @JoeSzalai Follow I dunno. I though Shirley Temple died when she became an active Republican. 9:24 AM - 11 Feb 2014 James Kass @jameskass Follow I had no idea Shirley Temple was such a staunch Republican. I guess the "Good Ship Lollipop" was really a INS deportation boat.

This week, a report from the Congressional Budget Office acknowledged that ObamaCare would reduce full-time employment by 2.5 million over the next ten years. And that is on top of news that 92 million Americans who could be working are not. What a devastating assessment for the unemployed or underemployed, particular millenials seeking to transition from internships and part-time jobs to career-building full-time jobs. Yet the predictable spin from the White House and major media outlets is that this is good news, liberating workers from the chains of employment. To quote President Obama, from the 2008 campaign, "You can put...

INDIANAPOLIS – The American Heart Association, through its Go Red For Women movement, urges everyone to support the fight against heart disease by wearing red on National Wear Red Day – Friday, Feb. 7. American Heart Month is in February, a perfect time to focus on the prevalence of heart disease, America’s No. 1 killer.