Free Republic

Politics: Rather than rooting on the strong economy, Democrats have taken to ignoring it, belittling it or, like Bill Maher did over the weekend, rooting for a recession. The extent to which Trump critics will go is truly mind-boggling. The unemployment rate is at 49-year lows overall, and lower than ever for African-Americans. Household incomes are at record highs. The U.S. reclaimed its No. 1 rank in competitiveness. Economists are revising their growth forecasts upward. Optimism is at levels not seen in more than a decade. Clearly the economy is doing well. And what's more, the public is increasingly crediting...

Rational conversations about gun control are difficult to come by. Hyperbole as well as deliberate misstatements only lead to emotional tirades. With this in mind, I will tread carefully toward illuminating the question posed by this article. Contemporary scholars have little explored the preconditions of genocide. Still less have they asked whether a society's weapons policy [contributes] to the probability of its government engaging in some of the more extreme varieties of outrage. Though it is a long step between being disarmed and being murdered – one does not usually lead to the other – ... it is nevertheless an...

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Not everyone from the Parkland school shooting is an activist for gun control. Kyle Kashuv, in fact, is adamant that the Second Amendment is not the problem; government failure is. He's defying a blue wave to get that word out. At an American Freedom Alliance conference on guns and school shooting yesterday in Los Angeles, Kashuv, the bright kid who defied the media "narrative" about gun control, came out in favor of the Second Amendment and has begun organizing for it, urging conservatives to fight the moves to grab guns and sway young voters in thrall to leftist blather as...

... The Pakistani Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed that exchange student Sabika Sheikh was killed in the shooting. Sabika was an exchange student with YES, which is funded by the U.S. State Department. It provides scholarships for secondary school students from countries with significant Muslim populations to spend one academic year in the U.S. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent his "deepest condolences" to her friends and family in a statement Saturday.

It's the question I'm asked over and over again. It's the question that's dividing churches and separating family members. It's the question that must be answered: Can you be gay and Christian? Well, if you claim to be a Christian, that means that Jesus is your Lord and the Bible is your authority, so the real question is: What does Jesus have to say about this? And what does the Bible – God's Word – have to say? That's what we need to find out. Of course, we understand that every Christian struggles in some area, whether it be pride...

With the unthinkable now cautiously possible, peace between North and South Korea, speculation about President Donald Trump becoming a Nobel Peace Prize winner has begun. If peace in the Korean Peninsula truly happens, the Nobel committee could be left with a difficult choice regarding Trump’s candidacy. Recognizing those who helped bring peace to the region would seem like an easy choice, but a decision to give Trump the award could force the Nobel Prize committee into a fierce political debate on whether a man who has openly mocked foreign leaders, launched multiple airstrikes and has threatened war, deserves an award...

NOAA’s US temperature record shows that US was warmest in the 1930’s and has generally cooled as CO2 has increased. This wrecks greenhouse gas theory, so they “adjust” the data to make it look like the US is warming. The NOAA data tampering produces a spectacular hockey stick of scientific fraud, which becomes the basis of vast amounts of downstream junk climate science. Pre-2000 temperatures are progressively cooled, and post-2000 temperatures are warmed. This year has been a particularly spectacular episode of data tampering by NOAA, as they introduce nearly 2.5 degrees of fake warming since 1895. (Please see full...

Tomorrow is Election Day in Texas. Voters will flock to vote in their respective primaries and for one race, it’s become deeply personal. In Texas’ 99 House District race, Bo French is running against incumbent Republican Charlie Geren R-Fort Worth. It’s a rematch from the pair’s 2016 bout; French is considered someone who could knock off Geren in a primary. Geren prevailed but by less than 4,000 votes. According to reports, the two men were friends until French was accused on what appears to be bogus child abuse allegations. The couple recently filed a lawsuit against the political operative for...

Have Republicans lost their hold on Morris County? Editor's Desk By Tom Bergeron Morris County | Nov 30, 2017 at 12:01 pm Tom Bergeron/ROI-NJ The sign commemorating Gov. Chris Christie Drive in Morris Plains. OK, let’s get the joke out of the way. Gov. Chris Christie, whose national political ambitions were sidetracked by his connection to a traffic jam, had a short access road named after him last week. The catch: This short road, no more than a half-mile long, is being built to alleviate traffic problems around a park in his home county of Morris. Now, let’s get to...

I love Rush Limbaugh. He's smart, articulate and wealthy, but that last part was not always so for Rush. He grew up in a family of ambitious lawyers and storied judges. The pressure from his family was really on for Rush to hit the books, stay in college, become a Man of Letters. They wanted him to rake it in somehow, preferably in law but if not, to earn a living in some capacity that involved stable income, a necktie and not moving around the country like an overfed vagabond. But Rush knew what he wanted to be in radio...

ABC News has obtained a copy of the one message that Republicans appear to be citing, and it's unclear if the message's reference to a “secret society” may have been made in jest. "Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society," FBI lawyer Lisa Page wrote to senior FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was working on the FBI’s probe of Russian meddling in the presidential election and would later join Page for a brief period on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team.

David Letterman has been in the news recently for his forthcoming Netflix show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, which will premiere on Jan. 12 and feature former president Barack Obama. However, in light of the #MeToo movement that became Time’s 2017 Person of the Year and was highlighted in last night’s Golden Globes, why does David Letterman get a pass for repeated allegations of sexual misconduct? In 2009, Letterman revealed during a live broadcast of his late-night talk show that he had engaged in sexual relationships with several female employees of his show, all while being...

Is the government keeping tabs on us through our cellphone batteries?

POLL: Do you believe the sexual misconduct allegations against Senate nominee Roy Moore?YesNoI'm not sure

A new Gallup poll shows growing support for marijuana legalization, with 64 percent of Americans now in favor of the measure. The number is the highest level of support in nearly half a century of surveying adults on the issue, according to Gallup. Support has steadily increased in recent years, with the latest figure up 4 percentage points over last year and up 14 points from 2011. The poll also showed a majority of Republicans favoring legalization for the first time, with 51 percent expressing support. That number is up 9 percentage points from last year, according to Gallup.

A few years ago, I attended a conference where pastors were encouraged to meet at a pub after the general sessions. A few of these pastors could exercise their liberty, but why publicly? I wondered how many people at the conference stumbled because of it. The demands of life often tempt us to seek gratification in alcohol and other things. We must be on high alert. The enemy uses "opportune times" to draw us away from God. (cf. Luke 4:13.) The line is so thin that it is often hard to determine when we cross over. The person who consumes...

Sure seems like it. Maybe it's just my PC.

My "Rewriting American History" column of a fortnight ago, about the dismantling of Confederate monuments, generated considerable mail. Some argued there should not be statues honoring traitors such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, who fought against the Union. Victors of wars get to write the history, and the history they write often does not reflect the facts. Let's look at some of the facts and ask: Did the South have a right to secede from the Union? If it did, we can't label Confederate generals as traitors. Article 1 of the Treaty of Paris (1783), which...

While the media and Democrats are obsessed with increasingly bizarre Trump-Russia conspiracy theories, and failed attempts to flip Special Election congressional seats, an enormous change to the federal judiciary is well underway. We have been covering this story, and the relative lack of media coverage, for months. Most recently, I wrote While you were focused on COMEY, Trump nominated another group of CONSERVATIVE Judges: While everyone was focused on Comey’s prepared statement, Trump went about his business filling vacancies in the federal judiciary. I wrote about this a month ago, Trump begins counter-packing federal courts, Dems can’t stop him thanks...