Free Republic

Guy Benson at Townhall puts the lie to Democrat accusations that the GOP "repeal and replace" bill will kill Americans. It seems that Obamacare has already done that. Quoting Oren Cass over at National Review, it turns out that fewer people – not more people – had health insurance after Obamacare. The only increase in "coverage" was Medicaid, but, sadly, it turns out that Medicaid kills people. It's better to have no medical insurance at all. This public-versus-private distinction is crucial, because studies of Medicaid do not find the same positive effects on mortality sometimes seen in studies of private...

While the region braces for its first unofficial snow panic of the season, the government is about to announce that 2015 was the warmest year on record worldwide - probably by a comfortable margin. Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies say they will release their annual reports on Wednesday. December climate data has not yet been released, but the first 11 months of the year were so historically balmy that the declaration of 2015 as the world's warmest year - surpassing 2014 - with temperatures of at least 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit...

The Christian persecution watchdog group Open Doors has released its annual list of countries where Christians face the greatest persecution and found that it has reached unprecedented levels worldwide as over 7,000 Christians were killed for their faith between Nov. 1, 2014, and Oct. 31, 2015. Although the California-based ministry, which works in over 60 countries, stated last January that 2014 was the worst year for Christian persecution than any other time in modern history, the organization said during the rollout of its 2016 World Watch List that 2015 surpassed 2014 as the deadliest year for Christians worldwide.

2015 was a record year for the National Instant Checks System (NICS), and for firearm sales. The previous record year was in 2013, another year in which President Obama put considerable effort into passing strict gun control, and failed. It is one of the few policies that President Obama has not been able to use his allies in the media to ram legislation through Congress. In 2013, there were 21,093,271 background checks completed through NICS, according to the FBI.  That amounted to 16,031,210 additional private firearms added to the stocks, according to the ATF. The numbers for NICS checks...

I was supposed to take part in a debate about abortion at Christ Church, Oxford. I was invited by the Oxford Students for Life to put the pro-choice argument against the journalist Timothy Stanley, who is pro-life. But apparently it is forbidden for men to talk about abortion. A mob of furious feministic Oxford students, all robotically uttering the same stuff about feeling offended, set up a Facebook page littered with expletives and demands for the debate to be called off. They said it was outrageous that two human beings ‘who do not have uteruses’ should get to hold forth...

The FBI processed a record number of firearms-related background checks last year, indicating that more guns were sold in 2015 than in any previous year in American history. More than 23 million checks were processed through the National Instant Background Check System in 2015, an all-time record.The all-time record for yearly sales comes after May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December 2015 each set sales records for their respective months. In December the FBI conducted 3,314,594 checks, an increase of more than half a million checks over the previous single-month record set in December 2012.The number of FBI...

E.B. White reportedly said “the most beautiful sound in America” is “the tinkle of ice at twilight.” In 2015’s twilight, fortify yourself with something 90 proof as you remember this year in which:

Given the times we are in and the abilities that we have, I am curious if others do as I do and record certain End-of-Year data for comparison from yer to year. Some of the obvious ones are personal like weight and miles run/cycled. Others are more business-like, say car odometer for business miles use, Electric Meter reading for year usage. Watching the change in net worth can be good or depressing but attention needs to be paid!

2015 was a rough year for the abortion lobby. They saw a huge number of pro-life laws passed. For the first time in history, the Senate — along with the House of Representatives — voted to defund Planned Parenthood. And while the media tried valiantly, they couldn’t close the floodgates of negative information about the abortion industry. But while 2015 was a hard year for everyone in the abortion industry, some definitely had a harder time than others. Here are the four biggest losers in the abortion lobby for 2015. Wendy Davis Hey, remember Wendy Davis? She was crowned the...

Think of a wonderful thought, any merry little thought. Think of Christmas, think of snow, think of sleigh bells, off you go, like reindeer in the sky! You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!, 1953 In July, I used that Peter Pan quote to describe Donald Trump's impossible Neverland. Yet having digested the Obama administration's 2015 foreign-policy review and its Twitter hashtag (#2015in5words), I conclude that the quote is equally applicable to American foreign policy. After all, the administration's review actually claims that 2015 was a successful year. These successes apparently include establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba (freedom...

The administration issued a record amount of heft in the federal rule book in 2015 as President Obama's team, carrying out his orders to work around Congress, pushed his expansive government agenda on environmental, labor and Wall Street policy. With one day to go, the administration added 81,611 pages to the Federal Register, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute's count of the official record-keeping digest of federal agencies' rule-making. It's the highest total on record and the third time Mr. Obama has crossed the 80,000-page level during his presidency, the institute's Clyde Wayne Crews calculated. "This is the pen and...

The State Department continues to live in an alternate universe. One day after the agency received criticism for claiming it is successfully "bringing peace" to Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed that of all the achievements of 2015, he is most proud of the historic climate deal reached in Paris.

It's the network that conservatives loathe (and rightfully so), and a source for constant content for the Washington Free Beacon and Newsbusters. MSNBC truly outdid itself from discussing how Star Wars might have some racial elements to it (which is nonsense) to how saying hard work could be a microaggession to slaves-the Free Beacon has compiled the greatest hits of the year.

Backing down is not in Pamela Geller's lexicon. In May 2015, Geller hosted an art exhibit and drawing contest featuring images of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Her aim was to stand up for free speech by showing that Muslims could not intimidate non-Muslim Americans into following Shariah blasphemy laws, which prohibit any depictions of Muhammad. Two gunmen showed up at the Garland, Texas, event and started shooting, injuring a security officer before being killed by police. Frightened into silence? Not Geller. A month later, she launched a new billboard-ad campaign featuring the winning drawing from the Muhammad art contest. The...

It was a big year for military aircraft advances. Here’s a look back at four of those – the F-16 Viper, Marine Corps’ King Stallion Helo, a new stealth bomber and fifth generation fighter F-35.

'He is positioned to win the GOP nomination and the White House despite all odds' They treated his campaign announcement as a joke. They tried to destroy his business. They called him every foul name they could come up with. But at the end of 2015, the biased journalists, political consultants, leftist activists, snarky comedians and embittered critics of every stripe had to concede one man had beaten them all. Donald J. Trump is the Republican favorite for president of the United States. There's no indication he'll fall from the top spot any time soon. And he's the WND 2015...

Donald Trump has been named a runner-up on TIME’s 2015 Person of the Year list, losing out to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But he is the only American political figure on the list–a testament to his surprise influence on American politics this year. TIME’s Michael Scherer profiles Trump for the issue, putting him in the same category as Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace. “Each terrified some and delighted others, testing the nation’s very identity,” he writes. The fallout from Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States entered its second...

...Then came 2015. Not once or twice but three times this year there has been reason to wonder whether Europe could continue to exist, not culturally or geographically but as a historic experiment in ambitious statecraft. Merkel had already emerged as the indispensable player in managing Europe's serial debt crises; she also led the West's response to Vladimir Putin's creeping theft of Ukraine. But now the prospect of Greek bankruptcy threatened the very existence of the euro zone. The migrant and refugee crisis challenged the principle of open borders. And finally, the carnage in Paris revived the reflex to slam...

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump made the shortlist for TIME magazine's 2015 Person of the Year for his "populist rhetoric" in the 2016 presidential election that has "stirred debate about the party's future."The magazine released its shortlist Monday morning with Trump making the cut among other finalists including Black Lives Matter activists, Russian president Vladimir Putin and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" Isaiah 5:20 From the LGBT Out Magazine: This is the first time a sitting president has been photographed for the cover of an LGBT title, a historic moment in itself, and a statement on how much his administration has done to advance a singularly volatile issue that tarnished the reputations of both President Clinton and President Bush. It might have tarnished this president, too, but for his late-hour conversion in 2012, which...