Free Republic

Today in America we have no shortage of fools. That is an obvious no-brainer. A fool is - in the Biblical sense - a stupid, wicked (especially impious), or vile person; fool (-ish, -ish man, -ish woman). A scoffer, blockhead or reprobate, a despiser of Almighty God and all that is truly good. The secular definition of fool is: one who is deficient in judgment, sense, or understanding. In both cases we see that the fool is a sound rejecter of the Laws of Nature, and of Nature's God. What is Foolishness to Whom? Conservatives, conservatism, and the adherence to...

As President Barack Obama enters his sixth year in the White House, 68 percent of Americans say the country is either stagnant or worse off since he took office, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Just 31 percent say the country is better off, and a deep pessimism continues to fuel the public's mood. Most respondents used words like “divided,” “troubled,” and “deteriorating” to describe the current state of the nation. On the eve of Tuesday’s State of the Union address, more than six-in-10 Americans believe that the nation is headed in the wrong direction and 70...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is ready to take on the tea party in 2014 Senate primaries and elections with a deep-pocketed boost of establishment and business Republican candidates. "Our No. 1 focus is to make sure, when it comes to the Senate, that we have no loser candidates," Chamber strategist Scott Reed told The Wall Street Journal. "That will be our mantra: No fools on our ticket."

Star Partners and Hummingbird Prods. are collaborating on production of a sequel to Frank Capra’s iconic 1946 movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which starred Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. The sequel, titled “It’s A Wonderful Life: The Rest of the Story,” is being financed by Allen J. Schwalb of Star Partners who will also produce along with Bob Farnsworth of Hummingbird. The duo are aiming to get the movie into theaters for the 2015 holiday season. Karolyn Grimes, who played George Bailey’s daughter “Zuzu” in the original, will return for the “Wonderful Life” sequel as an angel who shows Bailey’s...

Do you know of any place you can go to find a rational, well-thought out economic argument for liberalism? I can't. And that's really strange considering the degree to which this political philosophy dominates our culture. By the term "liberalism" I mean the intellectual effort to apologize for and defend economic programs primarily associated with Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. There are four main ones: •The substitution of regulation for markets, •The substitution of social insurance for private provision, •The nationalization of welfare, and •The manipulation of the economy by the government. It is difficult to exaggerate how completely this...

On Tuesday night after President Barack Obama’s address to the nation urging the public and Congress to back his proposal for intervention in Syria, Fox News ran a video of all the different statements from Obama and members of his administration. The four-and-a-half minute video shows how the Obama administration evolved from the “red line” declaration back on August 20, 2012 to the president’s ambiguous address on Tuesday night. It also included other aspects of the president’s policy toward Syria including the timing of the strike, the use of diplomacy and the extent to which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad poses...

Full title; Fool’s errand: It’ll be anything but smooth sailing if we send troops to Syria to defend a no-fly zone In 1982, Muslim extremists launched a civil war against Syria’s dictator, Hafez Assad. His soldiers chased them to the town of Hama, surrounded the city and pounded it with artillery for a solid month. Thirty thousand men, women and children were killed. The rebellion died, too. Assad bequeathed his dictatorship to his son, Bashar, who now faces a similar revolt by similar extremists. Credible reports put the death toll of the current civil war at 93,000. That’s sad. But...

A man apparently attempted suicide outside NBC’s “Today” show studio in New York City Thursday morning, requiring the crowd to be evacuated and the show’s anchors to move inside.

To this day, the Muslims of the world lament the loss of Andalus, the Arabic name for their Spanish Kingdom. While every Muslim knows what a mortal blow the loss of Spain was, few in the West are aware that even after the fall of Granada, the Spanish were not so easily rid of Islam.

Florida country radio morning-show hosts Val St. John and Scott Fish are currently serving indefinite suspensions and possibly worse over a successful April Fools' Day prank. They told their listeners that "dihydrogen monoxide" was coming out of the taps throughout the Fort Myers area. Dihydrogen monoxide is water.

Google’s decision to mark Easter Sunday with a doodle of leftist icon Cesar Chavez atop its search engine angered some users in what they see as a snub of Jesus on the day Christians mark his resurrection. However, Google executives offered quick apologies for the snub, issuing this statement: "We at Google honor Easter and are mortified that our Doodle of Chavez in any way upstaged this Holy Christian Holiday. We are reviewing the way Google Doodles are chosen on a go-forward basis." The statement appeared to appease some high-profile Christian figures. "I'm not much of a fan of Google,"...

I have some very disappointing news for some of the more-virulent foes of sane gun-control legislation. If you’re what the National Rifle Association loves to call a “law-abiding American citizen,” no one is going to take away your guns.

It's official. Reality-television executives have lost their minds. The reality-TV shows featuring mostly black casts debuting in 2013 are setting back images of black folks in television at least 60 years. While critics are obsessed with the controversial film Django Unchained, there is a movement taking place in reality television that has elevated black buffoonery to the highest level possible while diminishing black culture to the lowest level in recent memory. The images of blacks on TLC's reality shows Best Funeral Ever and The Sisterhood and Oxygen's All My Babies' Mamas are appalling. They are also reminiscent more of images...

In a sign that more Americans are feeling upbeat about their economic prospects, more people were running or starting new businesses in 2011 - the highest level since 2005, according to a study released Thursday. More than 29 million Americans were engaged in entrepreneurship last year - a 60 percent gain from 2010, according to a report issued by Babson College and Baruch College. And nearly 40 percent of these entrepreneurs are expected to create more than five new jobs during the next five years. "There is renewed interest in entrepreneurship," said Donna J. Kelley, associate professor of Entrepreneurship at...

Two weeks after President Barack Obama declared his support for gay marriage, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that he has "no problem with it." [snip] "But, as I've thought about gay marriage, I know a lot of friends who are individually gay but are in partnerships with loved ones," the retired Army general said. "And they are as stable a family as my family is. And they raise children. And so I don't see any reason not to say that they should be able to get married."

What Arkansas voters had to say after casting ballots in Tuesday's primary election: Bobby Smith, a 73-year-old retired aircraft mechanic, cast an early ballot for President Barack Obama even though he said he disagreed with the president's stand on gay marriage. "They don't have but two names on the ballot: President Obama and that other guy," Smith said outside a community center in downtown Little Rock where other people were voting on Tuesday. "I don't know anything about the other guy," he said, referring to John Wolfe. ___ Sarah Edmondson, 57, of Lonoke said she voted for Wolfe for president,...

A long-lost medieval cookbook, containing recipes for hedgehogs, blackbirds and even unicorns, has been discovered at the British Library. Professor Brian Trump of the British Medieval Cookbook Project described the find as near-miraculous. "We've been hunting for this book for years. The moment I first set my eyes on it was spine-tingling."

Taxes: As the president complains once again that oil companies are getting unfair tax breaks, the U.S. passes Japan as the leader in business taxes. Workers, investors and entrepreneurs will bear the cost. On April 1, Japan will cut its corporate tax rate to 36.8% from 39.5%. This includes a 10% surtax that will expire in 2014. As it does, the U.S. will officially have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, with average combined federal and state profit levies of 39.2%. And, no, this is not an April Fools' joke. The news comes after President Obama once again...

Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade is the latest celebrity to publicly come out in support of Trayvon Martin. Wade posted the picture above on his Twitter page on Friday and made it his avatar as well. Along with the picture, Wade added the hashtags: #hoodies, #stereotype and #trayvonmartin. Several other actors and sports stars are posting pictures of themselves in hoodies in honor of the Miami Gardens teenager.

[This is the entire article:] According to a movie and book that came out in 2010, everyone is Waiting For Superman. That would be the heroic, miraculous, too-good-to-be-true school that will swoop down into even the worst neighborhoods and rescue all those bad-luck kids. Me, I’m not counting on Superman. Public schools are too weird. The Man of Steel will look foolish fighting to the death against silly putty. To speak truth about this demented demimonde, we need a voice, a mind, a way of thinking as deranged as the system itself. We need Lewis Black. You know him, of...