Free Republic

The mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, refused on Monday to back off an ordinance that had aimed to expand anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people in the state's largest city but also sparked a controversial state law.

During Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign visit to Liberty University, he told the students that our nation was created on racist principles. Students at a Christian-based university, such as Liberty, do not often hear the founders-as-racists argument. But it is featured at many other universities, as well as primary and secondary schools. Most often, the hate-America teachings are centered on the fact that slavery is a part of our history. What is left untaught is: Slavery was a routine part of human history. Blacks were the last people to be enslaved. Plus, our Founding Fathers struggled mightily over the issue of...

North Korea, which in recent weeks has conducted a nuclear test and fired a long-range rocket in defiance of United Nations sanctions, has also resumed its efforts to produce weapons-grade nuclear material, National Intelligence Director James Clapper told Congress Tuesday. A North Korean uranium enrichment facility has been expanded, and a plutonium reactor, closed in 2007, is back up and running, Clapper testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The reactor could begin to recover plutonium "within a matter of weeks to months," he said. The dictatorship's growing menace also includes a growth in the "size and sophistication of its...

(CNSNews.com) – Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday disputed the suggestion that the administration has not given the North Korean nuclear threat enough attention as a result of its focus on the Iran nuclear talks and other issues, declaring that “North Korea has never been left unattended to, not for one day.” “That premise [that the North Korean situation has been neglected] is absolutely inaccurate, it’s without foundation,” he told reporters in the State Department briefing room. Pyongyang on Wednesday carried out a nuclear test – its fourth since 2006 – catapulting the reclusive Stalinist state back into the...

1. Define the enemy: Radical Islam. 2. Define Victory: No safe havens for radical Islamic groups anywhere. 3. Deploy 2 US Carrier Strike Groups & Marines to the Med. 4. Launch heavy strikes against radical Islamic terror groups in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and the Sinai. 5. Put US JTACs & FACs with real anti-ISIS fighters/Pesh Merga. 6. Provide arms directly to the Kurds - not through Baghdad. 7. Tell Putin to get out of the way. 8. Stop all GITMO transfers. 9. Support President Sisi in Egypt & King Abdullah in Amman to clear ISIS out of the Euphrates...

If polls are accurate, an irredeemable nincompoop is about to be become leader of this nation. The above sentence might have appeared in any number of newspapers in the United States during the unfortunate autumn of 2008. Alas, it is written in and of my beloved Canada. Having learned nothing from the past seven years of American decline under President Barack Obama, Canada is poised to elect its own media-approved, know-nothing dilettante in the person of Justin Trudeau. Justin’s father, Pierre, was a Castro-snuggling socialist and among the most consequential prime ministers in Canadian history. Justin evinces the worst traits...

Seoul refuses to back down and demands apology from Kim Jong-un for landmine blast it claims maimed two soldiers - North Korea's state media - Korean Central News Agency - has just issued another Shakespearean tirade against the South, accusing it of "false propaganda." Quote They [South Korea] claimed the DPRK "promulgated a decree on establishing a donation system" and "the society in the north has turned into the one where loyalty can be bought and sold." They asserted this was a "reliable source" from North Hamgyong Province. They even took issue with the newly built Pyongyang Home for the...

A North Korean military official says a meeting of senior party and defense officials led by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met Thursday night and "reviewed and approved the final attack operation." He gave no details on what kind of military retaliation North Korea would see as appropriate punishment for South Korea's shelling of its territory on Thursday. Kim Yong Chol, director of the general reconnaissance bureau of the North Korean army, on Friday denied South Korean allegations that Pyongyang has been raising tensions on the peninsula. He denied the North fired anything across the Demilitarized Zone and says...

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Friday declared his frontline troops in a "quasi-state of war" and ordered them to prepare for battle a day after the most serious confrontation between the rivals in years. South Korea's military on Thursday fired dozens of artillery rounds across the border in response to what Seoul said were North Korean artillery strikes meant to back up a threat to attack loudspeakers broadcasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda.

This 1938 Jackson Daily News article tells the story of how the Southern governors fought to level the playing field with the North when it came to railroad freight rates. The railroad commissions kept the freight rates very slanted towards the North. Canada, yes- Canada, enjoyed lower freight rates on railroads than did the South; so slanted weighted against the South were the rates. Thus a builder in New Orleans could get steel shipped more cheaply from Pittsburgh than he could from Birmingham....

Young North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has executed 70 officials since taking power in late 2011 in a "reign of terror" that far exceeds the bloodshed of his dictator father's early rule, South Korean officials said Thursday. South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, at a forum in Seoul, compared Kim Jong Un's 70 executions with those of his late father, Kim Jong Il, who he said executed about 10 officials during his first years in power.

Five of the seven men who stood alongside Kim Yong-Un at his father's funeral less than four years ago have either disappeared, been brutally executed or banished. Jang Song-thaek, Kim Ki Nam, Choe Tae-bok, Ri Yong-Ho, Kim Yong-chun, Kim Jong-gak and U Dong-chuk, who made up North Korea's political and military elite - were pallbearers at the state funeral of Kim Jong-il in December 2011. The dictator's uncle, Jang, was allegedly executed by firing squad, Ri is presumed dead, one has disappeared and two have been banished. Only Kim Ki Nam, the regime's propaganda chief, and Choe Tae-bok, the chairman...

Explanation: In only about 12,000 years Vega will be the North Star, the closest bright star to our fair planet's North Celestial Pole. By then, when you fix your camera to a tripod long exposures of the night sky will show the concentric arcs of star trails centered on a point near Vega as Earth rotates on its axis. Of course, presently the bright star conveniently near the North Celestial Pole is Polaris, but that will change as the Earth's axis of rotation precesses, like the wobble of a spinning top with a precession period of about 26,000 years. If...

an has built an active front from Israel's northern Mediterranean border adjacent to Rosh Hanikra, all the way to the Golan Heights. The goal: to undermine and wage war against the "Zionist entity" with conventional, powerful military means from within Lebanon and Syria. So says Yigal Carmon, Counter-terrorism Adviser to prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin, and founder and president of the prestigious Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). "Iran has taken advantage of the chaos in the Middle East to form a united front from Tehran, through Baghdad, Syria and Lebanon," Carmon told Kol Yisrael public radio on...

North Korean state newspaper Rodong Sinmun released images on 7 February showing a new type of surface-to-surface missile (SSM) being fired from a surface-effects ship (SES) from the Korean People's Navy (KPN) Eastern Fleet. The images, which showed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in attendance, were accompanied by an article translated by the English-language website KCNA Watch. The article noted that the test-firing proved in a "scientific" way that the capabilities of the long-rumoured vessel and its weapons system had reached design and engineering specifications.

This was the satellite photo which shamed North Korea by showing how the people of the hermit kingdom endure inky blackness at night. But now the hermit kingdom's propaganda machine has hit back, proclaiming that the stoic workers of the People's Republic have no need for 'flashy lights'. A recent editorial in the Rodong Sinmun, North Korea's tightly leashed newspaper of record, also says the photo represents the future of the U.S. - 'an old superpower that is meeting its sunset'.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un executed an army general last month following a difference of opinion as part of his latest purge of senior government officials. Gen. Pyon In Son, head of operations in the Korean People’s Army, was killed for disagreeing with the “Supreme Leader,” a South Korean official told reporters in Seoul Wednesday, but did not make clear what the two disagreed on, Bloomberg reported.

North Korea is attempting to put nuclear weapons to sea, according to a longtime regime watcher. Joseph Bermudez—an expert on North Korean weapons—believes the evidence is commercial satellite imagery showing a submarine with possibly two vertical launch tubes. The regime also appears to have constructed a test stand for launching sea-based ballistic missiles. The two revelations may not be directly related. For one, the vessel might not end up carrying nuclear-capable missiles. But Bermudez’s evidence is highly suggestive. And if the North is planning to put nukes aboard submarines, this would make Kim Jong Un’s atomic arsenal more survivable in...

The McKenzie County sheriff's department used its K9 team to track down three men who fled an accident scene in McKenzie county last week. The dogs led deputies and officers from the U-S Border Patrol through three miles of badlands where they found two of the men. They caught the third man two days later near Williston, after reports of a drug transaction. The Border Patrol was involved because all three of the suspects are illegal immigrants. The sheriff's office reports that one of the men has been deported 33 times.He will be charged with felony immigration violations. The suspects...

Looks like the "Guardians of Peace" scored another victory ... Sony quietly gave in to another hacker demand by wiping almost all traces of "The Interview" from its social media pages. Hackers threatened top level Sony execs Friday saying, "We want everything related to the movie, including its trailers, as well as its full version down from any website hosting them immediately." The movie studio almost immediately obliged ... the movie's Twitter page no longer has any tweets, the Facebook page has been deleted and all "Interview" footage has been wiped from its YouTube page.