Free Republic

Kamala Harris thinks that U.S. citizens in rural America don’t own copiers or scanners, can’t drive to or are not near an office supply store, and can’t take a cell phone photo of their government-issued ID. Isn’t it marvelous to have a Vice President who is so in touch with the people? With Joe Biden crashing and burning like the Hindenburg, his own party might decide not to wait for his corporeal demise (his mind left the planet quite some time ago) and remove him from office sooner rather than later. In any event, sometime before 2025, Harris could take...

The California woman dubbed “Soho Karen” for falsely accusing a black teen of stealing her iPhone and allegedly attacking him at a Big Apple hotel says she can’t be racist because she’s a “woman of color.” Miya Ponsetto, 22, made the remarks during a previously filmed interview with “CBS This Morning” anchor Gayle King that was teased on Twitter Monday.

• The Sri Lankan police have arrested 24 people in connection with a series of devastating suicide bombings at hotels and churches on Easter Sunday that left nearly 300 people dead and more than 500 injured. • The government on Monday blamed National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a little-known radical Islamist organization, for the bombings. An official said the group, which had not carried out any serious attacks before, had help from “an international network.” • Sri Lanka’s security forces were warned at least 10 days before the bombings that the group planned suicide attacks against churches, but apparently took no action...

Actress Jessica Chastain responded on social media this week after critics slammed her for appearing on the cover of LA Times Magazine alongside a half-dozen other white actresses for a story about women’s equality in Hollywood. Chastain, the 40-year-old star of the drama and upcoming awards-season hopeful Molly’s Game, covered the magazine’s pre-Chritsmas issue alongside fellow actresses Kate Winslet (Wonder Wheel), Diane Kruger (In the Fade), Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird), Margot Robbie (I, Tonya), and Annette Bening (Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool). Critics immediately noticed the lack of any actresses of color on the magazine cover, including author Rebecca...

SOUTH BEND — The student and parents suing Concord schools over the annual Christmas Spectacular are still seeking a court order barring the school from reverting to older versions of the show that contain live Nativity scenes. In a filing last week in U.S. District Court in South Bend, the anonymous Concord Community Schools student and three parents suing the school district say school officials' promises to use mannequins instead of live actors to depict the Nativity aren't enough. A court filing in the case by the school district in early October says Concord Community Schools Superintendent John Trout and...

Today is the first day of Advent, which marks the start of the pre-Christmas season. It is observed by many, if not most, of the Catholic faithful. And it is in popularity among Protestants, particularly those of us who count ourselves evangelical Christians. Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas and ends on Christmas Eve. During that four-week period, the Christian faithful prepare for the commemoration of the birth of Christ. Satan hates Advent. That’s because he wants to take the “Christ” out of Christmas. He doesn’t want Christmas to be a Godly “holy-day.” Rather, his aim is to reduce the...

President Barack Obama’s Department of Veterans Affairs has banned employees at its facility in Salem, Virginia, from saying “Merry Christmas” to veterans.It started as a broader ban that included Christmas trees. Federal law recognizes Christmas as an official federal holiday (5 U.S.C. § 6103) and provides federal employees with a paid day off to celebrate the Christian belief in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.Every year, a White House Christmas Tree and a Capitol Christmas Tree grace those two respective buildings in Washington D.C., and a National Christmas Tree is also officially lighted outdoors for the public to enjoy during that time...

Boundary dam, a power plant in Estevan, Saskatchewan, is the first commercial coal-fired plant to capture carbon dioxide from its emissions, compress the gas, and bury it underground. The plant demonstrates that so-called carbon capture and storage (CCS) can work at a large scale—a crucial achievement given that CCS could play a significant role worldwide in reducing the greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change. Right now only two other CCS power-plant projects are under construction, both of them in the United States. That’s because CCS carries a hefty price tag: SaskPower invested $1 billion to equip one of the...

HARLAN, Ky. (AP) — The rest of the house is just waking as Scottie Sizemore plops down in a rocking chair on his front porch with a cup of coffee. The sun has yet to crest the ridge above, where mist clings like clouds that couldn't quite make it over. Sizemore is the fourth generation of his family to mine coal in Harlan County. He knows he'll probably be the last. For over a century, life in Central Appalachia has been largely defined by the ups and downs of the coal industry. Through all the bust years, there was always...

EPA: Coal Plants Should Spend $2B To Cut Emissions Mon, 11/24/2014 - 4:53pm Emily Schmall, Federal regulators are proposing that the largest coal-powered plants in Texas invest $2 billion in new technology to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions, a measure energy companies are likely to resist. The plan released Monday would require that 15 units at eight coal-fired plants be retrofitted with controls to help clear the air near national parks and other federally protected land in Texas and Oklahoma. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the proposal would cut about 230,000 tons of sulfur dioxide emissions each year. Brad Watson,...

It sure seems that way to Politico after the midterm elections. The writing has been on the wall since the Democratic Party nominated and elected a President who declared that his energy policies would “bankrupt” coal operators in a 2008 interview, but the cycle didn’t complete itself until after Barack Obama’s EPA began to pursue those policies in earnest. What used to be the heart of Democratic working-class union strength has now flipped entirely red, and probably permanently: The Republicans’ romp this week may have permanently turned coal country from blue to red.Coal-heavy districts in West Virginia, Kentucky and Illinois...

Demonize coal. Keep the poor in the dark. And, above all, keep pushing the fantasy that U.S. government action (with or without the approval of Congress) is essential to dealing with climate change. That — in a nutshell — is the climate-change strategy of the Obama administration and its environmentalist allies. Evidence of the third point can be found by looking at the “Clean Power Plan” — the 645-page set of rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency last June that, if it withstands legal challenges, will effectively outlaw the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States....

In the wake of increasingly successful divestment actions aimed at carbon-producing industries, coal has turned into the new tobacco. While even natural gas mining has its vocal supporters despite the dangers of fracking, the supporters of coal are shrinking as the “clean coal” touted by candidates of both political parties looks more and more like an oxymoron. But what about the people who live in coal country? What is happening to them as the institutional investors withdraw their assets from the companies topping the Carbon 200 list? As institutional investors including foundations pull their assets out of coal, are foundations...

Gina McCarthy insists reducing carbon emissions, fighting climate change boost economyGina McCarthy argued Thursday that her home state of Massachusetts is proof you can cut greenhouse gas emissions while fostering economic prosperity, but the Environmental Protection Agency administrator failed to mention the apparent trade-off for consumers: dramatically higher electricity prices. In a speech promoting President Obama’s climate change agenda, Ms. McCarthy ignored the fact that New England states — which nearly a decade ago formed the nation’s first regional “cap and trade” system — are dealing with electricity rates more than 35 percent higher than the national average. She also...

On Monday (Jun 2), the Obama Administration took a major step toward shutting down the US coal industry, a stated goal from his presidential campaign. The Environmental Protection Agency proposed sweeping new regulations to limit so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions from existing coal-fired power plants. These regulations would make coal-powered electrical generation in the US uneconomical. Under this plan, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” as the President promised in his 2008 campaign. To what gain? The Wall Street Journal reported, “Based on the EPA's own carbon accounting, shutting down every coal-fired power plant tomorrow and replacing them with zero-carbon sources would...

Any distrust Women of Color felt toward Planned Parenthood was kept out of the public eye until July 28, when the abortion giant blew any remaining shreds of good will. It was on that day a story Planned Parenthood shopped to the New York Times was published, within which Planned Parenthood failed to give WOC credit for the concept of “reproductive justice” and submitted names of only white female leaders of the abortion lobby to interview – seven to be exact – but no WOC. Enter into the fracas Melissa Flourney, pictured right, Louisiana State Director for Planned Parenthood Gulf...

Before we become too optimistic about the prospects for using renewable energy sources to curb carbon emissions, it’s worth looking at a study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which should give pause to even the most confident advocate of action against climate change. The study forecasts that new EPA regulations -- regulations intended to cut carbon emissions by 30% from coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired plants by 2030 -- will lead to higher energy costs, fewer jobs, and slower economic growth in the United States. That, in turn, will lower Americans’ standards of living. A typical household could...

Twelve states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration on Friday seeking to block an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to regulate coal-fired power plants in an effort to stem climate change. The plaintiffs are led by West Virginia and include states that are home to some of the largest producers of coal and consumers of coal-fired electricity. The suit was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The other plaintiffs are Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming. The E.P.A. rule, announced by President Obama on June...

Jun. 19, 2014 - 5:57 - Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray on the impact of regulations on the energy industry.

For people who use the word “science” as a bludgeon and trumpet their strict commitment to fact and reason, the Obama administration and its supporters are strangely incapable of rational analysis of new climate-change regulations. President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency released draft rules last week to create a vast new regulatory apparatus with no input from Congress — in other words, to govern in its accustomed highhanded, undemocratic manner. The goal is to reduce carbon emissions from existing power plants, in particular coal-fired plants, to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The rhetoric around the rules has involved...