Free Republic

During his trip to India, President Obama declared America’s commitment to “help design smart cities” and “bullet trains” in the country. The main selling point for “smart cities” is that they are “sustainable,” a vague but applauded term that often used in context of combating what this author strongly believes is a non-existent problem: man-made climate change. During a speech at the Siri Fort Auditorium in India, Obama, who met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the tour, declared: We are ready to join you in building new infrastructure…roads and airports, the ports and bullet trains to propel India into...

Perhaps because the author is a sober-minded professor of ecclesiastical history at Germany’s University of Münster, his subtitle is considerably less lurid than it could have been. The scandals at a convent scarcely a kilometre from Pope Pius IX’s palace in Rome included heresy, lashings of sex (gay, straight and all-around religio-erotic kinky), and attempted murder... ...The book turns on the blue-blooded connections of its whistleblower, the 41-year-old wealthy, devout, twice-widowed, passionately romantic (with a capital “R”) Princess Katharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. She was first cousin both to the Protestant king of Prussia and to Catholic archbishop Gustav Adolf zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst,...

IN order to internalize the grave danger America is in – relative to the injection of Shariah Law - one must first recognize why ANY semblance of Shariah Law implanted within America is a clear and present danger. Civil, criminal, Shariah financing laws…makes no diff. SPECIFICALLY, the Muslim Brotherhood’s overall plan is to subsume all of America under the boot of Shariah, not “just” the Muslim community. They are deadly serious, and their track record attests as much. Don’t dare to dismiss their American (and global) designs. AT its base, Shariah Law is a knock out blow (despite protestations to...

Samsung Electronics reported its lowest annual profit since 2011 during its earnings call today as its smartphone sales continue to suffer from increasing competition. In 2014, the company’s profit was 25 trillion won, a 32 percent drop from a high of 36.8 trillion won in 2013. Its 4Q2014 net profit fell 27 percent to 5.3 trillion won year-over-year, in-line with Samsung’s earning guidance earlier this month. The Korean tech giant reported that its mobile unit’s earnings dropped 64 percent year-over-year to 1.96 trillion won, marketing its fifth quarterly decline in a row. Mobile sales accounted for just 58 percent of...

ast year boasted the strongest job numbers since 1999, and as a result, many commentators have concluded that left-wing critics of austerity were wrong all along. The basic case — advanced by Jeff Sachs, Scott Sumner, and others — is that the surge in growth and jobs proves that austerity is not the poison its detractors claimed it would be. These commentators make some good points. But they are wrong about austerity. A close examination of the counterfactuals shows that austerity almost certainly held back the recovery — and without it, we might have had 2014's strong numbers in 2011....

A controversial Spanish former magistrate slammed Google in Geneva for handing over emails from Wikileaks staff to the FBI without informing the whistleblowing website. At a press conference in the Swiss city on Monday, Baltasar Garzón, who heads the legal team working for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, accused the American internet search engine of an “attack on journalism” by providing the emails of three Wikileaks journalists to the U.S law enforcement agency. He told the Geneva Press Club that the staff members had only been informed in December that the contents of the accounts had been handed over to federal...

This week, we had Imam Choudary on the show. A famous Imam and leader in the Islamic community, what you’ll hear in this full-length interview is flat-out shocking. Some highlight quotes from the video CROWDER: “Who carries out Shariah in the world most closely to your beliefs? Which country?” CHOUDARY: “Well I don’t think any of them do quite frankly but I believe that what is the project in Syria and Iraq and places in Moli, Somolia, etc are doing quite well.” Moving on into the conversation, I challenged him on the ideas of freedom and how they work with...

One in three, or 35.2 percent, of people getting federal disability insurance benefits have been diagnosed with a mental disorder, according to the latest data from the Social Security Administration (SSA). Washington, D.C., the seat of the federal government, ranked in the top-ten list of states where disabled beneficiaries were diagnosed with mental problems. In 2013, the latest data from SSA show there were 10,228,364 disabled beneficiaries, up 139,625 from 2012 when there were 10,088,739 disabled beneficiaries. Disabled beneficiaries have increased 49.7 percent from a decade ago in 2003 when there were 6,830,714 beneficiaries; and the number is up 14.3...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ STEALING THE SHOW Retired Marine Josue Barron attempts to steal the ball from a player in San Diego, Jan. 25, 2014. Barron is a member of the Naval Medical Center San Diego Wolfpack wheelchair basketball team. The Wolfpack, which includes military and civilian members, is one of 10 teams in the West Coast Conference of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Zachary Bell Canteen Mission Statement Showing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies' militaryand family members of...

An enigma spanning thousands of years, the Green Man is a symbol of mysterious origin and history. Permeating various religious faiths and cultures, the Green Man has survived countless transformations and cultural diversities, enduring in the same relative physical form to this day. Although specifics about his beginnings and his worship are not fully known, due in large part to how far back and to what initial cultures he can be traced to, it is a testament to the widespread reach of his character that he is still remembered and worshipped to this day. The Green Man is most highly...

resident Obama's recent executive action on illegal immigration, deferring deportations and giving millions of individuals access to work permits, Social Security, Medicaid and other benefits, was front and center during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday where attorney general nominee and U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch testified. Under questioning from Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, Lynch argued that regardless of an individual's lawful status in the United States, they should have the right to work. ... Attorney General Eric Holder, who Lynch will replace if confirmed, has openly stated he believes amnesty for those who entered the country illegally...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Drug Enforcement Administration abandoned an internal proposal to use surveillance cameras for photographing vehicle license plates near gun shows in the United States to investigate gun-trafficking, the agency's chief said Wednesday. DEA Administrator Michelle Leonhart said in a statement that the proposal memorialized in an employee's email was only a suggestion, never authorized by her agency and never put into action. The AP also learned that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not authorize or approve the license plate surveillance plan. Automated license plate scanners take pictures of every vehicle that passes...

Teacher pensions are a huge and growing crisis waiting to explode without major reforms, warns a new report released Tuesday by an educational think tank.“Do the math on teacher pensions and it just doesn’t add up,” argues the National Council on Teacher Quality in its report, Doing the Math on Teacher Pensions. Total unfunded teacher pension liabilities in 2014 were a whopping $499 billion dollars, the group found. That amount is surging rapidly; in 2012, the total was just $394 billion, meaning that pension debt is growing by over $50 billion a year.Some states are in a particularly huge hole....

Here’s how anti-immigrant Spokesman and the principal architect of GOP immigration policy Rep. Steve King feels toward the immigrant community: Compares them to “lazy dogs [and] livestock” Believes they should be electrified as a method of “discouragement” from coming into the U.S. Wants to callously “bus [DREAMers] back to Tijuana” Claims they “developed ‘cantaloupe’-sized calves as drug mules” Characterizes them as “deportable…” Considers immigration raids as the “right direction” in order to prevent a “slow-motion terrorist attack” (SNIP) That is why early this week, the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address deceitfully mentioned ‘immigration’ in Spanish...

Morgan said she is not worried about anyone coming after her, because she packs heat. In the five months since Jan Morgan banned Muslims from her gun range in Hot Springs, Ark., business has boomed and predictions of a lawsuit brought by federal civil rights enforcers have so far proved inaccurate. Morgan, who claims keeping Muslims out of her Gun Cave Indoor Firing Range is a matter of public safety and not a constitutional issue, says she made the decision in September after two customers she deemed suspicious visited. She said their furtive behavior and cellphone ringtones of “Allahu Akhbar”...

France must repay the EU €1.07 billion ($1.2 billion) in agricultural aid paid to farmers due to fraud and mistakes over a four-year period, the European Commission said on Tuesday. The money, about 2 percent of the €40 billion that France has received from Brussels between 2008 and 2012 under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, must be repaid in three installments up to 2017, a European source said. France was penalized for failing to check farmers’ claims for subsidies, especially on environmental issues and calculating the area of arable land. …

In his recent interview Commonweal Magazine, Archbishop Blase Cupich provides an interesting glimpse into the activities of the Extraordinary Synod. When confronted with the idea that the media’s coverage of the event may have contributed to a certain “confusion” among some of the bishops, Cupich answered rather candidly: >>The media is not to blame at all. I think the media reported what actually took place. What really took place at the synod was that a majority of the bishops voted for all the proposals that were there in the final summary document ...<< >>It’s true that three of the paragraphs...

Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” Sheriff Joe Arpaio said the media is ignoring his statistics that prove President Barack Obama’s claims of the highest deportation rate is bogus. According to Arpaio, this is because the criminal illegal immigrants are turned over to ICE, are deported, reenter the United States, commit crimes, are returned to his jail cells, and the process restarts. Arpaio said, “I did a survey for a whole year. I think I talked to you about it. Nobody will publicize it. But we had 4,500 people in jail, illegal aliens charged with many...

So here it is…drumroll…spying factoid #2…Spying was big business during the Cold War and was deemed important enough by the Soviets for them to construct exact replicas of small U.S. towns within their borders in order to properly train their spies. One such town was Vinnytsia in what is now Ukraine. In these towns, spies in training would buy groceries from a 7-Eleven, watch U.S. television and talk only in English. Once their training was complete, many would head to places like Finland to see if they could pass as Americans before finally being stationed in the States. From my...

After answering a brief survey of 3 questions I was asked an open ended question of what the Republican leaders should do. All I said was that the Republicans need to get new leaders who will stand up to Obama and it appeared to me that Speaker Boehner was a drunk. Click.