Free Republic

When the Supreme Court rules about whether to impose same-sex “marriage” on the entire nation, the House of Representatives will remain mum on the subject. House Speaker John Boehner confirmed that the Republican-controlled body will not weigh in on either side of the constitutional issue. “I don’t expect that we’re going to weigh in on this,” Boehner said at a press conference last Thursday. “The court will make its decision and that’s why they’re there, to be the highest court in the land.” The House's decision effectively abandons the legal field to federal institutions that support the redefinition of marriage....

Russia will produce 560,000 fewer barrels of oil per day by 2020 as Western sanctions and low oil price slice into output, according to a report released Tuesday by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Russia, one of the world's largest oil exporters, faces a "perfect storm of collapsing prices, international sanctions and currency depreciation," and will likely emerge as the oil industry's "top loser," from cheap oil, the report by the Paris-based organization said. By 2020 Russia will produce only 10.4 million barrels per day (bpd), the IEA said, down from 10.9 million bpd last year — a fall of...

As our colleague Al Kamen notes, Attorney General Eric H. Holder over the weekend politely declined an MSNBC host's offer to "quack like a duck." (After all, who wants to see this headline: "Watch Eric Holder quack like a duck.") But the exchange provided some insights into his demeanor and, by extension, that of President Obama.

The former chief financial officer of Trinity Broadcasting, the nation’s largest Christian broadcasting network, has filed a lawsuit against her former company and its top bosses for allegedly threatening her with a loaded gun when she objected to “unlawful distributions” of $100 million to themselves and others. The lawsuit was filed Jan. 29 by Brittany Koper, the granddaughter of TBN founder Paul Crouch Sr., who died last year, and her husband, Michael Koper, against Trinity Christian Center, International Christian Broadcasting, Matthew Crouch, Janice Crouch and John Casoria. Brittany Koper was TBN’s CFO and treasurer until she was fired in 2011,...

Thankfully, Democrats in New Mexico, didn’t fair so well in their recent push for gun control. The Bloomberg initiated “universal background checks” failed in the Regulatory and Public Affairs Committee, 4-3 along party lines.

Spider-Man will appear in an upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film and Marvel is coming on board to produce future “Spider-Man” films with Sony, the two studios announced Monday. Under the deal, the new Spider-Man will first appear in a film from Marvel’s Cinematic Universe (MCU). Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next installment of its “Amazing Spider-Man” franchise, on July 28, 2017, in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago.

Brian Williams’ inability to recall and truthfully report the events concerning his helicopter coming under fire in Iraq single-handedly calls into question the lack of journalistic integrity among today’s American journalists and taints the entire field of journalism. While numerous instances of reporting fallacies, including the unraveling of the Rolling Stones UVA rape story, have recently flooded social media timelines and dominated newscasts, none delivers a stronger punch to the gut than when the poster boy of American journalism is found to be no more than a highly paid liar. In 2014, a Gallup poll showed Americans’ trust in mass...

There’s no question that this administration has lost all legitimacy and the stench of their numerous scandals is beginning to reach even the loftiest of America’s elites Last week Gallup CEO Jim Clifton took issue with the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) claim that unemployment in America was now hovering somewhere in the vicinity of 5.6%. Clifton said these numbers were “totally misleading” and maintains that the real percentage of unemployed Americans is closer to double the BLS figure. Apparently the BLS counts someone who is working two or three hours per week as employed. They do not count as...

When Ukrainian army officers came to the Ukrainian village of Velikaya Znamenka to tell the men to prepare to be drafted, they weren’t prepared for what happened next. As the commanding officer was speaking, a woman seized the microphone and proceeded to tell him off: "We’re sick of this war! Our husbands and sons aren’t going anywhere!" She then launched into a passionate speech, denouncing the war, and the coup leaders in Kiev, to the cheers of the crowd. What she did is now a crime in Ukraine: the only reason she wasn’t arrested on the spot is that the...

I only heard the sound bites from President Obama's address at the National Prayer Breakfast and don't know the full extent of his remarks. But what I got from what I did hear seemed to be a call for people to understand that what the evil ISIS is doing is not a part of Islam and that present day Christians should be carrying around the shame from events that happened many centuries ago.

How did the federal student loan program rack up such massive debt so quickly? Let's take a look at Obama's recent reform efforts and programs to help provide relief to student borrowers. A few days ago, Politico revealed a little gem hidden in the Obama budget: “In obscure data tables buried deep in its 2016 budget proposal, the Obama administration revealed this week that its student loan program had a $21.8 billion shortfall last year, apparently the largest ever recorded for any government credit program.” That’s a nearly $22 billion loss—for one program, for one year. Politico described how that...

Jihad is not radical, and it is not extreme, to Muslims. Jihad is the tool through which Islam is working to dominate the world. The United States Government, the Mainstream Media, and the demands of Political Correctness all label Muslims committing terrorism as being “extremists.” We constantly ask where the peaceful Muslims are. We are told that Islam is a Religion of Peace, and “radicals” who are committing atrocities in the name of Islam are not the true representation of Islam. The White House has gone so far as to label acts of terrorism as being “workplace violence,” or “violence...

The charitable foundation run by Hillary Clinton and her family has received as much as $81m from wealthy international donors who were clients of HSBC’s controversial Swiss bank. Leaked files from HSBC’s Swiss banking division reveal the identities of seven donors to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation with accounts in Geneva. They include Frank Giustra, Canadian mining magnate and one of the foundation’s biggest financial backers, and Richard Caring, the British retail magnate who, the bank’s internal records show, used his tax-free Geneva account to transfer $1m into the New York-based foundation. Hillary Clinton has expressed concern over...

The Obama administration is expected to formally announce a new cybersecurity agency Tuesday afternoon, following a string of high-profile cyber-attacks on U.S. companies. A senior administration official told Fox News the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC), modeled on the National Counterterrorism Center, is part of "a comprehensive strategy" to tackle what it calls "one of the gravest national security dangers that the United States faces." The official said the center is being established by presidential memorandum, under authority from a 2004 intelligence law. According to the administration, they plan to use existing funds in the 2015 budget and are...

Welcome to a coming free West run by Obama hand-picked obots where the term ‘Islamic terrorism’ now lost in America will be totally removed from the lexicon of the world. Lib-left world ‘leaders’ , soft as fleece on Islamic terrorism, go out of their way to hide the meaning of Islamic terrorism under a wooly blanket called “extremism”. The upside-down world they create leans heavily on projection and distortion in which they add insult to injury by smearing their perceived dissidents as “extremists” and watch with glee as the mainstream media repeat the smears. As bad as it is, count...

Once again the crisis in Greece is threatening the unity of the entire euro zone. Many analysts are asking what must be done to restore viability to the Union's weakest link. Lost in this discussion is that modern Greece, formed in 1830, has never really been required to stand on its own. Generations of support from abroad, typically given for strategic reasons, has created a false sense of prosperity in the country and has prevented the Greeks from accepting the realities of their current situation. When Greece fought for its independence against the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s, the struggle...

Dear Legislators: I am writing to ask the Regulatory Reform Committee to examine why the Michigan Liquor Control Commission continues to maintain “post and hold” rules designed to facilitate tacit price collusion between Michigan’s beer and wine wholesalers. The result is to keep prices of those products artificially high, which pads the bottom line of a handful of politically well-connected special interest beneficiaries at the expense of consumers. How much does this cost the residents you represent? One study estimates that post and hold rules raise the price of beer and wine products by 6.4 percent to 30 percent. These...

An Indiana state senator wants to change the way US senators are elected. Until the 17th Amendment was ratified a century ago, senators weren't elected directly, but by state legislatures. Charlestown State Senator Jim Smith says the idea was to make senators responsive to their states‘ concerns. He argues the switch to direct election has contributed to a shift in the balance of power from the states to the federal government. Smith says it‘s separated senators from state concerns and made it harder to remove them. "As the needs of the state of Indiana change," says Smith,"then we would essentially...

The atmosphere surrounding Brian Williams has turned so toxic that it’s not clear when—or even if—he’ll be able to return to the anchor chair. The original plan—Williams apologizes, takes himself off the air for a few days, schmoozes with Letterman, and slides back into his job—has crumbled. The apology was weak and inaccurate, too fleeting to heal the wound over telling a lie about his chopper in Iraq having been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. His statement that he had decided as managing editor to suspend himself made it look like nobody at NBC is in charge, that he is...

Another US-friendly regime has folded completely, and after bumbling US foreign intervention in Libya and Egypt made the countries into terrorist breeding grounds where Americans are kidnapped on sight or worse, it is now Yemen's turn: another country in the Middle East whose president until recently was backed by the US government, and which will now be nothing more than civilian casualty fodder for remote-controlled US drones. YEMENI EMPLOYEES SAY US AMBASSADOR IN YEMEN INFORMS STAFF THE EMBASSY IS CLOSING DOWN COMPLETELY, AMBASSADOR TO LEAVE BY WEDNESDAY For those Americans who are still on location, fear not: you are in...