Free Republic

By the somewhat tamer standards of the Midwest, Scott Walker’s speech to the Iowa Freedom Summit last Saturday was a smorgasbord of red meat. In just 20 minutes, the Wisconsin governor shed the persona that brought him to the stage—the stern but affable accountant—and re-emerged as a conservative warrior who defeated the unions, defunded the abortionists, and beat back the liberals to win three statewide elections for governor. His message, in short, was that he was effective, unwavering, and uncompromising. There was no need for outreach or a “big tent.” With the right conservative message, Republicans could win elections—and win...

Formerly the "Fans of Quinn and Rose Discussion" thread. We still hold out hope that our favorite talk show hosts will come back on the air - and all indications are that they will be, very soon! As we wait, our friendly group will still meet to start the day. So if you are preparing to go to work, are getting home from work - or happily retired - stop in and say mornin' and share the latest news, discuss the weather, share a recipe, or whatever!

Police say this suspect is the commander-in-chief of a shooting and robbery. Zachary Bowyer, a President Obama look-alike known by his street name “Baby Obama,” is wanted in Denver for a December holdup that ended with the victim shot in the ankle, police said. Authorities are offering $2,000 for the apprehension of the 21-year-old baby-faced perp, who should be considered armed and dangerous.

ON JAN. 9, the government of Saudi Arabia publicly whipped a liberal Muslim writer, Raif Badawi, flogging him 50 times outside a mosque in Jeddah. It was the first installment of the 1,000 lashes to which Badawi had been sentenced — in addition to 10 years in prison and a fine of more than $250,000 — for the crime of "insulting Islam" on his former website, the Saudi Free Liberals Forum.Two days later, following the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Saudi ambassador to France joined in the great Paris solidarity march in defense of freedom of expression.Such hypocrisy was more than...

"What do you think you missed not having a dad around?" Marshawn Lynch, the grumpy, often-fined National Football League star for the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks, was asked that question. Lynch, raised on the mean streets of Oakland, California, by a single mother, said: "Nothing. My mama played both parts." When asked, however, why he finds it difficult to "trust" people, Lynch tells a story about his father: "I think it started earlier, when Mom would (take me over to my dad's) house. And when I get there, my dad like, 'Oh, OK, I be right back,' and...

A virtual Buddy Holly performance will headline a new show that’s planned to debut in Holly’s birth state of Texas during 2016. Hologram USA Entertainment will present the show in partnership with Maria Elena Holly, the star’s widow and head of Buddy Holly Licensing; plans are to use this debut to kick off a show tour. Hologram USA is already working on the hologram-like performance of the rock and roll icon, as well as on a similar show around Liberace, which will debut in Las Vegas. Through the partnership with Buddy Holly Licensing, the company has access to music and...

Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. Eight million Israelis are surrounded by some 400 million Muslims in more than 20 states. Almost all of Israel's neighbors are anti-Israeli dictatorships, monarchies or theocracies-- a number of them reduced to a state of terrorist chaos. Given the rise of radical Islam, the huge petrodollar wealth of the Middle East and lopsided demography, how has Israel so far survived? The Jewish state has always depended on three unspoken assumptions for its tenuous existence. First, a democratic, nuclear Israel can deter larger enemies. In the Cold War,...

Funk singer Sly Stone has been awarded $5 million by a Los Angeles jury in his lawsuit against a former manager and attorney he claimed diverted royalties from his music for their own benefit. The Los Angeles Superior Court announced its verdict on Tuesday, after two days of deliberations. Stone’s litigation, filed under his real name Sylvester Stewart, involved millions of dollars in royalties and stretched over almost five years. He filed suit in 2010, claiming that manager Gerald Goldstein and attorney Glenn Stone in the late 1980s induced him to sign an employment and shareholder agreement with Even Street...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a potential 2016 GOP contender who never earned a college degree, has proposed a huge cut in funding for the University of Wisconsin system over the next two years. Walker’s office pitched the plan, which is part of the governor’s budget proposal, boasting it would give the university system more discretion over its finances. But it also carries a $300 million cut and a tuition freeze for the UW system over two years. That amounts to a 13% decrease of state funding for the university system, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel....... Rebecca Blank, chancellor of...

KFC has done it again, snatching headlines around the world for its latest extreme sandwich a hot dog wrapped snugly in a deep-fried chicken patty. They’re calling it the KFC Double Down Dog, a riff off their Double Down, which replaced bread buns with deep-fried chicken fillets. Only instead of sandwiching bacon and cheese, the Double Down Dog consists of a chicken patty, cradling a chicken-based hot dog that’s topped with cheese and honey mustard relish dressing. The latest monster creation was released in the Philippines over the last two days, in limited quantities – just 50 hot dogs a...

Scientists tracking the Ebola outbreak in Guinea say the virus has mutated. Researchers at the Institut Pasteur in France, which first identified the outbreak last March, are investigating whether it could have become more contagious. More than 22,000 people have been infected with Ebola and 8,795 have died in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Scientists are starting to analyse hundreds of blood samples from Ebola patients in Guinea. They are tracking how the virus is changing and trying to establish whether it's able to jump more easily from person to person. "We know the virus is changing quite a lot,"...

Their neighbors thought they were a sales consultant and a real estate agent. He had a degree from Harvard. They had two children. They were a typical American family, except they were not. Documents released by the FBI paint a picture of the lives and the extensive training in spycraft given to a group of Russian spies sent to live in American society, including one couple found in Cambridge.

In fact, Moscow’s latest diplomatic offensive to get a treaty banning weapons in space may be shot down by one of the proposed pact's little-noticed provisions: Nobody else should get to put weapons in space, but Russia gets to keep the ones it already has. Cosmonauts regularly carry handguns on their Soyuz spacecraft — and actually, that's not unreasonable. There are practical and historical justifications.

HOW MUCH IS THAT PSYCHOLOGY DEGREE WORTH? January 28, 2015 The Republican leadership in Congress still hasn't held hearings on why college is so expensive, although I proposed the idea two weeks ago. Of course, it's been a month since the GOP took control of Congress, and they also haven't voided Obama's unconstitutional executive amnesty, passed e-Verify, a fence bill or the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Act. Democrats are on offense all the time, even when they've just had their legs cut off. They announce absurd agenda items and then indignantly demand to know why Republicans are refusing to deal with...

The owner of the flight school where popular online aviatrix Nadia Marcinko received her private and commercial pilots licenses says Marcinko also used the name Nada Marcinkova while attending the school in Palm Beach, Florida, linking the Gulfstream Girl / Global Girl to the Epstein sex scandal. Palm Beach police claim that the NY billionaire and convicted sex-offender identified Marcinkova as his friend to some of the teenagers he paid to have sex with him at his Palm Beach mansion in 2005 - 2006. After a long investigation, the Palm Beach police presented a shocking account of how Epstein lured high school-aged girls...

AMMAN/TOKYO - An audio message purportedly from a Japanese journalist being held by Islamic State militants said a Jordanian air force pilot also captured by the group would be killed unless an Iraqi female prisoner in Jordan was released by sunset on Thursday. The message appeared to postpone a previous deadline set on Tuesday in which the journalist, Kenji Goto, said he would be killed within 24 hours if the Iraqi was not freed. The latest audio recording, which could not be verified by Reuters, was posted on YouTube early on Thursday. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a...

Cuban President Raul Castro demanded on Wednesday that the United States return the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the two nations re-establish normal relations. Castro told a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that Cuba and the U.S. are working toward full diplomatic relations but 'if these problems aren't resolved, this diplomatic rapprochement wouldn't make any sense.' ....The U.S. established the military base in 1903, and the current Cuban government has been demanding the land's return since the 1959 revolution that brought...

When my ex-husband and I divorced my economic situation took an abrupt downturn. My son and I moved from a luxurious home in an affluent suburb to a small apartment in a blue collar neighborhood. Our new home had none of the frills and extra amenities like the home we left behind. It was elbow-cracking small, the unreliable air conditioning made it heavy with heat in the Texas summers, and the neighbors were sometimes sketchy. But it was the best my budget could afford. My son and I went from being part of the upper class to living below the...

The plane was in good condition and the crew were all certified, said Mardjono Siswosuwarno, the chief investigator for Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee. ... Investigators have submitted their preliminary report into the crash, officials said Tuesday, but it's unclear when it will be released fully to the public. Co-pilot Remi Emmanuel Plesel, 46, had less flying time than the captain with 2,275 hours with AirAsia Indonesia. He was also president of a French pilot association. The captain of the ill-fated airliner, known only as Irianto -- as many Indonesians go by one name -- had more than 20,000 flying...

Australians were among the largest contingent of foreign jihadists killed in the battle for Kobani, a senior US state department official has said, after Kurdish forces announced the “liberation” of the Syrian city on Monday. A coalition of Kurdish and Syrian rebel fighters claimed full control over Kobani, located less than a mile from the Turkish border, after a bloody four-month siege by the militia group known as Islamic State (Isis or Isil). Their victory was confirmed by a senior US state department official on Tuesday, who told AFP: “[Isis] is now, whether on order or whether they are breaking...

SYDNEY – A hostage who died during a siege in a downtown Sydney cafe was killed when she was struck by fragments of a bullet fired from a police officer's gun as authorities stormed in to end the 16-hour standoff, a lawyer told an inquest on Thursday. Katrina Dawson, a 38-year-old lawyer who was among 18 people taken hostage last month by a gunman, died after being hit by six fragments of a police bullet that had ricocheted off a hard surface, Jeremy Gormly, a lawyer assisting the coroner, told the Glebe Coroner's Court. One fragment struck a major blood...

She says she’s interested in running for president, but Sarah Palin is not backing that interest up with action… “I see no activity, no hires, no grassroots, and there is no structure to the volunteer organization for Palin that existed four years ago,” said Craig Bergman, a Republican consultant who worked with the Organize4Palin group in Iowa in 2011. Myrna Beeber, who oversaw 11 counties as a regional coordinator for the group in 2011, attended Palin’s speech in Des Moines on Saturday and said she still counts herself among Palin’s supporters. But she hasn’t been in touch with anyone about...

Dear Friends in Jesus and Mary, This is an excellent Catholic Classic in more ways than one. This is a Popular Abridgement of 4 Volumes which exists. There are several books written on "Our Blessed Mother" - based on Scripture, Her Apparitions, Private Revelations by the Fathers of the Church, the Saints etc but none has been beautifully revealed as that by the Venerable Mary of Agreda titled : "CITY OF GOD". Few have heard about her and still fewer know about this book :"CITY OF GOD". The Divine History and Life of the Virgin Mother of God. It is...

King Minus ruled a prosperous and powerful nation, its economy was the envy of the world. Minus was proud of this, and he was proud to be the leader of such a fine kingdom. Then one night a red lizard appeared to him in a dream and it talked to him. “Oh sure, the kingdom is strong and rich. That is a fine thing indeed, but there are still a lot of poor people and can't you do something for them?” The king responded that red lizards appearing in dreams seemed a bit demonic and why should he listen to...

The boy held a knife to a fourth-grade girl’s leg, the child told KTLA Tuesday, adding that he said “If you snitch, you get stitches.” The girl’s mother first brought the story to KTLA’s attention. The girl’s mother said she was not satisfied with an in-school suspension that she was given to the unidentified boy. Her daughter missed nine days of school after the Jan. 9 incident, she said.

After a hiatus of six long years, US astronauts will finally launch to space in a revolutionary new pair of private crew capsules under development by Boeing and SpaceX, starting in 2017, that will end our sole source reliance on the Russians for launching our astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Two years from now, crews will start flying to space aboard the first US commercial spaceships, launching atop US rockets from US soil, said officials from Boeing, SpaceX and NASA at a joint news conference on Monday, Jan. 26. The human rated spaceships – also known as ‘space...

Parents of the students being barred from campus will get a phone call from the district’s nursing staff and a letter and phone call from the county health department, district officials said. Parents also were advised to watch for symptoms in their children, including fevers or rashes.

When Democrats were looking for evidence of a Republican war on women, they overlooked Exhibit A — Sarah Palin. This isn’t to say that Palin was part of the war on women, though many Democrats would say so. Rather, she was one of the war’s most conspicuous victims — fragged, you might say, by her own troops. And yet, she’s back again. And — yet again — she’s assuming her default position of presidential tease. Yes, she’s “seriously interested” in running for president. As evidence, she gave an utterly befuddling speech last weekend in Iowa, where other likely candidates were...

Just days after Iowa Governor Terry Brandstad kicked off a campaign to promote the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) as a “candidate” in the 2016 presidential race, it was basically a no-show at the conservative Freedom Summit featuring many presidential hopefuls. Asked about the RFS in an interview with the Des Moines Register on Friday, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said he would continue his opposition to the law as “a matter of principle.” One of the potential candidates who received some positive reviews at the summit was Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who was recently criticized by biofuels producers in his...

She was just criticized in Saudi Arabia for not wearing a headscarf, but even at home she’s not allowed to say what she wants. First ladies should be more than decorative.It must be very strange to be Michelle Obama. You are intelligent, capable, you have opinions and charisma, and yet you are fundamentally mute—your public utterances are scripted and tightly controlled. You are allowed to talk about broccoli and children’s exercise, and safe, non-inflammatory topics. The only time the public sees the Michelle Obama fire, thrillingly, is when she is on the campaign stump for her husband. Even when scripted...

Rep. Trey Gowdy came out swinging at Tuesday’s hearing of his Select Committee, laying into Democrats for playing political games and blasting the State Department for refusing to produce documents and for preventing witnesses from testifying before the committee. ... At the hearing, the State Department’s liaison officer to Congress said that more documents would be produced in the coming days, including emails from Secretary of State Clinton – giving the lie to oft-repeated Democrat claims that everything relating to Benghazi was already on the public record. ... two very real stand-down orders were issued that night by Secretary Clinton,...

Gov. Tom Wolf stood with a small group of lawmakers Wednesday morning to rally new efforts behind bills that would extend basic anti-discrimination protections statewide on the basis of sexual orientation. For Pennsylvania, a state where in most municipalities a person can still be fired from his job or denied housing because of his or her sexual orientation, Wolf said the extended anti-discrimination bills fit the state's heritage perfectly. "Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn on the basis of tolerance. On the basis of religious freedom," Wolf noted. U.S. District Judge John Jones gave the LGBT movement a push with...

NAGASAKI – A hotel with robot staff and face recognition instead of room keys will open this summer in Huis Ten Bosch in Nagasaki Prefecture, the operator of the theme park said Tuesday. The two-story Henn na Hotel is scheduled to open July 17. It will be promoted with the slogan “A Commitment for Evolution,” Huis Ten Bosch Co. said. The name reflects how the hotel will “change with cutting-edge technology,” a company official said. This is a play on words: “Henn” is also part of the Japanese word for change. Robots will provide porter service, room cleaning, front desk...

When small and medium-sized businesses are dying faster than they’re being born, so is free enterprise,” writes Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO of Gallup. “And when free enterprise dies, America dies with it.” For six years, the number of small businesses closing has exceeded the number of businesses starting. The number of business deaths exceeded births in 2008 for the first time in US history and has gotten worse in the ensuing years. Since 2010, the rate of small business closures has increased. In the 1980s, the number of new businesses exceeded those closing by more than 100,000 every year....

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)After a grand jury decided in November not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, many shifted their attention to a federal investigation into the killing. But on Wednesday, officials told CNN that federal investigators didn't find enough evidence and that Justice Department prosecutors won't recommend civil rights charges against Wilson. Attorney General Eric Holder, who has the final say in the matter, has said he will announce his decision before he leaves office, which is expected to be by the spring. The news that emerged Wednesday is likely to upset those...

NEW YORK – A Soros-funded group arguing to replace the U.S. passport with a North American passport appears ready to take up the mantle of championing the concept of a European Union-style regional government to supersede the sovereignty of the United States, Mexico and Canada, fulfilling the dream of the late American University professor Robert Pastor. The future of the U.S. lies in North America, not in the United States as a sovereign nation, contends the New America Foundation, a Washington-based leftist think-tank with ties to Jonathan Soros, son of famed leftist billionaire George Soros.

Football fans might want to start pretending there is something in their eye now in advance of Sunday’s big game, because if Budweiser’s newest Clydesdale commercial has anything to say about it, viewers will be bawling by halftime.

ISIS militants have threatened to behead Obama in the White House in a video released on Jan. 26. The video shows ISIS militants standing in the streets of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, following an artillery barrage on the city by Kurdish Peshmerga forces. In front of the militants is seated a Kurdish soldier who is executed at the end of the video.

Classic Catholic Converts Paperback by Charles Connor Classic Catholic Converts presents the compelling stories of over 25 well-known converts to Catholicism from the 19th and 20th centuries. It tells of powerful testimonials to God's grace, men and women from all walks of life in Europe and America whose search for the fullness of truth led them to the Catholic Church. It is the witness of brilliant intellectuals, social workers, scientists, authors, film producers, clergy, businessmen, artists and others who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, studied and prayed their way into the Church. Fr. Charles Connor writes insightful and...

We would like to take this opportunity to separate fact from fiction: There was never a Muslim prayer – or a prayer of any specific religion at the Stock Show this year. Because the Stock Show is an annual community event that attracts many visitors from around the world, country and state each year, last spring, we established a faith-based committee consisting of a wide range of local clergy. We based our decision on and selected our participants from the Mayor’s Faith Cabinet Directory. We invited each participant to provide a one-minute prayer to include the safety of the contestants,...

GUSTINE, Texas — A group of students at an elementary school in Texas were apparently asked to lower their pants for a poop inspection on Monday. School educators told two dozen students they were regularly finding feces on the gym floor. The students were then separated into groups of boys and girls and ordered to “pull down their pants” so administrators could “check if they could find anything.”

For many people who didn’t grow up in or around New York City, there are a few things that come to mind when they hear the name “Brooklyn.” Many automatically think of hipsters and indie rock concerts. Some think of artsy lofts and farmers markets. Others think of “brownstone Brooklyn,” where one can potentially afford a cute home and raise a middle-class family without the distance and suburban-like qualities of Queens. What people typically don’t think about are the underprivileged communities that exist here, many of which have become home to people priced out of their old homes in brownstone...

January 29, 2015Thursday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Heb 10:19-25 Brothers and sisters: Since through the Blood of Jesus we have confidence of entrance into the sanctuary by the new and living way he opened for us through the veil, that is, his flesh,and since we have “a great priest over the house of God,� let us approach with a sincere heart and in absolute trust, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.Let us hold unwaveringly to our confession that gives us hope, for he...

Mike Littwin If you haven’t heard the news, let me be the one to break it to you: Hillary Clinton is definitely running for president (OK, you knew that), and the two leading contenders to be her running mate are reportedly Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and Colorado’s own senator… Michael Bennet. I’m not making this up. It was right there in Politico, under the byline of Washington insider Mike Allen, who got it from people deep inside Hillaryland, where the talk is that Bennet and Kaine have the inside track. (Others mentioned: Sen. Cory Booker, HUD Secretary Julian Castro,...

Yesterday, Mormon leaders announced a kind of via media on gay rights. In a public statement, leaders agreed to …support legislation where it is being sought to provide protections in housing, employment and some other areas where LGBT people do not have protections, while ensuring that religious freedom is not compromised.In other words, the church proposes to give a little in order to get a little. If I understand their statement of principles correctly, they are now willing to acknowledge sexual orientation as a protected class along with religion, race, and sex. They are willing to do this in certain...

How is it possible that a president can win re-election by a relatively comfortable margin while receiving fewer raw votes than his first election? Enter Mitt Romney. A simple data comparison is very telling. That comparison is the Romney raw vote vs. all votes for congressional Republicans in a given state. Crunching the numbers, Romney significantly underperformed the Republican congressional vote totals in multiple states. In North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin -- all presidential swing states -- Mitt Romney underperformed the total raw votes cast for all Republican congressional candidates by an average of 3 percent. That means that...

A big endorsement for the insurgent campaign of former Adams County Republican Party chairman Steve House for chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, via a letter to the Colorado Statesman–Attorney General Cynthia Coffman would like current GOP chairman Ryan Call to hold this icepick for her. In his back. I write today to encourage your support of Steve House for Chairman of the State Republican Party. (SNIP) Steve House's stated willingness to forgo the generous salary Call had enjoyed could be a major selling point with central committee members, who have groused for years about Call and predecessor Dick Wadhams...

(Reuters) - Cuba will not accept any interference from the United States, President Raul Castro said on Wednesday, warning that meddling in its internal affairs would make rapprochement between the two countries "meaningless." His comments came after U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, the highest-ranking U.S. government official to visit the island in nearly 40 years, last week met with dissidents a day after talks with Cuban government officials. "Everything appears to indicate that the aim is to foment an artificial political opposition via economic, political and communicational means," Castro told a summit in Costa Rica. "If these problems...

Senator to AG Nominee Loretta Lynch: 'You're Not Eric Holder, Are You?' Jan 28, 2015 By MIKE LEVINE "You're not Eric Holder, are you?" That question, posed to Loretta Lynch nearly two hours into her confirmation hearing to be the next attorney general, seemed to encapsulate what every Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee was likely thinking. "No, I'm not," Lynch assured Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, with a wry smile. "I will be myself. I will be Loretta Lynch [if confirmed.]"

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica—Cuban President Raúl Castro demanded Wednesday that the U.S. return the base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the two nations re-establish normal relations. Mr. Castro told a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that Cuba and the U.S. are working toward full diplomatic relations but “if these problems aren’t resolved, this diplomatic rapprochement wouldn’t make any sense.” Mr. Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Dec. 17 that they would move toward renewing full diplomatic relations by reopening embassies in...