Free Republic

While world leaders gather in Katowice, Poland, for the COP24 climate summit, protesters in the streets of Paris have successfully forced French President Emmanuel Macron's hand, undercutting his efforts to impose a carbon tax on French energy sales. Macron has made climate change and lowering greenhouse gases a central component of both his domestic and foreign policies, only to face dramatic failure at the hands of his "yellow vest" countrymen. Macron's popularity has been low in France for months, and has now fallen to just a 23% approval rating. But the rioting across his country sends a frightening signal to...

Many people, the opinions of whom I greatly respect, have written on the state of politics and society in the US in such a way as to suggest the possibility of the US moving into a period of similar to what was seen in the former republic of Yugoslavia from the mid 1980’s through to the late 1990’s, referred to by many as Balkanization. I’m certainly in agreement with these bloggers and writers, Matt Bracken being just one example. The political, sociological, ethnic and racial trajectory in the US is eerily similar to that of the former Yugoslavia in many...

PARIS - Vincent Picard describes himself as a “militant ecologist.” But when protesters took to the streets to express their rage over a planned increase in France’s fuel tax, Mr. Picard joined their ranks. He acknowledges that the tax might encourage the conservation considered critical for a healthy planet. But with the nearest train station 35 minutes away, he has to drive to work every day. “I am conscious that we have reached the end of fossil fuels and that we have to modify our habits,” said Mr. Picard, a 32-year-old pastry maker from northern France. But, he added, “You...

The Environmental Protection Agency acted again Thursday to ease rules on the sagging U.S. coal industry, this time scaling back what would have been a tough control on climate-changing emissions from any new coal plants. The latest Trump administration targeting of legacy Obama administration efforts to slow climate change comes in the wake of multiplying warnings from the agency’s scientists and others about the accelerating pace of global warming. In a ceremony Thursday at the agency, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler signed a proposal to dismantle a 2015 rule that any new coal power plants include cutting-edge techniques to capture...

The CBS reboot of Murphy Brown featured a storyline where one of the show’s reporters is beaten and put in the hospital after attending a Donald Trump rally. In the episode, character Frank Fontana (Joe Regalbuto) is sent to a Trump rally to report live on the event. During the event the faux Trump singles out “fibbing Frank Fontana” and the crowd boos him, Entertainment Weekly reports. After the live shot, Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) and her crew find out that Frank was attacked and seriously injured at the rally by Trump fans.

CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill, in a Wednesday speech to the United Nations, called for violent resistance against Israel and advocated expanding Palestine “from the river to the sea,” a phrase used by those who believe that Israel should be eliminated. Hill, who has a long history of anti-Semitism, made the remarks at a U.N. event commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. He said the international community should boycott Israel and allow Palestinians more space to engage in violence against the Jewish state, arguing that violence was also employed to end “American apartheid.” "Tactics otherwise divergent...

The Trump administration is, it goes without saying, deeply anti-science. In fact, it’s anti-objective reality. But its control of the government remains limited; it didn’t extend far enough to prevent the release of the latest National Climate Assessment, which details current and expected future impacts of global warming on the United States. True, the report was released on Black Friday, clearly in the hope that it would get lost in the shuffle. The good news is that the ploy didn’t work. The assessment basically confirms, with a great deal of additional detail, what anyone following climate science already knew: Climate...

Over the past decade, attackers motivated by right-wing political ideologies have committed dozens of shootings, bombings and other acts of violence, far more than any other category of domestic extremist, according to a Washington Post analysis of data on global terrorism.

@60Minutes did a phony story about child separation when they know we had the exact same policy as the Obama Administration. In fact a picture of children in jails was used by other Fake Media to show how bad (cruel) we are, but it was in 2014 during O years. Obama separated.... ....children from parents, as did Bush etc., because that is the policy and law. I tried to keep them together but the problem is, when you do that, vast numbers of additional people storm the Border. So with Obama seperation is fine, but with Trump it’s not. Fake...

Full title: The Dick Cheney Dossier: Inside Adam McKay’s Searing Exposé of D.C.'s "Ultimate Gamesman" in 'Vice' It's the eve of the midterm elections, and Adam McKay is feeling optimistic about the Democrats' prospects of taking back the house. Still, the SNL writer turned Oscar-winning filmmaker insists he is not throwing a results-viewing party with his Hollywood friends, even as I spot an assistant carrying supplies from Whole Foods into his West Hollywood offices. Instead, McKay, looking like a college professor with a corduroy jacket and scarf, says he is planning to hang out at his house with his wife,...

Actor Jim Carrey doubled down on his criticism of President Donald Trump on a panel at Vulture Fest Sunday, describing Trump as a “melanoma” and accusing Republicans of “raping” America’s system of government. “These are not people you can deal with. You cannot be bipartisan with a criminal. A rapist needs to be removed, not negotiated with. These people are raping our system, they’re destroying it right in front of us,” Jim Carrey said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “These people have to be removed from our system because they’re bad for us,” Carrey continued. “Trump is a melanoma, and...

Filmmaker Michael Moore was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award, while Won’t You Be My Neighbor won the Best Documentary and Best Director categories at the third annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, held last night at BRIC in Brooklyn. Robert De Niro presented the award to Moore right before rushing off to appear on SNL, calling him “a true, true American hero … one of the greatest truth- tellers in this country right now.” Moore used his acceptance speech to finish his 2003 Oscar speech for Bowling for Columbine. At that ceremony, he had been pulled off the stage and...

On the two-year anniversary of Election 2016, Mary Steenburgen recalls the poignant solace she tried to offer her longtime friend Hillary Clinton after she lost that year’s bruising presidential race. “As long as we’re privileged to draw breath, life is a grace and none of us know what’s around the bend,” Steenburgen, 65, told Clinton, according to an essay the Book Club actress wrote for #StillWithHer by former White House photographer Barbara Kinney. (The book, out Nov. 1, was produced in collaboration with PEOPLE’s Sandra Sobieraj Westfall.) Steenburgen, a close personal friend of Hillary and Bill Clinton dating back to...

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s closing argument is now clear: Build tent cities for migrants. End birthright citizenship. Fear the caravan. Send active-duty troops to the border. Refuse asylum. Immigration has been the animating issue of the Trump presidency, and now — with the possibility that Republicans could face significant losses in the midterm elections on Tuesday — the president has fully embraced a dark, anti-immigrant message in the hope that stoking fear will motivate voters to reject Democrats. In a rambling speech on Thursday afternoon that was riddled with falsehoods and vague promises to confront a “crisis” at the border,...

As the fight against ISIS winds down, SyriaÂ’s minorities once again have to choose sides in the struggle for their countryÂ’s future. Syriac Christians, also known as Assyrians or Chaldeans, are one of the smallest ethnic and religious groups in Syria. But they have an important role to play in the US presence in Syria, and by extension, the politics of the entire Middle East. The Realist Review called Syriac National Council (SNC) founder Bassam Ishak to hear his perspective on US forces and the future of Syria.Before the interview, Ishak humbly warned the Realist Review that his perspective would...

The hostility she’s felt from the public recently wasn’t necessarily the last straw in television news photographer Lori Bentley-Law’s decision to quit the business after 24 years, but it was one of them. Bentley-Law’s recent blog post explaining why she was leaving Los Angeles’ KNBC-TV hit home for many colleagues. While President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media are usually centered on national outlets like CNN and The New York Times, the attitudes unleashed have filtered down to journalists on the street covering news in local communities across the country. When a president describes the press as enemies of the...

The widespread image of the polar bear and the threat of its extinction is perhaps the world’s most powerful image of climate change, but for at least one of the large environmentalist groups behind it, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), this image has become a dilemma. According to UN scientific assessments, the polar bear does not face extinction, and the common understanding that it does now stands in the way of more nuanced communication about climate change in the Arctic. “When the symbol gets bigger than the region itself and people don’t realize that the polar bear is...

The recent controversy over the Orthodox Church in Ukraine has been the subject of a lot of confusion, especially online. The following questions and answers attempt to clear up confusion in a non-partisan way that does not take sides in the dispute.Updates will be added whenever new information comes to light, so check back periodically.LAST UPDATED OCT. 18, 2018Who are the players in the current dispute and what is being disputed?The primary parties in the dispute are the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate, MP), led by Patriarch Kyrill, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (EP), led by Patriarch Bartholomew.Directly affected...

CNN's Jim Acosta: "...the president knows what mob rule and mob tactics look like because he encourages them himself." - This is a news video from television.

Experts share what you can do for your mental health amid news that Brett Kavanaugh will likely be confirmed. Brett Kavanaugh is likely being confirmed to the Supreme Court. And for many, that news feels devastating. Several women have publicly accused Kavanaugh of sexually harassing or assaulting them when he was in high school and college in the 1980s. The discussion surrounding those accusations has been particularly difficult for sexual assault victims, who have heard politicians dismiss survivors’ pain amid a barrage of news coverage and heated conversations about Kavanaugh. The judge’s controversial Supreme Court bid has also triggered memories...