Free Republic

EARLIER this month, my iPhone vanished. I looked up its location on an app called Find My Friends that my wife and I use, and I had a shock: The app said my phone was in a house 15 miles away, in a neighborhood that I’d never visited. I drove there. It was night. The house looked creepy. My wife stayed in the car, cellphone in hand, ready to summon the cavalry. I walked to the front door and rang the doorbell. Nothing. The lights were on, so I rang again and knocked hard. I spent five minutes ringing the...

For almost two years, an unmanned space plane bearing a remarkable resemblance to NASA’s space shuttle has circled the Earth, performing a top-secret mission. It’s called the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle — but that’s pretty much all we know for certain. Officially, the only role the Pentagon acknowledges is that the space plane is used to conduct experiments on new technologies. Theories about its mission have ranged from an orbiting space bomber to an anti-satellite weapon. The truth, however, is likely much more obvious: According to intelligence experts and satellite watchers who have closely monitored its orbit, the X-37B is...

Was Muslim convert Alton Nolen, who allegedly beheaded co-worker Colleen Hufford and stabbed another woman in Oklahoma on Sept. 25, inspired by ISIS, the Islamist group that rules large parts of Syria and Iraq? (ISIS is also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ISIL, Islamic State, and Da`esh.) Law enforcement and the media have, as usual, distanced the attack from Islam and terrorism, implying the alleged crime is an example of “workplace violence” due to Nolen’s recent firing from Vaughan Foods. But co-workers report Nolen had a history of attempting to convert them to the Muslim faith....

Lessons from Philadelphia's mandatory African American History classes. This summer, in Missouri, America got an awful tutorial in the realities of racism. We were taught—yet again, through bullets and teargas­—what it means to be black in this country. There is much to be done to prevent future Fergusons, of course. But as a teacher, I find myself wondering what our schools can contribute. In Philadelphia, where I live and teach high school, we have a course that could help to improve race relations. But some students believe that it doesn’t go far enough. Here in Philly, students are required to...

Dems freaking out. Remember Joni Ernst? She’s the pig-castrating, conservative candidate for Senate out of Iowa who took the internet by storm earlier this year with her campaign video claiming she’ll “make big spenders squeal” when she gets to Washington. Since she kicked off her campaign, Ernst has been seen as a long-shot to take the seat that had been held for 30 years by Democrat Tom Harkin, but a recent poll shows that her Dem opponent Bruce Braley is now running defense. Via the Des Moines Register: Ernst leads 44 percent to 38 percent in a race that has...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton is the one figure uniting religious conservatives frustrated by a leaderless Republican Party that's divided over foreign policy, immigration and social issues. The prospect of another Clinton White House stirred anguish at the Values Voter Summit this weekend where hundreds of conservative activists debated the GOP's future and warned that the acknowledged but unannounced 2016 Democratic front-runner would cement what they see as President Barack Obama's attack on religious freedom....

The rationalizations for Obama’s failures are already beginning, and Tom Friedman employs the laziest of all strategies, tearing down a great man to make a small man look bigger. In his Sunday column in the New York Times, Friedman makes a number of highly dubious points. These days there is a lot of “if-only-Obama-could-lead-like-Reagan” talk by conservatives. I’ll leave it to historians to figure out years from now who was the better president. On the question of the domestic economy, there can be little doubt. Reagan inherited far higher unemployment and high inflation, and within a year or so had...

Big, busy Morning Jolt to close out the week — an appalling failure of immigration law enforcement, an indictment in that long-forgotten GSA conference scandal, another trip down memory lane for a beloved prematurely-canceled television show, and then this glaring change in our national politics: Funeral Services for the Anti-War Movement Will Be Held Next Week Howard Kurtz writes the obituary of the anti-war movement. Born in 2003, the movement experienced sudden difficulties in January 2009, struggled and limped along for the past few years, and finally collapsed in the street in front of the White House least week: Medea...

U.S. Army Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl was described as a hero by President Obama in a White House Rose Garden ceremony this past summer. This was nothing more than a dishonest stage-managed public relations stunt featuring the president and Bergdahl's grateful parents. Against strong objections from some U.S. military advisers, the president released five dangerous senior Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Bergdahl. Paul Sperry of the Hoover Institution recently wrote an authoritative article on Bergdahl in the New York Post. This has “become a political powder keg for President Obama,” he said. The headline of his piece —...

President Barack Obama on Saturday said the widespread mistrust of law enforcement that was exposed by the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri, is corroding America, not just its black communities, and that the wariness flows from significant racial disparities in the administration of justice. Speaking at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual awards dinner, Obama said these suspicions only harm communities that need law enforcement the most....

Events in Afghanistan and the Middle East have awakened the Western world to the existence of an existential threat. We are not confronting a specific grievance that could be remedied by negotiation. We are not faced simply with rogue regimes and insurgent groups that can be dealt with through sanctions and reciprocal menaces. The threat is rooted in biological and cultural conditions that we cannot change by politics, and which have in any case pushed politics aside. The Middle East is, as we are discovering, not one thing: on the contrary, it is a patchwork of communities whose peaceful coexistence...

The parents of slain 18-year-old Michael Brown said Saturday that, almost two months after his shooting, they remain deeply skeptical that they will receive justice for their son through the local prosecutor, and they have more faith in the federal probe into the circumstances surrounding his death. Members of Brown’s family said they have still had almost no interaction with the Ferguson Police Department or St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch. Two days after Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson released a video apologizing to the family for the fact that Brown’s body lay in the street for several hours after...

At the Values Voter Summit, the Texan highlights his strong beliefs on conservative issues.In an already crowded field of likely contenders for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Ted Cruz has found his way to stand out against potential primary opponent Rand Paul: championing the most fundamental planks of the conservative base. In a passionate speech Friday morning to conservatives at the Values Voter Summit, Cruz left no room for doubt about where he stands on the social issues that—albeit amid party conflict—still define the GOP. "How do we win? We defend the values that are American values," he boomed. "We...

Winston Churchill once said, “You have enemies? Good. That means you stood up for something in your life.” Is no instance is this quote more applicable than the tenure of Attorney General Eric Holder, who stepped down on Thursday after leading the Department of Justice for six years and in, turn, became a prime target for Republicans intent on destroying everything that both he and the Obama Administration stood for. Despite constant attacks, as well as deliberate misinformation by Republicans, Holder stood strong and for six years became a champion for civil rights, gay rights, and voting rights. Holder himself...

President Obama, Ban Ki-moon and 300,000 others showed up in New York City this week to support the use of modern technologies and cleaner fuels. But at least four notable heads-of-state stayed home, each of whom is just as important in the battle against global warming. Missing: China, India, Russia and Canada. While it may seem hard to reconcile that some of the globe’s biggest polluters skipped the event — they still sent delegations as a show of respect — it is not necessarily a blow to the cause. That’s because of unconventional shale gas — and the wealth of...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The parents of Michael Brown said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press they were unmoved by the apology of the Ferguson, Missouri, police chief gave weeks after their unarmed 18-year-old son was killed by a police officer. Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, said, "yes," when asked if Chief Tom Jackson should be fired, and his father, Michael Brown Sr., said rather than an apology, they would rather see Officer Darren Wilson arrested for the death of their son on Aug. 9. "An apology would be when Darren Wilson has handcuffs, processed and charged with murder," Brown Sr. said....

Conservative scholar and talk radio host Mark Levin said the GOP is "a party in trouble" that must nominate a bold conservative for president in 2016 if they do not want to get walloped yet again. Speaking at Values Voter Summit on Saturday with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Levin, who is cementing himself as the intellectual godfather for conservatives in the age of Obama, said moderate candidates favored by the establishment and stand for nothing will never appeal to Americans who are hungry for leadership. "It's very, very, important that we nominate a conservative for the first time...

Officers lament new use of force policy, established after DOJ report found pattern of excessive force.A Seattle police department internal email said officers aren’t using enough force and that the softer approach could endanger both the police and the public, local media reported. The letter, obtained by local television news network KIRO 7, comes amid a national dialogue on excessive force by law enforcement in the wake of racially-charged protests in Ferguson, Missouri, where black teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white officer, Darrell Wilson, on Aug. 9. But officers of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) argue...

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz won the Value Voters Summit presidential straw poll on Saturday. The crowd burst onto applause on Saturday, as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins announced that Cruz won 25 percent of votes at the annual Washington conference. The victory is a big victory to the Republican firebrand and Tea Party icon, coming just a day after he drew standing ovations with a religious and emotional speech that blasted ObamaCare, congressional Democrats and called for Republicans to take over the White House in 2016. Cruz also won the straw poll in 2013. Coming in second was...

Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 92: When President Abraham Lincoln met with free black leaders in 1862, what did he propose? Today marks the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s “shot heard ’round the world.” I’m referring, of course, to the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation he fired off from the White House on...