Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said Friday that she believes most states will ultimately comply with her agency's proposed new rules on carbon emissions. The rules, which were released earlier this year and are supposed to be finalized by June 2015, set new limits, specific to each state, on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Each state, however, will need to develop its own plan for meeting those standards. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA can impose its own plans on states that choose not to submit one, and can legally compel states to follow those...

Palin salutes the commander-in-chief at #ValuesVoterSummit

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose less than expected last week, suggesting an acceleration in job growth in September.

Employers won’t hire her. She’s been berated with epithets like “dirty Jew.” Federal agents have guarded her house because of death threats. And she’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself against accusations she orchestrated a coverup in a scandal that has come to represent everything Americans hate about the IRS. Lois Lerner is toxic — and she knows it. But she refuses to recede into anonymity or beg for forgiveness for her role in the IRS tea party-targeting scandal. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lerner said in her first press interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago....

Earlier I posted about the new poll from Gallup where the Republicans wallop the Democrats when it comes to keeping America safe. Buried in that poll was this other nugget: “Looking ahead for the next few years, which political party do you think will keep the country prosperous." Results: Republicans 49%, Democrats 40%. And how will this impact the mid terms, exactly? Well, it "does not bode well for Democratic chances," says Gallup. While these measures are by no means perfect predictors of how well a party will do in a midterm election year, the Republican Party's strength this year...

The mother of James Foley -- an American journalist beheaded by ISIS militants -- said she is "embarrassed and appalled" by how the U.S. government dealt with her son's case, telling CNN that officials even suggested family members could be charged if they raised ransom to free him. "I think our efforts to get Jim freed were an annoyance" to the U.S. government, Diane Foley told CNN's Anderson Cooper, during part of an interview that will air on CNN at 8 p.m. ET. "It didn't seem to be in (U.S.) strategic interest, if you will." Officials told Foley family members...

President Obama appeared at a Labor Day event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he told a crowd of union supporters that "American workers and the American economy are better off since I became president."Since it is widely acknowledged that Americans have given Obama record setting disapproval numbers relative to his handling of the U.S. economy - we decided to fact check this statement. First let's review how America feels about this statement. According to the latest Gallup poll, a mere 35% of the country approves of Obama's handling of the economy. NBC News/Wall St Journal reported the same 35% (with 71%...

The real perversion of justice by way of modern American racism is that black people in Ferguson – like black people in the greater St Louis metropolitan area and nationally – are marginalized economically and physically from day one. That is the real looting of Ferguson. -Black Liberal Writer With all the talk coming from America's race industry, I wanted see if I could put together a powerful compilation of images to prove their thesis. So I scoured the web and came up with some of the most illuminating images of America and racism ... (Okay, it's called click bait...

The indictment of Texas Gov. Rick Perry on two felony counts of abusing his power "potentially was the stupidest thing I´ve seen, I think, in my entire career," MSNBC political analyst Mark Halperin told MSNBC´s "Morning Joe" on Monday. "I hope some judge throws it out right away. "It´s not just kind of funny and ridiculous. But it´s an infringement on individual liberty. He´s got a first amendment right -- just because he´s the governor of Texas. And I think, like I said, it´s easy to joke about this, but this is a serious thing. It is ridiculous that he...

SAN ANTONIO — A defense attorney whose client killed two men in a drunken crash found himself before the same judge Friday, accused of contempt for allegedly telling a witness to disappear so prosecutors could not recall her during the trial. Mike McCrum vehemently denies the allegations of wrongdoing by the district attorney´s office. If visiting Judge Dick Alcala agrees the accusation is legitimate, McCrum potentially could face up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $500.

The job market is still not the greatest, but we just got one hopeful sign that it might be improving a bit. The economy added 209,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate ticked up to 6.2 percent from 6.1 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. Believe it or not, both of those numbers are encouraging. The reason the first number is encouraging is because, duh, jobs. The encouraging part of the second number, the unemployment rate, is less obvious. Normally, higher unemployment is bad news, and people seeing HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT on the evening news tonight will naturally...

Joe Scarborough on Thursday had harsh words for Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying the country was engaging in “indiscriminate” killing. “This is asinine,” said the MSNBC host and former Republican congressman. “This continued killing of women and children in a way that appears to be indiscriminate is asinine.”

Near the end of 2010, a group of telecommunications and commerce businesses joined forces to form a mobile payment venture called Isis. It was a solid brand name: Short, simple and easy to remember. Unfortunately, ISIS is now associated with a militant group based in the Middle East, so the wireless company believes a branding tweak makes sense.

The Daily Mail has obtained three racially-charged radio ads placed by organizations that worked to help incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) stage his come from behind run-off victory this week. [The ads] claimed that supporters of conservative McDaniel had connections to the Ku Klux Klan and that McDaniel had a ‘racist agenda.’ They also warned that black Democrats ‘could lose food stamps, housing assistance, student loans, early breakfast and lunch programs and disaster assistance’ if he were to become the Republican U.S. Senate nominee. ‘Vote against the tea party. Vote Thad Cochran,’ one ad said. ‘If the tea party,...

The US GDP fell at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the first quarter, its slowest rate of growth since 2009, in the middle of the recession. And yet no one seems to mind. Stock markets didn't plummet, and no one is forecasting yet another recession. A shrinking GDP is never great news, of course, but here are a few reasons why economists and markets are shaking off the biggest economic contraction in more than five years.

YIKES! We just got the third revision to Q1 GDP, and it was horrible. After an initial estimate showing a mere 0.1% gain in growth in the first quarter, the government now says the economy shrunk at a staggering 2.9% pace, making it the worst quarter Q1 2009, at the pit of the financial crisis. So should you worry? Absolutely not.

You have to hand it to the GOP establishment. When their interests are threatened, they pull out all the stops. They demonstrated that in dragging GOP senator Thad Cochran across the finish line in tonight’s runoff in Mississippi. Imagine if a tea-party candidate in some state had openly appealed to registered Libertarians to help him win a close primary runoff. There would have been howls of outrage that people who didn’t agree with Republican values on social issues and foreign policy were being invited to decide a GOP race. Well, Thad Cochran’s allies performed a version of that ploy tonight...

In Q and A with Rep. Chaffetz, Koskinen says agency did not pursue recovery because it was ‘costly’ House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., today convened a hearing with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner John Koskinen on the loss of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s email over a two year period. Under questioning from Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Koskinen said that the IRS made no effort to recover Lerner’s email archive from the six month backups after her initial computer problems in June of 2011. Question & Answer with Rep. Chaffetz: Chaffetz: Thank you Chairman, my...

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) defended President Obama from former vice president Dick Cheney’s critiques of his policy in Iraq, saying that he faults Cheney and the rest of President George W. Bush’s team for launching an invasion of Iraq that ultimately strengthened Iran. “What’s going on now, I don’t blame on President Obama,” Paul told NBC’s David Gregory. “But I do blame the Iraq War on the chaos that is in the Middle East. I also blame those who were for the Iraq war for emboldening Iran.”

It’s no secret that conservative titans Ann Coulter and Matt Drudge are close friends. But it’s always interesting to see the latter come out of his elusive shell to make a public appearance, especially so with Coulter; and even more so when it’s at a major sporting event like game four of the NBA Finals.