Free Republic

The Republican Party’s Platform Committee adopted a draft document Tuesday that not only recognizes the unborn child’s “fundamental right to life,” but also calls for defunding Planned Parenthood and states that the GOP will “not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage.” The draft platform still has to be adopted by the full GOP Convention, which will be held in Cleveland next week. The Platform Committee, which was chaired by Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) — who has a 100 percent pro-life voting record, according to the National Right to Life Committee — and dominated by social conservatives, adopted...

A British investment company has thrown in the towel on an electric delivery truck manufacturer that it once wholly owned, saw fail, then spun off in the United States at the height of President Obama’s green energy stimulus subsidy mania. U.K.-based Tanfield Group announced at the end of June that it wrote down the value of the last 5.76 percent ownership stake it held in Smith Electric Vehicles, which received $32 million in U.S. taxpayer funds as a formerly British entity that reconstituted and relocated in Kansas City in 2009. The move by Tanfield followed Smith’s legal action filed against...

The nation’s health care tab this year is expected to surpass $10,000 per person for the first time, the government said Wednesday. The new peak means the Obama administration will pass the problem of high health care costs on to its successor. The report from number crunchers at the Department of Health and Human Services projects that health care spending will grow at a faster rate than the national economy over the coming decade. That squeezes the ability of federal and state governments, not to mention employers and average citizens, to pay. Growth is projected to average 5.8 percent from...

Theresa May entered No. 10 Downing St. on Wednesday as Britain’s new prime minister, following a bittersweet exit by David Cameron that was tinged with humor and regret. “I was the future once,” Cameron quipped as he left office. But that future now belongs to May, and it involves instability, uncertainty and tough wrangling over Britain’s departure from the European Union. […] May promised to fight for social justice in a speech that addressed “hard-working families” who have struggled during the years of instability since the 2008 financial crisis. Many of those people, fed up with remote politicians and bureaucrats,...

House conservatives have taken the first step to force an impeachment vote on IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. […] The hard-line House Freedom Caucus announced Wednesday that two members, John Fleming of Louisiana and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, were introducing a so-called privileged resolution that could result in an impeachment floor vote on Koskinen. …

An influential political lobby in Japan will do its utmost to capitalize on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s election victory and push for the constitution to be revised to allow a more active military, the group’s chairman said Wednesday. […] Tadae Takubo, chairman of Nippon Kaigi, or Japan Conference, said the war-renouncing constitution that makes Japan’s defense “defective” needs to be corrected. […] Founded in 1997, Nippon Kaigi has strived to revise the constitution to restore traditional gender roles, increase imperial worshiping and put public interest before individuals. The group is believed to be behind Abe’s comeback in 2012 and has...

The U.S. Capitol and its office buildings were briefly locked down Tuesday after suspects nearby shot at District of Columbia police with a small machine gun. Police arrested three men after stopping their car about two blocks from the Capitol, Police Chief Cathy Lanier said. Police were alerted to a man with a gun near Fort McNair in southwest Washington, about a mile and a half south of the Capitol, shortly after 4 p.m., police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck said. Lanier said officers followed the car into a tunnel that goes under the National Mall near the Capitol. …

A day after the Anglican Church of Canada narrowly voted not to authorize gay unions, questions about the integrity of the voting process emerged Tuesday, leading to a reversal of the result with the church approving the measure.More than 200 delegates attending the six-day General Synod 2016 narrowly rejected the resolution Monday night after hearing from more than 60 speakers, most of them in favor of gay marriage. However, on Tuesday — the last day of the triennial conference — some members stood up to say their ballot had not been recorded during voting late Monday, when the resolution failed...

Germany’s defense minister says Britain’s decision to leave the European Union offers an opportunity to press ahead with greater military cooperation in the bloc. Ursula von der Leyen says Britain for years “consistently blocked everything that had Europe written on it,” citing the example of a mobile European hospital some countries wanted to deploy to crisis regions. …

Japan’s Emperor Akihito has expressed his intention to retire and relinquish his title in the next few years, the country’s public television said Wednesday. NHK said the 82-year-old Akihito did not wish to remain emperor if he had to reduce his official duties. […] It was not known if he had a timeline to relinquish his title to Crown Prince Naruhito. …

Attorney General Loretta Lynch is repeatedly deflecting questions about the conclusion of the Justice Department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Despite repeated prodding from Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee, Lynch said that as attorney general it would be inappropriate for her to comment on specifics of the investigation. …

The Russian mafia is becoming “increasingly active” in Germany, with networks recruiting in German prisons and groups bringing in billions of euros each year, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has warned. “The Russian-Eurasian organized criminality is very dynamic,” BKA President Holger Münch told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. “They are already expanding in the west.” One of the most dangerous groups, according to Münch, is the so-called “Thieves in law” (Diebe im Gesetz) gang, founded in Stalin’s labor camps. The group from the former Soviet Union have their own “laws” and a secret language, and is thought to be...

Bernie Sanders may have lost out on the Democratic nomination, but he won significant influence over the party’s official policy positions, getting a draft document that largely reflected his liberal views. A marathon meeting in Orlando on Friday and Saturday marked the final deliberation of the Democratic Party’s platform before the convention later this month. A group of 187 delegates, including supporters of both Democratic candidates, crammed into a steamy hotel ballroom to pore over a draft document and offer amendments. […] The draft going into the meeting already reflected Sanders’ influence, with steps to break up large Wall Street...

Israel’s parliament passed a controversial law Monday that increases the regulation of many Israeli human rights organizations. The law approved by a vote of 57 to 48 targets groups that receive more than half their funding from foreign governments or political organizations. In practice, the law will affect liberal groups almost exclusively because hawkish groups in Israel largely rely on donations from wealthy individuals, which are exempt. The law requires organizations to state that they rely on foreign funding in all communication with public officials and on TV, newspapers, billboards and online. Representatives of these groups must also declare they...

The number of homicides committed with a firearm in the United States in 2014 was 10,945, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention&146;s report on its final data on deaths in this county for that year, which was released on June 30. The 10,945 firearm homicides in 2014 represented a 40-percent drop from the peak hit in 1993, when there were 18,253 firearm homicides in the country, according to CDC data. The 10,945 firearm homicides in the United States in 2014 equaled a rate of 3.43 per 100,000 people in the population. That was the lowest firearm homicide rate...

German property firms expect a boom in Frankfurt as financial businesses move activities and staff out of London in the wake of Brexit, an industry survey showed on Monday. A majority of 72 percent of respondents believed financial center Frankfurt, rather than rivals Dublin, Paris, or Amsterdam, would gain the most from Britain leaving the European Union, the study of 555 firms by consultants Ernst & Young (EY) found. The German property market as a whole would get a boost from Brexit, 57 percent of those polled said, with large majorities expecting prices for commercial and residential properties to increase....

“Economic giant, political dwarf” — that is how the world long viewed post-World War II Germany, the European export power reluctant to use military muscle in global conflicts. It is an image that Europe’s most populous country wants to shed as it gradually assumes a bigger defense role, within the frameworks of NATO and the European Union. That ambition, the outcome of a debate that began two decades ago, is the message of Germany’s new military roadmap, the defense ministry’s so-called White Paper, to be released Wednesday. […] The paper, the first of its kind issued in a decade, envisions...

Egypt’s foreign minister paid a rare visit to Israel on Sunday, saying that his country remains a “steadfast and unwavering” supporter of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians but warning that conditions for achieving that are deteriorating. Sameh Shoukry’s trip was the first official visit to Israel since 2007 and reflected the strong but low-profile ties that have developed between the two countries in recent years. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said Shoukry’s visit was aimed at reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. …

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, under pressure after a fatal crash involving one of his electric cars, went on Twitter Sunday to say he’s working on another “Top Secret Tesla Masterplan.” He said he hoped to publish details this week. The tantalizing message echoes an August 2006 blog post, titled “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me),” in which Musk unveiled the cars that became the Tesla Model S four-door family car and the Tesla 3 sports sedan. …

While the nation’s private sector employment grew by a solid 172,000 jobs overall in June, according to ADP, the goods-producing sector lost a staggering 36,000 jobs for the month. The Roseland-based payroll and human resources company said in its monthly National Employment Report that the services sector grew by 208,000 jobs for the month, up from the 173,000 gained in May. But the goods-producing sector followed May’s loss of 5,000 jobs in May with an even bigger loss last month. […] Among industries, manufacturing suffered the most, losing 21,000 jobs in June. Construction also lost 5,000 jobs for the month....