Free Republic

The United States could soon be pumping more oil than any country on earth.The International Energy Agency said Friday that "explosive" increases in U.S. oil output would push the country ahead of Saudi Arabia this year and put it in a position to challenge top producer Russia. "This year promises to be a record-setting one for the U.S.," the IEA said. "Relentless growth should see the U.S. hit historic highs." That could be enough, it said, for U.S. production to "rival" that of Russia, which has partnered with Saudi Arabia on efforts to keep oil prices high by throttling output...

If you're a Republican Trump supporter, the last few months have offered little in the way of positive polling news.  The last few days, however, have offered several glimmers of hope, all of which are linked to the robust economy.  We've been covering the drumbeat of upbeat economic news -- from low unemployment, to widespread optimism, to strong growth, to a booming stock market.  Here's a new piece of the larger puzzle, via the Washington Examiner: New applications for unemployment insurance benefits plunged by 41,000 to 220,000 in the second week of 2018, the Labor Department reported Thursday, the lowest level...

President Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did not reach a deal on DACA during a Friday meeting. Trump And Schumer Fail To Reach A DACA Deal “No deal was reached” in the meeting, a White House official told reporters. We are told there is no deal after WH mtg between Trump/Schumer — Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) January 19, 2018 Schumer said that he made “progress” with the president but they were unable to reach any official deal in the “long and detailed meeting.” “We made some progress but we still have a good number of disagreements. The discussion...

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is one of the key economic constructs where DC politicians show their UniParty corporate stripes. [Another is immigration usurpation]  The professional political class within both parties are aligned in common cause to retain both open-border immigration access (cheap labor), and multinational corporation control over North American Trade. Decades of carefully constructed legislation, written by corporate lobbyists to the benefit of their crony-constituents on Wall Street, are at risk from President Trump’s America-First economic trade platform which includes exiting NAFTA. Democrats and Republicans who have been purchased by the massive lobbying of the U.S....

Prime minister says it's not up to him to determine who the Aga Khan invites to his residences Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he and former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry talked about the then-incoming Trump administration and the general state of the world when the two of them were on the Aga Khan's private island in late 2016. During an interview this week with The Canadian Press, Trudeau shed a bit more light on his direct interactions with Kerry, who happened to be at the spiritual leader's island in the Bahamas at the same time as the prime...

The Canadian energy giant TransCanada said Thursday it’s prepared to move ahead with the long-awaited Keystone XL oil pipeline and plans to start construction next year, laying to rest rumors that it would abandon the project in the wake of regulatory setbacks in Nebraska. In a statement, the company said it’s beginning to work with Nebraska landowners to secure necessary easements to allow the pipeline to go forward. “Over the past 12 months, the Keystone XL project has achieved several milestones that move us significantly closer to constructing this critical energy infrastructure for North America,” said Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president...

You can watch and listen to the discussion by clicking the URL-LINK in the post. Opportunities abound for negotiating a better NAFTA. As the Trump Administration pushes for modernization, one commonsense policy area that should be preserved and improved is energy.

There is a girl in Toronto who needs a lot of patience and understanding. This 11-year-old child made a mistake that grew and grew until it became an international story. She told her family, her school and the police that a stranger had followed her and attacked her with scissors, slashing her hijab. Twice. The child's brother reported that he had been witness to it all. The girl described her attacker and the event in some detail. The man was Asian, he was smiling, he was dressed in black, the scissors had a blue handle. After the police went to...

Canada’s employment minister says churches and other religious groups are eligible for a federal grant to hire summer students as long as their core mandate agrees with access to abortion. However, it remains unclear what exactly counts as a core mandate.

Channel 4 News’ full, fiery interview with clinical psychologist and professorJordan B Peterson, whose views on gender have amassed great controversy - and a huge online following. He discusses the pay gap, patriarchy and his new book "12 Rules for Life."

ANALYSIS - It's no bromance, but Trudeau has found a way to charm Trump: Rosemary Barton Canadian PM is known abroad as the Trump whisperer One year ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was confronted with an unexpected challenge: A U.S. president more familiar to Canadians as a reality-TV star than for his public policy. A president so vastly different in his approach to politics that it was perhaps impossible to overcome. And so began a long courtship that now seems to be an actual relationship. It may be counterintuitive, given the state of the current free trade negotiations, but there...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a lot more in common with Stephen Harper than he would probably like when it comes to his job approval score, a new poll shows. More Canadians than ever before dislike Mr. Trudeau's Liberal government, whose approval ratings are now identical to Mr. Harper's before the last election, according to a new poll being released on Monday by Nanos Research and the Institute for Research on Public Policy. The share of Canadians who say Mr. Trudeau's government is doing a bad job has jumped to 39 per cent from 33 per cent a year ago...

Canadian police say an alleged scissor attack on an 11-year-old girl's hijab never happened. The girl made headlines last week after she said a man came up to her and tried to cut her hijab off. Toronto police now say the incident, which they were treating as a hate crime, "did not happen". The investigation sparked a national outcry, including from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who expressed his concern on Twitter. "After a detailed investigation, police have determined that the events described in the original news release did not happen," the police said in a brief press release on...

MONTREAL — After fleeing to Montreal from Long Island, Marlise Beauville felt, she said, as if she had reached the Promised Land. She entered the country last summer without immigration papers, yet received a work permit, a monthly stipend of 600 Canadian dollars, or $480, free health care and free French lessons. The weather has become bone-cold chilly but her Canadian neighbors are warm. Though it is not clear that she will be able to stay, she is hunkering down, adamant that limbo in Canada is better than returning to Haiti, where she fears that the family of her dead...

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the "gang of eight" bipartisan senators who drafted the comprehensive immigration reform bill, attempted on Thursday to cast the immigration debate as an economic issue but ended up having to clarify that his remarks weren't meant as a slight to Mexico. "I don't know how many fences we have on our Canadian border," Graham said in a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting. "Why are we OK up there and not OK to the south?" It's "the tale of two borders," Graham continued. "Why is one a problem and the other is not? Because Canada is...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke Wednesday about a new requirement in the Canadian summer jobs grant application that groups must indicate support for “the right to access safe and legal abortions” to be included in the program. Trudeau defended the requirement and called groups opposed to abortion “not in line with where we are as a government, and quite frankly where we are as a society.”"If you're pro-life then you are ridiculed and insulted, but if you're pro-choice then you are praised," a student told Trudeau at a town hall at McMaster University and was greeted with applause.Trudeau replied...

A faith-based care facility in Canada has lodged a complaint against an abortion doctor for “sneaking” into the institution and “killing” a resident. The Louis Brier Nursing Home has notified the British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons that Dr. Ellen Wiebe of the Willow Women’s abortion clinic helped end the life of an 87-year-old resident, Barry Hyman, without the facility’s permission. The care home is an Orthodox Jewish institution. Although it permits residents to be assessed for voluntary euthanasia, it forbids the actual killing of residents on the premises. Active euthanasia, or “medical assistance in dying,” has been legal...

Humanities professors say organization evading moral, professional duties Dozens of humanities scholars cancelled their membership with their field's leading professional academic organization ahead of its annual convention, in retaliation for the group refusing to impose boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. The defecting professors wrote to the Modern Language Association—published in the days leading up to the conference being held this week in New York City—that they will not be renewing their membership, due to the organization "disgracefully" voting in June against BDS and in favor of a statement denouncing academic boycotts. Timothy Reiss, a professor emeritus of comparative literature...

The Fight for 15 crowd is having more success in the Great White North than they’ve seen across much of the United States lately, with Ontario being the latest province to massively increase their minimum wage. What could possibly go wrong?As we’ve already seen repeatedly on our side of the border, quite a bit, actually. And as soon as the new mandatory minimum went into effect on January 1st, big employers of largely unskilled, lower wage workers responded in the only way available to them. They began cutting costs, starting with perks and benefits, but also reducing hours and even...

Among the hazards of public life are the photo ops that come back to haunt you. Our snap-happy Prime Minister is a case in point. Since the tropical vacation with his old friend, the Aga Khan, that cheery photo of the two of them on Parliament Hill has been rerun a thousand times. Whenever people see the picture they remember the private island, and thus it will ever be. Now there's the Boyle family. If you didn't know the backstory, the photos of their meeting with Justin Trudeau are positively heartwarming. After all, these are the hostages who were dramatically...