Free Republic

A House Democrat is calling on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban e-cigarette flavors and celebrity marketing practices that she says target children. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) wrote to the FDA Monday warning e-cigarette makers are trying to entice children with flavors such as “chocolate, gummy bear, bubble gum and strawberry.” She also warned the industry is using “celebrity endorsements” to encourage young people to take up smoking the nicotine vaporizers. “Due to the growth in child and adolescent experimentation with these alternative delivery systems, I urge the FDA to move quickly to ban child-friendly flavorings and youth-oriented...

On Saturday, 200 people marched through the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles protesting racial profiling and gun violence on the first anniversary of the verdict acquitting George Zimmerman of murdering Trayvon Martin. The crowd, led by Trayvon Martin’s parents, carried banners and chanted, “What do we want?... Justice. What do we want?… Justice.” According to CBS2 Los Angeles, the rally was organized by the Trayvon Martin Foundation, which states on its website that its purpose is to “create awareness of how violent crime impacts the families of the victims and to provide support and advocacy for those families in response...

Don Mullen: Why don’t America’s hotels provide hair products for black as well as white hair? Is there a way to get them to correct this “micro-aggression”? Jenée Desmond-Harris: Thanks for your question. I thought about the issue of hotel toiletries when I was writing the Race Manners column that answered the question, “Is Using Lotion a Black Thing?” In my opinion, the tiny moisturizer that most hotels provide is very clearly not designed for those who want or need to use it on their entire body (read: most black people). But off the top of my head, I’m not...

On July 8 I received the Climate Science Whistleblower Award at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute and other cosponsoring organizations held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The following are remarks I prepared for my acceptance statement:~~snip~~I wrote my negative comments on the Endangerment Finding support document because I believed EPA was using bad science ... But it is very encouraging to find that others agree with my decision to do so, which EPA clearly did not. My offending comments to EPA led to my being immediately muzzled at the same time that Obama was...

World wide experience has established that when an area that has not had Muslims living in it begins to be flooded by Muslims, violence ensues. The rough progression of Muslim population growth and its correlation to violent attacks on non-Muslims starts when they reach a population percentage of about five percent. At that plateau they begin to stir and organize. Shortly thereafter they start to make demands on the non-Muslim population as if they have always been there and are a historically oppressed minority. They will begin to patrol the streets in seemingly aimless patterns which in reality are far...

Natalie Portman looked great in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and we think you’ll love seven of this Brit’s hottest moments.

Rodney Durham stopped working in 1991, declared bankruptcy and lives on Social Security. Nonetheless, Wells Fargo lent him $15,197 to buy a used Mitsubishi sedan. ''I am not sure how I got the loan,'' Mr. Durham, age 60, said. Mr. Durham's application said that he made $35,000 as a technician at Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton, N.Y., according to a copy of the loan document. But he says he told the dealer he hadn't worked at the hospital for more than three decades. Now, after months of Wells Fargo pressing him over missed payments, the bank has repossessed his car. This...

And some experts think it wasn't even 'rebels' operating it, they lack the (extensive) training required; rather, the killers were regular Russian troops... Kiev-loyalist spies reportedly filmed the launcher used in the attack being hurried to Russia - with two missiles missing (twitter) Apparently the Russians are finding it a bit more difficult to kill, lie, and cover-up in the citizen-journalist/internet era... More pics/maps/links at Reaganite Republican...

President Obama has deliberately provoked the current crisis along our nation’s southwestern border in an effort to force House Republicans to pass the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan. Illegal immigrants are pouring in by the trainload, and the violent MS-13 gang is recruiting in detention centers. Polls show that voters strongly disapprove (58%) of Obama’s handling of the crisis he caused, but an even larger majority — 66% — disapprove of how Republicans in Congress are dealing with the immigration problem: Almost as many Republicans disapprove of their party’s handling of the issue as say they approve, with negative...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) – A man says he was just riding his bike at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront when out of nowhere a man got up and punched him in the head. The victim believes he was on the receiving end of the “knockout game,” a crime fad sweeping the county. “I‘m lucky that I didn’t get seriously get injured,“ said the Virginia Beach man, who wanted to remain anonymous. He said he wanted to tell his story to raise awareness — a story that ended with a trip to the emergency room. “It was absolutely crazy,” he said....

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin hit back at Attorney General Eric Holder on Saturday for criticizing her call to impeach President Obama over the border crisis. “I don't need lectures from Eric Holder, a guy – get this – so incompetent that he denied voter fraud existed even after someone claimed that they were Eric Holder and they got his ballot and they voted in D.C.,” Palin said at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver. Palin was referring to an April 2012 video by a conservative activist that showed a man entering a Washington, D.C., polling center and requesting Holder's...

On the second day at Netroots, which was held in Detroit, Michigan, about 300 attendees at this liberal conference took to the streets to protest the proposed water-shut-offs. The city has begun cracking down on residents who haven’t been paying their water bills; 42,000 have seen their water turned off since July of 2013. The Atlantic reported on July 17 that residents are paying plumbers $30 to turn their water back on illegally. Although, while Netroots participants were there to be the voices for these people, the folks affected are remaining quiet: Residents targeted by the shut-off campaign have been...

I haven't seen this connection yet, but it seems to me that the current border invasion is Fast and Furious in reverse. At least in political terms. Has there ever been an administration that foments international tensions in pursuit of its domestic agenda? In Fast and Furious guns were run to Mexico with the assumption that these guns would come back to kill Americans. Then the Left would call for more legislation to control weapons in the USA and restrict 2nd Amendment rights. Children were killed in Mexico with these guns as was one of our border agents, Brian Terry....

July 18, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - With Kiev's forces being encircled and decimated in eastern Ukraine, western Ukrainians in Kiev protesting the war, and US sanctions receiving global ridicule as feckless - the downing of a Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner with over 280 on board in eastern Ukraine - allegedly shot down over a conflict zone - will undoubtedly be exploited by NATO to vilify Kiev's opponents, particularly fighters in the east and Russia who NATO accuses of "destabilizing eastern Ukraine." Preceding the downing of Malaysian flight MH17, just hours beforehand, Ukraine claimed Russia had shot down...

When the power goes out, everything just stops. For residential users, even a few hours begins to intrude heavily as melting freezers, dying cell phones, and the awkward realization that we don’t remember how to play board games nudge us out of our comfort zone. However, those are just small inconveniences. For industrial and other heavy users, the impact of even a relatively short outage can be expensive or even ghastly. Hospitals and people on life-assisting machinery are especially vulnerable. Without power, aluminum smelters face the prospect of the molten ore solidifying in the channels from which it must be...

A Kauai man was sentenced to one year probation and a $200 fine on May 29, 2014 for letting his 8-year-old son walk one mile home as punishment for getting in trouble at school. I wondered what the progressive courts would do to American parents who would allow their minor children to trek unaccompanied across Mexico, hanging on trains, on buses, walking with a coyote, in order to arrive in a more prosperous country where welfare and economic security would await them through the generosity of a president who decided to nullify the southern border? Social services and progressives don’t...

If you look up 'shameless' in the dictionary... As a passenger liner with almost 300 people was shot-down, the Kremlin can see that this is the death for the underhanded crap they've been pulling in Ukraine, as for outside opinion anyway, they're toast. Vlad was trained how to lie, obfuscate, and deflect by the KGB, and he's usually pretty good at it. But this one really takes the cake: "This would not have happened if there were peace on this land ... and, certainly, the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility." Oh really? Not the lowlife GBU Colonel...

LOS ANGELES – Nearly 500 people are expected to converge on Crenshaw High School Saturday for the Trayvon Martin Foundation’s 2014 LA Peace Walk and Peace Talk, hosted by Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, organizers said this week. Local activists and civic leaders will join young people at the quarter-mile march that will honor “the right that all people should be able to walk safely on their streets,” says local organizer Vanessa Bolden. Martin, 17, was killed in February 2012 as he returned from a convenience after buying Skittles and a soft drink. George Zimmerman admitted killing Martin,...

On this episode of The Conservative Beacon Podcast, Josh Price wants to know why the media are so eager to blame Russia and Vladimir Putin for missile attack on Malaysian Airlines flight MH15, but whenever Islamic terrorists are behind an attack the media caution against speculation on blame. Head over to TheConservativeBeacon.com to listen.

UN Document Or Not, the Plot to Disarm America Is Commencing The evidence is mounting that Obama and his colleagues at the United Nations are preparing for complete gun confiscation of civilian-owned American guns. There is a new document, previously held secret, which has surfaced and clearly signals the intention of the United Nations to engage in gun confiscation in the relatively near future. The document is damning, however, the existence of the document is not even needed to prove the point that there is a major confrontation, brewing between the American people and an international peace-keeping UN force, right...