Free Republic

The National Minimum Drinking Age Act, passed by Congress 30 years ago this July, is a gross violation of civil liberties and must be repealed. It is absurd and unjust that young Americans can vote, marry, enter contracts, and serve in the military at 18 but cannot buy an alcoholic drink in a bar or restaurant. The age 21 rule sets the United States apart from all advanced Western nations and lumps it with small or repressive countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Congress was stampeded into this puritanical law by Mothers Against...

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has officially entered the twilight zone, searching in vain for a new focus in its remaining two and a half years. President Obama has been trying to look busy in recent weeks, giving speeches to rally his dispirited party as he voices new fears that Democrats will not turn out to vote in the midterm congressional elections in November. Apparently, many of them won't. "Our voters... get excited about general elections," he said at a recent Democratic fundraiser in Houston. "They don't get excited about midterm elections." The Washington news media is worried about it,...

Title of thread shortened to fit: Oregon woman claim 'carloads' radical Muslims turned her Oregon ranch into a training camp for terror Testifying in Manhattan federal court Tuesday, Eva Hatley swore she never meant for her Oregon ranch to become a training camp for al Qaeda. Her plan, she claimed, was to teach local Muslims to grow and can vegetables. But as 'carloads' of fellow Muslims she'd met through her mosque began arriving at the 160-acre ranch in 1999, she and her husband were helpless to stop their home from becoming a magnet for terrorists-in-training.

An Oregon woman says she thought she was opening up her family’s ranch to local Muslims to teach them how to grow and can veggies — and that her husband was even expecting a tax write-off. But US-born Muslim convert Eva Hatley testified in Manhattan federal court Tuesday that after the “carloads’’ of fellow Muslims she met through her mosque arrived at the 160-acre ranch in Bly in 1999, the couple watched helplessly as their home was turned into an al Qaeda training camp. “It wasn’t anything like I envisioned for the property,” insisted Hatley, testifying at the trial of...

LONDON, April 22, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A chilling video has surfaced of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger telling a British interviewer her goal is to see vast swaths of the world produce “no more babies.” The 1947 one-minute newsreel features an interview in London's Dorchester Hotel conducted by John Parsons. Sanger is referred to as “Margaret Slee,” reflecting her second marriage to James Slee.

Those who live in this nation's richest county and those who live its poorest have an important thing in common: a disproportionate dependence on government. In the United States as a whole, according to Census Bureau estimates for the five-year period from 2008 through 2012, 14.9 percent of the people who had civilian jobs worked for government. Another 78.7 worked for private employers and 6.3 percent worked for themselves in their own unincorporated businesses. In America's richest county, this pattern did not hold. Nor did it in the poorest. At the end of last year, the Census Bureau released two...

Believe me: If my mother-in-law didn’t live with us, the sights and sounds of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) would never pollute my home.But for much of her life, there were only 13 channels, so she habitually switches to the state broadcaster when she can’t find anything else to watch.That’s how I heard, on Easter Sunday morning, via various noises making their way from our living room television into my office, that Hurricane Carter had died.Judging solely by the anchor’s somber tone, one would be forgiven for concluding that the deceased had been some great Canadian statesman or artist, not...

Common Core-loving billionaire Bill Gates has suffered a stinging defeat in his ambitious quest to reform every cranny of the American K-12 public education system. The nonprofit educational-software company InBloom Inc., which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corp. of New York financed to the tune of $100 million, announced on Monday that it will shut down permanently. The reason for the shutdown is a steady cascade of parental and legislative anxiety about student privacy, reports The Wall Street Journal. The strategy driving inBloom had been to create a huge database connecting local school districts and state education...

Breakups are rough — regrets, pain and bitter memories. As Republicans in the House block immigration reform time after time, American Latinos get the message: It's over, don't call me. Have a good life.Incapable of producing even one GOP vote in favor of the Democrats' last-ditch gamble at forcing an open vote of the House, the message to Latinos is crystalline. Whatever goodwill the clutch of pro-immigration reform House Republicans won in the last year since the Senate passed its bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill has now evaporated. ADVERTISEMENT What remains are the weekly flip-flops by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio),...

Most people include home ownership as one of the basic elements of the American Dream. It stands not just for independence, but also in most minds an investment in tangible and significant property. It’s not a universally-held goal — some people prefer to rent even with the means to own — but home ownership is usually seen as one of the building blocks to middle-class wealth.As I noted, some people prefer to avoid home ownership, but not usually on the basis of it being a lousy investment. See if you can pick out the huge, gaping flaw that the Washington...

Republicans need to win six Senate seats to take control of the upper chamber, and most scenarios for victory include the Southern seats up for grabs. A poll out today from the New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that may be tougher than first thought. Mark Pryor, considered to be one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the midterms, has a ten-point lead over his Republican challenger, Rep. Tom Cotton: The survey underscores a favorable political environment over all for Republicans in Kentucky, North Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas — states President Obama lost in 2012 and where...

The partisan bureaucrats at the IRS who were ready and willing to harass conservative groups are just the tip of the iceberg at a corrupt and irresponsible agency that just happens to be the most unpopular and feared arm of the federal government. So self-serving is the agency that it actually paid bonuses – many bonuses – to employees who were delinquent in their own taxes. Gail Sullivan of the Washington Post reports: A report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration shows that between Oct. 1, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2012, the IRS paid $2.8 million in bonuses to employees...

Some time in the coming months, the Supreme Court will hand down its opinion in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, the case of the retailer that claims that its religious freedom or that of its employees is violated by contraceptive coverage required as part of the Affordable Care Act. The attitude of the health-care act’s supporters toward such cases is irritation. How dare a little religious case trip up the mighty Affordable Care Act and jeopardize the ACA’s establishment as permanent law of the land? Cases involving religious details, however, do have a way of stopping big social legislation, and not...

Billionaire hedge fund operator and “green” energy magnate Tom Steyer has pledged $100 million in the 2014 election cycle to help Democratic candidates who oppose the Keystone pipeline and who favor “green” energy over fossil fuels. Steyer claims to be a man of principle who has no financial interest in the causes he supports, but acts only for the public good. That is a ridiculous claim: Steyer is the ultimate rent-seeker who depends on government connections to produce subsidies and mandates that make his “green” energy investments profitable. He also is, or was until recently, a major investor in Kinder...

Julian Huxley, the head of UNESCO in 1947, wrote a book entitled, "UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy." His book was a blueprint for a collectivist evolutionary pantheist New World Order that called for a single 'new' spirituality: a mixture of occult Eastern pantheism, Liberal 'pantheistic' Christianity, Gnosticism, international Luciferian Masonry, and other occult traditions. There would be one language, one economy, one religion, and one way of thinking. He believed a global order could be brought about through the universal implementation of Hegel's Dialectic process. Huxley said, "The task before UNESCO...is to help the emergence of a single world...

Members of the Sierra Club’s board of directors are driving around in gas-guzzling vehicles, despite the group’s support for the Obama administration’s increased fuel efficiency standards. The Sierra Club strongly supported the Obama administration’s increase in minimum fuel economy standards to 54.4 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2025, but it seems the Club’s top officials don’t practice what they preach. The Sierra Club’s 15-member board of directors own a combined 32 vehicles, less than one-fifth of which are hybrids or electric vehicles. Seven of the 32 vehicles are sports utility vehicles while only six are hybrids and electric cars, according...

The great rotation to value has commenced in the stock market. And it's likely the thing that's needed if this bull market is going to continue. A parallel rotation to value is also occurring politically. And it's likely the thing that's needed if this Republic is going to continue. “Within the broader stock market there was a large rotation, out of growth and into cheap, or ‘value,’ shares,” writes FT.com. “Expensive shares had their worst performance against cheap ones since 2009. The other ‘factor’ popularised by academics Eugene Fama and Kenneth French – momentum – also had a terrible time....

After 14 years of marriage to Oprah's father Vernon, Barbara Winfrey is being forced out of her marital home by Oprah, leaving her homeless Barbara refused to sign a confidentiality agreement with Oprah 'You say I never talk to you,' Oprah told Barbara in a birthday phone call. 'I'm talking to you now. You have until Monday to get out of MY house' When Oprah threw her Legends' Ball, Vernon and Barbara weren't on the main floor with the A-listers but tucked in a corner on the second floor. 'We weren't allowed to mingle with the celebrities,' says Barbara

ST. LOUIS • They’ve trounced hundreds of robotics teams at regional and state competitions. And Thursday, about 12,000 students in safety goggles will convene at the Edward Jones Dome and America’s Center for the chance at world champion status.It’s the fourth year in a row that U.S. FIRST — For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology — has held its top competition here, drawing competitors from 38 countries.The matches will be timed and intense. The crowds thick. The stands loud.Through it, thousands of students will demonstrate their knowledge of programming, and electrical and mechanical engineering.For self-proclaimed geeks, it’s a...

After the masses departed and the smoke cleared, workers descended Monday on Golden Gate Park to bag up and truck away all that was left behind by those who celebrated the pot holiday of 4/20 - an annual event that again tested the patience of some residents and city leaders. While thousands enjoyed Sunday's informal smoke-out, police arrested 11 people around Sharon Meadow, and paramedics tended to four others. Traffic in the area was jammed all day. And officials estimated the cleanup cost would exceed last year's tab.