Free Republic

Beatrix Potter was a writer of strong contradictions. A keen business woman, the first author to license fictional characters to a range of toys and household objects still on sale today, she allowed herself to be short-changed over her royalties for years. She was an expert in natural history, boiling down animal corpses to extract their skeletons so she could understand their anatomy well enough to draw them, yet she wrote stories in which rabbits wear blue jackets and hedgehogs pinafores. A huge success, she turned her back on her literary achievements in middle age to pursue a career as...

Paul Krugman is confused. He can’t figure out why Americans are so gloomy that they might vote for Donald Trump in November. From the columnist’s perch at the New York Times, things in America seem A-okay: If you want to feel good about the state of America, you could do a lot worse than what I did this morning: take a run in Riverside Park. There are people of all ages, and, yes, all races exercising, strolling hand in hand, playing with their dogs, kicking soccer balls and throwing Frisbees. There are a few homeless people, but the overall atmosphere...

News recently broke that Hillary Clinton’s foundation is under IRS investigation, and at least part of that investigation centers on two companies. House Republicans reported that Laureate Education and Uranium One have payed out (in the tens of millions) to the Clinton Foundation and in return have received legitimate government benefits (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: IRS Launches Investigation Of Clinton Foundation). The Russian Atomic Energy Agency, Rosatom, purchased in January 2005 a Canadian company — UrAsia — with uranium stakes stretching from Central Asia to Western America, reports the New York Times. This purchase made the Russian agency one of the largest...

Russia’s apparent election tampering — and Trump’s call for the Russians to expose Clinton’s deleted e-mails — shows that the insecurity of America’s data networks could undermine our ability to hold free and fair elections. But if the Russian president would go this far to pick our next president, why not take the direct approach? Why not tamper with the computers that manage the nation’s voting systems?

In January of 2016, the office of the press secretary of the White House issued a memo directing the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security to promote research into “Smart Gun” technology. From the memo: The Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security (departments) shall, to the extent practicable and permitted by law, conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology that would reduce the frequency of accidental discharge or unauthorized use of firearms, and improve the tracing of lost or stolen guns. The memo resulted...

I’m in Philadelphia, sweating to death in the climate change (which used to be called “summer”) and learning just how horrible this country is. Who knew? My takeaway from the Democratic National Convention so far is that we’re a sexist, racist, homophobic country full of monsters hunting young black men, sex traffickers, and greedy people … and those last two weren’t a reference to Bill Clinton. The worst part is it’s “systemic,” meaning it is part of the fabric of our nation, according to these progressives. It’s part of the foundation upon which this country was built, and if the...

Susanna Ruth Makinson can blame a lot of things for why her then-husband was shot dead eight years ago while patrolling the streets of Fort Myers, Florida, the first time since 1930 a police officer had been gunned down in the city. That’s because, in a distant way out of her—and his—control, Andrew Widman’s death felt preventable; his killer, Abel Arango, was an illegal immigrant and convicted felon who was released from detention because his native Cuba wouldn’t take him back. But though Makinson wishes the government would do more to fix this little-known problem in the immigration system, to...

Climate change policies appeal to a majority of Californians despite the possibility of higher energy costs, a new Public Policy Institute of California poll has found.

Actress Sigourney Weaver offered a dark picture of the world’s future during her speech at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night. In her remarks, Weaver warned Americans that if we don’t act to combat climate change, doom is imminent. The DNC then aired a video featuring Weaver as the narrator. “It’s happening now,” Weaver says in the video. “The droughts, the record heat waves,” etc. “This is not something we’ve seen before,” she claims. “Our children are at risk.”

Gov. Jerry Brown, casting Donald Trump as a liar and a fraud, urged Americans on Wednesday to reject his candidacy as “dangerously wrong” about climate change. The fourth-term Democrat, speaking at a Democratic National Convention for the first time in 24 years, accused the Republican Party of ignoring what he called “the existential threat of our time.”

Seventy-five years ago, the world blew up in just six months. World War II ostensibly started two years earlier, when Germany invaded Poland. In truth, after the rapid German defeat of Poland in September 1939, the conflict was mostly confined to Western Europe for nearly the next two years. By summer of 1940, only Britain had survived Hitler's European victories. The dormant European war only went global on June 22, 1941, when Germany suddenly surprise-attacked the Soviet Union, its former partner. America and Asia were still not directly involved in the 1941 expansion of the war until the Japanese attacked...

In the wake of the horrific Jihadist attack on a Catholic church in Normandy, France, Pope Francis’ latest statements that the world war we are in is not a religious war shows a lack of knowledge of Islamic doctrine. The Pope is not alone in this view. Every major Western political leader from George W. Bush through to Barack Obama has maintained the same belief. When the Islamic State caliphate was declared in 2014, their media arm issued a slick, 10-page document announcing the establishment of the caliphate. In those 10 pages, they cited Islamic scripture 26 times–scripture from the...

In the top echelons of political power, there is only one major party in American politics, and that is the globalist war party. In case Americans needed more evidence that party labels are largely meaningless to the bipartisan ruling establishment, influential members of the establishment wing of the GOP — neocons, warmongers, globalists, and so on — are abandoning the Republican Party and in many cases jumping on board the Democrat Hillary Clinton campaign. From Bush-era war hawks who misled Americans into war to pseudo-conservative operatives of the globalist-minded Council on Foreign Relations, Republicans In Name Only (RINOs) are showing...

A 49-year-old Iraqi refugee who came to the U.S. in 2003 has fled the country 48 hours before he was to stand trial in Kennewick, Washington, for allegedly raping a grade-school girl. Khalid Fathey reportedly boarded a flight for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Authorities issued a nationwide arrest warrant this week after he failed to show at his Benton County Superior Court trial, a local newspaper reported. The U.S. Marshals Service then discovered that Fathey left Seattle on July 23 on a plane bound for Dubai, Anita Petra, deputy county prosecutor, told the Tri-Cities Herald. She did not...

I guess we should be excited that liberals and the media have finally sided against the Russians. After all, my college years were spent listening to them demand that we unilaterally disarm in the face of the Big Bad Bear. And then my post college years were spent in West Germany with the mission of killing Russians for as long as I could before my platoon and I were wiped out. Later, I helped train Ukrainians. So welcome to the party, you pinko dorks. It’s about freaking time.But apparently now me and a bunch of other certified Cold Warriors –...

When local artist Natasha Marin spoke with Seattle Weekly last week about Reparations.me, her then-7-day-old website and Facebook page, she was clearly fraying around the edges—underfed, overworked, and ragged as hell.“I’ve had about 12 hours of sleep since Friday,” she said over the phone with a hoarse laugh, as a second phone buzzed and buzzed in the background. She responded to one last frantic message and attempted to close the “99 windows I have open” in order to pull together her thoughts. “I maybe have eaten, like, one real meal. I’m at that point of exhaustion now, if I see...

The IRS confirmed in a letter it is looking into claims of “pay-to-play” practices at the Clinton Foundation, after dozens of Republican lawmakers requested a review of potential “criminal conduct” at the organization founded by the family at the center of this week’s Democratic National Convention. Commissioner John Koskinen wrote in a July 22 letter to Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn that the issue has been “forwarded” to the IRS “Exempt Organizations Examinations” program in Dallas. “This program considers all referrals and will send you a separate acknowledgement letter when it receives your information,” he wrote, in a letter first reported...

As the Islamic genocide against Christians and other “infidels” goes on and on in the Middle East, jihadists shouting "allahu akbar" (God is great) invaded a Catholic church in Normandy France during mass on July 26th. They beheaded an 85-year-old priest and seriously injured a nun. Yet while declaring that “the world is at war,” Pope Francis refused to acknowledge that this war has any religious component.

The clock is counting down toward an important decision for Maryland’s economic future, namely whether to allow hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, to drill for natural gas in the state. Over a year ago, legislation that blocked fracking for another two years became law without Gov. Larry Hogan’s signature. That law barred the state from issuing drilling permits until October 2017 and required the Department of the Environment to adopt new regulations by October 2016. The passage of this law effectively delayed any decision on fracking until next year. To recap: the Marcellus Shale is a geological formation found...

This summer, deadly terrorist attacks and crimes have taken place across the world and have many wondering how they can be safe even in the United States or Western Europe.This violence has been conducted with a range of weapons—including a suicide bomb in Ansbach, Germany, a truck in Nice, France, a rifle at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and a pistol in Munich, Germany, last weekend. While most of these are clear cases of terrorism, the investigation is still ongoing in Munich.Such violence will likely continue and every American should take the time to think about what they would...