Free Republic

: [A]t a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama said that it was time for Iran to reach a decision on “a deal that allows them to have peaceful nuclear power but gives us the absolute assurance that is verifiable that they are not pursuing a nuclear weapon.” He added that “if in fact what they claim is true, which is they have no aspiration to get a nuclear weapon, that in fact, according to their Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei], it would be contrary to their faith to obtain a nuclear weapon, if that is true,...

America is a country drowning in debt, slowly but surely, and the United States’ trillion dollar (annually) military-industrial complex, as Eisenhower put it more than half a century ago, is part of our national disaster. Before going all MAGA on me, just answer this question: when was the last time the US military defended the homeland? The answer is pretty simple if you know your history: in 1945. The sad truth is that the United States has world’s largest (and best funded) army, yet realistically speaking, it has no (military) enemies. No nation on Earth even comes close to having...

There is alive in the land an organized campaign to discredit the American press. This campaign is succeeding. Its roots are long. For decades, the Republican coalition has tried to hang together by hating on elites who claim to know things, like: “What is art?” Or: “What should college students be taught?” Or: “What counts as news?” The media wing of this history extends back to Barry Goldwater’s campaign in 1964. It passes through Spiro Agnew’s speeches for Richard Nixon in 1969, and winds forward to our own time through William Rusher’s 1988 book, The Coming Battle for the Media,...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that the company has already begun to implement a system that ranks news organizations based on trustworthiness, and promotes or suppresses its content based on that metric. Zuckerberg said the company has gathered data on how consumers perceive news brands by asking them to identify whether they have heard of various publications and if they trust them. -snip- The meeting included representatives from BuzzFeed News, the Information, Quartz, the New York Times, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, NBC, Recode, Univision, Barron’s, the Daily Beast, the Economist, HuffPost, Insider, the Atlantic, the New York Post,...

Meteorological authority prepares draft law to ban unauthorised forecasts Donald Trump may routinely rail against the “fake news media”, but Egypt is going one better by cracking down on “fake” weather reports. The head of the Egyptian Meteorological Authority has said it is the only government body authorised to make predictions about the country’s weather, and is preparing a draft law to ban unauthorised forecasts. Ahmed Abdel-Al, the EMA chairman, said during a television interview that the bill seeks to punish anyone “talking about meteorology, or anyone using a weather forecasting device without our consent, or anyone who raises confusion...

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said Tuesday the GOP’s decision to repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate without a broader overhaul of the heath care system will likely increase costs on consumers who remain in the program. The comments from Mr. Price, who was ousted from HHS last fall over his pricey business travel, were remarkable, since he claimed the mandate was ineffective while in office. Also, Democrats have been making the same argument in accusing President Trump and his Republican allies of sabotaging the 2010 law’s marketplace. GOP majorities were unable to repeal and replace the Affordable Care...

On Friday, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un offered to shut down the nuclear test site, telling South Korea’s president Moon he’ll scrap the nuclear site by mid-May....

WASHINGTON - White House chief of staff John Kelly has eroded morale in the West Wing in recent months with comments to aides that include insulting the president's intelligence and casting himself as the savior of the country, according to eight current and former White House officials. The officials said Kelly portrays himself to Trump administration aides as the lone bulwark against catastrophe, curbing the erratic urges of a president who has a questionable grasp on policy issues and the functions of government. He has referred to Trump as "an idiot" multiple times to underscore his point, according to four...

It's every art gallery's worst nightmare: given the ability of forgers down the centuries, what if some of those priceless works of art hanging on the walls are... not real? A state-owned French art museum has discovered that more than half of its collection consists of worthless fakes and experts fear that other public galleries may also be stuffed with forgeries. An art historian raised the alarm after noticing that paintings attributed to Etienne Terrus showed buildings that were only constructed after the artist’s death in 1922. Experts confirmed that 82 of the 140 works displayed at the Terrus museum in...

Taiwan’s military is scheduled to simulate defending the island from an invasion by mainland China. The simulation will be part of Taiwan’s annual Han Kuang drills, which begin next week. Citing a statement by the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense, the Japan Times said that “Taiwan will simulate repelling an invading force, emergency repairs of a major air base and using civilian-operated drones as part of military exercises starting next week.” Although the exercise begins then, the Defense Ministry said that the main part of the drill will take place from June 4 to June 8. That part will consist of...

Salem Media, owner of the influential conservative outlet RedState, froze the site on Friday and dismissed many of its writers. Bloggers were locked out of their accounts -- some just temporarily, while the cuts were made, and others permanently. Erick Erickson, the site's longtime editor who left in 2015, tweeted about what he called the "mass firing" on Friday morning. "Very sad to see, but not really surprising given Salem's direction," he wrote. "And, finally, after all these years, they've turned off my account." RedState writers work on contract and are paid based on the amount of traffic to their...

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. voters back legalizing marijuana, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday. Support for legalization hit 63 percent in the survey — the highest level of support recorded by a Quinnipiac poll. A third of American voters still oppose legalization, the poll found. Support for medical marijuana is even higher, at 93 percent. Only about 5 percent of respondents opposed it. The poll also found little support for Attorney General Jeff Sessions's decision earlier this year to rescind an Obama-era policy that paved the way for individual states to legalize marijuana without federal interference. Seventy percent...

The words, emblazoned on two signs that hang off U.S. Senate candidate Shiva Ayyadurai's campaign bus, appear next to two images: one of a stoic Ayyadurai looking into the camera, and another of a closeup of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren wearing a Native American headdress. Ayyadurai, a 54-year-old scientist born in Bombay, India, told the Washington Times the city of Camridge, Mass., had ordered him to remove the signs because they were placed "without approvals and permits." He believes this was instead a case of the city trying to clamp down on his right to free speech. “This is a...

When you don’t know what else to do, sue. To critics in both major national parties, the Democratic National Committee seemed to be following that dubious legal advice by filing a lawsuit last week that alleges collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Some from both parties ridiculed the suit as a distraction from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and the cash-strapped DNC’s rebuilding efforts as midterm elections approach. Trump has a long record of threatening more court fights than he actually wages. You might recall his similar promises to sue the publisher of Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury”...

Paris (AFP) - California will zigzag between droughts and floods which will become more intense and more frequent in the coming decades unless global emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases are checked, researchers said Monday. The Golden State has already experienced a rapid rise in such "whiplash" events -- careering from a record multi-year drought between 2012 and 2016, to heavy flooding in the winter of 2016-17. The situation will worsen as the global climate alters due to mankind's voracious burning of coal, oil, and gas for energy, a team wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change. They projected that wet-to-dry...

"Conservatism has all-too-often found itself unable to articulate a coherent positive doctrine. By this I mean specifically that the laudable conservative tendency to preserve the best of past has too-often manifested itself in a series of "thou shalt not" statements, instead of laying out a manifesto of fundamental values that might serve to unite people around a set of common ambitions. I am attempting to rectify this problem with this statement of principles, some of which I believe might have the additional virtue of being attractive to young people, looking for mature and forthright purpose and responsibility. I am not...

Prince Harry Allegedly Furious As Michelle Obama Was Not Invited To His Wedding On May 19, ‘Mirror’ Reports Prince Harry reportedly wants to invite the Obamas, but he can't so he is not happy about it. Louise Bonquin Michelle Obama and her husband, Barack, were not invited to the royal wedding, and it has been claimed that this made Prince Harry furious. It was said that the prince was very disappointed as his close friends were excluded from the wedding guest list when he and Meghan want them to be there. According to the Mirror, Prince Harry felt this way...

The Obama Foundation saw its largest donations so far this year come from repeat contributors who pledged to give even more money toward the organization’s vision, records show. The Crown Family, which owns a stake of the Chicago Bulls, real estate mogul and gay rights activist Mel Heifetz, and the Ford Foundation have made large million-dollar contributions before but agreed to repeat donations of more than $1 million each. The Obama Foundation reported one new donor of more than $1 million: Iger Bay Foundation, which is affiliated with the Disney family. The Obama Foundation was also given more than $250,000...

On Wednesday, a day of growing peril in a part of the world where Russian and American forces sometimes confront each other, the president who campaigned on never telegraphing his intensions to adversaries decided to taunt Russia with the threat of a missile attack. “Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria,” President Trump tweeted Wednesday morning as an anxious world watched to see if the Syrian crisis will escalate out of control. “Get ready, Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart.’” President Trump’s tweets fly in the face of the norms...