Free Republic

The Boy Scouts of America on Wednesday chose former U.S. Secretary of Defense and CIA director Robert Gates as its next president, who will face the task of repairing divisions in the organization from a heated debate over accepting gay scouts. As Defense Secretary, Gates supported President Barack Obama's withdrawal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that prevented gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. Congress repealed the ban in 2010 and it was lifted in 2011.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants Colorado as his personal plutocracy and is willing to spend. If he succeeds, Coloradans will be subject to laws and politicians bought and controlled by an outside demagogue. Bloomberg, the man who tried to control how his constituents consume soft drinks and salt, has never received a vote in Colorado. He has never lived here. Yet, he's paying for ads that tell Coloradans to spend their hard-earned wages on the Amendment 66 tax increase - a deceptive attempt to channel more than $1 billion a year to state government under the guise of helping...

DENVER - In the final week before voters decide on Amendment 66, the campaign supporting the education tax increase received $2 million in donations from Melinda Gates and a charity run by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "It is a testament to the breadth and depth of our reforms that Colorado has attracted the attention of business leaders across the country," Gov. John Hickenlooper said of the donations. The donations from out-of-state, wealthy and politically-connected Democrats drew criticism from conservatives opposed to the tax increase. "Billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg should have realized by now that he can't buy...

Hundreds are marching on the National Mall in Washington, DC to protest covert NSA surveillance operations on the anniversary of the Patriot Act. The organizers are planning to present Congress with a petition which has acquired over 570,000 signatures. Stop Watching Us is a collective of 100 public advocacy groups, among them the American Civil Liberties Union, Freedom Works, as well as individuals like Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei and Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who worked with Edward Snowden to expose many of the NSAÂ’s surveillance procedures. The rally is scheduled to begin at 11:30 am local time on October...

Humans are the enemy! A new study published in Ecology and Society claims that longer life expectancy for us is bad news for the planet. From the study by Aaron Lotz and Craig R. Allen: We found a positive relationship between life expectancy and the percentage of endangered and invasive species in a country…The overall trend in high-income countries with improvements to the Human Development Index, which includes human life expectancy as one of its variables, is toward a disproportionately larger negative impact on a country’s ecological footprint. However, some lower-income countries have a high level of development without a...

President Obama’s first two defense secretaries criticized the administration’s handling of the Syrian crisis on Tuesday night and expressed skepticism about the chances that Russia will broker a deal to remove Syria’s chemical weapons.

The corrupt liberal media, and Democrats have gone into full smear mode ever since Ted Cruz was elected to the U.S. Senate last year. The left fears Ted Cruz like no other Republican in decades. Chris Matthews in particular has been ruthless. A leftist in Houston identified as Nick Gates was arrested for threatening to kidnap, burn, and murder Ted Cruz and his father unless he paid him $3 million. Nick Gates identified himself as Abolfazi Akbori, so he may be a Muslim convert. Abolfazi Akbori comes from Sheila Jackson Lee’s district in Houston and obviously was missed by Obama’s...

It’s being billed as “the largest global event of the decade to focus on the health and empowerment of girls and women.” But it is also very obviously a conference designed to reduce populations of developing nations by promoting a Western-style sexual revolution via chemical contraceptives, access to abortion-on-demand including, the promotion of the chemical abortifacient misoprostol in countries where abortion is illegal, and sex education for youth. On Tuesday more than 4,000 delegates from 145 countries attended the launch of the third Women Deliver conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Featured speakers over the three-day event include Melinda Gates, of...

Elite U.S. troops were completely capable of saving Ambassador Chris Stevens during the Benghazi Consulate attacks on September 11, 2012. Elements of the highly specialized Combatant Commanders In-Extremis (CIF) units are always on alert, on forward deployment, ready to respond. Their job description is to hit the ground in 3 to 5 hours. CIF elements are ready to engage in active combat anywhere in their region, 3 to 5 hours after the call. Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense at the time, either misled the U.S. Congress or was incompetent. Panetta testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 7,...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Protesters rallied in dozens of cities Saturday as part of a global protest against seed giant Monsanto and the genetically modified food it produces, organizers said. Organizers said "March Against Monsanto" protests were held in 52 countries and 436 cities, including Los Angeles where demonstrators waved signs that read "Real Food 4 Real People" and "Label GMOs, It's Our Right to Know."… The U.S. Senate this week overwhelmingly rejected a bill that would allow states to require labeling of genetically modified foods.

An all-too-familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a meeting on May 4 to discuss demands by student activists for the college to divest itself of its investments in companies that deal in fossil fuels. As a speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars such a disinvestment would cost the college, student activists invaded the meeting, seized the microphone, and shouted down a student who rose in the audience to object. Although there were professors and administrators in the room — including the college president — apparently nobody had the guts...

The Obama administration got some backing Sunday for the way in which it responded as terrorists attacked the US diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, last September – a night of violence and confusion during which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican who served in both the Bush and Obama administrations, said if he had been at the Pentagon at that time, "Frankly … I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were.” Republican critics have said a Special Forces team or overflights by fighter aircraft based in Italy...

"Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued."

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the wealthiest American, said on “some days” he wishes the U.S. political system were like England’s, so that President Barack Obama could have “slightly more power.” Gates was asked for his assessment of President Obama’s job performance during an interview at Politico’s “Playbook Cocktails” event. “Some days I wish we had a system like the U.K. where, you know, the party in power could do a lot and you know, you’d see how it went and then fine you could un-elect them,” said Gates on Wednesday. “Now, over time, our system has worked slightly better than...

As the civil war in Syria enters its third year, there is much discussion of the regimeÂ’s chemical weapons and whether SyriaÂ’s Bashar al-Assad will unleash them against Syrian rebels, or whether a power vacuum after AssadÂ’s fall might make those horrific tools available to the highest bidder. The conversation centers on SyriaÂ’s chemical weaponry, not on something vastly more serious: its nuclear weaponry. It well might have. This is the inside story of why it does not. Relations between the United States and Israel had grown rocky after IsraelÂ’s incursion into Lebanon in 2006, for Secretary of State Condoleezza...

The exodus of senior aides from the White House continued as Gen James Jones, Barack Obama’s head of National Security, resigned. His departure, which comes a week after Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, resigned, removes one of the few senior officials not belonging to the US president’s coterie of long-time advisers. Brought in originally for his vast experience and independent voice, it had been clear for some time that the former Nato supreme commander had failed to gel with the president’s inner circle. Gen Jones is being replaced by one of those close aides, his former deputy Thomas Donilon....

Gates: Software billionaire Bill Gates, who previously has advocated the reduction of the human population through the use of vaccines, and his wife Melinda marked the 100th year since the First International Eugenics Congress in London with a “family planning” summit with abortionists and the United Nations. The July 11 event, co-hosted by the United Kingdom Department for International Development, included organizations such as Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes International and the U.N. Populations Fund, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Critics pointed out the summit was held 100 years after the July 1912 eugenics conference led by...

CHESAPEAKE, VA. (Catholic Online) - This letter,offered below, was written by Obianuju Ekeocha, a 32-year-old Nigerian woman. For the past six years she has been living and working as a biomedical scientist in Canterbury, England. Most of her family and many friends still live in Nigeria. She is active in her parish and says she is grateful to God for the graces she receives as she serves the Church. She praises Catholic radio in America, specifically the programs of Teresa Tomeo and Al Kresta, for keeping her "informed and inspired in all the things that 'matter most,'" and for providing...

uly 31, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano newspaper has published an article attacking Melinda Gates’ recently-launched campaign to distribute contraceptives to African women, saying that it is based on “an unfounded and second-rate understanding” of the issue. Click here for full translation of article. The article, written by Italian journalist Giulia Galeotti, and titled “Birth control and disinformation: The risks of philanthropy,” notes that Melinda Gates has expressed “anguish” over her new initiative, due to the conflict it creates with the Catholic hierarchy. It adds that Gates is apparently unaware of the reliability of the Billings Ovulation Method...

"If you want to get involved in business," Sen. Orrin Hatch warned technology companies at a conference in 2000, "you should get involved in politics." Hatch was referring to the shortcomings of then-software king Microsoft, which he had spent most of the previous decade harassing from his perch as Judiciary Committee chairman. The message was clear: If you become successful, you must hire lobbyists, you must start a political action committee, and you must donate to politicians. Otherwise Washington will make your life very difficult.