Free Republic

Media Malfeasance: Short of handing local rioters a locator map, the newspaper of record provides enough information to find the home of the police officer some still accuse of murdering Michael Brown for no good reason. We're not sure what the New York Times was thinking when it published an item last Monday by Julie Bosman on the recent marriage of Officer Darren Wilson along with the town they lived in and street they lived on. The street in the small St. Louis suburb they live in is only two blocks long, and the piece had almost all the information...

Executive Limits: For those in and out of the administration who dismissed the House lawsuit against the president for unconstitutional and illegal action, the naming of Jonathan Turley as lead attorney means game on. Coming as President Obama prepares to extend his lawlessness and war on the Constitution by granting de facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, the timing of George Washington University law professor and constitutional scholar Turley being named lead attorney in the House lawsuit against the president is exquisite. Though he is a supporter of Obama and his policies, Turley is not a party hack as...

Justice: Eric Holder, who dropped the New Black Panther case and almost had a defender of cop-killer Mumia abu-Jamal as an assistant, takes the death penalty off the table for four alleged Virginia cop-killers. The National Guard has not been called up, Al Sharpton has not made an appearance, and neither have 40 FBI agents been dispatched to ensure the convictions of the four gang members who allegedly murdered a Virginia police officer. Nor will there be riots and looting if they are acquitted. When cops are the victims instead of the accused, a different standard of social justice seems...

Defense: Members of Congress warn that the State Department is working on arms accords to demilitarize space and ban anti-satellite weapons, leaving Russia and China with a huge lead in military space capabilities. On Jan. 17, 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement announcing the Obama administration's intention to work with the European Union on an International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities. It was supposed to be sort of a "rules of the road" for space-faring nations to deal with issues such as the accumulating space junk jeopardizing satellites and manned space activities such as the...

Energy Transport: New data show fast-rising rail shipments from North Dakota's Bakken shale formation and the need for a safer alternative to rail — like the Keystone XL pipeline. In his post-election press conference, the president noted in justifying his continual kicking of the Keystone XL oil drum down the road that "while this debate about Canadian oil has been raging ... we've seen some of the biggest increases in American oil production and natural gas production in our history." That increase is due in large part to oil recovered from the Bakken shale formation centered on North Dakota. So...

Energy Policy: An oil-laden train collides with another and bursts into flames in a small American town, proving why pipelines are safer and why environmentalist opposition to a pipeline from Canada is misguided. Casselton, N.D., had a near brush with tragedy after a train of tank cars carrying crude oil derailed, resulting in fiery explosions and a call from the town's mayor for a re-examination of how such fuel is transported across the United States. The railroad runs right through the middle of Casselton, a town of 2,400 people about 25 miles west of Fargo, and Mayor Ed McConnell said...

Gun Control: To some, concern over a U.N. Arms Trade Treaty set to take effect Dec. 24 is much ado about nothing. But a president unconstrained by Congress or the Constitution may try to impose severe limits on gun rights. All treaties must be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate, and that's not about to happen in the case of the unratified Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), particularly after the 2014 election that gave the GOP Senate control. The same, of course, could have been said about the Kyoto Protocol and other climate change deals that mandate that governments tie their...

Military Superiority: China's new Shenyang J-31 stealth fighter could be the equal of our F-22s and F-35s, U.S. pilots say, and is just one of the weapons that may thwart America's "pivot" to the Pacific. The J-31, a fifth-generation stealth fighter, will make its official debut at the Zhuhai International Air Show Nov. 11-16 in southern China's Guangdong province. As one U.S. pilot with F-35 experience told USNI News of the J-31 and other new Chinese fighters: "I think they'll eventually be on par with our fifth-gen jets — as they should be, because industrial espionage is alive and well."...

Balance Of Power: As Vladimir Putin tops the Forbes list of powerful men, Russia targets NATO with air incursions and moves missiles toward Ukraine. As it does, Finland warns Europe is "at the gates of a new kind of cold war." President Obama may soon have more to worry about than what brand of Kentucky bourbon he'll share when he meets with new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Considering the recent actions of Russia's president, a round of vodka might be in order, a Finnish brand while it's still available. Forbes says its rankings are based on "an evaluation of...

Junk Science: The high priests of the climate change religion decree in a recipe for global poverty that renewable energy must generate most of the world's electricity, with fossil fuels purged by the end of this century. In a report released in Copenhagen on Sunday that Secretary of State John Kerry has called "another canary in a coal mine," the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recycled its prophecies of doom. The document is titled "Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report." The "synthesis" refers to the report's being essentially the "greatest hits" of prior climate assessment reports that...

Theft: As "calibration errors" switch votes in Illinois and Maryland, an election watchdog group sues the latter over massive voting by noncitizens in one county after discovering voters registered in multiple states. The fact that many people will do anything to get out of jury duty has exposed massive fraudulent voting in Frederick County, Md., that may have been going on for years. Illegal aliens who stated they were noncitizens on jury duty forms were found to have cast votes in elections. The Virginia Voters Alliance (VVA) cross-checked jury duty forms with individual voting records and found that hundreds of...

Scandal: Documents obtained by a government watchdog group list emails between the attorney general and his wife regarding a White House statement on the "gun walking" scandal the White House wants kept secret. The release of the government's Vaughn Index of documents that the administration withheld from the House Oversight Committee's investigation of Fast and Furious may not be the October surprise that the Obama administration hoped for. It raises more questions than it answers and shows the absurd extent of the administration's cover-up. On July 18, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates ordered the Justice Department to produce, in...

Leadership: Just when you thought the president couldn't pick anyone more radical than Eric Holder as attorney general, he's poised to name ultraradical race-baiter Thomas Perez. Holder's activism is no secret. But Perez is even more extreme. Worse, he's a liar and possible perjurer. Yet he's reportedly President Obama's pick to replace Holder as America's top cop enforcing the nation's laws. The Beltway media are reporting that Perez, now serving as labor secretary, is the front-runner for the key post — and he didn't deny it when reporters asked him about it at a recent speech. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus...

Security: In a country with strict gun control and without a Second Amendment, an armed citizen stopped a terrorist attack as our neighbor to the north becomes a jihadi target. When Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, aka Michael Hall, was shot dead by Kevin Vickers, the House of Commons sergeant-at-arms, the jihadist wannabe and Muslim convert had already murdered Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a guard at Canada's National War Memorial, and was inside Canada's Parliament building, very near a room where Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was meeting with members of his Conservative Party. "PM (Harper) was addressing caucus, then a huge boom, followed...

Second Amendment: The administration's choice to be the nation's doctor in chief views gun ownership as a public health issue and not a constitutional right, and wants doctors to query patients about guns in their home.... ....gun-grabbing advocate Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy, Obama's nominee to be U.S. Surgeon General. Murthy is the 36-year-old president and co-founder of the anti-gun group Doctors for America, which advocates ObamaCare and gun control laws. His group, which has been dubbed "Docs vs. Glocks," has pushed Congress to ban "assault" weapons and "high-capacity" magazines.

Politics: More than two dozen House Democrats are pushing the Senate to revive and ratify the nomination of Dr. Vivek Murthy to a critical post, but helping to fight deadly disease is not what they have in mind. The question of the day is why we have or need an Ebola czar in the form of political operative/hack Ron Klain when we have an unfilled surgeon general's position that physician emeritus serving as America's doctor is supposed to fill. We have an acting Surgeon General, Rear Admiral Boris Lushniak, but he is seemingly just a placeholder instead of the force...

Public Health: A disease that was once rare in the U.S. is killing Americans, and its rise coincides with the tidal wave of unaccompanied minor children arriving from Latin America under our de facto open-border policy. Eli Waller, a 4-year-old New Jersey boy, died Sept. 25. He was reportedly fine and healthy when he went to bed but died overnight, with the cause confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control to be enterovirus D-68 (EV-D68), one more casualty in an epidemic that has swept the country seemingly out of nowhere. The CDC website reports that from mid-August to Oct. 10,...

Leadership: In a telephone press briefing, the CDC director repeated that you can't get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, but infected or exposed people should avoid public transit because they might transmit it. Huh? During the Wednesday conference call with reporters, Centers for Disease Control director Tom Frieden was asked if he or anyone else at the CDC had vetted a videotaped message posted on U.S. embassy websites that showed President Obama saying you couldn't get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, while the CDC's own guidelines advised those with symptoms or a...

Public Health: The man whose one job is to safeguard America's health has failed, saying that we must change our responses to Ebola after a Dallas health care worker becomes infected despite the rules he championed. After 26-year-old Dallas health care worker Nina Pham became the first person to contract Ebola on U.S. soil, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said during a press conference that (we) "have to rethink the way we address Ebola control." Yes, we do. Pham's infection, just as Thomas E. Duncan's death in Dallas after a multistop trip from Liberia,...

Leadership: The former president on whose watch Americans were taken hostage and the mullahs rose to power in Iran gets it right in condemning the current president's failed handling of Syria and the Islamic State. We've often referred to Jimmy Carter as our worst president. But considering the recent IBD/TIPP poll showed 53% of Americans labeling Barack Obama's presidency a failure in just its sixth year, the incumbent may soon claim the title. It's one thing to make mistakes out of gullibility, quite another to foul up the world out of gross incompetence. It is said that Carter's presidency literally...