Free Republic

Lets raise the Debt Ceiling to 100 Trillion dollars,it's all borrowed money anyway,digitized,monetized,whatever.We pay off the 17 Trillion dollar debt,send everyone in the United States a check for a 1000 dollars and there will be trillions left over to fund everything!

GOP efforts to demonize the EPA’s climate change regulations haven’t found a groundswell of support in Virginia, where voters are more likely to favor the rules than oppose them, according to a new poll commissioned by POLITICO. The poll, conducted by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling and the Republican firm Harper Polling using automated survey methodology, found that 45 percent of likely voters support new EPA climate regulations for coal-fired power plants, an issue that has become a flashpoint in the Virginia governor’s race. Thirty-three percent of likely voters say they oppose the regulations and 22 percent aren’t sure.

You have to give school officials in Los Angeles credit for a good idea: put iPads in the hands of over 650,000 students to give them the most advanced learning tools available in an effort to boost their interest in academics. But the $1 billion plan is taking some heat after students in the nation's second-largest school district cracked the tablets’ security settings to forgo reading, writing and ‘rithmetic and instead post on Facebook and play games during class time.

Friends Without Benefits (Vanity Fair can only be linked to.)

When Katy Perry was chosen as one of Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People of 2011, it should have been an honor. Instead, the "Dark Horse" singer was petrified that the esteemed journalist would discover her marriage to Russell Brand was on the rocks... I was just exhausted and stressed." "I'd prepped everyone that I was running late, but Barbara showed up at the original time anyway," the singer continues. "When I got there, I apologized immediately, but then she said to me, 'You know, I've only ever waited for one other person this long, and you know who that...

It has become the diplomatic big tease of the year, a rumored geopolitical rendezvous that, if not quite as momentous as Nixon and Mao in 1972, would still rank as a landmark encounter for two countries that have been estranged for more than three decades. So, will President Obama actually shake hands with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran at the United Nations on Tuesday, when both men are scheduled to speak to the General Assembly? On Monday, the White House insisted again that there was no meeting with Mr. Rouhani on the president’s schedule. But administration officials did nothing to...

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by my (imaginary) friend, the Very Honorable Ima Librul, Senator from the great State of Confusion Utopia. He is a founding member of CCCEB (Climate Change Causes Everything Bad), a charter member of President Obama’s Go For it Team, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman of the Meretricious Relations Subcommittee. He is also justly proud of his expertise in the care and breeding of green unicorns, for which his Save the Unicorns Foundation has received substantial Federal grants. We are honored to have a post of this caliber by a quintessential Librul such as...

Let Johnny Manziel be himself By Kevin Van Valkenburg There is a vocal contingent of college football fans, and an even louder collection of media pundits, sports moralists and general know-it-alls, who cannot wait for Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel to grow the hell up. -snip- I want him to put on the black hat, so to speak, and score 100 touchdowns, steal 100 girlfriends, draw 100 penalties, and apologize for nothing. If he played the rest of the season like a cross between Ric Flair and Roddy Piper, I'd be ecstatic. I'd high-five my television screen. If he makes...

'William Lowell Putnam III says his family has identified with the cause of African American rights, and thus an asteroid named after Trayvon Martin is perfectly appropriate.'

New Jersey drivers face fines for texting while driving and prison time when they cause death or injury. Now, a state appellate court has decided it's not just drivers who can wind up in trouble for texting: Message senders can also be held responsible in civil cases, if they know the recipient is driving and likely to read the text while behind the wheel. In an opinion published Tuesday, the appellate court agreed with a Morris County Superior Court judge's decision to dismiss a claim against a 17-year-old girl who texted 18-year-old Kyle Best before his pickup crossed the center...

President Obama has “contributed to [Egypt's] descent into chaos” by providing foreign aid to the military regime while maintaining an otherwise “detached and abstract” position, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who called for an end to financial support. “President Obama’s detached and abstract statement yesterday on deteriorating conditions in Egypt is only the most recent manifestation of this administration’s failed policy in that country,” Cruz said. “As there can no longer be any reasonable doubt that what occurred in July was a military coup, the first step is to send an unequivocal message that the United States is a...

Calls by the Missouri chapter of the NAACP for a federal investigation into a rodeo clown who donned a President Obama mask at the state fair last week are misguided and hypocritical, a Texas Republican congressman told FoxNews.com on Thursday. U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, who has invited the clown who wore the mask to perform in Texas, said the request for probes into the incident by the Justice Department and Secret Service are “silly” and should be ignored. “A rodeo clown is really a nominal thing and it hurt no one,” Stockman told FoxNews.com. “They didn’t speak out when George...

In his latest book, Collision 2012, Dan Balz, a Washington Post writer, expresses his incredulity over “the inability” of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign to “humanize” its candidate. This is one reason why, in Balz’s estimation, Romney lost the 2012 election to Barack Obama. Yet there are two other reasons that he supplies to account for Romney’s defeat. The one pertains to the “technically superior” character of his rival’s campaign. The other is in regard to Romney’s “ambivalence” concerning his bid for the presidency. The first thing that should be noted is that if Romney’s consultants had difficulty in “humanizing” their...

Barack Obama, to hear his advisers tell it, has finally found The One he has been looking for: John McCain. “We have been looking literally for years for someone we can cut deals with, and finally someone has stepped up,” a White House official said. West Wing aides say they now talk with McCain roughly every other day. McCain, to hear fellow Republicans tell it, has finally found The Two he has needed to make such conversations worth the bother: Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat who can actually get things done in the Senate, and Denis McDonough, a White House...

(Originally published March 28, 2012) When I first heard the murder of Trayvon Martin took place in Sanford, Florida the first person I thought about was the late, legendary sports editor of the AFRO, Sam Lacy, a member of the journalists’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. When I became a reporter for the AFRO in 1989 I was blessed to share the same office with Mr. Lacy; I couldn’t put a price on the education in journalism and history he gave me that first year. But, the series of stories he told me about his involvement in Jackie...

The small Scandinavian nation said it would be the first nation in NATO to draft females into military service after decades of confining its conscription activities to men. "We are sending a signal that, once again, Norway's thinking ahead when it comes to equality, Norway's foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide said in an interview Sunday, two days after the parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new law mandating the drafting of women. About 10% of Norway's military is currently female, but the goal is to take the number to 20% by 2020. Norway has long considered itself a forerunner...

The Taliban said they were opening an office in Qatar to start peace talks with the Afghan government and revive talks with the U.S., taking an important step toward ending a conflict that has dragged on for over a decade.

If this story has you scratching your head in confusion: Secretary of State John Kerry quietly acted last month to give Egypt $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid, deciding that this was in the national interest despite Egypt’s failure to meet democracy standards. http://news.yahoo.com/u-quietly-allows-military-aid-egypt-despite-rights-063310258.html;_ylt=A2KJ2PZbvrFRxWgA7YHQtDMD Kerry made the decision well before an Egyptian court this week convicted 43 democracy workers, including 16 Americans, in what the United States regards as a politically motivated case against pro-democracy non-governmental organizations. Rights groups believe Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi is retreating from democratic freedoms, notably in a new civil society law and in proposals for...

Rand Paul is the latest Republican to tell his party to open up to a wider range of views within its ranks. "The party can be big enough to allow people who don't all agree on every issue," Senator Paul told an audience in California, a state that produced three Republican presidents in the 20th century but now votes reliably Democratic. "When the Republican Party looks like the rest of America, we'll win again," he said. "It's not going to change who I am or what I talk about but I think we can be a big enough party to...

"I think the atmosphere, unlike when I tried it, is better, maybe for the wrong reason. The right reason is it's important to reform a broken system. I'm not sure a right reason is that in so doing we win votes. I mean when you do the right thing, I think you win votes, as opposed to doing something that's the right thing to win votes. Maybe there's no difference there. It seems like there is to me though." —George W. Bush on immigration reform, according to the Huffington Post.