Free Republic

...You supported Obama. How do you think he’s done? I think he’s fantastic. He’s my favorite president, hands down, of my lifetime. He’s been awesome this past year. Especially the rapid, one-after-another-after-another-after-another aspect of it. It’s almost like take no prisoners. His he-doesn’t-give-a-shit attitude has just been so cool. Everyone always talks about these lame-duck presidents. I’ve never seen anybody end with this kind of ending. All the people who supported him along the way that questioned this or that and the other? All of their questions are being answered now.

Stand-up comedian and actress Amy Schumer is teaming up with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer to call for tighter gun control. She will join the senator on Monday as he unveils a three-part plan that would make it harder for violent criminals and mentally ill to obtain guns. They cited the recent shooting in a Louisiana movie theater that killed two women and injured nine others during a screening of the movie "Trainwreck" starring Amy Schumer. Amy Schumer is the senator's cousin.

President Barack Obama is mandating even steeper greenhouse gas cuts from U.S. power plants than previously expected, while granting states more time and broader options to comply. The tweaks to Obama’s unprecedented emissions limits on power plants, to be unveiled at the White House on Monday, aim to address a bevy of concerns raised by both environmentalist and the energy industry. The Environmental Protection Agency received more than 4 million public comments after Obama announced the proposed version last year, and opponents of the plan attempted unsuccessfully to stop it in Congress and in the courts.

...[Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.)] says they asked whether they could see those agreements. He says IAEA officials replied, “ ‘Oh no, of course not, no, you’re not going to get to see those.’ And so everybody on our side of the table asked, ‘Has Secretary Kerry seen these?’ ‘No, Secretary Kerry hasn’t seen them. No American is ever going to get to see them.’ ” It turns out that only the two parties — the IAEA and Iran — get to see the actual agreements (though you can see a picture of Iranian and IAEA officials holding up what appear...

Call their bluff and ask about exhuming the bodies in / at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia

In March, China was “handed a propaganda coup” (to use WSJ’s words), when the UK decided, in the face of loud protestations from Washington, to support Beijing’s efforts to launch a new development bank aimed at filling the gaps left by traditional post-war multilateral institutions such as the IMF and the ADB. The US claims it has concerns about governance and adherence to international norms around corruption and environmental protocol, but as even the most casual observers are well aware, the real concern in Washington (and in Tokyo) is that China will use the bank as an instrument of...

Rand Paul’s presidential campaign wants to portray his fight to block any Patriot Act extension as a faceoff against President Barack Obama. But the Kentucky senator is waging an increasingly lonely battle. Some of his usual tea party allies are abandoning him. House Republican leaders are not pleased with his antics. And then there’s Paul’s feud with the senior senator from Kentucky and the most prominent Republican to endorse his presidential campaign, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Put it this way — there aren’t many times that Obama, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, Speaker John A. Boehner, House Majority Leader...

Bishop Hill points us to this video of the Tesla Supercharging station at the Harris Ranch exit of Interstate 5 in California. He writes: “How can one resist posting a video of Tesla electric cars being recharged (so it is claimed) using a diesel generator? These people love the environment you see.” The video shows a portable diesel generator next to the charging station and some Tesla automobiles. Watch this short video:

Dear Steve, I had two citi-student loans and at some point in time within the last 5 years they went to Navient (Sallie Mae) I recently called to ask if I could get a lower pay-off amount as the original loans were 32K and now they are up to about 64K because of deferment and interest. They said no and I believe these may have been private loans. My conditions have changed. I was born into Islam, but never knew much about my religion. Since 2012 I have been learning more about my faith and it is strictly forbidden in...

The Obama administration is unfairly blocking tens of thousands of military veterans from owning guns, a Republican senator is charging. The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is filled with military veterans who are essentially banned from owning guns, even though they may not be a danger to society, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote this week in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. The gun ban "effectively voids their Second Amendment rights,” Grassley said. At issue is whether these veterans are suffering from mental illnesses. According to a 2013 Senate report, the Department of...

<p>At this time of year, the last thing anyone wants to think about is paying more taxes. But there's one tax I'm in favor of - and you should be, too, if you care about your health and the health of the planet: a sin tax on meat, cheese and other animal-based foods.</p>

Students at an Albuquerque, N.M., school decided that communism should be the theme for their prom — now dubbed "Prom-munism." The decision by seniors at Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School has upset some members of the school. One student who spoke to local CBS affiliate KRQE, but asked to remain anonymous, said "I hope that Cottonwood would realize the seriousness of having a very powerful and destructive idea as the theme for a prom."

Perhaps we can try another once he's in Kiev... or Riga As previously noted here, thinking all at the table are negotiating in good-faith (when dealing with serially-dishonest former KGB agents who want to take things from you) is probably not a very good idea- when what we ought to be doing is arming the Ukrainians to the teeth and putting troops in Poland to exhibit (residual) NATO resolve. The Russians' completely ignoring the latest Minsk accord and continuing to slaughter Ukrainian citizens in the name of 'Novorossiya' without pause should be all the evidence any thinking person would need to...

Ben Lucas was shocked when he found his packages damaged earlier this month. That's when he went to the surveillance videotape and saw the shocking moment the driver urinated on his home. UPS eventually apologized and fired the seasonal deliveryman. This guy puts the pee in UPS. A Houston deliveryman was canned from his job after a customer caught him on camera taking a leak on the side of his house. Ben Lucas went to the tape after items inside a package delivered to his home this month in the Heights neighborhood were broken and busted open. He suspected the...

The White House is proposing to designate the oil-rich coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness permanently off limits to drilling. The proposal sets up a showdown with Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who said the White House also intends to put much of the Arctic Ocean off limits to drilling in the new five-year offshore leasing plan to be released this week. SNIP Obama’s proposal to designate 12.3 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness would require Congressional approval, and there is no chance...

I am not Charlie Regarding “Massacre at French paper stuns world” (Jan. 8), the killing of 12 people at the French newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, is appalling. Hopefully, the perpetrators will soon be caught and prosecuted. The fact that 12 people are dead over cartoons by white, male cartoonists is horrible. Free speech is an important part of our society and criticism of Charlie Hebdo cartoons is also speech. But no one should be killed over cartoons. However, the statement “Je Suis Charlie” (I Am Charlie) ignores the magazine’s history of xenophobia, racism, sexism and homophobia. I sympathize with the victims’...

One, and only one, candidate, Barack Obama, caught the X-factor and improbably got himself nominated and elected, and re-elected, president. Another improbable candidate could catch it again.What is that X-factor? How does it upend things?Peace and personal security continued to flourish in 2014 and are likely to continue into 2015 and beyond. This is important news. It also is news the news media can ill afford to report. But voters sense it.Two of our greatest public intellectuals, Steven Pinker and Andrew Mack, provide a defining “state of the world” summation in Slate.com inThe World Is Not Falling Apart. The evidence...

..Turn Them in at School The PSA video above shows a young teen dramatically rifling through his parents’ drawer, only to take out a handgun and put it in his backpack, all while his mother is downstairs reading. The next day, he brings the gun to school, sits through class, and places it on a startled teacher’s desk before asking, “Can you take this away? I don’t feel safe with a gun in my house.” This is independent director Rejina Sincic’s idea of how to end gun violence and keep children safe. The message at the end reads, “Our children...

Tamir Rice's father should be absolutely ashamed of himself for not teaching his son that playing with guns (which have been doctored to look real) in public and not listening to policemen with real weapons will get you killed. I realize that his father, Leonard Warner, has a criminal history, but that should only make him more ashamed that he hadn't taught his son simple survival skills, and what a mistake it is to play chicken with the cops. Someone should do a quick anecdotal study about how many of these kids involved in these high-profile shootings (Trayvon Martin, Michael...

Before the tryptophan in the turkey induces somnolence, give thanks for living in such an entertaining country. This year, for example, we learned that California’s legislature includes 93 persons who seem never to have had sex. They enacted the “affirmative consent” law directing college administrators to tell students that sexual consent cannot be silence but must be “affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement” and “ongoing throughout a sexual activity.” Claremont McKenna College requires “all” — not “both,” which would discriminate against groups — participants in a sexual engagement to understand that withdrawal of consent can be any behavior conveying “that an...