Free Republic

With less than four weeks left in his decades-long congressional career, Boehner is maneuvering to shape the House Republican Conference on his way out. His goal is to leave the conference he helped build —with countless hours of grunt work and hundreds of millions of dollars in fundraising — in the strongest position possible. He has all but officially endorsed Rep. Kevin McCarthy to succeed him, giving the majority leader enough of a nod to express confidence but short of the full-throated endorsement that could sink him. Boehner tried to lure a candidate into the majority leader race against one...

SOME blondes have all the fun. As Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush get more testy, Donald Trump gets more chesty. And more blond. It’s mind-boggling to contemplate a President Trump trying to make peace between North and South Korea, even as we watch the pugnacious Candidate Trump trolling poor Jeb on Twitter and predicting that poor Hillary would have to run the country from Leavenworth. But, as Trump would say, deal with it. The pol who refused to identify himself as a pol on his jury duty questionnaire has utterly scrambled American politics. And he has trademarked the phrase “Make...

... Today, the world is looking forward to what we can accomplish over the next 15 years. The UN has established the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. Amina Mohammed is Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Adviser on Post-2015 Development Planning. Mohammed notes, “The sustainable development agenda addresses the root causes of poverty, inequalities and environmental degradation. It looks at the links between the social, economic and environmental agendas, and it presents more opportunities than the MDGs, which largely focused on the symptoms only.” In an effort to broaden the impact of the U.N.’s efforts, she says, “The sustainable development agenda looks...

Madison, WI - A group of protesters called Monday for the United Nations to conduct an independent investigation of a white Wisconsin police officer who killed an unarmed biracial man because they feel the U.S. government can't be trusted. Members of Young, Gifted and Black along with 19-year-old Tony Robinson's family held a news conference in front of the Dane County courthouse to call on the U.N.'s Human Rights Council to investigate Robinson's death last month. They added they don't have faith that any U.S. government agency could conduct an objective probe because it's all one prejudiced system. Protesters took...

EXCERPT "This afternoon, POTUS will convene a White House news conference. Details later this morning," Earnest said in a post on Twitter.

The Conversation by Jay Rosen, Associate Professor, Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look at key issues affecting society. If extreme polarization is now an enduring feature of American politics — not just a bug — how does that change the game for journalists? I have some ideas, but mainly I want to put that question on the table. “Conflict makes news,” it...

The Pentagon released a report Monday asserting decisively that climate change poses an immediate threat to national security, with increased risks from terrorism, infectious disease, global poverty and food shortages. It also predicted rising demand for military disaster response as extreme weather creates more global humanitarian crises. The report lays out a road map for how the military will adapt to rising sea levels, more violent storms and widespread droughts. The Defense Department will begin by integrating plans for climate change risks across all of its operations, from war games and strategic defense planning situations to a rethinking of the...

Venezuela's socialist government has quietly secured the backing of Latin America and the Caribbean to obtain a diplomatic trophy that long eluded the late Hugo Chávez: a seat on the United Nations Security Council. The unanimous endorsement of Venezuela's candidacy to represent the region on the Security Council came at a closed-door meeting July 23 in New York, said Amin Cruz, a diplomat at the U.N. from the Dominican Republic, which presided at the meeting. When Chávez last tried for a seat in 2006, the United States succeeded in torpedoing his campaign. This year, Washington has been mum.

The United Nations' human rights chief expressed concern on Thursday at what she said were plans by the U.S. government to deport tens of thousands of unaccompanied children who entered the United States in recent months. Navi Pillay-Wanker, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged Washington to protect the child migrants and investigate dozens of reports of abuse against them by U.S. officials. "I am particularly concerned because the United States appears to be taking steps to deport most of these children back," Pillay-Wanker told a final news briefing in Geneva before completing six years in office on Aug. 31....

I agree with Mark Levin. As Levin pointed out on his show today, talking heads claiming Obama is "toast" because of low polling data are naive or delusional. (My opinion)

Ten members of the G20 have joined the United States in accusing the Syrian government of carrying out a chemical weapons attack on civilians last month and called for a strong international response.A joint statement by the 10 countries and the United States stopped short of explicitly calling for military action against the regime of Syrian president Bashar Assad, as Barack Obama is advocating.But the tough language aligned half of the G20 members with the US president, who worked the sidelines of the summit in St Petersburg to build international support for a limited US military response. The 10 countries...

One of the repeating themes I kept hearing on the news for the past few days was how the White House was going to be really glad when this week was over because things really hadn’t been going very well. I assume Sunday is still part of the same week, because not only didn’t things get any better this morning, they seem to have taken a notable turn for the worse. We touched on this briefly earlier today, but the Obama administration dispatched Dan Pfeiffer to make the rounds of the Sunday shows and “clarify” what’s been going on with...

Maybe being "out of touch" isn't a bad thing.

Exclusive: Jane M. Orient, M.D., says political demagoguery is replacing science “From what I understand from doctors, that’s (conception as a result of rape) really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.” – Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo. All decent people, including U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin, agree that forcible rape is a heinous crime. Almost all would...

1. The Republicans have a deep bench from which Romney picked: 2. Paul Rahe suggests that the pick represents Romney’s declaration of war, and Professor Rahe is always worth reading. I think Romney has concluded he needs to go big and bold to win. 3. Paul Ryan is a remarkable man. He has made himself a national figure through his mastery of the federal budget. Who’d a thunk it? 4. Like the others on my putative short list, Ryan radiates decency 5. It would be nice to think that the Obama campaign played the murder card a little early, with...

A UN human official is urging the U.S. to turn over control of lands considered to be sacred to Native Americans, including the site of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, unveiled his recommendations in Geneva on Friday after completing a 12-day visit to the U.S. where he met with representatives of indigenous peoples in six states. The fact-finder also had a chance to meet members of the Obama administration and briefed the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, but no member of Congress agreed to meet with him....

Calling solitary confinement "torture," California prisoners and advocates are asking the United Nations to investigate the segregated housing of gang members at prisons throughout the state. "We have California treating several thousand prisoners in much the same way the U.S. government treats enemy combatants held in Guantanamo," said Peter Schey, an attorney representing hundreds of inmates. Schey, who announced the petition at a news conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday alongside prisoners' relatives, said solitary confinement was devastating to the physical and mental health of prisoners and was likely to increase their risk of committing more crimes upon release. The...

Gore: 'Our democracy has been hacked' By Daniel Strauss - 03/13/12 10:18 AM ET Al Gore said on Tuesday that America's democracy "has been hacked" and advocated for the use of digital tools to improve the government. Speaking to the high-tech crowd at the South by Southwest technology conference in Austin, Texas, the former vice president said that social media and digital technology should be used to "change the democratic conversation." "Our democracy has been hacked," Gore said, according to CNN. "It no longer works, in the main, to serve the interests of our people." He also urged the audience...

TAMUNING, Guam – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney picked up nine more delegates Saturday, winning unanimous backing at the Guam GOP convention. Republicans on the tiny Pacific island decided to shun traditional paper ballots and all 215 eligible to vote at the convention backed Romney with a show of hands.....

Ordinary people are not putting enough pressure on governments to deliver a legally binding deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the U.N.'s climate chief said. "There is not enough well up from the bottom up. I don't see millions of citizens demanding climate action," Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said at a lecture on Friday. "The reality we have to deal with is the process is very slow and the urgency is every day growing. The only way out is to continue to push on the government side but we can't depend 100...