Free Republic

Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) gave his own Republican congressional leadership a failing grade for not going “all in” to solve the nation’s fiscal problems and for not fighting President Obama’s executive overreach. “I’d give them all F’s. Fail. We did not fight. We didn’t win. My district sent me up here to score some points,” Brat said Friday after C-SPAN Washington Journal host Peter Slen asked the Tea Party-backed freshman congressman what he thought about House Speaker John Boehner’s leadership over the past year. Brat noted the Republican-controlled Congress’ failure to defund Planned Parenthood in the wake of graphic undercover...

Female employees in California are poised to get new tools to challenge gender-based wage gaps and receive protection from discrimination and retaliation if they ask questions about how much other people earn. A bill recently passed by the Legislature and that Gov. Jerry Brown has indicated he will sign won’t suddenly put all women’s salaries on par with men’s or prod employers to freely disclose what every employee makes, which could make it easier for workers to mount pay discrimination claims. But the legislation expands what supporters call an outdated state equal pay law and goes further than federal law,...

Two New York legislators are launching a campaign to designate the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village as the first national park site honoring LGBT history. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler are making their announcement in front of the tavern that was the scene of a 1969 uprising that was a key moment for the nascent gay rights movement. …

Wind power was so plentiful in Texas that producers sold it at a negative price. What? Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images In the wee hours of the morning on Sunday, the mighty state of Texas was asleep. The honky-tonks in Austin were shuttered, the air-conditioned office towers of Houston were powered down, and the wind whistled through the dogwood trees and live oaks on the gracious lawns of Preston Hollow. Out in the desolate flats of West Texas, the same wind was turning hundreds of wind turbines, producing tons of electricity at a time when comparatively little supply was needed....

Color me stunned, but I do believe Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) just admitted to hating abortion. Not that it will have any impact on the way she votes on the matter, but the Democratic House minority leader admitted that “we all” hate abortion during her weekly press briefing on Thursday. After accusing Republicans of a “lack of respect for women” because “they don’t believe in family planning,” Pelosi employed the Royal “We”:“I’ve never—you know, as a mom and a grandmother and all the rest, I respect people’s view on subjects—but I cannot understand why, if you abhor and you view...

Based on numerous polls and countless surveys, we already knew Americans didn’t trust Congress or the Executive Branch—but now, it looks like they don’t trust the courts, either. A new Gallup poll released Friday shows only 53 percent of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the United States’ judicial system, a record low since Gallup first began measuring government trust in 1997. Conversely, about half (47%) of all Americans think the courts can’t be trusted. …

Left-wingers are more likely to use swear words than their right-leaning counterparts, a study of thousands of Twitter accounts has suggested. While conservative-leaning individuals are, perhaps unsurprisingly, more likely to use religious terms such as “God” and “psalm”, those on the liberal end of the political spectrum are heavy users of “f***” and “s***” online. Researchers at Queen Mary University in London analyzed more than 10,000 Twitter users who follow either the Republican or Democrat party Twitter accounts. […] Conservatives, who “are more likely to emphasize group identity and consensus” according to the researchers, tended to use group terms like...

If you imagine a scenario in which Donald Trump vanishes from the Republican presidential race, and isn’t replaced by an equally brash panderer—that is, where his supporters scatter to a variety of other second-choice candidates—then you can make the case that behind all the dirt Trump has kicked up, the Republican presidential field is basically healthy. Conservative Bloomberg View columnist Ramesh Ponnuru flirted with that argument at the end of August, by listing all the reasons Trump is unlikely to win the primaries, including the fact that “Republican elected officials would consolidate behind a consensus choice if Trump started winning...

TORONTO (AP) — “Mike’s Happy Movie” was the working title of Michael Moore’s latest documentary, “Where to Invade Next,” but few would consider its examination of American ills — from runaway college tuition to mass incarceration — the stuff of bubbly, feel-good delight. Yet “Where to Invade Next,” in which Moore plunders foreign (mostly European) ideas like Italy’s government-mandated vacation or Portugal’s decriminalized drug use to bring back home to America, has an unmistakable whiff of hope. Yes, Moore, that passionately voluble critic and left-wing icon, is feeling a wind at his back. Moore’s first film in six years, he...

FRED = Federal Reserve Economic Data This is the perfect handout for just about discussion of the Democrats' libtard agenda!

When is it OK to break the law? When can you disobey the authorities? Should you be punished for meaning well? Before reflexively answering, let’s imagine some possibilities. Say the government came looking for spies hiding in your house. Is it OK for you to have allowed the spies to hide there? Isn’t it even worse if you cover up by denying the spies are hiding? Should you compound your treason by helping the spies escape? Next hypothetical: Should you disobey a law legitimately enacted and legally upheld by the highest court in the land? Last hypothetical: Do you think...

*Nearly 10% of college graduates think Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court.*.... WASHINGTON, D.C., September 8, 2015 — The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) today released a survey that shows how little college graduates and the general public know about the Constitution. According to the study, nearly 10% of college graduates think Judith Sheindlin — commonly known as Judge Judy — is on the Supreme Court; one-third of college graduates can’t identify the Bill of Rights as a name given to a group of Constitutional amendments; and 32% believe that Representative John Boehner is the current president...

The co-chairman of a reform panel formed after the Ferguson police shooting of Michael Brown said Monday that the group’s report calling for police departments and municipal courts to be merged and other changes “reveals uncomfortable truths about this region we call home.” Rich McClure and other Ferguson Commission members acknowledge in their 198-page report that the panel has no power to enact any of the proposals. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said he backs the recommendations and during a news conference declared: “I commit to you today that these tireless efforts will not be in vain.” “Together we will lead...

MPs have overwhelmingly rejected the legalization of assisted dying in England and Wales after an impassioned four-and-a-half hour debate in which party lines were set aside. Members voted by three to one against giving second reading to a bill tabled by the Labour backbencher Rob Marris, to allow terminally ill patients to be supplied with a lethal dose of drugs. It was the first ever serious attempt to change Britain’s assisted suicide laws through the House of Commons, and saw calls for the issue to be put to a referendum amid polling suggesting public support running at around 80 percent....

Among the speakers at today’s anti-Iran nuclear deal rally in Washington, D.C., was Sarah Palin, who worked a vicious comment about the #BlackLivesMatter movement into her remarks before shifting gears to focus on the topic at hand. [...] “Oh, and you know, since our president won’t say it, since he still hasn’t called off the dogs, we’ll say,” Palin said. “Police officers and first responders all across this great land, we’ve got your back, we salute you! Thank you, police officers!”

If you live in the US, the odds are high that you haven’t taken a vacation this year (or last year, for that matter). Before enduring another year without an official getaway, either because of work commitments or an otherwise hectic routine, consider the following: A growing body of literature across the fields of medicine, psychology, and management has confirmed what the body and mind already instinctively know. Working without a real break can take a serious toll on one’s mental and physical health. To put the importance of vacation in perspective, here’s a rundown of what happens when down...

The gathering of Davis’ supporters and their anti-American signs are no different from the “Death to America” rallies we see in some foreign countries. The martyr business in America is booming. It’s a growth industry, like yoga pants, prisons and celebrity nip-slip sites. Caterers, cake-makers, pizza shops, hobby stores and others are publicly throwing themselves on the righteous sword of spiritual indignation—but only when there are media cameras nearby to record their stirring sacrifice. On Sunday, around 300 supporters gathered outside the jail where Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, is being...

(CNN)—NASA's rockets are astounding machines, capable of blasting into space at thousands of miles per hour and withstanding temperatures twice the melting point of steel. But they can't take off underwater. Rising sea levels caused by melting ice caps threaten to disrupt a handful of NASA launch sites along U.S. coastlines, the space agency warns. In the coming years, launch facilities at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and other places may need to be retrofitted or even moved inland, NASA says. "Every NASA center has its own set of vulnerabilities, and some are more at risk than others," NASA climatologist...

167 Monday at an AFL-CIO Labor Day event in Pittsburgh, Vice President Joe Biden ranted about the economy as it pertains to the American labor force. Biden said, “We can’t let the changes that have taken place and crept in for the last twenty years— but they have been devastating for workers. I hope everybody in America has a chance to become millionaire and we need billionaires. But let me tell you something, man, The tax code’s not fair. It’s simply not fair. The wealthy aren’t paying their fair share. It used to be one America everybody was in on...

Former Secretary of State and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell backed the Iran deal on Sunday. The retired statesman, who played a key role in the push for war in Iraq, later supported Barack Obama for president. Powell made his announcements on NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday. “My judgment…is that it’s a pretty good deal.” Powell said that while Iran could continue working toward a nuclear weapon when the deal expires, the agreement would at least slow that down. “We have stopped this highway race that they were going down.” Powell added that “they get nothing”...