Free Republic

- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower. The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to “modify their behavior.” “Hotels consume a significant amount of water in the U.S. and around the world,” an EPA grant to the University of Tulsa reads. “Most hotels do not monitor individual guest water usage and as a result, millions of gallons of potable water are wasted every year by hotel guests.” -

WASHINGTON – The United States has laid out a battle plan to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul in an April-to-May time frame, using some 20,000 to 25,000 Iraqi troops who currently are being trained, a highly unusual disclosure that one intelligence source told WND is “pure lunacy.”

A week ago we explained that yet another conspiracy theory, one involving virtually every geopolitical hotzone, from Saudi Arabia, to Russia, the United States, Qatar, Syria, ISIS, and Ukraine, has become fact when our speculation from last September, namely that the plunge in oil was an choreographed move between the US and the Saudis (even if Kerry realized - we hope - that it meant a recession for the US energy producing states and a collapse in the only vibrant US industry of the past decade: shale), one seeking to dislodge Russian control over the Syrian government and to facilitate...

We are calling for an occupation of syllabi in the social sciences and humanities. This call to action was instigated by our experience last semester as students in an upper-division course on classical social theory. Grades were based primarily on multiple-choice quizzes on assigned readings. The course syllabus employed a standardized canon of theory that began with Plato and Aristotle, then jumped to modern philosophers: Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, Marx, Weber and Foucault, all of whom are white men. The syllabus did not include a single woman or person of color. We have major concerns about social theory courses in which...

America – He’s Your President for Goodness Sake! There was a time not so long ago when Americans, regardless of their political stripes, rallied round their president. Once elected, the man who won the White House was no longer viewed as a republican or democrat, but the President of the United States. The oath of office was taken, the wagons were circled around the country’s borders and it was America versus the rest of the world with the president of all the people at the helm. Suddenly President Barack Obama, with the potential to become an exceptional president has...

It’s official: the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an order declining a request for an en banc hearing in a case involving four students in at a California high school who were sent home for wearing American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. The full slate of Ninth Circuit judges has thus agreed with a lower district court and with a trio of appellate judges that officials at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif. could censor students who wanted to wear flag-emblazoned shirts. The federal appeals court issued its denial of an en banc hearing...

Crazy publicity stunt or stroke of daring genius? We're not sure, but it got our attention. The man pictured above is Alex Bellini, a professional adventurer and motivational speaker who plans to live alone on a melting iceberg off the coast of Greenland for one year, to emphasize the urgent need for climate change action.

Racial disparities tend to exist where one doesn't expect them. Situations provoke them to appear, and — if we're willing — we take notice and act. For decades, social justice advocates have referenced the racial disparity in citations and arrests for marijuana. liberal blah, blah . . Ending the war on marijuana won't end racial disparity in Oregon, but it would diminish it. Criminalizing marijuana allows racial inequality to fester. We can't reduce racial disparity where we don't know it exists, nor when we lack practical solutions. In the case of marijuana arrests, we have both. Isn't it responsible and...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office isn’t the only federal authority that has taken a stance against the name of the Washington Redskins. A federal judge in Maryland issued a ruling last week that purposely did not contain the team’s name, which has been described as an offensive slur against Native Americans. U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte, who is presiding over a lawsuit that former New York Giants linebacker Barrett Green brought against the Redskins, issued a 21-page ruling with this footnote on the first page: “Pro Football’s team is popularly known as the Washington ‘Redskins,’ but the Court...

There is rarely a good time to do hard things, and America won't advance if legislators act like seat-warmers. When I learned that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor had lost his Republican primary, my heart sank. Not simply because I think he is an intelligent and talented member of Congress, or because I worry about the future of the Republican Party. Like others who want comprehensive immigration reform, I worried that Mr. Cantor's loss would be misconstrued and make Congress reluctant to tackle this urgent need. That would be the wrong lesson and an undesirable national consequence of this single,...

President Obama’s instincts about Iraq and Syria have been sound from the beginning: Greater U.S. engagement probably cannot make things better but certainly can make them worse, both for the people of the region and for our national interests. Obama’s only mistake was to buy, for a time, the notion that Bush’s troop surge had miraculously healed ancient divisions and made the dream of a pluralist democracy still possible. There are aspects of Obama’s foreign policy that I question. His heavy reliance on drone strikes may create as many terrorists as it eliminates. He should have realized that the National...

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is welcoming members of Congress and their senior staff to tour a temporary shelter being used to house illegal immigrant children — but the invite comes with a list of rules, including a suggestion that members leave their cellphones in their vehicles. The 40-minute tour will take place Friday at the Ventura County Naval Base in Oxnard, Calif., according to the email invitation, obtained by The Daily Caller. The tours are meant to give members and staffers an inside look at how temporary facilities are being used to house illegal immigrant children...

Arizona police arrest man for shooting at the moon PHOENIX (Reuters) - A marijuana smoker was arrested in Arizona after shooting at the moon with a handgun and wrestling with officers who were called by his girlfriend to subdue him, authorities said on Wednesday. Police went to a home in Prescott Valley, about 85 miles north of Phoenix, late last Friday where the woman told them her partner had fired several shots into the air after telling her and her teenage son he had seen Halley's Comet. Prescott Valley police spokesman Sergeant Brandon Bonney said Cameron Read, 39, was arrested...

Judge: PTSD approved for medical marijuana use PHOENIX — State Health Director Will Humble acted illegally in denying access to medical marijuana to people — many of them former soldiers — suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, an administrative law judge has ruled. Judge Thomas Shedden said Humble relied solely on the lack of scientific “peer-reviewed” studies in determining that PTSD should not be added to the list of conditions for which marijuana could be made available. But the judge said the health chief should also have considered the testimony of doctors and nurses who said the drug has helped their...

... What is needed from Washington is not a heroic exertion of American military power but rather a sustained effort to engage with allies, isolate enemies, support free markets and democratic values and push these positive trends forward. The Obama administration is, in fact, deeply internationalist — building on alliances in Europe and Asia, working with institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, isolating adversaries and strengthening the global order that has proved so beneficial to the United States and the world since 1945. ... A Democratic Advisory Council committee headed by Acheson called Eisenhower’s foreign...

The owners of a Christian bakery who refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple are facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines after they were found guilty of violating the couple’s civil rights. The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries said they found “substantial evidence” that Sweet Cakes by Melissa discriminated against the lesbian couple and violated the Oregon Equality Act of 2007, a law that protects the rights of the LGBT community. Last year, the bakery’s owners refused to make a wedding cake for Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman, of Portland, citing their Christian beliefs....

<p>Military leaders have submitted a proposal to the White House that would keep 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after the U.S. combat mission ends in 2014, a senior U.S. official confirms to Fox News.</p> <p>The 10,000-troop plan or any other troop proposal could still be rejected by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has not yet signed a security agreement that would allow American soldiers to remain in the country.</p>

One of the most overlooked aspects of the year just ended is the vindication of Chief Justice John Roberts -- a vindication that showed up as the national catastrophe known as ObamaCare got rolling. Roberts may have also doomed Hillary Clinton's chance to live in the White House again. The chief justice, an appointee of President George W. Bush and reputedly a constitutionalist in his jurisprudence, set his diabolical trap (diabolical to Democrats) on June 28, 2012, when he joined with the four liberal justices on the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of ObamaCare. Conservatives and Republicans across the...

<p>WASHINGTON—All five regulatory agencies put to a vote and approved the Volcker rule on Tuesday, ushering in a new era of tough oversight that drills to the core of Wall Street's profitable markets and trading businesses.</p> <p>The rule will put in place new hurdles for banks that buy and sell securities on behalf of clients, known as market making, and will restrict compensation arrangements that encourage risky trading. The Fed also approved an extension to give banks until July 2015 to comply with the rule, though firms will be expected to make "good faith" efforts to get into compliance earlier.</p>

It is a phrase used for centuries by couples pledging to be faithful to each other. But as Gary and Louise Lidington, from London, made final preparations for their wedding last weekend, they received an urgent telephone call from council registrars warning that they could not legally say the words “in sickness and in health”. Officials in Tower Hamlets, east London, said that the phrase, which is used around the world, was too “religious” for a civil ceremony. The couple were forced to rewrite their vows, which they chose because of their traditional ring, just hours before the wedding, which...