Free Republic

Joseph Axelrod, father of President Obama’s close advisor and Chicago confidant David Axelrod, belonged to the Communist Party for the 1936 general election, according to newly released exclusive information by gotnews.com. (1) The street address in Brooklyn, N.Y. for the senior Axelrod is listed at 3831 Lyme Avenue in the “official report of the names and addresses of the voters for the Communist Party ticket in the l936 general election of the five boroughs of New York City.” But Obama’s Chicago based friend is discounting his father’s Communist Party membership as being reflective of his dad’s “youthful act of defiance....

Campus housing specifically for 15 alternative sexualities, including sadomasochists, is acceptable, but fraternities that just allow men are not, at Wesleyan University. Wesleyan University housing has an option for students who want to live with others identifying with one of 15 categories — LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM. The university's inclusiveness excludes, however, male-only fraternities. Delta Kappa Epsilon sued Wesleyan University after the liberal arts college ordered all of its fraternities to admit women, charging sexual discrimination and false and deceptive practices. Wesleyan, a Connecticut college, was founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named after 18th century evangelical theologian John Wesley, but is...

It’s fascinating to watch the national media slowly come to realize just how fundamentally dishonest Gov. Scott Walker can be. Walker’s likable, low-key personality makes a good first impression. But it didn’t take many in Wisconsin long to recognize the double-talking radical extremist behind that bland persona. That’s why Wisconsin may now be the angriest, most politically polarized state in the nation. Now the rest of the country is beginning to see why. Walker may seem like a wide-eyed, Midwestern innocent next to crude political thugs like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, but that’s...

Democrats are struggling to answer a simple question—“What’s a Democrat?”—and must do a better job of explaining their core values to voters, according to a task force formed after the party’s dismal showing in the 2014 election. “I am here to tell you the Democratic Party has lost its way,” said a panel member, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear. The problems are not with the “party’s core beliefs,” he said, but relate to “our inability to convey our principles to the American people in a precise, concise and passionate way.” According to interim findings in the Democratic National Committee’s report released...

Climate change is a threat to our very existence. Wherever we live and whatever we do. We all contribute to it. And we all have a responsibility to do something about it. But there is hope. Last week at the Geneva Climate Change Talks, 194 countries came together and agreed on a negotiating text as the basis for the final agreement they hope to reach at the Paris Climate Summit in December. Every country's position has been included. A good foundation for a collective global pledge to confront the threat to our future. It is about your life. Let's help...

... In some way, tobacco was an easier issue politically than climate change. With tobacco, the job of scientists was to convince people that smoking was harming themselves, not other people (at least until secondhand smoke became an issue). As more and more people had loved ones suffer through lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking, people became convinced of the relationship. With climate change, the victims are members of future generations or people who live near the rising oceans. Fortunately, science has a way of winning out in the long run, when scientists largely agree as they do on...

Welcome to Obama's Department of the Internet help line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnY3roP-oJI

A wise man once said something about knowing a tree by its fruit, and there are three bitter fruits always harvested by a culture that has allowed Marxism to take root: Leaders manipulate the public with outright lies and propaganda far exceeding the normal embellishments typical of politicians. Intimidation and bullying of your opposition becomes the norm and self-righteously justified. Demagoguery replaces common human decency and situational decorum. In total, this is known as the “thugocracy,” which is always what Marxism becomes. Here are three recent examples, both blatant and subtle, that indicate ours is a culture that doesn’t have...

Gov. Jay Inslee’s proposal to cap state carbon emissions and impose $1 billion a year in new charges on oil refineries, aluminum smelters and other top polluters passed its first legislative hurdle Tuesday, clearing the state House Environment Committee on a party-line vote. But as the bill headed for a final committee vote, the ranking Republican on the committee, Rep. Matt Shea, R-Spokane Valley, raised a line of argument that GOP leaders have largely shied away from this year. Shea, one of the legislature’s most conservative members, disputed the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is occurring, likely due to...

Are Americans worried about climate change? Do they want their government to regulate greenhouse gases? A recent survey - from Stanford University, The New York Times and Resources for the Future - found that strong majorities say "yes" to both questions. But there's a big catch, which isn't getting the attention it deserves: A strong majority also say that they oppose increasing taxes on either gasoline or electricity in order to reduce climate change. That's important, because any serious effort to lower emissions is going to raise prices. At the same time, a majority said they would oppose the Kyoto...

With the planet facing potentially severe impacts from global warming in coming decades, a government-sponsored scientific panel on Tuesday called for more research on geoengineering — technologies to deliberately intervene in nature to counter climate change. In two widely anticipated reports, the panel — which was supported by NASA and other federal agencies, including what the reports described as the “U.S. intelligence community” — noted that drastically reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases was by far the best way to mitigate the effects of a warming planet. But the panel, in making the case for more research...

Teenagers at a California high school were publicly shamed for disagreeing with speakers allowed to push an LGBT agenda during an English class, according to several upset parents. The Queer Straight Alliance at Acalanes High School, in Lafayette, lectured students in several ninth-grade English classes on Jan. 29 about LGBT issues, according to Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which is representing the parents. During the class, the students, ages 14 and 15, were instructed to stand in a circle. Then, they were grilled about their personal beliefs and their parents’ beliefs on homosexuality, PJI alleges.“The QSA...

Trojan condoms now cost a month's wages for an average person in Venezuela. A box of 36 condoms can cost upwards of $755 for Venezuelans. A long line in supermarkets for corn, milk and sugar has been customary for a few years in the country, and the skyrocketed price for common goods like condoms in the country stems from the flailing economy and the shortage of goods throughout the nation, according to a report by Bloomberg Business. Venezuelans are facing inflation of more than 60 percent, exacerbated by falling oil prices that have reduced the country's oil export earnings. Venezuela's...

With huge numbers of California children still uninsured, schools are beginning to take the lead in letting families know that affordable health care coverage is available. In school libraries and courtyards from Sacramento to Los Angeles and beyond, trained enrollment counselors have been invited to set up folding tables, commandeer desk space and corral parents before the Feb. 15 sign-up deadline for Covered California, the state’s online health insurance marketplace created under the federal Affordable Care Act. And the outreach will increase. Under a new state law, all California schools must include in their 2015-16 enrollment packets information about options...

Alfredo Padilla grew up in Texas as a migrant farmworker who followed the harvest with his parents to pick sugar beets in Minnesota each summer. He has not forgotten the aches of labor or how much the weather — too little rain, or too much — affected the family livelihood. Now an insurance lawyer in Carrizo Springs, Tex., he said he was concerned about global warming. “It’s obviously happening, the flooding, the record droughts,” said Mr. Padilla, who agrees with the science that human activities are the leading cause of climate change. “And all this affects poor people harder. The...

In an interview with Ezra Klein of Vox, President Obama said traditional market forces that used to redistribute income are failing and the time for government to do it instead has arrived. The interview, which ran today, was conducted January 23. Touting what he referred to as inclusive capitalism, Obama made the case for what actually sounds a lot like socialism. So part of our job is, what can government do directly through tax policy? What we’ve proposed, for example, in terms of capital gains — that would make a big difference in our capacity to give a tax break...

Promising to help America’s middle class, President Barack Obama on Monday sent Congress a record $4 trillion budget that would hammer corporate profits overseas and raise taxes on the wealthy while boosting tax credits for families and the working poor. Obama’s budget also would steer hundreds of billions of dollars to the nation’s crumbling infrastructure of roads and bridges, help provide two years of free community college and reverse the across-the-board, automatic budget cuts that have slammed the Pentagon and nearly every government department. In the face of certain opposition from Republicans, an optimistic Obama hailed a “breakthrough year for...

WASHINGTON — President Obama presented a budget on Monday that is more utopian vision than pragmatic blueprint. It proposes a politically improbable reshaping of the tax code and generous new social spending initiatives that would shift resources from the wealthy to the middle class. Absent from the plan is any pretense of trying to address the main drivers of the long-term debt — Social Security and Medicare — a quest that has long divided both parties and ultimately proved impossible. The document instead indicates that Mr. Obama, after years of being hemmed in on his fiscal priorities because of politics...

It was 8 degrees in Minneapolis on a recent January day, and out on Interstate 394, snow whipped against the windshields of drivers on their morning commutes. But inside the offices of Cargill, the food conglomerate, Greg Page, the company’s executive chairman, felt compelled to talk about global warming. Mr. Page is a member of the Risky Business Project, an unusual collection of business and policy leaders determined to prepare American companies for climate change. It’s a prestigious club, counting a former senator, five former White House cabinet members, two former mayors and two billionaires in the group. The 10...

Around the world, institutional investors — including pension funds, insurance companies, philanthropic endowments, and universities — are grappling with the question of whether to divest from oil, gas, and coal companies. The reason, of course, is climate change: Unless fossil-fuel consumption is cut sharply — and phased out entirely by around 2070, in favor of zero-carbon energy such as solar power — the world will suffer unacceptable risks from human-induced global warming. How should responsible investors behave in the face of these unprecedented risks? American universities are on the front line of this debate, pushed by their students, who are...

As the first major snowstorm of 2015 bears down on the Northeast, many pundits have taken the opportunity to mock the idea that humans are changing the climate. After all, it's very difficult to think "global warming" when your car is buried in snow. Still, all this doesn't necessarily mean that this particular blizzard was caused by, or made more intense by, human activity. Spotting the fingerprints of climate change in the middle of a blizzard is no easy task. But here's one thing we do know: As the climate continues to change, we can expect more weather like this.

... "'I'm not a scientist' won't be a winner in the presidential field," Republican strategist Ford O'Connell said of the now common response Republican lawmakers and candidates offer when asked about climate change. With the national party largely silent on the issue, conservative environmental groups like ConservAmerica are stepping up efforts to sharpen the Republican message. In recent months they have held meetings for like-minded conservatives and met with lawmakers and aides in a bid to help craft a new Republican environmental platform. Attempts to strike a softer tone will collide with entrenched resistance, primarily from the donor network in...

Don’t pick a political fight with Pope Francis? The title of Rachel Lu’s recent essay and the timidity behind it reminds me of a old Jewish joke. Max and Moishe are being escorted to the execution chamber in a Nazi prison. In a sudden gesture of defiance, Max raises his arm and gives the guards his middle finger. Horrified, Moishe pulls his arm down and blurts, “Please, Max, don’t make waves.” Just so all the reflexive excuses for Pope Francis’ dismaying behavior and increasingly obvious ideological bent. Lu forgets there exists such a thing as a loyal opposition. She cites...

NEW DELHI — President Obama pressed India on Tuesday to do more to curb the pollution that is choking its capital and contributing to global climate change, as he wrapped up a visit that yielded no meaningful breakthrough on the issue. While India and the United States agreed to cooperate in promoting cleaner energy, Mr. Obama left after three days without the sort of specific commitment to curbing greenhouse gases that he won in China last year. Instead, he used a farewell speech before his departure to argue that India had an obligation to step up, despite its economic challenges.

Marxist wealth redistribution The President is convinced that he has been elected to make sure everyone gets their “fair share” - paid for by taking it from those he has determined somehow have an unfair share. Of course he doesn’t use the term unfair share, but if someone has been denied their fair share then someone else must have more money than they are supposed to have, in other words, an unfair share. The real unfair share, though, is the wealth appropriated by our corrupt federal government that is so often misused, misplaced and stolen. All this wealth appropriation the...

The first day of the World Economic Forum in Davos was dominated by calls for 2015 to be a year of action on climate change. But while some in the business community worry about sustainability, there is plenty of evidence that the vast bulk of business executives give it no consideration at all. “We are seeing the accelerated impact of climate change,” World Bank boss Jim Yong Kim said in a speech on Wednesday. “Last year was the hottest on record. That matters. Extreme weather is real. It’s a complete no-brainer to move towards cleaner, more livable cities.” Yet according...

Greeks began voting on Sunday in an election expected to bring to power the radical leftist Syriza party, which has pledged to take on international lenders and roll back painful austerity measures imposed during years of economic crisis. Barring a huge upset, victory for Syriza, which has led opinion polls for months, would produce the first euro zone government openly committed to cancelling the austerity terms of its EU and IMF-backed bailout programme. After its most severe crisis since the fall of the military junta in 1974, Greece's economy has shrunk by some 25 percent, thousands of businesses have closed,...

Say conservatives have their way with Obamacare, and the Supreme Court deals it a death blow or a Republican president repeals it in 2017. Some people who got health insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act may lose it. In which case, liberals like to say, some of Obamacare’s beneficiaries may die. Columnist Jonathan Chait wrote recently that those who may die are victims of ideology — “collateral damage” incurred in conservatives’ pursuit “of a larger goal.” If these are the stakes, many liberals argue, then ending Obamacare is immoral. Except, it’s not. In a world of scarce...

FRISCO — With the EPA set to decide in May whether aircraft carbon pollution endangers public health or welfare, the battle over airline industry emissions in heating up. This week, six major green groups called on the EPA and the Federal Aviation Administration to move quickly to set emission standards to curb greenhouse gas pollution from the nation’s aircraft fleet. “The Obama administration needs to finally hold the airline industry accountable for its massive greenhouse gas emissions,” said Vera Pardee, a senior attorney with the Center’s Climate Law Institute. “The EPA has delayed action for years, and our climate is...

2014 was, according to NOAA and NASA, the warmest year on record for the entire world. Locally, it was also the hottest year in California’s history. The world’s climate is changing, at least according to science and data. 2014 was also the year of Frozen, Disney’s animated musical blockbuster about two sisters and a snowman (more or less), amassing over $1.2 billion in worldwide box office receipts and billions more from countless sing-a-long showings, DVD sales, and merchandise since its November 2013 release. And now, in 2015, we’re learning where these two seemingly disparate facts intersect: the State Department’s Admiral...

The symbolic doomsday clock moved to three minutes before midnight on Thursday because of the gathering dangers of climate change and nuclear proliferation, signalling the gravest threat to humanity since the throes of the cold war. It was the closest the clock has come to midnight since 1984, when arms-control negotiations stalled and virtually all channels of communication between the US and the former Soviet Union closed down. $cientists suggested that the greater danger lay in the failure of leaders to recognise and act on climate change. “Stunning government failures have imperiled civilisations on a global scale,” Benedict said. “World...

President Barack Obama's State of the Union address drew the second-lowest television viewership in 15 years. According to Nielsen data, 31.7 million viewers watched Tuesday night's prime-time address on broadcast and cable networks. That's the lowest television viewership for a State of the Union address since President Bill Clinton's final speech.

United States senators are now on the record on the question of whether climate change is "a hoax." The Senate on Wednesday passed a measure stating that "climate change is real and is not a hoax" by a margin of 98-1. The amendment was designed in part as a jab at GOP Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who has questioned the science of climate change. Inhofe voted for the measure, arguing that the true "hoax" is that climate change is the result of human activity. "Climate is changing, and climate has always changed, and always will, there's archeological evidence of...

Just saw a local Miami tv station using video from the government web site with an "interview" of Obama, where he spews some crap about how his goal is to outline for the nation how he is going to make sure things are fair, now that we have "made it through the crisis". I nearly spit my coffee out. We are not out of a crisis. My point is that these kind of videos are NOT a proper use for news....and I expect that if a REPUBLICAN president put out this type of "interview", the media would ignore it....on the...

The White House wants President Obama to play the part of Robin Hood at Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Obama hopes to use the big speech to remove a blemish of his presidency: an economic recovery that has left wage growth behind. Obama wants to move forward with all of these populist proposals for the poor and middle class, and he wants to do so by taking from the rich in the form of higher taxes on the wealthy and Wall Street.

Tom Steyer is telling potential supporters that if he were to run for Senate in California, he would set policy goals related to climate change, taxes and public education. If he does not meet certain goals in six years, Steyer would pledge not to run for a second term. The billionaire environmentalist and former hedge fund manager spent $74 billion in the midterm elections in an effort to elect more lawmakers who want to fight climate change. Steyer also wants to ensure that the highest income earners pay effective tax rates that are at least the same level as the...

President Obama plans to call for billions in tax increases on top earners – including a hike in investment tax rates -- in order to fund new tax credits and other measures the White House claims will help the middle class. The president's proposals, which also include eliminating a tax break on inheritances, are likely to be cheered by the Democratic Party's liberal base when they are announced Tuesday night in his State of the Union address. However, the tax increases are all but certain to be non-starters with the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill. The president's address --...

London: A new study has recently revealed that manicured lawns are major source of greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming. Grass lawns soak up carbon dioxide, which is stored in the soil after the cut grass rots and so, like trees, they are considered good for the planet. But Dr. Chuanhui Gu of Appalachian State University in the US said that once the energy expended by mowing, fertilizer use and watering are taken into account, lawns actually produce more greenhouse gases than they soak up. The study is published in the Journal of Environmental Management.

Socialism: Venezuelans are being arrested for posting Internet photos of shortages in stores. So let's get this straight: Murder and mayhem are de facto legal in that crime pit, but posting evidence of socialism's failure merits jailing. As socialism plays out to its logical conclusion in Venezuela, the specters of long lines, rationing, troop enforcers, bizarre edicts and desperate statements are now the order of the day. Not only have more than a dozen Venezuelans been arrested for posting photographs of empty store shelves on social media, three governors have responded to long lines by — prohibiting them; ordering the...

Three new studies offer new proof of how bad the earth's fever has gotten. It’s not often that the climate change deniers get clobbered three times in just two days. But that’s what happened with the release of a trio of new studies that ought to serve as solid body blows to the fading but persistent fiction that human-mediated warming is somehow a hoax. Good news for the forces of reason, however, is bad news for the planet—especially the oceans. “Today’s news is a clear and undeniable warning for all of us that we need to cut climate pollution and...

Students across the United States are getting a taste of progressivism. And it doesn’t seem to please their palates. The implementation of Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity lunch standards is encountering backlash from students and school administrators across the country. The program seems to have taught them a valuable lesson in the realities of progressivism -- that when American voters give up power to busy-body progressives, the result is more control over their lives and the loss of individual liberties. They responded to this newfound reality with boycotts, social media angst, and filled trash cans instead of filled bellies.According to the Government...

There are times when a little piece of news comes in from some far flung corner of the world and it’s necessary to wonder whether one should laugh or cry about it all. So it is with this remarkable story from Venezuela. The wonders of Bolivarian Socialism are so great that governors in some parts of the country have decided to ban queuing. No, really, I promise you that I am not making this up. Here’s the news about the queuing: Governors in three Venezuelan states have banned overnight queuing amid huge and sometimes rowdy lines around shops across the...

Pope Francis said Thursday he is convinced that global warming is "mostly" man-made and that he hopes his upcoming encyclical on the environment will encourage negotiators at a climate change meeting in Paris to make "courageous" decisions to protect God's creation.

The world's oceans are now rising far faster than they did in the past, a new $tudy says. The current sea level rise rate — which started in 1990 — is 2.5 times faster than it was from 1900 to 1990, according to a $tudy published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Scientists say that faster pace of sea level rise is from melting ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica and shrinking glaciers, triggered by man-made global warming. "We're seeing a significant acceleration in the past few decades," said $tudy lead author Carling Hay, a geophysical researcher at Harvard University....

Although most of us worry about other things, climate scientists have become increasingly worried about the survival of civilization. For example, Lonnie Thompson, who received the U.S. National Medal of Science in 2010, said that virtually all climatologists "are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization." Informed journalists share this concern. The climate crisis "threatens the survival of our civilization," said Pulitzer Prize-winner Ross Gelbspan. Mark Hertsgaard agrees, saying that the continuation of global warming "would create planetary conditions all but certain to end civilization as we know it." These scientists and journalists, moreover,...

FULL TITLE: Volcanoes are cooling Earth: Aerosols from small eruptions have reduced global temperatures and tropical rainfall. Small volcanic eruptions over the past 20 years have been protecting the Earth from global warming, according to a new study. Scientists have confirmed that droplets of sulphur-rich aerosols spewed into the upper atmosphere by volcanoes have been reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. Until recently it was thought that only particularly large eruptions had any noticeable affect on the climate. This could have helped decrease the global temperatures by between 0.05°C to 0.12°C over the past 15 years. Since 1998, the warmest...

The latest research on little auks, sometimes called "penguins of the north," reveals a surprising response to a rapidly warming Arctic: The birds make up for food lost to the effects of climate change by catching prey that were stunned by the cold water running off melting glaciers—another effect of climate change. The study, published Monday in the journal Global Change Biology, is the first to examine the feeding habits of little auks as Arctic ice is lost. Scientists watched the birds in Franz-Josef Land, off the northern coast of Russia, during an expedition supported by the National Geographic Society....

The economic damage caused by a ton of carbon dioxide emissions – often referred to as the "social cost" of carbon – could actually be six times higher than the value that the United States now uses to guide current energy regulations, and possibly future mitigation policies, Stanford scientists say. A recent U.S. government study concluded, based on the results of three widely used economic impact models, that an additional ton of carbon dioxide emitted in 2015 would cause $37 worth of economic damages. These damages are expected to take various forms, including decreased agricultural yields, harm to human health...

In a global warming series Eco Eye, experts warned about the catastrophic dangers of climate change, predicting significant coastal damage and the extinction of many plant and animal species. “Climate change is a reality. It’s here. That’s something as a society we haven’t bought into. It will be a very difficult problem for Dublin, Cork, Galway and Belfast,” said Professor Robert Devoy. “What is coming down the tracks is a significant warming of the planet. The last time it warmed of this order, 88 per cent of life on earth disappeared. “I have five grandchildren. Whatever time is left to...

Climate change predictions can be scary, and political opposition to climate action is fierce. But EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says she can’t help but be optimistic about the future. McCarthy, speaking at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) annual meeting in Phoenix on Wednesday, struck a decidedly positive tone. “If there is ever a challenge where the U.S. can shine and provide leadership, it is the challenge of climate change,” she said. “The real danger and the real economic problem we face is not taking action,” McCarthy said. She emphasized the importance of the work of the thousands of weather and...