Free Republic

<p>Unusual weather in the Southwest could cause a nationwide salad shortage later this month. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce): Scientists say the weird weather is probably caused by climate change - which means these sorts of problems are likely to happen again.</p>

If you think you’re going crazy from nonstop news coverage of unruly behavior and disruptive protests across the country since Donald Trump was elected president, rest assured there are veiled reasons for the current madness. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Goodwin asserts the ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ is no temporarily insane reaction, but rather “a calculated plan to wreck the presidency, whatever the cost to the country.” The beginnings of this “rolling coup” happened in broad daylight in the taking down of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn as Director of National Security by residual players within the Obama intelligence community -- including the...

Tuesday's address to a joint session of Congress was without a doubt the best speech President Donald Trump has ever given, perhaps the best speech to a joint session of Congress since the great Ronald Reagan.  But who could watch it and not be embarrassed by our infantile, bitter Left? It was uplifting, optimistic, full of unifying words, and obvious to everyone. The pathetic exception was the Democrats in Congress. And those were the ones who did not boycott the event.   Like spoiled children, who had not gotten their way, they refused to applaud at the most obvious good-for-the-country...

Californians are in shock that after five years of too little water, the problem now is too much. Some are calling this a wake-up call for California as climate change could bring similar damage. But this shouldn't be a surprise, says Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University. "It's actually exactly what has been predicted by scientists for at least 30 years," he says. He says California is likely to see more extreme flooding with climate change. And the reason is pretty simple. If it's warmer, storms produce more rain instead of snow. But that's not what California's water...

Before his 70-year sentence was commuted in the waning days of the Barack Obama administration, Lopez spent 35 years of his life in federal prisons for his role as a leader in the militant Puerto Rican nationalist group FALN. The group claimed responsibility for dozens of bombings across the U.S during the 1970s, including here in Chicago, although Lopez’s supporters argue he was never convicted of personally hurting anyone. The designation for the three-block stretch of North Luis Munoz Marin Drive was championed by Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26th), who worked the floor prior to the vote. Even with that lobbying,...

A week or so ago, I sent out the YouTube links to the first 3 Bezmenov videos -- actually, mainly audios -- of the 1985 Atlanta speech by the late Yuri Bezmenov, the KGB agent who defected from the USSR. I put those clips up 6 years ago and just never got back to the necessary editing required to break up his fascinating, excellent and alarming 90 minute presentation. (If you don't recall those first 3, I've included them below as well) Yuri's warnings to the America he came to love are more timely today now that the even more...

Pope Francis needs to take tougher action against the United States’ most influential Catholic in Rome, Cardinal Raymond “Breitbart” Burke. The renegade cleric is not only undermining Francis’s reformist, compassionate papacy, and gospel teaching as it applies to refugees and Muslims, but the rebel prince of the church is also using his position within the walls of the Vatican to legitimize extremist forces that want to bring down Western liberal democracy, Stephen K. Bannon-style. Simply put, the Vatican is facing a political war between the modernizing Pope Francis and a conservative wing that wants to reassert white Christian dominance. Burke...

The United Nations envoy for gay rights has declared that when there is a clash between homosexual rights and religious liberty it must be recalled that “freedom of expression and religious freedom are not absolute rights and may be limited if necessary.” In a recent public consultation, the UN’s newly appointed “independent expert” on the defense of LGTB rights, Vitit Muntarbhorn, said that negative moral judgments on homosexual activity were a recent phenomenon, stemming from “colonial law.”

Diversity In the past days, scientists have voiced concern over many issues - gag orders for government science agencies, funding freezes, and reversing science based policies. We recognize that these changes will differently and disproportionately affect minority scientists, science advocates, and the global communities impacted by these changes in American policies. Addressing these issues is imperative in understanding how recent developments will affect all people - not simply the most privileged among us. We take seriously your concerns that for this march to be meaningful, we must centralize diversity of the march's organizers at all levels of planning. Diversity must...

A law professor at Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York is appealing for an end to the institution of marriage in America, which he describes as “religious, gendered, and bourgeois.” Ethan J. Leib published his essay in the Fordham Law Review. The article, titled “Hail Marriage and Farewell,” says Leib was “elated” when the U.S. Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law of the land on June 26, 2015, a ruling he described as “a victory for rights, for open-mindedness, for love, and for the future.” The decision, in fact, made him feel, at least for a moment, as if...

In a controversial interview, Pope Francis has publicly defended Liberation Theology, calling it a “positive thing” in Latin America.

Valery Rodos has spent most of his 74 years coming to grips with a father he barely knew. "I would give my arm, my leg, my life if only my father had become a tailor like his father," Rodos told RFE/RL's Russian Service. Instead, Boris Rodos built an extraordinary career as a torturer and executioner in Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's dreaded secret police, the NKVD. Recruited as a junior lieutenant in December 1936, within two years the elder Rodos was the assistant to the head of the notorious political division in Moscow. He personally tortured the great Russian writer Isaac...

January 22, 2017The Left is not just in disarray--it is in complete collapse because the working class has awakened to the Left's betrayal and abandonment of the working class in favor of building personal wealth and power. The source of the angry angst rippling through the Democratic Party's progressive camp is not President Trump--it's the complete collapse of the Left globally. To understand this collapse, we turn (once again) to Marx's profound understanding of the state and capitalism. We turn not to the cultural Marxism that is passingly familiar to Americans, but to Marx's core economic analysis, which as Sartre...

This is an audio excerpt from the book, "Seven Miracles That Saved America: Why They Matter and Why We Should Have Hope" (http://tinyurl.com/j2x2pym) detailing some of Howard Zinn's anti-American views. An audio snippet of Noam Chomsky can also be found here: https://youtu.be/CZfS_p4ZEVk Likewise, one should visit my tribute to Zinn at his passing [now updated somewhat]: http://tinyurl.com/ovgxoz7

In its remaining days in power, the Obama administration suddenly punished Vladimir Putin’s Russia for allegedly interfering in the U.S. presidential election. It claimed that Russian or Russian-hired hackers tapped into the records of the Democratic National Committee as well as the correspondence of John Podesta, a Clinton advisor. But what the Obama administration did not say was that such cyber-crimes are by now old hat. Both the Russian and Chinese governments have been hacking into far more important U.S. records and government archives for years without earning retaliation The administration also did not mention that the election hacking occurred...

We are the most religious democracy in the world, and our Judeo-Christian ethic demands that we take care of the downtrodden. But we are also the only advanced democracy without universal health coverage. Are we confused . . . or just hypocrites? My bet is that we are very confused. The public’s reaction to Obamacare (also known as the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) is a prime example of our confusion. Most Americans are preoccupied with making a living and raising a family, and rightly so. They have no time to fully examine health care policy issues. Surveys show that...

Back from vacation for the holidays and New Years, I've been watching some videos by Pastor Mark Dice from California, he has been doing fake petitions in universities and in Oceanside Beach which is located north of San Diego. These petitions include banning guns and having registered gun owners put in prisons or concentration camps. Also there are petitions making post birth abortions legal, making incest legal, making Karl Marx a candidate for the Democratic party or mandatory euthanasia for the elderly. The majority of of the signers are young naive liberals and marxists of course and your typical California...

When Pope Francis delivers his Christmas message this weekend, he will do so not just as the head of the Catholic Church but as the improbable standard-bearer for many progressives around the world. With conservative and nationalist forces on the rise in many places and with figures such as U.S. President Barack Obama and French President François Hollande on their way out, many on the left—from socialists in Latin America to environmentalists in Europe—are looking to the 80-year-old pontiff for leadership.“Pope Francis really inspires a lot of people to want to fight. I’m pretty sure if he weren’t the face...

In a move that will likely be overturned promptly by the administration of Donald Trump, president Obama on Tuesday formally blocked offshore oil and gas drilling in most of the Atlantic and Arctic Ocean, responding to a call from environmentalists who say the government needs to do more to prevent drilling in environmentally sensitive areas of U.S.-controlled oceans. The president had been expected to take the action by invoking a provision in a 1953 law that governs Outer Continental Shelf offshore leases, and he did just that to block drilling in federal waters in the Arctic's Chukchi Sea and most...

President Obama is dishing out a much rockier transfer of power to Donald Trump than he received from his predecessor eight years ago, from accusing the president-elect of being aided by Russian hackers to first lady Michelle Obama’s complaint that the nation has lost hope. Despite pledging a “smooth and efficient” transition on the day after Mr. Trump’s victory, Mr. Obama has presided over an increasingly acrimonious war of words between the White House and the president-elect’s team. The awkward transfer of power stands in stark contrast to the cooperative atmosphere fostered by Republican George W. Bush’s White House in...