Free Republic

The atheism that is currently prevailing in Western Europe has not been a naturally occurring development in the mind of large numbers of people. It's not, as individuals like Richard Dawkins and the 19th-century French positivist sociologist Auguste Comte would have you believe, an effect of the progress of science. In fact, scientific progress points exactly in the opposite direction. The more we know about the universe, life and consciousness, the more we realise that the probability of all these extremely complex natural intricacies and perfectly accurate mechanisms have no chance of having happened by chance. No, present common...

(strong language warning) There’s a time and a place for everything and for these two News 12 The Bronx anchors, they picked the wrong time and definitely the wrong place to vent personal opinions that were destined to generate some controversy. TV Spy reports: Yesterday morning at around 8:25 a.m., News 12 The Bronx anchors Amy Yensi and Matt Pieper were caught in an open-mic moment. The pair were about to report on the need for school crossing guards in certain areas, when they made the following off-the-cuff comments on air.

Earl Malone, Suspected Armed Robber One adult attempts to rob another, using the threat of deadly force.  The victim is an armed adult with a concealed carry permit.  He defends himself, and the attempted robber dies.   Cause for muted thanks, correct?  The good guy won, and there is one less hardened criminal on the street to make the city a slightly less dangerous place. The CBSMinnesota headline: Man Released After Claiming Self Defense In Fatal Mpls. ShootingThis from cbslocal.com: Authorities believe he was acting in self-defense when he fatally shot 18-year-old Earl Malone Saturday night at the intersection of...

"God bless you, and God bless the Homeland."It won't surprise me if that's how a future President closes one of his "State of the Union " addresses. The un-American term "the homeland" is taking over America. Everywhere I turn it's being used to replace the words "country" or "nation" or "the United States." All the media have accepted the phrase. It's all over CNN, FOX, MSNBC. I hear it on NPR.It's in the news pages and headlines of the Washington Examiner, the Washington Post and the Weekly Standard. "The homeland" is a bipartisan insult to America. It's being used by...

President Obama will sit down with CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday for a wide-ranging interview on domestic and foreign policy, including the bombing campaign against ISIS, the network announced Thursday.

....Obama’s speech...reminded me of a certain other American president who dealt with terrorist threats during his time in office. The difference between Obama and President George W. Bush is that Obama is late to the game and lacks credibility. Also, we know that Obama’s speeches are not necessarily connected to any particular effort or outcome. His reputation for failing to follow through on his pledges – or should I say, “red lines” – means that many of our allies and enemies see our president as unreliable.

If you are sending a text, watching the TV or listening to the radio, you may want to stop and give this your full attention. Multi-tasking shrinks the brain, research suggests. A study found that men and women who frequently used several types of technology at the same time had less grey matter in a key part of the brain....

President Obama has put America at the center of a widening war by expanding into Syria airstrikes against the Islamic State, the Sunni extremist group known as ISIS and ISIL. He has done this without allowing the public debate that needs to take place before this nation enters another costly and potentially lengthy conflict in the Middle East. He says he has justification for taking military action against the Islamic State and Khorasan, another militant group. There isn’t a full picture — because Mr. Obama has not provided one — of how this bombing campaign will degrade the extremist groups...

....Obama joked today during a New York speech that he doesn't seem to have the traffic problems the city's residents are always complaining about. 'It's actually pretty smooth for me during the week,' Obama said, after playfully arguing that everyone in New York 'hypes' the traffic. 'I don't know what the problem is,' he told attendees of the Clinton Global Initiative's annual meeting. 'I haven't noticed.'

Florida International University students are watching their backs, literally. An email alerted students to a man on a bike grabbing female’s buttocks.

At the Main Event Bar and Grill in Yuma, Colorado, on Tuesday morning, locals took their usual tables to eat breakfast and talk, as country music played over the speakers. The crowd was a mix of farmers, ranchers and retirees, many of whom have spent their whole lives in the tiny town (population 3,500) on the plains in the eastern part of the state. "Either just let them wipe themselves out or drop a bomb on them and have it all over with," says a man in a Marine Corps hat upon entering the restaurant. "Just nuke 'em. Get it...

While the announcements of players receiving pay while investigations were ongoing pissed off the most holier-than-thou media types, I also believed that it was highly unlikely the sanctimonious punditry in the news business would be the ONLY employment base were domestic violence did not occur, and thanks to the Internet hamper, here are a few examples of the media’s hypocritical dirty laundry….

I can’t believe I’m writing about “StopRush” again.Longtime readers will recall my extensive and groundbreaking research into the StopRush operation just after Limbaugh’s comments about Sandra Fluke in 2012, for which he apologized.I proved then that the operation — at least at that time — was a Media Matters astroturfed assault on Limbaugh’s advertiser base, based on a pre-existing plan just waiting for the right moment. Supposedly independent groups coordinated their efforts with an MMFA operative, and then tried to cover it up. My research led Limbaugh to activate his personal Twitter account to spread the results of my research....

The president spent over $7.3 million on just three trips in 2013, including $2.1 million to appear on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” in August, according to new flight documents provided by the Air Force to a public watchdog group.

...Obama will make a statement this morning at 10:00 am ET on the South Lawn. I will live stream it here.

We are seeing how easy it is for government, with the collusion and connivance of the media and the education establishment, to spiral out of the control of the people Oh, Well… Constitution Day has come and gone and not surprisingly, hardly anyone noticed. The Constitution has become irrelevant to all but a few endangered Republicans on Capitol Hill, and is totally ignored or twisted beyond recognition by all - repeat, all – Democrats. This, of course, includes all the members, young and old, of the Ministry of Leftist Propaganda, aka, the “mainstream” media.

Turkey refused on Thursday US permission for combat missions against the Takfiri group operating in neighboring Iraq and Syria. A government official said Ankara will not allow a US-led coalition to attack ISIL from its air bases, nor will it take part in combat operations against the Takfiri militants.

Peyton Manning and sex scandal are two things you might never expect to see in the same article. If so, you don’t know about the incident that happened at the University of Tennessee when Manning was the Tennessee Volunteers star quarterback.

In August 2011 Gov. Rick Scott first made it plain he likes toll lanes on major highways and wants more of them. They speed up traffic, he said. In October 2011, PolitiFact Florida checked out his assessment, rated it "mostly true." So it was a little surprising to see the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting (FCIR), whose stated purpose is "to expose corruption, waste and miscarriages of justice," expose Scott's commitment to toll lanes. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great this news is well and truly in front of the public again. And shame on all of us...

The alternative online publication philebrity.com, which is about "Philly Arts, Gossip, Media, Music, Nightlife & Politics".   The have picked up on the theme of irrationality of those who wish to disarm the citizenry by attribution volition and motivation to inanimate objects: "..3,373 people were killed by guns in Philadelphia between September 11, 2001 and the end of 2013, and 174 more have been murdered so far this year." People were killed *with* guns, not "by" guns.   There is a large difference.   Guns are not alive.   Guns do not make choices.  Guns do not have volition or...