Free Republic

A huge boom in immigration, legal and illegal, over the past 16 years has jumped the immigrant population to over 43 million in the United States, according to a new report. And when their U.S.-born children are added, the number grows to over 60 million, making the immigrant community nearly one-fifth of the nation's population, according to federal statistics reviewed by the Center for Immigration Studies.

The vice president—and other powerful men—regularly avoid one-on-one meetings with women in the name of protecting their families. In the end, what suffers is women’s progress. March 30, 2017 In a recent, in-depth Washington Post profile of Karen Pence, Vice President Mike Pence’s wife, a small detail is drawing most of the attention: “In 2002, Mike Pence told The Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.” In context, this choice is not especially surprising. The Pences are evangelical Christians, and...

If President Trump continues to remain silent on the Kurdistan referendum, he risks botching the most consequential moment for American national interests in the Middle East this century. Should the Kurds of northern Iraq succeed in their independence ambitions, it would create the possibility for the rise of the first secular, liberal nation in the Middle East since Israel’s 1948 declaration of statehood. Now is the time for President Trump to act decisively and back this movement before it’s too late and a momentous opportunity falls by the wayside. This weekend, the Kurdish people started voting on whether to secede...

A global tipping point for electric cars could come as early as 2022, as battery costs decrease and concerns about range and infrastructure ease. That’s from analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, who in a little over a year’s time have turned even more optimistic about the future dominance of electric cars over internal-combustion vehicles. In a Tuesday note, the analysts forecast that one in three cars will be purely electric by 2030; their July 2016 prediction was one in 10 by the same year. “There are several factors converging that have led us to revise our thinking —...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A North Carolina teenager accused of decapitating his mother is psychotic and won't be prosecuted on a murder charge, his attorney said Wednesday. A judge ordered 19-year-old Oliver Funes Machada involuntarily committed to a state psychiatric hospital after a series of mental health evaluations, including those by state experts, defense attorney Boyd Sturges said. Machada was ruled incompetent to proceed with his case. "This is consistent with what our position is," Sturges said. "We feel that Mr. Machada is very, very seriously deranged. And clearly he's psychotic, and we think the state's correct."   Sturges said the...

The FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR) for 2016 shows more than four times as many people were stabbed to death than were killed with rifles of any kind. And because the category of rifles covers every type of rifle, this means there would be an even greater divide between the number of people stabbed to death versus those shot to death with an AR-15 or similar rifle. According to FBI: UCR Table 12, there were approximately 374 people shot and killed with rifles of any kind. There were 1,604 people killed with “knives or cutting instruments.” Table 12 also shows...

CLIFFSIDE PARK, N.J. — A 25-second video clip recorded inside a classroom at Cliffside Park High School is being shared on social media and it has started a debate. “…men and women are fighting. They are not fighting for your right to speak Spanish. They are fighting for your right to speak American,” a teacher can be heard saying to her class. Students in Cliffside Park, a diverse community with a large number of Spanish-speaking students, immediately reacted to the comment. One even walked out. "You're being racist," that student can be heard saying on the video. "I know how...

President Donald Trump enjoyed a night out with the family over the weekend, as he and the First Lady dined at his DC hotel property on Saturday. The Commander-in-Chief arrived at the Trump International Hotel shortly after 8pm where he met with Melania and their son Barron, who were waiting for him inside the establishment. It was a rare public outing for the three and the first time Barron, 11, has been photographed with his parents since August 27, when he was seen returning from a brief overnight trip to Camp David with the President and First Lady. The venue...

We see patterns where none exist. It’s what humans do; in fact, it’s what animals do. Mark Twain noticed this and had a pithy summary. "We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it — and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again — and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more." The wary cat has a theory of the world: Stove burns you. Stay...

We’re coming to the end of a slew of Jewish holidays, today being Shemini Atzeret. Ben Shapiro, being a devout Jew, is unable to use technology, with holidays treated as the Sabbath. Ergo he cannot reply to criticisms leveled against him. A perfect time for The New York Times to conveniently drop an OpEd titled “The Hollow Bravery of Ben Shapiro.” Pro-tip: if you’re going to accuse someone of “hollow bravery,” post your hit piece when the subject can respond. Lest anyone call you, or your organization, cowards. Blatant, obvious cowards. A note before we continue: I beg for your...

The economic argument for free international trade is basically that people produce in order to consume, not the other way around, so the economic system should be geared to the benefit of the consumer, not the producer. In the economic sense, producers include workers and owners of capital or land, who often join in associations called "firms." There are more consumers than producers, as everybody is a consumer but not everybody is a producer; some live off the production of parents, donors, or taxpayers. So there are more consumers than producers; but this is not the important point. Free Trade...

In reality, a randomly selected black man is overwhelmingly unlikely to be victim of police violence — and though white men experience such violence even less often, the disparity is consistent with the racial gap in violent crime, suggesting that the role of racial bias is small. Last year, according to the Washington Post’s tally, just 16 unarmed black men, out of a population of more than 20 million, were killed by the police. The year before, the number was 36. These figures are likely close to the number of black men struck by lightning in a given year, considering...

History Channel Origin of Taps includes the history of Taps and a look at the Broken Note at John F Kennedy's funeral in 1963

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — For the first time ever, more New Yorkers are using ride service vehicles like Uber than the city’s famed yellow cabs. The New York Times crunched the numbers provided by Uber and found people took an average of 289,000 Uber rides every day in July compared with 277,000 taxi trips.

Colin Kaepernick and his supporters may not realize it, but their ideas originate in a nineteenth-century German who interpreted the world as a struggle between oppressors and oppressed. When Colin Kaepernick, then a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, refused to stand for the national anthem in 2016, he probably had no idea what he was starting. But Kaepernick also probably had no idea where his own ideas originated. Like so many left-wing beliefs, Kaepernick’s intellectual odyssey begins with the nineteenth-century German philosopher Karl Marx. Marx explained the world through exploitation and oppression. A struggle between oppressor (evil) and oppressed...

Civil War reenactors replaying the Battle of Cedar Creek in Virginia on Saturday went ahead with their demonstration despite the group organizing the event receiving a letter threatening "bodily harm" to anyone who participated. The battlefield was temporarily cleared on Saturday when a "suspicious device" - possibly a pipe bomb - was discovered. The FBI is investigating. Washington Post: “We wanted to send a message,” said Keith MacGregor, 56, from Lebanon, Pa., who was playing the role of a Union infantry captain for the reenactment of the Battle of Cedar Creek, held not far from here. “We wanted to show...

Four floors above a dull cinder-block lobby in a nondescript building at the Ohio State University, the doors of a slow-moving elevator open on an unexpectedly futuristic 10,000-square-foot laboratory bristling with technology. It’s a reveal reminiscent of a James Bond movie. In fact, the researchers who run this year-old, $750,000 lab at OSU’s Spine Research Institute resort often to Hollywood comparisons. Thin beams of blue light shoot from 36 of the same kind of infrared motion cameras used to create lifelike characters for films like Avatar. In this case, the researchers are studying the movements of a volunteer fitted with...

Are Fox News host Sean Hannity and WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange up to something? On October 8th, Hannity tweeted his famous “Tick Tock,” warning — but this time — with a twist, including a 7 day countdown. One week later, Assange followed up with his own cryptic tweet.

American conservatism is having something of an identity crisis. Most conservatives supported Donald Trump last November. But many prominent conservative intellectuals—journalists, academics and think-tank personalities—have entrenched themselves in bitter opposition. Some have left the Republican Party, while others are waging guerrilla warfare against a Republican administration. Longtime friendships have been ended and resignations tendered. Talk of establishing a new political party alternates with declarations that Mr. Trump will be denied the GOP nomination in 2020. Those in the “Never Trump” camp say the cause of the split is the president—that he’s mentally unstable, morally unspeakable, a leftist populist, a rightist...

t feels strange writing about this topic, some 25 years after I had it completely settled in my mind. But nothing is ever really settled, I suppose. The claim that I had long ago concluded was a basic historical and economic fallacy is back in a big way. The claim is that society needs homogeneity to be orderly and free. It is a core claim of the alt-right and its sympathizers (and, in a different way, of the alt-left). It is what leads them to reject freedom as a path forward and embrace state control of demographics. It’s completely wrong....