Free Republic

Ted Cruz is back in the headlines after what can be most charitably described as a bit of showboating at a summit of Middle Eastern Christians. Much has been written about that controversy, but one of Cruz’s comments received relatively less attention than it deserved. “ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and their state sponsors like Syria and Iran, are all engaged in a vicious genocidal campaign to destroy religious minorities in the Middle East,” Cruz said. “Sometimes we are told not to loop these groups together, that we have to understand their so-called nuances and differences.” “But we shouldn’t try to...

Criticized for zealously defending a cop killer, President Barack Obama’s beleaguered nominee to lead to the Justice Department’s civil rights division has withdrawn his nomination. The law firm of WilmerHale said Debo Adegbile has returned to private practice in its New York office. The White House confirmed that Mr. Adegbile withdrew his nomination. The Senate blocked Mr. Adegbile’s nomination in March, with critics citing his representation of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted 30 years ago of murdering a Philadelphia police officer. As the former head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Mr. Adegbile helped Abu-Jamal get his death sentence overturned....

Sisters speak out at In Defense of Christians Inaugural Summit. Sometimes it takes a David to defeat a Goliath – or, in this case, unassuming nuns to speak where the media remain silent. Speaking out for Christians persecuted in the Middle East, Mother Olga Yaqob and Sister Hatune Dogan slammed the American media for keeping silent. The nuns spoke with MRC during the In Defense of Christians (IDC) Inaugural Summit in Washington, D.C. Sept. 9-11. Both told the stories journalists ignore: of refugees displaced and Christian girls “repeatedly raped” and “misused” – some as young as 5-years-old. Mother Olga of...

Venezuela's chronic shortages have begun to encroach on a cultural cornerstone: the boob job. Beauty-obsessed Venezuelans face a scarcity of brand-name breast implants, and women are so desperate that they and their doctors are turning to devices that are the wrong size or made in China, with less rigorous quality standards. Venezuelans once had easy access to implants approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But doctors say they are now all-but impossible to find because restrictive currency controls have deprived local businesses of the cash to import foreign goods. It may not be the gravest shortfall facing the...

Have you met Ezra Trudeau? He has some pretty far-out ideas about how to run the country!

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - U.S. law enforcement is investigating a new phenomenon of women from the American heartland joining Islamic State as President Barack Obama vows to cut off the militants' recruiting at home. At least three Somali families in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area have female relatives who have gone missing in the past six weeks and may have tried to join Islamic State, said community leader Abdirizak Bihi. He said that while the reasons for their disappearance were unclear, he had told the families to contact police. In a separate case, a 19-year-old American Somali woman from St. Paul snuck...

USA Today has published a copy of the November 2010 edition of the Senate Handbook, a "compilation of the policies and regulations governing office administration, equipment and services, security and financial management." It has never been released publicly before, which means we now have much more about how Senate offices go about their business, decorate their office spaces, etc. In fact, it's far more than you would ever want to know. But now that the information has been published online, we can at least tell when elected officials are fudging the official rules. We read the manual (so you don't...

An internal watchdog office says that NASA's efforts to identify, track and do something about potentially threatening asteroids are not well-integrated and lack proper oversight. Top NASA executives agreed with the criticism and promised to fix the problems within a year. Monday's report from NASA's Office of Inspector General focuses on the agency's program to deal with near-Earth objects. That program is budgeted at $40 million a year, which represents a tenfold increase over what it was five years ago. The NEO Program Office coordinates NASA's efforts to catalog comets and asteroids in Earth-crossing orbits — and also plays a...

More than three dozen nations have signed on to the anti-Islamic State coalition, US officials say. But Russia and Iran are also likely to play roles, and some Arab countries will prefer to keep quiet about their help.

On July 24, President Obama traveled to Medina, a small, wealthy enclave outside Seattle, to attend a fundraiser for a Democratic super PAC at the home of former Costco CEO Jim Sinegal, one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable donors. But at the same time Sinegal was raising money to help Democrats retain control of the U.S. Senate, he and two of the wholesaler’s top executives were also shelling out cash to help Republicans win the Washington State Senate. In fact, the three Costco executives — long among the most reliable donors to Democratic candidates and causes — have spent...

[SNIP] All of which brings us to the latest popular lament among pundits, politicians, and even some in the business world: the perceived lack of engineers and/or ‘STEM’ (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates. President Obama has said “We need more engineers,” so has Hillary Clinton, and then Lockheed Martin executive Stephanie Hill recently stated that “we’ll lose” if we don’t produce at least 1 million more ‘STEM’ grads. About all the handwringing, readers can relax. Indeed, there’s nothing to this story or alleged shortage. Price signals work. They always do, and they do because one of the underlying purposes...

Leading retailer Sports Direct has apologised to customers after a security guard allegedly barred “Jews” from entering its store. The security guard was removed from the store after he told Jewish students they could not enter the branch in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, on Friday afternoon. The guard, who was sacked from the security company supplying Sports Direct with staff, reportedly told two Year 7 students wearing Yavneh College school uniform: “No Jews, no Jews”. Lawyer David Rosen, whose son was prevented from entering the retailer by the guard, complained to managers. In a Facebook post, he wrote: “Other children from the...

What is the enduring lesson of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when the Bush administration overestimated and, in some cases, exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein? Some say it's to be skeptical of government officials who are making the case for war. I say the legacy should be skepticism toward government officials, period—all of them. Their hidden agendas can shade the case for peace as well as war, which might explain why there's no consensus among so-called experts about the threat posed today by ISIS. On a scale of zero to panic, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint...

Can Touré Neblett not see the incandescent irony of his statement? His show-ending rant on The Cycle today condemned the censorship of the shocking images of war. Railed Touré: "we're blocked from seeing so much of the cost of war, of the evil of war as if we are too sensitive or squeamish or unable to handle the graphic truth." Touré focused on one particular photo, taken by photojournalist Kenneth Jarecke during the first Gulf War, deploring the fact that AP refused to publish it. Incredibly, Touré then proceeded to . . . censor the photo himself, declaring that "it's...

Chloe Rubiano is an 8th grader at Ramey Junior High in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She wore a shirt to school that says 'Virginity Rocks'. She got the shirt at a Christian festival last year. She said, she didn't think anyone would really make a big deal out of it. She wore it at her old school but at Ramay Junior High she was told it would disrupt the classroom.. When she was called to the office Chloe said the administration was worried her shirt would start sexual conversations in class. She said her vice principal told her, 'I love the shirt,...

Hundreds of Likud members took part in a meeting of the party's Central Committee in Ashkelon on Monday, where they passed a party proposal obligating the toppling the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza in the next counter-terror operation. "We must rehabilitate our deterrence, and in the next round destroy Hamas - there must be a clear decisive (blow)," said Likud Central Committee Chairman MK Danny Danon at the event. The statement refers to the perceived lack of decisive military action in Operation Protective Edge, the third such operation in Gaza, which ended with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sealing a ceasefire...

Kalapana. Royal Gardens. And now … Pahoa? With a lava flow advancing steadily toward Pahoa village, Kilauea appears poised to claim yet another community as part of its 31-year-long eruption.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Reuters US Secretary of State John Kerry has waffled on his position from last Friday, when he ruled out Iran's participation in a global coalition against Islamic State (ISIS) - on Monday, he said in an interview that he would be open to military cooperation with Iran. Asked in a Yahoo interview whether the US would cooperate militarily with Iran, Kerry did not rule out the option, saying "let’s see what Iran might or might not be willing to do before we start making any pronouncements." Kerry elaborated saying "I think we are open...

More than 700 people fleeing Africa and the Middle East may have drowned in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean over the last week, bringing the death toll this year to almost 3,000, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Monday. In the worst incident, as many as 500 migrants are believed to have died after traffickers rammed their ship off Malta's coast last week, an event that only came to light this weekend in testimony from two of nine survivors.

More than 700 people fleeing Africa and the Middle East may have drowned in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean over the last week, bringing the death toll this year to almost 3,000, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Monday. In the worst incident, as many as 500 migrants are believed to have died after traffickers rammed their ship off Malta's coast last week, an event that only came to light this weekend in testimony from two of nine survivors.