Free Republic

A body found in a New Jersey river is that of missing Wall Street Journal reporter David Bird, who disappeared more than a year ago, authorities announced Thursday. Bird's remains were pulled from the Passaic River by dive teams Wednesday about a mile from where he vanished -- on the border of Morris and Somerset counties. Bird, an avid hiker and father of two, was last seen by his family on Jan. 11, 2014, as he was leaving his Long Hill Township, N.J., home to go on a walk.

Netanyahu Tactics Anger Many U.S. Jews, Deepening a Divide By LAURIE GOODSTEIN MARCH 20, 2015 Long before the latest election in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu was a polarizing figure among American Jews. But even many of his supporters said this week that they were appalled at his last-minute bid to mobilize Jewish voters by warning that Arabs were going to the polls in droves, and his renunciation of a two-state solution to the Palestinian crisis. Mr. Netanyahu’s party won the election and cheers from harwkish American Jews. But in interviews this week, rabbis, scholars and Jews from across the country and...

WASHINGTON — President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had a poisonous relationship long before Mr. Netanyahu swept to victory on Tuesday night in elections watched minute-by-minute at the White House. But now that Mr. Netanyahu has won after aggressively campaigning against a Palestinian state and Mr. Obama’s potential nuclear deal with Iran, the question is whether the president and prime minister can ever repair their relationship — and whether Mr. Obama will even try. On Wednesday, part of the answer seemed to be that the president would not make the effort. In strikingly strong criticism, the White...

Police are looking for a man who allegedly tried to use a baseball bat to settle a dispute over cash that disappeared from a tip jar at a Petaluma pizza restaurant. The incident happened around 1:45 a.m. Saturday at the New Yorker Pizza & Restaurant at 3 Petaluma Blvd. North, police said. The suspect, a man in his 30s, first got into a beef with workers after someone snatched money from the tip jar, said police Sgt. Rick Cox.

The U.S. government suppressed information about chemical weapons it found in Iraq, and several servicemembers were injured by their exposure to those weapons, The New York Times is reporting. In an article published late Tuesday, the newspaper says it found 17 American servicemembers and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to mustard or nerve agents after 2003. They were reportedly given inadequate care and told not to talk about what happened. "From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam...

Israel’s election has done a lot to reveal the challenges facing the country and the intentions of the men who seek to lead it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s outright rejection of a Palestinian state and his racist rant against Israeli Arab voters on Tuesday showed that he has forfeited any claim to representing all Israelis.

Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s initial hope for a more stable coalition, and the Israeli left’s later hope that it would score an upset, the balance of power in the Israeli Knesset is almost exactly the same as it was after the last elections in 2013: 2013: Likud+Lieberman+Bennett = 43 (right-wing Zionist bloc) 2015: Likud+Lieberman+Bennett = 43 2013: Labor+Meretz+Tzipi = 27 (left-wing Zionist bloc) 2015: Labor+Tzipi+Meretz = 28 2013: Lapid+Kadima = 21 (centrist Zionist bloc) 2015: Lapid+Kahlon = 21 2013: Haredim = 18 (Ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties) 2015: Haredim = 14 2013: Arabs (divided) = 11 (Arab parties) 2015: Arabs (united)...

TEL AVIV — After a bruising campaign focused on his failings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel won a clear victory in Tuesday’s elections and seemed all but certain to form a new government and serve a fourth term, though he offended many voters and alienated allies in the process. With 99.5 percent of the ballots counted, the YNet news site reported Wednesday morning that Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party had captured 29 or 30 of the 120 seats in Parliament, sweeping past his chief rival, the center-left Zionist Union alliance, which got 24 seats.

IT is time to talk about President Obama’s contingency plan for health care. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments earlier this month in King v. Burwell, a case challenging the provision of tax credits on federal insurance exchanges. While the legal issues are dry lawyers’ fare — how to interpret several interconnected phrases of the Affordable Care Act — the practical stakes are high. The government estimates that millions of Americans will be left without affordable health insurance if it loses. While the administration may well prevail, it has expressed remarkable pessimism about its options if it does lose. The...

GETTING a $50 ticket for missing a red light is unpleasant enough. But when it is received in the mail without warning, generated from an unmarked camera, it can cause resentment. “If there were signs up, yes, I’d feel differently,” said Dan Rosenbaum after he received his camera-based ticket for an infraction in Brooklyn. Mr. Rosenbaum’s reaction is common among drivers who question whether the cameras are deployed to prevent accidents or to generate revenue. The absence of a caution sign can raise suspicions. In New York, there are red-light cameras at 150 intersections; none of the cameras are marked....

Maybe it is her short, spiky hair, or the cigarettes, which she gives to the men repairing the wiring in her Brooklyn apartment. Maybe it is because she swears. For whatever reason, the Rev. Ann Kansfield does not fit the stereotype of a minister. Not that she is worried about meeting anyone’s expectations for what a clergywoman should say or do. “We shouldn’t have to hide ourselves or worry about being judged,” Ms. Kansfield, who ministers at the Greenpoint Reformed Church, said. In her newest ministry, that self-assuredness is likely to serve her well. Ms. Kansfield, 39, is to...

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said officer Darren Wilson should be “commended” for fatally shooting Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, last August in Ferguson, Missouri. “A man committed a robbery, attempted to assault a police officer, and the police officer, to save his life, shot him,” Giuliani told Fox News on Thursday. “The police officer did his duty. The police officer should be commended for what he did. He did exactly what you should do.” Wilson was cleared of any charges by a local grand jury last fall. The Justice Department last week released a report on his...

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani says President Barack Obama is to blame for the police shootings in Ferguson, Missouri, and other disturbing events because he sets the tone for the nation. ... Giuliani also says Obama should say the kinds of things comedian Bill Cosby used to say before he was accused of sexual assault, which Cosby denies. Cosby often exhorted black people to focus on education and parenting.

This afternoon, in the hot center of the state of Alabama, a parade of Americans will pay homage to a historic march. Meeting on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, on which hundreds of black Americans were beaten for the crime of standing up to their government, Barack Obama will remember a heroic feat of rebellion, and a brutal act of repression. The president, the White House has announced, will speak personally “about what it means to stand on the spot where police beat and gassed 600 unarmed protestors,” and he will explain what the moment means to him as an African...

Submitted by Thomas Miller via Oilprice.com,One could argue America was conceived from intense frustration that ultimately led to separation. Fed up with what they perceived as excessive control by the Crown, colonists to the “New England”, in essence, seceded in 1776, and thus the United States was born.Now, there is a renewed and growing secession conversation brewing in the New England region, this time fueled by a commodity: Natural gas. Infuriated by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s December decision to permanently instill a ban against hydraulic fracture stimulation, or fracking, residents in 15 communities in the Southern Tier of New York...

.....Hillary Clinton may not be their candidate....but Dems agree: It won’t be Gov. Cuomo. “People in the party all hate him. There’s an ABC factor at work....‘Anybody but Cuomo’.’’ Cuomo was described as detached and aloof from his party’s activities, without a significant party following.....a series of press interviews were remarkable for their hostility toward Cuomo....investigations into the governor’s closing of the Moreland panel on corruption, and his disappointing showing in last year’s primary cut into his standing. A Quinnipiac poll last week found Clinton backed by 56%, 14% for Sen Warren. Cuomo received 4% last fall, but received no...

The New York Times has been accused of bias by conservative US media after cropping George W Bush and his wife Laura out of its front-page image of the Selma anniversary march. The former Republican president took part in Saturday's march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama to mark 50 years since one of the bloodiest episodes in America's civil rights movement. But the photograph on the front page of Sunday's New York Times, which showed Barack and Michelle Obama leading the anniversary march, appeared to cut the Bushes from the right-hand side of the image.

The 50th Anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march was held in Selma, Alabama on Saturday. The New York Times cropped out the George and Laura Bush. Discrimination still exists in America. MRC reported:

Despite the European accord last month to extend a financial lifeline to Greece, Athens is rapidly running out of cash. So it is scrambling to find new, even radical ways to fill the shortfall — including a proposal to recruit citizens and tourists to spy on suspected tax evaders. Greece’s coffers may be empty before the end of this month, as tax receipts shrink and the economy shows signs of lapsing back into recession. Athens officials have hinted they may have trouble repaying or refinancing a total of about 7 billion euros, or $7.7 billion, owed in March to the...

Signers include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sens. Susan Collins and Mark Kirk and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie BakerMore than 300 veteran Republican lawmakers, operatives and consultants have filed a friend of the court brief at the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage late Thursday. The amicus brief, organized by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, was filed for the four same-sex marriage cases the Court will hear on April 28 that could legalize the unions nationwide. In 2013, Mehlman marshaled a similar effort for the case that overturned California’s Proposition 8, which had banned same-sex marriage...