Free Republic

It’s a coin toss between China and Turkey for the title of least honest country, according to a new study. As part of a 15-nation honesty study, researchers from the University of East Anglia had the 1,500 subjects participate in a coin flip, telling them they’d get up to $5 every time it came up heads. The researchers theorized that if the percentage reporting heads was over 50 percent, participants were being dishonest, since heads statistically shows up only half the time. An estimated 70 percent of Chinese participants lied — the most dishonest of the bunch, according to the...

Nicaragua shut down its border with Costa Rica on Sunday to keep more than 1,000 Cubans from entering the country. The move by Nicaraguan authorities is a direct rebuke to their Costa Rican counterparts' decision, one day earlier, to grant transit visas to the migrants - a decision that the administration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said will set off a humanitarian crisis. The border crisis comes amid increasing tensions over the rising number of Cubans crossing Central America on their way to the United States in order to circumvent the heavily patrolled Florida Straits and to take advantage of...

If you were alive in 1963, you probably remember where you were the afternoon of November 22. That is the day you heard the news that United States President John F. Kennedy had been shot. President Kennedy was murdered as he traveled by motorcade in Texas. Since that very day, the truth about the assassination has been a mystery. Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine, defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 and returned to the U.S. in 1962. Two days after the president’s assassination, he was murdered by a nightclub owner under dubious circumstances. The Warren Commission, which...

"Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you." (Frank Sinatra) Fairy tales certainly came true for Sinatra's chum John F. Kennedy. I refer to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 53 years ago this week. More specifically, I refer to the media/academia/Hollywood spin of the crisis, especially its outcome. Surely you know the tune: "JFK stood up to the Russians in Cuba! Khrushchevblinked, cowered, and took his missiles home with his tail between his legs! Ha-ha! Take THAT Russkies! That’s the kind of gumption we need today with Iran and Putin!" In fact, here was the consensus at the time...

After a close race for mayor in the Colombian capital of Bogotá, former Mayor Enrique Peñalosa emerged victorious last Sunday to regain his old post with one-third of the vote. Besides his own proposals, Peñalosa, of the center-right Radical Change party, was undoubtedly favored by the fact that Bogotá residents had grown tired of 12 years of leftist rule in the city. In the last decade, city infrastructure has decayed, crime has increased, and poor planning surrounding the Integrated Transportation System has worsened public mobility. Political and security analyst John Marulanda believes the key to Peñalosa’s victory was his decision...

How inflated is Venezuelan currency? So inflated that even thieves in Venezuela are refusing to steal it.  This has been reported in several media outlets such as the New York Times and Vox but a certain word is very noticebably absent in both reports. It is the S-word that dare not speak its name. One big reason it is taboo in liberal circles to associate that word with economic failure is that one Democrat candidate for president is openly an advocate of the unspoken system and most of the rest of the other candidates silently support it. We start with...

The United States is in decline. While not all major shocks to the system will be devastating, when the right one comes along, the outcome may be dramatic. Not all explosives are the same. We all know you have to be careful with dynamite. Best to handle it gently and not smoke while you’re around it. Semtex is different. You can drop it. You can throw it. You can put it in the fire. Nothing will happen. Nothing until you put the right detonator in it, that is. To me, the US – and most of the supposedly free West...

More Cubans are coming to Florida in their golden years to retire, able to tap U.S. government assistance even though they never lived or worked here. The number of Cubans arriving over the age of 60 grew fivefold since 2010, according to state refugee data. At least 185 made the crossing in their 80s or 90s. Unlike most other immigrants, Cubans qualify immediately for food stamps and Medicaid. If they are over 65 with little or no income, they also can collect a monthly check of up to $733 in Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Golden years: Cubans retire to Florida...

In the wonderfully funny movie “Mom and Dad Save the World,” one of the heroes admits that his people are not so bright. “But what we lack in brains,” he says, “we make up for in ...good intentions.” Gentle mocking here of the frequent appeal of the incompetent for tolerance of their mistakes: How can you blame us if our intentions are good? The trouble is that much of what's really rotten in the world is due to people who thought that their good intentions would ensure a favorable result. Maybe the best example of this: former president Jimmy Carter....

A Black September terrorist who served only about half his 30-year sentence for planting three car bombs in New York City in 1973 was released Thursday into the custody of immigration officials to be deported. Khalid Al-Jawary, 63, was released from the Supermax maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo... Al-Jawary has denied involvement in the 1973 New York City bomb plot; he claims his real name is Khaled Mohammed El-Jassem. The FBI to this day remains unsure of his true identity; his nom de guerre was Abu Walid al-Iraqi. Al-Jawary was a member of Black September, a terrorist group responsible for...

When Venezuelan Oil Minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso resigned in 1963, he blasted the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, at the time torn by internal rivalries, for failing to produce any benefits for his country. Half a century later, OPEC is still split and Venezuela is again unhappy, this time at the unwillingness of the organization’s top producer, Saudi Arabia, to rescue oil prices from a six-year low that’s dragging the battered Venezuelan economy into an even deeper crisis. On Sept. 10, Venezuela’s oil minister, Eulogio del Pino, tweeted appeals for OPEC and non-OPEC countries “to have a discussion on...

Guyana's president said Saturday he's willing to meet with Venezuela's leader on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly — and the U.N. chief has arranged just that. Ban Ki-moon's Sunday schedule now shows a joint meeting with the two leaders embroiled in a border dispute. But in an interview with The Associated Press, Guyana's President David Granger also reiterated his belief that the International Court of Justice is the only answer to the countries' territorial squabble. Granger said the U.N. court in the Netherlands should mediate the matter. Any attempt by him and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to negotiate...

Cuba has got to be one of the most revolutionary places on the planet -- if you're naïve enough to believe the official slogans, street signs and the rest of the prolefeed on display in the Castros' crumbling little police state. The old Soviet Union used to be heavy on talk of revolution, too, though most Russians came to realize it was only talk. In the grim, gray reality, Russia was anything but revolutionary. When that evil empire collapsed, so did the empty slogans about revolution, the workers' state and all the rest. Official lies may hold up for a...

As Pope Francis embarks on his historic visit to the United States, His Holiness will spread his message of hope, faith and unity in the form of a prog-rock-infused album titled Wake Up! this November. The Vatican-approved LP, a collaboration with Believe Digital, features the Pontiff delivering sacred hymns and excerpts of his most moving speeches in multiple languages paired with uplifting musical accompaniment ranging from pop-rock to Gregorian chant. Wake Up! arrives November 27th, with the iTunes pre-order now available with an instant download of "Wake Up! Go! Go! Forward!," which Rolling Stone is proud to premiere.

Cuban authorities prevented leading dissidents from meeting Pope Francis in Havana on Sunday, in a sign of the Communist regime’s rigid intolerance of political opposition. Two well-known dissidents, Marta Beatriz Roque and Miriam Leiva, had been invited by the Vatican to attend a vespers service led by the Pope’s in Havana’s historic baroque cathedral.

Live coverage of South American communists.

If a Republican wins the White House, the military prison at Guantanamo Bay will almost surely be kept open for the foreseeable future. That is, unless Rand Paul nabs the GOP nomination. Yet again, the senator from Kentucky has scouted out a position on a national-security issue that makes him an outlier, at least among senators running for president. That was clear Monday after Marco Rubio introduced two amendments that would extend the use of the prison: one to prohibit funding to programs that would help close the facility, and another that sets a series of tough ground rules before...

Been looking at some of the coverage today regarding the Obama Regime's efforts to enrich the communist dictators of Cuba. Among other elements happening is the new importation of cigars....and the press certainly seems quite enamored with Obamugabe for this action. Of course we have been subject for DECADES about the EEEVILS of tobacco... If the media were going to be consistent, we would see them ripping Obama for increasing Americans' exposure to such a DEADLY product. I guess ATTACKING AMERICAN TOBACCO companies is okay, while ENRICHING CUBAN DICTATORS who control Cuban tobacco is even better. American tobacco=bad. CUBAN tobacco=good.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., took a shot at Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., when asked about the possibility of running simultaneously for re-election to the Senate and for the presidency in 2016. "If someone decides to run for president of the United States, you run for president of the United States," Rubio said at the National Press Club. "I don't believe you can run effectively for an office of that magnitude while having some exit strategy in mind."

".............Paul has signaled that if he runs for president in 2016, he won’t do it the way his father did, by mostly shunning the GOP establishment. Instead, he is expected to cultivate relationships with Republicans like McConnell, whose help making inroads with establishment donors could be very, very useful. Rubio clearly isn’t shunning the establishment, either. He worked on crafting an immigration reform bill earlier this year, something the establishment wing of the party has been clamoring for in the wake of a disappointing election in which Republicans performed poorly among Hispanics. And he didn’t hesitate to back McConnell, even...