Free Republic

We managed to repeal the 18th Amendment, which created Prohibition. It is time to repeal the 17th. What? You have no idea what the 17th Amendment is? Well, it is the one that effectively ended federalism by taking the power to appoint U.S. senators from state legislatures and having the citizens directly elect them, as they had always done with the House of Representatives. We may not get better senators, but it is likely they would not try dictating to the states what they should do — as they did when they set the national speed limit at 55 mph...

What is up with the ubiquitous Mitt? He’s flitting about—as would any public office aspirant trying to gain voter interest in their candidacy—making the scene on radio and T.V., while enthusiastically endorsing the go-along-to-get-along hack candidates backed by the Progressive RINO Establishment; champions of crony capitalism, electoral criminality (remember Mississippi), and fraternal loyalty to the ruling class: still neglecting to embrace a concise articulation of the Constitutional Conservatism they rightly view as a threat to their established Inside-Beltway political racket pecking order. The elitist, morally relativistic, self-serving behavior of the establishmentarians illustrates a resistance and incapacity to communicate with their...

“Doing nothing new and simply working with pre-existing [federal bankruptcy] procedures would have been much better than anything we’ve done so far.”–Harvard Professor Jeffrey Miron, “The Case for Doing Nothing,” July 10, 2009I’ve been a big fan of the Austrian school of economics and have written books on the subject, including “The Structure of Production” and the first purely “Austrian” textbook, “Economic Logic.” The ideas and policies of giants like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek have much to offer the world. They are better than other schools in identifying the imbalances in the global economy that can cause trouble...

After conservative icon and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh blasted House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for declaring that impeaching Obama was off the table, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin praised Limbaugh for understanding the importance of not emboldening Obama to act even more lawlessly. "Rush is right," she wrote in a Wednesday Facebook post. "The GOP wants to take impeachment off the table? When will you learn liberals won't hate you less if you play nice in these tumultuous times? No matter how polite, complacent, and complicit you are, Obama will continue to harm our Republic and make you impotent....

"The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been"

"Don't be disappointed," Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in a research note. "The trend is downwards, signaling faster payroll growth."

Still Soft after Half a Billion Years? by Brian Thomas, M.S. * Original soft tissue fossils are revolutionizing our understanding of how and when fossils formed. Secular researchers have described dozens of them over the years, from mummified skin and hemoglobin to dried up retinas—all in rock layers designated at least tens of millions of years old.1 The science of tissue decay does not permit these long ages, calling into question the "age" of the most recent discovery: original, pliable, marine worm tube tissue found in Pre-Cambrian fossils. ...more at link

'They Show No Respect for Their Caesars'by Gerald A. HonigmanDec 18, '06 / 27 Kislev 5767  E-mail This  Print  Homepage The year was 1887. An Egyptian woman discovered a treasure trove of over three hundred clay cuneiform tablets that would shake the world of religion and the study of ancient history. Named for a local Bedouin tribe, the Tel El-Amarna tablets (which can now be found mostly in the Berlin and British Museums) were mostly the official correspondence between Pharaoh Amenhotep IV - Akhenaten - and his governors and vassals from places such as Canaan, Syria, Babylonia, etc. They date mostly from...

The Jewish people, according to archaeologists, originated in Babylon and Persia between the 4th and 6th centuries BC. The modern-day Jews most closely related to that original population are those in Iran, Iraq and Syria, whose closest non-Jewish relatives are the Druze, Bedouins and Palestinians, the study found. Sometime in that period, the Middle Eastern and European Jews diverged and the European branch began actively proselytizing for converts. At the height of the Roman Empire, about 10% of the empire's population was Jewish, although the bulk of them were converts. Some Khazars were also incorporated during this period. "That explains...

Genesis Science Is Practical, Not Just Academic by James J. S. Johnson, J.D., Th.D. * “It doesn’t really matter, in the real world, what you believe about creation or evolution,” the college student glibly challenged me. “Whether the evolutionists are right or whether Genesis is right makes no practical difference in how science works or in how people live their lives.” With a grin and a wave of his hand, the sophomore dismissed the real-world relevance of biblical creation as if it were no more practical than evolutionary myths. Was he correct? Is the Genesis record of God’s creation (and...

China National Gold Group Corporation General Manager Sun Zhaoxue has come out and told the world media that the US is suppressing the gold price. The reason for America’s manipulation of gold is to ensure US Dollar dominance on the world stage. America has by default ended up with the world’s reserve currency and therefore gets the world to work for them in exchange for an ever increasing supply of printed greenbacks. He also went on with an excellent analysis of America’s war against Europe and the Euro using their investment banks. Another good insight from Sun Zhaoxue is that...

The uncivil war within the GOP will immediately stop if Mitch McConnell can be defeated in the Kentucky primary race. If McConnell can be defeated in 2014 - Then Chris Christie might not be the 2016 candidate for President. Period. If McConnell wins his 2014 primary – Then Chris Christie WILL BE the 2016 candidate for President. Period. If McConnell is defeated in 2014 - The financial donors will recognize their money is *futile* against the will of a committed and conservative electorate.

If New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has any chance of securing the Republican presidential nomination, he just might have to thank such darlings of the tea party movement as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz for an unlikely path to victory. As Mr. Paul’s and Mr. Cruz’s recent filibusters on the Senate floor have shown, the 2016 quest for the White House is well underway. A fierce battle among the new small-government, libertarian stars is already raging. That has left a growing number of conservative activists voicing concerns publicly about a scenario that would let a moderate Republican like Mr....

That’s the claim at least from this new paper. That your iPhone, or more exactly your smartphone, uses more electricity than a refrigerator does. Do note though that it’s not actually the phone that does this: it’s the entire infrastructure that supplies it with the ability to be smart that does. All those data centres, running the WiFi and mobile networks and so on. In fact, the claim is that IT now uses 10% of the world’s electricity: The global digital economy, also known as the ICT system (information-communications-technologies), sucks up as much electricity today as it took to illuminate...

Evolutionists need the “magic” of millions and billions of years to have a hope of convincing us that what is normally impossible according to the laws of science just might be possible if we allow unfathomable years for it to happen. So it is that they want us to believe that it took millions or even billions of years for the geological features we see to have formed. Well, not only is the “science” upon which assumptions rest based on an unproven and unprovable house of cards, we are learning that many of the things scientists once claimed had to...

A Washington state Democrat is accusing Republicans of “throwing American infrastructure … under the bus” after a bridge collapse there this week. The portion of Interstate 5 in Washington that runs over the Skagit River collapsed on Thursday after a truck hit an overhead support structure, but Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) cited the incident in an interview as proof Republicans were blocking infrastructure investment to hurt President Obama politically. “Well, they have clearly spent the whole last five years trying to tear the president down, but they have done it by throwing the American infrastructure and the society under the...

Has Tim Tebow been unofficially blackballed from the NFL? That's what Yahoo Sports writer Michael Silver is suggesting. After one season, the New York Jets released the third-string quarterback on April 29. And in the ensuing three weeks, no serious offers have been made. "No NFL team seems to want him — as a starter, backup, converted H-back or fake-punt decoy — and it's not like he's fending off big-money offers from Canada, either," writes Silver. And Silver blames "Tebowmania." Yes, Tim Tebow draws a media crowd – everywhere he goes. As a backup, backup quarterback, one could easily argue...

Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords received the 2013 Profile in Courage award at the John F. Kennedy Library on Sunday in recognition of the political, personal, and physical courage she has demonstrated in her fearless public advocacy for policy reforms aimed at reducing gun violence.

London Pizza Named Most Delicious Food, Beating Italian

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday the U.S. intelligence community believes the Syrian regime used the chemical weapon sarin, a revelation that immediately raised the question of whether a "red line" had been crossed in the country's civil war. Hagel confirmed the intelligence assessment, which was detailed in a letter to select members of Congress, while speaking to reporters on a visit to Abu Dhabi. The administration swiftly released those letters, which said U.S. intelligence determined with varying degrees of confidence that "the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin."...