Free Republic

The plan to void 60 western Colorado energy leases.. is a looming BLM-caused disaster. Hundreds of citizens from Mesa County and other affected areas gathered May 1 in De Beque to protest a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plan to void existing contracts the government made with private individuals and companies. The meeting in De Beque, a little town dependent almost entirely on gas, oil, coal and cows, was not originally planned by the BLM. Since half of the imperiled leases are in Mesa County, the Mesa County Board of Commissioners joined with various associations and individuals to demand that...

Just hours after last weekend’s ouster of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, one of Pierre Omidyar’s newest hires at national security blog “The Intercept,” was already digging for the truth. Marcy Wheeler, who is the new site’s “senior policy analyst,” speculated that the Ukraine revolution was likely a “coup” engineered by “deep” forces on behalf of “Pax Americana”: “There’s quite a bit of evidence of coup-ness. Q is how many levels deep interference from both sides is.” These are serious claims. So serious that I decided to investigate them. And what I found was shocking. Wheeler is partly correct. Pando has...

White House adviser John Podesta told reporters Monday afternoon that Congress could not derail the Obama administration’s efforts to unilaterally enact policies to fight global warming. Podesta said that the president was committed to using executive orders to pass regulations under the Clean Air Act to limit carbon dioxide emissions that they say cause global warming.

In March 2011, Reuters announced a secret order signed by Barack Obama to provide covert support for Libyan rebel forces. The operation became known as Zero Footprint, but after Obama finished with it, Big Foot was identified. For about 18 months before the attacks on our Benghazi Special Mission, intelligence had successfully identified terrorist factions inside the rebel factions. Those terrorists included the Muslim Brotherhood as well as al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, Senator John McCain said the rebels were his heroes. Qadhafi made a fatal mistake, literally, by working toward one currency for Africa, which threatened the West. The idea of a...

Two teams of scientists published studies on Sunday showing that blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice, rejuvenating their muscles and brains. As ghoulish as the research may sound, experts said that it could lead to treatments for disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease. “I am extremely excited,” said Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the research. “These findings could be a game changer.” The research builds on centuries of speculation that the blood of young people contains substances that might rejuvenate older adults. In the 1950s, Clive...

Vladimir Putin's recent intervention in Ukraine on the pretext of defending the ethnic Russian population has forced other former Soviet republics to look for ingenious ways to protect their own sovereignties from similar moves. On Monday, the Parliament of Kazakhstan, with a 25% ethnic Russian population and a 4,660 mile-long border shared with Russia, voted to rename the country 'New Illinois,' hoping to attract more American support for their territorial integrity. Kazakhstan's President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is expected to sign the emergency bill into law by Wednesday, setting in motion a complex process for the Central Asian nation of almost 18...

What will Scotland look like after 10 years of independence? If Alex Salmond’s vision is fulfilled, Scotland will have become a prosperous, high-income, high public expenditure, social democracy on the Nordic model, fully at ease with its position in the European Union, and possibly even a signed up member of the euro. An equally plausible scenario, however, is that it will by then have been forced into a vicious fiscal consolidation that will have cut many public services and entitlements to the bone. Gone will be free university education and medical prescriptions. Gone too will be the triple lock on...

The European Commission has exercised historic new EU powers allowing it to revise national budgets for the first time Spain and Italy have been warned that their budgets for 2014 are in breach of European Union rules as Brussels uses new powers to force governments to revise spending plans before national parliaments vote on them. France was also cautioned that plans for painful economic reforms represent only "limited progress" as the European Commission exercised new eurozone powers in a historic shift of sovereignty away from elected governments. "Because in an economic and monetary union, national budgetary decisions can have an...

KIEV, Ukraine, Jan. 16 - As protests here against a rigged presidential election overwhelmed the capital last fall, an alarm sounded at Interior Ministry bases outside the city. It was just after 10 p.m. on Nov. 28. More than 10,000 troops scrambled toward trucks. Most had helmets, shields and clubs. Three thousand carried guns. Many wore black masks. Within 45 minutes, according to their commander, Lt. Gen. Sergei Popkov, they had distributed ammunition and tear gas and were rushing out the gates. Kiev was tilting toward a terrible clash, a Soviet-style crackdown that could have brought civil war. And then,...

If you think Washington is scary now, consider this: Al Gore is not ruling out a 2016 run for president. Al Gore 2000 was awful, proving himself willing to divide the country and put it through hell during his attempt to sue his way into the White House. Al Gore 2016 would be many times worse. He would be a single-issue president, and that issue would be the total destruction of the economy in the name of the debunked global warming hoax.

The 2016 Republican presidential nominating battle is shaping up as the most wide-open in a generation, with a new Washington Post-ABC News poll showing five prospective candidates within four percentage points of one another at the top and a half-dozen more in the mix. The picture is very different on the Democratic side, where former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton is the clear front-runner. In a hypothetical matchup, Clinton leads former Florida governor Jeb Bush — seen by many GOP establishment figures as the party’s strongest general-election candidate — 53 percent to 41 percent. Clinton’s commanding position is fueled...

I periodically (some would say over and over and over again, though occasionally made more palatable by using humor and cartoons) warn that the United States should not become a European-style welfare state. But I wonder whether I spend enough time explaining why this would be a bad idea. After all, some people may think that you get more security and benefits with the European approach, so why not head in that direction. And these folks aren’t just pointing with approval to the Nordic nations. A writer for the New York Times actually thinks we should copy Italy. So it...

There have been 13 senior financial services executives deaths around the world this year, but the most notable thing about the sad suicide of the 14th, a 52-year-old banker at France's Bred-Banque-Populaire, is she is the first female. As Le Parisien reports, Lydia (no surname given) jumped from the bank's Paris headquarter's 14th floor shortly before 10am. FranceTV added that sources said "she questioned her superiors before jumping out the window," but the bank denies it noting that she had been in therpapy for several years. ...

WASHINGTON — America’s diplomats and generals aren’t alone in watching the unfolding conflict between Russia and neighboring Ukraine. ... Ukraine is the world’s third-largest corn exporter and sixth-largest wheat exporter. Russia is the world’s fifth-biggest wheat exporter _ and a large buyer of U.S. corn and poultry products. ... “This is a region where we have been facing stiff competition from Ukraine,” said Thomas Sleight, the president and CEO of the U.S. Grains Council, which develops markets for U.S.-grown corn and sorghum. “Longer term, everyone is waiting to see what effect credit availability will have on Ukrainian farmers’ willingness to...

After Breitbart Texas reported on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) intent to seize 90,000 acres belonging to Texas landholders along the Texas/Oklahoma line, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott questioned the BLM’s authority to take such action. “I am about ready,” General Abbott told Breitbart Texas, “to go to go to the Red River and raise a ‘Come and Take It’ flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas.” Gen. Abbott sent a strongly-worded letter to BLM Director Neil Kornze, asking for answers to a series of questions related to the potential land grab. “I am deeply...

ASSOCIATION AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE EUROPEAN ATOMIC ENERGY COMMUNITY AND THEIR MEMBER STATES, OF THE ONE PART, AND UKRAINE, OF THE OTHER PART EU/UA/en 1 PREAMBLE ... EU/UA/en 3 Contracting Parties to the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, hereinafter referred to as the 'Member States', THE EUROPEAN UNION, hereinafter referred to as 'the Union' or 'the EU' and THE EUROPEAN ATOMIC ENERGY COMMUNITY, hereinafter referred to as 'the EURATOM' on the one part, and UKRAINE on the other part, Hereafter jointly referred to as 'the Parties', EU/UA/en 4...

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, in his new book, recommends six rewrites to the U.S. Constitution. He would restrict gun ownership to militia members; ban the death penalty; and allow government to set "reasonable limits" on campaign financing, among other things. But Stevens says he's no radical: "I think every one of my proposals is a moderate proposal," Stevens told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week." One of Steven's proposals would add five words to the Second Amendment, which would then read: "...the right of the people to keep and bear...

The Obama regime has issued simultaneous threats to the enemy it is making out of Russia and to its European NATO allies on which Washington is relying to support sanctions on Russia. This cannot end well. As even Americans living in a controlled media environment are aware, Europeans, South Americans, and Chinese are infuriated that the National Stasi Agency is spying on their communications. NSA’s affront to legality, the US Constitution, and international diplomatic norms is unprecedented. Yet, the spying continues, while Congress sits sucking its thumb and betraying its oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. In...

Thursday's session in federal parliament was suspended for a while after the independent MP Laurent Louis (photo) had called Premier Elio Di Rupo a paedophile. Several MPs left the hemisphere as a protest. The incident happened around 3pm. Laurent Louis, a French speaker, had climbed the platform to criticise the cost of President Obama's visit to Belgium. "It cost millions, cash that could have been used to fill millions of fridges", he argued. "We bring life in our capital to a halt, without showing respect to the citizens." As Louis kept going, Di Rupo (Francophone socialist) promised to release more...

Probably the most emotive issue to come before the electorate in a vote on May 18 is an initiative to ban convicted paedophiles from working with children for life, the culmination of a ten year campaign sparked by a controversy in the town of Biel. The initiative has mainly been backed by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party and the centrist Christian Democrats. ... The initiative, brought by the Marche Blanche (White March) group of concerned parents, would amend the Swiss constitution to ensure that “persons who are convicted because they have affected the sexual integrity of a child or a...