Free Republic

Rebellious Democrats shut down the House’s legislative work on Wednesday, staging a sit-in on the House floor and refusing to leave until they secured a vote on gun control measures before lawmakers’ weeklong break. Exasperated Republicans were forced to recess while cutting off cameras that showed the protest. But in an unprecedented step, C-SPAN used live video feeds from one lawmaker’s Periscope account and another’s Facebook page to transmit words and images from the House. Nearly 100 Democrats led by Georgia Rep. John Lewis demanded a vote on measures to expand background checks and block gun purchases by some suspected...

On June 11th at 4 AM five assailants were captured on security camera assaulting restaurant patrons outside Geno’s Steaks. The jihadis beat the restaurant patrons screaming, “Don’t mess with us, we belong to ISIS!” The Philadelphia police released this report: "On June 11, 2016 at approximately 4:15 am, five (05) unknown males were captured on surveillance video outside 1219 South 9th Street assaulting the victims. After the assault the suspects fled in two (02) vehicles, a dark colored pickup truck and a SUV and fled in an unknown direction. Both vehicles had New Jersey license plates. Victim #1 was struck...

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today unanimously reversed a trial court’s ruling dismissing a fraud case brought against the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The result of the appellate court’s ruling is that CAIR National, operating out of the District of Columbia, must stand trial and allow a jury to hear all of the evidence of the massive fraud and attempted cover up carried out by CAIR and perpetrated against hundreds of CAIR fraud victims. In January of last year, Judge Paul Friedman, the federal judge presiding over a five-year old lawsuit alleging...

Sen. Susan Collins' attempt to keep firearms out of the hands of potential terrorists just picked up its most powerful backer yet: Harry Reid.

The Obama administration on Wednesday decried a ruling by a federal judge that blocks rules for hydraulic fracturing, saying the decision prevents regulators from using “21st-century standards” to ensure that oil and gas operations are conducted safely on public lands. Jessica Kershaw, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said “modernized fracking requirements” imposed by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell reflect best industry practices and are aimed at ensuring adequate well control, preventing groundwater contamination and increasing transparency about the materials used in fracking. Kershaw’s comments came after a judge in Wyoming ruled late Tuesday that federal regulators lack authority to set...

Electric cars are showing up all over the place, but hydrogen fuel-cell cars have lagged behind, with only three Asian makers committed to offering them in the U.S. That's partly because setting up a network of hydrogen stations to fuel them is slow and expensive. Now Nissan has a better idea. Rather than pumping hydrogen into the cars at very high pressure, the company proposes to offer a different kind of fuel-cell car — one that is filled with ethanol instead. That fuel, or an ethanol-and-water blend, is "reformed" to produce a supply of hydrogen on board the car itself....

Like a crazed serial killer, the liberal green groups are celebrating their “victory” of putting America’s major coal producers out of business — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of miners placed in unemployment lines. Several thousand more mining jobs were lost last month. Now to get their next homicidal high, the leftists have turned their ambitions on the oil and natural gas industries. Here is how the Sierra Club spokeswoman, Lena Moffit, explains the grand, green vision: “We have moved to a very clear and firm and vehement position of opposing gas. We oppose any new gas-fired...

President Obama furthered his gun control message today when addressing the massacre in Orlando that killed 50 people, making it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. 'Although it's still early in the investigation we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate,' Obama said, making no reference to ISIS or Islamic terror in his brief remarks. Obama called the shooting spree, at the gay nightclub Pulse during Pride month in the United States, a reminder of how easy it is for someone to get a hold of a weapon that could...

Bond guru Bill Gross believes the growing global move toward negative yields will have dire consequences. In a tweet from his firm, Janus Capital, Gross goes back half a millennium to assert that the current situation with the world's debt market is unprecedented and dangerous: The warning comes as yields on Japanese government bonds and German bunds hit record lows.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev has whipped up a storm on Russian social media for an off-the-cuff comment he made to a Russian pensioner last month. Medvedev was caught on camera telling an elderly woman in Crimea, a region annexed by Russia from Ukraine in spring 2014, that there was "no money left" in Russia's budget when he was asked why the state pension of 8,000 Russian rubles a month (around $125 a month) was not higher given the rising cost of living. "There just isn't any money now. When we find money, we'll make the adjustment," Medvedev replied to...

It was the third such ‘honour killing’ in as many monthsA teenager was burnt alive by her mother on Wednesday after marrying a man of her own choice, Pakistani police said. Zeenat Bibi, 16, was set on fire by her mother Perveen Bibi in the eastern city of Lahore a little more than a week after the wedding, police said. "Perveen Bibi killed her daughter Zeenat Bibi by burning her alive around 9:00 am on Wednesday," Haidar Ashraf, a senior police official told AFP, adding the teen had married a man named Hasan on May 29.

Doctors Now Have to Steal Food From Hospitals to Feed Their Own Families The increasing shortage of food and other basic products in Venezuela, on top of inflation, is now takingits toll on the health of the nation — most notably, on its malnourished children. Children frequently arrive to the San Felipe Central Hospital after having fainted from malnourishment, officials told the PanAm Post, and are given medicine to take three times a day, Mothers tell physicians they don’t have enough food in their homes, even after rationing. “Children under five months of age come in here with diarrhea and...

As we reach the middle of the 21st century, half the population of the world will lose their job to a machine. The latest comes from Moshe Vardi, professor at Rice University , Houston, who delivered a talk to the American Association for the Advancement of Science , exploring the question: "If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?" Vardi reckons that half of workers across the globe will be replaced by machines within the next 30 years, wiping out middle-class jobs and "exacerbating inequality". He noted that robots would take over...

U.S. crude oil exports rose to 591,000 barrels per day in April, up 83,000 barrels from March, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau on Friday. The total figures are the highest since at least 1920, Rigzone reports. A majority of the crude - 324,000 bpd of it - went to Canada, 90,000 more went to Curacao and 36,000 others went to the Bahamas. The figures come almost six months after the U.S. government lifted restrictions on crude exports.

Norway has decided to prohibit the selling of all gasoline-powered cars by 2025, according to Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv. The ban, which has received support from political parties on the left and the right, is pegged to be the most aggressive anti-gasoline energy policies of its kind in the world – the irony, of course, is that Norway is one of the largest producers of fossil fuels in the entire world. Norwegians produced and exported in 2013 more than 1.2 million barrels of oil, placing it 14th overall on a list of exporting countries, just below Qatar and Mexico. India...

The much anticipated OPEC meeting in Vienna on June 2 ended pretty much as expected: the group once again failed to put any production targets in place. Without a ceiling on output, all OPEC members will continue to produce as they see fit, leaving the oil market to sort itself out. The result was largely anticipated, given the lack of agreement at several prior meetings. However, the meeting in Vienna was not without some news. OPEC members managed to agree on several small bore issues, which could be viewed as a modest success, especially after the apparent hostility on display...

A report from Pew Research Center reveals that between the third quarter of 2000 and the same period of last year, wages across the U.S. rose by an impressive 7.4 percent in real terms, driven largely by the oil and gas industry. Wages in energy-dependent communities rose by the most, in some cases more than twofold, such as in Texas. This shouldn’t be surprising as the period reviewed coincides with the peak of the shale boom in the country, even though it also covers two periods of recession. But those positive effects are starting to disappear. The energy industry is...

Bill McKibben was just named by Bernie Sanders to serve on the platform committee at this year’s Democratic National Convention. He joins Sanders’ other four appointments: scholar and racial justice activist Cornel West; Native American activist Deborah Parker; Minnesota Congressmember Keith Ellison, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus; and Palestinian rights activist and scholar James Zogby, who founded the Arab American Institute. We speak with 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben about how he’ll seek to translate his activism into Democratic Party platforms in Philadelphia in July. TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, before we end, Bill McKibben, I want to ask you...

Venezuela is running out of just about everything. Food, medicine, electricity, toilet paper, condoms -- you name it. And over the weekend at least two large international airlines -- Lufthansa and LATAM -- said they will suspend service to Venezuela in the coming months due to the economic crisis. The widespread scarcities and fleeing businesses reflect a country in crisis. "There's a shortage of everything at some level," says Ricardo Cusanno, vice president of Venezuela's Chamber of Commerce. Cusanno says 85% of companies in Venezuela have halted production to some extent. Venezuela's economy is spiraling into extreme recession. It is...

Venezuela is running out of just about everything. Food, medicine, electricity, toilet paper, condoms -- you name it. ( Full title ). And over the weekend at least two large international airlines -- Lufthansa and LATAM -- said they will suspend service to Venezuela in the coming months due to the economic crisis. The widespread scarcities and fleeing businesses reflect a country in crisis. "There's a shortage of everything at some level," says Ricardo Cusanno, vice president of Venezuela's Chamber of Commerce. Cusanno says 85% of companies in Venezuela have halted production to some extent. Venezuela's economy is spiraling into...