Free Republic

Politicians exploit public ignorance. Few areas of public ignorance provide as many opportunities for political demagoguery as taxation. Today some politicians argue that the rich must pay their fair share and label the proposed changes in tax law as tax cuts for the rich. Let’s look at who pays what, with an eye toward attempting to answer this question: Are the rich paying their fair share? According to the latest IRS data, the payment of income taxes is as follows. The top 1 percent of income earners, those having an adjusted annual gross income of $480,930 or higher, pay about...

October 13, 2017 | David F. Coppedge Ring Around the Dwarf Planet Says ‘I’m Young’ You can’t declare something old just because your worldview requires it to be old. New Scientist declared in bold print, “Distant dwarf planet near Pluto has a ring that no one expected.” Reporter Ken Croswell, however, never explains why it was unexpected to find a prominent ring around the dwarf planet Haumea, located about 2 billion miles beyond the orbit of Pluto. When surprised by something that shouldn’t last for billions of years around a body smaller than Pluto, one strategy astronomers employ is to...

The University of Mississippi is replacing a Confederate statue on campus which was damaged by a pickup truck last month. Now, students are outraged after learning that the Confederate statue on the Oxford campus will be rebuilt. Ole Miss student groups are coming together to protest the forthcoming restoration. The University of Mississippi NAACP chapter released a statement in collaboration with the Students Against Social Injustice (SASI) in which they lambasted Ole Miss for their decision to fix the damaged statue instead of retiring the controversial artwork. “The repair and continued display of this monument by the University of Mississippi...

But then in September, the EPA truly infuriated the biofuel industry by floating the idea of bringing the proposed total even lower, and of revisiting other renewable fuel requirements for 2018 and 2019 finalized under the Obama administration. The proposal is in line with what the oil and gas industry want (those energy producers think the RFS adds to the cost of refining petroleum and wants to see Congress rewrite the underlying 2005 law). “Until Congress acts to address the structural flaws with the RFS,” Frank J. Macchiarola of the American Petroleum Institute wrote in a letter to the EPA...

Much of the ground for advocating Second Amendment freedoms has been covered in the media, but at times like this, when a major tragedy places the second amendment under intense scrutiny, the basic point bears repeating. The Second Amendment to the Constitution is not about granting rights to citizens to carry guns; it is about denying to government the exclusive monopoly on the use of force and ensuring the preservation of our freedom. Though much-debated, the Constitutional text is simple. "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and...

Jimmy Kimmel deserves credit for frankness, if nothing else. In an interview over the weekend, the ABC late-night host said he doesn’t care about losing Republican viewers. We’re a long way from Johnny Carson, whose “Tonight Show” was a national institution that enjoyed a broad audience — and was conducted like one. Carson steered clear of politics and kept his views to himself because delving into divisive politics would “hurt me as an entertainer, which is what I am.” Kimmel may be an entertainer, but he has no such inhibitions. He is willing to say “not good riddance, but riddance,”...

History Channel Origin of Taps includes the history of Taps and a look at the Broken Note at John F Kennedy's funeral in 1963

President Donald Trump expects to nominate a total of four Supreme Court justices, claiming that three seats will likely become vacant during his first term, anonymous sources told Mike Allen of Axios. Trump expects to fill the seats of Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor in addition to nominating Neil Gorsuch, who Trump nominated to fill former Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat earlier this year. Scalia died in 2016, well before Trump took office.

President Trump is busy doing the job the voters asked for him to do, but this isn't stopping the mainstream press and other establishment cognoscenti from whining about "the Obama legacy" and the dreadful loss these actions by President Trmp this supposedly represent. According to Agence France-Presse: Brick by brick, the demolition job has begun: since taking office less than a year ago, Donald Trump has launched an all-out assault on the legacy of Barack Obama.

Civil War reenactors replaying the Battle of Cedar Creek in Virginia on Saturday went ahead with their demonstration despite the group organizing the event receiving a letter threatening "bodily harm" to anyone who participated. The battlefield was temporarily cleared on Saturday when a "suspicious device" - possibly a pipe bomb - was discovered. The FBI is investigating. Washington Post: “We wanted to send a message,” said Keith MacGregor, 56, from Lebanon, Pa., who was playing the role of a Union infantry captain for the reenactment of the Battle of Cedar Creek, held not far from here. “We wanted to show...

In the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting massacre, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks wasted little time in exploiting the tragedy to advance their anti-gun rights agenda. In just six days of (October 2 through October 8) coverage, the networks filled their evening and morning show programs with statements favoring gun control over gun rights by a ratio of roughly 5 to 1. MRC analysts reviewed all statements that took a position on overall gun policy by anchors, reporters, guests and soundbites, beginning with the morning of October 2 through the morning of October 8, and found time...

Wherever you stand on the issue, it’s impossible to ignore the cultural shift in attitude towards euthanasia and assisted suicide. What was once considered murder under the law is now being accepted as medical ‘treatment’ in many countries. However, even the most ardent promoters of these laws are now saying the ‘genie is out of the bottle’ and are severely questioning where these laws have taken society. We’ve all heard the tragic and much publicized stories of people who died by an assisted death. Tragic indeed. However, this film will focus on stories seldom heard in mainstream media: testimonies from...

The flood of refugees that rolled over Europe in 2015 affected Austria more than any other country except its neighbor Germany. Today, Austrians go to the polls in parliamentary elections that could elevate a 31 year old nationalist to the chancellorship. Sebastian Kurz, the charismatic leader of the Austrian People's Party (OVP) left the coalition government with the Social Democrats when he was elevated to the party's top spot last May. The cause of the split was the ongoing debate over refugees in Austria, who have put a huge drain on government resources. Austria is a conservative Cathloic country and...

No matter what, the future is here, and President Trump is one by one by scratching those Obama executive orders. At this pace, President Obama's résumé will be a total blank under "accomplishments." It will simply say he was inaugurated in 2009, was re-elected in 2012 and left office in 2017. There will be very little in between because he did so much by executive order rather than laws passed by Congress. "The 'Blank' Presidency" may be the title of a future book about this time in office.

These are developments in the Northern California wildfires as of 3:35 p.m.; click here for more recent updates: 3:25 p.m. Two Napa victims ID’d: Two bodies found on the 1900 block of Soda Canyon Road in Napa County are believed to be Sally Lewis, 90, and her caretaker, Teresa Santos, 50, according to the Napa County sheriff. The bodies were found at 10 a.m. Saturday. Their discovery brings the death toll from fires in the county to six.

Five years ago at the Democratic National Convention, I went to a Planned Parenthood rally, where one speaker was TV actress Lisa Edelstein. “Do not go to the polls alone,” she told us. “Drag somebody, if she’s a woman especially, because those women are going to vote for Obama—if they know what’s good for them.” Edelstein is hardly the only Hollywood figure to make the case that liberal policies are crucial to women’s happiness and welfare. Yet, with the media still reeling from the revelations about powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s behavior toward women, it’s time to examine both the...

The FBI has found 30 pages of documents related to the June 2016 airport tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, even after the bureau claimed to not have any records related to the matter. FBI lawyers revealed the existence of the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog group. The FBI had informed Judicial Watch last October that the bureau did not have any records related to the June 27, 2016 meeting between Clinton and Lynch. That encounter, which occurred on the tarmac at Phoenix’s airport,...

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) says the federal “assault weapons” ban that lapsed in 2004 would have prevented the Las Vegas attack, had that ban still been in force today. This claim shows a deep misunderstanding of the “assault weapons” ban, which did not ban the possession or purchase of “assault weapons.” Rather, it limited importation and mandated types that could be manufactured in the U.S., thus driving up prices. For a man of means like Stephen Paddock, paying the higher price for an “assault weapon” would have been no problem.

New York Times Keynesian economics columnist Paul Krugman as has been having a hard time ever since Donald J. Trump was elected President in November 2016. However, the "conscience of liberalism" told Twitter today that he is "terrified" and suffering from a “state of existential dread.” Primarily because, as Krugman puts forth in a bizarre theory, Trump "enjoys seeing others hurt." Krugman believes the 45th President may soon be impeached or removed from office by the 25th amendment. Because of that, the President has nothing left to lose. "He can't save his presidency. He can, however, still hurt a lot...

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