Free Republic

Closing arguments heard at Arab American Marine's court-martial Disillusioned with the Marine Corps and fearing he would die in combat, an Arab American Marine deserted his unit in Iraq in 2004 and fled to his native Lebanon, a Marine prosecutor told a court-martial Friday. Hassoun's lawyer told a military judge Friday that Hassoun was captured by insurgents and held for 17 days before a tribal sheik negotiated his release. Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, who disappeared from a military camp in Iraq a decade ago and eventually turned up with family in Lebanon was charged Friday with desertion and other charges....

During Legend’s speech Oprah Winfrey was crying. I don’t understand why these millionaires and billionaires bite into the apple of their ancestors’ grief. Legend and Oprah suffered nothing. Are they so greedy that they want fortunes simultaneously with the pride of being trounced-on-slaves?

U.S. Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., applaud as President Barack Obama takes the stage to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington Feb. 5. (CNS photo/Kevin Lamarque, Reuters) On Wednesday and Thursday last week, President Barack Obama gave two speeches at the White House Conference on Violent Extremism, attended by representatives from some 60 nations. His purpose was to focus attention, both domestically and internationally, on fighting the sources of violent extremism. What are those sources? Obama answered, “By ‘violent extremism,’ we don’t just mean the terrorists who are killing innocent people. We also...

One mother’s essay, which states her desire for her 6-year-old daughter to be gay, has triggered a debate about parenting and gender stereotypes. Sally Kohn, a CNN contributor, lives with her partner Sarah Hansen and their daughter Willa Hansen-Kohn in Brooklyn, New York. In her recent essay for the Washington Post, Kohn writes, “I’m gay. And I want my kid to be gay, too.” She explains her stance by saying, “But more often than not, we define happiness as some variation on our own lives, or at least the lives of our expectations. If we went to college, we want...

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson has offered florist Barronelle Stutzman a deal: She can cater to same-sex weddings or she can stop doing weddings altogether. Of course, there’s always a third option: She can go out of business. Ms. Stutzman, the 70-year-old owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Washington, is opting for none of the above. “Your offer reveals that you don’t really understand me or what this conflict is all about,” Ms. Stutzman said in a letter to Mr. Ferguson. “It’s about freedom, not money. I certainly don’t relish the idea of losing my business, my home, and everything...

Michael Savage is looking for the complete interview that he did with Chris Kyle - it was done right after the book "American Sniper" was released. Unfortunately, Savage can only find half the interview - Savage's voice only, and he doesn't have Chris Kyle's answers. By chance, did any Freeper tape record the interview? If so, Savage would like to hear from you.

If anyone has stopped to ask just why global central banks are in such a rush to create inflation (but only controlled inflation, not runaway hyperinflation... of course when they fail with the "controlled" part the money paradrop is only a matter of time) over the past 5 years, and have printed over $12 trillion in credit-money since Lehman, the bulk of which has ended up in the stock market, and which for the first time ever are about to monetize all global sovereign debt issuance in 2015, the answer is simple, and can be seen on the chart below....

Secular Study: No Big Bang? by Brian Thomas, M.S. * Christians who believe the universe began billions of years ago often point to the Big Bang model to try and verify a creation-like beginning.1 But a new origin of the universe model offers an "everlasting universe" and dismisses the whole idea of a Big Bang.2 Genesis does not describe a Big Bang. Instead of a hot explosion, it presents a rather cold, watery origin. Instead of stars first, followed by Earth's emergence billions of years later, God made Earth first, then stars four days later. If the Big Bang really...

Let’s say you want to stop someone from shooting you. You could A) lobby for more gun control, B) report the potential killer to the police, or C) arm yourself. Choose any two. Common sense suggests that B and C are the correct answer. Even if you think “stricter” gun laws could keep a gun out of the hands of your potential killer, you’d have to be crazy to consider it a short-term solution. When it’s your life on the line, short-term solutions are what you need. And any law that makes it harder for you, the innocent party, to...

Anyone who thought political correctness had croaked, joining neon leg warmers, mullets and MC Hammer in the graveyard of bad ideas from the late 1980s and 1990s, should think again. When even someone as gay-friendly and Guardian-hued as Benedict Cumberbatch can be hounded for incorrectness, you know no one’s safe. So what can you say? Here’s an A-to-Z guide to the new PC. A is for America. One-time land of the free, founded by un-PC white dudes partial to a drink and sex with slaves, but more recently the birthplace of identity politics (see under I) and 21st-century taboos (see...

 The first theological school in Islam … said, "God is rationality and justice," … the other side … said: "No, God is pure will and power. Rationality has nothing to do with Him and whatever He does is incomprehensible to us and He cannot be confined to what is thought to be reasonable or unreasonable."  It's a denial of natural law and because of this almost perverse concentration on God's omnipotence. The theological school in Sunni Islam called Ash'arism, which is the majority theological school, even today says that God is the first and only cause of everything and there...

Liberals have been wailing over the past two decades on why poor whites vote for the Republican Party. In 2012, the New Yorker Magazine published an article on poor Republicans, that was full of all the crude stereotypes about poor whites. http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/poor-white-and-republican After all, the Democrats are offering free stuff to the poor, such as free health care, free welfare payments, free food stamps, and other free goodies. In the opinion of the Democrats, poor whites are voting against their economic interests by voting for the Republican Party. Liberals have coined the term "Trailer Park Republican" to describe poor whites...

From a shining city on a hill and Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, to terrible deeds in the name of Christ and terrorists' legitimate grievances. The chasm between Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama when it comes to their views of America and the world could hardly be wider. But on today's Up With Steve Kornacki, when the host asked the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart whether President Obama talks and thinks about America differently from Reagan [and Clinton and Carter], Capehart emphatically replied "No. Rudy Giuliani is lying." View the video here.

Craig Schroeder was injured in 2006 while serving with the Marines in Iraq and suffers from traumatic brain injury and pain, for which he has been on a steady regimen of opioids. WASHINGTON — New federal rules that make it harder to get narcotic painkillers are taking an unexpected toll on thousands of veterans who depend on these prescription drugs to treat everything from missing limbs to post-traumatic stress. The restrictions, adopted last summer by the Drug Enforcement Administration to curb a national epidemic of opioid abuse, are for the first time, in effect, forcing veterans to return to the...

Europe, a continent long known for the rarity of gun violence, is confronting twin challenges that give the issue sudden urgency: a growing population of radicalized young men determined to strike targets close to home, and a black market awash in high-powered weapons. The problem has been rendered vividly in recent weeks by a pair of deadly assaults that each paralyzed a European capital. In Paris and Copenhagen, the attacks were carried out by former small-time criminals turned violent extremists who obtained military-grade illicit weapons with apparent ease. In contrast with the free-firing United States, Europe is generally seen as...

Something striking on today's Morning Joe. On the one hand, there was complete consensus that—as a matter of politics—Rudy Giuliani made a huge mistake in claiming that President Obama doesn't love America. Panelists called his comments "stupid," "crazy," "tone deaf," even "racist." But remarkably, there was one thing that no one said: that as a matter of substance Rudy was wrong. No one made the case that President Obama really does love America in the way most Americans do.

A Washington grandmother and florist of 40 years who refused to service gay weddings because of her faith will now be forced to arrange flowers for gay ceremonies, a judge ruled Wednesday. On top of that, the woman, Barronelle Stutzman, will have to pay the legal penalties imposed by the judge as well as attorney’s fees. Benton County Superior Court Judge Alex Ekstrom ruled in a summary judgement that Stutzman violated anti-discrimination and consumer protection laws. Ekstrom ruled that the gay couple could collect penalties not just from her business, but also from her personally, according to Alliance Defending Freedom,...

<[p> The former fire chief of Atlanta, Georgia, is suing the city and its mayor, claiming he was dismissed from his job because of his Christian faith. Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of Kelvin Cochran, a highly regarded fire offical whose troubles began when some fire department employees complained about a book he was allegedly distributing on the job. Cochran had written the book, "Who Told You That You Were Naked?" which briefly discusses "Biblical sexual morality," according to an ADF press release. Cochran, who is a deacon in a Protestant church, wrote the book during his...

No Republican presidential hopeful since George W. Bush in 2000 has generated widespread support across the party's class and cultural divides. The next GOP nominee may be the candidate who most closely matches his success. The Republican presidential primary electorate now divides about evenly between two factions. The GOP's "managerial" wing consists of voters who are generally more affluent, better educated, more secular, and somewhat less ideological. The party's "populist" wing draws on the overlapping circles of evangelical Christians, blue-collar voters, and the most committed conservative believers. As a Harvard MBA who memorably identified "Jesus" as his favorite philosopher, Bush...

The United States’ political parties have always been amalgams of factions rather than vehicles for any single interest. Partly because of the pressures of the electoral system and partly because of the republic’s vastness, forging either of the two major parties into a political monolith has been impossible; the need to cater to a wide base of Americans tends to keep the parties broad and relatively inclusive. This embedded pluralism of the U.S. party system has diminished somewhat in the current era of polarization but it has not evaporated entirely. The parties are still relatively broad churches. This is clearest...