Free Republic

Perhaps the decisive factors in combating poverty and enabling upward mobility were not economic but cultural — the habits, mores and dispositions that equip individuals to take advantage of opportunities. This was dismaying because governments know how to alter incentives and remove barriers but not how to manipulate culture. The assumption that the condition of the poor must improve as macroeconomic conditions improve was to be refuted by a deepened understanding of the crucial role of the family as the primary transmitter of the social capital essential for self-reliance and betterment. Family structure is the primary predictor of social outcomes,...

The link goes to an opinion piece with a title similar to the the tweet: “You think your drunk college-age daughters are bad with their iPhones? Imagine them with guns.” Author Anne Skomorowsky writes about her fears concerning her college-aged daughter, who left for college last year at age 17. Specifically, she is worried her daughter will be raped in college.

Deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf complained recently about the “crazy” responses she received after she said that one way to fight ISIS is to ensure job opportunities for would-be terrorists. During a Q&A period at an HBCU foreign policy conference Harf was asked what she considers her biggest professional gaffe or mistake. “I did a cable interview on ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews’ a few weeks ago where I said something that, to me, was totally uncontroversial,” Harf began. She was referencing a Feb. 16 show in which she said of the bloodthirsty ISIS: “We cannot win this war by...

Starbucks admits that the initiative was birthed out of a company forum in which employees discussed racial tensions across America due to “police killing unarmed black men in Ferguson.”

There is so much bad news, fallacious rhetoric, bad faith, and general unscrupulousness coming from the ligbitists (my name for LGBT activists) that it might be tempting, at times, to write off everyone queer as a bunch of incorrigible homofascists.  When sterling exceptions remind us that no constituency has a monopoly on human dignity, we ought to stand up and give proper credit where it is due. Openly gay Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, the Italian geniuses in evening wear and accessories, came forward and stated their defense of the traditional family of mother-father-child.  The Daily Mail among many...

 People Who Don't Want Women to See Ultrasounds of their Babies – What Are They Thinking?   He's a really nice guy. George Leventhal, Montgomery County Maryland Council President, likes puppies. Presumably he loves babies…born ones, that is. What motivates a nice guy like George, to want to impede women seeing their babies' ultrasounds? Ultrasounds aren't exactly cute, but people do get excited about them. We can't presume to know George's thinking, but it's still important to try to understand what people who take his position have in mind.  It may be true, not necessarily in George's case, but on average, that...

WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has begun an aggressive campaign to block President Obama’s climate change agenda in statehouses and courtrooms across the country, arenas far beyond Mr. McConnell’s official reach and authority. The campaign of Mr. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is aimed at stopping a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations requiring states to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Once enacted, the rules could shutter hundreds of coal-fired plants in what Mr. Obama has promoted as a transformation of the nation’s energy economy away from fossil...

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, doesn't have a lot of friends in Washington, and he's proud of it. "Politics, it ain't beanbag," the freshman firebrand told ABC in 2013, after sustaining heavy criticism from fellow Republicans for his starring role in that year's government shutdown. "I'm not serving in office because I desperately needed 99 new friends in the U.S. Senate." The shutdown episode, which saw Cruz successfully urge conservatives in both chambers to defy GOP leadership by refusing to back any government spending bill that funded Obamacare, became emblematic of Cruz's time on Capitol Hill. From the moment the conservative...

RENO, Nev. -- Hundreds of LGBT supporters marched through downtown Reno Saturday afternoon for northern Nevada's Pride Parade, where for one nine-year-old, it was a place to express who she really is. "I really like sleepovers and make up parties and tea parties," Cee Cee Ott, 9, said. It wasn't always like that for Ott. Cee Cee was born Conrad. "We didn't see the transgender come out until she was about three. It didn't really start hitting that she wanted to wear her sister's clothes, she wanted to wear wigs," said Shanna Ott, her parent. It became a struggle for...

The University of Minnesota Duluth will begin offering a minor in LGBTQ studies so that students can be better prepared for life in “an increasingly diverse society.” To complete the minor, students will have to take classes such as “An Introduction to LGBTQ” (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer), “Queer Theory,” “Queer Media,” “Queer Cinema in International Perspective” and “History of the Homosexual Rights,” Campus Reform reported. “This minor will prepare students for life,” Gesa Zinn, head of the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department, told Campus Reform. ” ‘The job’ the LGBTQ minor prepares students for is to understand and...

National Geographic claims creationists are at war with science by Lita Cosner and Keaton Halley Published: 19 March 2015 (GMT+10) National Geographic (NG) is a respected popular science magazine with millions of subscribers. So it is unfortunate when they use that platform to promote anti-creation propaganda under the guise of science. The cover of the March 2015 issue is “The War on Science”, and the featured article by science writer Joel Achenbach, “The age of disbelief”, intends to explain why so many people doubt the scientific establishment on a range of issues—from global warming to vaccines to the Apollo moon...

"More specifically, Netanyahu's Likud Party won by siphoning voters away from the other right parties who will become its coalition partners. Mainstream Israeli opinion has shifted to the right: to win, Likud didn't need to win over a swath of centrist voters. It needed to jazz up the Right with nasty rhetoric about Palestinians and Arabs." "Meanwhile, Likud is going through a process that some observers have referred to as Tea Party-ization. Younger Israelis tend to be more conservative, increasingly empowering the more right-wing factions inside Likud. That causes center-right voters to defect to centrist parties, pushing the party ever...

Protests against racist policing practices in Ferguson, Missouri and all throughout this country have largely been peaceful. Yet the shooting of two Ferguson police officers last week—a shooting that has not been clearly associated with the protests—has been used to discredit an entire movement, to cast a whole wave of social justice activism as violent and sinister. A few states away, in Oklahoma, a video showing a white American fraternity chapter singing with reportedly drunken glee about how excluding and enacting violence on black men has laid bare anew a core truth about race in America: being white means never...

Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida have released a blueprint for federal tax reform called “The Economic Growth and Family Fairness Tax Plan.” First, we should not embrace the language of progressive socialism in believing tax reform should have as a goal to advance “family fairness.” The plan should simply be entitled “The American Growth and Opportunity Plan.” That said, the Lee-Rubio plan is a great improvement over the current system. For the individual tax structure, the plan introduces a two-tier system to replace the current seven tax brackets. This plan moves America from a...

It s a simple statement of fact to note that gun control groups—without exception—deal in the currency of lies, deception, and emotional manipulation. Mom Demand Action/Everytown has been excoriated numerous times by the press for lying about the number of school shootings in the United States. The Violence Policy Center has been laughed out of the room over their demonstrably false claims about the “threat” of concealed carriers. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) has cried wolf so many times about gun owners being “insurrectionists” that they’ve lost all credibility.

"I look at Barack Obama and I see the worst president of my lifetime, without question," Cheney told journalist James Rosen. "I used to have significant criticism of Jimmy Carter, but compared to Barack Obama and the damage he is doing to the nation—it’s a tragedy."

The New York Times was abuzz March 5. The board of trustees of South Carolina’s Erskine College—a small, liberal arts college historically associated with the Presbyterian church—had issued a statement declaring that the school considered “all sexual activity outside the covenant of marriage [as] sinful and therefore ultimately destructive of the parties involved.” Not only did the trustees affirm what has been standard Christian belief and practice since … well, the beginning of Christianity, but they even stated: “As a Christian academic community, and in light of our institutional mission, members of the Erskine community are expected to follow the...

An older generation complaining that an emerging one will be the death of civilization as we know it is a cliche and constant as the North Star. However, based on some rather troubling data regarding today’s millennials, it could turn out to be true this time. In his first inaugural address as governor of California 47 years ago, Ronald Reagan warned us that “freedom is a fragile thing, and is never more than one generation away from extinction.” He also reminded us that freedom “is not ours by inheritance but must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation,...

(Excerpt) The Minister for Finance in Ireland, Michael Noonan, sold his shares in funds that track European and US stocks and diversified his portfolio including allocating some of his personal wealth into a gold exchange traded fund (ETF) in 2014. Noonan sold out of his positions in the Lyxor Eurostoxx 50 ETF and SPDR DJIA ETF in 2014 and opted to invest in the SPDR gold shares ETF and Portuguese government bonds. He maintained his holdings in SPDR KBW Banks ETF, Ishares FTSE 100 ETF, Market Vectors Agri Business ETF, ETFS Agricultural Commodities ETF. ... Noonan is believed to...

Imagine my surprise when I went to sign-in to Twitter today and one of the pictures rotating before I was able to login showed a bunch of people with their “hands up” in front of the St. Louis Gateway Arch. “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot …” Hadn’t the Department of Justice’s largely ignored report exonerating Officer Darren Wilson basically shown the whole Ferguson narrative of the “Gentle Giant” Michael Brown’s final moments on earth to be a huge lie? Why yes, yes it did.