Free Republic

Legendary investor George Soros called for comprehensive debt relief for Greece. "Everyone knows that it can never pay back its debt." Greece is close to a primary budget surplus after a lot of pain and suffering, says Soros, whose speculation against the pound forced the UK to withdraw from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. "If the official sector could forgo repayment as long as Greece meets the conditions imposed by the troika [of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Central Bank (ECB) and European Commission]," Soros added, "private capital would return and Greece could rapidly recover. I can testify...

(CNN) -- A Syrian minister declared "victory" for his country on Sunday, thanking Russia for orchestrating a chemical weapons deal to avert U.S. military action, Russia's state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported. "We welcome these agreements. On the one hand, they will help Syrians come out of the crisis, and on the other hand, they prevented the war against Syria by having removed a pretext for those who wanted to unleash it," National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar was quoted as saying. He called the deal an achievement of Russian diplomacy, and "a victory for Syria won thanks to our Russian...

And they should. CBS reoprts that NSA Director Keith Alexander made an “emergency visit” to Capitol Hill to head off a potentially embarrassing vote to defund his agency’s trawling of phone and Internet records. House Republican leaders allowed a vote on an amendment by Rep. Justin Amash to use the power of the purse to rein in the NSA, and the panic shows that the effort might well succeed in the Senate when the budget comes to the upper chamber: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO With a high-stakes showdown vote looming in the House, White House press secretary Jay...

Due largely to unauthorized leaks, we now know that the National Security Agency has seized from private companies voluminous data on the phone and Internet usage of all U.S. citizens. We've also learned that the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has approved the constitutionality of these seizures in secret proceedings in which only the government appears, and in opinions kept secret even from the private companies from whom the data are seized. If this weren't disturbing enough, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform, is compiling a massive database of citizens' personal information—including monthly...

In the chaos that is the fight over the abortion bill in Texas, it’s difficult to see the real story behind the circus of filibusters, “mob rule,” and Satan-hailing. But I recently had the privilege of speaking to someone who has been on both sides of the argument. Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director and now a pro-life advocate who testified during the Texas Senate hearings this week on the abortion bill, claims the ban on late-term abortions is not the most disputed portion of the bill. “What’s being highly contested by abortion supporters in this bill is not...

"Ted Cruz Exposes the Amnesty Bill… $5000 Penalty for Hiring Citizens Over Legalized Aliens… SERIOUSLY!!!" We can’t possibly expect our Senators to read a 1200 page bill before voting on it. Can we? Well Thank God Ted Cruz read it. Not only did Cruz read it but he schooled anyone who would listen from the Senate floor on Tuesday. Cruz found a loophole that actually penalizes an employer $5000 for hiring a citizen over a legalized alien. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up. Senator Cruz was quoted as saying: “I filed an amendment that would have corrected one of...

WASHINGTON — The State Department has hired an alarming number of law-enforcement agents with criminal or checkered backgrounds because of a flawed hiring process, a stunning memo obtained by The Post reveals. The background problems are severe enough that many of the roughly 2,000 agents in State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security can play only limited roles in agency efforts to police bad conduct and prosecute wrongdoers. ... “Department intakes of new . . . officers since the hiring surge a decade ago have reportedly been flawed, with ‘mitigation’ of troubling histories including criminal matters,” according to a December 2012 memo...

President Obama shrugged off Friday what he coined Republican "fearmongering" and said the healthcare law is working the way it's supposed to, The Hill's Healthwatch reports. Obama criticized the GOP for using scare tactics over the effects of the healthcare law. He says early results indicate the system is working as intended, although industry experts say the true measure of the law's success will be known once new insurance marketplaces open this fall in states across the country and enrollment for the new coverage options begin. But Obama pointed to California, as one of several states that shows early success,...

On Thursday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” conservative talk show host Mark Levin reacted to recent revelations that the National Security Agency had been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers. He said that the NSA news in addition to other openings for intrusion by the federal government are the makings of a “police state.” MARK LEVIN: I tell you what I make of this — we have the elements of a police state here, and I’m not overstating it. When you step back and realize the Supreme Court the other day ruled...

Escalations continued on all sides in Syria’s civil war except, curiously, among the Syrians.  The EU decided not to renew the embargo on arms sales to Syrian rebels, which prompted the Russians to pledge delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, which prompted Israel to implicitly warn that they would make great targets for their air force.  In the middle of all this, John McCain got a photo op with a Syrian opposition that’s being dominated by radical Islamist militias, including an al-Qaeda affiliate that forms the core of their military operations.In other words, it’s a mess, but let’s start with the embargo’s...

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) on Monday introduced a bill that would provide arms to vetted rebel groups. Menendez’s legislation would give arms and military training to opposition groups that had been vetted, as well as provide $250 million for basic services and security in a post-Assad Syria. The bill also includes new sanctions against those providing arms or oil to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. Menendez’s bill comes as the Obama administration is reconsidering its opposition to providing arms to the Syrian rebels.

We can drop this debate over his birth certificate because we have something even more valuable. We have his mother’s passport files. Snip~ When Obama was young, children traveled as an addition to their parents’ passports. Passport regulations required a photo of parent and child together, as well as a certified copy of a hospital birth certificate. State-issued IDs came much later. If Obama was born in the United States, as everybody says, then there should be a photo of little Barack Obama with his mother, as well as a certified copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate in her file....

Freaking idiot hosebag- ALL.org   h/t IBD

Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report for 2011-2012, released Monday, reveals that the abortion and women’s health provider received $542.4 million from taxpayers in government grants and reimbursements — constituting 45 percent of the organization’s revenue. Abortions constituted 3 percent of the services Planned Parenthood provided from October 2010 to September 2011. According to the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, the 333,964 abortions the organization performed in that timeframe represented a record high for Planned Parenthood. The group noted that from 2009 through 2011, Planned Parenthood performed 995,687 abortions.

Egypt’s new constitution “prepares the way for an Islamic caliphate”, according to the acting leader of Coptic Catholics, who is among three bishops to condemn the document as a fundamental attack on human rights. The bishops expressed their profound disappointment with the constitution signed into law on December 26, saying only extremist Muslims’ rights were guaranteed by the new document and that at particular risk were women, young people and religious minorities. Bishop Kyrillos William, administrator of the Coptic Catholic Patriarchate of Alexandria, said: “We were waiting for a constitution that represents the whole of Egypt but instead we have...

Thanks to Barack Hussein Obama’s Arab Spring scheme of turning the Egypt of Hosni Mubarek into a “representative democracy,” the US is now reduced to watching as a former friend and ally morphs into an America-hating, Sharia-based theocracy. Six months after promising to build a government based on “freedom and social justice,” Egypt’s newly elected president Mohamed Morsi authored a decree granting himself a level of dictatorial authority which even Mubarek did not enjoy. As a result, demonstrations began throughout the nation culminating last week in Morsi fleeing the presidential palace in Cairo. (1) Though he has since rescinded most...

FULL TITLE: 'British whites' are the minority in London for the first time as census shows number of UK immigrants has jumped by 3million in 10 years White British people are now in a minority in London for the first time, it emerged today as census data revealed that the immigrant population of England and Wales went up by 3million over the past decade.

In the wake of President Barack Obama’s assertion that women “rely on” Planned Parenthood for mammograms, about 2,000 pro-life activists called Planned Parenthood offices to schedule appointments for the breast health service, according to the Catholic EWTN News. While Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms, however, it does offer breast exams and referrals. “When Governor Romney says that we should eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, there are millions of women all across the country, who rely on Planned Parenthood for, not just contraceptive care, they rely on it for mammograms, for cervical cancer screenings. That’s a pocketbook issue for women...

Plans to create a neo-liberal start-up city in Honduras with its own laws, tax rules and police force suffered a setback on Friday when the economic guru who inspired the project said he has been unable to act as its guarantor and watchdog.

Editor's note: This column was authored by Catherine Glenn Foster, Litigation Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. It seems that every day the effects of the culture of death on our society are more and more obvious, and more and more gruesome. Just take the continued funding of Planned Parenthood with taxpayer dollars. This ongoing controversy was highlighted recently when President Barack Obama declared yet again that he wants to continue pumping our hard-earned money into Planned Parenthood. Why? So it will still be around to perform abortions for daughters if they want one. He drew a contrast with...