Free Republic

In Seattle, wasting food will now earn you a scarlet letter — well, a scarlet tag, to be more accurate. The bright red tag, posted on a garbage bin, tells everyone who sees it that you've violated a new city law that makes it illegal to put food into trash cans. "I'm sure neighbors are going to see these on their other neighbors' cans," says Rodney Watkins, a lead driver for Recology CleanScapes, a waste contractor for the city. He's on the front lines of enforcing these rules. Seattle is the first city in the nation to fine homeowners for...

JANUARY 26, 2015 Reality Check on Huckabee There’s no hiding his highly problematic record in Arkansas. By Quin Hillyer Late last week, a nasty little scuffle of the premature 2016 presidential campaign reminded us why both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee should be kept miles away from the Republican presidential nomination. It also reminded us that Huckabee thinks he can sell snake oil even to water moccasins. Neither the moccasins nor Republican voters should buy what he’s selling.

Sure, the incentive to compost is the putative reason for this regulation, but exactly how is it enforced? In order for city officials and trash collectors to know you have committed the civic sin of disposing of leftover food in your trashcan, they have to examine the contents of your trashcan. Let’s hope the citizens of Seattle and trash collectors can come to some kind of silent truce over this. Do they collectors really want to examine every load they dump into the truck for transgressions? (Lord help us, the city probably offers a bonus of taxpayer money for tagging...

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris once again pose a question that seldom gets discussed. To whom are these attacks aimed? Is it Christians? Jews? Non-Muslims in general? Could it be Western democracies or Western society as a whole? As media pundits shed their crocodile tears and two-faced politicians dramatize their insincere outrage, every Islamic terrorist since 9-11 knows very well who their targets are. It is the Left. These terrorists may be monsters, but they’re not stupid. They know that their carnage and destruction must make an impression on those most likely to assist their cause: anti-war pacifists, progressives,...

There is no doubt that many, if not most, conservatives could not care less what those on the hard Left have to say. I understand this, but I also know that the lies of the Left (and lies are all they have to push their demented, tyrannical agenda) should be noted and refuted, because if left alone, they will become the "truth" that dictates the policies of our nation. This will make the second column in a row in which I have featured some outlandish lies of liberal columnists. Last week, it was ludicrous claims from the New York...

Victory! Something is changing. Some positive effects of the Charlie Hebdo atrocities are felt in Italy, with crackdown on the cult of Islam. First Massimo Bitonci, the mayor of the city of Padua, in the region of Venice (Veneto), Northern Italy, simply and clearly said: "No more mosques in Padua. The city council will not grant any more public space for the building of mosques and Islamic places of worship." Padua's councillor Marina Buffoni sent the city's police to Muslim meeting places, to confiscate posters and images of women in burka. She said: "These posters showed women completely covered...

The Collapse of Europe? The European Union May Be on the Verge of Regime Collapse Europe won the Cold War. Not long after the Berlin Wall fell a quarter of a century ago, the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States squandered its peace dividend in an attempt to maintain global dominance, and Europe quietly became more prosperous, more integrated, and more of a player in international affairs. Between 1989 and 2014, the European Union (EU) practically doubled its membership and catapulted into third place in population behind China and India. It currently boasts the world’s largest economy and also heads...

Last Tuesday evening during the State of the Union address, President Obamapledged “to protect a free and open Internet, extend its reach to every classroom, and every community, and help folks build the fastest networks.” Obama is calling on the Federal Communications Commission to challenge a wave of state laws blocking the construction of municipal broadband networks, which are high-speed Internet services run by local communities. Here’s what you need to know about the president’s proposal and what it might mean for consumers. Why Can’t Cities Just Build Their Own Broadband Networks? Although there are about 300 municipal broadband networks...

Three Words Explain Obama’s Visit To Saudi Arabia: Stability Is King Almost 70 years ago, a fading President Franklin Roosevelt, returning from Yalta, held a historic meeting on board a U.S. destroyer with King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama met with King Salman, one of Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud’s sons. Much has changed in the U.S.-Saudi relationship. But the elements that drove FDR and all of his successors to maintain and strengthen those ties—oil and regional stability–are still in place. The United States and Saudi Arabia never shared common values. The arrest and...

It has been concluded that Bowe Bergdahl is a deserter: The Army has decided to charge Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was released by Taliban-aligned militants last year in exchange for five Guantanamo prisoners, with desertion, according to a former military intelligence officer. Retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, who now works at the London Center for Policy Research, told Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" Monday night that he's learned of the military's decision from two sources. "The Army has come to its conclusion, and Bowe Bergdahl ... will be charged with desertion," he said. Asked for comment on the claim, Army...

Let’s reverse our dangerous dependency on foreign energy sources, and in-so-doing reduce the unnecessary expenditure in blood and treasure Energy – especially availability and most especially foreign oil dependency – is a huge national concern. In the aggregate, energy is perhaps the greatest of all concerns related to American national security. If we look at foreign oil dependency alone, we see that the U.S. spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year on energy imports, with much of this energy imported from Middle Eastern nations. Since there is no way to adequately determine – much less direct or demand –...

Screw you, Alaska. Obama has simply engaged in yet another assault on this nation's economic vitality About a third of all the jobs in Alaska are connected to oil exploration and development. And the ability to keep the oil industry vibrant in Alaska is very much dependent on the Trans-Alaska pipeline. So you’d think an administration that claims to be about keeping good jobs viable would have an interest in seeing to it that oil continues to flow freely through the pipeline - not only for the sake of Alaska’s economic viability but also for the sake of the nation’s...

The Warmist does. To see Global Warming while walking through a blizzard, is itself an act of faith The sky over New York City was a falling sheet of white. Trails of footprints, work boots, paw prints, sneakers and bird claws, told their own story of how the residents of city were getting through the blizzard to their daily errands. Shoppers lugged home milk as if cows were going extinct. Miniature snowmen decorated mailboxes and garbage trucks towing orange plows clattered down empty streets. Nowhere in the city was the blizzard more pronounced than in Central Park, designed a century...

Over-reaction of meteorologists and politicians Dateline: January 27, 2015 - 3 to 4 AM, New York City and Tri-State area. There was no climate change where I live in a suburb of Newark, N.J. if by “climate change” you meant a dramatic blizzard with high winds and several feet of snow. It’s winter and you get the occasional, rare blizzard every few years, but more often you get snowstorms. That’s not “change” by any definition. Listening to WABC radio follow events with callers from around the Tri-State area calling in with far more accurate reports than the meteorologists was an...

We now all know why ‘Snow Job & the Seven Meteorologists’ went so far out of their way to frighten people to obsess over the coming biggest blizzard in all of history As 28 million Americans were supposedly taking cover from history’s worst predicted blizzard, what was a buoyant Barack Obama really doing? Proudly leading a ceremony that paid respect to Saudi Arabia’s newly-ensconced King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. With most class chatter on what Canada Free Press (CFP) calls ‘Snow Job & the Seven Meteorologists’, Obama was speaking for all Americans in defending the U.S. government’s absolute willingness...

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) acknowledged that injuries to his eye sustained in an exercise apparatus mishap last month prevent him from reading. Rather than being an impediment to his legislative performance, though, Reid insists that it will be an asset. “The premise that a lawmaker needs to read the words he is enacting into law is erroneous,” Reid asserted. “Attempting to read the 1000 page bills we are asked to act upon is time consuming and, ultimately, unnecessary. Even when I could read I couldn’t bring myself to wade through the 2000 pages of the Affordable Care Act....

The self-important Boston Globe ran an editorial that is a microcosm of how the Left manages to be so consistently wrong on so many substantive issues. The piece had to do with the supposed wrongheadedness of Republican House Speaker John Boehner. It seems that according to the Globe, Boehner has committed some kind of treasonous act by inviting Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, to address a joint session of Congress without asking permission from their boss President Barack Obama. The writer moans that such an undercutting of Obama’s authority will damage the delicate negotiations Obama is in with the Iranians;...

Recently we marked the 50th anniversary of the January 24, 1965 passing of Winston Churchill. Churchill was not only a courageous leader but an eminent historian and lucid writer who left us with volumes of valuable insight and wisdom. We have been flipping through his, “The Gathering Storm,” which recounts among other parts of history the lead up to World War II, when Churchill stood as a lone voice against Nazi Germany — a threat he so clearly saw while the world dithered. Below are 12 passages from Churchill’s Volume I of “The Gathering Storm,” that look awfully eerie in...

Irate liberals, incensed that the film American Sniper is doing well in theaters, have taken to social media to spew their nonsensical garbage. With the film's success, those on the left have been tweeting that the movie is terrible. Some have gone much further, attacking the people who see the film. Hundreds have even gone so far as to say that, if you like American Sniper, you also probably like the Holocaust, are trying to create another Holocaust, or you are a racist, skin-head murderer. Here are just a few examples:

Whatever happened to the investigation of Bowe Bergdahl and his capture by the Taliban? Last year, the Obama administration traded five high-ranking Taliban commanders to get Bergdahl back, but men in his former unit immediately objected to the trade, accusing Bergdahl of having deserted before his capture. Months later, there still has been no final determination of Bergdahl’s status — at least none made public. Last night, retired Lt. Col. Tony Schaffer told Bill O’Reilly that the Army has charged Bergdahl with desertion, but that the White House — and specifically Ben Rhodes, the national-security adviser/speechwriter to Barack Obama —...