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Spring is a wonderful time of year. Despite T.S. Eliot’s line that “April is the cruelest month,” spring is a time of renewal, a good time to remind ourselves to open up to new facets of life. One of the best things about spring, to me, is the opening of the baseball season. I am a fervent baseball fan. To me, there is a good deal of metaphysics in baseball. You start out at a place called home, then you go on a little journey like the Prodigal Son, the aim being to return home. The ones who go home...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried to calm fears of a possible debt default Tuesday, pleading with everyone to “relax” as talks continue between the White House and House GOP negotiators ahead of the likely June 1 deadline. “I think everybody needs to relax,” McConnell told reporters in his home state, again reiterating that the nation will not default on its payments, a declaration he’s repeated throughout the negotiation process. “The last 10 times we raised the debt ceiling, there were things attached to it. This is not that unusual. It is almost entirely required when you have divided...

Fox News anchor Eric Shawn floated the possibility that former President Donald Trump may have tried to "sell" classified documents to Russia or Saudi Arabia. The FBI executed a search warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort residence on Monday in search of top secret and sensitive compartmentalized information, as well as other classified documents. The Washington Post reported Thursday that information regarding nuclear weapons was believed to be among the documents sought by federal agents, and a Russian-state television host said officials in Moscow have already studied the records. Trump described the report regarding nuclear weapons documents as a "hoax." In...

WASHINGTON (SBG) - As we pass 30 million vaccine doses distributed, Dr. Anthony Fauci says masks and social distancing aren’t going anywhere any time soon. “You can’t just say forget, no more public health measures,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci to The National Desk anchor Jan Jeffcoat. He also addressed when the public will be able to get back to some sort of normalcy.

Former President Barack Obama on Thursday wrote about the ongoing debate among leftists in the Democrat party over America’s founding ideals and the future of the country. The former president published an updated excerpt from his book in the Atlantic ahead of Tuesday’s release date of volume one of his memoirs A Promised Land.

WASHINGTON — A bare majority of the U.S. Supreme Court appeared likely Tuesday to let the Trump administration follow through on its plan to shut down DACA, the federal program that has allowed nearly 800,000 young people, known as dreamers, to avoid deportation and remain in the U.S. With hundreds of DACA supporters rallying outside — so many that police shut down the street in front of the Supreme Court — the justices heard nearly an hour and a half of oral arguments. Based on their questions, it appeared that the court's five conservatives were inclined to rule that the...

(Reuters) - Global temperature rise could exceed "safe" levels of two degrees Celsius in some parts of the world in many of our lifetimes if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, two research papers published in the journal Nature warned. "Certain levels of climate change are very likely within the lifetimes of many people living now ... unless emissions of greenhouse gases are substantially reduced in the coming decades," said a study on Sunday by academics at the English universities of Reading and Oxford, the UK's Met Office Hadley Center and the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand."Large parts of...

Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the UN and member of Barack Obama's cabinet, opened the door for the possibility of an international investigation into the U.S. military on Fox News Sunday yesterday. Here's the relevant part of the exchange: Chris Wallace: And a simple question: Would the U.S. accept foreign participation if this country were investigating actions by the U.S. military? Susan Rice: I think it depends on the circumstances, Chris. Naturally, this question came up during an exchange about the pro-Hamas flotillas that Israel prevented from reaching its shores. But it's an extraordinarily short-sighted statement for Rice to make.

AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the Obama administration, suggested Thursday that he would consider invoking states’ rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president’s healthcare plan, which he said would be "disastrous" for Texas. Interviewed by conservative talk show host Mark Davis of Dallas’ WBAP/820 AM, Perry said his first hope is that Congress will defeat the plan, which both Perry and Davis described as "Obama Care." But should it pass, Perry predicted that Texas and a "number" of states might resist the federal health mandate.

PITTSBURGH – As much as a foot of snow fell from the Plains across the Midwest on Saturday, snarling road and air travel, as the second big winter storm in a week barreled through on its way to New England. Tens of thousands of people still lacked electricity after the first storm slammed Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri earlier in the week. That storm was blamed for at least 38 deaths, mostly in traffic accidents. Winter storm warnings and watches extended Saturday from Missouri across parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, the National...

NEW YORK - The city and state stepped up their pressure on striking transit workers Wednesday in hopes of forcing them back to work, and a judge said sending union leaders to jail was a "distinct possibility." State Supreme Court Justice Theodore Jones, who is hearing several legal issues related to the strike, directed attorneys from the Transport Workers Union to bring president Roger Toussaint and other top officials before the court Thursday to answer to a criminal contempt charge. He said he may sentence the union leaders to jail for refusing to end the strike, calling such a scenario...

Meeting raises possibility that Nagin may have political future 10/30/2005, 9:58 a.m. CT By KEVIN McGILL The Associated Press NEW ORLEANS (AP) — There were fewer than 300 seats and more than 500 people jammed into the hotel for a town hall meeting. It was overcrowded and under-air conditioned (nothing new in post-Katrina New Orleans), dozens of unhappy people lined up behind a single microphone and the scene appeared set for an ugly political inquisition as Mayor Ray Nagin entered the room — 30 minutes late. Nagin made an opening statement on housing, then turned it over to the audience....

An 18 year old Jersey City,NJ student was viciously beaten by 5 men,who used baseball bats, among other things. All 5 have been arrested.All have "Islamic" surnames. Police "don't know" if they are a gang. (Hmm.... Let's see: They hang out on a street corner and beat people up.Young Mens'Islamic Association maybe ?) Details at link.

The January/February issue of Foreign Policy magazine has an insightful article by Josef Joffe, the publisher and editor of Die Zeit and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution titled " A World Without Israel." While advocates for Israel often point out the tremendous technological, medical and agricultural advances Israel has produced (including those by this year's Nobel Prize winners in medicine) which have benefited so many people around the world, this intriguing article constructs a counter-factual history of the Middle East which would exist without Israel. Since there are a surprising and distressing number of people who blame the...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Supreme Court: Moving On, Moving In, Moving Up A vacancy could open up in the U.S. Supreme Court soon By Daniel Klaidman, Debra Rosenberg and Tamara LipperNEWSWEEK     Feb. 17 issue —  It’s been nine years since the last vacancy opened up on the U.S. Supreme Court. That historically long drought could end this year with at least one resignation. Eager White House aides are stepping up preparation efforts, vetting candidates and contemplating a special media operation to deal with a potential confirmation battle.  

SACRAMENTO -- The politics behind reforming California’s tort laws are as convoluted as the statutes themselves, which Republicans in the state Legislature, citing attorney abuses, have sought doggedly to overhaul for the last six years.  But even with the coalitions of unusual alliances that have successfully stymied every recent noteworthy attempt at restructuring the laws that provide legal remedies for civil wrongdoing, advocates for change say this year it’s all but certain meaningful tort reform will emerge.  “I am more optimistic this year than I have in any of the years past,” said Diann H. Rogers, executive director of Citizens...

ANCIENT RAMAYANA BRIDGE - A REALISTIC POSSIBILITY