Free Republic

WASHINGTON • Attention has been focused on who becomes our next president, but meanwhile the incumbent is on quite a roll. Throughout his tour of Alaska, President Obama looked full of his old swagger. He took photos of Denali — the former Mt. McKinley — through the windows of Air Force One and shared them via Instagram. He used melting glaciers as a backdrop to talk about climate change, posed with small children and large fish, and became the first sitting president to venture north of the Arctic Circle. He seemed to smile throughout the trip, and why not? The...

(CNN)—NASA's rockets are astounding machines, capable of blasting into space at thousands of miles per hour and withstanding temperatures twice the melting point of steel. But they can't take off underwater. Rising sea levels caused by melting ice caps threaten to disrupt a handful of NASA launch sites along U.S. coastlines, the space agency warns. In the coming years, launch facilities at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and other places may need to be retrofitted or even moved inland, NASA says. "Every NASA center has its own set of vulnerabilities, and some are more at risk than others," NASA climatologist...

The journalists at MSNBC may have too much time on their hands. On Thursday, the network played a graphic of a Donald Trump speech with the "breaking news" about his hair. MSNBC blasted, "Breaking News: Trump Has Woman Pull Hair to Prove It's Real." Anchor Thomas Roberts then excitedly showed video of Trump calling on a woman at a news conference. She walked on stage to inspect his hair: Not a Joke: MSNBC Has 'Breaking News' on Donald Trump's HairDONALD TRUMP: It's my hair! I swear! [Calls woman up on stage.] Come on! Come. Is it mine?" WOMAN: It is....

PRINCETON, N.J. -- The American public estimates on average that 23% of Americans are gay or lesbian, little changed from Americans' 25% estimate in 2011, and only slightly higher than separate 2002 estimates of the gay and lesbian population. These estimates are many times higher than the 3.8% of the adult population who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Gallup Daily tracking in the first four months of this year.

The woman featured prominently in three of the Planned Parenthood sting videos says she’s unsure whether the women’s health organization should be shut down in light of the massive political controversy she helped ignite. Holly O’Donnell, a 24-year-old from Northern California, said in a little-noticed conservative radio podcast that she is “pro-life” and personally opposes abortion, but also calls it “every woman’s choice.” She said she participated in the videos as a whistleblower because she wanted to expose practices that she considers trafficking in fetal body parts — yet she still has praise for some of Planned Parenthood’s work. “I...

Things got very awkward on Thursday when Chris Matthews asked DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz what the difference was between the modern Democratic Party and Socialism. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was completely stumped. She couldn’t answer the question. We haven’t seen that dazed look since Rachel Dolezal was busted as a fraud. Because, as we all know, there is no difference between today’s Democrat Party and radical Socialism. On Sunday DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was again asked to explain the difference between the modern day Democratic Party and Socialism. Again She failed. “You know Chuck it is always fun to...

For Jon Stewart, this certainly isn’t the high note he wanted to go out on. The guy who prides himself on speaking truth to power, as the anti-establishment, take-to-both-sides-hero for millennials everywhere… reduced to a stenographer for a sitting president so thin-skinned about any and all criticism that he needs to dictate his own comedy. As originally reported in Politico by Darren Samuelson, the outgoing Daily Show host met with President Barack Obama twice in the past four years but failed to let anyone know about it. It was only then that Stewart — who loves to play the “I’m...

Here's what we know: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for selling U.S. nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union after one of the most sensational Cold War-era espionage trials. They were convicted in 1951 owing, largely, to the testimony of David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother. Here's what we don't know: How credible Greenglass' testimony was in court. Greenglass himself spent nearly a decade in prison for his role in the conspiracy. The Army sergeant stole nuclear intelligence from Los Alamos, N.M., and said he passed it on to the Rosenbergs. At the trial, he said Ethel Rosenberg typed...

Vernon, Calif., the notoriously corrupt, industrial city that inspired True Detective season two, is a far cry from the eerie swamplands of the Louisiana bayou, but we’re there for a reason — right? In this week’s episode, “Maybe Tomorrow,” Det. Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) and California Highway Patrol officer Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch) search for the killer, leading them to ambush the home of Mayor Austin Chessani (Ritchie Coster), who was in close, questionable contact with the seedy city manager before his death. While in Chessani’s mansion, we catch a glimpse of a framed photo of the mayor and former...

The symptoms of the prion disease are beginning to become so obvious that even some of our more prominent pundits are beginning to notice them. For example, even former Karl Rove life-coach Ron Fournier has noticed the severe lack of Abraham Lincolns in the current GOP presidential candidates. And noted climate-denialist and baseball drone George Effing Will has staked out the bold position that many of these candidates have gone so far around the bend that they've crossed some kind of termination barrier. It is, therefore, especially disheartening that Cruz, who clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and who is...

Bill Nye, the liberal establishment’s cartoonish Pseudoscience Guy, packages progressive ideology in childish goofiness so as to render it less menacing as he preaches disproven global warming theory to kids young enough to take it at face value. Although his attempts to implant fear of “climate change” are laughable, his underlying message should make your hair stand on end: “Climate change is a real deal everybody…“Now back in 1750 there were about one-and-a-half billion people in the world. Well today there is 7.2 going on 7.3 billion people. Well that’s the problem. There’s billions of people breathing and burning the...

The editorial board of PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. is taking a hardcore stance against those who disagree with the Supreme Court ruling to legalize gay marriage. “As a result of Friday’s ruling, PennLive/The Patriot-News will no longer accept, nor will it print, op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage,” they declared. After receiving strong pushback, the newspaper’s editorial board, which is overseen by Editorial Page Editor John Micek, quickly revised its policy. Freedom of speech will be allowed — but only for a “limited” period of time. Micek explained on Twitter: “Clarification: We will not...

ISIS celebrated gay love today by tossing four more gays from top of a highrise. Of course a crowd gathered below to watch the execution. Several Islamists tweeted out #LoveWins – the same hashtag that was used today after the Supreme Court ruling. Of course this wasn’t the first time… A massive crowd assembled to watch ISIS rebels throw another gay man off a building top earlier this month. Hundreds of spectators came out to watch the brutal public execution. It looks like they drove their cars to the execution! They hung the man from his feet and then let...

I have had enough of smug liberal elites wrapped in their "Celebrate Diversity" banners tearing down minority conservatives. Look in the mirror, media and academia bigots. Your own reflexive racism and divisive rhetoric are poisoning public discourse. There's nothing "progressive" about attacking the children and grandchildren of immigrants who proudly embrace an American identity. We are not "self-hating." You just hate what we believe. The most recent grenade tossed by the jack-booted Enforcers of Ethnic Authenticity came from The Washington Post this week. The Beltway fish-wrapper hyped a 2,100-word investigation of GOP Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal with a condescending quote...

“… I think to every African-American in the country it’s a symbolism of slavery to them and now it’s a symbol of murder for this young man and so I think it’s times to put it in a museum.” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says he believes the Confederate battle flag is “inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery” and needs to go. “No, I agree, I think the flag is inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery, and particularly when people use it obviously for murder and to justify hated so vicious that you would kill somebody I...

If you thought violent biker gangs were a relic of the Altamont era, the shootout at a Waco, Texas, restaurant on May 17 might have come as a shock. A long-simmering beef between the Bandidos and Cossacks boiled over into gunfire. When police arrived at the scene, gang members shot at them too, leaving nine bikers dead, 18 people injured, and 170 suspects in police custody. Over 100 weapons have been confiscated. The scale of this incident dwarfs a typical urban gang confrontation, says Harold Pollack, co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab and an expert on gangs and...

Most curators hope to get glowing reviews and popular acclaim when they mount an exhibit. Michael Kamber, on the other hand, is expecting some blowback for his latest show, “Altered Images: 150 Years of Posed and Manipulated Documentary Photography,” which opens this weekend at the Bronx Documentary Center. And he’s perfectly O.K. with that. “I think there will be some unhappy people,” said Mr. Kamber, a photojournalist and founder of the center. “That’s good. If people would stop faking photos, then they wouldn’t have to be worried about being called out.” The exhibit, a selection of well-known images that have...

NEW YORK (AP) -- On social media and red carpets, from New York to China, hairy underarms are having a mainstream moment. Women are proudly showing off their growth on Instagram and YouTube, and it's not just Miley Cyrus anymore. Jemima Kirke of "Girls" flashed her fair-colored au naturel look - earning some cringes - at the June 1 CFDA awards, one of the top fashion events of the year.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton says much of the nation's political debate lacks the compassion for the poor she learned in Sunday school. At a rally in Iowa, the Democratic presidential hopeful portrayed herself as a champion for struggling Americans, in contrast to the alleged "mean spiritedness" of others. Without naming names, Clinton asked, "Did they not go and hear the same lessons I did in Sunday school? Did they not sing the same hymns?" She said those who lack compassion make her wonder, "Did they never hear, 'there but for the grace of God go I?'"

It looks like Spike TV didn’t find Clint Eastwood’s joke about Caitlyn Jenner during the Guys’ Choice Awards taping on Saturday very funny. A rep for the male-centered network said the reference will be cut from the telecast. “We will remove the reference in the version that will air,” David Schwarz, Spike TV senior vice president of communications, said in a statement. During the taping, while presenting “San Andreas” star Dwayne Johnson with a special award, Eastwood compared Johnson to other athletes-turned-actors like “Jim Brown and Caitlyn Somebody.” Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner, made her debut as a...