Free Republic

First things first, let’s stipulate that if there’s a government shutdown at the end of the month — and I continue to doubt there will be — it will happen because House Speaker John Boehner chooses to precipitate one. He can always partner with Democrats to pass a temporary, uncontroversial government spending bill if he wants to, because almost all Democrats will vote for it, and there are still a few dozen Republicans in the House who are both sane and unintimidated by the threat of a primary challenge from the right. Whatever happens is his decision. The latest doomed-to-fail...

Two weeks ago, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau finally released its assessment (PDF) of the costs of Common Core, the new set of educational standards going into effect in school districts around the state this year. Here's the good news: For the state of Wisconsin, Common Core will be virtually free! "There is no direct fiscal effect on the state to update district curriculum and teacher practice to align with the common core standards," the Fiscal Bureau reports. Here's the bad news: Instead of the state shelling out for Common Core, individual school districts will have to pick up the tab....

The nation will soon know whether or not President Obama will authorize a strike on Syrian military forces. What he will tell us on Tuesday evening, few can factually predict. But if the outcome of his deliberative process does not pose his favored verdict, no one would be surprised if he just did as he originally wished to begin with. But even that is truly a mystery. After all, chemical weapons attacks have been occurring in Syria since March, and it’s only now that we must make some sort of demonstrable stand so that future rogues don't think we're sissies...

(NOTE: Huffington had to shorted to Huff because the original title exceeded the limit of characters.) Dana Loesch is a well-known conservative writer and thinker. Her fame comes about in part because, aside from being one heck of a smart gal and a good writer, she’s also extremely beautiful. Perhaps that beauty is what drove a Progressive Huffington Post contributor to abandon his political argument with her on Twitter and simply threaten her with anal rape. Loesch is a chronic irritant to Progressives. She’s a pro-gun conservative who looks like a fashion model and who can communicate her conservative ideas...

LOS ANGELES — A federal bankruptcy court judge granted the city of San Bernardino eligibility for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, raising the possibility that the city will propose a plan to dig itself out of debt by cutting money promised to the public pension system. The ruling by Judge Meredith Jury came despite opposition from the powerful California Public Employees’ Retirement System, more commonly known as CalPERS. San Bernardino, a working-class city of 240,000 about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy last summer, saying it had effectively run out of money to pay for day-to-day operations, in...

The vast majority of people under 35 think that the Christian attitude to gay people is “wicked” and “incomprehensible”, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said. The Most Reverend Justin Welby told an audience of traditional born-again Christians that they must “repent” over the way gay and lesbian people have been treated in the past and said most young people viewed Christians as no better than racists on the issue. Archbishop Welby, who as a young priest once opposed allowing gay couples to adopt children, said the church now had to face up to what amounted to one of the most...

Sr. Florence Deacon, OSF, outgoing president of the LCWR. Credit: Lisa Johnston for CNA. South Bend, Ind., Aug 24, 2013 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite a shift in tone, virtually no progress has been made toward the Vatican's goals for the reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, says an author who has closely followed the group. Group members “are making an effort to be more conciliatory, at least verbally,” said Ann Carey, author of the 1997 book “Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities” and the newly-released “Sisters in Crisis Revisited: From Unraveling to...

Parents of teenagers should allow their children to have sex in their home or even live together, according to a recent column in USA Today. “Letting your teenager have a boyfriend or girlfriend sleep over, or even move in, takes away the ‘sneaking around’ aspect of teenage romance, and that also is a good thing,” wrote columnist Amanda Marcotte, who also writes for the radical feminist blog Jezebel and the pro-abortion blog RH Reality Check. According to Marcotte, teenage cohabitation is a growing trend. “As youthful cohabitation rises, parents should accept it and educate their children on sex,” she wrote....

A savior or a sell-out? A compromise or compromised? -snip- “HE DOESN’T GIVE a s—- what people think,” a Republican “close” to Chris Christie told Politico after the governor denounced the Republican House and Speaker Boehner (yes, by name) for voting down a pork-laden aid bill in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. We pretty much knew Christie felt that way, though it was good to see it confirmed in writing. The bigger question, one that should concern Christie, is what people think about him. We know he’s home safe in New Jersey, cruising toward re-election this November as he enjoys...

Was it a thrill kill or part of a gang initiation? That would be the bushwhacking of Chris Lane, an Aussie college kid and baseball star. Lane was gunned down running along a country road near Duncan, Oklahoma, the other day. You know the story by now. Does it matter what motivated Allen Luna and James Francis Edwards, Jr., Chris Lane's accused killers, and Michael Dewayne Jones, an accessory, to off a young man with a promising future who was just going about the routine of his life on a summer's day? In one sense it doesn't matter. Whether those...

Citing ObamaCare as a reason, the the University of Virginia has announced that spouses of University employees who have access to health insurance through their own jobs will no longer be eligible for health insurance coverage. In its announcement, President Obama's healthcare plan is specifically mentioned by UVa as a reason for the rising costs that forced the university to drop working spouses. ObamaCare is expected to add $7 million to the university's health care costs. UVa was also a public supporter of ObamaCare: Working spouse provision: Starting Jan. 1, spouses who have access to coverage through their own employer...

New York is number one again, but this time it’s for being the rudest and most arrogant state in the country. A new survey from Business Insider asked 1,600 Americans to answer questions about states they don’t live in, like which were the drunkest, the smartest or had the silliest accents. “The results were hilarious, informative and tell you everything you need to know about the dynamic between the states,” Business Insider said on its website. It found that 39 percent of those polled felt New York was the most arrogant state and 44 percent felt it was the rudest....

Sometimes I wonder when black people will reject the patronizing insults of white progressives and their black handmaidens. After CNN's Piers Morgan's interview with the key witness in the George Zimmerman trial, he said: "Rachel Jeantel is not uneducated. She's a smart cookie." That's a remarkable conclusion. Here's a 19-year-old young lady, still in high school, who cannot read cursive and appears to be barely literate. Morgan may have meant Jeantel is smart -- for a black person. Progressives treat blacks as victims in need of kid glove treatment and special favors, such as racial quotas and preferences. This approach...

Granted, it was only a few dozen people. Granted, the rally against Filner was bigger, and public opinion is running seven to one in favor of resignation. "Organizer and immigrant rights activist Enrique Morones said Filner backers would no longer stay silent." “These joint community members of color, veterans, environmentalists, educators, women’s rights, gays, civil rights, labor, human rights, unions, neighborhoods, immigration and many more — we stand united in stopping the public mockery of our judicial system,” Morones said. “Due process for Mayor Filner and due process for the accusers.”… "Suzie Ditmars, of the Committee on the Status of...

The latest casualty of Obamacare may be a low-cost New Jersey health-care policy. Though President Obama promised “if you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period,” that will not be the case for approximately 106,000 New Jersey residents whose plans will disappear under the law.Known as the “basic and essential,” or B&E, health-care plans, the policy costs as little as a couple hundred dollars per month and is the choice of 71 percent of New Jersey residents on the individual insurance market. It provides minimum coverage for things such as doctor’s visits...

Francine Busby, Chair of that San Diego Democrat Party, told the New York Times that the party was giving Mayor Filner the "benefit of doubt" because they were so excited to have someone in office pushing a progressive agenda. "Democrats aren’t going to give him a pass, but may be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because we’ve waited so long, nearly 20 years, for a mayor who could put forward a progressive agenda," she said. "But this doesn’t erase what he’s done," she said. "I don’t know if it’s enough at this point." (Translation: Close...

How long does it take for the penny to drop? It is amazing how slow voters have been to see that the two major parties have been stolen from them, and are now their enemies. I spend a lot of time here pointing out that the Tory Party is a now a nest of anti-British, anti-family liberals. But Labour is just as bad. The Labour Party of 1945 was pretty Left-wing. But it was patriotic, Christian and genuinely working-class. It hated cheats and it loathed crime. Several members of the Labour Cabinet of 1948 voted to keep the death penalty....

Watch as this stereotypical California liberal psychopath rattles on about how those who disagree with Obama should be tried for treason. We HAVE to fight or these people will plunge us into a socialist dictatorship we won’t easily free ourselves from. (3 minutes)

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog The biggest current obstacles to medical marijuana are President Obama and the progressives on the Supreme Court I’m a libertarian, and I think that both medical and recreational marijuana should be legal. That being said, I myself have never smoked marijuana, or tobacco, or been drunk, or used any illegal drug. I do, however, think that it’s completely ridiculous to put non-violent people in jail for using mind altering substances. And I especially detest the idea of the government preventing people from using a medical treatment which has been proven in scientific studies to be beneficial...

Gabriel Lugo is president of the faculty senate at UNC-Wilmington. He's generally a nice fellow with a good sense of humor. But, unfortunately, on August 9th, he sent out a wildly unprofessional memo to the entire university faculty. His memo lends credence to my concern that the UNC system has become little more than a political lobby for the Democratic legislative agenda. Thus I will soon propose that we rename our school DNC-Wilmington to reflect the fact that it is an institution committed to politics rather than honest intellectual inquiry. In a section of his memo allegedly updating them on...