Free Republic

As each day passes, the lengths to which school districts will go to prevent gun violence has been taken to new levels of maladministration. For example, last Friday an Anne Arundel County, Maryland, student was suspended for “chewing his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun and saying, “bang, bang”— an offense that the school described as a threat to other students, according to his family,” according to the Washington Post. “The boy’s two-day suspension Friday comes at a time of heightened sensitivity about security issues and guns— even pretend guns — in the aftermath of the mass shooting...

The head of the world's biggest food company Nestle said on Friday that rising food prices have created conditions "similar" to 2008 when hunger riots took place in many countries. "The situation is similar (to 2008). This has become the new reality," the Swiss giant's chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe told the Salzburger Nachrichten daily in his native Austria in an interview. "We have reached a level of food prices that is substantially higher than before. It will likely settle down at this level. "If you live in a developing country and spend 80 percent of your income on food then of...

You're lucky to live through big history. And you're living through it. The explosion of joy in large pockets of the country Tuesday night was beautiful to see, and moving. For me, at the end of the evening, looking at live shots of the throngs in Chicago's Grant Park, I flashed back to 1960 and how it felt, as a child, to see that the grown-ups had elected a Catholic president. I can't say we stood taller—we were Irish, we already stood tall—but yes, there was a wave of feeling: "What a country," "What a development!" The other day, when...

If Hillary Clinton wins the US presidency, Bill Clinton will be given the job of repairing America's damaged international reputation, the former president tells the Guardian in an interview today. Mr Clinton, 61, reveals that his wife has said she would ask him to "go out and immediately restore America's standing, go out and tell people America was open for business and cooperation again" after eight years marked by unilateralist policies that have "enrage[d] the world".

Reviewing Mary Mapes' new book, Truth and Duty, in the November 2 National Review, Byron York opens with a description of the 60 Minutes II story that got her fired from CBS last year. That story said CBS had new documents shedding light on an old story--that George W. Bush had spent the Vietnam War years in a playboy unit of the National Guard and skipped out when he got bored. "CBS aired the documents in a 60 Minutes II report on September 8, 2004, and all hell broke loose," York writes in his review. "Within hours, the papers were...