Free Republic

Hell-bent on arming opposition forces in Syria—despite strong evidence that they’re run by Islamic terrorists—John McCain displayed behavior unbecoming of a United States Senator during a recent meeting with Syrian Christian leaders touring Capitol Hill. The delegation of Syrian clergy came to Washington to raise awareness among lawmakers of the growing crisis among the region’s minority Christian community. Christians make up about 10% of the Syrian population and they are being targeted and ruthlessly murdered by radical elements of the rebel forces, according to the visiting church officials. They say the media and human rights groups in the west have...

The facts 1. There are 21 US Senate seats held by Democrats in the 2014 election. 2. There are nine US Senate seats held by Democrats in the 2016 election. This is likely to be 10 due to a special election in HI in 2014. 3. Republicans need to pick up six senate seats to have a majority. The Analysis The failures of ObamaCare and broken promises by Democrat senators create a target rich environment in 2014. This is a year Republicans have to do well. Winning a majority in the senate by only one seat or maintaining the status...

A homeless man told the police on Friday that his conscience drove him to reveal something he’d kept secret — that he’d beaten a man to death in South Providence 24 years ago. By nightfall, Daniel Serrano, 65, was charged with the murder of 32-year-old Michael Holliday — a man he said he didn’t intend to kill, Maj. David Lapatin said. “He claims he was feeling very guilty about it,” the police major added. A workman discovered Holliday’s body in a vacant third-floor apartment at 27 Somerset St. on Feb. 24, 1990. The man had been beaten to death. He...

 “I didn’t realize that so many people here in our corner of Rhode Island were so passionate about guns,” a nonplussed Calvin Ellis told the Wall Street Journal. Bless his heart. It’s safe to say, though, that he his three fellow Exeter town council members have now been thoroughly educated on that matter. That’s because, as RF relayed, 80% of the town council – Ellis included – stand to lose their jobs in a recall election today because they voted to transfer their shall-issue concealed carry licensing authority to the state’s may-issue attorney general. As resident Letitia Davis told wsj.com, ”Our rights are...

The Maryland Republican Party took no action Saturday on the idea of opening its primaries to independent voters but left open the possibility of doing so after next year’s elections. A report on the controversial issue was delivered to party leaders Friday but did not come up for discussion during the general session of the Maryland GOP’s fall convention in Annapolis, the last opportunity to change the rules before the June 2014 primaries. “With it just being presented last night, people were a little uncomfortable,” said Joe Cluster, the party’s executive director. “It would be a big change.” Some Republican...

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) warns sports stadiums are at risk from the "sea level rise effects of climate change," and that climate change specifically threatens hockey and skiing. "We see significant sports facilities, the palaces of - of sport that are at risk from the storm, climate, sea-level rise effects of climate change," Sen. Whitehouse said today following a closed-door climate discussion with executives from the NFL, NHL and NBA.

Rhode Island has rejected President Obama’s proposal to allow people to keep health insurance plans that were canceled because of the Affordable Care Act. Kathleen C. Hittner, the state’s health insurance commissioner, and Christine C. Ferguson, director of the state’s health benefits exchange, ruled Friday that Rhode Island would stay the course and opt out of Mr. Obama’s “fix” for those upset that their policies had been discontinued. The president announced on Thursday that people should be allowed to renew those policies for a year. But his decision does not require insurers to do so, and state insurance commissioners were...

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander (R) Montana Senator Max Baucus (D) Alaska Senator Mark Begich (D) Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss (R) Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran (R) Maine Senator Susan Collins (R) Texas Senator John Cornyn (R) Massachusetts Senator William "Mo" Cowan (D) Illinois Senator Dick Durbin (D) Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi (R) Minnesota Senator Al Franken (DFL) South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham (R) North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan (D) Iowa Senator Tom Harkin (D) Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe (R) Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns (R) South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson (D) Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D) Michigan Senator Carl Levin (D) Kentucky...

"We do not want to have any more press conferences announcing arrests of people accused of murder. I've done too many of those as mayor," Taveras said Thursday. That's why local leaders secured a $150,000 grant to help curb gang violence in the city of Providence as part of the Project Safe Neighborhoods program. Federal funding will go toward targeting "impact players" on the streets. The city will hire so-called street workers who will spend time getting to know crime-prone areas and work on preventing gang members from turning to violence. Providence has received the grant in years past. Taveras...

A former Social Security official has pleaded guilty to identity theft on accusations he used information from the federal agency's database and took more than $160,000 of a Coventry man's stock investments. ... Hurst, who was assistant district manager for the Social Security Administration in Warwick, used a Social Security database to find personal information such as a Social Security number and date of birth.

In its first 11 days of operation, Oct. 1 through Friday, HealthSource RI fielded 62,000 unique website visits. Of these visitors, about 5,500 started accounts (created a username and password) and 1,698 completed their applications and selected a health insurance plan. These numbers were released Saturday by Christine C. Ferguson, director of the agency. HealthSource RI is not saying how many of the 1,698 who completed applications are small businesses (a key focus of the exchange) nor how many qualified for Medicaid.

A 12-year old Rhode Island boy named Joseph Lyssikato was suspended for three days and barred from going on a school trip to Salem, Massachusetts after a gun-shaped key chain a bit larger than a quarter fell out of his backpack at school. According to WPBF.com, the key chain fell out of Lyssikato's backpack while he was at Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School in Coventry. "Another boy then picked it up and began showing it off." Lyssikato's mother said, "The [other] boy was the one waving it or showing it to other kids. Not Joseph. Joseph wasn't doing that." She...

On Tuesday, an official in Pennsylvania's Montgomery County made a decision that he said would put him "on the right side of history and the law." He decided that he would issue a same-sex marriage license to anyone who wanted it. In Pennsylvania, same-sex marriage is illegal, but Register of Wills Bruce Hanes said in a press release that he made his "own analysis of the law." He also noted that the state's attorney general announced on July 11 that she would not defend that state's gay marriage ban against a legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union. At...

Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee (shown) has vetoed a bill that would have authorized the state to offer a “Choose Life” license plate to raise funds for a faith-based crisis pregnancy center in the state. The governor cited the First Amendment's supposed separation of church and state mandate that he insisted prohibited the state government from involving itself in such a campaign. The measure, which was approved by the Democrat-controlled state legislature earlier this month, would have allowed half of the $40 cost of the vehicle plates to go to Providence-based CareNet, a Christian crisis pregnancy center. Supporters said the...

The New Jersey Attorney General has indicted fifteen defendants for their alleged roles in a multi-million dollar heroin trafficking ring which supplied wholesalers throughout the northeast as reported by Christopher Baxter for The Star-Ledger. The accused ringleader is Dominican national Segundo Garcia who illegally re-entered the United States following his deportation on a drug conviction according to authorities. Dominican drug trafficking organizations -- both in the Dominican Republic and in North America -- increasingly have been appearing on law enforcement's radar screen for their involvement as distributors for the Mexican drug cartels. Last summer the feds busted 11 suspects in...

June Goodhue says she’s known about the rock since she and her late husband moved to North Kingstown’s Pojac Point in 1952. Sitting in shallow water, the 8-foot-long boulder sported unusual markings that were typically visible only at extreme low tide. Goodhue said she heard people say the markings might be ancient runic characters left by Viking or Nordic explorers. Even so, Goodhue, who is now 89, says she didn’t give much thought to the significance of what people call the Narragansett Rune Stone or Quidnessett Rock. That is, until a week or so before Christmas 2011 when her neighbor...

Governor Palin wrote the following in response to the latest scandal coming from the Obama administration’s State Deptartment.Via Facebook: Outrageous. Once again the cover-up is worse than the “crime.” Secretary of State John Kerry WAS on his boat while Egypt fell into turmoil resulting in an overthrow of its new government ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood that the Obama Administration had so recently supported and may still support. (That, however, we do not know because President Obama’s absolutely dithering foreign policies, his "leading from behind," and his benign statements on the Muslim Brotherhood make no sense to sensible people.)The State...

Secretary of State John Kerry spent time lounging around on his yacht Wednesday while the Egyptian military was deposing their country's democratically elected president Mohammed Morsi, according to various reports. When Kerry was first spotted on his yatch, called "Isabel," near his vacation home in Nantucket, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki called the report "completely inaccurate" saying that the Secretary of State had been "working all day and on the phone dealing with the crisis in Egypt," according to CBS News. Psaki even went so far as to deny that Kerry was even on the boat.

... The setting is what makes it so eyeroll-worthy. If Kerry had been seen at a barbecue, no one would bat an eye. But on board a $7 million yacht? It just doesn't seem like he's working hard. The incident fits a pattern for Kerry: a strange penchant for foppish gaffes involving water sports. First, of course, there was the epic television ad that George W. Bush ran against Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign. Using footage of Kerry windsurfing and comparing his zig-zagging to a supposed propensity to change his positions... Then fast-forward to 2010, when then-Senator Kerry admitted...

<p>Complete Title: "The picture that proves Secretary of State John Kerry HAS been out on his boat while Egypt plunges into chaos - after his spokesman denied he been sailing in Nantucket"</p> <p>John Kerry's spokesman has admitted that the Secretary of State did go sailing off Nantucket as the Egyptian President was ousted from power, after pictures emerged of him out on the water on July 4.</p>