Free Republic

The latest United Nations effort in Lima to draft a new global treaty on climate change proves Prime Minister Stephen Harper was right when he described its efforts as “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.” Harper was pilloried by Canada’s opposition parties after his statement, contained in a 2002 fundraising letter for the now-defunct Canadian Alliance, was revealed in 2007, shortly after he won the 2006 federal election. But Harper was right. Indeed he was vindicated in 2011, when a senior UN climate official, German economist Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,...

Seattle, Washington, one of the strongest remaining bastions of liberal philosophy left in the country, passed a phased-in $15 minimum wage law earlier this year. The highest minimum wage in the country. The vote was unanimous and the throng outside cheered, but for many this is a loss from which they will never recover. It is a blow to the profitability of business that they just can't take.

PORTLAND, Me. — The foldaway blue bleachers and scuffed wooden floor were packed with fleece-clad onlookers as President Obama prepared to take the stage, but the crowd was hushed and sedate, lulled by the smooth jazz piping over the sound system. “This is straight-up elevator music,” muttered a Democratic aide with a shake of his head, searching in vain for an iPod with a more fired-up soundtrack to greet the leader of the free world. “People are about to fall asleep.” Minutes later, the crowd was awake and roaring for the president, as a grinning Mr. Obama bounded up a...

On Monday's Morning Joe, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough prompted hippie icon Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, and Nash fame to promote his new song about the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Nash wildly contended that "what happened with...almost, the execution of Michael Brown, we had to say something."

A socialist party that wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $20 per hour is currently advertising a job for an experienced web developer paying $13 per

Employees of San Francisco Print Media Company, the parent company of the Examiner, SF Weekly, and San Francisco Bay Guardian were this morning informed that the latter paper will be shuttered after 48 years. The paper was founded by husband and wife Jean Dibble and Bruce Brugmann — whose visage, urging locals to "Read my paper, dammit" — grew ubiquitous over the years. Its founding mission was to "print the news and raise hell," and, as an independent paper, it ostensibly did just that for 46 years. In 2012 Brugmann and Dibble sold the Guardian to the San Francisco Media...

Rahm Emanuel won election as mayor of Chicago three years ago in part because of his strength in the African-American community, but enough black voters have since soured on him that a black labor leader is emerging as a potential rival in the city's February election. Emanuel easily won the majority of voters in every African-American ward in 2011 to become mayor of Chicago, the nation's third-largest city. Since then, a persistently high murder rate, the closing of 50 public schools and a sense that Emanuel is out of touch have hurt his position and invited a bid from Karen...

… With (Bernie) Sanders’ Iowa visit coinciding with Hillary Clinton’s much-anticipated return to the state, some Democrats have wondered if the senator’s presidential ambitions are merely an elaborate display of effigy-burning—an attempt to move Clinton and the center of gravity of the entire party to the left. Not so, the senator says. “If I run, I would like to win. That’s why I would run,” he told msnbc Thursday. He’s not interested in being a protest candidate, he insists. Sanders realizes it’s a long shot. “For me to win, it would require a grassroots effort on the part of literally...

Well, the HiTech RedNeck is looking for a job... AGAIN. This job hopping is getting old, but the boss of the group, at a major freight railroad, for which I'm a contractor has an integrity problem, to put it delicately. For some reason, I don't get along very well with liars and phonies. Well, I refreshed my resumes on Dice and Monster this past weekend and crossed my fingers. Well this morning what do I behold, but someone wants to know if I am interested in working for a company that turns out to be BLOOMBERG MEDIA. They are quoting...

WASHINGTON -- Private car-hailing service Uber has hired President Barack Obama's former campaign manager David Plouffe to be its senior vice president of policy and strategy. Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick said Plouffe will oversee all global policy and political activities, communications and branding efforts. The company has faced resistance from taxi companies in cities including Miami and Washington.

John Lewis, the Democratic congressman from Georgia and civil rights icon, called on President Barack Obama to declare martial law in Ferguson, Missouri, on Thursday as a necessary response to the blunders of local police. Lewis says the police have responded to largely peaceful protests over the slaying of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, with excessive force reminiscent of the 1960s. “My own feeling is right now is that President Obama should use the authority of his office to declare martial law, federalize the Missouri National Guard to protect people as they protest," Lewis said during an interview on...

Socialist Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant drafted a letter this week calling for an immediate end to all U.S. government military aid for Israel.

After 6 years, all of B. Hussein's vain attempts to "Fundamentally transform the United States of America' into HIS version of a European Socialist State, has resulting in Debt, Dereliction of Duty, High Crimes and Felonies, Depravity and Scandal.

Paul Farhi of The Washington Post writes today about a trend at the White House—and throughout journalism—that threatens the quality and credibility of news-gathering: Public-relations "minders" are injecting themselves into our interviews with politicians, CEOs, and other policymakers. Minder madness joins the surge of "background briefings" and the decline of access to decision-makers as evidence that the White House—and other big instititutions—are manipulating the press. It's that, but it's also something worse: It's evidence that journalists are ceding control when they should be seizing it, accepting canned news rather than breaking it. Farhi writes, "Almost every officially sanctioned exchange between...

What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.

As members of Congress continue hammering out a bill to improve the Department of Veterans Affairs' beleaguered health care system, attention has focused on one man leading the charge: Bernie Sanders, Independent senator from Vermont and a self-described socialist. Sanders barely got 2 percent of the vote when he first tried breaking into Vermont politics in the 1970s, but now there's buzz that the man known simply as "Bernie" may be a presidential candidate in 2016."The cost of war is huge," the 72-year-old said recently during lunch at Henry's Diner in Burlington, Vt., where he rose to become an immensely...

At first, it seemed like just another example of Harry Reid being Harry Reid. The Senate majority leader, whose unscripted attacks can veer into bellicosity and take liberties with facts, spoke on the Senate floor last October and appeared to blame billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch for the government shutdown. “By shutting down the government,” Reid said, “we’re satisfying the Koch brothers and Ed Meese, but millions of people in America are suffering.” In January, he went further, accusing the Kochs of “actually trying to buy the country.” His staff affectionately refers to such ad libs as Reid “getting...

Ayers the Guilt Monger: “And we did enslave people for 250 years” In the recent debate between Ayers and D’Souza on "The Kelly File", with Ayers, former anti-Vietnam war activist and sometime mentor of President Obama, representing the leftist ashamed-to-be-an-American crowd and D’Souza, defending American exceptionalism, Ayers claimed that Americans should be ashamed of their record of 250 years of slavery.

Bill Ayers shouldn’t be interviewed; he should be jailed. Megyn Kelly’s interview of Ayers, made reference to the role of Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in the bombing-murder of San Francisco policeman Brian V. McDonnell. Unfortunately, Ayers lied his way through the interview, which aired over two nights on her nightly Fox News Channel show, “The Kelly File.” But this is what happens when a professional liar like Ayers does a “shocking” TV interview. The exchange may achieve high ratings, but nothing good will come out of the interview unless Kelly now follows up with the “Justice for Victims of the...

This winter was not a good one for farmers in the Fertile Crescent. A punishing drought hit most of Syria and northern Iraq during what’s normally the wettest time of the year. In the mountains of eastern Turkey, which form the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, snow and rain were less than half of normal. The region has seen one of the worst droughts in decades. Drought is becoming a fixture in the parched landscape, due to a drying trend of the Mediterranean and Middle East region fueled by global warming. The last major drought in this region...