Free Republic

New data released by state regulators provide a detailed snapshot of California’s battle against global warming. We’ve crunched the numbers on specific sources of pollution, including planes, cars and trucks, and how the state’s pollution compares to the size of its economy. The state has been chipping away at greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. However, it’s going to need much deeper cuts to reach its goals. Emissions have been reduced by approximately 1% each year since 2006, when California enacted its landmark law setting a target for cutting pollution that causes climate change. But to reach a newer, more...

Democrats are pushing late-blooming bills to significantly improve state Sen. Josh Newman’s odds of surviving an effort by the state GOP and others to recall him from office. The proposed changes, which became public Monday morning, would add months to the existing timeline of certifying a recall election for the ballot. The measure would virtually assure that any recall election would be held at the regularly scheduled June 5, 2018 legislative primary election. Regular election turnout historically is much higher than turnout for special elections, which helps Democrats. The effort to recall Newman, D-Fullerton, began soon after his April 6...

I sometimes wonder how the mainstream media, judicial system, sanctuary cities and liberal politicians would fare in the kind of world they are trying to bring about: a world without borders, a world without morals, a socialist society ruled by an all-powerful, central government that would control the distribution and quality of health care, the parameters of abortion, the length of people’s lives through euthanasia and the population’s practice of religion. Probably the first thing to go, as is always the case in totalitarian regimes, would be freedom of the press. Then most of the rest of our personal freedoms...

A virtual “slush fund” of taxpayer money the Obama administration deployed to support private groups that advanced his agenda has been shut down by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions issued a memorandum June 7 to all U.S. attorneys and Justice Department leaders that put an end to the policy of requiring the department’s settlements with defendants, particularly corporations, to include donations to non-governmental organizations, Breitbart News reported. Among the recipients of the funds under Obama, was the radical National Council of La Raza, or “The Race,” which supports mass illegal immigration. In 2015, WND published a four-part series exposing the...

A plan to draft Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to lead a third party has been launched by progressives who are frustrated with the Democrats, the Washington Examiner reported. Ahead of what is being called the “People’s Summit” in Chicago this weekend, the progressives say Sanders is the choice for a new political movement. Sanders is scheduled to speak at the summit, the website reported. “The majority of Americans are progressive and want a major new political party,” said a report by progressives in advance of the meeting. The 15-page report, called “From Resistance to Revolution,” has a “Draft Bernie for...

On May 19, five of the USCCB’s leading bishops sent a letter to every senator and representative, denouncing President Trump’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2018 as “profoundly troubling.” Invoking “moral criteria” and the “common good,” the bishops insist that Congress abandon Trump’s cuts in federal welfare programs. In a bow to fiscal responsibility, they endorse cuts in defense spending instead. Essentially, the bishops are calling on Congress to preserve the spending priorities that prevailed during the Obama administration. Apparently that includes Obama’s support for full funding of Planned Parenthood, which the letter does not mention. And curiously, while the...

Can we just get along? This question is being asked more and more, what with the bitter polarization of the nation. The answer, right now, would appear to be a resounding no. It’s not because we can’t. We don’t want to. I had that thought the other day when I was listening to the Seattle City Council. Many council meetings of late involve left-wingers shouting at other left-wingers for not being left-wing enough. But on this day, a new purity test of left-wingedness was revealed. The council was debating the juvenile-justice issue. Not everyone agrees whether a new jail should...

Face it: losers like socialism because it allows them access to money and goods that they would not be able to acquire through their own powers.  So it should surprise nobody that an academic study finds that poor upper body strength in males correlates with socialist views.  Amanda Prestigiacomo writes at the Daily Wire: An academic study from researchers at Brunel University London assessed 171 men, looking at their height, weight, overall physical strength and bicep circumference, along with their views on redistribution of wealth and income inequality. The study, published in the Evolution and Human Behavior journal, ​found that weaker men were more likely...

Vatican Secretary of State Sends Letter for Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction May 25, 2017ZENIT StaffPope and Holy See ZENIT - HSM The Holy See stands ever ready to make its own specific contribution as the Forum works to meet the urgent challenges before us.This assurance was given by Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to the participants at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction taking place in Cancun, Mexico, May 22-26, 2017.More than 5,000 experts, including policymakers and disaster risk managers, are participating in the forum, which marks the world’s foremost gathering of stakeholders committed to reducing...

<p>George Neumayr, the author of The Political Pope, reacted indifferently to Donald Trump’s meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican but told Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that Francis and his supporters in the US are no friends of Trump.</p>

EXCLUSIVE: Media Matters and Soros 2017-2020 Media Assault Plan Exposed Including 'Trump War Room' Operations, #BrockGate A new document, titled "Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action", was discovered recently that reveals a liberal coalition of business entities and groups and their plans to influence the media and the general public for the 2017-2020 period featuring everything from Russian-conspiracy jargon to anti-Trump dictums. The four entities are as follows: Media Matters for America, American Bridge, CREW, and Shareblue. Each has their own strategic plan. This is the first of three articles that will be outlining the planned media assault that is...

<p>The rift within the Democratic Party was on full display at the California Democratic Party Convention on May 19 in Sacramento, California. Progressives joined members of National Nurses United, protesting the Democratic Party establishment’s refusal to support single payer healthcare system. Rather than follow through with Democratic rhetoric that healthcare is a human right, establishment Democrats have responded to voters by scolding and attacking them.</p>

“As Venezuela burns, many Latin Americans ask: ‘Where is Pope Francis?’” The headline on a Catholic World Report essay by Samuel Gregg more or less speaks for itself. And Sando Magister of L’Espresso raised essentially the same question a week ago. The Catholic bishops of Venezuela have been relentless in their criticism of the government led by President Nicolas Maduro. That government has led the country into a disastrous economic collapse, characterized by raging hyperinflation and severe shortages of food and medicine. Then, rather than acceding to popular demands for new elections, the Maduro regime (through the president’s allies on...

The number of dead is now around forty, the wounded number a thousand. It is the price of a month of popular demonstrations, even of only women dressed in white, against the presidency of Nicolás Maduro, in a Venezuela on the brink.A Venezuela in which a new factor has recently taken the field, and this is the growing, systematic aggression against properties and personnel of the Catholic Church.Vatican sources - starting with “L'Osservatore Romano” - as detailed as they are in covering the developments of the crisis, are sparing with news about aggression against the Church.There is not a single...

President Trump's meeting Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was always going to be a bit awkward, image-wise. With tensions high after the United States launched a missile strike in Syria, a Russian ally, last month, Trump knew he would have to appear friendly — but not too friendly, since the FBI is investigating whether Trump's campaign might have colluded with Russia to meddle in last year's election. When Trump abruptly fired FBI director James B. Comey on Tuesday, he made the optics of his meeting with Lavrov even more delicate. But he didn't stop there. Ever a glutton...

Four U.S. states have sued Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, the Interior Department and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to block new leases of public lands for coal mining, according to papers filed on Tuesday in Montana federal court. State prosecutors for California, New Mexico, New York and Washington are arguing new coal extraction would exacerbate global warming and violate the federal government's statutory duty to use public lands "in a manner that will protect the quality of scientific, scenic, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resource, and archaeological values," according to the filings. The move was one of...

Former Democratic President Jimmy Carter revealed Monday night that he backed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in last year's Democratic presidential primary. "Can y'all see why I voted for him?" the 92-year-old Carter said of Sanders, who was seated next to him during a discussion hosted by the Carter Center on Human Rights in Atlanta. Carter kept his preference quiet during last year's heated race between Clinton and Sanders, but his distaste for Hillary and Bill Clinton is an open secret. Carter would be Sander's highest-ranking supporter in the Democratic Party. Only one senator backed the Vermont Independent...

In January, Kehler Liddell was the first gallery in the state to present an exhibit of protest art stemming from the inauguration of the current president. That show focused on a myriad of human-rights and philosophical concerns. The New Haven art space is doing it again, this time zeroing in on one topic: the environmental devastation of global warming. "We have deemed ourselves gods of this planet, deciding to abuse and ravage our home, rather than cherish her many gifts," Elizabeth Asstle-O'Donnell, one of the artists in the show, said in an artist statement. Asstle-O'Donnell contributed a piece made of...

Record-breaking heat is possible Saturday, potentially adding fuel to the fire for the People's Climate March on the National Mall. Thousands are expected to attend the march, including former Vice President Al Gore and actor Leonardo DiCaprio. And if you're thinking about going, be prepared to sweat. Highs of 86 to 91 degrees are expected Saturday, according to Storm Team4. The average high is just 71 degrees. Organizers say the event will get more political than last weekend's March for Science and Earth Day rally and will target Trump administration policies. "On the 100th Day of the Trump Administration, we...

When the US went ahead and started setting up an anti-missile defense system in South Korea on Wednesday, it brought out bottle-throwing protesters, riot police... //snip// Today, South Korean and US national security advisers agreed that the deployment was moving ahead smoothly, South Korea’s presidential office said.