Free Republic

Three and a half years after the worst recession since the Great Depression, the earnings and employment gap between those in the under-35 population and their parents and grandparents threatens to unravel the American dream of each generation doing better than the last. We have noted a number of times that these divides are growing and warned of the social tension this could create and, as Bloomberg notes, it does not appear to be getting any better, Generation Y professionals entering the workforce are finding careers that once were gateways to high pay and upwardly mobile lives turning into detours...

One of my 2013 predictions — coming soon! — is that rifles will trail knives as murder weapons of choice in the coming year as they have in the most recent five-year period for which statistics are available. Magical thinking underlies the calls for gun control in the wake of the slaughter of the innocents at the Sandy Hook school, but a relentless logic is at work in this anecdote of modern life in the Britain formerly known as Great: A disabled caravanner who kept a penknife in his glove compartment to use on picnics has blasted the authorities after...

By now you may have read about the DC Metropolitan Police Department's active investigation into David Gregory. The host of NBC's Meet the Press thought a 30 round AR magazine would make a cool prop to shake in the face of Wayne LaPierre this past Sunday. What Gregory didn't think about was the DC law which forbids the mere possession of any magazine that is capable of holding more than 10 rounds. If he did think about the law, he obviously assumed it didn't apply to "esteemed journalists" such as himself. Now conservative attorney Aaron Walker is offering to defend...

Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio has done a ground-breaking recitation and analysis of all relevant gun control arguments and his conclusions are virtually unassailable. Guns cut down on violence, save lives and property and help protect the public. Over 2.5 million times per year, guns prevent robberies and armed assaults on the public. Stefan’s coverage of this always difficult subject, especially in the aftermath of the horrid Newtown Connecticut school shooting, puts the matter into perspective and helps us to understand that the best way to stop gun crime is by allowing honest law abiding citizens to responsibly own and...

From 1977 to 1980, BBC One ran "Citizen Smith", a TV comedy about an aspiring young revolutionary who wore a beret and a Che T-Shirt and did his best to create a Communist Britain while heading up the Tooting Popular Front, consisting of six members, by virtue of shouting "Power to the People" and making up lists of the people he would put up against the wall on the day of the glorious revolution. This is finally Citizen Smith's time where the lazy and cowardly aspiring revolutionary can create his own Tooting Popular Front, camp out in a public park...

There is much debate whether when it comes to the total notional size of outstanding derivatives, it is the gross notional that matters (roughly $600 trillion), or the amount which takes out biletaral netting and other offsetting positions (much lower). We explained previously how gross is irrelevant... until it is, i.e. until there is a breach in the counterparty chain and suddenly all net becomes gross (as in the case of the Lehman bankruptcy), such as during a financial crisis, i.e., the only time when gross derivative exposure becomes material (er, by definition). But a bigger question is what...

n this time of worry about the future of our nation let us pause to remember the gift God gave us on the first Christmas morning. Here is the story of Christ’s birth as told to us by St. Luke @2: 1-20) 1 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. 2 This was the first enrollment, when Quirin’i-us was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to...

Bloomberg and Cuomo come from the jurisdiction where major gun control legislation was established by New York State Democratic Senator Timothy “Big Tim” Sullivan. Sullivan became known as a Tammany Hall crook intent on protecting his mobsters from prosecution and disarming innocent civilians in New York State. The Sullivan Act was passed in 1911 after a murder suicide shooting. The law mandated that New York residents must have police issued licenses for concealed handguns, otherwise it would be considered a felony. In 1903, the Battle of Rivington Street pitted a Jewish gang, the Eastmans, against the Italian Five Pointers. When...

"Those that give up an essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty not safety" - Ben Franklin IÂ’ve waited to comment on the Sandy Hook atrocity for quite a few days because I have been doing some serious soul searching and thinking. IÂ’ve tried to wait for all the facts to come out, for all the pundits to get their BS out, for all the politicians to declare their holy crusades and for every dimwit lobbyist to voice their opinion. Now itÂ’s my turn. WeÂ’ve heard every manner of excuse in the last week. Guns kill people!...

"A flag bearing a crescent and star flies from a flagpole in front of the World Trade Center, next to a Christmas tree and a menorah." New York Times, 1997 In 1997, Mohammed T. Mehdi, the head of the Arab-American Committee and the National Council on Islamic Affairs, lobbied to have a crescent and star go up at the World Trade Center during the holiday season. His wish was granted, despite the fact that Mehdi had been an adviser to Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. In the name of diversity and political correctness, an adviser to the religious leader behind the...

Every Christmas I make the 15-minute drive from my Jerusalem home to Bethlehem for a reality check on the beleaguered town five miles away. This year, contrary to the customary gloomy reports from the international media, things were bustling in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. Bright blue skies and comfortable temperatures help make things more pleasant than in previous years when a cold, grey drizzle dampened spirits. Driving up to the Rachel’s Passage checkpoint in my car with Israeli plates, a quick check of my press credentials is all that’s needed to get waved through. Tour buses and private cars get...

It’s not enough that liberals sought to destroy a good man’s reputation when he was nominated to the Supreme Court. Their efforts at character assassination continue after his passing. One of the most contemptible examples of this came from Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC show Dec. 19 in talking about the death of Robert Bork and his influence on American jurisprudence and politics over the last four decades. As to be expected, Maddow focused on Bork’s thwarted nomination to the Supreme Court in the fall of 1987, the opening salvo in our decades-long culture war. …

Here is a movie showing how bad the Connecticut Democrats are, with Gov. Dan Malloy covering for DSS wonk Roderick Bremby: http://youtu.be/xTtY8pC6lsI Our family filed to intervene in a pending lawsuit because our mother, suffering from ALZ, was not getting her Title XIX Medicaid benefits processed in a timely fashion. It is a HUGE problem in CT and many disadvantaged and elderly people are being denied benefits that were already paid for. There are two lawsuits pending: Shafer v. Bremby 12-CV-00039 on Medicaid processing issues, and Briggs v. Bremby 12-CV-00324 on Food Stamps. We don't need not stinking food stamps...

When National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” the collective gasp from the media must have been heard for miles. These pitifully ignorant people don’t understand research and certainly have no intellectual curiosity. They went ballistic when confronted with the fact that they had to share responsibility for promoting a culture of violence and failing to honestly report the true damage Hollywood’s movies and rap music and “revolving door justice” have done especially to young people. The media savaged LaPierre...

There was a temporary interval in American life when a shooting spree by a madman would have been viewed as the crime of one man. The dead would have been mourned. The killer, if he had been taken alive, would have been punished, and while the memorial might have been accompanied by some leading sermons, the country would have been spared the media exploitation and blame-a-thon that invariably follows such events. The trouble is that there are no more individuals. Or rather the individual is no longer recognized as having any standing. "All private plans, all private lives, have been...

As the battle for the gun rages on, an intriguing question came to mind: what if the NRA was mostly black and brown folks, would we even be having this conversation? Let’s take it a step further; what if mass murderer Adam Lanza was a young black, Hispanic or Middle Eastern male? The National Rifle Association is politically and socially powerful, there is no disputing that. They have their tentacles deeply buried in our legislative discourse and have successfully maintained their stronghold through many gun massacres and other gun violence over the years. Until this latest school tragedy, which is...

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it. In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical...

Ordinarily, I'd agree that THIS is no time to be arguing gun control. With the pain still intense in Connecticut, there should have been a truce declared, to allow for grieving. But the plain truth is, those who declare that a good crisis must not be wasted, jumped the gun (as they usually do) and began a nationwide PR war through the national Mainstream Media to bring as much pressure to bear as they possible could on our government for laws to ban certain guns, eventually ALL guns in the hands of US civilians. To those on the political and...

One of the unfortunate developments of 2012 was the continued usurpation of the legislative process by a president intent upon pursuing his personal political objectives, even if doing so meant evading the constitutional separation of powers. In addition to the broad administrative amnesty initiated by ICE in 2011, the last year of the Obama administration saw the implementation of a policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an end-run around Congress’s consistent rejection of the Dream Act that has already afforded hundreds of thousands of potential criminals the opportunity to exploit American taxpayers, i.e. suckers. While the executive branch seeks...

KALAMAZOO, MI – It may be time to put away those rocking chairs and list the golf clubs on eBay. Whether driven by economic necessity or a desire to remain engaged, more people are punching clocks well past their 65th birthday. In 2012, one in nine men over age 75 was working, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and one in 20 women over 75 were employed. That was the highest number recorded since the government started keeping those statistics in 1981. "I do think that a lot of people who are approaching later in life these days...