Free Republic

Obama now has two more years in which to try to destroy the U.S. economy; particularly its manufacturing and energy sectors. The extent to which he is putting in place the means to do that still remains largely unreported or under-reported in terms of the threat it represents. The vehicle for the nation’s destruction is the greatest hoax of the modern era, the claim that global warming must be avoided by reducing “greenhouse gas” emissions.

Police in Europe seek boost in firepower to respond against terroristsTargeted and outgunned by homegrown terrorists, cops throughout Europe are demanding a serious boost in firepower. In France, police say the Jan. 7 massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine office showed cops lack the firepower, protective gear and training to guard against terrorists packing high-powered assault weapons. Police in Belgium and Britain also want a boost in firepower.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Many of the students at Kingsley Elementary School in a low-income neighborhood of Los Angeles eat breakfast and lunch provided by the school. For the nearly 100 enrolled in the after-school program, another meal is served: supper. The nation’s second largest school district is doubling the number of students served dinner, with an eye toward eventually offering it at every school. It’s a growing trend: Nationwide, the number of students served dinner or an after-school snack soared to nearly 1 million last year. “When kids are hungry, they don’t pay attention,” said Bennett Kayser, a member...

He was attempting to enjoy a Brookside High basketball game when he saw some of these kids today chatting and laughing and generally having too swell of a time during the customary presentation of the national anthem. Schiller was “absolutely infuriated” by what he perceived as disrespect for the song expressing America’s very patriotic soul, he wrote on his Facebook page. He decided to approach the kids and give them his version of the what-for. The confrontation got Schiller kicked out of the game.

Billy Crystal Has Had Enough of Gay Storylines Billy Crystal, comedian and one of the first actors to portray a gay character on TV, has had enough of the gay storylines on television.Speaking to an audience at the Television Critics Association press tour, Crystal said: “Sometimes I think, ‘Ah that’s too much for me.’”The comedian played Jodie on Soap from 1977-1981. “It was very difficult at the time,” said Crystal. “Jodie was really the first recurring [gay] character on network television and it was a different time, it was 1977. So, yeah, it was awkward. It was tough.” He spoke...

At 9:30 p.m. on Saturday night, a packed theater in Franklin, Tenn., was completely quiet. As the credits rolled, some folks were filing out, but many more were standing, still looking at the screen, honoring the man whose life they’d just seen portrayed on the silver screen. Before the movie, I’d never seen the parking lot so crowded. I had to park more than a quarter-mile away, hidden in the corner of a restaurant parking lot (hoping I wouldn’t be towed), and watched in amazement as people were streaming into the theater from parking spaces scattered far and wide. It...

In the Darwin Debate, How Long Before the Tide Turns in Favor of Intelligent Design? Casey Luskin January 19, 2015 4:36 PM | Permalink A student emails me to ask how long it will be before the "tide turns from Darwinism to ID." He follows the debate over intelligent design and is aware that the Darwin lobby's rhetoric typically fails to address ID's actual arguments (which are scientific in nature), instead focusing on personal attacks or trying to claim ID is religion. This student feels it is obvious that ID has the upper hand in the argument, but wonders when...

Just saw a local Miami tv station using video from the government web site with an "interview" of Obama, where he spews some crap about how his goal is to outline for the nation how he is going to make sure things are fair, now that we have "made it through the crisis". I nearly spit my coffee out. We are not out of a crisis. My point is that these kind of videos are NOT a proper use for news....and I expect that if a REPUBLICAN president put out this type of "interview", the media would ignore it....on the...

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. — Ever since he was a two-year-old boy, Dylan Johnson has had a passion for vacuum cleaners. Dylan, who has autism, was never into “normal” toys, his mother Jodie said. The Swift Creek Middle School student turned 14 years old over the weekend and celebrated his birthday with a party that included close friends, family and a vacuum salesman.

The first school in Britain for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people could open its doors within the next three years. Based in the centre of Manchester, the specialist state school plans to take 40 full-time students from across the area and will offer up to 20 part-time places for young people who want to continue attending a mainstream school. “This is about saving lives,” said Amelia Lee, strategic director for LGBT Youth North West, the youth work charity behind the plans. “Despite the laws that claim to protect gay people from homophobic bullying, the truth is that in...

China’s leadership has issued guidelines requiring universities to strengthen ideological controls in classrooms and telling professors to champion Marxism, traditional culture and socialist core values. The orders come as President Xi Jinping tightens his grip on political power and cracks down on the encroachment of supposed Western values such as press freedom and civil society groups. […] … Willy Lam, a political analyst at Chinese University in Hong Kong, said other professors were reporting tighter controls, including government monitors filing covert reports on classroom lectures. Control over professors has significantly tightened since Xi took power in late 2012, Lam said....

The funniest part about this video? Liberals are already complaining that voicing an MLK cartoon is "just like blackface!" Surpppriiiiiiiise!

Modern Parenting is Impoverishing the Childhood ExperienceIn a fascinating article in The Atlantic, Hanna Rosin reveals how much parenting, and therefore also the childhood experience, have changed since we were kids. It’s hard to absorb how much childhood norms have shifted in just one generation. Actions that would have been considered paranoid in the ’70s—walking third-graders to school, forbidding your kid to play ball in the street, going down the slide with your child in your lap—are now routine. In fact, they are the markers of good, responsible parenting. One very thorough study of “children’s independent mobility,” conducted in...

Alice Kearns Geoffroy Bernard, the last known living Orphan Train rider in Louisiana, died Saturday (Jan. 17) in Lafayette. She was 98. The Orphan Train Movement from 1854 and 1929 was a social experiment in child relocation, in which more than 250,000 orphans and unwanted children were taken out of New York City and given away at train stations across the country and in Canada. The program stopped in large part due to growing measures by state legislatures to restrict or forbid the interstate placement of children, according to the Louisiana Orphan Train Society.Ms. Bernard, who lived most of her...

This conversation will hurt your brain. QVC is not typically the go-to place for spirited discussions about the mysteries and marvels of space, but this week host Shawn Killinger and fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi turned it into one. Killinger was presenting a "Cherry Blossom Print Boyfriend Cardigan" design by Mizrahi which she thinks looks like the Earth "when you're a bazillion miles away from the planet moon." And from this point forward we realize our education system has failed us, at least in the science department. "From the planet moon…" repeats Mizrahi. "Isn't the moon a star?" she asks, questioning...

In spite of the vitriol spewed toward the movie “American Sniper,” Americans flocked to see the Clint Eastwood biopic of the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle in record numbers. The previous record for a movie opening on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend was set last year by “Ride Along,” which opened with $41 million. “American Sniper” is estimated to have more than doubled that, bringing in an astounding $90.2 million.

I’ve been asked to give my thoughts on the highly publicized recent “events” in the media because of the pigmentation of my skin. Yes, I am “African American,” but I’d like to simply be referred to as an American. My ethnic background also includes white, black, and Native American. Now that that’s out of the way, here is where I stand: – 15 million children die each year from starvation. (A third of these children live in Africa) – A few months ago, we were all going to get Ebola. (My allergies did get a little crazy around that time.)...

Here’s something I didn’t know about the Swiss National Bank: “Many economists believe that balance sheet losses are irrelevant for a central bank, so they should play no role in policy. But the SNB is 45 per cent owned by private shareholders, many of whom are individuals, who receive dividends from the SNB. The rest is owned by the cantons, which have been complaining recently about insufficient cash transfers from the SNB.This ownership structure contrasts sharply with most other central banks, which are in effect government departments, wholly owned by the treasury and therefore the taxpayer. The Swiss set-up makes...

This weekend, you can see Sly lay waste to hundreds of fools in The Expendables 3. But the man formerly known as John Rambo is, surprisingly, one of the NRA’s most reviled stars. On Friday, The Expendables 3 hits theaters. It’s the third installment in the star-studded, old-school, bullet-riddled action series spearheaded by Sylvester Stallone—of the Rambo franchise or, for the less-discerning filmgoer, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. The latest Expendables flick was never destined to garner much love from film critics. “You need The Expendables 3 like you need a kick in the crotch,” wrote Variety’s Justin Chang....

A man who auctioned his ex-fiancée's honeymoon place for charity on eBay has been jilted for a third time. John Whitbread, from Leicestershire, auctioned the £1,800 trip to the Dominican Republic in the hope of finding a female companion. The highest bidder failed to pay the winning sum of £8,000, and now the second highest bidder has pulled out after offering to pay £7,900. Mr Whitbread is now selling £10 raffle tickets for the chance to join him. All of the money raised from the "Jilted John" raffle will go to Balls to Cancer. "It's just been knock after knock...