Free Republic

The biggest program she oversaw there was foreign aid, which spent roughly $50 billion a year between 2009 and 2012. Mrs. Clinton stated in 2009 that “a lot of these aid programs don’t work,” lamented their “heartbreaking” failures, and promised fundamental reform at the Agency for International Development (AID). But “see no evil” was often the Clinton State Department motto regarding U.S. aid. The Ethiopian government received more than $3 billion in U.S. aid while Mrs. Clinton was secretary. ... Corruption has long plagued foreign aid and Mrs. Clinton claimed to be spearheading a global crusade against graft. But when...

Matt Drudge, author of the conservative media site DrudgeReport.com, is being ridiculed over his tweets in advance of Hurricane Matthew's arrival in Florida. Thursday afternoon and early Friday morning, the conservative firebrand took to Twitter to imply that the storm might not be as powerful as government officials say it is. First he tweeted: "The deplorables are starting to wonder if govt has been lying to them about Hurricane Matthew intensity to make exaggerated point on climate."

“Rip” Smith, played by Jimmy Stewart, solved the problem of getting respondents to take part in a telephone poll in the 1947 film Magic Town. He found the perfectly representative Midwestern city and simply asked a few folks around town how they felt about the day’s burning issues. Stewart’s character, just back from the war, had his work cut out for him. He wanted to break into the then new science of public opinion polling. But he was broke and his competition, George Stringer, was well established. Then he discovered Grandview, which was perfectly representative of the county as a...

The Census Bureau reported that median income jumped 5.2% last year. As I pointed out last week, that's a solid increase, but still leaves us short of the record in 1999. Still, something about the gains struck me as wrong. Even with cities, states and some businesses bumping up their minimum wage, 5.2% seemed like a lot. So I went digging. And the more I dug, the more disappointed and frustrated I became. As usual, the source of my angst was the federal government. Long-time readers know my ongoing annoyance with the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) when it comes...

--No victims in any category below have been double-counted. --Outside Peru, no war-related deaths or imprisonments have been included.

Mark Twain famously said that there were three kinds of lies — "lies, damned lies, and statistics." Since this is an election year, we can expect to hear plenty of all three kinds. Even if the statistics themselves are absolutely accurate, the words that describe what they are measuring can be grossly misleading. Household income statistics are an obvious example. When we hear about how much more income the top 20 percent of households make, compared to the bottom 20 percent of households, one key fact is usually left out. There are millions more people in the top 20 percent...

Statistics site 538 adjusted its swing state forecast for Ohio Monday, and the results are looking better for Republican nominee Donald Trump. Trump overcame a 5 point deficit mid-August to lead Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by three points in the state, according to the latest Ipsos poll published in September. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/05/nate-silver-trump-improving-in-ohio-hillary-slipping/#ixzz4JQZrW0e1

The honest statistics show that the only injustice being perpetrated against blacks is by other blacks. https://youtu.be/2mrWN40u2Zc

Even in this age of runaway emotions, there are still some people who want to know the facts. Nowhere are facts more important, or more lacking, than in what has been aptly called "The War on Cops," the title of a devastating new book by Heather Mac Donald. Few, if any, of the most fashionable notions about the police, minorities and the criminal justice system can withstand an examination of hard facts. Yet those fashionable notions continue to dominate discussions in the media, in politics and in academia. But Ms. Mac Donald's book of documented facts demolishes many fashionable notions....

President Barack Obama is claiming that murder rates are declining in Dallas, Los Angeles and nationwide, even though numerous sources of data shows a nationwide spike in murder since he launched his 2014 stigmatize-and-federalize campaign for the nation’s state and local police forces. “Over the last four or five years during the course of my presidency, violent crime in the United States is the lowest it’s been since probably the 1960’s … in places like New York or Los Angeles or Dallas, you have seen huge drops in the murder rates,” Obama claimed at a July 9 press conference held...

The youngest black professor ever to receive tenure at Harvard and recipient of an economics prize for “most promising American economist under 40” has just upended the conventional wisdom on police shootings. There is no racial bias when officers fire on suspects, according to a new study by Prof. Roland Fryer – black suspects are actually less likely to be shot than other suspects.The study looked at more than a thousand shootings in 10 major police departments, The New York Times reports. Fryer and student researchers spent 3,000 hours putting together data from police reports in Houston, Austin, Dallas and...

My daughter was a thief. And what she stole was cold, hard cash. It began with money from a parent’s wallet. Then, from another parent’s wallet. It moved on to a twenty from her big brother’s desk drawer. And then singles from the babysitter’s purse. This happened a dozen times over. It was a pattern. It was serious, not incidental or of opportunity. The piece de resistance was pinching thirty dollars from a school mate’s back pack – she got wind that the wad was in there for a donation. Oh, and my daughter is seven. I freaked out. Explained...

Analysis contradicts widespread views about racial targetsNobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison says she wants to see an officer shoot an unarmed white teenager in the back before agreeing that the “conversation about race” is over, but she almost certainly already has received her wish. An analysis released last week shows that more white people died at the hands of law enforcement than those of any other race in the last two years, even as the Justice Department, social-justice groups and media coverage focus on black victims of police force. As researchers are quick to point out, FBI data on police...

I can’t breathe. I’m literally fighting back tears as I write, again, about this prevalent injustice. They don’t see us as individual human beings, but a group to be exploited, separated, and judged based on our pigmentation. I’m talking about mainstream media and their manipulation of all Americans, corralling us into our respective color zones. They have a narrative to peddle. And we see it with every tragic account of black Americans killed by those tasked with the extremely dangerous job of serving and protecting. I’m repulsed by a news media that is hell-bent on fomenting a racial war. Whites...

Folks, let's be clear: Autism is almost-certainly not caused by vaccines. Let's remember the first rule of observational studies, which incidentally I was surprised to find a few years ago in my daughter's High School intro-to-stats class: Observational studies can only show correlation and correlation cannot prove causation. However, the absence of correlation is damn near bomb-proof evidence that the alleged cause you believe exists is false. Measles vaccination in the US began in 1963 following approval in 1962. Within five years near-complete compliance was obtained within the US. MMR, the combined vaccine that people like to blame autism on,...

A new study published in Climate Dynamics has found that humans are responsible for virtually all of the observed global warming since the mid-20th century. It's not a novel result - in fact, most global warming attribution studies have arrived at the same general result - but this study uses a new approach. Studies attempting to figure out the global warming contributions of various human and natural sources usually use a statistical approach known as 'linear regression'. This approach assumes we know the pattern of warming that each source (forcing) will cause, but we don't know how big the resulting...

Who needs algebra? That question muttered by many a frustrated student over the years has become a vigorous debate among American educators, sparked by a provocative new book that argues required algebra has become an unnecessary stumbling block that forces millions to drop out of high school or college. “One out of 5 young Americans does not graduate from high school. This is one of the worst records in the developed world. Why? The chief academic reason is they failed ninth-grade algebra,” said political scientist Andrew Hacker, author of “The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions.” Hacker, a professor emeritus...

Academia is supposed to be a place in which scholars pursue inquiries. Perhaps more academics should have inquiring minds. "One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives, according to the National Sexual Violence Center," Ingrid Sturgis, an associate professor at Howard University, writes in a special supplement to The Chronicle of Higher Education in an article which appeared on March 18, 2016. Actually, that ratio was rebutted widely and vigorously two years ago. Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute summed up the case in a column which appeared...

I was listening to Mark Levin’s radio show last night during which he expressed his frustration with how the GOP has allowed itself to be mired in meaningless “scandals” at the expense of making a clear case for conservatism and addressing policy. I agree with him. It is absolutely unbelievable to me that despite having a very strong lineup of candidates, on tp of 8 years of disastrous progressive liberalism, we could be in danger of losing this nation to a SOCIALIST? While the media (even on our side) obsesses over tweets, there are critical issues we should be discussing....

I am completing my family tree which goes back 39 generations on one branch and 14 on another. I would like to explain to my grandchildren how unique the DNA combination they have is. We have roots to a canonized saint in our bloodline as well as an American Revolutionary War solider and a famous Irish revolutionary hero too. I just need to show the children how small the odds are of duplicating our family tree. Anyone that can help please Freepmail me, Thanks much