Free Republic

..gunfire scattered thousands attending Saturday's 4/20 counterculture holiday, the first since Colorado legalized marijuana.

Maryland made national news recently for a "rain tax" to start July 1. The tax, an unfunded mandate originating with the Environmental Protection Agency and cemented by the state legislature and governor last year, means homeowners, businesses and nonprofits in certain counties will pay a fee based on the amount of "impervious surfaces" on their property. It is supposed to raise about $482 million annually. Satellite imagery will help counties comply with the law, designed to reduce runoff into the Chesapeake Bay. Call it the 'Drones for the Bay' program. The "Free State" is a Petri dish for progressive causes...

You need to go to this URL and watch the video!! ... some illegal aliens dreaming about free health care, “because health happens when we dream together”. If wishing will give us free healthcare for all, why stop at our borders? Why not get it for everyone in the world? I wish that everyone in the world could have the the very best healthcare there is, for free. Don’t you? I wish unicorns would just fly it around everywhere.

I woke up this morning and received a breathless email from Cecilie Surasky, the Deputy Director of “Jewish Voices for Peace.” The email gleefully announced that in anticipation of the AIPAC Policy Conference in DC and the arrival of thousands of Israel activists from across the US, JVP arranged for the placement of 100 large back-lit ads to be plastered across the busiest Metro stations in Washington, D.C. The ads read as follows “Jewish and proud and AIPAC doesn’t speak for me – President Obama and Congress: Most Jewish Americans are pro-peace. AIPAC is not.” The email then urges JVP’s...

Martin Dempsey, the Army general who's now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a division commander when he got to Baghdad in 2003 and climbed into a Humvee for his first trip off base. "I asked the driver ... who he was (and) where he was from," the general remembers, "and I slapped the turret gunner around the leg and I said, 'Who are you?' And she leaned down and said, 'I'm Amanda.' "And I said, 'Ah, OK.' So female turret gunner protecting division commander." One of the things that makes a good commander is the speed...

There are people on both sides of the gun debate who make good points. And then there are people who have absolutely no clue. In that latter camp we might include Senator Lamar Alexander, who thinks that, when it comes to people getting shot to death, "video games are a bigger problem than guns." We might also include at least some of the 495-plus people who have shared a picture of me on Facebook and tried to make me a poster child for all that is wrong with people who like guns. These people—some of them confused, some of them...

With California mandating that 33 percent of electricity be generated from renewables by the end of the decade, there are 227 proposed solar projects in the pipeline statewide.. Coupled with wind and other renewables they would generate enough electricity to meet 100 percent of California's power needs on an average summer day... Developers are flocking to flat farmland near power transmission lines, but agriculture interests, environmental groups and even the state are concerned that there is no official accounting of how much of this important agricultural region's farmland is being taken out of production. Planning department records in four of...

You've heard of the security state, in reference to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security efforts to keep us safe and keep watch on threats from abroad; and the welfare state, the national apparatus designed to provide health care and sustenance to those in need. Well, some among us are proposing the pistol-packing state, which would arm virtually everyone with a weapon to be whipped out to shoot the bad guys whenever and wherever they're encountered. At least that's what Wayne LaPierre, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, and his ilk seem to be recommending as a way of...

While many believe substance should trump style when it comes to the first lady, there is no denying the impact Michelle Obama has on American style. So when Mrs. Obama debuted a new haircut Thursday (with bangs, no less!) via her freshly launched official Twitter account (on the first day, no less) it was sure to become a major style moment. The fact that the reveal also occured on her 49th birthday didn't hurt when it came to creating interest in the new 'do. The first lady's second official tweet showed her chatting with inaugural citizen co-chair David Hall in...

This idiotic meme is making the rounds right now, usually I shake my head, plant a facepalm and move on, but not this time....

Squee! As Twitchy reported, binders full of moochers stopped hoarding birth control when the nefarious pill-stealer Romney lost the election. Now, they are empowering themselves by groveling at the feet of their birth control sugar daddy master.

Michael Moore recently said that the only reason white people are buying a bunch of guns in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting is that they’re fearful. Afraid of black people specifically. He said, “Calm down, white people, and put away your guns.” So if we’re all buying guns and ammo out of fear of the black man, what emotion would cause this idiocy: a 6-year-old boy was suspended from school for making his hand in the shape of a gun and pretend shooting it, saying, “Pow,” as it was pointed at a fellow student. Were school officials actually...

Susan Schwartz already drives a Prius and has solar panels on her home. But the 69-year-old Berkeley woman still doesn't think she's doing enough to stop global warming. On Thursday and Friday, Schwartz will join hundreds of other Bay Area residents to document the spectacularly high tides lapping at shores and seawalls across the region. The tides aren't new - they happen every year - but this week a coalition of government and nonprofit advocates hopes the photos will draw attention to the rising seas. The photos of the king tides will be collected online on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr...

Key lawmakers expressing concerns about the Obama administration's plan to send 20 F-16 fighter jets to Egypt, where new President Mohamed Morsi's allegiances are as uncertain as his grip on power. Under a foreign aid deal signed in 2010, when Morsi's U.S.-friendly predecessor Hosni Mubarak was in charge, the U.S. is giving the planes to Egypt's air force, which already has more than 200 of the aircraft. The first four jets are to be delivered beginning Jan. 22, a source at the naval air base in Fort Worth, where the planes have been undergoing testing, told FoxNews.com. But the $213...

(CNSNews.com) – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Dec. 6 released a report that urges the U.S. Forest Service to work more closely with tribal governments in protecting, respectfully interpreting, and giving appropriate access to sites that are sacred to American Indians and Alaskan Natives. "American Indian and Alaska Native values and culture have made our nation rich in spirit and deserve to be honored and respected," Vilsack said. "By honoring and protecting sacred sites on national forests and grasslands, we foster improved tribal relationships and a better understanding of native people's deep reverence for natural resources and contributions to society."...

Jeb Bush in 2016? (CNN) -- For all of our post-2012 election talk about the changing culture, the changing demographics and, perhaps, a changing party, preliminary thoughts out of D.C. about the 2016 election have us headed toward not much change at all: Clinton vs Bush ... again. I am as intrigued by the prospects of these two juggernauts, Jeb and Hillary, locking ideological horns as I am repulsed by the thought of half of my life being dominated by two family names. One, Clinton, has risen from the ashes after the White House. The other name, Bush, is so...

Nearly 6 in 10 young voters support bigger government — a worrisome statistic for conservatives who want to increase their presence on college campuses and among the under-30 crowd. According to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of young voters think the government should do more — something only 44 percent of all voters support. On government-run healthcare, the most popular policy preference among young voters was to expand it. Young voters were also far more likely to identify as liberals and members of the Democratic Party than older generations. For young conservative activists, making inroads on college campuses will...

When single women vote with their sex organs, gay marriage becomes popular, marijuana becomes legal, young people and blacks want entitlements instead of jobs and millions of illegals vote with their stupidity, you can count on the liberals in our education system to outperform themselves by dumbing down America so the sheep will put socialists and liberals in power.

The fact of the matter the exit polls show about 50% of people still blame Bush for economy. It's been four years but half the American people are too stupid to understand. It is Nazi Germany, repeat a lie over and over again and people believe it. Obama says it Pravada repeats it. The problem is Republicans need to stand up for Bush's tax policy and explain it did not cause the crisis. Everyone runs away which just further pushes that narrative. THink of the idiotic question from Candy Crowley, about what if he was Bush.

Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings has demanded that a group planning to challenge voter access to the polls on Election Day provide him with details of its planned operations. Cummings targeted the organization True the Vote, saying the group planned to deploy hundreds of thousands of personnel across the country on Election Day to challenge the status of citizens who they believe may be ineligible to vote. “There have been reports from multiple states during the past two years that your organization is targeting predominantly minority communities and coordinating with the Republican Party in an attempt to intimidate legitimate voters,”...