Free Republic

WEST POINT, N.Y. ─ Following the decision of the South Carolina government to remove the Confederate flag from a state memorial, and the subsequent, nation-wide uproar over all things Confederate, West Point has announced that it will posthumously revoke the diplomas of all cadets who graduated from the Academy and fought for the South during the Civil War.

District of Columbia council members voiced their support Wednesday for a new law that would allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.“These are residents who are well on their paths to citizenship,” Councilman David Grosso said. “Unfortunately not all of our residents have a say in the politicians who are elected to represent them.”The bill would allow permanent residents in the city who are not American citizens to vote in elections for mayor, city council, the attorney general and State Board of Education members, among other things.“They are our neighbors and our friends and they want to see our city...

Tracking Down Leviathan by Tim Clarey, Ph.D. * What exactly was the leviathan described so vividly in Job 41? Was it a swimming reptile like a plesiosaur or a mosasaur, or something we have yet to unearth? We may never know the answer for certain, but the latest discovery of a large, semiaquatic dinosaur offers another possibility.1 Most specimens of the large theropod dinosaur Spinosaurus, made famous by the Jurassic Park movies as the dinosaur that defeated T. rex, are found in North Africa. Whether an encounter between the two would have had the same result in reality is highly...

Only in a media biased in favour of progressive causes would make such idiotic statements In recent years a lot of attention has been placed on media bias. Those on the right of the political spectrum are always pointing out the left wing bias of the mainstream media such as the New York Times, CNN and no one’s favourite, MSNBC. Those on the left deny such bias because they are incapable of seeing it. To them, left wing views are not biased but merely the truth. Divergent views are wrong and those who accuse the media of a progressive bias...

...Obama administration downplays the self-proclaimed Islamic State takeover of the important Iraqi city of Ramadi as Iraq emerges again.... John Kerry says the battle against ISIS or Daesh, its Arabic acronym, will be a long one with many setbacks.

Thank you for contacting me regarding climate change. I appreciate knowing your thoughts on this issue. Last year, President Obama announced a plan to address climate change. Unfortunately, most of the Administration's proposals would simply impose burdensome regulations on American business that would be harmful to the U.S. economy. While I welcome the opportunity to debate proposals in the Senate, I do not support the use of executive orders to implement policy and place costly new regulations on the American industry. According to extensive international scientific studies, including reports by the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on...

House Speaker John Boehner called for the Obama administration to provide "all the facts" in the U.S. drone strike that accidentally killed an American and Italian hostage held at an al Qaeda compound. Boehner, R-Ohio, said he also expects House committees to look into the incident. "As President Obama indicated, this is not a time for excuses," Boehner said after offering condolences to the families of American Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian citizen. "The president announced an independent review is under way and that is entirely proper," Boehner said. "We need all the facts for the families,...

In our federal system, states should be able to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Friday joined an amicus brief on behalf of 57 members of Congress in support of the right of states to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The brief was filed in four cases that the Supreme Court will jointly hear on April 28, 2015, in which same-sex couples challenge the marriage laws of Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan, and Kentucky, all of which were upheld by the U.S....

Wednesday on PBS “NewsHour,” Secretary of State John Kerry articulated the administration’s new position on Sen. Bob Corker’s (R-TN) bill demanding Congress get a vote on the merits of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, in light of prominent Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) supporting the bill this week. Making it clear the bill can not “interfere” with the president’s deal, Kerry said “if it’s changed and adjusted and reflects the respect for the Constitution and the president’s prerogatives,” then Congress can vote.

John Mauldin February 16, 2015We do not have to look to Greece to find massively underfunded obligations. Here in the US we can find hundreds of examples, willingly created by politicians and businessmen who proclaim they are working for the public good. We call them pension funds, but they’re just another form of unfunded debt. A sovereign bond is a promise to pay a certain amount of money over time. A defined-benefit pension fund is a promise to pay a certain amount of income over time. The value of either is determined by the ability of the government or the...

The #Millennial-friendly website BuzzFeed has taken over for Zach Galifianakis as the White House's preferred video venue for encouraging young people to sign up for health insurance. You remember the Galifianakis video, of course; Obama's self-deprecating appearance on the fake interview show last year was credited with a big boost in traffic (however short-lived) to Healthcare.gov.

Ann Arbor might be on its way to becoming the solar capital of Michigan. The Ann Arbor City Council voted unanimously Monday night to approve a deal with DTE Energy to construct the largest solar array in the state on a 14-acre site at the city's airport. The decision came following a brief discussion with no objections raised by any of the 11 council members. "This is an exciting effort," said Mayor Christopher Taylor. "I'm so glad that we're moving forward with it. Having the largest solar field in Michigan is going to be an important thing for the city...

A renewed push by some Democrats for an increase in the federal gas tax to replenish the Highway Trust Fund drew a frosty reception Thursday from Speaker John A. Boehner — though the Ohio Republican stopped short of ruling the idea out. Both Boehner and the top-ranking Democrat in the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, were asked Thursday about an increase in the 18.4 cent-per-gallon federal gas tax after the National Republican Campaign Committee sought to make a gas tax increase a political liability for Democrats. “I’ve never voted to raise the gas tax. Funding the highway bill is critically...

One, and only one, candidate, Barack Obama, caught the X-factor and improbably got himself nominated and elected, and re-elected, president. Another improbable candidate could catch it again.What is that X-factor? How does it upend things?Peace and personal security continued to flourish in 2014 and are likely to continue into 2015 and beyond. This is important news. It also is news the news media can ill afford to report. But voters sense it.Two of our greatest public intellectuals, Steven Pinker and Andrew Mack, provide a defining “state of the world” summation in Slate.com inThe World Is Not Falling Apart. The evidence...

Governor Palin is lending her support to Mark Levin’s call for Representative Steve Scalise to step down from his Republican leadership position: Defense of this (last decade) racist action is disgusting and wrong, as is defense of the even more recent immoral actions of our President’s with any association he embraced with the racist Jeremiah Wright and the anti-American domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. I’ll add to Levin’s list: Do political “leaders” think Americans are so stupid we don’t recognize the despicable double standard here, and that we’re so weakly complacent that we’ll put up with this? - Sarah Palin Mark...

As Britain shivers under a blanket of snow and ice, it has emerged that offshore windfarms have been idling to prevent icing up – and drawing electricity off the national grid to do so. Critics have pointed out the “folly” of having windfarms idle in a cold snap, but industry experts insist that all forms of power generation involve some electrical input. The issue has been raised by Brian Christley, a resident of Abergele, Wales, who wrote to the Daily Telegraph to say: “Over the weekend just gone, the coldest of the year so far, all 100-plus off-shore wind turbines...

A man is dead Thursday after a stray bullet hit him in the head in southeast Houston. Police say the victim and his wife were watching fireworks around 1 a.m. on their front lawn on the 800 block East Lake and Theta Street near Edgebrook. Investigators say someone shot a gun in the air and the bullet came down and hit the victim in the head. He died at the scene.

The Chicago City Council voted 44-5 Tuesday to increase the minimum wage. Chicago’s minimum wage workers will see their first increase next July, when the rate increase to $10 an hour from the current statewide hourly rate of $8.25. It then will increase by 50 cents in July 2016 and another 50 cents in July 2017. The minimum wage would go up $1 in July 2018 and $1 in July 2019 to reach $13 an hour.

The American people are “tired of hearing about Gruber,” according to White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. Video tapes of MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, a key architect of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), have been doing major damage to the Administration’s credibility over the past two weeks. In the videos, Gruber is repeatedly shown describing voters as stupid and gloating about how Democrats used this stupidity to deceptively enact the ACA. Earnest warned the media to drop the issue “because, frankly, the President is tired of hearing about it. These tapes and the alleged deceptions they portray...

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Republicans are hyping past comments from ObamaCare consultant Jonathan Gruber as a way to distract from what’s going well for the healthcare law. After saying that Gruber’s view that the healthcare law was passed partly because of the “stupidity” of the American voter is not shared by “anybody at the White House,” Earnest challenged claims that ObamaCare was not passed in a transparent way. He also suggested that few Americans are paying attention to the controversy. “People are understandably pretty tired of relitigating all the fights from 2009 and 2010,” Earnest said Tuesday at...