Free Republic

Lois Lerner, director of the IRS division that singled out conservative groups, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to testify at a House oversight hearing on the scandal. Lois Lerner, director of the IRS division that singled out conservative groups, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to testify at a House oversight hearing on the scandal.

Kaitlyn Hunt, 18, had her entire life before her. Graduation. College. Job prospects. The high school senior was just preparing to start her life when she found herself expelled and slapped with criminal charges over her engagement in a same-sex relationship. And what started as a relationship between two young women has snowballed into a legal battle that could land Hunt in prison. The story has many twists, turns and oddities. And so far, only one side — that of Hunt family — is being told. The high school senior apparently met her girlfriend, who is now 15-years-old, on the...

"Never had standing to sue, Ninth Circuit confirms." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/copyright-troll-righthaven-finally-completely-dead/

Establishing a bond with a pocket pistol is similar to marriage—in one way: You have to be willing to accept compromise. To make any compromise worth the effort, there must be a clear objective. In this case preserving your life is the goal, and pocket pistols, whether diminutive semi-automatics or small-frame revolvers, do their part and offer a solution that is easy to carry concealed. Merely slipping one into the front pocket of your jacket, however, will not prevent a determined threat from causing you bodily harm. To stop a violent attack, you must be prepared to counter with force...

As one who believes that God created the universe and all things therein, including man, just wondering how long the evolutionists on FreeRepublic believe man has existed on the earth and why.

So much for girl power. Former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell tweeted out a positive message regarding former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who the singer once dubbed the "first Spice Girl," to honor the late leader's legacy earlier today. Liberal social media users quickly engulfed Halliwell with hateful tweets, using the kind of language normally reserved for the worst of the worst....

Proponents of gay marriage, as they eagerly anticipate the Supreme CourtÂ’s examination of the issue next week, are chortling over recent polls that suggest the American publicÂ’s resistance to it is fast eroding. They pointed this week to a Washington Post-ABC News poll in which 58 percent of Americans support gay marriage and 37 percent oppose it. This is an almost exact reversal from a decade ago, they say, when polls then showed 55 percent of Americans opposed gay marriage and 37 percent supported it.Meanwhile, establishment Republicans, who have always been ambivalent about the issue, appear ready to wave the...

Hello Brothers and Sisters – There’s an insidious heresy going around the Body of Christ. It sounds something like this: “[Because of the license given by the LORD Jesus to believers in Luke 22:36-38 to carry and use deadly weapons, I say, “Better the death of Masada than the death of Dachau when the government illegally violates the 2nd amendment, and lawlessly comes to confiscate my gun(s)]�. Before we begin, let’s remember that Scripture has no contradictions per John 10:35, and per 2 Timothy 2:15 there is a right and wrong way to interpret scripture. It is even possible per...

Last week, Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio announced that he had reversed his position on same-sex marriage. The reason was that his son had come out to him and his wife as gay. This is not the first such instance. Periodically, we hear about Republican politicians whose child announces that he or she is gay, prompting the parent to change his mind about the man-woman definition of marriage. As a parent, I understand these parents. We love our children, and we want them to love us. Nevertheless I differ with their decisions to support the redefinition of marriage. In...

I got a troll zotted yesterday, then all of a sudden this morning I get the following email (to the email address attached to my FR profile) from "Organizing for Action" (rapid pro-Obama group): Hi -- Thanks for saying you’re in for the next phase of our grassroots movement. I’m excited to get the chance to work with you as we set out to finish what we started. Over the next four years, we’ve got an incredible opportunity to keep moving this country forward. This grassroots movement has shown time and again that ordinary people have the power to change...

"Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation. Otherwise, celibacy itself would lose its meaning as a renunciation. It would be extremely dangerous if celibacy became a sort of pretext for bringing people into the priesthood who don't want to get married anyway," the pope said. The pope cited a 2005 Vatican document that drew a sharp line against priestly ordination of homosexuals. He said the document emphasized that homosexual candidates cannot become priests because their sexual orientation interferes with "the proper sense of paternity" that belongs to the priesthood. The pope said it was important to select priestly candidates very...

Please, do not laugh. Barack Obama has the same qualifications to be Pope, as he has to be a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, or President of the United States. If Obama can win the Nobel Peace Prize, then we cannot say with 100 percent certainty, that he cannot become Pope. Stranger things have happened. As far as I am aware, one does not need to be a Cardinal in order to become Pope. The job is open to any Baptized male Catholic. Two Popes, Benedict IX (1012 - 1056) and John XII (930 - 964), become Popes when...

I saw something today that upset and deeply disturbed me. I was walking past my son's bedroom, where he spends all his time on his computer playing those damn games of his. I stopped when I heard the sound of Wayne LaPierre's voice as he gave his speech about the Newtown massacre. I was surprised my son, who is just 14, was getting involved in anything political, but I was glad he was exposing himself to the right people. I opened the door, intending to tell him how proud I was, when the image on the screen stopped me cold....

Most preppers should be familiar with the ‘rule of three’ – this means having one main method of an important function and a backup for it and a backup of the backup. It doesn’t necessarily entail 3 versions of the same thing but distinctly different ways of accomplishing a priority task. In the case of personal security arrangements, the main or level 1 version would be firearms within easy reach within a structure. These would be the primary weapons used for hunting and defence. And while it’s been said that the time to hide weapons is the time to bring...

Starting with the best available source of trend data and adding a bit of thought and analysis, I come up with the following conclusions. First, the reasoning: The Northeast: The Northeast is a solid Democratic Party stronghold, and with the growth of the Northern Virginia suburbs has expanded to include that state in its political orbit. The South: The South remains mostly Republican. However, Hurricane Sandy exerts a strong political impact here, giving President Obama an opportunity to display his leadership chops while reminding people of Dubya's inept handling of Katrina. This effect isn't great enough to tip the Gulf...

If you only listen to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh you believe Romney is winning. He's not, he's losing. Both Real Clear Politics and Intrade have Obama with 281 electoral votes with 11 days til the election. You only need 270 to win. Intrade predicted every state correctly in 2004 and had two states reversed in 2008. Move your cursor over each state "click here" to see the candidates chance of winning. Notice Virginia has moved back toward Obama and has more chance of going for Obama than Ohio does of going for Romney. There have been a lot of...

My first thought was 'that has gotta be 'shopped' but apparently not, if Getty Images can be believed. Even though the uncorroborated claim the guy photographed in Lancaster, Ohio was genuine was immediately pumped by Obama allies in the lap-dog media/Lefty blogs, does anybody have something more than this dubiously convenient pic? Of course not... Alas, as has become a favored tactic with unprincipled liberal zealots over the last few years, this fictional character was almost certainly a 'progressive' plant, since some things in the widely-circulated (and in the case of lib blogs, celebrated) photograph just don't square-up for any thinking...

The Time Abraham Lincoln and a Political Rival Almost Dueled on an Island Exactly 170 years ago today, the Mississippi River levee in Alton, Illinois, was crammed full of spectators awaiting the results of a highly anticipated duel — a smackdown between Abraham Lincoln and political rival James Shields. Only one man could emerge victorious. Onlookers held their breath in suspense as they spotted a boat approaching with a blood-soaked body draped over the bow. It had all started where so many skirmishes do: the Illinois state legislature. Though at the time Lincoln was a Whig and Shields was a...

Mitt Romney is losing the most important election of our lifetime. Don’t be deceived by the polls that show him “within the margin of error.” Don’t put your faith in last minute media-buys from the campaign’s gargantuan war chest. Don’t expect the debates to turn things around. The president may not be an electrifying speaker, but he knows how to demagogue. His message will be: I love the middle class; Mitt Romney wants tax cuts for millionaires and eats children. And, don’t count on the fact that public opinion is against Obama on almost every significant issue. (At no time...

....Whatever lessons the Democrats take from Charlotte, whatever it did for the president or for the ambitious senators and governors who stalked delegate breakfasts and whispered “2016,” this is a fact: The convention was successfully trolled. I don’t use troll in the pejorative sense. Actually, I may be trying to craft a neutral meaning of troll where none previously existed. The term, in its modern Internet usage, refers to people who want to start fights online to bring the universe into an argument on their terms. It comes not from Grimm literature, but from a fishing technique in which multiple...

WASHINGTON – In a rare display of harsh criticism, President Obama lambasted First Lady Michelle Obama as she and the presidential children were preparing to board Air Force One. When the President first arrived on the tarmac, minutes after the First Family’s arrival, he was all smiles as he waved to press members and staff that had gathered to see the family embark on their twenty-seven day Caribbean vacation. But Obama’s smile faded when he saw what his wife was wearing. After the initial wave of astonishment washed over him, the President’s face filled with scorn as he let fly...

Watch Julie McCarty, President of the NE Tarrant [County TX] Tea Party and delegate to the Republican National Convention. Over strong grassroots opposition, Rule No. 12 was passed which gives the Republican National Committee the authority to change any rule between convention sessions. According to McCarty, “This rule was deliberately designed to suppress grassroots efforts.” "It is the Establishment Republicans saying to the grassroots, 'we do not want to hear from you, we want to do things our own way.'” They were able to defeat Rule 15. Under this rule, delegates to the National Convention would have no longer been...

The latest line of attack from the left against Ryan. He needs to own it, and agree it was the wrong thing to do; chalk it up to a youngster's misguided party loyalty. The more R&R distance themselves from Bush's Keynesian flights of fancy the better.

I was riding around in the car, listening to XM Radio and had FOX News with Megan Kelly's show on. She was interviewing some guy and said (paraphrase) she's hearing from people in the know who are discussing this behind closed doors that Obama will be re-elected for sure and gee, how would four more years of Obama affect the crapola you and I are talking about? What are we to think about this statement by Ms. Kelly? Complete rubbish?

You never know what will be the next big news story. Who would’ve guessed that the fast food chain “Chick-fil-A” would dominate the political airwaves just a few months before November? It certainly caught me by surprise, at least. Today, I want to look into the Chick-fil-A controversy, the conservative backlash, and to conclude with an honest plea to my fellow conservatives to move on, already. What’s the controversy? Early last month, an interview conducted by the Biblical Recorder with Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy surfaced in which Cathy reiterated the company’s support for traditional marriage between a man and a...

Support for same-sex marriage has risen across the board in the last four years, new polling data shows, signalling a shift in the overall political and social views of Americans. The new data, released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, shows a higher percentage of Democrats, Republicans, whites, minorities and people of all generations support same-sex marriage legalization.... Among voting groups, there has been an increase in support for same-sex marriage even among Republicans. Since 2008, Democrats have jumped in support from 50 to 65 percent; Republicans from 19 to 24 percent; and Independents from 44...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh4K2BePG0s

In blogosphere slang, a ‘Moby‘ is a particular kind of troll, namely a left-winger who posts right-wing extremist material on right-wing sites in order to discredit them. (This is somewhat distinct from a ‘concern troll‘, who seeks to sow dissension by posing as a concerned supporter.) The ‘Moby’ species of troll is named after the eponymous electronic music producer, who in February 2004 proposed this tactic and is supposed to have invented it. James Taranto, however, reminds us the tactic is anything but original. Food for thought comes from this passage from a Saul Alinsky biography, quoted by David Horowitz:”...

"I was zotted and came back, then zotted again and came back, then hit again and came back and finally just got bored with the constantly hypocritical stances and didn't return after my last zot. The interesting thing is that JR tipped his hand in zotting me. I know for a fact that he's using a language analyzer program, as my IP was continually changing thanks to a few perks I have from my employer."

A Virginia nonprofit is asking for donations to cover the $30,000 it spent successfully fighting a Righthaven LLC copyright infringement lawsuit. The Virginia Citizens Defense League Inc. (VCDL), a gun rights group in Newington, Va., was sued by Las Vegas-based Righthaven in September 2010.

Homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires, a series of psychology studies demonstrates.

It doesn't take much for online comments to quickly get out of hand, and there are certain subjects that inevitably attract trolls ready to defend their stance or platform of choice. PC (Windows) versus Mac, AMD versus Intel, politics, religion, abortion, and other high octane subjects could all be fun to debate, but almost always quickly end up derailed by name calling and other Internet tough-guy nonsense. The solution? Most sites just drop the ban hammer if someone gets too far out of line, but the state of Arizona has written a bill that would essentially make it a crime...

Internet pornography could conceivably become a thing of the past if Rick Santorum is elected president. The unapologetic social conservative, currently in second place behind Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, has promised to crack down on the distribution of pornography if elected.

Bill Maher Hit With Palimony SuitEx accuses HBO star of physical abuse, "degrading racial comments" NOVEMBER 11--Comedian Bill Maher was slapped yesterday with a $9 million palimony suit by an ex-girlfriend who alleges that the HBO star subjected her to physical and verbal abuse, including "insulting, humiliating and degrading racial comments." In the below Los Angeles Superior Court complaint, Nancy Johnson, a centerfold model and former flight attendant also known as Coco Johnsen, alleges that Maher, 48, reneged on promises to pay her expenses and purchase a Beverly Hills home. Johnson, who says she dated Maher for 17 months before...

In a fact check of Wednesday's Republican presidential debate on CNN, Associated Press reporters Calvin Woodward and Tom Raum take Newt Gingrich to task for stating: "If we’re going to have a debate about who the extremist is on these issues, it is President Obama, who as a state senator voted to protect doctors who killed babies who survived the abortion." Citing the above statement in a list of what they call "head-scratching claims," Woodward and Raum challenge it as follows: "THE FACTS: As an Illinois state senator, Obama voted against legislation promoted by anti-abortion activists that would have conferred...

Former Senator Alan Simpson had some choice words for his one time colleague, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. "I know Santorum, I served with him," he said. "He is rigid and a homophobic. He believes that gays and lesbians, he mentioned in an interview in 2003, about bestiality, and gays and lesbians. I think that's disgusting," said Simpson. The former three-term Senator from Wyoming has always been known for both his candor and his ability to work across party lines, said Republicans are hurting themselves by focusing on social issues. "Here's a party that believes in government out of your...

Rick Santorum shows his true colors by tailoring his message to what his audience wants to hear.

On Saturday night, at precisely 9:19 and 30 seconds, my iPhone, my iPad, my computer and, for all I know, my toaster were informed that Herman Cain had endorsed Newt Gingrich. The ping-ping of the devices suggested that something momentous had happened--alerts from both The Post and the New York Times--but in fact it was just additional evidence that the Republican Party has become a circus: One clown endorsed another. It’s hard to know who is the more ridiculous figure — the grandiloquent, bombastic and compulsively dishonest Gingrich, or the beguilingly ignorant Cain, a man who has never held elective...

<p>Thank you, FR, for the truly marvelous entertainment (as I haven't been laid in so long I get no other entertainment other than watching people on here like a perv stalker) . While lurking tonight (the internet version of peeping in your windows) for the first time in ages, the amount of schadenfreude I'm experiencing is bordering on orgasmic (which is the closest I've gotten to the real thing in years).</p>

Why is Glenn Beck lying to destroy Newt?? Glenn has voiced support for Santorum while his actions are pushing Mitt. On his propaganda page the blaze in one day he had 14 hit pieces on Newt, 9 puff pieces on Mitt and 2 stories mentioning Santorum {one of those could be considered negative}. The amount of dishonesty in those articles and his radio show is mind boggling. Glenn is abusing the trust people have placed in him and trying to get the most liberal candidate the nomination. Newt was surging in Iowa so Glenn went scorched earth and by catching...

I knew this would happen and in a way, it is a good thing because it will also bring focus to Barack Obama's eligibility. Reading the paperwork on this I found out some things I wasn't aware of pertaining to our citizenship statutes back in the 1940's such as the statute listed in this challenge, U.S. Nationality Act of 1940 Sect 201, 54 Stat. 1137 which provides provides the law by which a person born outside the U.S. is bound by in order to qualify legally as a U.S. citizen. For some that do not know, according to Mexican law...

Is North Korea about to split into two parts not necessarily of the same size ! Could there be a big regime change be a regime change ! will the puppet master please stand up !

ALLEN PARK, Mich. — Protesters descended on a Lowe's store in one of the country's largest Arab-American communities on Saturday, calling for a boycott after the home improvement chain pulled its ads from a reality television show about five Muslim families living in Michigan. About 100 people gathered outside the store in Allen Park, a Detroit suburb adjacent to the city where "All-American Muslim" is filmed. Lowe's said this week that the TLC show had become a "lightning rod" for complaints, following an email campaign by a conservative Christian group. Protesters including Christian clergy and lawmakers called for unity and...

As the merry-go-round of the GOP primary continues, the present darling of fickle voters is Newt Gingrich, Like a phoenix he’s risen from the ashes to claim, with typical humility, “I’m going to be the nominee,” dismissing all other candidates as a trifling irrelevancy. Unfortunately the belated choice of Gingrich is no choice at all, for there can be little doubt how the questionably conservative and enormously polarizing Gingrich would fare against a personally popular Obama in the General Election. There is, at present only one real choice to make regarding the next president. It’s either Romney or Obama. A...

He was only trying to make a folksy appeal to conservative Christians in Iowa. And what he had to say was unlikely to cause much controversy with the evangelicals who dominate the Republican Party's caucuses there. But when Presidential hopeful Rick Perry donned a brown jacket and spoke to the camera for his latest campaign ad he didn't expect to be so widely mocked.

If the Republican presidential contenders wish to remain truthful to their rhetoric of decentralization of power in Washington, they should take a break from wooing social conservatives and stand for states' rights in regard to gay marriage. Because many likely Iowa caucus-goers describe themselves as very conservative on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion, many candidates feel they need to reach out to the far-right if they plan to get the presidential nod. However, a staunch, conservative position on social issues will likely hurt them in the long run, because it undermines their more-appealing small-government policies.... The three...

Jackie Broyles has prepared a statement concerning the booing of the First lady the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Homestead, Fla. and so has the next president of The United States.

What do we think of this? I'm not talking about any bannings and whether they were justified or not. What I mean is, showing FR in a negative light like this. It doesn't show us as open minded and most people equate banning to censorship. And well, that doesn't exactly jive with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights we hold so dear. Jim can do what he wants. He owns the site. I moderate a website that my friend owns and it's the same tact we take with trolls and spammers. But we never ban people for simply taking...

In an alternate universe........President Paul entered the White House Situation Room in a huff. It was about 4pm, and he was cranky. Everyone knew not to disturb President Paul during Judge Judy, but this was a national security emergency. The CIA now had definitive proof that the Islamic Republic of Iran had placed intercontinental ballistic missiles in Venezuela. "Mr. President," began Major General Major, the Commandant of the Marine Corps and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "The Iranians have placed ICBM's on the northern coast of Venezuela. We're not sure about the capabilities of these weapons of mass...