Free Republic

DAVOS -- The crackdown on illegal immigration combined with intensified border security has prompted large numbers of undocumented Mexican laborers to remain in the U.S. permanently -- even as many prefer to go home -- out of fear they will never be able to return, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon told International Business Times. “Many of them are currently trapped,” Calderon told IBTimes. “There are a lot of these people [who] want to be in Mexico eight months every year, but they are unable to go there, because if they cross the border, they will never be able to cross...

Doctors’ house calls are considered a thing of the past, but not in the appointment book of Dr. Carrol Frazier Landrum, an 88-year-old physician from Edwards, Mississippi. The good doctor will see you no matter who you are, where you are, or how much money you have — as long his 2007 Toyota Camry can deliver him to your location. But now his state’s medical board wants to see him gone. Dr. Landrum, a WWII veteran, was forced to make a change after crime drove him from his Edwards, Mississippi, office two years ago, and he couldn’t find another space...

DENVER — If bakeries can be compelled to make wedding cakes for same-sex marriages, can they also be forced to create anti-gay cakes? That’s the question before the Colorado Civil Rights Division after a customer filed a complaint against Azucar Bakery in Denver for refusing to write anti-gay messages on a Bible-shaped cake.

The creator, director and producer of the controversial movie about the encroaching police state and FEMA camps in America, David Crowley, has been found dead with his wife and young daughter over the weekend. The police are calling it a murder-suicide incident yet not ruling out anything suspicious. The movie was currently in production and Crowley had recently received a contract of $30 million to complete the project of his dreams. While depression can have its harshest affects on people, his friends and co-workers have stated that the police story is highly unlikely.

More than half a million undocumented immigrants are living within the five boroughs of New York City, but slightly more than 230,000 are eligible for the deferred action programs created by President Barack Obama. The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) released details data on featuring estimates of major U.S. counties and its undocumented immigrants population. MPI's data profiled 94 counties across the U.S. and discovered the five counties with the largest populations potentially eligible for either DACA and DAPA relief are Los Angeles, California; Harris, Texas; Orange, California; Cook, Illinois; and Dallas, Texas, accounting for 1.1 million people, or more than...

The Environmental Protection Agency, on the heels of the controversy at the IRS over missing emails, is facing a probe of its own over whether it improperly scrubbed text messages. The EPA inspector general's office announced this week it is launching an audit into the agency's policies for keeping text messages. The audit was prompted by a complaint from Republicans on the House science committee, worried the EPA may have "deleted thousands of text messages" that should have been preserved. Jennifer Kaplan, spokeswoman for the EPA inspector general's office, confirmed the complaint prompted the audit. "Our auditors were persuaded that...

(Reuters) - The White House on Thursday said legislation was not necessary to settle so-called "net neutrality" rules because the Federal Communications Commission had the authority to write them. Republicans in Congress are trying to drum up support for a bill that would counter the FCC's upcoming new rules. The Obama administration's comments, while not entirely rebuffing the legislative effort, could make some Democrats wary of joining it. "In terms of legislation, we don’t believe it’s necessary given that the FCC has the authorities that it needs under Title II," a White House official told Reuters. "However, we always remain...

I was in the middle of working on an article covering real U.S. economic stats versus manipulated statistics when the Charlie Hebdo shootings took place. And though I knew the implications of the event would be far-reaching, I was originally undeterred from my financial subject matter. I had already covered in previous articles the inevitability of ISIS attacks on Europe and America, including the “warnings” of Saudi Arabia in August of last year that jihadists would target the EU within months and the U.S. a month later. In September of last year, ISIS publicly urged attacks on French and U.S....

In 2011, concerned about the growing debt crisis, Standard & Poor, the venerable credit rating firm, downgraded the U.S. bond rating for the first time from “Triple-A” to “AA-plus,” a move that sent shockwaves through the financial markets raising troubling questions about the government’s growing debt. The move hit a nerve with a White House gearing up for a massive re-election campaign. Then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called the Chairman of McGraw Hill, the owners of S&P, declaring that the government would hold S&P “accountable” and their conduct would be “looked at very carefully.” Geithner wasn’t bluffing. The Obama Administration...

Do you know what an “extremist� is? In the wake of the horrible terror attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in France, Barack Obama is speaking very boldly about the need to win the war against “extremists�, and he has announced plans to host a major global summit on “extremism� next month. And on the surface that sounds great. But precisely how are we supposed to determine whether someone is an “extremist� or not? What criteria should we use? As you will see below, your definition of an “extremist� may be far, far different from the definition that Barack...

MADISON, Wis. – Almost five months after the Government Accountability Board quietly ended its role in a politically charged investigation into dozens of Wisconsin conservative groups, the agency has yet to return property seized from people caught up in the probe. “I would think that because it’s not an ongoing investigation, then it seems to me they should get their stuff back,” said constitutional law expert Rick Esenberg. Investigators seized paper files, computers and other electronic devices, including the electronic equipment of targets’ family members, among other property, in raids in October 2013. They aren’t likely to see their things...

Every month there is an incident, like taking property of Hindu people or forced conversion of Hindu girls. ... Minority Hindus have complained of increasing harassment and discrimination in Muslim-dominated Pakistan in recent years, including the destruction or desecration of their places of worship. ... Hindus complain that girls are forcibly converted to Islam, there is no legal recognition for Hindu marriages, and Hindus are discriminated against when it comes to access to government jobs or schooling. ... During partition in 1947, the violent separation of Pakistan and India into separate countries, hundreds of thousands of Hindus decided to migrate...

Washington, DC – Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell today issued a Secretarial Order calling for a comprehensive science-based strategy to address the more frequent and intense wildfires that are damaging vital sagebrush landscapes and productive rangelands, particularly in the Great Basin region of Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and California. The strategy will begin to be implemented during the 2015 fire season. Goals include reducing the size, severity and cost of rangeland fires, addressing the spread of cheatgrass and other invasive species, and positioning wildland fire management resources for more effective rangeland fire response. “Targeted action is urgently needed to...

For the first time since Gallup has conducted polling, people say that the "biggest problem" in America is "the government." It topped all other categories, including terrorism. "2014 was the first year ever in Gallup records that dissatisfaction with government topped the list," the 80-year-old firm said. "Government includes dissatisfaction with President Obama." And angst over government has been climbing each year since 2009, when Obama took office, breaking a long period of relative satisfaction with government. Beyond Obama, Americans are rejecting what the Left is selling — the idea that government should determine our fate. No, they're saying that...

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler appears poised to propose new rules that would classify Internet service providers as public utilities in a move designed to ensure everyone has the same access to free content online. […] The remarks suggest that the Federal Communications Commission is falling in line with President Barack Obama, who announced in November that he favors governing Internet service providers like telephone companies to preserve a “free and open” Internet. …

One council member in Maryland not only didn’t want to comment on a story, but he also doesn’t want his name in any news articles about him. The issue stems from an article Frederick News-Post reporter Bethany Rodgers wrote about concerns Kirby Delauter, a Frederick County Councilman, and fellow Councilman Billy Shreve had over County Council parking spaces. Delauter declined to comment for the article, which isn’t out of the ordinary for a public official. But what he did next, is. “Shame on Bethany Rodgers for unauthorized use of my name and my reference in her article today,” Delauter posted...

The European Union’s executive Commission said Monday that membership in the euro bloc is “irrevocable” but left it open to what extent Greece could renegotiate the terms after elections on Jan. 25. Greece’s left-wing Syriza party leads the polls ahead of the elections and is in favor of changing the conditions of the country’s international bailout deal. That would likely anger the rest of the eurozone, which has given Athens the bulk of the rescue loans. […] EU spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt said Monday that if the Greek elections call for a need to reconsider the conditions of Athens’ membership within...

A new proposal in Oklahoma would bar drunk drivers from buying or consuming alcohol -- and already is raising concerns over how it would be enforced. Fox 25 in Oklahoma City reports that state Sen. Patrick Anderson is proposing a bill that would allow a judge to enforce the alcohol restrictions on anyone with a DUI charge for a set period of time.

Moving to quash a conservative GOP insurrection, Assembly Speaker-designee John Hambrick on Saturday harshly rebuked Assemblywoman Michelle Fiore, telling her to stop playing “childish games” and undermining him by insisting she’s still Republican majority leader. Hambrick said in an email to Fiore that he had full authority as the elected leader of the Assembly Republican Caucus to remove her as majority leader and as chair of the Assembly Taxation Committee. He said he removed her last month for insubordination and for how she’s handling a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over unpaid payroll taxes for her home health care...

Our dishwasher broke just after Christmas. The timer stopped working, and a new one costs about $100. My wife suggested that since the dishwasher is nineteen years old, we should buy a new one. Up until now it was working very quietly and efficiently, washing and drying a full load in about an hour. We visited the appliance shop where we had recently purchased a new clothes washing machine a few months earlier. I mentioned to the salesman that our new washer was very slow, taking nearly two hours to finish a large load compared to our old one, which...

21,000 new regulations have been enacted under Obama, and 2,375 are scheduled so far for 2015. Congress does not have the power to stop this avalanche, and can do very little to slow it down. The sad and frustrating part of this “government gone wild” scenario is that it is highly doubtful any of these regulations can be rescinded or fixed before they potentially cause significant permanent damage to our individual freedoms, to say nothing of how they will negatively impact our day-to-day lives. This is how Obama’s “fundamental change” of America is accomplished.

It's time to mobilize Congress against Obama’s plan to relinquish our authority over the Internet.When the new Congress shows up on Tuesday, it’s going to have lots to worry about, but there’s one serious problem at risk of being overlooked. And that really can’t be allowed to happen; it’s much too important: In 2015, the Obama administration plans to hand over control of ICANN — the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — to international governance. ICANN oversees the superstructure of the Internet, and the American Department of Commerce oversees ICANN. The plan for handing our authority to the...

Late last year, Obama asked the Federal Communications Commission to create a new set of rules to make sure everyone has access to the Internet and that phone and cable companies would not be allowed "to act as a gatekeeper, restricting what you can do or see online."

Federal regulators looking to place restrictions on Internet providers will introduce and vote on new proposed net neutrality rules in February, Federal Communications Commission officials said Friday. President Obama's top telecom regulator, Tom Wheeler, told fellow FCC commissioners before the Christmas holiday that he intends to circulate a draft proposal internally next month with an eye toward approving the measure weeks later, said one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the agency's deliberations are ongoing. The rules are meant to keep broadband providers such as Verizon and Comcast from speeding up or slowing down some Web sites...

CARSON CITY — The Nevada Supreme Court on Wednesday gave a victory to the city of Reno in its decision in May to lay off 32 firefighters after federal funding that supported their positions ran out. The court, in a unanimous decision written by Justice James Hardesty, found that a Reno District Court did not have the authority to grant a preliminary injunction in the labor dispute because the underlying grievance was not arbitrable under the parties’ collective bargaining agreement. A District Court judge in Reno issued the preliminary injunction in June preventing Reno from completing scheduled layoffs. The order...

2015 promises to be a year of unrest. True Blue Americans are tired of having their Liberty, Blood and Treasure Bargained Away in Back Room Deals. While those who would bring you immediately before a revolutionary court for being an enemy of the people rally under the Red Communard Flag. Will You allow Freedom and Justice for All?Or will you toil for From each according to his ability, to each according to his need?

The federal government shipped nearly 4,000 more assault rifles to local law enforcement agencies in the three months following the Ferguson riots, marking a huge surge in the amount of lethal firearms being doled out to police and sheriff’s offices. The Ferguson riots drew attention and criticism to the massive firepower state and local police are now able to bring to bear on their citizens, and earned scrutiny for the Pentagon project, known as the 1033 program, that helps arm many of those agencies by making surplus military equipment available to them. President Obama called for a review of the...

Chicago Obama library bids in trouble; foundation has 'major concerns' with U. of C. proposal Posted: 12/30/2014, 12:45pm | Lynn Sweet WASHINGTON — The Barack Obama Foundation has major problems with the University of Chicago bid for the Obama presidential library and museum and is uneasy about the bid from the University of Illinois at Chicago, leaving Columbia University in New York the front-runner for the project. A source close to the foundation told me that the University of Chicago bid is in jeopardy because it does not own — and has no definite path to acquiring at present —...

Regulation: Cures for cancer and Ebola having been found, the federal ubernannies have decreed that sprinkles should no longer adorn kids' ice cream because they contain the trans fat that liberal groups once pushed for. Come the New Year, the Food and Drug Administration, ignoring the principle that in most cases it's the dose that defines the poison, will issue new regulations designed to remove even trace amounts of hydrogenate oils, commonly known as trans fats, from our diets. Trans fats have been in our foods since the 1950s to increase shelf life and improve taste. A small amount appears...

To hear the White House tell it, the November elections never happened and 2014 was a super-duper year for President Obama. In a “Year in Review” slideshow, the White House suggests 2014 represented a “breakthrough” for America. The Obama administration takes credit for: • An economy growing at a record pace; • The longest streak of private-sector job growth on record; • The number of Americans without health insurance falling to a near record low; • Concerted action to prevent sexual assaults on college campuses; • The highest high school graduation rate in the nation’s history; • Historic steps to...

During Stalin's reign, he used a particularly horrific manner of social engineering. It was ethnic cleansing.

Habersham County, Georgia is nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, just south of stunning Tallulah Gorge.  The biggest city in the county is Cornelia, with 4,160 residents.  The entire population of Habersham County would fill slightly more than half the seats in the Georgia Dome. Yet Habersham County Sheriff’s Department has a SWAT team, complete with flash-bang grenades, one of which exploded in a 19-month-old’s crib on May 28, 2014.  A drug raid gone wrong.  In fact, gone so wrong that there wasn’t even a hint of a drug dealer at the home, just a sleeping family. [WSB-TV]...

The National Security Agency may have violated U.S. law for over a decade with the unauthorized surveillance of U.S. citizens' overseas communications, according to new reports on the agency's intelligence collection practices released by the NSA on Wednesday. The U.S. spy agency released the highly confidential reports in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). According to documents posted on the NSA website on Christmas Eve, the examples of violations include sending data on Americans to unauthorized recipients, storing such data on unprotected computers and retaining them after they were meant...

The Internal Revenue Service, infested with liberal left acolytes, has become one of those tools of tyranny. A liberal that used to frequent my radio programs and website, who went by the moniker “Mudkitty,” used to argue with me on every issue under the sun, but would always include in her discussion with me that she appreciated my passion for what I believe, and that she would defend my right to say it if she had to go to the mountaintops to do so. Today’s liberal-left Democrat does not share her opinion. Rather than defend the First Amendment right of...

Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) hailed President Obama’s move to reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba as “inspired leadership that has made me proud to be an American.” “For too long a succession of white presidents has oppressed this small, racially diverse island nation,” Rangel contended. “It took a Black man to right this wrong.” Rangel said he hopes that “diplomatic recognition is the just the first step. We need to make reparations for the 50 years of suffering the US Government has imposed on the Cuban people.” The Congressman said he “would support legislation aimed at providing food, housing, and other...

New rules being proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will give that agency enormous new powers over consumers who use the healthcare.gov website to purchase their insurance. The proposed rules would allow CMS to automatically renew consumers' policies every year if they don't visit the website to do it themselves. Without any knowledge of an individual's health care situation, their financials, or anything else that might affect what kind of policy they may need, the government wll choose and force you to pay for a policy that they think works best for you.

In the end, making a political issue personal might have done in Assemblywoman Michele Fiore. The Las Vegas Republican was coming off a tumultuous week — she’d been deposed and then quickly restored as majority leader-designate and chairwoman of the Assembly Taxation Committee by Speaker-designate John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas — when she doubled down on allegations that certain Republican forces were targeting her and other conservatives. Speaking on the Alan Stock radio show on KDWN-AM 720 on Tuesday, Fiore not only repeated her rhetoric about a “war on women,” but blamed some of the alleged infantrymen in that conflict: Republican...

CARSON CITY — Las Vegas Assemblywoman Michele Fiore’s tax liens and problems with the IRS were cited in her second removal from Assembly leadership positions Thursday. Fiore’s removal could clear the way for moderate Republicans to control the Assembly in the 2015 session and eliminate any talk of a GOP-Democratic partnership challenge to the leadership. It could also smooth the way for Gov. Brian Sandoval to win more funding for public education. Assembly Speaker designate John Hambrick reversed course on Fiore for a second time in recent weeks and removed the controversial lawmaker as majority leader. She has also been...

Cuba's Castro Brothers Get Big Present From Santa Obama Foreign Policy: Just as its patron Venezuela hit the rocks, Cuba got a last-minute rescue from none other than President Obama, who announced a Santa Claus-like package of wish-list goodies for the Castro brothers. Why? In many ways, President Obama's announced plan to normalize relations with Cuba, lift the embargo, extend trade credits and remove Cuba from the state sponsors of terror list is about on par with the rest of his foreign policy. It was done by executive order without consulting Congress, just like last month's decision to temporarily legalize...

President Obama declared yesterday the United States would begin a new chapter with Cuba. Obama already began negotiating with Cuba regarding a prisoner swap among with other issues. For years Obama has told Congress he would keep them in the loop regarding Cuba. Predictably Congress had no idea the Obama administration was negotiating with the Communist dictatorship. Yesterday’s announcement came as a surprise to everyone. As with every other negotiation with a hostile foreign power, Obama got completely taken by the Cuban Communists. Obama negotiates from a position of American weakness because he doesn’t believe in American strength. Obama’s flirtations...

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo) is demanding an investigation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s “Operation Choke Point” practices. Under these practices, the FDIC pressured banks to freeze or close accounts of businesses that the US Department of Justice designated as “anti-social enterprises.” Among the businesses targeted by DOJ are firearms sellers, coin dealers, and pharmaceutical sales. Martin Gruenberg, chairman of the FDIC, admitted that “while these businesses are not illegal, per se, the president has made it very clear that they are outside the boundary of the type of businesses he thinks we ought to have in our society. There...

December 17, 2014, 08:15 am Obamas say they're no strangers to racism By Justin Sink The president and the first lady chronicled a series experiences in People magazine that they say demonstrated some of the latent racism that blacks in America continue to face. "There's no black male my age, who's a professional, who hasn't come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn't hand them their car keys," the president said. The first lady said someone had asked her husband to get them coffee because he was wearing a tuxedo at a black-tie dinner,...

CARSON CITY — Las Vegas Republican lawmaker Michele Fiore, a lightning rod in an ongoing Assembly GOP power struggle, said Tuesday she is fully in compliance with the Internal Revenue Service over more than $1 million in tax liens against her home health care businesses. In her first comments on the controversy, Fiore appeared on the Alan Stock radio show on KDWN in Las Vegas, saying her actual active liens total less than $200,000. Liens dating back to 2003 had previously been resolved, she said. Fiore said her lien problems stemmed from a dishonest bookkeeper, who she said is facing...

The migration of undocumented children and adolescents traveling alone EE. UU. does not stop, and only in October and November last -the first two months of fiscal 2015 in that country-, 495 thousand Guatemalan minors were arrested in the southern border of the country by Border Patrol agents. Guatemala tops the list of Central American countries with the largest number of infants captured by entering illegally in the country's north. In the same period 115 thousand were arrested and 506 Hondurans Salvadoran children. Although Foreign Ministry authorities say that migration figures are changing and may decrease in the coming months,...

Shocking political news this morning! Jeb Bush has announced he is going to “actively explore” running for President. This, no doubt, comes as a huge shock and surprise to everyone. It was only a few days ago that the New York Times got wind of Bush’s super secret meeting with John McCain wherein they discussed how to make irrelevant the conservative base of the Republican Party. Funny how in politics super secret meetings somehow get discovered and splashed all over the New York Times. It’s as if someone planted the story. After McCain and Mitt Romney, party moderates, got trounced...

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident...collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in - your nation, your people - is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of...

<p>California’s health insurance exchange extended its deadline for consumers wanting Obamacare coverage in effect by Jan. 1.</p> <p>Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, said people who start the application process or make some “good faith effort” by Monday will have until Dec. 21 to finish signing up. Monday at midnight had previously been the hard deadline.</p>

A Long Island federal jury rewarded Nancy Genovese, 58, a mother of three, $1.12 million in compensatory damages after being arrested in 2009 for attempting to photograph a helicopter at a Air National Guard base in the Hamptons. Genovese intended to use the photo on a “Support the Troops” website; she was arrested for trespass and insulted as a "Teabagger." From The New York Post: Southhampton cops searched her and found a legally owned rifle that she was transporting from a nearby rifle range. She contends a deputy sheriff arrived on the scene later and said to her, “I bet...

Last month Republicans won a wave election picking up a dozen seats in the House and nine seats in the Senate. Last week the Republicans ignored the will of the voters and voted in favor of President Obama’s budget initiatives. The country is overwhelmingly opposed to Obamacare, so the Republicans fully funded it without making any changes. The country is overwhelmingly opposed to amnesty, in particular the country is opposed to amnesty created by the executive branch alone. Rather than refuse to fund the President’s amnesty power grab, the Republicans are funding it completely. They’re even spending a billion dollars...

Sarah Palin – RINO Season Opens Soon, Amnesty Juan Boehner Flipped America the Bird Rick Wells Sarah Palin, as is the case with most conservatives and others who value the Constitution and the rule of law in the United States, is not happy that the Speaker of the House and his comrades have lied and sold out the American people. John Boehner has effectively allowed Hussein Obama act as a dictator and to take actions which are illegal and which circumvent Congress through the implementation of his criminal amnesty. She had a few choice words in response to questions after...