Free Republic

In an interview with the Washington Times, Palin makes her most direct comments yet about Conservativism versus the Republican Party. In my humble opinion, it’s clear the GOP, unfortunately, is lost beyond the point of return. When you’re one year out of key campaigns to take back Congress in 2010 and Meghan McCain is The Oracle of the party, you know it’s over. If Tina Brown thought Ms. McCain’s willingness to be a Useful Idiot for liberals would undermine the conservative movement (and consequently Sarah Palin), she should take a serious and long look at what their attacks on Palin...

Featured Term (selected at random):INQUISITION The special court or tribunal appointed by the Catholic Church to discover and suppress heresy and to punish heretics. The Roman Inquisition of the middle twelfth century, with its ecclesiastical courts for trying and punishing heretics, arose during the ravages of the anti-social Albigensian sect, whose doctrines and practices were destructive not only of faith but of Christian morality and public order. While Church authorities would condemn a person found guilty of heresy, it was the civil power that actually inflicted the penalty. The reformation of the heretic was first sought. By exhortations and minor...

As the confirmation hearings for President Barack Obama's Supreme Court appointee Sonia Sotomayor are upon us, the left-wing attack machine had to take a few last shots ranking Senate Judiciary Committee Republican Sen. Jeff Session, Ala., and the Republican Party as a whole. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explained the junior Alabama senator would take over the spot after Sen. Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party on her July 10 program, suggesting his selection to the post was part of some rebranding by the GOP. "Republicans have also decided to have Senator Jeff Sessions lead this battle for them," Maddow...

President Barack Obama may never have fired a gun but he is turning out to be one of the best firearms salesmen in American history. I've sold probably four times as much in the last six months as I have in 20 years combined," said Cliff Hunter, owner of Tommy Bronson Sporting Goods in Memphis. "Hand guns and the tactical weapons, they're absolutely off the charts." Most of his gun sales used to be for hunting, or personal protection in a city riddled with crime. But just before the November election, anxiety that Mr Obama would win and enact a...

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran is preparing a package of proposals to present to Western powers that could be a basis for future talks, the country's foreign minister said Saturday. Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference that the package deals with political and economic issues as well as security and international affairs but did not say whether its proposals also covered Iran's nuclear activities.

By June 19, 2009, all 50 states in the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have reported novel H1N1 infection. While nationwide U.S. influenza surveillance systems indicate that overall influenza activity is decreasing in the country at this time, novel H1N1 outbreaks are ongoing in parts of the U.S., in some cases with intense activity.

Reporting from Beirut -- A top advisor to Iran's supreme leader today urged the country's establishment to be more tolerant of dissent, even as military officials stepped up their rhetoric in the latest signs of divisions created by the marred reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad one month ago. Mohammad Mohammadian, a midranking cleric who heads Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's office of university affairs, acknowledged simmering discontent over the vote, which sparked massive protests and a violent crackdown last month.

We should be concerned about the people who are going to be running the country during the next 3 1/2 years. This is about one of the Czars. Book he authored in 1977 advocates for extreme totalitarian measures to control the population Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A "Planetary Regime" with the power of life and death over American citizens. The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both? These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack...

Ryan Means was so gung-ho about the military, he ripped out a recruitment card from a magazine, filled it out and mailed it in. A few days later, two Marine Corps officers knocked on his parent’s door in Atlanta, ready to enlist their son. His mother, Mary Jo, sent the officers away. After all, her son was only 9. Young Means revered the armed services. As a kid growing up in Atlanta, he’d frequently don fatigues. At Halloween, he packed heat as G.I. Joe. And every day, he and younger brother Michael would dig foxholes in the back yard, filling...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _____________________________________________________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 10, 2009 Food Security: Investing in Agricultural Development to Reduce Hunger and Poverty The vast majority of the world’s poorest people depend on agriculture for food and household incomes. When world food prices spiked last year, the G8 acted, including by advancing the Global Partnership for Agriculture and Food Security and implementing largely short and medium term measures to reduce hunger, the majority using emergency food aid. This year, the global economic and financial crisis threatens the...

NEW YORK -- Like any other golden retriever seeking a treat, Tuesday nudged his owner's hand with his snout one recent morning and waited expectantly. Luis Carlos Montalvan got up from a chair in his small Brooklyn apartment and walked to the kitchen. Tuesday followed close behind, eyes fixed on a white cabinet. The retriever sat alertly as Mr. Montalvan, an Iraq war veteran with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, reached for a vial of pills, lined a half-dozen on the table and took them one by oneThe dog had gotten what he wanted: When the last pill was swallowed, he...

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Concerns about the creditworthiness of CIT Group Inc. (CIT) are seeping into broader markets after the commercial lender Friday confirmed that the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has yet to approve its application to issue government-backed debt. The worries about the lender are touching markets from stocks to Treasurys, underscoring how broader credit concerns may be resurfacing after a period of relative calm. Shares of CIT were off nearly 30% Friday before closing down 18%, while most CIT bonds fell, indicating worries about the lender's ability to meet its obligations in the long run. Treasury prices, meanwhile,...

HAVANA, July 11 (Reuters) - Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro predicted that Latin America would be swept by a wave of military coups if Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was not returned to power after his ouster in a June 28 coup. Castro, in a column published late on Friday on an Internet site run by Cuba's communist government, said right-wing military leaders trained by the United States could be encouraged to take up arms against their governments, depending on how the Honduras crisis turned out. "If President Manuel Zelaya is not returned to his post, a wave of coups threatens...

The government is now floating the idea of giving small businesses money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Obama administration is working on a plan that would make available funds from the $700 billion banking-system bailout package to millions of small businesses struggling to survive the recession, FOX News has confirmed. Gene Sperling, a top adviser to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, developed the idea of using funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to help small businesses as part of a department-wide push to generate ideas to pump life into this ailing part of the economy. The concept...

On Wednesday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan announced his country will ask the UN Security Council to discuss the ethnic rioting that has scarred China’s Xinjiang region this week. Then he upped the rhetoric. “The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide,” Erdogan said on Friday. “There’s no point in interpreting this otherwise.” On July 5, a peaceful demonstration by the local Uighurs,Turkic Muslims,apparently triggered a savage reaction by Chinese police, and that led to bloody clashes between enraged Uighurs and Hans, members of the majority ethnic group in China. The disturbances started in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang,and...

There are a few things you need to know about President Obama’s shameful release on Thursday of the “Irbil Five” — Quds Force commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds — yes, hundreds — of American soldiers and Marines.

BOSTON -- The Franklin Park Zoo, the only Boston institution of its kind, may be forced to close and euthanize some of its animals, zoo officials said Friday. Without more state funding, zoo officials said that they will run out of money within months and have to close both Franklin Park and the Stone Zoo in Stoneham. The zoos would be forced to lay off most of their 165 employees and attempt to find new homes for more than 1,000 animals. Zoo officials estimated 20 percent of the animals would not find homes and could be euthanized. “Not all the...

IndyMac died a year ago Saturday, the first major thrift to fail in the financial crisis. Its burial, marked by confusion, chaos, and a relatively sweet deal for a group of private equity titans, is unlikely to happen in the same manner today. The aftermath of IndyMac, since renamed OneWest Bank, is telling, and provides a stark illustration of how much things have changed in the course of a year.

According to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, we only have 96 months left to save the planet. I'm impressed. 96 months. Not 95. Not 97. July 2017. Put it in your diary. Usually the warm-mongers stick to the same old drone that we only have 10 years left to save the planet. Nice round number. Al Gore said we only have 10 years left three-and-a-half years ago, which makes him technically more of a pessimist than the Prince of Wales. Al's betting Armageddon kicks in January 2016 – unless he's just peddling glib generalities. And, alas, even a...

Honduras, the tiny Central American nation, had a change of leaders on June 28. The country's military arrested President Manuel Zelaya -- in his pajamas, he says -- and put him on a plane bound for Costa Rica. A new president, Roberto Micheletti, was appointed. Led by Cuba and Venezuela (Sudan and North Korea were not immediately available), the international community swiftly condemned this "coup." Something clearly has gone awry with the rule of law in Honduras -- but it is not necessarily what you think. Begin with Zelaya's arrest. The Supreme Court of Honduras, as it turns out, had...