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I graphed the EIA data, shown below. What is most interesting is that this is market driven, not mandate driven. Amazing Shale: US CO2 Emissions Plummet Towards 1990 Levels by John Hanger (via The GWPF) America’s carbon emissions may drop back close to 1990 levels this year. That result would have been thought impossible, even at the end of 2011. But the shale gas revolution makes a reality of many things recently thought impossible. Shale gas production has slashed carbon emissions and saved consumers more than $100 billion per year. Truly astonishing! For US energy-related carbon emissions, fuel switching to...

An Associated Press photographer finds Chief Justice John Roberts in Malta — where he's spending some time after the

In a previous post, I stressed the importance of standing up for the religious freedom of people of every faith, not just those who share our own convictions. In view of a recent development in Germany, I here wish to say that Christians, especially those of us who are Catholics, should be particularly outspoken in defending the rights of Jews and the Jewish people. It is not simply the memory of past crimes committed by Christians, including leaders of the Church, against Jews—crimes sometimes committed in the very name of Christian faith. It is the fact that we are taught...

When the air-conditioning broke down at the reception for the unveiling ceremony of the Red Army monument in Netanya on Monday, it didn’t matter if you were a billionaire, multimillionaire or broke. Everyone suffered the same. In one corner sat Mikhail Fridman, the seventh-richest man in Russia, whose fortune is estimated at $15 billion by Forbes. He stayed hydrated in the sweltering heat by sipping a glass of water. In another stood Moshe Kantor, the chemicals tycoon who Forbes said was worth $2.3b. He repeatedly removed the beads of sweat from his head with a napkin. The two men were...

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico — A powerful car bomb exploded outside the home of the top police official of the northern Mexico border state of Tamaulipas early Tuesday, killing two policemen and injuring four officers and three civilians. Tamaulipas state Interior Secretary Morelos Canseco said Public Safety Secretary Rafael Lomeli wasn't injured in the blast, but that three neighbors were injured by glass fragments from shattered windows. Canseco said the attack appears to be a reprisal by criminal gangs. Almost a half-dozen car-bomb attacks have occurred in recent years Tamaulipas, where the Gulf cartel is battling the rival Zetas gang, but...

There is a limit to how long Israel is going to wait for Abbas and this seems an opportune time to take him at his word on the dead negotiations and act independently. A confluence of events is increasingly pointing to Israel taking action in the very near future to extend its sovereignty over a substantial part - if not all - of the 61% of Judea and Samaria it has totally controlled since 1967 - unless Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ends his posturing and submits to considerable loss of face by announcing he is now prepared to resume...

Ancient 'Cow Woman' Skeleton Called Bizarre The skeleton of a 1,400-year-old Anglo-Saxon woman buried alongside a cow has emerged from a former children's playground near Cambridge in England, making the "cow woman" an extraordinary unique find. Described as "hugely exciting" and "bizarre," the burial was uncovered by students from Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Central Lancashire. The find is believed to be the only one of its kind ever found in Europe. "Usually it is warrior men who are discovered buried with their animals. Never before have we found a woman buried alongside a cow," Faye Simpson, of...

Alabama is getting a new high-tech aircraft factory and 1,000 high-wage jobs, despite warnings from progressive groups that the state’s immigration reform would frighten away investors. “The naysayers were hoping it would,” said state Rep. Mike Ball. But “the immigration law doesn’t make any difference to the foreign companies — if they’re legal, they know they’re welcome, and we have a competitive environment where they can make a profit,” said Ball, a former police detective. “More jobs for sweet home Alabama,” said Chuck Ellis, a councilman in the city of Albertville. “Once again the state of Alabama has taken the...

The Legacy Lives On! Mark’s Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation “Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.” --Mark Levin in Liberty and TyrannyWelcome to “The Levin Lounge”… Step in and have a virtual FRink.Taking the country by storm, one radio station at a time – and kicking the BUTTS of the competition! Welcome all, to the most FUN LIVE THREAD on FreeRepublic.com! You can call Mark’s show: 1-877-381-3811

LAKELAND, FL | A few years ago, Randy Lippy was fishing at Saddle Creek Park when a man approached. Lippy, 65, of Lakeland, said the man asked if he wanted to pay for sex. The proposition made him so uncomfortable, Lippy said, he stopped fishing at the park until just recently. Once favored as a fishing spot with walking trails and a public gun range, the park is almost as well known now for the number of arrests that take place there. So far this year, 20 people have been arrested by the Polk County Sheriff's Office for lewd behavior....

A businessman in east Tennessee is banking on a new concept -- hillbilly tourism. He has turned an open field he owns into the Redneck Resort, a country playground focused around the love of mud and big trucks. The vacation spot offers muddy swimming holes, mud bogs, a mud slip-and-slide, a mud run for trucks and ATVs, a muddy outdoor bar and 'Mud Girls,' the resort's own lovely dirt-caked cheerleaders. ..... Jeff Darragh told WBIR-TV he owned a spot of land in Sweetwater, Tennessee, for seven years and got sick of telling local resident to stop tearing across his property...

The day after the ruling came down, this newspaper carried an article that explained Justice Roberts's decision this way: "By confounding charges that the court is too partisan, the chief justice might have earned sufficient political capital to move to the right during the next term, when the court will likely confront a host of hot-button issues, including affirmative action, gay marriage and the continued vitality of the Voting Rights Act." If earning "sufficient political capital" is simply a consequence of his ruling, Justice Roberts cannot be blamed. If it was the aim, however, and it led to his voting...

The United States has reportedly bolstered its air and naval presence in the Persian Gulf as Iran is in the middle of a three day series of missile tests aimed at mock foreign bases. The buildup is to strengthen the US’ position at the Strait of Hormuz, a key world oil route that Iran has threatened to block amid tightening sanctions over its nuclear program, the New York Times reports. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, such as power generation and cancer treatment. But Western powers suspect the Islamic Republic wants to build nuclear weapons, and Israel...

Some who spoke with my office claim they were “alarmed” by the substance of the memorandum and it caused such a stir that ATF planned to put a panel together to address the allegations but someone within DOJ suppressed the idea. The possibility that DOJ was aware of this memorandum on February 3, 2011, and still sent the erroneous letter to Congress on February 4, 2011, raises more questions about DOJ’s claim that faulty information from Department components inadvertently led to the false letter. This was direct, documented information from street level agents in a far better position to know...

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, July 2, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Fresh off its decision to celebrate “LGBT month” by incorporating a homosexual “marriage” storyline into its X-Men comic books, Marvel Comics has announced it is marking National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October by teaming up with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation. Superheroes in several comic lines will be drawn with a special pink cover to mark the comic line’s affiliation with Komen. The comics specifically involved include the Avengers, Captain America, Captain Marvel, the Fantastic Four, Invincible Iron Man, Mighty Thor, Uncanny X-Men, and Wolverine. In...

President Obama’s public humiliation of the Supreme Court, that is: [Embedded video] The Right needs to stop kidding itself that last week’s epic Dolchstoss amounts to anything but a loss: a loss to the country, a loss to the court’s apolitical reputation, and a personal loss for the chief justice, whose legacy now seems permanently sullied. From CBS News: Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court’s four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama’s health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to...

In spite of denials by Democrats and the Obama administration millions of Americans will begin feeling the impact of new Obamacare taxes on January 1, 2013.

The death certificate of Elizabeth Warren's aunt Bess "Bea" Veneck, who famously told the Massachusetts Democrat that her grandfather's "high cheekbones" belied Warren's Cherokee heritage, identifies Veneck as "white" and not "Native American." Warren officially informed the state of Oklahoma of Veneck's death in 1999. William Jacobson reports: So Aunt Bea was Indian, sharing the same ancestry as Warren, according to Warren, and that ancestry was such an important part of who Aunt Bea was that she told the story about the high cheekbones at least a thousand times. Yet when Aunt Bea died, she was not identified as American...

DUBUQUE, Iowa, July 3, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Vice President Joe Biden made a quiet visit to the religious sisters of St. Francis in Dubuque last week, the motherhouse of the current president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). David Gibson of the Religion News Service wrote that about 150 people were present at the event, and noted that the Dubuque location is the motherhouse of LCWR president Sr. Patricia Farrell, OSF. A recent newsletter also lists Farrell as one of the vice presidents of the Dubuque house. It wasn’t clear whether Farrell was present for Biden’s visit. “The...