Free Republic

Last week, I appeared on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight." For the past few weeks, Morgan had been inviting gun rights defenders ranging from the reasonable to the nutty, and then slamming them by appealing to the memory of the children slain at Sandy Hook. And when I appeared with Morgan, that's precisely what I told him: "What you tend to do is you tend to demonize people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook, saying they don't seem to care enough about the dead kids." Morgan could only stammer, "How dare...

One definition of "imperial" on dictionary.com is, "of the nature or rank of an emperor or supreme ruler." At his news conference Monday, a petulant, threatening and confrontational President Obama spoke like an emperor or supreme ruler. All that was missing was a scepter, a crown and a robe trimmed in ermine. This president exceeds even Bill Clinton in his ability to evade, prevaricate and dissemble. I didn't think that possible. Not only did he supply long answers to relatively easy questions, but much of what he said bore no relation to reality. He spoke of having had the debate...

What do Al Hunt of Bloomberg News, David Gregory of “Meet the Press” and President Obama have in common -- besides their liberal politics? They all send their kids to Sidwell Friends School. With campuses in Washington, D.C. and Bethesda, Md., the highly selective private school is where the Clintons and the Gores sent their kids, along with Joe Biden’s grandchildren. It’s also where the local 1 Percenters and the government-media elites who can afford to shell out about $32 grand a year send their children to be indoctrinated -- excuse me, educated -- and to be safe. Unlike parents...

Let me say on the record that I don’t really care about New Jersey. I know very little about it. But, I know this much: I don’t want to live there and I don’t want the rest of the United States to resemble New Jersey. For me New Jersey is the Joe Piscopo character asking anyone and everyone “Are you from Jersey? I’m from Jersey.”Also, I’ve never seen the TV show “Jersey Shore,” but still I don’t like it. And know that I don’t want the rest of the country to resemble it, either.It’s the state that elected Jon Corzine...

Al Qaeda terrorists have seized a gas field in Algeria and have taken 40 Western hostages. 3 have been executed. The terrorists successfully thwarted a military raid Wednesday night. The hostage nationalities are US, Britain, Norway, France and Japan. 150 Algerian hostages were released...

To judge from his surly demeanor and defiant words at his press conference on Monday, Barack Obama begins his second term with a strategy to defeat and humiliate Republicans rather than a strategy to govern. His point blank refusal to negotiate over the debt ceiling was clearly designed to make the House Republicans look bad. But Obama knows very well that negotiations usually accompany legislation to increase the government's debt limit. As Gordon Gray of the conservative American Action Network points out, most of the 17 increases in the debt ceiling over the last 20 years have been part of...

The face of gun violence is not Sandy Hook. It is Chicago. In 2012, President Barack Obama's adopted hometown had 506 murders, including more than 60 children. Philadelphia, a city that local television newscasters frequently call 'Killadelphia," saw 331 killed last year. In Detroit, 386 people were murdered. Since 1966, there have been 90 school shootings in the U.S., with 231 fatalities. Yes, Sandy Hook shocked us. But the odds of a child being killed at a school shooting are longer than the odds of being struck by lightning. Of the 11,000 to 12,000 gun murders each year, more than...

The horrific Newtown, Conn., mass shooting has unleashed a frenzy to pass new gun-control legislation. But the war over restricting firearms is not just between liberals and conservatives; it also pits the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution against each other. Apparently, in the sequential thinking of James Madison and the Founding Fathers, the right to free expression and the guarantee to own arms were the two most important personal liberties. But now these two cherished rights seem to be at odds with each other and have caused bitter exchanges between interpreters of the Constitution. Many liberals believe there...

Seung-Hui Cho, who committed the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, had been diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder as a child and placed under treatment. But Virginia Tech was prohibited from being told about Cho's mental health problems because of federal privacy laws. At college, Cho engaged in behavior even more bizarre than the average college student. He stalked three women and, at one point, went totally silent, refusing to speak even to his roommates. He was involuntarily committed to a mental institution for one night and then unaccountably unleashed on the public, whereupon he proceeded to engage in the...

Indonesian disaster authorities have lost count of the number of people who have been left homeless in widespread flooding, but say it could reach the hundreds of thousands. The centre of Jakarta, including the Presidential Palace, is awash and parts of the Indonesian capital that have never seen flooding before are now underwater. Yesterday 10,000 people had to flee their homes but hours of heavy downpours overnight and rivers bursting their banks, have added to the problem. Audio: Australia Network's Indonesia correspondent, Helen Brown, speaks to News Radio (ABC News) Three people have been killed so far in the seasonal...

A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye. Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive. The question of how much of her face a woman should cover is a controversial topic in many Muslim societies. The niqab is more common in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but women in much of the Muslim Middle East wear a headscarf which covers only their hair. Sheikh Habadan, an ultra-conservative cleric who is said to have wide influence among religious...

Sad news out of Belgium: two twins, deaf from birth, were euthanized after discovering they were going blind. The brothers worked and lived together, and they were productive members of society. They weren’t suffering, in extreme pain, or terminally ill. Belgium’s euthanasia law requires that a person be suffering from extreme pain or a terminal illness. The twins, despite not meeting the requirements to be eligible for euthanasia, were still put to death by lethal injection. The pair were euthanised by lethal injection by doctors at Brussels University Hospital on December 14. “They were very happy. It was a relief...

Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fitted in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods". Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as a credibly nutritious substitute for meat. Unusual among...

The NRA released on Tuesday an ad that accuses Obama of being an "elitist hypocrite," because he provides armed protection for his children but insists that the nation's schools remain "gun-free zones." The video is part of the NRA's offensive dubbed "Stand and fight," in response to its anticipation of Obama's announcement of stricter gun control measures. According to Boston.com, the 35-second video posted to YouTube by user HotWeirdNews, also appeared on the NRA's website on Tuesday. However, the video was removed from the NRA's website by Wednesday morning. The ad begins with a shot of a school, the American...

"I'm against having a king," Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said of U.S. President Barack Obama in an interview to the Christian Broadcasting Network. Paul expressed his apprehension on the president's threats to impose gun control through executive orders. "I think having a monarch is what we fought the American Revolution over, and someone who wants to bypass the Constitution, bypass Congress, that's someone who wants to act like a king or monarch," Paul said. "Suffering rule," wherein the people of a nation suffer through a decision made unilaterally by the ruler - whether he is elected, or not, was a...

US-based Hemlock Semiconductor said Monday it planned to shed 400 of the staff at its Michigan and Tennessee production plants due to an oversupply in the polysilicon industry and an expected drop in orders from China. Hemlock, a joint venture of US silicon-based materials maker Dow Corning, Japanese Shin-Etsu Chemical Co Ltd (TSE:4063) and Mitsubishi Materials Corp (TYO:5711), makes polycrystalline silicon for the production of semiconductors and solar cells. The company is suffering from the expanding trade dispute between the US and China in which the Asian country launched anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probes into polysilicon imported from the US, the...

During the past two years as his frustration with a "dysfunctional" Congress has grown, President Barack Obama has resorted to bypassing the legislative branch as he did on Wednesday to implement tighter gun control laws. "Where they won't act, I will," he said in October 2011 as part of a "We Can't Wait" campaign he launched 10 months after Republicans took over the U.S. House of Representatives. Since then, the president has turned to executive orders, policy directives, waivers, signing statements and other administrative steps to bypass Congress and act on contentious issues, including immigration, welfare, education reform and now...

January 17, 2013   Memorial of Saint Anthony, Abbot   Reading 1 Heb 3:7-14 The Holy Spirit says:Oh, that today you would hear his voice,“Harden not your hearts as at the rebellionin the day of testing in the desert,where your ancestors tested and tried meand saw my works for forty years.Because of this I was provoked with that generationand I said, ‘They have always been of erring heart,and they do not know my ways.’As I swore in my wrath,‘They shall not enter into my rest.’”Take care, brothers and sisters,that none of you may have an evil and unfaithful heart,so...

In America, we are about to experience the most sweeping, restrictive gun control legislation ever enacted since the second amendment was written. So, where do we draw the line? When do we stand up and boldly proclaim: “Enough is Enough?” Since the first inauguration of Obama in 2008, the average American citizen has witnessed an onslaught of restrictions to their freedoms emanating from the Office of the Executive. There has been the debt incurred through the “Quantitative Easing” Programs, the restrictions to our freedom of speech on the internet and the violations to our freedom of religion through the recent...

The nation's largest pharmacy benefits manager is cutting its payroll. St. Louis-based Express Scripts Holding Co. announced its laying off 332 employees nationwide, including 103 workers at the former Medco Health Solutions site in Franklin Lakes and 12 at its facility in Willingboro. The layoffs are the latest in a series that followed the company's $29.1 billion acquisition of Medco in April...