Free Republic

On the 19th, gun owners are asked to go their state capitols to show their solidarity. I'd like to go, but I need a ride.

Jim, looks like we are Frozen again? WHY???

Admitting that passing his ambitious plan to rein in shooting incidents such as the one that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut, last month would “be difficult,” President Obama published a 22-page explanation of exactly what he has in mind. There are “four common-sense steps we can take right now,” according to the White House blog. The two steps meeting the most resistance are: 1. Closing background check loopholes to keep guns out of dangerous hands, and 2. Banning military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Highlights of his plan include requiring background checks for all gun sales, reinstating and strengthening the assault...

After 23 executive actions, Obama fails to address the problems he identifies. When President Obama announced Wednesday a slew of executive actions and proposed legislation related to gun control, he didn’t criticize the National Rifle Association by name.He did, however, make his feelings obvious.“Ask your member of Congress if they support universal background checks to keep guns out of the wrong hands,” Obama said in his remarks. “Ask them if they support renewing a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And if they say no, ask them why not.”“Ask them,” he continued, “what’s more important — doing whatever...

Those of us concerned about the decaying credibility of Big Science were dismayed to learn that the whistleblower site Science Fraud has been shut down due to a barrage of legal threats against its operator. With billions of dollars in federal science funding hinging on the integrity of academic researchers, and billions more in health care dollars riding on the truthfulness of pharmaceutical research claims, the industry needs more websites like this, not fewer. Regular readers of Retraction Watch, a watchdog site run by two medical reporters, got the news along with a story about the blog’s anonymous editor, who...

An interview with Keith Morgan, President of the West Virginia Citizens Defense League.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO)’s annual audit of the government, released Thursday, raises serious concerns about the federal government’s long-term financial stability and the effectiveness of the Affordable Care Act’s cost-curbing measures. The report found “that—absent policy changes—the federal government continues to face an unsustainable fiscal path.” The GAO, which is an “independent, nonpartisan” government agency, released its annual report as Congress braces for a fight with President Barack Obama over the debt ceiling. Republicans are calling for spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. The president has vowed not to negotiate with Congress. The report notes that...

... Over the past two years, Republicans have ... viewed every potential crisis -- a possible government shutdown, the threat of a debt ceiling breach and the prospect of the nation sailing over the "fiscal cliff" -- as an opportunity to corner Obama into agreeing to tackle the nation's mounting debt problem. This strategy has created a dynamic in which Obama has successfully portrayed Republicans as reckless, incapable of governance and willing to put the economy at risk to make a political statement. He's been able to deflect questions about his own lack of action on deficits by blaming Republican...

French troops have been fighting Mali's Islamist rebels in street battles in the town of Diabaly, Malian and French sources say. In the first major ground operation in the conflict, French special forces were fighting alongside Malian troops. Diabaly, 350km (220 miles) north of the capital Bamako, was captured by the rebels on Monday. France intervened in Mali last Friday to try to halt the Islamists' push southwards towards the capital. In a separate development, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court opened a war crimes investigation, focusing on acts committed since January 2012 in some northern regions of...

<p>New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is labeling “reprehensible” the National Rifle Association ad that brought President Barack Obama’s daughters into the gun-control debate.</p> <p>The NRA ad accused the president of being a hypocrite for allowing his daughters to be protected by armed Secret Service agents but not embracing armed guards for schools.</p>

The Utica and Marcellus shale plays in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York could represent more than $10 trillion in new economic activity when fully developed, says a new report from a bond rating firm. But the analysis by Kroll Bond Rating Agency in New York also cautions that the oil and natural gas shale boom is “fraught with a multitude of environmental and health issues” related to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. It said concerns over methane escaping during drilling, water use in fracking operations and potential contamination issues all need to be adequately addressed. New York has banned...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: So, I'm trying to keep a low profile. This is what I mean. I'm just telling you, they don't get the humor. They're wound so tight that they're just waiting to be offended. And this is like the third day in a row members of the media are fit to be tied over my characterization of the children at the White House being used as human shields. Boy, times change. Jonathan Karl, when he was at CNN, I did a number of interviews with Jonathan Karl, and he was like our old buddy Jim Rutenberg at the...

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 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 broader measures.Working out...

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is encouraging licensed gun dealers to help private gun sellers run federal background checks. In an open letter to the country's federally licensed gun dealers, the ATF says they can "enhance public safety and assist law enforcement" by facilitating private sales through their businesses and running federal background checks on prospective gun buyers.

A Mexican national claims to be the man who shot and killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, whose death is tied to the "Fast and Furious" gun-walking scandal. Gustavo Cruz-Lozano, who says he killed Terry, turned himself in on Wednesday on charges related to a separate incident: threatening to kill Hidalgo County, Texas Sheriff Lupe Treviño. But before he surrendered himself, Cruz-Lozano said in an exclusive interview with Univision News' daily news magazine show "Primer Impacto" that he murdered Terry during a firefight on Dec. 14, 2010, while the agent was on patrol near the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona....

BURLINGTON, Vt. - A firing range has announced the Burlington Police Department is not welcome to train at its facilities any longer. Last week the Burlington City Council voted to ban semi-automatic rifles and large capacity magazines in the city limits. The chairman of the Lamoille Valley Fish and Game Club explained in a letter that it cannot support the city with such a prejudice against the club, and has voted to suspend the city's use of the range for law enforcement officers. Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling says it will affect how and when officers train with their firearms....

Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law. Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.” The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA...

For the last ten years, theoretical physicists have shown that the intense connections generated between particles as established in the quantum law of 'entanglement' may hold the key to eventual teleportation of quantum information. Now, for the first time, researchers have worked out how entanglement could be 'recycled' to increase the efficiency of these connections. Published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the result could conceivably take us a step closer to sci-fi style teleportation in the future, although this research is purely theoretical in nature. The team have also devised a generalised form of teleportation, which allows for a...

I'm getting about 20 articles showing per page and no stuff on the side. Is something broken?

Early last year in Williston there had been too much attention focused on the local gentlemen's clubs for any strippers to talk with me about what they earned, but apparently that's changed. John Eligon from The New York Times just visited the North Dakota boomtown and one visiting dancer says she often earns more than $1,000 a night. That may be a conservative estimate as word last year was dancers were making two to three times that amount, but club owners were concerned with IRS attention and prohibited employees from speaking to the press. With nearly two men for every...