Free Republic

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is sharing his regrets about his "fiscal-cliff" strategy, less than a month after the House bitterly swallowed a last-minute deal hatched in the Senate. In a private speech to the Ripon Society on Tuesday, Boehner said that he should have taken a different course after the November election by immediately demanding that the Senate produce a bill to avert the worst parts of a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that were due to hit on Jan. 1. Instead, Boehner delivered a formal speech at the Capitol on the day after President Obama won a...

August Landmesser (born May 24, 1910; missing and presumed dead Oct 17, 1944; declared dead in 1949) was a worker at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, best known for his appearance in a photograph refusing to perform the Nazi salute at the launch of the naval training vessel Horst Wessel on 13 June 1936. August Landmesser was the only child of August Franz Landmesser and Wilhelmine Magdalene (née Schmidtpott). He joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1931 in hope of getting a job. When he became engaged to the Jewish woman Irma Eckler in 1935, he was...

Issuing Tehran's strongest warning to date, a top Iranian official said Saturday that any attack on Syria would be deemed an attack on Iran, a sign that it will do all it can to protect embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad. Ali Akbar Velayati, an aide to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made his comments as Syrian troops conducted offensive air raids against rebels and discovered a trio of tunnels they were using to smuggle weapons in their fight to topple Assad. The world has been grappling over how to deal with Syria ever since an uprising against Assad's regime...

Have you heard much about President Obama’s $787,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) lately?  In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending that had by then gone out the door, only one job had been created or saved.  Even in Washington, that’s not considered good bang for the buck. Moreover, that was the fifth consecutive “stimulus” report that showed this number getting progressively worse.Alas, that was the last report we’ve seen.  Never mind that Section 1513 of the “stimulus” legislation, which...

Washington (CNN) -- The Pentagon has begun laying off 46,000 contract and temporary civilian employees in an effort to cut back on military spending, the No. 2 Pentagon official said on Friday. Full time civilian employees, which number in the hundreds of thousands, also will be furloughed for one day a week for 22 weeks, Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in an interview with wire service reporters. His comments were confirmed by a Pentagon spokesman.

There was an 1854 Lefaucheux pinfire pistol carbine on display, as well as an 1876 .22-caliber derringer in a glass box. But neither was for sale. It wouldn't have mattered if they were. The gun enthusiasts who showed up in Rosemont on Friday for what was billed as the first-ever Chicagoland Gun Show didn't seem interested in gawking at antique pistols. Some wanted to buy high-powered rifles, semi-automatic handguns and high-capacity magazines. But there wasn't a single gun dealer at the show, only a Chicago collector who said he was there to show off his collection. "I've been to a...

If 27 people were killed due to a soccer event and/or ruling, shouldn't there be a ban on the game? Oh wait, Soccer balls don't kill people, people kill people.

Biases upfront: I'm a 46 year-old health nut obsessed with exercise and eating right. I don’t smoke or drink, and there are supermodels who worry less about their weight. However, I do admire those who don't live like that; who might not live as long as I do, but will probably enjoy their overall quality of life more than my somewhat Spartan one. Oh, and I also realize that this is America. And if people want to pursue happiness through a double cheeseburger and a pack of Newports, any joyless, left-wing bossy-pants who has a problem with that can go...

It was one of one of those grand summits in the journey through life, when the entire landscape is set before you in ultra-high definition. Suddenly, you know where you are, where you are going and what you have to do to get there. I upgraded my iPhone....

This was too funny; an animated Thomas Jefferson makes the case that Social Security violates the Constitution of the United States and operates like a ponzi scheme. Here it is - Why We Should Abolish Social Security

A muslim who raped a 13-year-old girl he groomed on Facebook has been spared a prison sentence after a judge heard he went to an Islamic faith school where he was taught that women are worthless. Adil Rashid, 18, claimed he was not aware that it was illegal for him to have sex with the girl because his education left him ignorant of British law. Yesterday Judge Michael Stokes handed Rashid a suspended sentence, saying: ‘Although chronologically 18, it is quite clear from the reports that you are very naive and immature when it comes to sexual matters.’ Earlier Nottingham...

A bipartisan group of House members has been quietly meeting and is close to an agreement on changes to propose the nation’s immigration laws, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said last week in a speech to a Republican group.

Inspired by the words of Thomas Paine, the new nation's leaders sought to resolve grievances with the government to allow the citizenry to live free from tyranny, while remaining true to the concepts of civil rights and individual liberty. James Madison, in his letter of October 24, 1787 to Thomas Jefferson voiced concerns: "a majority... united by a common interest or a passion cannot be constrained from oppressing the minority." His words have now been proven justified. In writing the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson, guided by Thomas Paine's 'Common Sense', laid out the grievances against the king, many of which...

There is an epidemic taking hold in America that appears immune to intervention or therapy, and despite the best effort of the nation’s brightest minds to find a cure, it seems likely to remain virulent, but limited to a particular segment of the population for the foreseeable future. The disease’s symptoms are beliefs with the strong conviction despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and unlike beliefs based on confabulation, faulty or incomplete information, there are no known remedies for delusion. Unlike most severe mental disorders, this epidemic has a traceable beginning and a very predictable demise, but that is little...

The Truth About Obamacare “Obamacare” is neither about health nor care. It is ultimately about control, the devaluation and the elimination of human life. Here is the Vulcan mind-meld translation of the core premise of the Left: you have no right to live. By their lights, you are no more than a thing, or an animal, or a machine. Therefore, you have no right to the fruits of your labors. You are a ‘resource’ at best, a fungible, and ultimately disposable asset of the State. Or you are in their way and must be eliminated. There are the last 200...

        PRAYER Dear Lord.... As we offer You thanks and praise, we realize how important it is to stay prepared for all the surprises in life. Daily, so many things catch us off guard, though they seem to happen over and over again. Would life be easier if we could begin the day with, "This is a drill. This is a drill"? Would we be any more prepared if there were drills for the many personal challenges we respond to daily? Besides a "general quarters" for missile hits, we'd prepare to take hits for all the...

In Sarah Palin’s first interview since parting ways with Fox News, the former Alaska governor said she doesn’t want to “just preach to the choir" and that she is looking to take her message to a "larger audience." Palin told Breitbart News there needs to be “more truth-telling in the media” and called for fellow conservatives to follow her lead and expand their audience. “I encourage others to step out in faith, jump out of the comfort zone, and broaden our reach as believers in American exceptionalism,” she told the conservative news site in a short Q&A. “That means broadening...

This is the first day of the gun show since the City of Austin discussed possibly banning from the Travis County Expo Center. State law, however, prevailed because the move would have proved illegal in Texas... “It took 20 minutes to park the truck and about an hour waiting in line,” Another group, One Million Moms for Gun Control marched at the Texas Capitol... The group expected over 100 participants to join in the Austin event.

When the history of US politics in the early 21st century is written, two figures will stand out: Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. The election of Mr. Obama to the highest elective office – the first African-American to win the presidency – did not necessarily signal a new era of post-racial politics. But coming just a generation after federal troops in the South (and a federal judge in Boston) were necessary to desegregate public schools, it was a huge milestone. Sarah Palin was not the first woman to win a major political party’s vice presidential nomination; that was US Rep....

Blast hits key Iranian nuclear site? US-based website WND says mysterious explosion destroys large part of Fordo nuclear facility. Report uncorroborated by any official Western source Ynet Published: 01.26.13, 23:12 / Israel News WND, an American news website affiliated with the Right, reported Friday that a mysterious explosion has destroyed a significant portion of Iran's Fordo nuclear facility – considered Tehran's most fortified facility. The website alleged that Hamidreza Zakeri, formerly with the Islamic Republic's Ministry of Intelligence and National Security, confirmed that the facility was hit, but the report has not been corroborated by any Western source. Related stoies:...