Free Republic

Conflicts across the globe and an international respect for Barack Obama have created the perfect setting for establishment of “a New World Order,” according to Henry Kissinger, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former secretary of state under President Nixon.

BAMAKO/SEVARE, Mali (Reuters) - French and Malian troops were on Sunday restoring government control over the fabled Saharan trading town of Timbuktu, the latest gain in a fast-moving French-led offensive against al Qaeda-allied fighters occupying northern Mali. The Islamist militant rebels have pulled back northwards to avoid relentless French air strikes that have destroyed their bases, vehicles and weapons, allowing French and Malian troops to advance rapidly with air support and armored vehicles. A Malian military source told Reuters the French and Malian forces reached "the gates of Timbuktu" late on Saturday without meeting resistance from the Islamist insurgents who...

President Obama is suggesting that House Republicans on the issue of gun control appear neither willing to work with him nor listen to the American public on the issue. “The House Republican majority is made up mostly of members who are in sharply gerrymandered districts that are very safely Republican and may not feel compelled to pay attention to broad-based public opinion, because what they're really concerned about is the opinions of their specific Republican constituencies,” the president said in an interview with The New Republic. Obama also said he can get 50 percent of public support for many of...

Andre Barbosa may soon have to pack up and leave the palatial home he has been occupying in Boca Raton, Florida. The 23-year-old Brazilian national has been squatting at the $2.5million waterfront estate on Golden Harbour Drive since the summer, infuriating all the neighbors in the process. Barbosa, originally from the neighboring Pompano Beach, has been threatening to use an obscure real estate law that allows people to claim a property as their own if they stay there for seven years. No one witnessed Barbosa breaking into the 7,522-squae foot, five-bedroom, six-bathroom waterfront home, so he cannot be arrested. But...

A correlation of legal drug use to recent school attacks https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/13c79487a83e67be

Was at the Austin Gun Show yesterday, got there at about 1pm there was a line out the door into the parking lot. was in line 30min or so. Lots of AR-AK platforms several folks selling mags (in parking lot). Inside lots of AR-AK deals, Folks were shelling out cash like there was no tomorrow. Ammo was $hocking, I tell you $hocking. I have been to several Austin shows in the last year or so this was the first one where I had to stand in line just to get in. Sorry no pics but it looks like 0(zerotm) is...

A new law that makes it illegal to 'unlock' your cell phone and switch carriers goes into effect today and will carry fines between $2,500 and $500,000, and in some cases, prison time. The change made by the U.S. Copyright Office and Library of Congress to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act will make it illegal for consumers to unlock mobile devices without the permission of their carrier. The lock feature on mobile devices essentially allows carriers a way to prevent customers from switching to a new plan with a different company. Unless your phone came unlocked and are grandfathered in...

Barack Obama on the media By DYLAN BYERS | 1/27/13 12:01 AM EST The New Republic has just lifted the embargo on its wideranging interview with President Obama, in which he talked at length about the role the media can play in breaking Washington's partisan gridlock. "One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates," he tells editor Frank Foer and owner and publisher Chris Hughes. "If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll...

In the ongoing fevered debate over gun control legislation, registration of firearms is a key flashpoint. “Progressives” insist that nothing could be more reasonable and benign than simply requiring every firearm and firearm owner to be registered with some government entity. Thus, bad guys could be screened out and guns used in crimes could be traced to help catch the criminals. They denounce as paranoid, delusional nonsense the concerns of gun owners that registration would lead to eventual confiscation. In a “Fact Check” at Time.com intended to dismiss “The Gun Registry Red Herring,” Michael Scherer notes that President Obama’s “Now...

But at the first public screening Friday of the documentary After Tiller, the familiar specter in the corner of the theater was a uniformed police officer, and ticketholders were scanned by metal detectors on their way in. The reason for the extraordinary security was After Tiller's controversial subject matter, and more important, its subjects: the four doctors in the United States who openly perform third-trimester abortions.

An explosion deep within Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility has destroyed much of the installation, trapped about 240 personnel deep underground, according to a former intelligence officer of the Islamic regime, and reported by Reza Kahlili on Thursday. The previously secret nuclear site has become a center for Iran’s nuclear activity because of the 2,700 centrifuges enriching uranium to the 20-percent level. A further enrichment to weapons grade would take only weeks, experts say.“The level of enrichment has been a major concern to Israeli officials, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly has warned about the 20-percent enriched stockpile. The explosion occurred...

In the movie, John Cusack's character would climb through a long tunnel and come out the other side feeling as if he were another person – inside of them, seeing and feeling the world through that person's eyes. (In a twist, that person would always be the actor John Malcovich, who plays a fictionalized version of himself in the movie.) Anyway, I bring this up because Twitter's new social media app for the iPhone, Vine, is the closest thing to a real-life Being John Malcovich I have ever seen. For six seconds, you see and hear the world through someone...

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (KTLA) — The 30th Space Wing and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency conducted a flight test of the Ground-Based Mid-course Defense system Saturday. The missile test was designed to demonstrate the latest version of the advanced kill vehicle.

Gary Flakes, a man convicted in the murders of two teenagers, formally announced Wednesday that he's running for Colorado Springs City Council. ... In 1997, Flakes was convicted of accessory to murder and negligent homicide in the killings of 13-year-old Andy Westbay and 15-year-old Scott Hawrysiak. The boys were gunned down as they were walking in the Cheyenne Meadows area on Valentine's Day. Flakes and his friend Jeron Grant accused each other of pulling the trigger of the shotgun, and neither was convicted of murder, sparking outrage. After spending 12 years in prison, Flakes was released in 2011. ... Scott...

Full headline: Before he was overthrown and killed, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi warned jihadists would conquer northern Africa During the dying days of his four decade rule, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi cast an ominous prophecy. If his regime fell, jihadists would subjugate northern Africa, inflicting widespread violence and terror. “Al-Qaeda considers all the people to be infidels,” Mr. Gaddafi declared in a speech weeks before NATO began its military intervention in Libya. “They deem all people their enemies. They know nothing but killing.” The Islamists would pour in from Afghanistan, Algeria, and Egypt, he warned, saying, “These are beasts with...

Some fun for a Sunday Morning....

Professor: Take our country back, from the Constitution The U.S. Constitution - a document perhaps too revered, says Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman. (Library of Congress) (CBS News) Is the U.S. Constitution truly worthy of the reverence in which most Americans hold it? A view on that from Louis Michael Seidman, Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University: I've got a simple idea: Let's give up on the Constitution. I know, it sounds radical, but it's really not. Constitutional disobedience is as American as apple pie. For example, most of our greatest Presidents -- Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, and both...

At California's only African-American student science fair, the presentations on cardboard poster boards had a lofty mission: High school sophomore Daniel Tekle compared germs on the euro and American dollar; ninth-grader Saron Tedla's achieved neutral buoyancy with a homemade submarine, and 14-year-old Galila Amedie's deciphered the effect of temperature on DNA extraction. For the 80 kids -- a record number -- who participated Saturday in the annual fair sponsored by the Frank S. Greene Scholars Program, though, the science may be the easy part. Upending long-standing societal trends will be their real conquest. Many of the students showing their projects...

“You should be afraid,” says a 24 year veteran officer of the U.S. State Department who is facing job termination for writing a book about what really went on in the Iraq war years. He has been stripped of his security clearance and diplomatic credentials. Blogging on TomDispach.com , Peter Van Buren is warning that President Barack Obama is “declaring himself above the law; he decides himself who lives or dies by death by drones.” This state department veteran writing in the liberal leaning Mother Jones Journals, is revealing yet another non reported story about the Obama Administration. An award...

With the state budget balanced for the first time in years, Gov. Jerry Brown is roaring that "California is back," painting a rosier future for California with gauzy predictions of its "rendezvous with destiny." But beneath the governor's flowery evocations of "bold pioneers" who followed "every failure with an even greater success," Brown tacitly acknowledged during his State of the State speech last week that California's present isn't what it once was. Before they rendezvous with destiny, Californians must confront their stark new reality. "What everybody is struggling with now is how to set expectations," said Mark Baldassare, president and...