Free Republic

The Miami Heat's upcoming four-game trip will feature a welcomed detour. The White House announced Wednesday the team will meet Monday with President Obama at the White House to commemorate the franchise's 2012 NBA championship. According to a memo from the White House press office, "President Obama will welcome the NBA Champion Miami Heat to the White House to honor the team and their 2012 NBA Championship victory. The President will also recognize the Heat’s ongoing support to the men and women who serve in our military and their families, continuing the tradition begun by President Obama of honoring sports...

A natural gas drilling boom is creating long lines at the Tyler County Courthouse as companies seek to verify the titles of properties they are leasing. The records room has a limited number of spaces, two of which are left open for local attorneys and residents who need to do business, County Commission President John Stender said. That leaves oil and gas companies’ representatives jostling for a place in line.

This week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will be making her swan song appearance on Capitol Hill, providing at last to Senate and House panels her testimony about the Benghazigate scandal. Under the circumstances, legislators may feel pressured to be deferential and to keep their questions more limited in scope and superficial rather than probing. For the good of the country, it is imperative that they resist going soft. After all, the hearings Wednesday before the two chambers' committees responsible for foreign policy oversight afford the final opportunity to examine with the sitting secretary of state her legacy with...

French-led troops surrounded Mali's fabled desert city of Timbuktu on Monday after seizing its airport in a lightning advance against Islamists who have been driven from key northern strongholds. French paratroopers swooped in to block any fleeing Islamists while ground troops coming from the south seized the airport in the ancient city which has been one of the bastions of the extremists who have controlled the north for 10 months. "We control the airport at Timbuktu," a senior officer with the Malian army told AFP. "We did not encounter any resistance." French army spokesman Colonel Thierry Burkhard told AFP the...

Prominent economists, politicians, and pundits throw around the term “austerity” as if policies by that name always take the same form. They usually use the term to criticize the concept and its effects by pointing to Europe’s stagnation at the hands of “savage” cuts in government spending. But this mindset ignores the question: Austerity for whom? The answer is especially important if the United States, which has continued to follow in Western Europe’s footsteps with this month’s fiscal-cliff deal, is to learn from the Old World’s mistakes. Raising taxes on the private sector while government continues to gorge itself on...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem A New Journey…The Names of God in The Scriptures El Bethel - GOD of the House of GOD(Genesis 35:7) There he built an altar, and he called the place El Bethel, because it was there that God revealed himself to him...

At what point does the ridiculous become absurd? When is it okay to call President Obama out on his complete and total foolishness? Since I am the one writing this post, this is my opinion. We are far past the point where Obama should be called on the carpet for the foolish statements he makes. His latest published gripe about the media really makes me wonder just how out-of-touch the President really is. Is he so naive that he believes the trite nonsense he is spouting? If we are to believe what he says, the media is biased, but it...

MRC's Brent Bozell discusses liberal media bias and its effect on the Tea Party movement with Scottie Nell Hughes of the Tea Party News Network.

Another gun turn in will be conducted at College Park, Georgia on February 9th, from 11 am to 5 pm. The turn in will be conducted at 3631 Main Street. $20,000 of public funds has been allocated for this political theater designed to delegitimize armed citizens, defraud ignorant gun owners, and increase the demand for new firearms by decreasing the supply of used ones. As is happening across the country, private citizens are likely to be on hand to pick up a bargain gun, while offering more than the city will for good quality guns. Others will be scouring...

There have been suggestions floating around that some of the bigger donors should buy a newspaper, a television network or a women's magazine to counter the media's grip. There was a time when a powerful media outlet could be bought or created by conservative owners and function and wield influence over national policy. Time Magazine in the Luce era is one example. But that was when the media was a patchwork of publications and radio stations where powerful owners often set the tone. Today the media is more of an integrated beast that is mostly localized on the internet. It's...

Do This for Your Health! Today's Scripture “A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.” (Proverbs 14:30, NIV) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria It’s so easy to let the pressures and distractions of life pull our thoughts away from the Father. It doesn’t take long before we are so focused on earthly things that we feel overwhelmed and all stressed out. But, we weren’t meant to live anxious about life; we were meant to live in peace. Did you know the best thing you can do for health is to set your...

How Could Someone So Persecute Jesus! "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" —Acts 26:14 Are you determined to have your own way in living for God? We will never be free from this trap until we are brought into the experience of the baptism of “the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11). Stubbornness and self-will will always stab Jesus Christ. It may hurt no one else, but it wounds His Spirit. Whenever we are obstinate and self-willed and set on our own ambitions, we are hurting Jesus. Every time we stand on our own rights and insist that...

Speaking Saturday at the conservative National Review Institute summit, Cruz said, “Let me give three concrete bits of advice to conservatives in Washington, and in particular let me address this to our friends in the House of Representatives, who I think for the next two years are the last bastion standing between us and oblivion,” the freshman senator told a gathering of conservatives at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. “The first thing I would urge to every Republican in the House of Representatives is stop reading the New York Times,” he said. “Cancel your subscription.” “Listen, the media...

This woman testifies to Schumer & Frank et al about what the 2nd Amendment is all about, and it aint hunting. This is from 1991 but is timeless...

Explanation: Clouds of glowing gas mingle with dust lanes in the Trifid Nebula, a star forming region toward the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius). In the center, the three prominent dust lanes that give the Trifid its name all come together. Mountains of opaque dust appear on the right, while other dark filaments of dust are visible threaded throughout the nebula. A single massive star visible near the center causes much of the Trifid's glow. The Trifid, also known as M20, is only about 300,000 years old, making it among the youngest emission nebulae known. The nebula lies about 9,000...

Bear surprises a camera crew filming a commercial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoe5Vjl90-o

The Lebanon-based Hizbullah terrorist organization is setting up bases in Syria close to known chemical weapons storage facilities, according to a source quoted in a report published Monday by Israeli Hebrew-language news outlet Ynet. Hizbullah, which is generously funded and equipped by Iran, has been working to shore up the government forces backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, together with Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards. But even with that assistance, the loyalists are beginning to lose their grip on the country, and it appears likely that Assad’s regime may soon fall. If it does, there is a strong likelihood that he may...

How the Republican candidate lost the presidential election. < snip > ..... [Republicans] are concocting explanations and excuses for what they see as Mitt Romney's snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They should realize that it was economics that sank Romney. His crucial problem was his campaign's failure to make a sufficiently convincing case on the money issues. Most postmortems have focused on the demographics of the defeat. ..... < snip > But none of Romney's demographic defeats are as significant as the electoral potential Romney missed on money issues. Election Day exit polling by Edison Media Research/Mitofsky International...

As long as Republicans do not kick away a golden opportunity, wonderfully wild West Virginia could be their best U.S. Senate pick-up prospect of the 2014 midterm election. With incumbent Democrat Jay Rockefeller’s decision to retire, the door has opened for a strong Republican candidate to win a state that has pivoted away from Democrats in presidential races as well as in its congressional delegation. Mountaineer Republicans never were able to knock off another Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin, but a number of factors worked against them. First, in fairness, Manchin basically is a Republican; second, he was a popular pro-gun,...

An Israeli intelligence source has confirmed Iran’s Fordow underground nuclear uranium enrichment facility sustained major damage in a “mega explosion” that occurred last week. Fordow, which contains at least 2,700 centrifuges for uranium enrichment, is located deep beneath a mountain near the Iranian city of Qom. Some 200 workers were trapped inside the facility at the time, according to a report published Monday by The Times, a UK-based newspaper.