Free Republic

Confession: I plucked the inspiration for this piece from my father. Given the premise, perhaps that’s appropriate. The common underlying current to the progressivism which has saturated America’s social, political and economic firmament is an erosion of America’s multigenerational purpose. The federal apparatus has supplanted families as our primary support mechanism. Families provide the sure foundation undergirding Western Civilization. No laws or economic remedy can arrest social breakdown if the family structure fractures. Yet, progressives have commandeered the political realm to overhaul culture. Marriage withers under easy divorce, subsidized illegitimacy, and the desire among progressives to make it anything and...

First, criminals don’t obey the laws. That is why they are criminals. ...

Will the Fed End QE Summer 2013? Interest-Rates / Quantitative EasingJan 30, 2013 - 07:30 PM GMT By: Money Morning Jeff Uscher writes: Amid all of the hoopla over the Standard & Poor's 500 Index touching 1,500 on Friday, it seems few people noticed that the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds has risen to within a couple of basis points of 2%. That is nearly 30 basis points higher than it was one month ago and 10 basis points higher than one year ago. It seems as if the bond market is beginning to price in higher inflation at...

Living here in the shadow of our nation’s great Capitol in this fine Federal City, my neighbors and I enjoy the peace and serenity of a tightly enforced “no-fly” zone. By “peace” and “serenity” I mean that we are under near-constant assault by helicopters everywhere whapping just over our rooftops. Sometimes they are orange, sometimes green, sometimes they are blue with an orange stripe. And, yes, sometimes they are even actual black helicopters flying just overhead. I have even seen them ride over my little house with a guy tricked out in tactical gear hanging out the door holding a...

Nothing like an idiot who thinks he is intelligent I'm minding my own business watching Sean Hannity with David Limbaugh and Juan Williams. JW hogged most of the airtime with Limbaugh barely getting in a word. JuanW has a glow and confidence ever since 0 got back in. He has become more vocal spreading his liberal manure. It got so bad I surfed to different channels and whenever I got back to Fox, JW was on and David Limbaugh was not This is the worst JW has been. I mute him all the time. He makes any Fox News show...

Windows 8 pro review (upgrade XP to Windows 8 with Classic Shell)I am writing this hasty and imperfect review of Windows 8 for fellow Freepers (etc.) in case someone is looking into buying it, and as the 39.99 (about 42.00 with taxes) upgrade ends tonight. Better late then never i suppose. And the the media center upgrade is only fre till then ($10.00 afterward) which should be standard. And no, I have no affiliation with MS. My review is on how W/8 runs this old PC (used mainly for Christian ministry). This is a 2005 Sony VGC-RA840G (Asus P5LP-VX 64...

Apart from finding out that Barack Obama did far worse in his re-election than nearly any other incumbent who won re-election, the only thing that perked me up after Nov. 6 was coming across a Time magazine published after the 2004 election, when George W. Bush won a second term.In the mirror image of all the 2012 post-election analyses, the Democrats were said to be finished, out of ideas, hopelessly unpopular. It’s like watching MSNBC, with the word “Democrats” replaced with “Republicans.”Democrats had thrown everything they had into beating Bush, crushing the Howard Dean wing of their party and running...

The tax hikes already on the books, taking effect in 2013, fall mainly on people who make lots of money and on the health care industry. But about half of Americans benefit from the tax-free status of employer health insurance. Workers pay no income or payroll taxes on what their employer contributes for health insurance, and in most cases on their own share of premiums as well. It's the single biggest tax break the government allows, outstripping the mortgage interest deduction, the deduction for charitable giving and other better-known benefits. If the value of job-based health insurance were taxed like...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ COMBAT GUNNER U.S. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Bobby Heimovitz, assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 9, USS Harry S. Truman, fires a .50-caliber machine gun at a MK-25 smoke target in the Atlantic Ocean, Sept. 5, 2012. Heimovitz is a naval aircrewman helicopter. The squadron is under way with the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman to support carrier qualifications. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Mick DiMestico Canteen Mission Statement Showing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies' militaryand family members...

The Local Newspaper for Las Vegas today had an article on the true unemployment figures for Nevada. This figure included the unemployed who have used up all of their Unemployment eligibility, the people who have stopped looking for work, and the people currently on unemployment. The figure is 22% of the current residents of Nevada, not the phony figures put out by the Government

The Local Newspaper for Las Vegas today had an article on the true unemployment figures for Nevada. This figure included the unemployed who have used up all of their Unemployment eligibility, the people who have stopped looking for work, and the people currently on unemployment. The figure is 22% of the current residents of Nevada, not the phony figures put out by the Government

South Korea for the first time has successfully sent a satellite into space from its own soil, joining an exclusive club that only 12 other nations in history have entered. South Korea failed previously to achieve a flawless launch, allowing impoverished North Korea to beat its rival into space. During South Korean launches in 2009 and 2010, the protective barrier around the payload failed to separate properly from the rocket. This time all appeared to go according to plan after the KSLV-1, with a Russian first stage, lifted off from the Naro Space Center, 480 kilometers south of Seoul. Its...

Guns: A 15-year-old girl who performed at the president's inauguration is gunned down by gangs less than a mile from Barack Obama's home. What does Chicago's mayor do? He blames banks who lend gun makers money. Hadiya Pendleton, who just days before had performed with her high school band at President Obama's inauguration, was gunned down Tuesday afternoon in Chicago's Kenwood neighborhood, just blocks from the high school she attended. The park where she was killed is a little less than a mile from President Obama's Kenwood home. In addition to Hadiya, two men were killed and eight other people...

From the perspective of the Fabians in the Obama Administration, including President Obama himself, the contraction in the US economy, as reported for the fourth quarter of 1012, is actually good news. This means that the United States is on the right path toward economic and eventual political convergence with the rest of the world. In the Age of Obama, American exceptionalism is a bad thing because it runs against the Fabian principle of de-facto equality for all nations and for all of mankind. The Fabians, in the tradition of good socialists, will do and say almost anything to obtain...

MONTERREY, Mexico - Police pulled 17 bodies from a well in northern Mexico and 14 of them have been identified as members of a musical band kidnapped by gunmen last week, an official said Tuesday. Investigators have finished searching the well but are still trying to determine a motive in the killings of the Kombo Kolombia band members and crew, said a Nuevo Leon state official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the case. Kombo Kolombia was playing at a ranch in the town of Hidalgo when 10 gunmen entered the...

Very funny.

rlier this month, FreedomWorks covered a suspect symposium being sponsored by a pro-Obamacare organization, designed to provide journalists with "specialized education in health care reporting”. The anticipation of media bias was palpable. The symposium, sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund, hosted by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW), held at Reuters headquarters in New York City, and with a featured student body of 17 mainstream reporters - including the Dallas Morning News, Reuters, and Money Magazine - has since come to pass, and the concerns of blatant media bias should be even more heightened in the aftermath. The SABEW has posted...

North Dakota lawmakers are looking to get tough on potential direct actions taken by President Barack Obama, proposing a bill to grant the Legislature the right to review, approve or reject any executive order issued by the president. House Bill 1428 is designed to give legislators the power to suspend orders implemented unless the orders have been upheld by a vote of Congress. Rep. Bob Skarphol (R-Tioga) is a co-sponsor of the bill and said some members of the Legislature don’t believe in governing by executive order. He said there are checks and balances ingrained into the government for a...

CNN) -- Idiotic TV shows and all the latest apps bumming you out on the 21st century? Ready for some "me time" on the world's remotest islands? Forget golden sands and swaying palms -- the reality of solitude is different as these terrifyingly distant landfalls demonstrate. ... Bear Island 400 miles off Europe's north coast Bjornoya, better known as Bear Island, is the southernmost island in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, 400 miles north of mainland Europe -- but only on paper, given that it's almost 150 miles south of the Norwegian island chain with which it's lumped. It's been...