Free Republic

CAPITOL HILL -- During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill about how to prevent gun violence, Senior Fellow of the Independent Women’s Forum Gayle Trotter was loudly heckled by anti-gun advocates in the crowd after she suggested women need firearms to protect young children in their homes. "An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies at her home becomes a defense weapon,” Trotter said as jeers erupted. “Guns are the great equalizer during a violent confrontation.” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse attempted to lecture Trotter about the type of gun she and women like...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is an official statement from Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa: "Today we learned that the U.S. economy is shrinking due to a fall in government spending. That should tell us that government austerity is not just wrong, it's bad economic policy. "The Bureau of Economic Affairs' announcement that GDP fell by 0.1 percent reinforces our message that we need jobs, not cuts – especially to Social Security, Medicare and education. "Teamsters around the country are participating in actions today to demand that big corporations and the richest 2 percent pay their fair...

Windsor on Monday joined the growing number of municipalities which have voted to end the decades-old practice of adding fluoride to the water supply in the fight against tooth decay. “A lot has changed in the last 60 years … fluoride is not the be-all and end-all to prevent tooth decay,” said Mayor Eddie Francis, who voted with the majority.… “I want to be shown that when we ingest this, we are safe,” said Kimberley DeYong of Fluoride Free Windsor. She and others said not a single study among those cited by fluoridation proponents looked specifically at the industry-sourced chemical...

Kwame Harris has responded to Chris Culliver’s comments on gays in the NFL. The former 49er and openly gay football player is responding to Culliver’s suggestion that gay players would not be welcome in the team's locker room. “It’s surprising that in 2013 Chris Culliver would use his 15 minutes to spread vitriol and hate. I recognize that these are comments that he may come to regret and that he may come to see that gay people are not so different than straight people,” Harris told NBC Bay Area exclusively. Harris was outed as a gay man just this week....

Interest Expense on the Debt Outstanding The Interest Expense on the Debt Outstanding includes the monthly interest for: U.S. Treasury notes and bondsForeign and domestic series certificates of indebtedness, notes and bondsSavings bondsGovernment Account Series (GAS)State and Local Government series (SLGs) and other special purpose securities. Amortized discount or premium on bills, notes and bonds is also included in the monthly interest expense.The fiscal year represents the total interest expense on the Debt Outstanding for a given fiscal year. This includes the months of October through September. View current month details (XLS Format, File size 146KB, uploaded 01/07/2013).Note: To...

• Tendai Biti made the announcement at press conference declaring: 'Last week when we paid civil servants there was $217 in government coffers' • However he today contradicted his claims by saying the following day $30m was paid into government accounts • Result is culmination of years of ruinous economic policy by Zimbabwe's despotic President Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe's finance minister has taken a hard look at the cash strapped country's bank accounts - and discovered it only has £138 and 34 pence left. Tendai Biti made the announcement at press conference yesterday declaring: 'Last week when we paid civil servants...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – The mayor of Minneapolis wants to reduce gun violence in the city and he’s taking a new approach. During Wednesday’s city council meeting Mayor R.T. Rybak said he’s going to closely examine where the city purchases its guns and ammunition. “We buy a lot of guns and ammunition, we should really question whether the companies that we are buying from are going to Washington and are working with us or fighting against us,” he said. Rybak says he wants to begin a constructive dialogue with companies they buy from and see if they would like to be...

Organizing for Action, the non-profit iteration of Barack Obama´s campaign organization, decorated its first big email blast with the well-known campaign logo of Obama for America. Jim Messina, the chairman of Organizing for Action, purportedly authored the email sent Tuesday, featuring the subject line "I need to know: Are you ready to get this done?" Messina was referring to the President´s new immigration legislation proposals, which he promoted at a campaign-style event in Las Vegas, Nevada on Tuesday. The language of the email is similar to emails sent by Obama for America during the 2012 presidential campaign:

No one can accuse the Democrats of being the party of personal responsibility. Confronted with an economy that contracted in the fourth quarter, Speaker Nancy Pelosi blamed Congressional Republicans for obstructing the president’s agenda and creating uncertainty. In the wake of the financial collapse, the Democrats took full control of both the Congress and the Presidency in 2009 and were presented with an historic opportunity to put their ideas into practice. Unfortunately, the newly elected President Obama and Speaker Pelosi treated the situation as a political opportunity to build a Democratic majority rather than an obligation to fix what’s broken...

A jihadist website posted a new threat by al Qaeda this week that promises to conduct “shocking” attacks on the United States and the West. The posting appeared on the Ansar al Mujahidin network Sunday and carried the headline, “Map of al Qaeda and its future strikes.” The message, in Arabic, asks: “Where will the next strike by al Qaeda be?” A translation was obtained by Inside the Ring. “The answer for it, in short: The coming strikes by al Qaeda, with God’s Might, will be in the heart of the land of nonbelief, America, and in France, Denmark, other...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius violated federal law by campaigning for President Obama on the taxpayers’ dime, but now that initial violation has the Democratic National Committee and an HHS aide in the spotlight for related alleged infractions. A nonprofit government watchdog filed a complaint alleging that the DNC violated campaign finance law by misreporting the money it spent to reimburse HHS for Sebelius’ trip in a way that masked the fact that the Hatch Act, a ban on political campaigning by government employees working in their official capacity,

The White House on Wednesday blamed the surprising contraction of the economy at the end of last year at least partly on Republican "political brinkmanship" for threatening to let defense cuts take effect. White House spokesman Jay Carney said similar threats over a looming March 1 deadline when defense and other cuts take effect absent a broader budget deal could similarly hurt the U.S. economy and taxpayers. "This is political brinkmanship with one primary victim, and that is American taxpayers and the American middle class," Carney said at a briefing. "Our economy is facing a major headwind ... and that's...

In today's episode of "As The Reichstag Burns", let's talk about Dianne Frankenfeinstein's (H/T Mark Levin) attempt to ban "assault weapons". (Just so you know, "assault weapons" are vewy, vewy scawy guns that make homosexual agenda-pushing commie libtards poop themselves. No gun aficionado I know of has ever used the term.) Before we get started, a little housekeeping is in order. I know there are some out there who are in the "It Will Never Get Through The House" camp. To those dunderheads, I say this: The current Republican't (no typo) party has just raised raised taxes and is now...

One in four Americans believes that God 'plays a role in determining which teams wins' at a sports game, a survey has revealed. And more than half of Americans believe 'God rewards athletes who have faith with good health and success', the poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found. It suggests that, while Ravens and 49er fans across the country are willing their teams to win the Super Bowl this Sunday, a significant portion of the country believes they had better get praying.

SUMTER, SC (WIS) - "You can fire it as many times as you want, it won't come out" said 6-year-old Naomi McKinney. "It's duct taped because it's broken." McKinney took her brother's air soft gun to school January 4th. The school kept it. "It was broken and I just wanted to show my friends it" McKinney said. She never got that far at Alice Drive Elementary. "I told Ms. Frye that I had the gun and she took it from my hand," said McKinney. McKinney was taken to the office and police were called. Her father, Hank McKinney, admits some...

NEW ORLEANS – San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver has made inflammatory comments regarding homosexuality in football just a few days before Super Bowl XLVII. Shock jock Artie Lange revealed he had interviewed Culliver at media day Tuesday and aired a segment on his show that night, where the player insisted that any gay players would not be welcome on the team. "I don't do the gay guys man," said Culliver, whose Niners play the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday. "I don't do that. No, we don't got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here...

A Democrat precinct volunteer in Oak Harbor has acknowledged to Examiner that opponents of guns in city parks are trying to pack the city council meeting next Tuesday specifically to keep gun rights activists out. Gun rights activists and gun control proponents are expected to square off over the right to bear arms under the state constitution and state preemption statute. The situation in Oak Harbor has gotten national attention because of this video, in which a city councilman left the last council meeting because a citizen in the audience was armed. Pam Fick, a 20-year Oak Harbor resident and...

There’s plenty about Girls to annoy conservatives, yet this often creepy, usually skeevy, critically-acclaimed HBO series is also a test for conservatives. Will we finally heed Andrew Breitbart's warnings about the importance of taking pop culture seriously or just keep fiddling as the culture burns? If conservatives are going to be in the popular culture – and act to change it – they can’t simply ignore shows like Girls that capture the zeitgeist, even if the zeitgeist makes their skin crawl. Season two is well under way, and conservatives need to participate in the discussion. Girls is about four young,...

Like its travel slogan says, Virginia is for lovers. But if said lovers are cohabitating outside marriage, they are currently breaking the law. But there’s good news for those lawless lovebirds: State officials in the commonwealth are considering a bill that would legalize cohabitation. Florida, Michigan and Mississippi have similar laws banning cohabitation. …

January 30, 2013 RUBIO'S AMNESTY: A PATH TO OBLIVION FOR THE GOP Ann Coulter 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...