Free Republic

As we watch the lawmakers scramble to make new laws to restrict our ability to defend ourselves and our families, it becomes clear that there are few politicians representing the people or the Constitution in this manner. Despite abundantly clear Second Amendment's restrictions, the politicians seem to not care. The politicians have learned from recent history that any controversy over their current actions will blow over and be replaced by the latest pop scandal in the press by election time. Furthermore, they know that litigation against their illegal laws will take years and perhaps even decades. To bolster their point...

WASHINGTON — Republican strategist Karl Rove huddled with a group of House GOP leaders in the office Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy Thursday morning to discuss the party's messaging efforts, Republicans familiar with the meeting said. Details of Rove's presentation to a group of McCarthy's "whip team" — a subset of the broader conference tasked with educating the rank and file, rounding up votes on key bills and generally enforcing discipline within Republican ranks. Following the meeting, several lawmakers could be heard instructing staff to setup meetings with Rove. Rove has been locked in a battle with conservatives over the last...

Inflation is expected to run well above the Bank of England target rate of 2% for another two years in the UK. Don't worry it's a self-inflicted goal. Moreover, Inflation is a cause for optimism says Bank of England governor Mervyn King. The UK inflation rate will remain stubbornly high for longer than previously thought, the governor of the Bank of England has said. Sir Mervyn King now expects inflation, currently 2.7%, to rise to at least 3% by the summer and to remain above the Bank's 2% target for two years. In November he had said that inflation would...

Keep Wrestling in the Olympics! We have 270,000 wrestlers in high school and the Olympics is the aspiration of many. It is one of the real tests in high school athletics and to take away the Olympics is a big blow to the sport. There are more important things than TV ratings. They are keeping golf and replacing wrestling, the sport from the ancient Greeks and in the first Olympics. It was painted on cave walls 3000 years ago. Americans have earned over 100 Olympic medals in wrestling! Thanks for your support.

During Tuesday night's State of the Union address, Barack Obama boasted that he and NATO are planning to leave Afghanistan at the end of 2014 and leave the security of the country to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). There’s one problem: the ANSF isn’t ready. The ANSF was supposed to meet determined standards of effectiveness before the U.S. would withdraw its forces, but now the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is admitting that those standards were lowered so that coalition forces could get out. The desired ranking for the ANSF was previously “independent,” which meant they could function alone. Those...

SAN DIEGO — Former San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor took $2 million from a nonprofit foundation to feed a gambling addiction in which she lost more than $1 billion over an eight-year period, federal prosecutors said Thursday. O’Connor, 66, appeared in federal court and pleaded not guilty to a money laundering charge as part of a deferred prosecution. Under the arrangement with federal prosecutors, she has two years to repay the $2 million taken from the R.P. Foundation, a nonprofit set up by her late husband, Robert O. Peterson. Peterson was the co-founder of the Jack-In-The-Box restaurant chain and later...

(CNN) -- The Illinois Senate passed a measure Thursday to legalize same-sex marriage, voting 34-21.

Home from Afghanistan for just five months, 25-year-old Indiana National Guardsman Willie Cook was gunned down while shielding his two-year-old son. CBS 2′s Dana Kozlov reports its another case of mistaken identity, with no one in custody. Two-year-old Antoine Cook uses a toy cell phone to talk to his father. It’s all he has. “And to know that your 2 year old has to pretend to talk to his dad,” said Laquana Norwood. On February 2, Cook, was shot and killed while in a car near his grandmother’s East Chicago house where he was taking Antoine for a visit. The...

President Obama’s State of the Union address recycled the same old tired rhetoric that he’s been peddling since 2009. Instead of addressing how to reduce the nation’s $16 trillion debt and lower the high unemployment rate, Obama proposed more reckless spending and regulations that will further stifle economic growth in this country. He started his speech with predictable statements on how the economy is allegedly growing stronger—despite the near eight percent unemployment rate calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That official rate does not even factor in the 3.25 million out of work Americans that are so hopelessly discouraged...

The men and women charged with enforcing federal immigration law are being prohibited from doing so by the Obama administration, according to Chris Crane, president of the union that represents officers and agents employed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “I think most Americans assume that ICE agents and officers are empowered by the government to enforce the law,” Crane said on Wednesday at Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on immigration reform. “Nothing could be further from the truth. With 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S., ICE agents are now prohibited from arresting illegal aliens...

Real estate mogul Donald Trump said that Republican political consultant Karl Rove, who served as a senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, was responsible for helping Barack Obama win the presidency in the 2008 election. … Then, commenting on how a political action committee founded by Rove raised and then spent money in the 2012 elections, Trump said, “The thing that really bothers me, however, is he raised $400 million—spent $400 million on fighting Democrats—didn’t win a race. Didn’t do well in any races and just took $400 million and threw it out the...

President Obama didn’t make any phone calls the night of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the White House said in a letter to Congress released Thursday. “During the entire attack, the president of the United States never picked up the phone to put the weight of his office in the mix,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, who had held up Mr. Obama’s defense secretary nominee to force the information to be released. Mr. Graham said that if Mr. Obama had picked up the phone, at least two of the Americans killed in...

The White House and President Obama’s supporters insist that he’s making his first trip to Israel next month to assure the Jewish state that if push comes to shove with Iran, he’ll have Israel’s back. But North Korea’s nuclear test Tuesday morning could indicate that it’s already too late for that. If North Korea has the bomb, then for all practical purposes Iran does, too. If that’s so, then Obama’s policy of prevention has failed, and containment—a policy that the president has repeatedly said is not an option—is in fact all Washington has. If this sounds hyperbolic, consider the history...

Dear Carrie, I'm the father of three teenage daughters. I've been saving for college since they were babies, so I'm shocked to find myself $100,000 short. How can I cover this gap? The oldest is 16. --A Reader Dear Reader, First, I want to congratulate you for making saving for your daughters' educations a priority. It's no easy task to keep that as a primary goal in the face of all the other costs of raising children. A national Sallie Mae study, "How America Pays for College 2012," found that the typical family covered just 28 percent of their kids'...

We all saw it coming and now it’s happening — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is going to announce an official ban on styrofoam containers in his State of the City address today. Just to clarify once again, uppercase Styrofam is a trademarked product used in insulation, while what we all know as styrofoam is really extruded polystyrene. Moving on! The ban on styrofoam is part of a larger program the mayor has planned for his last year in office, which will also include more recycling, a curbside food-composting pilot program and more electric vehicles cruising the city streets. His...

"First, we really don't care how you did it in Chicago. Second, if you miss it so much, Delta is ready when you are......... Giving Northerners unbuttered instant grits is an old remedy for getting rid of tourists........ How can I trust a bank to keep my money safe when it has dozens of pens stolen every day? ....... As best as I can tell, God was undefeated in all sports last year. Anybody who won thanked Him, and I never heard a single loser blame Him.......

Not Yet: GOP filibuster holding; Reid moves up Hagel cloture vote to 4:15 By Kevin Baron Thursday, February 14, 2013 - 3:25 PM Chuck Hagel will not be defense secretary this week. The Republican filibuster proving unbreakable, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-NV) moved up a now symbolic cloture vote to be held at 4:15 on Thursday. Three Republicans said they would ultimately vote to allow a final vote on Hagel’s nomination, but not until after next week’s recess. “That’s too bad,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who called the delay “a mistake.”...

Watch Fr. Robert Barron's new video on Pope Benedict's Legacy. Please share this with friends and family and be on the lookout for a very exciting announcement from Word On Fire in the next few days!

I recently prepared for an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation concerning the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. I thought it would be worth my while to compare murder rates between the two countries, but also between adjoining divisions of those two countries. There was a time when Canadian murder rates were low enough compared to the U.S. for American gun-control advocates to argue in favor of Canadian style gun control for our country. This is no longer the case. It is certainly true that for Canada as a whole, murder rates are still considerably lower than for the United States...

Sen. Frank Lautenberg Says He Won’t Seek Re-election In 2014 February 14, 2013 3:32 PM WASHINGTON (CBSNewYork) – Senator Frank Lautenberg announced Thursday that he will not seek re-election in 2014. “I will be traveling to my hometown of Paterson tomorrow to announce that I will not seek re-election in 2014,” Lautenberg said in a statement. “This is not the end of anything, but rather the beginning of a two-year mission to pass new gun safety laws, protect children from toxic chemicals, and create more opportunities for working families in New Jersey.