Free Republic

Senate Republicans filibustered President Barack Obama’s nominee to be the next Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, by a razor thin vote of 58-39 Thursday, with one senator voting present. But all hope for Hagel is not lost. Just because they still want more time to debate their former Republican colleague’s nomination, doesn’t mean that Hagel’s confirmation is dead. At least three Republican senators – John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Richard Burr – said that they simply want more time and intend to vote for cloture – a parliamentary procedure that ends a filibuster by limiting debate to 30 hours that...

During President Obama's Palm Beach vacation this weekend, he'll be getting some golf lessons from Tiger Woods' former instructor at the Floridian Golf Club in Palm City, Golf Digest reports: The Harmons, Butch and son Claude III, are flying in to work with President Obama, who inquired through an aide if they would be on property during his stay

Youthful Solar System Bodies Puzzle Evolutionary Scientists by Jake Hebert, Ph.D. * A feature story in a recent issue of the journal Nature described four solar system bodies that are puzzling to evolutionary scientists.1 Specifically, the article discussed the rings of Saturn, two of Saturn's moons (Enceladus and Titan), and Jupiter's moon Io. These four bodies all exhibit properties that cannot persist for billions of years. The brightness of Saturn's rings is puzzling because after billions of years, they should have been darkened by dust from comets and asteroids. Yet these rings are still brilliantly beautiful. Likewise, watery geysers erupting...

Big time ammo company Hornady released a statement Tuesday commenting on the ammo shortage and shed light on some key questions they’ve been asked repeatedly. The Hornady booth at SHOT Show 2013. This year they introduced “Critical Duty” ammo. “The current political climate has caused extremely high demand on all shooting industry products, including ours,” Hornady said in the statement. “Empty retail shelves, long backorders, and exaggerated price increases on online auction sites – all fueled by rumors and conjecture – have amplified concerns about the availability of ammunition and firearms-related items.” The company asked that you, the consumer, not...

The State Department will have to stop humanitarian aid to millions of people, cut foreign assistance to Israel, and delay efforts to ramp up diplomatic security abroad after the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, if sequestration goes into effect next month, according to Secretary of State John Kerry. At the beginning of March, across-the-board cuts to all discretionary spending accounts will go into effect, based on the 2011 Budget Control Act and the failure of the "supercommittee" to agree upon discretionary budget cuts in 2012. Congressional appropriators are planning to reorganize those cuts when the continuing resolution that has been...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama's second term wish-list -- his ideas for jump-starting the job-starved economy -- looked a lot like his warmed-over, half-baked proposals of the past. With rare exceptions, Obama's fifth State of the Union address was a costly laundry list of more big government programs aimed at his party's political base. More job-training programs? There are 47 different federal job-training programs right now, costing $18 billion a year, according to the General Accountability Office. And 51 other programs offer job-training assistance. With the unemployment rate rising last month to nearly 8 percent and likely heading higher, and economic...

New York - -(Ammoland.com)- Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes gave a fiery speech to approximately 3,000 New York gun owners, urging them to refuse to comply to the “SAFE Act,” to refuse to disarm, to nullify at every level. He also urged them to make sure their county was a “Molon Labe” county, asking them “is your county a ‘come and take it’ county, or is it a‘bend over and take it’ county? Which is it?! Find out now!” He told them to make sure all the gun owners and veterans in their county are ready to stand up, and...

With the announcement of the indefinite suspension of nuclear refueling of the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the White House has signaled a new shift in naval technology - away from costly and potentially hazardous fossil fuels, towards non-toxic and environmentally stable wind power. Not letting Republican obstructionism of the budget process go to waste, President Obama's national defense team is putting together a plan to retrofit US warship with 'tried-and-true' sails, taking advantage of free, naturally occurring wind rather than diesel and nuclear fuels that put crews at constant risk of causing an ecological disaster.

In The Detroit News, the presidents of the University Research Corridor schools argue that a dollar of state appropriations for their institutions returns $17 in economic benefits. But this analysis, regardless of accuracy, does not justify the appropriation. These multiplier analyses are meant to show the economic impact of spending in one area compared to another. For instance, this 17-times spending multiplier is awfully close to the returns promised from spending on early childhood education, where advocates argue that spending a dollar generates $16 in economic activity, despite evidence to the contrary. An even greater claim, using the same form...

Second thoughts on the Second Amendment in the race to replace Jesse Jackson Jr.Debbie HalvorsonAfter a long wait, Illinois’s second district will soon have a representative in Congress. That seat has been vacant since Jesse Jackson Jr. resigned from it in November, and the bizarre politics of gun control may determine who its next occupant will be. As the issue plays out on the national stage in the wake of the massacre in Newtown, Conn., it can be seen in microcosm in the Illinois race, where 17 Democrats are fighting for their party’s nomination in advance of a primary set...

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, expects the bipartisan immigration reform proposal, which includes a path to citizenship, will end up costing taxpayers more overtime than the trillion-dollar calculations he testified to during debate over the 2007 immigration reform bill. “[The proposal] seems to be virtually identical to the 2007 bill and would be extremely costly to the U.S. taxpayers,” Rector told The Daily Caller in a Wednesday interview. “Granting amnesty or legal status to illegals will generate costs in Medicare and Social Security alone of $2.5 trillion above any taxes paid in.” According to Rector,...

First, the good parts. They stood out. Indeed, the president's general tone Tuesday night, despite the reflexive class warfare here and there, was much less fast and furious than his re-inaugural address -- as if now he wanted to work with the opposition rather than just excoriate it. "We can do this," Mr. Obama assured the country. Just what we can do -- will it be for good or ill? -- may not always be clear, but at least Tuesday night he seemed interested in bringing us together instead of driving us further apart. The partisan boilerplate that issued forth...

<p>Obama — ticked off by Rice’s treatment and still emboldened by his convincing victory over Mitt Romney — courted confrontation when he tapped Hagel.</p> <p>If true, this is outlandish. The president would imperil national security out of spite? .........</p>

President Obama willingly admits he dispatched CIA agents to kill an American and his teenage son and the son’s American friend while they were in a desert in Yemen in 2011. He says he did so because the adult had encouraged folks to wage war on the United States and the children were just “collateral damage.” He says further that he’ll do this again when he is convinced that killing Americans will keep America safe. He says he knows the adult encouraged evil, and his encouragement caused the deaths of innocents. The adult was never charged with a crime or...

Two of the most honestly gruesome films of barbaric atrocities in modern times ever made are the Russian film The Chekist and the Polish film Katyn. The Chekist was directed by Aleksandr Rogozhkin (1992 Cannes Film Festival Award) but hardly rated mention anywhere in the United States. The unbelievable atrocities of torture and mass execution seen in the film were all confirmed by factual articles in Pravda itself in 1921-22. Katyn is the true story of the slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers on April, 1940 by Stalin’s henchmen and based on the book Post Mortem: The Story of Katyn by...

Andrea Mitchell/Barack Obama: same struggle! In an stunningly blatant display of solidarity with the Obama line, Andrea Mitchell declared on today's Morning Joe that she shared the same "concern" with the White House: that poor Chuck Hagel wouldn't get a final vote on his nomination. Mitchell prefaced her "concern" by roundly condemning Republicans in general--and Senator Ted Cruz in particular--for supposedly attacking Hagel with allegations "completely unsupported by fact." Could somebody please tell me why Mitchell, supposedly a reporter, should so shamelessly be toting the White House's water this way? View the video here.

“We have a weapon more powerful… than any in the whole arsenal of the British Empire! That weapon… is our refusal!” - Michael Collins The police in America have proven once again that they are above the law and have a license to kill as the charred remains of Christopher Dorner were cooling in the cabin in California. The more thuggish aspects of the constabulary were on the mainstream news despite the twisted and sycophantic relationship of the press in lionizing tyranny everyday in the hero worship of the thin political black and blue line. The readers who have read...

President Obama's Two Hundred and Twelfth Week in Office2/14/2013It's 3am and nobody's thereChuck Hagel makes history as first to be blocked from Defense Hagel Confirmation Squashed For Now As Dems Lack 60 Votes – Furious White House Blasts 'Unconscionable' RepublicansFAA Official: No Armed Drones In U.S.Benghazi-GateObama made no phone calls on night of Benghazi attack, White House saysVideo: The John Brennan puzzle is slowly being pieced togetherReid: 'Outlandish' to Say 'Administration Hasn't Been Forthcoming' on BenghaziObama Voter FraudDid Hagel rig vote to win Senate seat? Details revealed in magazine profile on alleged GOP plan to steal electionMassive Voter Fraud in St....

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says Hillary Clinton inspired his decision to allow women in combat. “And in many ways, I have to tell you, it was her inspiration that encouraged me to move forward to be able to bring down the last barriers for women in the Department of Defense and to give them the ability to have a chance to engage in combat. I thank you for that inspiration,” Panetta told Clinton at a Pentagon ceremony on Thursday. …

Sen. Ted Cruz lost his voice a couple days ago. Some senators probably wish it wouldn’t come back — at least for a little while. In six short weeks since he became the junior Texas GOP senator, the no-nonsense freshman has quickly become a lightning rod — on issues ranging from guns to Chuck Hagel’s nomination for defense secretary — upending the Senate’s conventional ways, in which freshmen typically work quietly to build bridges with their colleagues. Cruz’s sharp-elbowed Senate style underscores the dilemma facing Republicans as they seek a way out of the political wilderness: Rising stars like Cruz,...