Free Republic

Howie thread for November starting off with his Nov 1 column, "Call 911! EBT benefits get cut"

New Jersey may have been stronger than the storm, but the sea will prove stronger in the long run, scientists fear. Dozens of its towns – including such familiar places as Atlantic City, Hoboken, Beach Haven and Wildwood -- may already be doomed to partly flooded futures. Some neighborhoods are already precariously close to sea level, as evidenced by projects that have committed more than a billion dollars to replenish Jersey beaches and protect them over several decades. Even climate-change skeptics acknowledge that sea levels have been slowly rising. "It's rare that you'll find someone to say that sea level...

PARIS — Tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States over Washington’s approach to the Middle East were brewing for months before they burst into the open last week. First, there was the American inaction in Syria and lack of progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace. Then came America’s withdrawal of aid to the Egyptian military after the July coup. Now President Obama is pursuing a very public rapprochement with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s archrival. The mounting disagreements between the two longtime allies is now in full public view. Last week, the head of Saudi intelligence warned that it would stop cooperating with...

A lightning strike may have caused a pipeline rupture that spilled more than 20,000 barrels of oil in a North Dakota wheat field, federal regulators said in a report issued Thursday. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said a preliminary investigation of the Tesoro Corp. pipeline break “points to a strong electrical discharge as the cause of the failure.” Damon Hill, a spokesman for the agency, said a final determination as to the exact cause has not been made. The agency based its initial findings on mechanical and metallurgical analysis of a section of the...

BERLIN (AP) - Germany's top security official said Friday he will try and find a way for Edward Snowden to speak to German officials if the former National Security Agency contractor is willing to provide details about the NSA's activities including the alleged surveillance of Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone. The comments by Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich came after a German opposition lawmaker traveled to Moscow and met Snowden. The lawmaker, Hans-Christian Stroebele, said he received a letter from Snowden to German authorities that he planned to present later Friday. Stroebele, a Green party lawmaker, is a prominent critic of the...

Avik Roy on how 93 million Americans may lose coverage (Video) http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/the-kelly-file/index.html#http://video.foxnews.com/v/2790651395001/how-many-people-will-have-their-health-plans-disrupted/?playlist_id=2694949842001

Nicolle Wallace has yet again demonstrated why she's a Morning Joe kind of Republican. Two weeks ago, even after the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, Nicolle Wallace wasn't sure she opposed the big-government monstrosity. Today, when Joe Scarborough alluded to Clinton's infamous "what difference does it make?" line about Benghazi, there was Wallace riding to Hillary's defense: "I don't think she meant it that way." View the video here.

It seems that on Thursday morning Pope Francis celebrated Mass ad orientem at the tomb of John Paul II. For those not hip with the Catholic jargon, this means that he said Mass facing away from the people and towards the altar/God.

They’re still having a lot of trouble with Obamacare. First the website had all these glitches, and now people are getting a busy signal when they try to apply over the phone. So you can't use the Internet and you can’t use the phone. And now fax machines are like, "Look who's come crawling back to Mr. Fax Machine." ~ Fallon According to a new report, more than 700 fake Obamacare websites have been created. Security experts say it's simple to identify the phony sites because they are easy to log on to. ~ Leno The Obamacare website is...

The government will have to fix HealthCare.gov to hold up the new marketplace, but there are other elements in the law that will prevent the "death spiral" from kicking in. The system of subsidies for consumers on the market, along with mechanisms like "reinsurance" and "risk corridors" designed to stabilize the market, should keep premiums from spiraling out of control. Along with subsidies, there are other mechanisms built into the Affordable Care Act designed to prop up the new individual health insurance market. For instance, the "reinsurance" program taxes all insurance plans -- including employer-provided insurance -- and reimburses the...

Canadian officials seized three pumpkins from a passenger's bag at the airport. And boy were they stuffed, they say, with 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of cocaine. Border agency officers at the Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport found the pumpkins while searching the luggage of a female traveler, according to a news release.

Link Only

Give Your Faith a Target Today's Scripture “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” (Hebrews 11:1, NLT) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria So many people today are depressed and discouraged simply because they only focus on their present circumstances. They’re constantly dwelling on their problems, what they don’t have, and what’s wrong with them. They don’t realize it, but they’re allowing the enemy to steal their hope. This negative frame of mind is what keeps people from moving forward in life. Understand today that...

“You Are Not Your Own” "Do you not know that . . . you are not your own?" —1 Corinthians 6:19 There is no such thing as a private life, or a place to hide in this world, for a man or woman who is intimately aware of and shares in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. God divides the private life of His saints and makes it a highway for the world on one hand and for Himself on the other. No human being can stand that unless he is identified with Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified for...

The watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Thursday that it had obtained emails showing that former IRS official Lois Lerner gave protected information to the Federal Elections Commission. Meanwhile, the House Ways and Means Committee said it had identified the IRS agent who leaked National Organization for Marriage donors to gay rights activists. Judicial Watch obtained the emails in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Aug. 9. They purport to show Lerner, who led the IRS Exempt Organizations division, promising full cooperation with an FEC attorney who was seeking information about the tax-exempt applications of two conservative...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Department of Children's Services says case workers can no longer remove children from homes without a hearing in court. The Tennessean reports the agency told employees this month about the change, which comes on the heels of a pair of U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals opinions that said case workers have to abide by a constitutional amendment that guarantees people the right against searches and seizures without a warrant.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The stock market remains fundamentally overvalued and the weekly charts for the major averages are overbought except for the Dow Industrial Average. New all time highs or multi-year highs were set as October came to an end. The stock market has been trading under the cloud of a ValuEngine valuation warning since mid-May and today we show that 77% of all stocks overvalued, which is well above the 65% warning threshold. Technically, three attempts to confirm cycle highs were thwarted as all five major averages did not shift to having negative weekly chart. We enter November...

The Vatican is taking the unusual step of conducting a worldwide survey on how parishes deal with sensitive issues such as birth control, divorce and gay marriage, seeking input ahead of a major meeting on the family that Pope Francis plans next year. The poll was sent in mid-October to every national conference of bishops with a request from the Vatican coordinator, Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, to "share it immediately as widely as possible to deaneries and parishes so that input from local sources can be received." The survey reflects the pope's pledges to move away from what he called a...

In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of “Word for the Day”. Limntr.v. limned, limn·ing (lmnng), limns 1. To describe. 2. To depict by painting or drawing. See Synonyms at represent. Rules: Everyone must leave a post using the Word for the Day in a sentence. The sentence must, in some way, relate to the news of the day. The Review threads are linked for your edification. ;-) Practice makes perfect.....post on.... Review Threads: Review Thread One: Word For The Day, Thursday 11/14/02: Raffish (Be...

Tea Party activists are reportedly urging Christian historian David Barton to primary against Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). The move comes as some Texas Republicans question Cornyn’s devotion to conservative values. Rick Green, a close adviser to Barton and a speaker for the historian’s WallBuilder‘s organization, told National Review Online (NRO) that more than 1,000 Tea Party and conservative leaders have asked Barton to run. Conservative historian David Barton (Credit: AP) “Polling says Sen. Cornyn is vulnerable and that’s why he is running ads right now,” Green wrote in an e-mail to the outlet. “Like America’s Founding Fathers, David Barton will...