Free Republic

(Excerpt) In a warning shot to outside conservative groups, the National Republican Senatorial Committee this week informed a prominent Republican advertising firm that it would not receive any contracts with the campaign committee because of its work with a group that targets incumbent Senate Republicans. Even more striking, a senior official at the committee called individual Republican Senate campaigns and other party organizations this week and urged them not to hire the firm, Jamestown Associates, in an effort to punish them for working for the Senate Conservatives Fund, a group founded by Jim DeMint, then a South Carolina senator, that...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, November 1, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Sexuality education for five-year olds is one of the topics being discussed at a NZ Family Planning Association Conference currently being held in New Zealand's capital city of Wellington. The New Zealand Family Planning Association is an affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). One of the keynote speakers at the conference is Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood. “Positive sexual health” is the theme of the conference, a title that belies the association’s true agenda. Part of that agenda is the release on November 28 of a “sexuality” resource aimed...

Welcome to the FReeper Recipe Thread. Looking for something new to make or made something new that came out great? Please share a 'tried-and-true' recipe or three- for fellow FReepers to add to their 'go-to' Recipe Stack of Family Favorites! Here's the place to share and explore your latest and greatest favorite recipe.

Johnny Kucks, a born and bred “Jersey Boy” who went from the sandlots of Jersey City to a 1956 Yankee World Series hero, died Thursday after a long bout with cancer. He was 80. Kucks, a side-arming righthander who had what Yogi Berra said was one of the “heaviest sinkerballs” he ever caught, spent 4½ seasons with the Yankees from 1955-59 and appeared in eight games over four World Series with a 1.89 ERA in them. But his finest hour was when Yankee manager Casey Stengel gave him the ball for Game 7 of the 1956 World Series at Ebbets...

Big Oil: So what happened to the $19 billion judgment against Chevron over rainforest pollution in Ecuador? Seems the leftist lawyer behind it all now finds himself in the dock on a RICO rap for a massive fraud. This has been going on for years, the oft-repeated meme that Chevron, through its Texaco acquisition, polluted the rainforest floor and poisoned its helpless villagers. Activist Bianca Jagger is emblematic of this disregard for fact. In the Huffington Post, she wrote that while she's no apologist for Chevron's accusers, the bottom line is: "Ecuadorian communities were the victims of exploitation by a...

As of 2003, consumers have had the right to change providers while keeping their wireless number. Since 2007, consumers have also had the right to "unlock" their wireless device. But the Librarian of Congress recently made a bureaucratic ruling eliminating consumers' right to use their own device after their contract expires. When the Librarian’s ruling made unlocking illegal, the digital generation responded (both young and old alike) and created a White House petition on this issue. But today, after five bills were introduced, Congress has essentially failed to act. It’s imperative that Congress act now because: •Every day that Congress...

-excerpt- British and Portuguese media now report that the leading suspect is Euclides Monteiro, an immigrant who was a restaurant worker at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, which is where the nearly four-year old Madeleine McCann was last seen. Monteiro was fired shortly before her disappearance and may have kidnapped the girl as an act of revenge against his former employer, according to the Portuguese daily Correio da Manha. Another theory is that Monteiro stumbled upon Madeleine when he was robbing her parents room. Monteiro was a heroine addict, reports the Daily Mirror, and was fired for...

After a month of criticism of our Obamacare Website - so full of “glitches” that we can still count on one hand the number of legit enrollees -We’re #1 – now in 4 different colors!we’re adopting a whole new approach.Because apparently the old one didn’t work rightHere are the primary tactics of our new strategy: #1: Blame the Republicans. This one nearly always works; this time they are culpable because everyone knows they’ve been trying to sabotage Obamacare from the start. And they’re racists.#2: Blame the greedy, heartless insurance companies. They’re rotten apples. That’s why we need to get rid...

Gov. John Kitzhaber on Friday downplayed the problems that have plagued Oregon’s health insurance exchange and urged people who need insurance by Jan. 1 to fill out a paper application instead of waiting for online enrollment to work. Nobody has been able to enroll in health insurance through Cover Oregon, the state’s health insurance exchange, because software glitches have prevented the website from accurately determining whether people qualify for federal subsidies or publicly funded health care through Medicaid.

1) Social media: Recently I made some pretty strong political posts on Facebook about Benghazi. Then I felt badly and was afraid to check FB in fear of what responses I would find. Why did I feel that way? My liberal friends post their memes all the time, but the conservatives are shy about expressing their opinions. We are bothered by what people will think. But why is this the case? If they are truly our “friends” on Facebook, we should be able to post what we really think and feel, right? We read our friends’ posts and even appreciate...

In recent months, a loosely coordinated band of activists have displayed anti-Obama signs from atop overpasses across the U.S. After one town cracked down on the practice, conservatives involved in the movement are crying foul. Officials in Campbell, Wis. recently passed legislation that specifically targets signage displayed within 100 feet of a bridge, precisely the areas targeted by the so-called “Overpasses for Impeachment” campaign. Town Chairman Scott Johnson claims the decision stemmed from “them distracting people,” which he said “constituted a safety risk.” Despite insistence that the new laws are designed to combat distracted driving, Tea Party-aligned activists naturally feel...

It’s never too early to talk about the future, especially if you’re one of the 83% of Americans that presently believe the country is headed down the wrong track. And I’ve already received numerous media inquiries about where things stand in my home state of Iowa, which is host to the first in the nation presidential caucuses. Iowans will again become the first Americans to officially cast a ballot for president in 2016, and just like in 2008 both parties will have open nomination fights. Because of my perceived influence in the Iowa Caucuses, thanks in no small part to...

Of all the lame attempts to explain away President Obama's oft-repeated Obamacare lie that "if you like your plan, you can keep it," Melissa Harris-Perry might have come up with the most hilarious: President Obama figured people wouldn't like it! Yes, that's what MHP actually asserted on her MSNBC show this morning, claiming the Obama administration figured people wouldn't like their plans, and would clamor for the ones offered under Obamacare. Of course the argument still leaves Obama as having lied. Even if if a majority of people with private plans didn't like them, that would still leave millions being...

The European Parliament called on Thursday (24 October) for EU countries to better implement European environmental rules despite the initial costs involved. The vote put the EU legislature’s seal on a deal with the EU Council of Ministers on the program to lay out the EU’s approach to environmental action up to 2020, “Living well, within the limits of our planet”. The program, the seventh of its kind, will structure EU action on all environmental policy, from water management to climate change, and boost so-called “green growth”. …

With over 500 pages and 1,200 footnotes, Ted Flynn’s book, “Hope of the Wicked: the Master Plan to Rule the World,” details many of the agendas of the global ‘elite’ community. With several thousand quotes it uses the words of prime ministers, secretaries of treasury, secretaries of state, philanthropists and global business leaders to describe their NWO vision and their plans to bring it about as well as the convergence, on a global basis, of multinational corporations, foundations and the political and sociological instruments that would form a one-world government designed to bring about a New World Order. Flynn writes...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was in Memphis, Tenn., for an education and outreach session about the health care marketplace, when a state senator presented her with a gift she didn’t appear to be happy to receive.

It takes a lot to convince a company to move jobs out of the town that bears its name. But that’s the step Hershey took a few years ago, driven in part by cronyism. The company is based in central Pennsylvania because there are plenty of dairy farms around. But sugar is an even more important ingredient in chocolate than milk, and the price sugar users in the United States pay is far higher than the world market price. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2012, the price of raw sugar was 40 percent higher in the United...

U.K.: Boy Finds Name of 'Allah' on Last Crunchie Chocolate Biscuit in the Packet Little Imran Abdur-Rahman, seven, spotted the Arabic letters in his Cadbury's Crunchie biscuit he was about to scoff. Dad Mohammed, 36, who took the picture, told the Manchester Evening News: “He recognised it straight away and came running to me. "I looked at it and I was surprised to see that was exactly what it was. "Imran is not very patient and when he'd shown it to me he said 'dad, give it back now. I want to eat it.' “It all happened quite quickly, I...

The problems with the Obamacare website, the waves of policy cancellations, and the ensuing “sticker shock” of higher insurance premiums for conforming Affordable Care Act plans has Democrats facing reelection in 2014 in a state of high anxiety. “I'm seeing a lot of sympathy for the poor schmucks that can't log onto the website or are getting cancellation notices,” Senator Al Franken (D-Minn) observed. “I don't see anyone showing much concern about how this will affect us next November. I didn't muck up the website. I didn't send out any cancellation notices. But it looks like voters could take out...

So how much more is your health insurance going to cost you? That’s the question, really, as Obamacare begins taking effect and the stories pour in from around the country: how much your premiums are going up, not if they are. Rising costs are a fact of life, but the changes Americans are seeing as a result of the president’s signature law are putting the “shock” in “sticker shock.” I recently had lunch with a friend who said his perfectly healthy 28-year old son had just received a notice from Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Illinois that on Jan. 1, his...