Free Republic

This was shaping up to be Paul Ryan's moment. With the Republican Party reeling from a government shutdown and a near disaster over the debt limit, the chairman of the House Budget Committee was tasked with leading the GOP in a six-week bicameral budget conference. Republicans, who demanded these talks in exchange for a short-term budget resolution, were expected to pursue big-picture negotiations over America's long-term fiscal challenges. But that's not going to happen. Since being appointed as the Republican negotiating chief two weeks ago, Ryan has endeavored to lower public expectations for the committee, saying he hopes to pursue...

When a new poll of Virginia voters this week found a tight gubernatorial race between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cuccinelli, it seemed like an outlier. For the past few weeks, surveys in the Old Dominion have shown the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee leading by a comfortable margin, and sometimes by double digits. (The RCP Average has him ahead by 7.5 points.) Such numbers should have been reassuring for McAuliffe, given Virginia’s habit of choosing its governor from the opposing party of the president.But a four-point race -- the margin that Quinnipiac (which has a slightly...

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani Taliban on Saturday named Khan Syed Mehsud alias Sajna as its new chief, a day after a US drone strike killed its former leader Hakimullah Mehsud in the lawless North Waziristan tribal region. The decision was taken at a meeting of the Tehrik-e- Taliban Pakistan's Shura (Council), media reports said. Most of the members of the council were present in the meeting held at an undisclosed location though all could not attend it.

Jimmy Carter, the man considered by Republicans and Democrats alike as the most incompetent U.S. president in modern history, made comments that sure sounded like he called President Barack Obama incompetent over his handling of the Affordable Care Act. But if it helps, he did it in a nice way. Carter made the observation during an interview this week with Parade Magazine. “He’s done the best he could under the circumstances,” Carter said of Obama. “His major accomplishment was Obamacare, and the implementation of it now is questionable at best.”

A St. Cloud police sergeant turned himself into authorities Saturday morning on stalking charges. John Nettles, 36, is accused of stalking his romantic partner after she tried to end their relationship after a two-year affair. ... His wife, Edeania Nettles, was fired from the Osceola County Sheriff's Office Thursday in the wake of her alleged battery on a law-enforcement officer arrest earlier this month. When Deputy Edeania Nettles found her husband in a park on Oct. 2 with St. Cloud police officer Jennifer Hoyos, 26, she allegedly punched her in the face and yanked her out of her patrol car...

Gun rights groups are throwing their weight behind efforts on Capitol Hill to rein in the National Security Agency (NSA). The National Rifle Association (NRA) is among a number of groups that have signed on to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against the secretive government agency. The NRA has also endorsed bipartisan legislation proposed by House and Senate Judiciary committees that would end the NSA’s collection of bulk phone records. Another Second Amendment advocate, the Gun Owners of America, expects to back NSA legislation as well. “There are issues that, maybe at first blush, wouldn't seem like a...

OTTAWA — Women are bitchy by nature. No, that’s not a sexist remark. That’s science. Or at least that’s what University of Ottawa psychologist Tracy Vaillancourt more or less concludes in her latest research on “intrasexual competition” among women. Derisive comments on another woman’s appearance, spreading rumours about her sex life, giving her the silent treatment — all this and more reflects the kind of “indirect aggression” women deploy against each other in the competition for a mate, she says in a report published this week in a Royal Society journal. “Human females have a particular proclivity for using indirect...

Mohamed Elibiary, a member of the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council, is under fire for tweeting that America is “an Islamic country," reported the Washington Free Beacon.

he Wyoming GOP primary campaign is already shaping up to be a scorched-earth affair, demonstrating the kind of senator Liz Cheney would likely be. ..... Other Wyoming politicos who’ve tried to stay above the fray have found themselves drawn into the feud, notably Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator known for his crotchety demeanor. The Cheneys and the Simpsons were at a charity gala in Cody, Wyoming, when Lynne Cheney—Liz’s mother, Dick’s wife, and a writer of racy novels—allegedly approached Simpson and told him to “shut your mouth.” Simpson’s daughter-in-law posted about the incident on her Facebook page, and the...

So far this year President Obama has removed nine “flag officers” from their posts. Three of these firings are linked to last year’s attack on the US Consular facility in Benghazi. US Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel defended the moves as “the prerogative of the nation’s Commander-in-Chief. The President must have men he can trust to carry out his orders.” U.S. Army General Carter Ham, who commanded U.S. African Command when the consulate was attacked, lost President Obama’s trust when he contradicted his assertion that no forces were available to rescue Ambassador Stevens. Ham contends that reinforcements could have been...

Here is a link to a military tribute that was originally done about 10 years ago. You will need flashplayer to view it. Homeward Bound.

In that report, Jones found that Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint screeners are receiving training to prepare them for the possibility of a mass shooting at one of the agency’s airport checkpoints, and those TSA personnel are being instructed to “save themselves” should a shooting occur. One TSA worker told Jones, “Every day when I arrive for work, I look for an escape route in case someone opens fire. We have been told to save ourselves.”

To get a sense of the Republicans' internal struggle, take a look at a congressional runoff Tuesday in south Alabama. Bradley Byrne, a lawyer with two decades in government, is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's preferred candidate vs. Dean Young, a self-described tea party conservative best known as a onetime campaign adviser to Roy Moore, the judge who was once ousted as state Supreme Court chief justice after refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the Alabama Judicial Building.

An assistant librarian says she was fired after reporting two town employees having sex in the library late last month — and now she plans to file a lawsuit against the New Mexico town. Jamie Kurz walked in the Estancia Public Library before opening one morning and heard noises emitting from the children’s section of the library, her attorney, Joseph CampBell, told KOB-TV. When she walked over to investigate, Kurz saw two town employees having sexual intercourse, the attorney said. “Right in the middle of the library, in front of God and everybody,” attorney CampBell told the local news station....

Greatest Cat Reflexes Ever. Just something to make you chuckle.

Hello all... Any chance I can get some tax / income savvy freepers to weigh in? New job, first pay. No exemptions are showing up on my pay stub (I took it in the kiester this pay with Federal Withholding). I have three kids who live with me full time. I have a soon to be x-spouse and we are NOT filing jointly. I am in the 28% tax bracket. Is there a (relatively) easy site I can calculate what I should be getting paid? My last job's with holding was CONSIDERABLY less. My new HR rep's merely have heartbeats...

From Just Surviving Life to a Life of Survival Preparedness, by Michael B. I was born into the percentage of Americans,who statistically don't make it to the American dream. I was Born 1980 in Modesto, California. The third child of a young mother and father hooked on Speed, KJ and any other number of drugs they could get their hands on. By 1983 we found ourselves 140 miles south in Visalia Ca. That year my father was shot point blank range in the lower abdominal area with a .22 Long Rifle hollow point. It was the neighbor in the next...

Federal employees at the Department of Homeland Security call it the “candy bowl” — a longtime pot of overtime money they have dipped into to pad their pay, even if they haven't earned it, whistleblowers say. The practice, which can add up to 25 percent to a paycheck, has become so routine over the last generation that it's often held out as a perk when government managers try to recruit new employees, according to the accounts.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon) has a network of food canning and distribution centers around the nation, where volunteer church members donate time to can food grown on the church’s farms and orchards or purchased from other sources. The purpose of this network of canneries is to provide food to those who have been caught in disasters or just caught short by an ever-declining national economy. Millions of pounds of food are prepared for distribution annually in the LDS canneries. Recently, we have heard rumblings that the federal government has been paying very close...

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Retired Marine colonel and Iran-Contra figure Oliver North said in Huntsville Friday that that he is "deeply concerned" about the data being collected on American citizens by American intelligence agencies. "I think the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution has been trod on," North told a press conference before addressing a crowd of 350 at a young Republicans' dinner at the Davidson Center for Space Technology. North added that "the Republicans in Congress are complicit by not insisting on a select committee to investigate not just NSA, but Benghazi, the IRS, the spying on Americans, enemies' lists being...