Free Republic

Why does it matter to the rest of us what happens in Georgia and environs? Answer: if the West cannot help an aspiring ally with dreams of joining Nato and the EU, cannot even protect it from Russian hegemony, what are we doing meddling in the Middle East or anywhere else? And if we can’t help Georgia, then what is left of the West’s victory in the Cold War? I reported on the national elections in Tbilisi, Georgia, last October. On one occasion, I was shown a text from a politician of the party that won the election to a...

The Associated Press ran a surprisingly scathing look at the current state of health care in Venezuela, In a word, the whole system, and especially the parts run by the government as part of a 1999 constitutional mandate to provide “free” universal health care, is collapsing: Driving the crisis in health care are the same forces that have left Venezuelans scrambling to find toilet paper, milk and automobile parts. Economists blame government mismanagement and currency controls set by the late President Hugo Chavez for inflation pushing 50 percent annually. The government controls the dollars needed to buy medical supplies and...

Rogue police officers and sheriff’s deputies in a Southern New Mexico county are guilty of the sort of malevolent abuse of authority which has come to typify the lust for power exhibited by far too many police officials and departments across the nation. Officers Bobby Orosco, Robert Chavez and Officer Hernandez subjected law abiding resident David Eckert to 14 hours of accusation and physical abuse as the “suspect” was forced to undergo X-Rays, 2 anal cavity searches, 3 enemas and a colonoscopy, all performed at the Gila Regional Medical Center without Eckert’s consent. The officers claim of probable cause for...

San Francisco architect Lee Hammack says he and his wife, JoEllen Brothers, are “cradle Democrats.” They have donated to the liberal group Organizing for America and worked the phone banks a year ago for President Obama’s re-election. Since 1995, Hammack and Brothers have received their health coverage from Kaiser Permanente, where Brothers worked until 2009 as a dietician and diabetes educator. “We’ve both been in very good health all of our lives – exercise, don’t smoke, drink lightly, healthy weight, no health issues, and so on,” Hammack told me. The couple — Lee, 60, and JoEllen, 59 — have been...

Video:"So I want to ask you about the navigators," said Senator John Cornyn at a hearing today on Capitol Hill. "The president is in Dallas, Texas today, touting the navigator program, which, as you know, are people who are hired to help people navigate the Affordable Care Act. But I would just like to ask you this question, if you would answer it: Isn't it true that there is no federal requirement for navigators to undergo a criminal background check, even though they will receive personal -- sensitive personal -- information from the individuals they help to sign-up for the...

The whole world is watching Maryville, Missouri. The Daisy Coleman case is international news.  It's a story of a girl assaulted and discarded by a privileged boy, only to be attacked by a town that rallies around a powerful, corrupt politician. But as this story unfolded, there were cracks that many weren't really talking about, either from the raw emotional response to the story or because they just didn't dare question the narrative out of fear. While they don't disprove Daisy's story and it's possible what she claims is the truth, these cracks need to be discussed, as an entire...

President Barack Obama plans to call on Texas Gov. Rick Perry – one of the most prominent Obamacare foes in the country - to follow the lead of a handful of other Republican governors and agree to the expansion of Medicaid in the state as he visits Dallas on Wednesday. "This isn’t a political issue. This is about making sure people where they live have access to good quality, affordable health care," White House deputy senior adviser for communications and strategy David Simas said Tuesday as he previewed the president's trip. Obama will ask Perry and the Republican majority in...

President Obama is "so proud" that lawmakers in his home state of Illinois have voted to legalize same-sex marriage, he said Tuesday night. "I applaud the men and women of the Illinois General Assembly, a body in which I was proud to serve, for voting to legalize marriage equality in my home state," Obama said in a statement released after the state House and Senate voted earlier in the day. The White House had previously said that Obama would have supported the measure if he were still in the legislature.

Each new day brings more disturbing news about the reckless rollout of Obamacare. Americans deserve better than this unworkable law. They also deserve the truth. And right now, they are getting neither from the Obama Administration.Six days ago, a North Carolina man named Justin Hadley logged on to HealthCare.gov to evaluate his insurance options after his current provider canceled his plan — one of an estimated 16 million Americans who could face such a predicament thanks to Obamacare.Once on the website, Hadley discovered a security breach that exposed the personal information of a total stranger. That man, Tom Dougall...

As a child in elementary school, I was the epitome of an underachiever. You could always count on me to get the lowest score on a test, because I lacked even the basic knowledge of an unsophisticated street kid. I secretly admired the smart children in school and wondered how they always seemed to know the answers to any question the teachers would ask. I would have been doomed to failure but my mother, who was a domestic, keenly observed that her employers did a great deal of reading. She determined that my brother and I would become avid readers...

Featured Term (selected at random:SABELLIANISM A third-century heresy called after Sabellius, a theologian of the Monarchian school. His followers advocated belief in one Divine God, the Father who became Man in Jesus Christ and died to redeem the world. Later they modified this single belief to profess that, though only one Person, God had three modes or aspects of manifesting himself as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. This heresy, known in the East as Sabellianism, in the West was called Patripassianism. It was condemned by Pope St. Callistus I but remained in Christian history under a variety of other forms. All...

A court-appointed expert testifying in U.S. student Amanda Knox’s third murder trial in Italy said Wednesday that a new trace of DNA found on the handle of the knife alleged to have been the murder weapon belongs to Knox and not the victim. That testimony bolsters the defense, which claims the kitchen knife was not the weapon used in the bloody 2007 slaying of Knox’s British roommate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher. …

I'm really excited that Chris Christie got reelected last night in a landslizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...By June of 2015 there's going to be a lot of RINO hand-wringers out there who will say that Christie is just saying what he needs to say to be accepted in a DEEP blue state like New Jersey. Including sucking up to Obama.I accept that argument...for New Jersey, but national office is a different story.There should be an electoral college litmus test that says if you can't get the state you're from to support you then forget it...I don't see Jersey going for him over Hillary.Maybe he'd...

The illegal cutting of timber and the poaching of elephants and rhinos are part of a “rapidly escalating environmental crime wave” that international governments must combat by increasing cooperation, police and environmental officials said Wednesday. Interpol and the United Nations Environmental Program are working together to stop environmental crimes that cost tens of billions of dollars a year, said Achim Steiner, the U.N. Environmental Program's Executive Director. … The demand for elephant ivory by China’s rising middle class is fueling the deaths of thousands of elephants across Africa, say wildlife experts. An estimated 17,000 elephants were illegally killed in Africa...

Twenty former residents of a Catholic boys home in Bedfordshire have now joined a legal action to seek compensation. Detectives are investigating claims of sexual and physical abuse at the St Francis Boys Home, in Shefford. But ex-residents are angry that police files from two previous enquiries have gone missing.

AG Schneiderman leaks "secret memo" in violation of the law to prosecute political enemies. http://www.wham1180.com/pages/boblonsberry.html?feed=146799&article=11803245 Good afternoon – OFF THE RECORD/FOR PLANNING PURPOSES ONLY: The AG’s office will announce tomorrow the arrest of four well-recognized individuals for their part in an elaborate scheme to defraud Monroe County citizens. The suspects will surrender at the Attorney General’s Rochester Regional Office (144 Exchange Blvd.), and at 12:30 p.m. will exit the office and walk across the street to the Rochester Police Department for processing. Read more: http://www.wham1180.com/pages/boblonsberry.html?feed=146799&article=11803245#ixzz2jt8uzNRN

PHELPS, New York — The remains of a teenage New York soldier killed in the Korean War more than 60 years ago have been identified and are being returned to his upstate hometown.

Breaking: Sens. Cruz, Paul join Sen. Gillibrand to push for taking sexual assault out of military chain of command.

Shortly after the polls closed at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, the AP and other media outlets easily called the New Jersey governor's race for Republican incumbent Chris Christie, based on exit polls. He defeated Sen. Barbara Buono, a Democrat, by taking a third of the Democratic votes in the state, and two-thirds of independents. The win for the GOP in New Jersey will likely be in contrast to the expected results of a handful of other big races this Tuesday, including the New York City Mayor's race, and the Virginia governor's race. That could be, in part, why the national...

Capping weeks of speculation surrounding Bishop Salvatore Matano, at Roman Noon this Wednesday the Pope named the 67 year-old prelate – head of Vermont's statewide diocese of Burlington since 2005 – as bishop of Rochester. In the upstate New York post, the Providence-born, Rome-trained canonist succeeds Bishop Matthew Clark, who led the 320,000-member diocese for 33 years – a length of tenure practically unheard of in recent times – until his retirement was accepted last September, two months after his 75th birthday. While Rochester under Clark had been an outlier among Northeastern dioceses in its normative embrace of a...