Free Republic

Sorry, but this one you can’t blame on either party. Yes, President Obama has made the problem much, much worse, but the scary truth is that the national debt keeps rising inexorably no matter who or which party is in office. That’s the new law of American politics. When I first arrived in Washington in the early 1980s, the debt was roughly $2 trillion. This week, 30 years and five presidents later, the debt for the first time exceeded $18 trillion. We have been in the red in all but four of the last 40 years. That’s $18,000,000,000,000. We all...

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s $40 million investigation of the CIA (that involved no CIA directors or interrogators) culminated yesterday in the release of a 545 page executive summary (the complete report is 6000+pages so you can’t expect anyone to read that). I can summarize it for you in far fewer words: America conducted what Diane Feinstein considers illegal torture techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and death threats against Taliban operatives  captured following that World Trade center “incident” that led to our National Day of Remembrance Service. That makes us as bad as they are. Somehow.Do you see the equivalence?...

I’m still not in love with this transmission. In general, it operates well and shifts quickly, but I had a pretty unsettling moment waiting for the transmission to engage so I could make a left turn in front of some oncoming traffic. Even with the throttle pinned, the trans turned what should have been a leisurely 20-foot trip into a small moment of terror. I actually had time to say, “Oh, come on!” before the car took off, and to be fair, crossed the lane before the oncoming driver even had to think about touching the brakes. As anyone within...

Greg Starr, assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, and Steve Linick, inspector general with the State Department, testify before the House Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.

“No nation ever continued happy, whose chief magistrate was its absolute master; and no nation miserable, whose supreme power was properly checked and divided.” These words were written by Thomas Gordon in 1722. Perhaps he picked them up from John Locke’s 1689 Two Treatises of Government. In any event, our framing generation certainly understood what to do with power in a republic, for their design “properly checked and divided” powers. They first divided it vertically between member republics and the government created by those republics. Second, authority was carefully parceled out horizontally among three branches. This past month, depending on...

WASHINGTON – The government watchdog group Judicial Watch has struck again, discovering Lois Lerner, former IRS tax-exempt division chief, had discussed possible criminal prosecution of conservative groups with Justice Department officials two years before what the agency had conceded. Lerner met with Department of Justice officials in October 2010, just before the November midterm elections. Amid the rise of the tea-party groups targeted by Lerner, Republicans in the 2010 elections gained the most seats in the House since 1948.

In December 1941, Adolf Hitler threw a Christmas Party for his fellow Nazis. It was a lavish affair, in which the Nazi Party's top officials, statesmen, and generals gathered before a massive Christmas tree to feast and exchange presents with hundreds of jackbooted S.S. cadets in attendance. In surviving pictures taken by the Führer's own personal photographer, Hitler appears somewhat dour and maybe a little sad to be at this event, as if he feels out of place despite his importance, and no wonder: What holiday could be less suited to the sentiments of that genocidal, warmongering dictator than...

CORTEZ, Colo. (AP) A man accused of assaulting a police officer trying to arrest him is free after invoking a Colorado law that allows homeowners to use force to protect themselves. A jury in Cortez, Colorado acquitted 38-year-old Shane French of assaulting a peace officer and resisting arrest Monday after 3 ½ hours of deliberations.

Like many cities, Lake Worth opens its commission meetings with an invocation, usually given by clergy who sometimes pray in Jesus' name. Last week, an atheist named Preston Smith was allowed to give the invocation.Before he opened his mouth, four of five commissioners -- including Mayor Pam Triolo -- walked out of the room. - click here to watch via YouTube . Triolo has told WPTV-Ch. 5 that she walked out before Smith's invocation because of an allegedly offensive Twitter comment he posted in July. "I didn't leave because he's an atheist, I left because of his alleged Tweet," Triolo told...

(CNSNews.com) – A United Nations human rights official is calling for individuals who carried out, planned or authorized abusive practices against al-Qaeda detainees in the aftermath of 9/11 to be put on trial, saying the U.S. was obliged under international law “to bring those responsible to justice.” He also warned Tuesday that perpetrators could be prosecuted anywhere in the world, noting that “torture is a crime of universal jurisdiction.” Meanwhile the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the Senate Intelligence Committee’s release of a declassified portion of a report on CIA interrogation and detention programs was insufficient, calling for the...

The economic recovery has not been kind to millennials. They make less money than previous generations did, they're more likely to be unemployed and they're burning through cash without saving much of it. Now comes more evidence that the economic odds are stacked against them: Many corporate executives are making no effort to attract workers under age 35, a new survey says. One reason: Millennials are developing a reputation as workplace divas who need more handholding and who will bolt from jobs at the drop of a hat.

The Lakers each had the T-shirts on their chairs in their dressing room before the game. Every player except backup center Robert Sacre wore the shirts. "I think it's us supporting that movement and supporting each other as well as athletes," Bryant said after the game. "I think the beauty of our country lies in its democracy. I think if we ever lose the courage to be able to speak up for the things that we believe in, I think we really lose the value that our country stands for.

In August 2005, Marine Lance Cpl. Travis Williams and his squad were sent on a rescue mission in Barwanah, Iraq. En route, their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. Of Travis’ entire 12-person team, he alone survived. Here, Travis reflects on the hours and days after the explosion, as well as his life now, and pays tribute to the men he left behind.Watch the video.

As colleges across the country struggle to develop procedures for dealing with sexual misconduct and sexual-misconduct complaints, it’s time to take a second look at the effort that was made to deal with campus sexual offenses two decades ago by Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. A tiny college, founded before the Civil War by Horace Mann, the legendary educational reformer, Antioch has always been innovative, and its ’90s effort to come up with sexual-conduct guidelines reflected this tradition. The Antioch rules—officially, the Sexual Offense Prevention Policy—centered on the idea that “consent must be obtained each and every time there...

A Missouri inmate was put to death early Wednesday for fatally beating a 63-year-old woman with a hammer in 1998, the state's record 10th lethal injection of 2014 to match Texas for the most executions in the country this year. Paul Goodwin, 48, sexually assaulted Joan Crotts in St. Louis County, pushed her down a flight of stairs and beat her in the head with a hammer. Goodwin was a former neighbor who felt Crotts played a role in getting him kicked out of a boarding house. Goodwin's execution began at 1:17 a.m., more than an hour after it was...

BP expects to take $1 billion in restructuring charges over the next year as it plans to accelerate job cuts and pare back its oil production business amid crumbling oil prices. The British oil giant is gearing up to weather at least two years of lower oil prices and the contraction in the oil industry that goes with it, making plans to deepen cuts even after slashing $32 billion in oil-producing assets over the last 18 months, BP executives told investors in London on Wednesday. In a written statement released in conjunction with the investor presentation, BP CEO Bob Dudley...

"Christian unity" is one of those terms that stir up a whole spectrum of—sometimes emotional—opinions. On the one hand, we know that Jesus prayed to the Father concerning future believers "that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you" (John 17:21a, NIV). On the other hand, charismatics know it is almost pointless to discuss the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12, 14) with Baptists or most anyone else from a mainline denomination. And Protestants of just about any stripe get riled up when they hear Catholics talking about...

In the run-up to last October’s synod of bishops on the family, one of the more sensational developments was the Vatican’s decision to ask bishops around the world to survey the grassroots on matters such as same-sex marriage, divorce and remarriage, and cohabitation outside marriage. Some bishops’ conferences made a big deal of the questionnaire, even creating online opportunities for people to submit reactions, while others played it down out of concern that raising these questions risked a false impression that Church teaching is up for grabs. In hindsight, it was an early hint that the synod would be a...

The real part of the climate change negotiations started yesterday in Lima. Bolivian President Evo Morales took the spotlight at the United Nations summit as he pointed the finger at developed countries for their responsibility for climate change and suggested creating a world court to judge climate crimes. “Developing countries are the ones that struggle the most because of climate change even though they are the least responsible for it,” Evo Morales said, speaking alongside UN heads and several ministers. “After 30 years of negotiations, we haven’t reached any important climate change agreement. We have failed and now we are...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jGmGiARnBo&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop Supposedly from Oakland. Hippie guy has a t-shirt saying, "STOP KILLING BLACK MEN." Is decked by a thug with a hammer.