Free Republic

First there was Fergusson, where James Brown, a black teenager, stole a few Cigarillos. He was punished by death. Darren Wilson, a trigger-happy white cop, didn't have to stand trial for the murder. a grand jury let him off the hook. The resulting unrest in the community was severe. Fourteen businesses were looted and torched, and 3,000 national guardsmen were brought in to quiet things down. Then another minor offense, selling cigarettes without tax stamps on the packages was punished by death at the hands of a white officer. He used a chokehold, forbidden by New York City Police Department...

[Barf Alert] Gender equality must guide 2015 climate deal, U.N. envoy says By Megan Rowling, Reuters LIMA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Gender equality must be a key part of a new global climate change deal due to be reached in Paris next year even though achieving it will be a struggle, U.N. climate envoy Mary Robinson said on Tuesday. The former Irish president said the 2015 agreement should drive climate policies that take both women's and men's needs into account and must include gender equality as a guiding principle. [excerpt. hurl here]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department has failed to turn over government documents covering Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as secretary of state that The Associated Press and others requested under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act ahead of her presumptive presidential campaign. They include one request AP made four years ago and others pending for more than one year.

I believe the American people have a right — indeed, a responsibility — to know what was done in their name; how these practices did or did not serve our interests; and how they comported with our most important values. The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it, nonetheless. They must know when the values that define our nation are intentionally disregarded by our security policies, even those policies that...

That's how radio talk show host and law professor Hugh Hewitt has been describing Senator McCain for years. Tuesday, Senator Feinstein finally saw the release of her Majority Views "Torture" Report. Absent from the 5 year investigation is any participation from Republicans who sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee. They perceived the Feinstein investigation as a partisan exercise. So what we're left with, absent the Minority Views Report, is a non-bipartisan (re: partisan), $40 million investigation tinted and tainted by a Democrat's worldview lens in interpreting the information they used to draw up the Report. Senator Feinstein spoke yesterday on...

Apple made billions giving people what they want, but the tech giant might want to rethink its decision to kill off the iPod Classic music player, now that it has become one of the hottest Christmas presents of the year. People are clamoring for used models on eBay, according to the UK newspaper The Guardian. The 16-gigabyte digital music player, which a decade ago helped Apple revolutionize the music industry, can hold up to 40,000 songs, more than double the amount of any iPods currently being manufactured. More than 3,000 have been sold on eBay since the Classic was retired...

Botox is being used to slim calves. Due to genetics or athletics, some women are prone to larger lower-leg muscles. When you use those muscles to walk, stand in heels, or workout, for instance, they also bulge and thicken. Injecting Botox paralyzes the muscle so it can’t fully contract, which may lead to a potential two-inch decrease in calf circumference and the appearance of a slimmer leg for up to six months. Why the push to pare down the lower leg? Those with larger calves have more complaints than you think. Women may have more trouble finding clothes and boots...

Michael Matt discusses Pope Bergoglio's invitation to Patti Smith.

Vice President Biden said Tuesday he’ll make up his mind about whether to run for president “at the end of the spring or early summer. "I honest to God haven't made up my mind,” Biden said at a ‘Women Rule’ event hosted by Politico. “I'm confident I'd be in a position to be competitive." "The one thing that moves me — I think that I have the ability to bring the sides together,” he added. Biden’s daughter Ashley appeared on stage with him at the event, and called his potential presidential aspirations a “family decision.”

House Republicans blocked a legislative rider that would have protected churches in California from being forced to pay for abortions, according to one lawmaker, because they needed Democratic support to pass the CRomnibus. Representative John Fleming (R., Ariz.) tried to have the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act added to the CRomnibus because in response to a new regulation in California that requires all insurance plans to cover elective abortions. “Even our own leadership stripped it out,” Fleming told reporters Wednesday. The rider didn’t make it through negotiations with Democrats in the House and Senate. The federal government is supposed to revoke federal...

GENEVA (AP) — All senior U.S. officials and CIA agents who authorized and carried out torture like waterboarding as part of former President George W. Bush's national security policy must be prosecuted, top U.N. human rights officials said Wednesday. The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, said it is "crystal clear" under international law that the United States, which ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture in 1994, now has an obligation to ensure accountability.....

A team of approximately 20 agents with the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will begin to examine the remnants of the 7-story Da Vinci Complex, located at 906 N. Fremont Avenue, the LAFD said.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren urged Democrats Wednesday to withhold support for a massive government funding bill, as opposition on the political left mounted over a set of changes to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law buried in the legislation.

A powerful video posted to YouTube shows a bloodied man in the moments after he had two teeth knocked out by masked vandals late Tuesday in Oakland during a protest against police brutality that ranged from Berkeley to Oakland to Emeryville.

Think it’s elitist or wrongheaded to admit that Democrats can’t win down south? Then let’s go through the numbers, shall we?All right. Now that I’ve gotten your attention about the South, let’s stay at it, shall we? I’ll keep the rhetorical flourishes to a minimum this time and make no references to specific religious figures, but I will instead use hard numbers to drive home what was the clear substantive point of my Monday column: That from the level of Congress on down, with a small number of exceptions, the Democratic Party is largely wasting its time (and indeed worse—diluting...

Law: If there really is a "war on women," it's being waged against a group of nuns who seek to honor their call to serve the dying poor without being compelled to provide contraception coverage to those who help them. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver heard oral arguments Monday in the lawsuit by the Little Sisters of the Poor challenging the ObamaCare abortion-inducing drug mandate that threatens religious liberty. The case of the feisty nuns challenges a bizarre "accommodation" offered by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS). Under its proposal, the Little Sisters can fill...

Good 6 1/2 minute video with Hayden. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden on Wednesday defended the agency’s post-9/11 interrogation methods, following the release of a Senate report that slammed their tactics as "brutal" and ineffective. “These interrogations … gave us kind of a Home Depot-like storage of information on Al Qaeda on which we relied,” Hayden told Fox News. “We are still relying on it today.” Hayden was one of the top-ranking intelligence officials in the federal government for a decade. He first served as director of the National Security Agency, before taking over at the CIA in 2006 during...

The West, in its era under Christianity, has not known the phenomenon we call the homosexual movement until the 20th century. During the Christian era, whenever homosexuality was discussed, it was almost always considered an aberration imported from the Muslim orient—which there, it was always considered not just an acceptable practice but a norm and is why homosexuals tend to be more sympathetic towards Islam over Christianity. The proof to this is simple. All one has to do in order to understand Islamic history is to review ISIS and they will see is a microcosm of the times of Muhammad...

Out of a clear blue sky, stock brokers and janitors rained. Contorted bodies approached terminal velocity in wind-whipped business suits. Forced to decide between the slow agony of fire and the sudden — O, God I hope it’s sudden –slam against cement, they laid out upon the atmosphere, wishing for the whisper of angel wings to whisk them ever upward. Yet. Plummeting. I called a database vendor to get a project update. He said, “Do you know what’s happening?” “No, what?” “We’re under attack,” he said. “America is under attack.”

One of the most annoying things about pacifists is they can only afford to have their views in a strong society where others will do the dirty work necessary to allow them to stay in their narcissistic bubble of abject unawareness of themselves.If the world went to hell a la The Walking Dead that "pacifism" and a nickle would be worth 5 cents. (assuming money retains value after the apocalypse...so humor me on this one)The same thing is true of the liberal kabuki theater that is opposition and outrage over "enhanced interrogation" and the pure fantasy that it has gotten...