Free Republic

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro blasted the United States Wednesday for its large-scale use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, saying it is flooding the market with oil produced with environmentally destructive methods. The United States, one of the world's biggest practitioners of fracking, a controversial technique that involves pumping a pressurized fluid - usually composed of water, sand and chemicals - into a shale formation to create a fracture in the rock layer and release trapped petroleum or natural gas - has used that technology to double oil output to 8.5 million barrels per day in six years.

Eternal Glory Today's Scripture “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” (2 Corinthians 4:17 NIV) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria Troubles and trials are only temporary! In fact, this verse tells us they are momentary. Compared with eternity, our troubles won’t last long at all! When you stand strong in faith during the difficult times, you are building faith in your life and also achieving eternal glory. If you are in the middle of tough times today, look to God. The Bible says that He is the...

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is reminding Americans that no civilized nation should ever torture prisoners. “Torture is wrong, unambiguously. Period. The end. Civilized nations do not engage in torture and Congress has rightly acted to make absolutely clear that the United States will not engage in torture,” Cruz said during the Q-and-A portion of a speech at the Heritage Foundation.

IRBIL, Iraq — While Iraq is being torn apart along sectarian lines, Shiites and Sunnis have managed to keep the peace among themselves in a tent city, Camp Hashem. More than 1,300 displaced by war that pits "Islamic State" against Iraque and Kurd forces. The French relief agency in charge maintains order among the mixed, destitute population with just a half dozen employees and no security personnel. While new neighbors at the camp get along, each understand; the "Islamic State" could never have achieved success without help from within.

The Offering of the Natural " It is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. —Galatians 4:22 " Paul was not dealing with sin in this chapter of Galatians, but with the relation of the natural to the spiritual. The natural can be turned into the spiritual only through sacrifice. Without this a person will lead a divided life. Why did God demand that the natural must be sacrificed? God did not demand it. It is not God’s perfect will, but His permissive will. God’s perfect will was for the...

What do abortionists truly believe about the humanity of preborn children, and what do they admit about the violent late-term abortion procedures they perform when they do not realize the cameras are rolling? Live Action‘s “What is Human?” undercover investigation probes America’s late-term abortion industry, and reveals chilling admissions from abortionists on the humanity of children in the womb. The video, which has garnered millions of views on Facebook and over 60,000 views on YouTube, exposes the violent and inhumane nature of late-term abortion procedures that occur daily in abortion facilities. “What is Human?” details the willingness of abortionists to...

Looking for a job? If you're a programmer or computer science grad, there are plenty, said Meir Brand, head of Google's Israel office.Looking for a job? If you're a programmer or computer science grad, there are plenty of jobs for you in Israel, said Meir Brand, head of Google's Israel office. “I can tell you that there is a worldwide shortage of qualified people in these areas, and Israel is feeling this as well,” Brand told an audience at Haifa University, at an event sponsored by the Israel Lottery. The Lottery raises money for education, and Brand's message for listeners...

"I don't know that the report that was released yesterday is that historically accurate. It reads like a prosecutorial screed rather than a historical document."- Michael Hayden, Former CIA Director from May 30, 2006- Feb 12, 2009 For the most part, the narrative that the CIA tortured, that methods were "brutal", that the program wasn't effective in obtaining intelligence, that it played no role in the finding and killing of OBL, that those involved are war criminals- all of that is pretty much cemented in the minds of a number of Americans who are only reading the headlines and buying...

High-ranking American military sources revealed Monday, Dec. 8, that Israel’s air strikes near Damascus the day before wiped out newly-arrived Russian hardware including missiles that were dispatched post haste to help Syria and Hizballah frustrate a US plan for a no-fly zone over northern Syria. The advanced weapons were sent over, as debkafile reported exclusively Sunday, after Russian President Vladimir Putin learned that the Obama administration and the Erdogan government were close to a final draft on a joint effort to activate a no-fly zone that would bar Syrian air force traffic over northern Syria. The Kremlin has repeatedly warned...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday called the latest Senate report on torture “full of crap.” “The report’s full of crap, excuse me,” Cheney said in an interview with Fox News after calling the report a “terrible piece of work” and “deeply flawed.” Cheney cited the report’s lack of first-hand accounts from CIA officials as one reason he was dismissing its findings.

<p>Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans alike threw a wrench Wednesday into congressional leaders’ hopes of quickly passing a newly struck budget deal, with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi demanding that certain provisions be stripped.</p> <p>The California Democrat had been coy for days over whether she would support the plan being hammered out in closed-door negotiations to fund the government past a Thursday-at-midnight deadline.</p>

Beyond these three visible dimensions, scientists believe that there may many more. In fact, the theoretical framework of Superstring Theory posits that the universe exists in ten different dimensions. These different aspects are what govern the universe, the fundamental forces of nature, and all the elementary particles contained within. ... In the sixth, we would see a plane of possible worlds, where we could compare and position all the possible universes that start with the same initial conditions as this one (i.e. the Big Bang). In theory, if you could master the fifth and sixth dimension, you could travel back...

Sens Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said, “So I have a message today to every leader in Congress, to every official in the White House, and to President Obama: we are going to fight this illegal amnesty and we are not going to stop. We are going to carry out the mission the voters sent us here to do. We are not going to give in. We are not going to yield. We are going to stand strong for the American people.”

Margaret A. Woodbury, a writer for Salon magazine, describes two abortions that she witnessed in an abortion clinic. The first abortion was done on a woman who was 23 weeks pregnant. It was a “partial-birth” abortion, which is now illegal. This was the most difficult procedure to watch, mostly because of the pain experienced by the least sedated of the women. As the doctor, with a resident by his side, slid most of his hand deep into the patient’s vagina, she moaned horribly and could not remain still. Only when the anesthesiologist administered a drug to increase her sedation could...

--snip-- They live in rooms 6-by-8 generally, and shedlike housing, sometimes no furniture. They sleep on scraps of cardboard," Marosi says. The workers are forced to buy food from the company stores, where the prices are heavily inflated. Even making $8 to $12 a day, which is more than they might make at home, they can't keep up with the high costs. "A lot of these places, they illegally withhold the wages of the workers; they're there on three-month contracts, they're not paid until the end," he says. That means they don't even have the money to catch a bus...

Late on Thanksgiving eve, with no one paying attention, the Obama administration released its regulatory road map of thousands of regulations for 2015. Within the bundle of more than 3,000 regulations lies a rule on ozone that President Obama himself in 2011 “put on ice” in effort to reduce “regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.” Regarding the 2011 decision that shocked environmental groups, the New York Times recently stated: “At the time, Mr. Obama said the regulation would impose too severe a burden on industry and local governments at a time of economic distress.”...

Health Overhaul: Jonathan Gruber isn't the only one who got rich off ObamaCare. Several big government contractors are raking in megabucks to help the government take over the nation's health care system. Gruber made news when it came to light that the Obama administration had paid the stupid-American-calling MIT economist roughly $400,000 to help build ObamaCare, and several states paid him big bucks as well to build their exchanges. But this is just the tip of the ObamaCare bonanza. In the last fiscal year, Health and Human Services spent $21 billion on contracts with private firms. That's more than it...

House speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday defended the $1 trillion spending bill as a bipartisan bill that's needed to keep the government open after Thursday, even as it came under attack from both Republican and Democrats. ...

Article 16. (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

With the release of EPA’s 600-plus page proposal on ozone, all attention turns to the fine details of such an expansive regulation. American Action Forum (AAF) research found that 100 national and state parks might not the meet EPA’s standards of 60-70 parts per billion (ppb). Hardly transportation corridors and centers of heavy pollution, many observers would be surprised to know that Death Valley National Park, Sequoia National Park, and Cape Cod National Seashore have ozone readings of 71 to 87 ppb. The map below details the geographic distribution of state and national parks in danger of EPA’s non-attainment label...