Free Republic

resident Barack Obama has launched a new initiative to get American schools to teach computer science. Appearing at a Newark, New Jersey, middle school, the president suggested that students, especially girls and minorities, should learn "not just how to use a smartphone but to create the apps for a smartphone." If we lived in a country where most students were graduating from high school with good English and math skills and with a firm grasp of American history and government, we might be in a position to make time for advanced computer skills. But we don't. Only about 68 percent...

Congress this week quietly passed a bill that may give unprecedented legal authority to the government's warrantless surveillance powers, despite a last-minute effort by Rep. Justin Amash to kill the bill. Amash staged an aggressive eleventh-hour rally Wednesday night to block passage of the Intelligence Authorization Act, which will fund intelligence agencies for the next fiscal year. The Michigan Republican sounded alarms over recently amended language in the package that he said will for the first time give congressional backing to a controversial Reagan-era decree granting broad surveillance authority to the president.

Father Frank Pavone, the founder of Priests for Life (PFL), once again faces possible disciplinary action because of his refusal to allow episcopal oversight of his organization’s finances. New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan has revealed, in a letter to the bishops of the US, that the Vatican conducted an apostolic visitation of Priests for Life last year. After that investigation, the cardinal says, he was asked by the Congregation for the Clergy to “assist Father Pavone with several necessary reforms.” However, Cardinal Dolan writes, Father Pavone has not cooperated with the reforms. As a result, the cardinal has told the...

Now that Republicans have made it clear they will do nothing to stop his amnesty for existing illegal immigrants, Obama is moving on to step two of his plan. He is planning to bring in more people who will constitute or public charge, or worse, represent a security risk. The LA Times is reporting that the administration will increase the number of refugees that are admitted from Syria: The U.S. government intends to dramatically accelerate efforts to resettle refugees from the Syrian civil war and is preparing for a "surge" of thousands in each of the next few years, State...

Everytime the screen refreshes I am logged out of FR I log out constantly . Frustrating. New behavior. Not logging out of other sites on screen change. Do you not love me anymore?

Under normal circumstances, an institution as big and famous as SeaWorld would be impervious to any number of public assaults on its standing. Like Wal-Mart or Comcast or Disneyland, one would assume it could bear any bad press and keep chugging. But after the release of the documentary “Blackfish” in the summer of 2013, it became clear to onlookers that these were not normal circumstances and not the usual bad press. That became dramatically clear Thursday, when the company’s CEO, Jim Atchison, resigned in a departure many link to the fallout.

Courtesy of the Cronybus(sic) last minute passage, government was provided a quid-pro-quo $1.1 trillion spending allowance with Wall Street's blessing in exchange for assuring banks that taxpayers would be on the hook for yet another bailout, as a result of the swaps push-out provision, after incorporating explicit Citigroup language that allows financial institutions to trade certain financial derivatives from subsidiaries that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, explicitly putting taxpayers on the hook for losses caused by these contracts. Recall: (more at link)

Nathaniel Branden, who has died aged 84,was for many years the lover and chief disciple of the American writer and libertarian monstre sacré Ayn Rand (1905-82); the story of their relationship and its bitter ending served to illustrate some of the pitfalls of her philosophy of ethical selfishness.When they first met in 1950 Nathan Blumenthal, as he then was, was a 19-year-old Canadian psychology student at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ayn Rand, a Russian-Jewish emigrée in her late forties,was the bestselling author of The Fountainhead (1943), a torrid ideological melodrama of Nietzschean individualism, whose merciless celebration of the...

Atthar Mirza and Elizabeth Ballou — second and third-year College students, respectively — released a self-made video Thursday evening thanking Jackie for telling her story and offering support for sexual assault survivors in the University community. Jackie, a University student, told Rolling Stone magazine seven men — one of whom she worked with as a lifeguard at the Aquatic and Fitness Center — raped her at a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party on September 28, 2012.

We started the week with Gruber, apologizing for acting stupidly: "In excerpts of these videos I am shown making a series of glib, thoughtless, and sometimes downright insulting comments," Gruber said in prepared testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Tuesday. "I behaved badly, and I will have to live with that…" And apparently so do we – “have to live with that” I mean – as the House of Boner passed the CROmnibus last night. Now our fate is in the hands of Elizabeth Warren.Next, Senator Feinstein acted stupidly by releasing a prosecutor’s brief untainted by any...

Allah and Ed gave you the blow by blow on the Cromnibus last night, which we were apparently all supposed to oppose. (Though while a 60 or 90 day CR would have left us with a better looking battle in March on the surface, I’m not all that optimistic that the final result would have smelled much better.) The deed is done, though – at least in the House – and it’s worth remembering that things could have gone much further off the rails. The threatened shutdown – though it didn’t happen – was being reluctantly portrayed in the media...

WASHINGTON (WJLA) – After falling victim to thieves who swiped packages off of their front porch several times, a Northeast D.C. couple decided to teach them a lesson. Tis the season for package thieves; many D.C.-area residents have recently caught robbers taking packages on surveillance. But for one couple, caught on camera wasn’t enough—they boxed up a stinky surprise from their two dogs. About 3 p.m. Friday, surveillance footage shows a man walking up and down the sidewalk in front of their home, before stealing their package and taking off. The caught-on-camera incident marked the third package taken from their...

Chicanery, to be polite, is afoot in regard to the Synod next year. Father Z gives us the details. The outline of features for the next Synod of Bishops in October 2015, or Lineamenta, has been released. The Lineamenta is based on the last Synod’s final document, the Relatio Synodi. For the Relatio, the members of the Synod voted on each paragraph. According to the Synod’s own rules, established and approved by those appointed by Pope Francis to run the Synod, in order to be included in the Relatio each paragraph had to receive a 2/3’s majority of voting members....

One of two concealed gun permit holders involved in a rolling shootout down Milwaukee streets and freeways last year was turned down Thursday when he asked a judge to order the return of the gun seized after the incident. Roy Anthony Scott told police he was merely trying to escape from Eric Adamany, 29, and fired in self-defense. Scott was never charged in the June 2013 shootout. Adamany was, and his case of recklessly endangering safety is pending. Scott, also 29, was charged in September 2013 with being party to the crime of armed robbery at an auto-parts store three...

The U.S. chemical industry is expanding at a healthy clip thanks to a domestic drilling renaissance that has flooded the world with cheap oil and gas. The industry grew by 2 percent this year and is expected to swell further next year as advances in drilling and completion technologies unlock vast new supplies of hydrocarbons that chemical companies rely on to make products and fuel their plants, according to the American Chemistry Council’s annual year-end review of the industry. “The wind is back in our sails,” Kevin Swift, chief economist for the trade group, said in a statement. “During the...

Sinatra was a giant of American entertainment. He began his career in the 1930s as a singer whose romantic renditions of songs like "I'll Never Smile Again" caused teenage girls, called "bobby soxers," to shriek and swoon. Later, as an actor, he starred in films such as The Manchurian Candidate, From Here to Eternity, and the original Ocean's Eleven.

The Chart above is said to have been produced by michellawyers.com.  This is a screen shot of the pdf file.   I appreciate the work that went into producing this chart, especially as the timing is subject to change "for good cause" by the En Banc Coordinator at every step of the process.    I do not know if Judge Sidney Runyan Thomas is still the En Banc Coordinator.  The chart is said to have been produced in 2010, four years ago. Now that a Judge in the Ninth Circuit has called for the an En Banc review, sua sponte, this...

FRANKLIN, Mass. (MyFoxBoston.com) -- A dispute over graduation gowns has begun at Franklin High School. At issue is whether all students should wear the same color robes so others aren't discriminated against. At the high school's graduation ceremony, it has been a long running tradition for boys to wear blue gowns and for girls to wear white. But that tradition is changing "There will be a change, I think," said Peter Light, the school's principal. "We have yet to determine what that change looks like." The call for change started when members of the school's Gay Student Alliance organization became...

Sheriffs from across the nation held came to Capitol Hill Wednesday to warn of the dangers of Pres. Obama’s executive order grant amnesty to an estimated four million illegal aliens. At the press event, hosted by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the sheriffs called on Congress to defund the president’s amnesty edict. Sheriff Chuck Jenkins (Frederick County, Maryland; Maryland Sheriff’s Association) said Obama’s action is attracting transnational gangs: “You ask, why am I here? Because what we see in Frederick County, Maryland, are the same problems that the border county sheriffs see. We see human trafficking, we see an insurgence of...

Hollywood, still wet from the soaking it took from Noah, has headed for the desert with Moses in the new movie Exodus: Gods and Kings. Surely this time we have a foolproof crowd pleaser filled only with milk and honey? Or, instead, is it going to be a lot of grumbling at bitter herbs?The movie, which opens today, stars Christian Bale, best known for his Batman portrayal, and is directed by Ridley Scott, no stranger to big screen extravaganzas like his film Gladiator. In 3D, and costing an estimated $140, 000,000, this must have appeared a formidable proposition. I mean,...