Free Republic

Senate Republicans are throwing up obstacles to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) plans to confirm a batch of executive and judicial branch nominees this weekend. Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said if Reid wants to confirm 12 pending federal district judges, he will have to run them through the regular floor process, which could take days. Grassley noted that Republicans don’t have enough votes to block the judicial nominees but they can drag out the process, which may force Reid to bring the Senate in next week if he wants to get the...

"....The first, most important question to ask in looking at our year of data collection about guns is simple: Why is our tally of gun deaths in the year since Newtown so much lower than the likely actual number of gun deaths over a year’s time?........Suicides, it turns out, are this project’s enormous blind spot. Most every homicide makes the local paper,even if in large cities these stories are sometimes relegated to a mere news brief. Accidental shootings are usually reported upon, as are shootings by law enforcement and incidents in which civilians kill in self-defense. But suicides are mostly...

A group of more than 300 hundred former Obama staffers have written an open letter urging Elizabeth Warren to run for president of the United States. "We helped elect Barack Obama — now we’re calling on Elizabeth Warren to run in 2016," the letter is titled. We believed in an unlikely candidate who no one thought had a chance.

NASHVILLE — The approval of a constitutional amendment to give the state Legislature more power to regulate abortions in Tennessee may have opened the floodgates to proposals from Republican lawmakers in the upcoming session, but Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey said Thursday that he doesn't expect most of them to be enacted.

Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday condemned anti-Muslim demonstrations centred on the eastern city of Dresden, saying there was "no place in Germany" for hatred of Muslims or any other minority. In a speech at a party congress of her Bavarian allies in Nuremberg, Merkel also denounced an attack on buildings in a nearby town being turned into refuge for asylum-seekers. The structures were set on fire and daubed with swastikas. "It is unbearable when homes of asylum-seekers are defiled, when people try to make radical slogans," Merkel said, adding that everyone coming to Germany had the right to be treated...

While many public school students complain about lunchtime mush that meets White House calorie guidelines, President Barack Obama's daughters are dining on gourmet meals at a posh private school in Washington. School kids have been moaning about tasteless fare local governments adopt to comply with first lady Michelle Obama’s war on the waistline and posting photos of the mystery meals online. The Sidwell Friends School, the $36,000-a-year private academy attended by Malia and Sasha Obama, also posts its menus on the Internet. The Daily Caller discovered that Sidwell students eat well. Thursday’s lunch included: potato sausage soup, firecracker slaw, California...

In one of its last and most partisan acts as a Senate Majority, on Tuesday Democrats released a partisan political report on the CIA’s Enhanced Interrogation Program. It is nothing more than a blatant, shameful attack on the men and women who helped protect America in the harrowing days after 9/11. Purporting to be a comprehensive study of the CIA’s Enhanced Interrogation Program, which ran from 2002 to 2009, the report, which cost over $40 million to prepare, calls into question the lawfulness and effectiveness of the CIA program that led to the disruption of active terror plots and the...

Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, who recently questioned ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber about a paper he wrote which discussed how the government had saved billions of dollars by targeting abortion to the poor, is calling the paper creepy and based in eugenics. Thomas Massie Gruber Nemesis In a December 9, 2014 hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, about enrollment issues with the Affordable Care Act, Jonathan Gruber, a former consultant and adviser during the lawÂ’s creation, apologized for comments he made in which he called voters stupid and said the controversial law was passed because voters did not...

More than a million retired and current truck drivers, construction workers and other union workers could see their pension benefits cut if the U.S. Senate passes a proposal aimed at shoring up some of the nation's biggest pensions. The House of Representatives approved the proposal late Thursday night as part of a last-minute government spending bill. The bill now heads to the Senate, which is expected to vote on the funding bill by midnight on Saturday.     .

Stocks opened under pressure and never put up any kind of fight. The carnage was evenly distributed, but the epicenter was oil. Already under pressure, the weekly inventory numbers point to a build in supply rather than a drawdown. The implication is that there was weaker demand. Remember, thus far; the narrative is cheaper oil, solely because of a slowing global economy outside of the United States, but what if demand is declining here, too? It is bizarre. A major asset class could lose 40% of its value in a flash, and not rankle or worry investors of other assets. There...

An Oklahoma TV station has reported that eight more patients have come forward to talk about their experiences with an abortionist arrested and charged with fraud earlier in the week. Abortionist Patel Arrested Dec 2014 Tuesday, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt charged 62-year-old abortionist Nareshkumar Patel with three counts of obtaining money under false pretense after improperly prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to patients he said were pregnant, but were not. “After an undercover investigation, our office today arrested an abortion doctor in Oklahoma City on fraud charges for prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to patients who were not pregnant. This type of fraudulent...

The Harvard Business School professor who blasted a family-run Chinese restaurant for overcharging him $4 has previously attacked a sushi place in a dispute over a Groupon. -snip- In the email, published by Boston.com, he claimed he would fight to strip the establishment of its alcohol license 'if it does not honor its contractual commitments'. He wrote: 'I call on you to honor my three Osushi Groupon vouchers. 'I also call on you to extend their validity for six weeks to reflect the day imposed by our resolution of this dispute. 'If I don't hear from you within the next...

Exactly 199 years ago, in 1815, a “temporary” committee was established in the US Senate called the Committee on Finance and Uniform National Currency. It was set up to address economic issues and the debt accrued by the US government after the War of 1812. Of course, because there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government measure, the committee became a permanent one after just one year. It soon expanded its role from raising tariffs to having influence over taxation, banking, currency, and appropriations. In subsequent wars, notably the American Civil War, the Committee was quick to use its powers...

" Republican Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Jeff Sessions are pushing for a vote to defund President Obama’s executive amnesty in the “Cromnibus” spending bill Friday night, The Daily Caller has learned. The trio of conservative senators is hoping to get the defund vote onto the Senate floor as a “point of order,” which would force a procedural vote on the issue without Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid having to introduce it." http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/12/breaking-ted-cruz-mike-lee-jeff-sessions-pushing-for-defund-amnesty-vote/ PLEASE all freepers call your Senators. Boehner screwed us but here is another chance.

The energy junk bond bubble has finally popped. Falling crude prices were the catalyst. Junk bonds of Energy XXI Ltd. plunged to 64 cents on the dollar from 106.3 cents since September. They now yield over 27%. Energy XXI Ltd. raised over $2 billion. Energy production is extremely capital intense, and often accompanied by negative free cash flow. Recently I have been getting numerous cold-calls, nearly all of them energy related. These companies need money, and snake-oil salesmen attempt to get it for them. Energy investment added to GDP since 2010, with $550 billion in bond and loan offerings. Energy...

President Barack Obama bailed out House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday night. After the House embarrassed Boehner by almost killing his 1,774-page $1.1 trillion cromnibus bill on a purely procedural vote earlier in the day, House Democrats pitched in to provide the votes to pass it. “My job tonight is to say thank you and Merry Christmas,” Boehner said in a rare floor appearance after the measure barely passed the House 219-206 after a day of pure chaos in Congress. Earlier in the say, every Democrat who voted on the rule voted against it. That nearly derailed the bill, as...

The hand-held breath test, which is expected to become available in February, can detect a presence of THC on the breath for up to two hours after use. (Credit: courtesy photo)Six months after New York State lawmakers voted to legalize marijuana use for medicinal purposes — and as pot laws become more relaxed across the U.S. — the availability of a breath analysis test to help determine if drivers are under the influence is that much closer. Researchers with a Canadian company called Cannabix Technologies Inc. say they have the technology for a THC detection test that’s similar to an alcohol...

Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said that conservatives in the House heard "not one word" from House GOP leadership on compromises to make changes to the cromnibus in order to get conservatives to vote for it even though "we were willing to work with them to compromise" on Thursday's "Hannity" on the Fox News Channel. "There was no encouragement to conservatives. The Speaker and Majority Leader, these folks knew there's money for abortion, money for the EPA to hurt states like Texas, Arizona. There's just all kinds of money in there for things we don't support. and, Sean, you and I...

Guinea-Bissau reports suspected Ebola caseBissau (AFP) - A man who entered Guinea-Bissau from neighbouring Guinea the day after the border reopened is being treated for suspected Ebola, a medical official said on Friday. The traveller was running a … Yahoo News /AFP 33 minutes ago

Fountains of the Deep by Tim Clarey, Ph.D. * Most of the fossil-bearing strata on Earth are comprised of six megasequences.1,2 Secular scientists believe they were laid down over millions of years, but this assumption prevents them from describing some prominent geological features—features that are best explained by large-scale flooding. Using data from over 500 stratigraphic columns,3 I examined megasequences across North America to document the sedimentary evidence for the Flood’s catastrophe. At each site, the megasequence boundaries were identified, along with the thicknesses and extent of individual rock types. These findings enabled the creation of computer maps that will...