Free Republic

The Affordable Care Act is spelling the demise of free healthcare clinics across the country, The Wall Street Journal reports. Of clinics across 28 states, almost a dozen in the past two years have cited Obamacare as their reason for shutting their doors. Both The Good Samaritan Free Clinic in Rock Island, Illinois, and the Ninth Street Ministries Free Medical Clinic in Polk County, Arkansas, shut their doors this year saying their missions were complete. Now that most of their former clients have medical insurance, many through expanded Medicaid, they are no longer needed, they say. …

Their sons -- Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner -- have become symbols of a raging national conversation about police brutality and racial injustice. The mothers of these four unarmed black men and boys felled by bullets or excessive police force have no doubt their sons would still be alive if they were white. No question, they say. "I think absolutely my son's race and the color of his skin had a lot to do with why he was shot and killed," Sybrina Fulton, Martin's mother, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Friday. "In all of these cases,...

Last week’s furore over the US senate’s report into the CIA’s torture of detainees was a reminder that since 9/11, America’s decision-makers have been a little like Darren Wilson, the Missouri policeman who shot and killed the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown last August. By his own account, Mr Wilson had been mortally afraid. Brown, he said, “looked like a demon”, and he feared the young man might punch him to death. In his own mind therefore, he had acted in self-defence when he shot Brown dead. The 2001 terror attacks left US leaders making decisions in a climate of...

The New York City Police are asking Mayor Bill DeBlasio and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito to stay away from their funerals should they be killed in the line of duty.This comes after the Democratic mayor smeared the police after the Eric Garner grand jury decision. The New York Post reported: Not over their dead bodies. ​ Cops are warning Mayor de Blasio and Council Speaker Melissa ​Mark-​Viverito to stay away from their funerals should they be ​killed in the line of duty.The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association distributed a flier to members, blaring: “DON’T LET THEM INSULT YOUR SACRIFICE!” Cops were encouraged to...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — At the start of every month, the same image of a pistol points from the same place on the front page of the New Pittsburgh Courier, above the same caption: Under Attack By Us! The only thing that changes is the number of the dead. “75 of 91 homicides Black lives,” read a recent headline in the renowned Black newspaper’s crusade against Black-on-Black violence. It was accompanied, as always, by a literal body count: The name, race and manner of death for every homicide in Pittsburgh in 2014 — with victims being overwhelmingly Black, as the headline...

LIMA, Peru (AP) — A last-minute deal that salvaged U.N. climate talks from collapse early Sunday sends a signal the rich-poor divide that long held up progress can be overcome with a year to go before a landmark pact is supposed to be adopted in Paris.

Chippewa Falls, WI — Dashcam video has been released that shows the disturbing last moments of a man’s life as he’s detained by a Chippewa Falls police officer on the way to the hospital. 29-year-old Casey Kressin died after suffering a severe asthma attack when the vehicle that was rushing him to the hospital was pulled over by a Chippewa Falls police officer. After they were stopped, Kressin’s girlfriend immediately starts to beg the officer to take him to the hospital. The officer instead calls for an ambulance. The couple was just 3 miles from the hospital when they were...

Enterprise Products Partners (EPD) is shelving a proposed pipeline that would have transported crude from North Dakota to Oklahoma, the company announced on Friday. The news came in the midst of a brutal slide in global oil prices that have raised concerns about whether U.S. companies will continue to build on the expansion of oil production. Middle East oil producers have yet to announce a cut in production to offset the drop in crude, in what some analysts say is a slow-bleed strategy designed to make pumping crude as uneconomic as possible for the world's fastest growing non-OPEC oil producer....

TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices sank more than two percent to 5 1/2-year lows early on Monday on concerns about a supply glut and slower global growth, feeding fears for energy and commodities producers and exporters. Investors were nervous after U.S. shares posted their biggest weekly fall in 2 1/2-years last week on losses led by energy sector, and as they expect the U.S. Federal Reserve to hint this week it is getting closer to raising interest rates. U.S. crude futures fell more than 2.5 percent at one point to as low as $56.25 per barrel (CLc1) in quiet early...

[I had originally posted this as a comment to an news article about an absurd "Hand Up, Don't Shoot" protest at my alma mater, East Carolina University, covered by WITN. The good little progressive censors at WITN didn't appreciate my polite if forceful views, and deleted it. It's replicated here for my edification.] Black lives don’t matter. If they did, people would be rioting to burn down Planned Parenthood locations, which have been intentionally located in minority neighborhoods since the group’s racist founder Margaret Sanger decided that it was the easiest way to exterminate them. In 1922 she said: “We...

It’s a question that will prove crucial next year when Mitch McConnell takes the reins of a new Senate: Just how big is the Ted Cruz caucus? Three votes on the “cromnibus” late Saturday night suggest it could be as large as 22 senators — a dangerously high number for McConnell — or as few as a handful. Let’s break down the three votes — on filibustering the $1.1 trillion package, on Cruz’s point of order aimed at targeting the president’s immigration action, and final passage. The high-water mark for the Texas Republican came on his point of order vote,...

I have been assured, over and over again, sometimes condescendingly and sometimes not, that the Kasper Proposal is a dead letter. First it was Cardinal Muller's letter in L'Osservatore Romano. Then it was some random papal comment affirming marital indissolubility (which ignored the fact Cardinal Kasper swearsies he's all about keeping marriages intact). Then, most recently, it was the supposed door-slamming vote at the end of the Synod, which asserted that the matter was--this time for sure, how could you ever doubt it?--done. Over. Locked into a safe, wrapped in chains and dumped square in into Challenger Deep, where it...

Jeb Bush does. The Democrats’ Castro brothers do not. Ted Cruz knows ‘Spanglish.’ But fluency and being able to talk to Hispanics are two entirely different matters.The ability to speak Spanish is a prized commodity on the campaign trail, a way to prove your bona fides with Hispanics—the fastest-growing bloc of voters—and to show your inclusiveness in a rapidly changing country. Lots of Anglos are proficient in Spanish. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a potential presidential candidate, speaks nothing but Spanish at home, and has for years. His wife, Columba, is from Mexico. A more recent phenomenon in the political...

The Department of Defense says an Army sergeant from New York City has been killed in Afghanistan. A soldier from Arizona was also killed. Military officials say Sgt. Ramon Morris, 37, and Spc. Wyatt Martin, 22, died Dec. 12 in Parwan province. The men died from wounds suffered when their vehicle was attacked with an improvised explosive device.

Just thought it was worth posting, since it now appears we are about to break the bad record we had established: The US / China trade balance appears to be heading for setting, another (bad) record this year. Go into any store. Pick up anything. Anywhere. Odds are it is imported, from China. Just saying.

FORT PIERRE — An argument about equal rights took place a few days ago during the meeting of the state Game, Fish and Parks Commission. ... And more specifically, equal rights in the opportunity to take fish, whether by spear, arrow or hook. Or, as commissioner Paul Dennert of Columbia put it, spears and arrows have been around much longer than motor boats and electronic depth-finders. It’s an interesting, fundamental question.

Retailers ads still referring to Christmas. 5 out of 40

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Our Troops Rock!  Thank you for all you do!   For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.   Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ~ Hall of Heroes ~ Part 3:  Operation Little VittlesAll info and photos from this website. Link to Part One Link to Part Two             "DER SCHOKOLADEN FLIEGER"   OPERATION LITTLE VITTLES   General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force is shown presenting the 1948 Cheney Award to...

December 14, 2014 by Steven Hayward Coming Soon to a Utility Bill Near You? The New York Times today has a long news story (“Energy Bills Send Shivers in New England”) about soaring utility bills in the Northeast, where many people are seeing 100 percent increases in their energy costs over just a few months ago: For October, [John York] had paid $376. For November, with virtually no change in his volume of work and without having turned up the thermostat in his two-room shop, his bill came to $788, a staggering increase of 110 percent. “This is insane,” he...