Free Republic

Elizabeth Warren’s weekend heroics have endeared her even more to the Democratic base, and it’s time Hillary started getting worried.Are future historians going to look back on the past weekend as the one in which Elizabeth Warren took over the Democratic Party? She didn’t win the fight she led over the weekend to have the provision weakening the Dodd-Frank law stripped out of the spending bill, but she was never going to win that vote. What she did win, though, was the ever-more intense ardor of her growing number of liberal fans. They’d march with her over hot coals. There’s...

- 10:13 AM In a speech delivered on the Senate floor Friday as the Senate was debating a 1,603-page government funding bill that will permit President Obama to spend tax dollars to implement his unilateral amnesty, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.) argued that trends in U.S. immigration and employment are depressing the job prospects and income of Americans. "This summer alone the White House met 20 times with business executives, amnesty lobbyists, immigration activists to craft their executive amnesty," Sessions said. "You know who wasn’t invited into that room? You, the American citizen. You don’t get a say. "These super-elites in...

In the US, the land rig count fell 28 units to stand at 1,820 last week. A decline in vertical oil drilling activity took the rig count lower. Horizontal oil drilling (ie activity in the unconventional oil plays) was only down 7 rigs on the week—about in line with normal seasonal trends this time of year. Much of this week's activity decline was due to a slowdown in conventional drilling in the Permian Basin. The number of vertical rigs in the Permian fell by 13 to 188. The Permian horizontal rig count was only down 7 to 360. While...

Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee on Monday morning became the latest Republican governor to announce support of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion —and the third in the nation since Republicans gained more power at the state and federal levels in the November midterm elections. Like most other Republican governors who want to take the health-care law's generous federal funding, Haslam is now offering a plan that deviates from the Medicaid expansion envisioned under the Affordable Care Act. Haslam, who made the announcement almost a month after his re-election, said the Obama administration has verbally approved the approach. The Tennessee plan, which Haslam...

* RTS share index plunges 10 percent to 5-year low * Central bank seen intervening to support rouble * Putin's popularity in part based on stability (Recasts and update prices) MOSCOW, Dec 15 (Reuters) - The rouble plunged almost 10 percent against the dollar on Monday, its sharpest fall since 1998, and Russian assets sold off across markets, testing the firepower of the central bank and posing a major challenge for President Vladimir Putin. Traders said the slump in the rouble, down 49 percent against the dollar this year, forced the central bank to intervene in the market on Monday...

By reviewing tweets from users who publicly mentioned their diagnosis and by looking for language cues linked to certain disorders, the researchers say, they’ve been able to quickly and inexpensively collect new data on post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, bipolar disorder and seasonal affective disorder. In research presented at three scientific conferences this year, the scholars described how their techniques of mining public data have yielded fresh numbers on cases of these illnesses, allowing for analyses that were previously difficult or expensive to obtain. The scholars emphasized, however, that their findings did not disclose the names of people who publicly tweeted...

The Russian rouble has dropped to a new low against the US dollar, as falling oil prices and Western sanctions continue to weigh on the country. As of Monday afternoon, it takes more than 60 roubles to buy a single dollar. The 60 mark is considered a "psychological barrier" for Russia's national currency, says the BBC's Moscow correspondent, Steve Rosenberg. Since the start of the year, the rouble has lost more than 45% of its value against the dollar. Russia's central bank has tried unsuccessfully to stabilise the currency, buying roubles in the markets and raising its main lending rate...

Uber's low-cost ride ride-hailing service will be banned in France from the start of next year, the government said Monday as hundreds of taxi drivers blocked roads around Paris to protest what they claim are its unfair business practices. A new law tightening regulations for chauffeured rides will effectively ban the UberPop service as of Jan. 1, said Pierre-Henry Brandet, spokesman for France's Interior Ministry.

To hell with the independents. That’s not usually the animating principle of a presidential campaign, but for Ted Cruz’s, it just might be. His strategists aren’t planning to make a big play for so-called independent voters in the general election if Cruz wins the Republican nomination. According to several of the senator’s top advisers, Cruz sees a path to victory that relies instead on increasing conservative turnout; attracting votes from groups — including Jews, Hispanics, and Millennials — that have tended to favor Democrats; and, in the words of one Cruz strategist, “not getting killed with independents.” Twenty-three months from...

... Carpool lanes are so clogged in California, the state could lose federal funding and approval for projects if it doesn’t fix the problem. Under federal law, carpool lane drivers in California must be able to go an average of 45 miles per hour or faster during peak hours. Additionally, over a six-month period, traffic has to go that fast 90 percent of the time. Caltrans explains that means the lane’s average speed can drop below 45 no more than two days a month ...

Feminists demand that men learn not to rape so that suggestive attire can be worn safely. Hispanics in California demanded that high school students not be permitted to wear patriotic attire so that Hispanics wouldn't feel offended and perhaps become violent. The school complied. A Federal District Court and a majority of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the Hispanics.According to this Rutherford Institute press release, it has asked the Supreme Court to reject a lower court ruling that declared it unsafe for California public school students to wear American flag t-shirts to school. In asking the Supreme Court to hear the case of...

Fed up with the passage of an 18½-page incoherent, rambling, unconstitutional gun control initiative that was bankrolled by billionaires, gun owners across Washington state held the largest felony civil disobedience rally in the nation’s history, brazenly titled “I Will Not Comply.” No one was hurt and no stores were looted. Between 1,000 and 3,000 lawful gun owners showed up openly armed at the state capitol in Olympia, Wash., on Saturday to defy the newly passed gun control law, I-594. Organizer Gavin Seim made the extraordinary nature of the rally very clear, "This isn’t just a protest. We are here to...

French police launched raids across the country early on Monday, dismantling a network sending jihadist fighters to Syria ... anti-terror police units descended on around a dozen targets, mostly in the southern region of Toulouse, but also around Paris and in the northern region of Normandy. ... In recent months France, which has Europe's largest Muslim population, has been facing the fact that hundreds of its citizens have openly joined jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria and have even called for attacks on their homeland. The new reality was driven home in a video from the Islamic State group released...

In 1783, with the Revolutionary War nearly over, the American dream of an independent republic almost died at the hands of the army that fought for it. While Continental Army officers waited in camp at Newburgh, New York, for negotiators to end the conflict, their long-simmering frustration with Congress finally boiled over. Anger swept through the corps from the lieutenants to the generals. These men had had enough—enough of inedible rations, inadequate clothing and supplies, and, most important, years of foregoing pay. A coup was in the making. Even the British knew it. As one of their spies reported, military...

It gets pretty cold this time of year in Tibet. For centuries, the solution to this problem was a win-win: just burn that huge pile of yak dung that’s been accumulating all summer. For millions of nomadic Tibetans, it’s a system that works. But that system comes at a hefty cost. Tibetan homes have some of the worst indoor air pollution in the world, and the soot the dung fires release is a big contributor to climate change. Yak dung, when used as fuel, is arguably dirtier than coal but is definitely much cheaper. Particulate pollution from burning animal dung...

The principal argument against taking strong action to curtail the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change has long been that it will be economically costly. By putting a price on carbon, goes the logic, people will spend more for gas, more for home heating -- more for many things in the economy, given the dominance of fossil energy in our lives.

Apparently, Elf on the Shelf is evil... No, not that kind of evil (are "fun-loving" antics from inanimate dolls "evil"?) This kind of evil. Could there be something more sinister behind the little elf sitting on the shelf who returns to the North Pole each night?Yes, says Laura Pinto, a digital technology professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.She recently published a paper titled “Who’s the Boss” on the doll, saying the idea of it reporting back to Santa each night on the child’s behavior “sets up children for dangerous, uncritical acceptance of power structures,” according toinsideHalton.com.From her...

In the Spirit of the Christmas, we remember that answers sometimes come in seemingly insignificant beginnings. Two centuries ago, in the midst of the all-powerful Roman Empire, a savior was born in a humble manger. Today, in a world preoccupied with deteriorating race relations, demonstrations turned into riots, and name-calling, some individuals are doing their part to reach across our racial divide and make a difference. In this season calling for hope, peace and new beginnings, letÂ’s celebrate some Americans who deserve far more attention.With race hustlers, looters and rioters taking advantage of peaceful demonstrations over the death of Michael...

Despite the Sydney, Australia hostage-taker displaying a flag reading in Arabic, ”There is no God but God and Mohammed is the prophet of God,” despite his being a self-proclaimed sheikh and despite his demand that police give him an ISIS flag, MSNBC “The Rundown” host José Diaz-Balart wondered if Iranian-born Man Haron Monis is motivated by Islam at all.

DECEMBER 15, 2014 4:00 AM Remembering Glenn Miller Big-band giant, down-to-earth guy, devoted patriot — and he might have some new albums on the way. By Spencer CaseOn the stormy day of December 15, 1944, a military plane transporting big-band superstar Major Glenn Miller to Paris for a Christmas broadcast disappeared over the English Channel. It’s worth taking a moment, on the 70th anniversary of that event, to consider whom America lost. What Miller accomplished in his 40-year lifetime is astonishing. During the 1930s, Miller was among a handful of innovators, along with Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, who brought...