Free Republic

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident...collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in - your nation, your people - is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of...

The most dishonest advertising in The Washington Post isn’t selling soap or shoes or automobiles. It doesn’t come phonier than this: “Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.” Rubin spent 2012 insisting that every conservative presidential contender was unelectable except Mitt Romney, who was neither conservative nor electable, as it turned out. Rubin’s still at it, as in her latest screed from Sunday, headlined “Senate passes spending, GOP still despises Ted Cruz: The cromnibus passes despite Ted Cruz's ego trip.” Which part of the GOP? The wing of the party...

An ex-con who died of his injuries today after being shot over the weekend by a retired Union City police officer was carrying a loaded .38-caliber revolver, sources with direct knowledge of the incident told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. Authorities also are expected to announce that they've secured a surveillance video of the incident. The retired officer was working as a UPS security guard when 26-year-old Devin Grimes and another man who were in a pickup truck -- and wearing masks -- ordered him out of his Infiniti at gunpoint around 4:30 a.m. Saturday, law enforcement sources told CLIFFVIEW PILOT tonight. That's...

Tom Davis, who is an ordained minister with the United Church of Christ and a chaplain and professor at Skidmore College: “I contend that Planned Parenthood is engaged in a form of sacred work, the work, that is, of securing reproductive justice for women… Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is thoroughly secular. But when it comes to the issue of sacred work, that doesn’t matter. The scripture is clear about one thing: sacred work, the work of justice, is sacred no matter who does it.… In the biblical view, sacred work is love, and in practical social realities, sacred...

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. - An employee who works at a popular brewery in Coral Springs was seriously injured Sunday after he tried breaking up a fight between patrons and a waiter, police said. Coral Springs police were called to Big Bear Brewing Company, 1800 N. University Drive, after receiving multiple 911 calls from employees who feared for their lives. Police arrested Claude Galland, 29, and Michael Laguerre, 29, on complaints of aggravated battery and disorderly conduct after witnesses alleged the men assaulted a restaurant employee.

I hate Republicans. I can’t stand the thought of having to spend the next two years watching Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Ted Cruz, Darrell Issa or any of the legions of other blowhards denying climate change, thwarting immigration reform or championing fetal “personhood.” This loathing is a relatively recent phenomenon. Back
 in the 1970s, I worked for a Republican, Fred Lippitt, the senate minority leader in Rhode Island, and I loved him. He was a brand of Republican now extinct—a “moderate” who was fiscally conservative but progressive about women’s rights, racial justice and environmental preservation. Had he been closer to...

The Obama administration’s original government website promoting Obamacare has been deleted. […] (A)fter Healthcare.gov went live, HealthReform.gov went dark. Thankfully, the Internet’s “WayBack Machine” gives us a shot of HealthReform.gov’s final big screaming homepage: “Keeping the Health Plan You Have…The rule announced today preserves the ability of the American people to keep their current plan if they like it.” …

Obama Braces For Immigration Battle With GOP By David Nakamura December 15 President Obama is bracing for a political and legal battle with Republicans next year over his executive actions on immigration, but as he seeks to rally support against the anticipated assault, a lingering frustration among some Latinos could mean renewed pressure on him to do even more to protect illegal immigrants. After six years in which his administration took a tough line on deportations, Obama’s decision to shield up to 4 million more undocumented immigrants from being removed from the country was in part aimed at repairing damage...

One day after saying Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz had no idea “what they were trying to accomplish,” syndicated columnist George Will said Monday on “Special Report” the pair have two “exceedingly strange careers underway.” Will told Fox News’ Doug McKelway that Cruz is “indifferent” to politics being a “team sport,” adding further that there hasn’t been “a more peculiar career” in the Senate than the one Cruz is currently enjoying. The conservative columnist also said while Democrats are “bemused” by his antics, he is “loathed” within the GOP caucus, while also telling McKelway if Cruz doesn’t get the GOP...

Terror of Hindu Girls Forced Into Marriage Anjali, 12, was kidnapped from her home in Sindh on October 29 by a gang of men who intended to forcibly convert her to Islam via marriage to a Muslim Robin Pagnamenta Anjali, 12, was kidnapped from her home in Sindh on October 29 by a gang of men who intended to forcibly convert her to Islam via marriage to a Muslim December 16 2014 The kidnap gang armed themselves with AK-47s and pistols for their mission, but this wasn’t a jihadist hostage-taking, or even the latest brutal convulsion of gang warfare. It...

Top Republican leaders in the House and Senate are gearing up to push legislation in the next Congress that would increase the number of foreign guest-workers even in industries that do not need them. They are hoping such legislation would "open the door" to a broader comprehensive immigration bill.

Right-wing televangelist thinks the Tea Party senator from Texas needs to tone it down. It’s come to this: even uber-conservative televangelist Pat Robertson is fed up with Ted Cruz’s rabble-rousing. Over the weekend, the Tea Party hero teamed up with fellow Sen. Mike Lee of Utah to hold up a spending bill funding most of the government through the fiscal year, protesting that the measure did not defund President Obama’s executive action on immigration. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the outgoing majority leader, took advantage of Cruz and Lee’s delaying tactics to push through confirmation votes on several Obama administration...

Ali Alsanai went to the Panola County Sheriff’s office Monday to try to get an order of protection. “They came to the store, they asked for the surveillance video. I showed them the surveillance video. The next day, they came and asked for the camera, so I gave them the camera system. What else can I do?” he said. There has been online speculation Alsanai was not telling the truth and might be involved, but there is no proof of that. Hear from him on WREG at 5 p.m. Monday, the Panola County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the FBI is now...

“Think of how stupid the average person is — and realize half of them are stupider than that.” — George Carlin Congress has gone full stupid. Late Tuesday night, lawmakers released a 1,603-page bill that would dole out more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money (the federal government, by the way, has collected a record amount in taxes this year, but still can’t stop overspending). Rollcall.com calculated that the massive omnibus bill came in at 289,861 words. Then the reporter dove into the math: “If members averaged 200 words per minute to read the dense legislative text, they would need...

The incredibly resourceful and brilliant unpaid blogger known only as “sundance” at TheConservativeTreehouse.com is doing it again. Just as she (or he) did in the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cases, sundance is putting the professional media journalists to shame by methodically analyzing and exposing key details of the recent, still-smoldering Jessica Chambers murder caper in rural Panola County, Mississippi, apparently well before ordinary reporters or even police investigators have even begun to rub the sleep from their eyes. This time, probing deeply into the very disturbing mystery surrounding the gruesome torture and burning death last week of the blonde,...

(Reuters) Oakland, CA — A software update for Apple Inc's iPod music player was not a product improvement, but was intended to improperly raise costs for consumers who wanted to switch to newer devices, an attorney for Apple customers said in court. Closing arguments were delivered on Monday in an Oakland, California, federal courtroom in an antitrust trial that has cast fresh scrutiny on Apple's onetime virtual domination of the digital music market. The plaintiffs, a group of individuals and businesses who purchased iPods from 2006 to 2009, are seeking about $350 million in damages from Apple for unfairly blocking...

One of the most significant ongoing tributes to the Prophet Joseph Smith is the annual Joseph Smith Memorial Firesides...These...began in 1944 and have been held each year since, as close as possible to December 23, Joseph Smith’s birthday...Brother Chase...published a ...volume titled Joseph the Prophet, As He Lives in the Hearts of His People. SNIP ...William E. Berrett...“It is an appropriate thing to remember the birthday of...Joseph...This is the birthday of our greatest countryman. Joseph Smith is the only American whose birthday is heralded around the world...People of every land and of every race are coming to honor the birthday...

CICERO, N.Y. -- The Onondaga County sheriff's deputy who ran a red light and crashed head-on into a car this weekend in Cicero likely will not be ticketed, Detective Jon Seeber said, speaking for the sheriff's office. Deputy Michael Ciciriello was on patrol, driving a 2010 Ford Crown Victoria east on Guy Young Road about 6:55 p.m. Saturday when he ran the red light and struck a 2012 Toyota Prius heading south on Brewerton Road, Seeber said. Ciciriello and the driver of the car, 59-year-old David Lekki, of Baldwinsville, were treated at local hospitals for minor injuries and released. Both...

VANSANT, Va. -- Some 175 miners at three SunCoke Energy facilities were laid off today after their mines were idled, company officials announced this afternoon. The Dominion No. 36 mine and parts of the Dominion No. 7 and Dominion No. 30 mines have been idled, said Steve Carlson, spokesman for SunCoke. He said those mines are all in far Southwest Virginia. The move is a step in SunCoke's ultimate plan to exit the coal-production business, Carlson said. The announcement also included plans to reduce production at the Jewell Coke plant in Vansant. "At this point, the plan is to look...

A former USC professor once on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted fugitives list was sentenced to five years in federal prison Monday for flying to the Philippines and sexually assaulting underage boys he had met online. In addition to the sentence, Walter Lee Williams, 66, of Palm Springs, will be required upon release to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and will be on 10 years of supervision Williams, previously known as a well-respected academic, had pleaded guilty and admitted engaging in illegal sexual contact with minors in foreign places. As part of a plea...