Free Republic

The 20-odd people chanting “Honk if you want justice,” on a New Bedford, Massachusetts sidewalk Dec. 12 got a lot of attention. They were second graders, rallying against police for the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. While the rest of their class enjoyed 11:30 recess that morning, these 7 and 8-year-old protesters stood by the side of the road in front of the Alma Del Mar Charter School holding signs including one that read, “Please don’t shoot me, Ferguson.”...

I live in the Florida panhandle. I have a couple of bird feeders in my yard and I keep them filled. For the last few weeks, I haven't had to add any food. It dawned on me that there are no birds in my yard anymore. I used to have many cardinals along with jays, doves, woodpeckers and all the little ones I am not smart enough to identify. I thought it was just me, but I had dinner with two of my neighbors the other night and they brought up the subject asking where the birds have gone. Have...

The late Philip K. Dick, born 86 years ago today in Chicago, is something of a cautionary figure in American literature: brilliant, prolific, often sloppy, and woefully underappreciated during his lifetime. It was only with the 1982 release of the film "Blade Runner" (loosely based on his 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?") that Dick's work truly began to saturate the mainstream; by that point, he had been dead for four months. In the ensuing three decades, Dick's novels and stories have served as fodder for dozens of Hollywood movies; they have been reissued again and again. In...

“A federal jury handed Apple a win in a long-running antitrust case on Tuesday, rejecting plaintiffs’ claims that the company had sidelined competitors and hiked up prices during the iPod’s heyday,” Julia Love reports for The Mercury News. “After just a few hours of deliberations, the eight-member jury sided with Apple that iTunes 7.0 was a meaningful improvement over previous versions of the software, rather than a plot to hobble rivals,” Love reports. “The verdict defuses a case that could have cost Apple as much as $1 billion.” “The trial was full of legal drama, including an eleventh-hour search for...

A man was killed and his adult stepson wounded Sunday, after gunmen opened fire on the front porch of a Carrollton home with children playing only a few feet away. Family members identified the dead man as 35-year-old Michael "Puff" Meyers, who lived at the house in the 8400 block of Hickory Street with his mother and six of his seven preteen children. New Orleans police said he was shot once in the back around 1 p.m., collapsed outside his front door, and died a short time later at Interim LSU Hospital. Grieving relatives said he was the third member...

State Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, has filed a bill that would removes the requirement that a woman undergo a fetal transabdominal ultrasound prior to an abortion. The General Assembly enacted the requirement in 2012, generating a national uproar. Abortion advocates said the measure was a medically unnecessary invasion, while anti-abortion advocates said the aim was to help women be better informed.

Sorry, senator -- it's not happening. To the surprise of approximately nobody, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is proceeding full steam ahead with plans to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. The Tea Party icon has already settled on a location for his campaign headquarters (Houston), made the requisite appeals to GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson, and decided on a campaign strategy. That strategy, National Review’s Eliana Johnson reports, centers on energizing the GOP base, not wooing moderates and independents to the Republican fold. Of course, the hard demographic truth is that a Republican can’t win the presidency by relying on...

Life Dynamics is calling for criminal investigation of a Florida abortionist who failed to report an abortion performed on a 12-year-old girl. Michael Benjamin, the abortionist in question, was given a light punishment from the medical licensing agency. Life Dynamics President Mark Crutcher tells OneNewsNow that Jermaine Jones is serving a prison sentence for molesting the girl. Crutcher, Mark (Life Dynamics)“After being advised by the National Abortion Federation and given a referral to Michael Benjamin in Florida, Jones, the child molester, took her there,” Crutcher explains. “She was 24-weeks pregnant. The medical board determined that Benjamin spent 6-8 minutes counseling...

Six months after the military began an investigation into the disappearance of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and his capture by the Taliban, which held him for five years, the results remain under wraps as senior Army officials determine what to do next. Bergdahl was recovered in Afghanistan by U.S. troops in a controversial swap for five Taliban officials on May 31. He had disappeared from his small patrol base on June 30, 2009, under a cloud of suspicion and fear as it became clear he been captured by militants. The Army in June launched a new investigation into Bergdahl’s disappearance...

Via WaPo, it’s now officially a mixed-blessings news day for Jeb Bush fans. Two issues here. One: Does Obama enjoy more power to craft policy if Congress is deadlocked between the two parties? Ezra Klein says yes, I say no. Two: How far can Obama go in crafting policy in the name of “prosecutorial discretion”? No one disputes that he can prioritize one illegal immigrant’s deportation case over another’s. If he can do that for one person, why can’t he do it systematically for five million? At what point does “prosecutorial discretion” become unconstitutional legislation by presidential diktat?Judge Arthur Schwab’s...

The link above (not the picture) will take you to this somewhat prophetic song.

Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle. Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. “sexual assault.” Herewith, a Philadelphia magazine report about Swarthmore College, where in 2013 a student “was...

In Part 1 we saw that Mary is the woman from Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12 who is at enmity with the devil. In Part 2, we saw that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant. Now I would like to examine the salutation of Gabriel, which I think provides some of the strongest evidence for the Immaculate Conception and the sinlessness of Mary.The Salutation of Gabriel With this section, I am attempting to synthesize information taken from the following articles: Lk 1:28 and the Immaculate Conception: Linguistic and Exegetical ConsiderationsDialogue on the Exegesis of Lk 1:28 and the...

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow greeted last week's release of the so-called Senate torture report with her skewed telling of the tale of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer who defected to the US and was subjected to years of harsh treatment and interrogation before the CIA concluded he was not a double agent. As you'd expect from the marquee host at America's version of Pravda, Maddow left out a significant and embarrassing detail in her December 9 report -- Well in 1964, Yuri Nosenko finally decided to defect to the United States and that is when things started going horribly wrong because...

Woman Who Was Arrested and Called “Teagbagger” by Deputy Awarded $1.12 Million For Illegal Arrest A federal jury has awarded Nancy Genovese an amount of $1.12 million for her inappropriate prosecution by Suffolk County law enforcement. It was an innocent enough day for Nancy Genovese of Long Island. After visiting a shooting range, the mother of three stopped to take a photo of a decorative helicopter in front of a National Guard base in the Hamptons for use on a website showing support for the troops. She was on public property the entire time. She was charged with trespassing and...

* Trump has kept his spotlight hot and raised smirks by speculating about a White House run, but now he's scheduling speeches in early primary states * 'A lot of people believe I'm having fun with it, and I enjoy the process,' he said during an Economic Club of Washington event, but 'the country's in serious trouble' * He lashed out at potential opponents including Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz * Couldn't come up with a 'single nice thing' to say about Hillary Clinton and insists Sen. Elizabeth Warren will give her serious competition * Trump has flirted with running...

In June, Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared on the cover of People magazine for the first time in more than a decade. Real people, not the magazine, talked about what the article might mean for 2016. They talked about whether Clinton was using a walker (she wasn't). They talked about people talking about whether Clinton was using a walker (She still wasn't). What they didn't do was buy the magazine. According to a report from AdWeek on Monday, the June 16 issue of People featuring the former first lady and senator was the magazine's worst selling of 2014 with 503,890 copies...

This is a rush transcript from "The Kelly File," December 15, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.MEGYN KELLY, HOST: Breaking tonight on a day marked by what looks like a lone wolf terror attack overseas and an ongoing debate about how America has waged the war on terror. We tonight get our first chance to interview the man singled out by a controversial Senate report produced by the Democrats alone, and then attacked by some in the media. The man who personally interrogated Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks....

Earlier, we reported that various currency brokers such as FXCM and FxPro, would - as a result of the soaring liquidity in the USDRUB pair - suspend trading in the Russian Ruble (while other merely hiked margins to ridiculous levels). It appears things have escalated again, and as FXCM just reported, instead of just politely advising clients not to open new USDRUB position tomorrow, it has advised anyone long, or short, the USDRUB that their positions will be forcibly shut in moments. So for those curious why there appears to be a collapse in Ruble volatility in the past...

I have seen a video of PM Netanyahu lighting the first Hannukah candle with a group of IDF unit commanders. VIDEO HERE I have a question: why does he light the first candle and only then, somebody else (Yaalon?) lights the Shamash (servant) candle?