Free Republic

Winston Churchill apocryphally said “if you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart.  If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.”  Of course, he didn’t say it.  But if you choose to believe that anyway, you’d have a lot of support from young liberals. There’s something wrong with liberals—an immaturity of thought and a wonton ignorance of sometimes-hard truths.  The reason that quote is so popular is simple:  youth is full of exuberance and impulsiveness, but lacking in wisdom.  World peace, Kumbaya, and Star Trek are banging around in young people’s...

Three inmates who famously escaped from the US island prison Alcatraz had a small chance of making it to land alive - but the odds were stacked against them, a new study suggests. In 1962, the prisoners absconded using a raft, and were never seen again. A novel computer model now indicates that if they set off right at midnight, they could have made landfall. But if they left in the hours either side, it is very likely they died in the cold waters of San Francisco Bay. The study was carried out by scientists at Delft University and the...

As an unapologetic Tea Partier, an unreformed right-winger, I resent being lumped into the same column with the moral and intellectual geldings of the establishment GOP. Many of my fellow Republicans are either too lazy – or intellectually dishonest – to differentiate a conservative from a Republican. Sometimes, depending on the individual, the two are one and the same. Most of the time, unfortunately, the two are mutually exclusive. Take GOP House Speaker John Boehner… please. The recent budget battle added clarity to the political war being fought in America. And that war is raging on the fringes of our...

WARSAW, Poland — A top Baltic church leader voiced concern about possible Russian aggression against Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and appealed to Western Catholics to be better informed about the situation. "We're in the front line, and Russia has made its intentions clear. While we feel NATO's support, we know the front could move forward if the international community fails to stand firm," said Archbishop Gintaras Grusas of Vilnius, president of the Lithuanian bishops' conference. "What isn't fully realized in the West is that the information and propaganda war which preceded the military action against Ukraine is very much underway...

Images from space don’t get more dramatic than this. Image processing wizard Stuart Atkinson zoomed in on one of the most intriguing views yet of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, highlighting the contrasts of dark and light, smooth and rugged, soft contours and frighteningly vertical cliffs.

From the article: "The Rev. Franklin Graham says Christians should never deny Jesus Christ in order to spare their lives from slaughter by terrorists, such as ISIS, and further asserts that doing so would be a betrayal against martyrs who stood strong for their faith, despite persecution. "Christians have been martyred going all the way back to the Romans when they fed them to the lions. We would be betraying every person who stood for their faith, who stood for Jesus Christ, if we turn our back on Jesus Christ. … I think we take a stand for our faith,"...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Russia's suddenly escalating financial crisis risks spilling beyond its borders and endangering parts of the global economy. With economies in Europe, Japan, China and Latin America already ailing, fresh threats have emerged from Russia's shriveled currency, its move to dramatically boost interest rates, the damage from plummeting oil prices and Western sanctions over Russia's action in Ukraine. The alarming 10 percent drop in the ruble over the past two days has amplified the economic turmoil in Russia. Investors fear that Russia may default on its foreign debt obligations - a move that would inflict hundreds of billions...

The pro-life movement experienced a milestone year, with huge national victories across the board. From a record number of pro-life legislators elected to Congress to wins protecting the freedom of conscience and pro-life legislation, 2014 was a benchmark year for pro-life. Not all pro-life victories of the past year were front-page news. Like Live Action investigations, some of the biggest pro-life victories happen “undercover.” Here are nine ways you made a difference with Live Action in 2014! 9) Millions of people saw the ugly truth about abortion. Live Action’s groundbreaking investigations into the abortion industry shaped the dialogue on abortion....

Beginning of an Italian Civil War against Immigration, Enza Ferreri's Blog, December 15, 2013 Does the situation seem familiar to that in the Obama Nation? This article is published by permission from the author. ************** For once we have riots that are not by anti-white black protesters — to whose violence Ferguson, among others, has accustomed us — but by indigenous Europeans defending their land against invaders. In Rome, on the night of 10–11 November, a group of residents of the Tor Sapienza suburb living in public housing attempted to assault the local centre for refugees and asylum seekers incongruously...

Eliana Johnson reports that Ted Cruz and his strategists see a path to the presidency that relies on turning out the conservative base and largely ignoring independents: "It’s almost conventional wisdom now that presidential candidates woo the party faithful in primary contests and tack to the middle in the general election to attract more-moderate voters. Not Cruz. As one of his advisers puts it, “winning independents has meant not winning.” The adviser says the moderate fiscal- and social-policy positions that candidates need to adopt to win independent voters have dampened base turnout." As evidence, the adviser points out that George...

Overruling the objections of gun-rights advocates, the U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed Dr. Vivek Murthy, a British-born, American-educated internal medicine specialist, to become the 19th surgeon general of the United States. The 51-43 vote makes Murthy, a 37-year-old graduate of Harvard University and Yale University Medical School, the third-youngest physician to lead the U.S. Public Health Service's 6,800 commissioned officers. Murthy founded Doctors for America, a national physicians group that worked to pass the Affordable Healthcare Act, and has worked to promote HIV/AIDS education both in the United States and India. At Brigham & Womens Hospital in Boston, his research...

Rush Limbaugh commentary absent.

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...