Free Republic

December 17, 2014 John Rubino To say that gold is in a bear market is to misunderstand both gold and markets. Gold isn't an investment that goes up and down. It is money in the most basic store-of-value sense. Most of the time it just sits there, and when its price changes in local currency terms that says more about the local currency than about gold. But when currencies collapse, gold shines. Consider the above from the point of view of a typical Russian. The ruble is tanking (no need to understand why -- all fiat currencies go this way...

The President and Mrs. Obama took to People Magazine to whine about alleged racist slights they’ve received over the years. The President complains that he used to have trouble hailing a cab and was mistaken for a valet. The First Lady whines that at Target someone asked for help getting something off a shelf. The Obama’s apparently believe this constitutes racism, likely of the mythical white privilege variety. In reality none of these events constitute racism, they only constitute common mistakes people make. In the cast of the lady at Target, she made the mistake of asking someone as arrogant...

LAFAYETTE -- Acalanes Union High School District is once again under fire for its sex education course taught by Planned Parenthood instructors -- this time for material from that course and what some parents see as a failure to involve parents appropriately. At issue are two handouts parents say violate the California Education Code. One is a checklist entitled "Sex check! Are you ready for sex," which lists physical, emotional and relationship questions to consider before having sex. Included are phrases like, "I know when my body is sexually aroused," and "I can tell my partner what feels good." Some...

No matter how many bombs Americans drop on ISIS forces, Iraqi troops are losing ground. If al-Anbar is lost, the entire Iraqi front dynamic will shift to favor ISIS again, and months of the U.S.-led air campaign will have been wasted. Maybe that’s why we had reports from an Iraqi field commander on Tuesday that U.S. forces had their first ground clash with ISIS terrorists at midnight on Monday, Baghdad time. ISIS fighters were forced to withdraw after U.S. air force fighters bombed enemy positions The minor victory was well timed. After six weeks of defeats in Iraq, ISIS made...

In a new Washington Post poll released today, American Latinos have a more favorable view of the GOP, besting the Democratic Party among the nations fastest growing demographic group. In a survey conducted between December 11-14, 52 percent of Hispanic Americans view the Republican Party favorably, while 37 percent have an unfavorable view of the Party of Lincoln. In contrast, 40 percent of Latinos have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, while 48 percent rate them favorable. The poll suggests that large numbers of Americans, of all demographic groups, are moving toward the right, as the GOP holds a...

Un frickin’ believable! Copies of ‘torture’ report hand delivered to terror suspects, blocked from CIA officials: Full disclosure took a back seat to the CIA’s green movement last week when agency big shots blocked officials from printing out hard copies of the Senate Democratic report on terrorist interrogations, fearing it was “killing too many trees.” Meanwhile, paper copies of the report from Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein were hand-delivered to terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay — though not the rebuttals from the CIA or Republicans on her committee. Oh, the Hillarity: NEW YORK (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday she’s...

The only question is why stop there? Can’t we just appointed a politician, whose only qualification for every job she has gotten in the last two decades has been her last name, Supreme Overlord of the Universe?Mike McCurry, Bill Clinton’s press secretary and a guy you happily forgot even existed until now, returns with a proposal so insane that even Obama might shake his head.What if a vacancy now appeared on our nation’s highest court? Given the bitterness and polarization that exists in Washington today, it is hard to imagine any nominee offered by Barack Obama having a less than...

There’s always that super-powerful person who prefers to stay out of the spotlight…(and I don’t mean Valerie Jarrett, even though the resemblance may be striking ;-P)

Beavers are contributing to climate change, adding an estimated 800 million kg of methane to the atmosphere every year, scientists have found. Over the last century, there has been a worldwide conservation effort to save beavers from extinction. The fur trade between the 16th and 19th century almost led to the annihilation of beavers across the globe. After trapping was limited and the creatures were reintroduced to their natural ranges, their numbers grew significantly, with scientists now estimating their population to have reached over 10 million worldwide. Beavers build dams in rivers to create standing ponds,However, the consequence of this...

A handful of state legislators from across the country gathered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to announce the creation of “American State Legislators for Gun Violence Prevention” or ASLGVP. The new group, which claims to be non-partisan, will work to push new gun restrictions at the state level. But the coalition has one major problem – they will not let anyone know who they are.

Silent Night! Endless night! All is dark, there’s no light. Cyclone clouds have blocked out the sky, We’re almost out of our dry-meat supply. Sleep in uneasy peace. We may have to eat Aunt Bernice. What the New Yorker is calling "Climate Change Carols" are a series of Christmas songs whose lyrics have been rewritten to focus on environmental issues, gutting the carols of any relationship to the season of Christ’s birth. Not only that, but the hope and joy characteristic of Christmas has also given way to gloom and doom. Granted, this dechristianization of carols began years ago with...

Hey Freepers; A North Georgia family man who defended himself and his family with lethal force against two younger men on his own property has been charged with 1st degree murder. Bo hosted a birthday party at his home and a parent and another man later confronted him on his own property about some as yet unknown issue. A call was placed from Bo's residence to 911, a fight ensued, one man was shot and killed (Brandon Weaver). The Sheriff did not arrest Bo until some 12 days later. Bo is being held w/o bond on a 1st degree premeditated...

Michelle Obama wants you to feel bad for her, and for Barack, because they are black. “I think people forget that we’ve lived in the White House for six years,” Michelle says in People Magazine. “Before that, Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs.” Oh, the horror. Why didn’t the emperor clean up Chicago neighborhoods with his pen and his phone while he was there? Cabs likely would have stopped more frequently if the city, especially the South and West Sides, wasn't infested by crime....

More than 120,000 fighters supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been killed in the country's civil war since it began in 2011, a group monitoring the war said on Wednesday. Syria's conflict began as a peaceful protest movement calling for reforms in 2011 but descended into civil war after a government crackdown. In total, more than 200,000 people have been killed and millions more have fled their homes. Shi'ite fighters including from neighbouring Iraq and Lebanon have joined Syria's fight to aid Assad, a member of the Shi'ite-derived Alawite sect, against the Sunni rebels trying to overthrow him. Assad was inaugurated...

For the past week, Sen. Harry Reid has worked hard to prevent a vote on President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty. [snip] Only one month ago President Obama announced amnesty for roughly five million people here illegally. He did so in defiance of the manifest will of the voters [snip] [snip] Even more troubling was how the amnesty was decreed: by executive fiat, directly contrary to federal immigration law and to the Constitution. [snip] [snip] If Congress does nothing in response, we acquiesce to this constitutional crisis. [snip] Some critics have disingenuously suggested that, by fighting on amnesty, we somehow facilitated...

Over the dissents of three Justices, the Supreme Court today rejected Arizona’s request to allow it to deny driver’s licenses to young undocumented immigrants who have been permitted by Obama administration policy to remain in the United States. In a brief order, the Court refused to block a temporary ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit requiring the state to issue driver’s licenses to the so-called “Dreamers” — young adults who came to this country illegally — if they have permits allowing them to have jobs here.

Richard C. Hottelet, the last of the original "Murrow's Boys," the pioneering group of wartime journalists hired by CBS radio newsman Edward R. Murrow, has died. He was 97. CBS News spokesman Kevin Tedesco said that Hottelet died early Wednesday morning at his home in Wilton. Hottelet was a foreign correspondent for the United Press in Berlin at the start of World War II ? and even spent several months in a Nazi prison ? before joining CBS in London in 1944. He reported from many battlefronts, and went on to become CBS' correspondent for the United Nations, an assignment...

North Korean defectors are planning to attach DVDs of The Interview to 15-foot helium balloons, which they will send over the border into their home country. Fighters for a Free North Korea, led by former government propagandist Park Sang Hak, has for years used the tactic to smuggle transistor radios, DVDs and leaflets into North Korea. If all goes to plan, the latest move will see dozens of copies of the Seth Rogen movie released from South Korea and drifting for several hours before scattering over Pyongyang.

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday she's proud to have been part of an administration that "banned illegal renditions and brutal interrogations" and said the U.S. should never be involved in torture anywhere in the world. [Snip] She declared, "yes, black lives matter," a mantra of demonstrators around the country who have been protesting recent grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers involved in the deaths of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York. She wondered what Kennedy would say about "the thousands of Americans marching in our streets demanding justice for all," and "the mothers...

So holds the Connecticut Supreme Court, in the just-released State v. DeCiccio. Here’s an excerpt of the reasoning as to police batons, which also applies in large measure to dirks, and which, I would argue, should apply to stun guns and Tasers (paragraph break added). (Disclosure: I represent the Association of Women Against Rape and Endangerment, as amicus curiae, in Commonwealth v. Caetano, now pending before the Massachusetts high court; that cases involves the question whether stun guns and Tasers are “arms” for Second Amendment purposes; we argue that they are.)