Free Republic

According to a teacher at Cornell University, race is a determinant of "coolness." Yesterday, Dexter Thomas, who is helping teach the course "Asian 1104 "FWS: let's talk about cool stuff, #swag"" at Cornell this semester, wrote an article in the Guardian titled, "Why white people aren’t as cool as black people." According to Thomas, as opposed to whites, "Black people have an effortless cool about them, almost no matter what they do." President Obama, Thomas continues, "seems to be the King Midas of political cool. Any topic he touches – whether it’s climate change, rap music, or health care –...

Young Muslims on Way to Mosque Stopped to Set Young Christian Stranger on FireFor being a Christian, a boy in Pakistan has been burnt alive and now is in serious condition. According to Fides, some young Muslims burnt alive 14-year-old Christian teenager, Nauman Masih, who now is in the hospital in Lahore, fighting for his life. The young boy did not know the people who attacked him in the same city where there was the deadly attack on two Church's in recent months. The police were alerted and registered a complaint against unknown persons. "The young people who attacked me...

Police in Edmond, Oklahoma have not identified any suspects in connection with the reported placement of raw bacon on the door handles of a mosque. Officers were called Sunday afternoon to the Islamic Society of Edmond, where a mosque trustee reported that “someone put uncooked bacon on the door handles of the men's and women's mosques” earlier in the day. Muslims are prohibited from consuming bacon and other pork products. The mosque official, who contacted police at 4 PM, told officers that the vandalism was discovered at 10 AM. An Edmond Police Department report does not indicate why six hours...

Falih Essawi shouted on the phone as he described his situation. From his point of view, ISIS militants might be just hours away from taking the key Iraqi city of Ramadi. Fierce fighting has engulfed Ramadi, which lies only about 70 miles (113 kilometers) west of Baghdad and is the capital of Anbar province, Iraq's Sunni heartland. Essawi, the deputy head of the Anbar Provincial Council, told CNN from inside the city Wednesday that it's unclear how much longer government troops can hold their front lines against the ISIS offensive. Security was "collapsing rapidly in the city," and he begged...

Does anyone know if Charlie Rangel ever paid his taxes? How about all the IRS employees and congressional employees that owed taxes? Just wondering.

Fast-food labor organizers have planned a handful of protests throughout the country Wednesday as they push for $15 an hour and unionization, including a demonstration in the afternoon at University of Illinois at Chicago. Organizers expect to bring together 60,000 protesters in major cities across America and in more than 40 countries, as well as at more than 170 college campuses. The plans are a continuation of a campaign that began in late 2012. The push is being spearheaded by the Service Employees International Union and has seen marches nationwide to build public support for raising pay for fast-food and...

Hundreds of Americans remain trapped in Yemen and escape routes are dwindling, the U.S. Ambassador to Djibouti said. Various boats have sailed and motored their way into the port and Ambassador Tom Kelly was on deck to meet the most recent arrivals: 200 people including 11 American citizens, all crammed onto an overcrowded fishing boat. In the past two weeks, 150 Americans have fled to Djibouti. Kelly’s staff speaks with every American who arrives in the port.

Rosneft broke another world record Tuesday after drilling the world’s longest well at the Chayvo field off the coast of Russia’s Sakhalin Island. The O-14 production well was drilled to a record breaking depth of 44,291 feet with a horizontal reach of 39,478 feet. The well is part of the Sakhalin-1 project that includes the offshore Chayvo, Odoptu and Arkutun-Dagi fields. Since the start of drilling at Sakhalin-1 the company has broken nine world records including setting two consecutive records for measured depth in 2013. Russia’s Rosneft said the extended reach drilling was among the fastest ever thanks to ExxonMobil’s...

I arrived at the NRA Annual Meeting in Nashville late on Thursday, the 9th of April, so I was able to get to the press room only a little after they opened on Friday morning.  Mike Vanderboegh was there.  I had met Mike a couple of years ago.  He looked and acted a lot healthier than he had in Houston in 2013, and he did not have to use a wheel chair.  He is someone who I have admired ever since I learned of his activities and the Sipsey Street Irregulars a few years ago.  I do not count...

Russia’s announcement on Monday that it will proceed with the sale of advanced missile systems to Iran crosses a so-called “red line” established by the Obama administration in 2010, according to comments by senior administration officials. Following years of dissent from the United States, Russia announced on Monday that it would proceed with the sale of the advanced S-300 air defense missile system to Iran, which has been vying to purchase the hardware for years. The announcement sparked criticism from the Obama administration, which has been pressuring Iran since at least 2010 to withhold the sale.

After an 18-month study of banned commenters on cnn.com, breitbart.com and ign.com, three researchers claim they can identify Internet trolls with great accuracy. The say their system can spot an inflammatory commenter in less than 10 posts.

Companies are seeking more foreign workers than ever before to fill highly skilled jobs in technology and other industries, but the United States will grant visas to just a fraction of them in a lottery that began this week.

Former Secretary of State and newly-announced presidential candidate Hillary Clinton should probably watch her phrasing after she told Iowans she planned to “drink [her] way across Iowa.” No, she wan’t talking about alcohol. Clinton reportedly made the comments at a coffee house in Cedar Rapids. “The big rallies and massive fundraising blitzes have to wait,” read the AP report on the stop. “Hillary Rodham Clinton is getting her 2016 campaign for president started with a few caffeinated beverages and says she’s ready to ‘drink my way across Iowa.’”

The plaintiffs in King v. Burwell argue that an IRS regulation unlawfully extends tax credit eligibility beyond what is expressly authorized under Section 1401 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). It appears that this sort of administrative rewrite of the PPACA may be more the rule than the exception. These IRS rewrites have potential consequences beyond the extension of tax credits beyond what Congress authorized. As with the regulatory change expanding tax credit eligibility to some unlawful aliens, the IRS cited no authority for making this change. Fairly administering this law requires implementing it as written, and...

Influential Egyptian TV personality Tawfik Okasha has reportedly told Israel to bomb Iran. Addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “dear friend,” Okasha said that Israel should bomb the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor, Breaking Christian News reports. "Put your trust in God and bomb it. We are with you and if you need fuel for the jets, we will give it to you,” Okasha said. Netanyahu said Okasha’s words are proof Egypt cannot be trusted. "In the last few days, Iran has shown again why it can't be trusted," Netanyahu said. According to Breaking Christian News, the Israeli Prime Minister...

As the world grapples with combating climate change, one world leader aiming to influence the outcome might come as a surprise. Pope Francis. The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics not only says the world must try to protect against an environmental catastrophe regardless of its cause, but he is preparing the first ever papal letter to the church’s bishops focused on the environment. He hopes it will encourage U.N. negotiators meeting in Paris in December to make courageous decisions about protecting the world from global warming, he told reporters traveling with him to the Philippines earlier this...

DNC Chairwoman and late term abortion advocate Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who threatened to call President Obama a sexist if he fired her after the 2014 midterm elections, is concerned GOP presidential candidate and Senator Rand Paul wants to "let women die." "We believe a decision on a woman’s reproductive choices is best left between a woman and her doctor and I am still waiting for Rand Paul to say whether or not he supporting exceptions when a woman is raped, going to force a woman to carry a baby to term and not allow her to make that choice? When...

A new Seattle-based Kickstarter aims to give Americans the environmentally-friendly option of composting their bodies, the green alternative to taking up valuable real estate in a resource-draining casket or contributing to carbon dioxide emissions with their burning flesh, like a common tire fire. From this idea, the Urban Death Project was born. “Composting makes people think of banana peels and coffee grounds,” Katrina Spade, the project's founder, told the Times. "But 'our bodies have nutrients. What if we could grow new life after we’ve died?'” Bodies, of course, decompose just like everything else. The Kickstarter page breaks it down. (Ha.)...

Traitor is strong language, but in the aftermath of Tuesday’s vote on a bill that was supposed to reaffirm the Senate’s constitutional power to consent to President Obama’s as yet still undefined and undisclosed nuclear treaty with Iran there is no other way to describe the actions of Senator Bob Corker, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations The bill Corker rammed through the Foreign Relations Committee is worse than no bill at all. What Corker’s bill does is, in its post-markup form, require the president to submit for congressional review the final nuclear agreement reached between Iran, the...

Is nothing sacred? The question is being raised in wake of a disturbing discovery in a Pennsylvania cemetery: The gravestone of Hillary Rodham Clinton's father has been found toppled over, NBC News is reporting. According to NBC, police say vandals may be responsible for upending the gravestone of Hugh Rodham in the Washburn Street Cemetery in Scranton.