Free Republic

In Popular Economics, John Tamny, editor of RealClearMarkets, sets out to refute bad economic ideas and replace them with sound ones. Many books have tried to do that, but what sets Tamny’s apart is how he goes about making the “dismal science,” well, popular. His subtitle is revealing: “What the Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey, and LeBron James can teach you about economics.” Quite a bit, as it turns out. To educate is to build a bridge from what a person knows to things he doesn’t yet understand. Tamny does that brilliantly by using sports and popular culture to convey key...

As recently as a year ago, Hillary Clinton was sparring with a public radio host about her position on same-sex marriage, defending her past reticence to discuss the issue and falling well short of full-throated support. Now, in a markedly new position, Clinton is offering just that, calling gay marriage a right afforded by the Constitution. "Hillary Clinton supports marriage equality and hopes the Supreme Court will come down on the side of same-sex couples being guaranteed that constitutional right," said Adrienne Elrod, a Clinton spokeswoman, in a statement. This is an entirely new position for Clinton.

A worst-case scenario is that a terrorist with a laptop would sit among the passengers and take control of the airplane using its passenger Wi-Fi, said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee who requested the investigation. "That's a serious vulnerability, and FAA should work quickly" to fix the problem, DeFazio said. The avionics in a cockpit operate as a self-contained unit and aren't connected to the same system used by passengers to watch movies or work on their laptops. But as airlines update their systems with Internet-based networks, it's not uncommon for Wi-Fi...

Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were gay, says a new book by a gay activist and award winning writer. Larry Kramer, 79, says he believes what's written in his history book is true though he is selling it as fiction to avoid legal troubles. In Volume One of his two part book 'The American People,' Kramer says that Abraham Lincoln was gay and his killer John Wilkes Booth was actually Lincoln's spurned gay lover. 'We know that Abraham Lincoln was gay,' Kramer told CBS in an interview about the book which came out this month.

Reading all these sotries about people whining how fast food jobs should be paying 15 bucks an hour got me thinking about all the people we hire from other countries when we have all these well educated native born people struggling to find work... What does H1B really mean? H1B = Hire 1 Barista So for every foreign worker we bring in on a H1B, we end up having to "Hire One Barista" down the street at starbucks... The H1B program is directly tied to the number of colleg students having to take a lower paying job handing out coffee...

There are usually a few Masses per year at which there can be expected to be a large number of non-Catholics present. Christmas and Easter Masses are popular with non-Catholics, mainly because they are visiting Catholic family and friends. Nuptial Masses, especially when one of the parties to be married is a non-Catholic Christian, will have large turnouts of non-Catholics (sometimes up to half the congregation). Non-Catholics can also be expected at Masses offered for other sacramental firsts and life-cycle events, such as confirmations and funerals.This reality raises a common question for the apologists here at Catholic Answers: What...

Couple at Vatican wedding last September (CNSNews.com) – Pope Francis criticized "so-called gender theory" today and reaffirmed that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and was created so by God. "For instance," said the pope, "I wonder, for example, if the so-called gender theory is not also an expression of a frustration and of a resignation, which aims to cancel the sexual difference because it no longer knows how to address it. Yes, we risk taking a step backward. "The removal of the difference, in fact, is the problem, not the solution," the pope said....

The tombstone of Hillary Clinton’s father, Hugh Rodham, was knocked over in a possible case of vandalism, police in Pennsylvania said Tuesday. Scranton Police Chief Carl Graziano said someone reported the stone had been disturbed at the Washburn Street Cemetery on Tuesday morning, according to a local report

Hillary Clinton is making campaign appearances in Iowa under extremely controlled conditions, and during one event she spoke of commerce:

A federal appeals court panel assigned to consider whether to temporarily lift a block on President Barack Obama's latest round of immigration-related executive actions leans Republican, 2-1, and contains a sharply conservative judge who drew national attention for clashing with the administration over Obama's health care reform law.(Snip)The panel is set to hear two hours of oral argument Friday morning in New Orleans on the issue of whether to stay a district court judge's injunction from February blocking Obama's efforts to offer deferred deportation and work permits to millions more undocumented immigrants. The same three judges are unlikely to make...

The UK Independence Party launched its election manifesto on Wednesday, appealing to Conservative voters with pledges to raise defense spending and bring forward a vote on Britain’s EU membership. […] (Nigel) Farage vowed to spend “substantially” more than the NATO minimum of two percent of GDP on defense in a move that he said would “rattle the dwindling number of Conservative voters who still see (Prime Minister David) Cameron’s party as the party of security”. […] The anti-mass immigration party, which had two MPs at the end of the last parliament, also promised to cut small business taxes and boost...

On Tuesday, Christopher Cadelago, political reporter in The Sacramento Bee‘s Capitol Bureau, revealed another example of exactly how strong the links remain between the mainstream media and the Democratic Party, tweeting: Michael Soller, a former editor on the op-ed pages at the L.A. Times, named communications director for @CA_Dem. — Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) April 14, 2015 Soller has impeccable leftist credentials; in addition to his pontifications for the Times, he has worked for the Service Employees International Union and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, and graduated from UC Berkeley. Soller, of course, was no fan of George...

My war was the Cold War.  I spent a good chunk of my career helping to develop weapons to counter the communist threat.  A chunk of our intelligence effort was spent attempting to determine what was going on inside of the Soviet Union, who might succeed who in the leadership, and what it might mean. Watching the NRA and trying to determine what is happening in its internal politics is much like that.  There are the public pronouncements, that tell us some of what happened, after the fact.  While the NRA elections can have a significant effect on select...

The word from on high is out at the Democratic Underground. Despite the previous misgivings from many if not most of the DUer's about Hillary Clinton and her massive war chest fattened by corporate capitalist and shadowy foreign donations, they must be absorbed by the Hillary Borg. And to emphasize the point, the DU leader and co-founder, Skinner aka David Allen, posted a picture (above) of himself holding a Chipotle burrito and Hillary logo with this message: "So, I had this inexplicable craving for Chipotle today..."Yes, there are still 8 months left until the caucuses and primaries begin but Skinner has...

Rashida Strober, a self-described "dark skin activist" and "Expert on Dark Skin female Issues," is calling for the boycott of Kendrick Lamar because his girlfriend and is not dark enough. Despite the fact that Mr. Lamar's girlfriend is black, Strober believes that his choice of a light-skinned black woman makes him a "fake" and he should therefore be boycotted. She made her sentiments known in an expletive-laced Facebook post: Despite the fact that men and women are allowed to choose who they want to date, Strober believes that Mr. Lamar should be judged based on the color of the skin...

NBC

Today is tax day in America. As always, it features a lot of confusion with tax forms, some rushed trips to the post office and a whole lot of heartburn as taxpayers are reminded just how much they paid in taxes over the previous year. Despite the fact that every American constantly is affected by local, state and federal taxes, there is still a large number of Americans who don’t know about taxes. Here are seven things many every American should know about taxes. 1. Taxes Cost a Whole Lot Taxes on all levels consume over a quarter of gross...

Participants in a Congressional hearing Wednesday argued that Russia is waging sophisticated propaganda campaign that threatens American allies and interests - and that U.S. government-funded news media haven’t adequately countered that disinformation. “Russia’s propaganda machine is in overdrive, working to subvert democratic stability and foment violence,” the chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce of California, said in opening the hearing. "Russian propaganda has the potential to destabilize NATO members, impacting our security commitments,” he added. “ This Russian campaign - what one witness describes as the ‘weaponization of information’ - seriously threatens U.S. security.”...

Hillary Clinton's astroturf candidacy is in full swing in Iowa. Her Tuesday morning visit to a coffee shop in LeClaire, Iowa was staged from beginning to end, according to Austin Bird, one of the men pictured sitting at the table with Mrs. Clinton. Bird told Daily Mail Online that campaign staffer Troy Price called and asked him and two other young people to meet him Tuesday morning at a restaurant in Davenport, a nearby city. Price then drove them to the coffee house to meet Clinton after vetting them for about a half-hour. The three got the lion's share of...

Todd Macaluso, who helped represent Casey Anthony, faces 20 years in prisonA prominent San Diego personal injury attorney pleaded guilty Tuesday to defrauding clients, forging their signatures to gain millions of dollars from investors, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Todd Macaluso, 52 -- a lead player in personal injury, plaintiff’s and aviation law -- once helped represent high-profile defendant Casey Anthony, a Florida mother acquitted in her 2-year-old daughter’s death. Now, he has admitted in his plea deal to bankrolling his law practice through “funding agreements” with investors. Under the plan, Macaluso would offer them the right to...