Free Republic

Toya Putnam, a mother of two boys, chooses to send her seven-year-old son to a Detroit-area charter school in Roseville. Though some nonprofit organizations are urging the state to limit school choice in the City of Detroit, Putnam says it is incredibly important for her to be able to make the best educational choice for her family. Shopping around for the best school "wasn't a problem for me," Putnam said. "I don't want anyone else to pick and choose for my kids' future." Later this month, Putnam and her family are moving back to Detroit from Warren, and her son...

GOP congressional leaders are racing to approve a budget blueprint for the coming year that abides by strict spending limits, determined to show that the party can maintain fiscal discipline. But some rank-and-file Republicans are already expressing interest in a much bigger deal that would adjust those caps, sweep away the still-developing blueprint and ease the budgetary pressure on the Pentagon — and, grudgingly, domestic programs if necessary.

Pope Francis and Kim Kardashian made headlines recently by calling attention to what happened to the Armenian people 100 years ago. It was genocide at the hands of the Turks in what was then the Ottoman Empire, according to the pope, the reality show star and many historians. In Minnesota, the push to recognize the deaths of Armenians a century ago as the first genocide of the 20th century is being led by a small, new St. Paul church. In the past month, St. Sahag Armenian Church has put up billboards on Interstate 94 in St. Paul and Interstate 494...

April 17, 2015 (FRCBlog.com) -- Hate is sin.Hate is disobedience to God. "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" (I John 3:15).To rage against, physically or verbally abuse, belittle, or diminish the humanity of homosexuals is hateful.To disagree is not hateful.To stand for truth is not hateful.To make arguments about human sexuality and marriage from sociological and demographic data is not hateful.To object to the legal redefinition of marriage is not hateful.To oppose efforts to redefine marriage in law is not hateful.To believe in the uniqueness of male-female complementarity is not hateful.To herald the Bible's teaching...

Listen Live: Sound Off Connecticut with Jim Vicevich 9 a.m. to noon ET (Daily Thread)Sound Off Connecticut is a popular conservative/libertarian call in talk show hosted by Jim Vicevich weekday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon ET. Although based in Connecticut, the show welcomes callers from all over the United States! This is your chance to sound off America! Call into the show toll free (800) 966-9842! Listen to the LIVE AUDIO STREAM at http://wtic.com - it's free and NO registration is required! If you're in southern New England listen over the air to WTIC 1080 AM, the 50,000 watt...

Income disparity – the divide between those at the top of the economic ladder and those stuck on lower rungs – is the era’s most explosive political issue. It has, however, a very ironic twist. As a recent report from the Brookings Institution reveals, income disparities are widest in the nation’s bluest – most liberal – cities and much narrower elsewhere.

In April of 2012, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) condemned laws requiring an individual to have a photo identification to vote in local, state and federal elections. “Eleven percent, or over 21 million, of American citizens do not possess a government-issued photo ID,” an IBEW article stated when discussing the argument that photo ID laws suppress voting. The union pointed the finger at “the ultraright” for pushing for photo identification as a requirement to vote. However, the same union has no problem demanding a photo ID for something as simple as a member wanting to leave it. Ryan...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Samuel New International Version (NIV) 15 Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. 2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle...

Washington (CNN) - A person carrying a suspicious package scaled a White House fence Sunday night, but was quickly apprehended. The person climbed the fence on the south side of the White House complex about 10:25 p.m., said Brian Leary with the United States Secret Service. The individual is in custody and charges are pending, Leary said. The person's name or gender wasn't released. The package was being examined and later deemed to be harmless, a Secret Service source told CNN. Last week, a U.S. official told CNN that temporary steel spikes may be added to the tips of the...

"We have prevented the worst outcome in Libya" Senator John McCain-April 2011 You're seeing the story of the 'migrants' crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Southern Europe today and the immediate reason why they are doing it. There's chaos in Libya right now including the presence of Islamic State and its ususal methods of dealing with its enemies including those who are not Muslims. What the media will not talk about but others already are were the policies that brought Libya to where it is today, the same policies used to a lesser extent in Syria with the same result. The...

Near the end of 2011, I believe, the press had a round of nastiness toward Mitt Romney. (It would not be the last, of course.) I thought, “This is interesting. If Romney is elected president — or any other Republican is elected president — we will see the return of the adversarial press. The adversarial press has been absent during the Obama years. The press has been amazingly tender toward the president. A Republican victory would mark the return of normality.” The other day, I was looking at some press about Hillary Clinton — pretty tough press, or normal press....

While the administration struggles to move forward with its plan to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, the list of foreigners trying to get into the United States legally has surged to 4.4 million, over 100,000 more than last year, according to the State Department. Those on the list either have a family member who is a U.S. citizen or green card holder, sponsoring their entry, or an employer wants them. The list grew by 100,085 over last year. And more than a quarter of them, 1,323,978, are Mexican. ... unlike illegals slipping over the border, many of those on the...

Kim Jong-Un has climbed the highest mountain in North Korea, state-run media claims.

The elephant on the Green Line trains is the behavior of many of the young people who ride the trains: appalling profanity, an utter disregard for the tidiness of the carriages, the blatant freeloading. To the last, it has not even been a year of operating yet and there is a passenger constituency so accustomed to not paying that a train ride might as well be another in a long list of entitlements. Our elected worthies seem disinclined to point this out. In the meantime, our governor, Mark Dayton, when he is not championing the return of the umlauts to...

Thousands of environmentally conscious citizens converged on the National Mall on Saturday to be part of the Global Citizen Earth Day rally and concert. Performers like Mary J. Blige, Usher, and No Doubt performed to the crowd to highlight global poverty and climate change. Via USA Today: Earth Day Network President Kathleen Rogers said eliminating poverty will require solving climate change. So advocates on both issues are collaborating to push for sustainable international development and hope Saturday’s event inspires people to support it. The rally was a cooperative effort with Global Citizen. The actual Earth Day observance is April 22.“Whether...

"I also don't believe that your sexual preferences are a choice, for the vast majority of people," Sen. Marco Rubio said on Sunday's broadcast of Face the Nation. "In fact, the bottom line is that I believe that sexual preference is something that people are born with." CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO...

Yesterday, Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin signed into law a bill that approves the use of nitrogen gas for executions in the state. The method, which would effectively asphyxiate death row inmates by forcing them to breathe pure nitrogen through a gas mask, is meant to be the primary alternative to lethal injection, The Washington Post reports. Fallin and other supporters of the procedure say it's pain-free and effective, noting that the nitrogen would render inmates unconscious within ten seconds and kill them in minutes. It's also cheap: state representatives say the method only requires a nitrogen tank and a gas...

Watching the "inevitable" Hillary Clinton campaign across Iowa reminded me of another profoundly flawed human being whose nomination was also seen as inevitable 18 month before Election Day: Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1967.  Actually it was Gene McCarthy I first thought about when I read this a few weeks ago: Again and again, the activists jumped to their feet, cheering on such promises as breaking up big banks, reining in Wall Street’s “reckless gambling” and addressing the country’s “gross concentrated wealth.” They might have been listening to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), whose populist crusade on income equality, health care and...

An investigation I conducted in 2009 revealed that the H1N1 swine flu epidemic was far less than the U.S. government had made it out to be. I exclusively obtained lab test results from 50 states when the Centers for Disease Control refused to produce them. The results showed that most of the supposed cases of swine flu were not swine flu at all. In fact, they weren’t any type of flu.That reality makes it all the more difficult for those who were brain damaged by the vaccine they took to try to prevent swine flu.The British press reported in March of 2014 that UK...

The White House reacted last night to the video released by ISIS of the slaughter of more Christians for their faith. Calling the actions “vicious, senseless brutality,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan called for a political solution to the chaotic status of Libya. “This atrocity once again underscores the urgent need for a political resolution to the conflict in Libya to empower a unified Libyan rejection of terrorist groups,” she explained in a statement.