Free Republic

Last week Nate Cohn wondered why a guy like Rubio with obvious “breakout potential” hasn’t broken out yet, early though it may be. No one expects him to run away with the nomination, but no one expected he’d be stuck at five percent either. As a conspicuously electable center-right candidate, why hasn’t he at least joined Jeb Bush and Scott Walker by polling in the mid-teens?If you believe CNN, he’s on his way. For the moment. Overall, 17% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents back Bush for the GOP nomination, while 12% support Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Paul and Rubio...

A potential showdown is looming over a pair of City Council proposals that would decriminalize a host of offenses — including fare-beating, drinking on the street and public urination — in an overhaul that could dramatically impact the NYPD’s “broken windows” approach to policing. The measures, still the focus of ongoing negotiations, could pit some Council members against Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who raised questions about the potential changes just last month. City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito’s office is working on a proposal that would make some of the most common criminal court summonses civil charges instead. Violators would get...

‘Liars like Us’ J School: Heads up to the unsuspecting people of India: The liars of the U.S. State Department have taken it upon themselves to teach “ethics” to your nation’s upcoming journalists. Don’t get caught up in the controversy that it “has even proposed appropriating the name of Robin Thicke’s 2013 hit “Blurred Lines” as a title for the course. It’s not the name of the course, that could just as easily be called “Liars like us”, but what the course is teaching that’s the clear and present danger:

Welcome to the latest media litmus test for Republican candidates, which like the 2012 litmus test — contraception — has absolutely nothing to do with the job for which they’re vying. Thanks to our crack legions of national reporters, we now know how Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and now John Kasich will RSVP when the gilt-edged invitation shows up in the mail. Meanwhile, we still don’t know whether Hillary Clinton would sign the deal with Iran or why she refused to bolster security around the Benghazi consulate.To borrow a phrase from, like, two years ago,...

Terrorists release propaganda video showing two massacres of Christians from Ethiopia ISIS has released another video depicting the slaughter of Christians in Libya, showing footage of two massacres in which 30 Ethiopian Christians were killed.Before the executions a masked militant said: “To the nation of the cross, we’re back again… Muslim blood that was shed under the hands of your religion is not cheap.”“We swear to Allah … you will not have safety even in your dreams until you embrace Islam,” he added.Later a militant with a Yemeni accent said: “Those who convert to Islam are safe. Those who...

China's President Xi Jinping has signed agreements with Pakistan promising investment of $46bn (£30.7bn). The focus of spending is on building a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) - a network of roads, railway and pipelines between the long-time allies. They will run some 3,000km (1,800 miles) from Gwadar in Pakistan to China's western Xinjiang region. The projects will give China direct access to the Indian Ocean and beyond. This marks a major advance in China's plans to boost its influence in Central and South Asia, correspondents say, and far exceeds US spending in Pakistan.

The Obama Administration remained undaunted by yet another court ruling against its attempts to compel religious groups to fund abortion coverage in their health insurance plans. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued an order preventing the Obama Administration from forcing religious groups in Pennsylvania to pay for abortion-causing drugs mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Supreme Court had previously blocked HHS from imposing similar mandates on the Little Sisters of the Poor, Hobby Lobby, Wheaton College, and the University of Notre Dame. That the Administration would repeatedly attempt this type of coercion caused Lori Windham,...

1. Iran is refusing to allow inspections at military sites. On Sunday, Iran rejected any international inspection of military sites that are thought to be developing nuclear technology, threatening war as a response to the idea itself. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has complained that Iran has not cooperated with its own requests for details about these sites. A deal that allowed Iran free reign at its military sites would be worse than a fraud: it would be a disaster. 2. Iran continues to threaten war against the U.S. and Israel. Several times in recent weeks, Iran has staged...

In the moments before the police and county prosecutors and child protective services took over her life, Monique was thinking about dinner. Specifically, she wanted a baked chicken. She had just left a birthday party and was driving home with her two daughters. By the time she pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store near their house, her younger daughter, then 4 years old, was taking a much needed nap. Monique hesitated. She didn’t want to wake her daughter to bring her into the store, where she was liable to be as cranky and difficult as anyone else...

A rookie Ohio cop is being praised for "great restraint and maturity" after he held off using deadly force against a double murder suspect who charged at him, his police chief said. In a confrontation Thursday with a man accused of killing his fiancee and his best friend, New Richmond Police Officer Jesse Kidder is heard on his body-camera video yelling, "No man, I'm not going to do it!" and ordering the suspect to get down on the ground. The suspect rushes toward him shouting, "Shoot me, shoot me!" "Back up!" screams Kidder, holding his gun out. The man finally...

Recently, Reason‘s Ronald Bailey asked what it would take to convince conservatives and libertarians that global warming is real. If generally rising temperatures, decreasing diurnal temperature differences, melting glacial and sea ice, smaller snow extent, stronger rainstorms, and warming oceans are not enough to persuade you that man-made climate [change] is occurring, what evidence would be? This has since been picked up by Jonathan Adler at the Washington Post‘s token right-leaning blog, the Volokh Conspiracy. There’s no pressure: Bailey and Adler merely insinuate that you are “obscurantist”—that is, you hate new knowledge—if you don’t agree. That, by the way—the...

Holy Cow! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RubJOmPmqwA

This Season of Unreason will end with the elections of November 2016, but its consequences – validation of the idea that belief without evidence is a virtue, that religion, and especially Christianity, deserves a place in our politics, our Constitutionally enshrined secularism notwithstanding – will live on and damage the progressive cause. But it does not have to be this way. There will almost certainly be no (declared) atheist or even agnostic among the candidates. This is scandalous, given the electorate’s gradual, relentless ditching of religion. A survey just out shows that 7.5 million Americans have abandoned their faith since...

The Florida senator’s dabbling in multiple denominations shows a country more and more inclined toward a consumerist approach toward religion. American presidential candidates are often a good lens for looking at the state of American religion. For instance, the fact that 2012 was the first election in American history where no candidate was a mainline Protestant, after that branch’s virtual monopoly on the White House, reflected the mainline’s precipitous decline in numbers and influence over the 20th century. While the two vice-presidential candidates were boringly Catholic, Barack Obama ran as a nondenominational, basically unchurched Christian, and Mitt Romney as a...

Indiana Governor Mike Pence is extending an executive order allowing a needle exchange program in southern Indiana’s Scott County. So far, there have been 128 confirmed cases of HIV connected to Scott County and intravenous drug use. Last month, Pence signed a 30 day order to suspend state law and allow the needle exchange program. With that order due to expire on April 24, the governor signed Monday a new order extending the exchange program into May. Pence says he got the recommendation to do so from the Indiana State Department of Health, the CDC, and Scott County health officials....

Gov. Scott Walker's father is the Rev. Llewellyn "Llew" Walker. Sen. Ted Cruz's father is the Rev. Rafael Bienvenido Cruz. Both are conservative Baptist ministers. But that is not the only thing they have in common. Both Baptist ministers were born in the same year, 1939. Could this be a mere coincidence, or is God trying to send America a sign in these troubled times? We are living in an America where the leadership of both parties no longer believes in the difference between morality and immorality. Who better than the conservative sons of two Baptist ministers to remind us...

California’s drought and how it’s handled show just what kind of place the Golden State is becoming: feudal, super-affluent and with an impoverished interior. California has met the future, and it really doesn’t work. As the mounting panic surrounding the drought suggests, the Golden State, once renowned for meeting human and geographic challenges, is losing its ability to cope with crises. As a result, the great American land of opportunity is devolving into something that resembles feudalism, a society dominated by rich and poor, with little opportunity for upward mobility for the state’s middle- and working classes. The water situation...

Tired of being duped by conservative-sounding Republican presidential candidates who secretly harbored support for gay marriage, abortion and other socially liberal issues, evangelical pastors plan to investigate the backgrounds of White House hopefuls and their top aides. "Personnel is policy," said David Lane, whose American Renewal Project is working with 100,000 pastors to push 80 million evangelicals and 40 million Catholics who typically don't vote to the polls in 2016 to elect a conservative Republican. "We need to bring these things up on the table," he told Secrets. "Evangelical pastors aren't as much interested in budget issues as they are...

Northern California's car-clogged freeways run through thousands of acres of protected wetlands, creating a "ring of death" east of San Francisco, according to an ongoing study. Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have plotted some 29,000 reports of roadkill to identify the most hazardous roadways for the state's wildlife. The volunteer reports, collected over the past five years, cover more than 40 percent of California's highways and roads. Tracking roadside carcasses may sound odd, but the endeavor can reduce deaths for both drivers and wildlife, the scientists said. For instance, the study found many hotspots where animals are repeatedly...