Free Republic

Empty shelves in the supermarkets. Never-ending lines forming before dawn to buy whatever basics good from whatever brand arrives to the store. Hostile military officers threaten reprisal, ensuring that those lined up keep their grievances silent. This is how shopping for food or basic household goods looks like in Venezuela today. Rising shortages and inflation have submerged the country in a deep recession. This precarious reality is the result of actions carried out by the ‘revolutionary’ government in the past years: a model of poor economic management in a context of prevalent incompetence, corruption, and human rights violations. Did oil...

It began after the Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini, told his followers last month that foreigners in South Africa should pack up and leave. President Jacob Zuma’s eldest son, Edward, chimed in that foreigners were “taking over the country” in a “ticking time bomb.” Then last week, violent attacks on immigrant shopkeepers in Durban townships exploded and have continued since. Dozens of immigrants in Johannesburg and other cities shuttered their shops Wednesday as anonymous cellphone text messages warned that Zulu people were coming to kill immigrants in neighborhoods with large migrant populations. One message read: “Wednesday, Zulu people are coming to...

It took the Chattanooga gangbanger about two seconds to realize he had mouthed off to the wrong judge. General Sessions Court Judge Lila Statom was presiding over a preliminary hearing on April 16 for attempted murder suspect O’Shae Smith. Smith made a reference to a public housing development known as East Lake Courts, calling it his “hood.” What happened next was captured on video by television station WRCB and has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people since. Judge Statom admonished the gang member with a heaping dose of Southern-flavored righteous indignation. “Sir, East Lake Courts is not your...

Has billionaire oil man Harold Hamm ever been tempted to take the U.S. shale revolution abroad and expand his oil empire from North Dakota to the rest of the world? “I have not,” Hamm told a gathering of energy executives Tuesday. The question had come from Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS. Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, one of the biggest oil producers in the Bakken Shale, was one of three oil-company chief executives speaking from the stage during a panel at the IHS CERAWeek energy conference at the Hilton Americas-Houston. So why haven’t U.S. shale producers tried to tap...

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — More than 100,000 Ethiopians on Wednesday protested the killing of Ethiopian Christians in Libya and their own government's failure to raise living standards of the poor, with poverty fueling the flow of migrants through dangerous areas. The government-supported march at Addis Ababa's Meskel Square turned violent as stone-throwing protesters clashed with the police, who arrested at least 100 people. The protesters said "We want revenge for our sons blood," referring to Ethiopians seen being beheaded or shot in a video released on Sunday by the extremist group Islamic State. The Ethiopian victims are widely believed...

Sitting between a billionaire Republican donor and a TV news titan at the ultimate party for influencers, I picked up a few political tips. And I met some of the most powerful women in the universe. My hat goes off to Nancy Gibbs and her colleagues at TIME, who managed to assemble the most eclectic group of influential people one can imagine last night in New York City as part of their celebration of this year’s TIME 100. I found myself sandwiched between billionaire David Koch and Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly while watching Tim McGraw perform in a tuxedo...

For much of the past century, America has embodied, both in word and in deed, a commitment to freedom and democracy that has improved the lives of billions of people all over the world. Leaders such as Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan saw the importance of a foreign policy based on American values and grounded in American leadership. They understood that smart, strategic engagement was the only way to ensure our security, champion our values and advance our interests. One of the most unstable and dangerous areas of the world today is the Middle East. Events that take place there...

Earlier this month, Gehad el-Haddad, a senior adviser and media spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood was sentenced to life in prison in Egpyt. The son of Morsi’s former foreign affairs adviser Essam el-Haddad, he was the main English-language spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood. He is also a former employee of the Clinton Foundation. Oops! In 2012, Gehad El Haddad divided his time between volunteering for the Muslim Brotherhood and heading the Cairo office of the Clinton Climate Initiative, but later that year began to work full time for the Muslim Brotherhood.

What's the true test of one's commitment to free speech? It does not come when he permits people to be free to say or publish ideas with which he agrees. Not by a long shot. The true test of one's commitment to free speech comes when he permits others to say and publish ideas he deems offensive. In March, a video surfaced of a racist chant by Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers at the University of Oklahoma, a public university. It has brought widespread condemnation and the fraternity's suspension. Two fraternity students have been expelled. The University of Oklahoma's president,...

The USS Theodore Roosevelt is known in the Navy as “the Big Stick.”  She carries a ship’s crew of 3,200 sailors and Marines, along with an Air wing of 2,480. And not one of them knows what the hell they are doing off the coast of Yemen, following an Iranian convoy of just nine ships. That’s because the Commander-in-Chief who sent them there doesn’t know why the hell he moved a 104 thousand ton Nimitz class nuclear carrier into the Gulf of Aden near the Horn of Africa. The Pentagon told Fox News that the ship is there to track the...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 THE NEWS OF THE WEEK IN REVIEW18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Health Reform: Back in 2013, ObamaCare supporters couldn't talk enough about how California was a showcase for how the law would succeed. Isn't it funny that nobody is making such claims any more?

Sales of the Nissan Leaf and other electric cars have dipped thus far in 2015, and automakers have resorted to price cuts to boost interest in plug-ins.

At the tender age of 33, Marie Harf has attained a special kind of immortality, joining a list of luminaries (for instance, Thomas Crapper) whose names have become verbs. The Urban Dictionary has now listed “Harfing” as a verb: Harfing To say or assert something so patently stupid and preposterous as to generate widespread mockery. Named in honor of State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf. The State Department Spokesperson was harfing on about how Islamic State jihadists only needed job opportunities in order to give up their evil ways. And yesterday, Marie gave us another example:

America’s Institutional Enablers of the New Anti-SemitismPosted By Kenneth Levin On April 22, 2015 @ 12:05 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments [1]Incitement and indoctrination are at the heart of the Jew-hatred raging through the Arab and broader Muslim world and now infecting much of Europe. Within the Palestinian realm, both Palestinian governments – the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza – regularly call for annihilation of the Jews. Hamas’s charter cites the oft-quoted Hadith (a statement attributed to Muhammed but not found in the Koran) declaring that Judgement Day will not come until...

A 16-year-old Muslim boy from York – who was “seduced” by the terrorist group ISIS and plotted to kill American troops in North Carolina – will spend up to the next five years in a juvenile prison after being sentenced Tuesday on a gun charge.The teenager, an American citizen whose family is from Syria, wanted to join the terror organization and was scheming with a Muslim militant from North Carolina to rob a gun store near Raleigh, with plans of killing soldiers in retribution for American military action in the Middle East.The Enquirer-Herald does not name juvenile defendants. Prosecutors in...

One of the more generous benefits for congressional staffers might be on the chopping block in this year’s budget. The House and Senate budgets include cuts for education, employment and training, including the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. The program forgives all federally backed student loans for those working for 10 cumulative years in public service — including time spent on Capitol Hill.Both the House and Senate budgets would cut the subsidy that allows people to not pay interest while they’re in undergraduate studies and for six months after. The Student Loan Repayment Program, which authorizes the House and Senate...

President Obama will once again avoid using the word “genocide” at a ceremony to designed to memorialize more than a million Armenians murdered by the Ottaman Turks 100 years ago. During his 2008 campaign, then-Senator Obama repeatedly promised he would label the massacre a genocide as president.

<p>An Islamic extremist with an arsenal of loaded guns was only prevented from opening fire on Sunday morning churchgoers because he accidentally shot himself, French officials said.</p> <p>The 24-year-old computer science student, who was also suspected in the death of a young woman whose body was found on Sunday just ahead of his arrest, had been flagged as a risk last year and earlier this year but there was no specific reason to open a judicial investigation, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Wednesday.</p>

when you have the guts to take a traditional firm for freedom position and conservatism --- Cruz simply touted principles and values that Americans have held since the founding of the Republic: The American exceptionalism, freedom, hard work, God and country. --- Inspires people to be the best they can be American Thinker, by Lloyd Marcus