Free Republic

President Obama is celebrating Earth Day by flying in his jumbo jet down to Florida so he can tour the Everglades. The 1,836-mile roundtrip will consume 9,180 gallons of fuel on Air Force One, according to CBS White House reporter Mark Knoller. And that’s just the president’s plane. There will a half-dozen support planes along for the trip, Marine One helicopters, and a 25- to 30-vehicle motorcade belching exhaust into the air.

Activist and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali responded to her critics by saying “there are two different tactics of silencing individuals like me who want to start the conversation about what in Islam needs to change,” hit lists and smear campaigns on Tuesday’s broadcast of “The Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel.

Scott Walker’s recent comments suggesting that the United States’s policy on legal immigration should be focused on what’s good for American workers—a seemingly obvious point that nevertheless has ruffled feathers—offers further evidence of the Wisconsin governor’s political savvy. When two of one’s strongest competitors (namely, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio) share a weakness on an issue, it’s smart to draw attention to that issue by making clear there is daylight between you and them...... Nor is it merely from a political perspective that Walker is right to join Sen. Jeff Sessions in questioning the prevailing orthodoxy on this issue. Reflecting...

Photo: AP As Iraqis fight to repel ISIS forces in Ramadi, the Obama administration is deeming this vital city expendable. In so doing, the White House shows it understands nothing about the value of Ramadi or even its own capacity to defend it. There’s no better example of US incompetence in dealing with these mad jihadis. Why isn’t this key western Iraqi city, the capital of Anbar Province, high on our priority list? According to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey, it’s because President Obama would rather place the emphasis on defending an Anbar refinery, to protect the oil...

Saudi-led coalition jets have bombed Houthi rebels in Yemen's third city of Taiz, hours after announcing the end of a military campaign against them. The strikes followed the fall of the base outside Taiz of an army unit loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. Fighting was also reported in the second city of Aden, Lahj's provincial capital Huta, and the town of Daleh. On Tuesday, Riyadh declared its month-long campaign, which sought to restore the president, had achieved its goals. But it warned that it would continue to take action against the Houthis as needed. The UN says at least...

Between the egotistical unions, misguided misinformed environmentalists and pushover government bureaucrats, free enterprise is under fire and our men and women at arms are underfed. Few things are more despicable It wasn’t enough that the International Longshore and Warehouse Union targeted Portland container-terminals run by ICTSI Oregon, effectually shutting down Terminal 6 by goading Hapag Lloyd into closing operations which supplied 20% of Portland’s container traffic. Hanjin, which began servicing the U.S. Army after World War II, had already abandoned the port taking 80% of T-6’s traffic with it, but the shortsighted union stranded inland farmers and backstabbed the military....

I see that Lady M is promoting her “Let’s Move!” #GiveMeFive!” program on the back of Lil BUB – who despite her name is not a rap star butt rather a very special cat.  Lady M thought she might help her put some mojo back in her faltering signature project.I’m embarrassed to say I was totally unfamiliar with this famous cat until the “#GiveMeFive! video crew showed up last week to film this promo:Don’t worry about MO exploiting this little special needs cat - it’s actually the other way around; Lil BUB is quite an entrepreneur as it turns out,...

Confederate History and Heritage Month Tennessee Senator Edward Ward Carmack said it best in 1903: “The Confederate Soldiers were our kinfolk and our heroes. We testify to the country our enduring fidelity to their memory. We commemorate their valor and devotion. There were some things that were not surrendered at Appomattox. We did not surrender our rights and history; nor was it one of the conditions of surrender that unfriendly lips should be suffered to tell the story of that war or that unfriendly hands should write the epitaphs of the Confederate dead. We have the right to teach our...

Mike Huckabee has been staffing up for his likely presidential campaign, before an expected announcement in Hope, Arkansas, on May 5. Sources familiar with the internal planning tell POLITICO that the Republican has decided on senior staff and their roles for a potential 2016 campaign. This inner-circle includes three alumni of the former Arkansas governor’s 2008 presidential campaign, during which he won the Iowa caucuses and carried seven other states. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Huckabee’s daughter, would be campaign manager. Chip Saltsman, who was manager last time, returns as a senior adviser. Bob Wickers will stay in his role as pollster...

What can be done to ignore a government determined to lie to everyone about a “threat” that does not exist? Not much. Let us begin with the understanding that there is no connection between the climate and health. The climate is something measured in decades and centuries, so what happened in the last century has nothing to do with whether you are sneezing today. The weather surely can help generate health problems. For example in the northeastern states, the Lyme disease season is beginning. Between 1992 and 2010 reported cases of Lyme disease doubled to nearly 23,000 according to the...

April 21, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The American College of Pediatricians has made a statement advising women to be informed about the link between abortion and breast cancer – at the same time recognizing the medical establishment has been reticent to admit the connection.“Although the medical community has been reluctant to acknowledge the link, induced abortion prior to a full term delivery, and prior to 32 weeks of gestation, increases the likelihood that a woman will develop breast cancer,” the physicians' organization stated on April 7. “This risk is especially increased for adolescents.”“The American College of Pediatricians urges women to 'Know...

If Islam is not the curriculum topic in social studies, English, or history, it is the indoctrination into the green religion of environmentalism, of Gaia, or Mother Earth, masqueraded as climate change. America used to be the country of freedom where people dreamed of immigrating to if only they could get a passport, a visa, enough money to fly or sail across the ocean, if only the border guards would not arrest them in the U.S. if they had no papers, if only the military guards in their own countries would not shoot them on sight. Cubans have risked their...

The government is Google, and Google is the government It was a mainstream media asking no questions that inflicted a Marxist president on an unsuspecting West in 2008, but it is Google that is keeping him there, and Google which is making the election of Hillary Clinton in 2016 all but inevitable. As much as half of the U.S. population so fervently wishes otherwise, America-hating Marxists in office are there to stay, courtesy of the airtight power bestowed upon them by the most arrogant, powerful and influential company on earth: Google. In an upside-down world, fraught with government-designed false flags...

FAYETTEVILLE, AR (KNWA) - Police arrested 20-year-old Lindsey Sweetin Thursday for filing a false police report about a sexual assault she originally said happened in the Harmon Parking garage on the University of Arkansas campus. According to a police report, on March 8, Sweetin's brother called the University of Arkansas Police Department to report that his sister had been sexually assaulted in the garage on March 5.

Terrance Patrick Bean greets President Obama, as Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber looks on. “It seems to me that in the gay community the people who should be running interference for NAM/BLA are the parents and friends of gays. Because if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.” – Harry Hay, founder of the modern “gay rights” movement None of it matters: Neither common sense, nor...

Some Advice from Mother Church, as Pictured in the Book of Ruth By: Msgr. Charles PopeRecently I preached a retreat for a good number of women here in our Archdiocese. I based the retreat on the Book of Ruth, a beautiful love story that is a kind of allegory for Christ and the Church. More specifically it is an allegory of the individual’s salvation by Christ and in relationship to Him.The detailed background to the text is too lengthy to go into here, but a few points will help. The story features three main characters: Boaz, Ruth, and Naomi....

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a bill Tuesday night to extend through 2020 a controversial surveillance authority under the Patriot Act. The move comes as a bipartisan group of lawmakers in both chambers is preparing legislation to scale back the government’s spying powers under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

When a faith is highly traditional—so traditional that her Tradition is seen as nothing less than the presence of God living and breathing in the life of the Church—it is sure to clash with the sensibilities of a modern, critical, and pluralistic culture such as our own. One of the many sources of friction between the Orthodox Church and contemporary culture is in the exercise of authority. As Lockean, democratic, social-contract theories, with an emphasis on individual rights, have come to dominate the way we instinctively think about morality and social life over the past few centuries, Christian moral and...

Better for states not to comply with the EPA’s plans than to go along and absolve the feds of accountability for the mess. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) set off a firestorm recently when he advised states not to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. Yet that advice isn’t as radical as his detractors make it sound. As a state public utilities commissioner who deals with the effects of federal regulations on a regular basis, I also recommend that states not comply. ... While the short-term effects may be painful, the long-term consequences of submitting...