Free Republic

What do you call it when 12 men are drowned at sea for praying to Jesus? Answer: Religious persecution. Yet, when a throng of Muslims threw a dozen Christians overboard a migrant ship traveling from Libya to Italy, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi missed the opportunity to label it as such. Standing next to President Obama at their joint news conference Friday (April 17), Renzi dismissed it as a one-off event and said, “The problem is not a problem of (a) clash of religions.” While the prime minister plunged his head into the sand, Italian authorities arrested and charged the Muslim...

I caught New York Mayor Bill de Blasio streaking along Manhattan’s waterfront—and it wasn’t the first time.“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true,” writes author Nathanial Hawthorne in his classic novel, “The Scarlet Letter.” Mayor de Blasio has finally reached complete bewilderment over who he is as a politician. Is he a champion of the poor and oppressed? Or is he the oppressor? In his confusion, he has taken to metaphorically streaking in public, giving us clues to his...

Let’s test your presidential election knowledge. In how many presidential elections did Bill Clinton win a majority of the popular vote? The answer, of course, is zero. That’s right. In 1992, Bill Clinton won his first presidential term with just 43 percent of the vote. Republican George H. W. Bush received 37.5 percent. Ross Perot — America’s proto-tea partier — received 18.9 percent (without receiving a single Electoral College vote). In 1996, Clinton nearly managed to claw his way over the 50 percent barrier. But he didn’t. The New Democrat eked out a second plurality victory with only 49.2 of...

The New York Times reported this week on the unseemly transfer of cash from parties interested in a major uranium deal to the Clintons. The Canadian company selling Uranium One to the Russians donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation. And Russians tied to the deal gave Bill Clinton $500,000 for a Moscow speech. The deal had global consequences. It would put one fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States under Russian control. So critical was the deal that it needed the approval of the U.S. State Department. State approved the deal, and it managed to so...

LYNNWOOD, Wash. -- A robber got more than he bargained for this week at a Lynnwood Baskin Robbins when a worker pummeled him and chased him out of the store. Police say a man wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses walked into the Baskin Robbins Wednesday afternoon. He approached the employee, Rachael Bishop, and demanded she hand over all the money in the cash register. Bishop refused, so the robber tried to grab the money himself. That turned out to be a mistake, as Bishop began to pummel him with punches to the head. "I just really didn't want him...

Naloxone isn’t magic, but its power to rescue a heroin user from the brink of death can certainly seem miraculous. The anti-overdose drug, also known by the brand name Narcan, is easy to administer and has saved thousands of lives. First responders are often awestruck at how swiftly it can revive a dying addict."It's just incredible," the deputy fire chief of Revere, Mass., marveled in a public-radio interview last year. "There's somebody who's on the ground who's literally dead. They have no pulse. Sometimes they're blue, sometimes they're black. And you administer this stuff and sometimes in a minute or...

The conservative movement’s leading media icons lined up to back Scott Walker after the media attempted to lynch him for talking tough on immigration.After being attacked...Walker stayed the course...“A couple years ago, when the unemployment rate was at incredibly high levels and labor participation was low, why would we want to flood the market with more workers?” he said. “So that would be a time when you would have arguably less. As the unemployment rate goes down and labor participation rates go up, the two have to go hand in hand. Then it could be conceivably more than we have...

Senate will resume Iran debate at 3pm. On Tuesday, the Iran bill will be opened up for amendments. On Thursday, final passage is expected in the Senate. On Friday, final passage is expected in the House.

Warning: The contents of this column are likely to be deemed offensive by radical feminists and the emotionally handicapped. Please pardon the redundancy.Some conservatives fail to grasp the importance of the campus culture wars. They write to me asking why I don’t cover issues of national importance instead of battling endlessly with college administrators. Their criticisms fall on deaf ears because I understand something they don’t: That the insanity we see on the campus today will threaten our fundamental freedoms when it becomes normalized and bleeds into the broader culture.Clearly, there is no greater threat to freedom today than the...

We decent Americans are bombarded with lies, libeled, and subjected to petty (and, increasingly, not so petty) tyrannies by government flunkies. At every turn, liberals and their suck-ups in the media and academia seek to delegitimize our interests, concerns, and opinions. They want us to submit, to take the easy way out, to just go along. Our fate, they decree, is cultural and political dhimmitude.Well, it’s time to draw a red line and, unlike President Feckless and the Wimptones, to enforce it.Conservatives, it’s time to say, “No.”No, liberals, you can’t just lie about us anymore without us pushing back. The...

In a first for a major restaurant chain, Chipotle Mexican Grill on Monday will begin serving only food that is free of genetically engineered ingredients. “This is another step toward the visions we have of changing the way people think about and eat fast food,” said Steve Ells, founder and co-chief executive of Chipotle. “Just because food is served fast doesn’t mean it has to be made with cheap raw ingredients, highly processed with preservatives and fillers and stabilizers and artificial colors and flavors.” In 2013, Chipotle was the first restaurant chain to indicate which items contained genetically modified organisms,...

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...

The nature of dark energy is one of the most important unsolved problems in all of science. But what, exactly, is dark energy, and why do we even believe that it exists? Step back a minute and consider a more familiar experience: what happens when you toss a ball straight up into the air? It gradually slows down as gravity tugs on it, finally stopping in mid-air and falling back to the ground. Of course, if you threw the ball hard enough (about 25,000 miles per hour) it would actually escape from the Earth entirely and shoot into space, never...

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Just ran across this nice poster: http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/rtnwcm/groups/ids/documents/content/rtn_242005.pdf

The GOP seems determined to reinforce its reputation as “the stupid party.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other prominent Republicans plan to co-sponsor a piece of legislation introduced by Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson that, as he recently admitted in the Wall Street Journal, would allow Obamacare subsidies issued through federal exchanges to continue for two more years—even if the Supreme Court declares them illegal. This will not only mask the negative consequences of the sloppily-written law, it will antagonize the voters who reinstated the GOP congressional majority last November and provide yet more time for Obamacare to metastasize. Senator...

GoFundMe has determined that if Christians are accused of crimes, such as not baking cakes for gay weddings, they will not be able to use their service. It appears that gay activists have objected to a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to keep the Sweet Cakes bakery in business or pay the fine, which could be as high as $150,000, for declining to bake a cake for a gay wedding. It is, of course, the right of GoFundMe to deny service to anyone – even as Sweet Cakes is denied the same right – but it leaves a market for...

New Orleans teens arrested for 'execution-style murder' of father and son at home in Metairie area: authorities (VIDEO) BY TOBIAS SALINGER Authorities in New Orleans arrested two area teens on Friday for the alleged “execution-style murder” of a father and son only two days earlier, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand announced on Sunday. Sheriff’s deputies and U.S. Marshals captured Dexter Allen, 17, and Haraquon Degruy, 18, in a stolen SUV traced to the scene of the shotgun killings of Metairie area residents David Pence, 56, and Nicholas Pence, 25 late Wednesday night, Normand told local reporters, according to WVUE-TV.

WASHINGTON – A presidential election just getting into gear provided President Barack Obama plenty of new material to work with on the night he describes as Washington celebrating itself. "It's amazing how time flies," Obama told those attending the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents' Association on Saturday night. "Soon, the first presidential contest will take place, and I for one cannot wait to see who the Koch brothers pick. It's exciting." Obama added: "Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker ... who will finally get that red rose?" On the Democratic side, Obama observed that...

It’s been fascinating to watch the media “discover” Marco Rubio as the GOP’s new front-runner. He is suddenly leading the field in a Fox News poll with a less-than-overwhelming 13 percent, just a tick ahead of Scott Walker (12), Rand Paul (10), Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee (9), and Ted Cruz (8). Not bad for a freshman senator, until you realize that the poll’s margin of error is 5 percent. Meaning that, in theory, Cruz could be first and Rubio could be sixth. One of the most popular Rubio story lines involves the evolution and possible strain on the Jeb-and-Marco...