Free Republic

A YOUNG student from Seattle has been revealed as a senior female ISIS agent responsible for recruiting women to join the terror group. On Twitter, she is known as @_UmmWaqqas, and is pictured shrouded head-to-toe in black; an inscrutable and high-ranking officer of ISIS who boasts more than 8000 followers online, and is in close contact with the British, Americans and the jihadi brides in Syria. Channel 4 News has since revealed her identity as a woman in her 20s who went to school in the US, and by her friends’ accounts grew up as a regular teenager in a...

The Baltimore riots have captured America’s attention this week. Buildings have burned, people have been injured, reporters have been robbed, and there was even a failed attempt at setting off an IED. Yes, seriously. There will be lessons learned from the events stemming from the terrible and tragic death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, and changes will be made in Baltimore at many levels. One hopes some of these changes will help the community and the police find common ground again. One expects from government, as one does, that there will be a lot of unnecessary gesture-making and...

Exclusive: Ted Nugent counters 'our embarrassing president's' social-justice rhetoric Social justice? Level playing field? Equal opportunity? Income inequality? Everyone should play by the same rules? Cue the cheeky cherubs breaking through the pillowy clouds blowing sweet trumpet music in the heavenly skies. Our embarrassing president and all the cult-of-denial goons that chant the above nonsense have clearly lost all sense of reason, logic, common sense and honesty, not to mention a basic grasp of human history. Here’s how it works, Mr. President and all you fundamental-transformation, social-engineering America haters. There is no social justice, and there will never be any...

Last week with a 21-10 vote the Texas Senate passed legislation (Senate Bill 931) that would end the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, which is a primarily a wind energy (with a certain degree of solar energy) mandate. Wind energy is more efficient in Texas than it is in states like Michigan — not necessarily efficient but relatively more efficient. Texas is far and away the leading wind energy state in the nation and, thanks in no small part to a $7 billion program for building transmission lines for wind from the western side of the state, it has met its...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has poached Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s "most prominent pro-Israel backer," The Washington Free Beacon reports. Rich Roberts, a major Republican donor who Politico described as "a kingmaker among ultra-Orthodox Jews" in his home state of New Jersey, had been a benefactor to Paul, even paying for the senator’s 2013 trip to Israel. But Roberts is now throwing his support to Walker, who has not yet declared his candidacy, though it’s expected, because he believes the Wisconsin governor is more electable. "I like Rand Paul a lot, our relationship goes back now about three or four years,"...

I'm pretty sure this was posted a couple of years ago, but with Baltimore and Ferguson recently in the news (and in flames), it is worth another look. Steven Crowder's "Detroit in Ruins" is (IMO) a well done piece on Detroit's fall from grace under liberal influence, put in power by the UAW.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush declared Wednesday that 11 million immigrants in the country illegally should have an opportunity to stay, wading yet again into his party's contentious immigrant debate. In tone and substance, Bush stands out among the many Republicans lining up for the GOP's next presidential primary, where conservatives who oppose an immigration overhaul often hold outsized influence. As he moves toward a presidential campaign, the brother and son of former presidents has not backed away from his defense of immigrants in the country illegally and a policy that would allow them to attain legal status under certain...

Didn't see this mentioned elsewhere: The Supreme Court issued an order today preventing the Obama administration from forcing religious groups in Pennsylvania to obey the HHS mandate that requires them to pay for abortion-causing drugs for their employees. This is the fifth time the Supreme Court has rebuked the Obama administration and prevented it from making such a mandate. In an order issued last night, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito prevented the federal government from enforcing its contraceptive mandate against a range of Pennsylvania-based religious organizations including Catholic Charities and other Catholic schools and social service organizations connected with the...

Former Gitmo Prisoners Demand Reparations from US A group of former Guantanamo Bay prison camp detainees have staked out the U.S. embassy in Uruguay in a demonstration meant to pressure the U.S. government to provide them taxpayer-funded reparations for their time spent in the terrorist prison, according to Uruguayan officials. Three of the six former detainees sent to Uruguay following their release from Gitmo have spent days camped in front of the U.S. embassy located in Montevideo, according to Uruguayan officials and regional reports.

BOSTON (AP) — Teachers who knew Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a child described him as a hardworking youngster who seemed to have a bright future. Catheryn Charner-Laird, his third-grade teacher, said Tsarnaev was just learning English after moving to the U.S. from Russia in 2002 and cared very much about his school work. She said he “always wanted to do the right thing.” Other teachers said he got nearly all As in his classes, made friends easily and was an excellent soccer player. The testimony came Wednesday during the third day of the defense case in the penalty...

Baseball in Baltimogadishu Today's game in an empty stadium: Amid civil unrest in Baltimore, Wednesday’s game between the White Sox and Orioles at Camden Yards has been moved to a 1:05 p.m. CT/2:05 p.m. ET start and will be closed to the public, the Orioles announced Tuesday. The game had been scheduled for Wednesday night. This after two straight days of cancelled games and the organization locking 15,000 fans inside on Saturday night as riots spiraled outside. On the bright side, the Sox play in front of crowds about as big as today's scheduled attendance - it'll be like having...

The rapid growth of the GOP presidential field is causing major headaches for party bosses ahead of a primary debate season that begins this summer. The dilemma for Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman, is stark: If the declared field grows to 18 or 20 candidates, as now looks plausible, how can those numbers be winnowed in a way that seems fair and reasonable rather than arbitrary and undemocratic? “You’ve got to prevent it from becoming a ‘WWE SmackDown’ event on national television,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell. “You don’t want to bump everybody off the stage, but you...

Republican senator Ted Cruz said Wednesday afternoon he is “long-term optimistic and short-term pessimistic” on the question of passing any immigration reform legislation. Speaking with Javier Palomarez, the president of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Texan presidential candidate said he considers himself a “proponent of immigration reform.” But, Cruz added, political leaders should focus on those aspects that have “bipartisan support.”

Time reporter Zeke Miller was at a Teaism cafe near the White House Wednesday around noon when President Barack Obama came in for a surprise visit. Miller started broadcasting Obama’s visit on Periscope with his smartphone. A peeved Obama ordered Miller to stop filming–and Miller obeyed.

JERUSALEM — A woman in need of a cigarette took her frustrations out on a man's car after he denied her a nicotine fix. Security footage from April 28 in Jerusalem shows the woman walk up to the man pumping gas and is apparently dismissed. She walks away but turns back around a few seconds later, pulls out what looks like a lighter, and sets the gas pump ablaze. The car catches on fire and is almost instantly engulfed in flames. The victim's brother was sitting in the car at the time but he managed to escape with no injuries....

GRIN clink on link http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/business/media/new-york-times-company-q1-earnings.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

The present four-year California drought is not novel -- even if President Barack Obama and California Gov. Jerry Brown have blamed it on man-made climate change. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California droughts are both age-old and common. Predictable California dry spells -- like those of 1929-34, 1976-77 and 1987-92 -- more likely result from poorly understood but temporary changes in atmospheric pressures and ocean temperatures. What is new is that the state has never had 40 million residents during a drought -- well over 10 million more than during the last dry spell in the early...

“We have no information or evidence at this point to indicate that there is a prior pre-existing spinal injury,” said Jason Downs, an attorney representing one of Gray’s relatives, told the Sun. “It’s a rumor.” And yet that rumor might have caused real damage in a country already polarized on the subject of race and the police. The story quickly spread to several other Web sites, such as Free Republic and the Conservative Tree House, which called Gray’s supposedly pre-existing injury “a potential game changing discovery. A site called New York City Guns ran the headline “Dead Baltimore Drug Dealer...

The oil industry has always had buzz words and unique verbal shorthand. Remember the “Year of the MLP” (2007) and “Drill, Baby, Drill” (2008)? During the last down cycle in 2008-2009, oil executives debated whether the recovery – when it came – would be “V”-shaped or “U”-shaped. That is, a relatively rapid bottoming of oil prices in the former instance, followed by a fairly quick rebound – or, alternatively, a steep falloff of oil prices, a plateau as the market got its bearings and settled out, and then a fairly rapid climb back up the price ladder. It turned out...

The heartache and bewilderment is still prevalent in Wisconsin following three election victories for Gov.Scott Walker (the presumptive presidential candidate) in the span of about four years. This is also coupled with majorities in both state legislative houses for Republicans, which allows them to impose their agenda with little to no protest. All of these facts underscore a pretty dire situation for Democrats in this state. So what is being done to try to reverse this tide? Within the last few years, a trend has emerged of people mischaracterizing the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They make statements...