Free Republic

Rosie O'Donnell's estranged wife claims she wants custody because Rosie drinks too much, smokes too much and has a laissez-faire manner when it comes to raising kids. Rosie's reaction ... her wife's delusional.

May 1st is Silver Star Service Banner Day: A day to remember our wounded, ill and injured Armed Force members from all wars. The United States House has made the day permanent while the Senate passes a continuing resolution every year. Take a moment on May 1st to remember the sacrifices made for our Nation.

San Francisco is getting ready to raise its minimum wage to $12.25 an hour, a rate that will have the city joining Oakland as the locales with the nation's highest legally mandated pay for non-salaried workers. San Francisco's new minimum is set to go into effect on Friday. It was approved by voters as part of an initiative that will increase the minimum wage to $15 in 2018. The National Employment Law Project estimates that 142,000 workers will receive the higher wages.

An editor for the conservative website Breitbart News on Thursday announced he will run for the House seat vacated by former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.). Mike Flynn launched his campaign for the seat representing Illinois’s 18th District from his hometown of Quincy. “The political party bosses in Washington and Springfield, and the special interests they represent, wanted a coronation for their hand-picked candidate,” Flynn said in a statement. “Yet another go-along-to-get-along seat warmer who won’t challenge the status quo.” “Central Illinois deserves a choice and as a lifelong conservative reformer, I plan to give them one.” The conservative journalist will...

Kate Reese, a 13-year-old living in Reno, Nevada, used to think there was something wrong with her. “I began realizing I wasn’t necessarily straight when I was around 5 or 6,” Reese said. “I saw girls holding hands and thought, I could go for that. Girls were just more interesting.” Reese may have gone quite a few more years thinking that the innocent schoolyard crushes she harbored were indications of her deviance. But she was able to seek the language to describe herself, and assuage her worries, in a way older LGBT people never could — she had the internet.

Two junior conservatives blindsided Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Thursday by attempting to force a vote on an amendment that could derail the bipartisan Iran nuclear review bill. Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is running for president, surprised McConnell by leapfrogging ahead of colleagues waiting for chances to get votes on their amendments. They used a procedural maneuver to force McConnell to schedule a vote on an amendment requiring Iran to recognize Israel’s right to exist as part of any nuclear deal. McConnell’s only way of avoiding the controversial amendment would be to file a...

Panzanella, and other hearty sides! Every year around the first of June, my office has a barbecue party. Thinking of a side dish to take this year, I remembered one that I haven't made in a while. I first had 'Panzanella' - or Tuscan Bread Salad - at the home of a friend, and looked for a recipe of my own. This one is very good: Tuscan Bread Salad 1/2 loaf day-old dense, country-style bread (I always use Italian bread) 3 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped 1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced 1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced...

In the Republican presidential field, Jeb Bush appears more and more to be a moderate outlier—not necessarily because he is changing his views, but because so many of his potential competitors are racing each other to the right. This dynamic was on full display on Thursday, when the former Florida governor spoke at a summit hosted by National Review, where Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov. Bobby Jindal, and Gov. John Kasich will speak on Friday. In an interview with Rich Lowry, Bush held fast on his immigration record, and argued that it is better to narrow access to citizenship to spouses...

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Some feel it is oppressive when police officers in New York arrest people for seemingly minor offenses like cycling on a sidewalk. And although these types of arrests are down dramatically, there is a move in the City Council to decriminalize low-level offenses like littering, fare evasion, public drinking, public urination, cycling on a sidewalk and loitering after hours in a city park. Supporters of the plan say they should be treated like parking violations, not crimes. In Park Slope, just eight people were arrested for sidewalk cycling from 2008 to 2011, but there were more...

Editor's Note: The following column is by Veronique de Rugy. Have you noticed that everyone in the top tier of Republican presidential candidates -- Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Scott Walker and Jeb Bush -- has gone on record against a small New Deal-era crony agency called the Export-Import Bank of the United States? In fact, Sen. Rubio recently came out with all guns blazing against the bank, arguing that it picks winners and losers and shouldn't be reauthorized once its charter expires June 30. Maybe their commitment to end Ex-Im cronyism and corruption will rub off on their...

Two reports, both released in Washington this week, document a decline in journalistic freedom and religious freedom for 2014 — the consequence of an increasingly unstable and authoritarian world.“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to tell you, the news is bleak,” announced Vanessa Tucker of Freedom House at the release of the NGO’s annual Freedom of the Press report Wednesday. According to the group’s metrics, freedom for journalists to operate freely dropped last year to its lowest point in a decade. Freedom House’s report shows that the collapse of press freedom occurred not only in autocracies, but in vibrantly democratic countries, “including...

RUSH: Let's get to this Politico story on the Clintons, 'cause it's big. I mean, The Politico and a lot of Drive-By Media outlets are really worried about this. They're worried about the Peter Schweizer book. They're worried about Hillary's e-mails and the servers. They're worried. This is sticking. There are some people in the media terribly worried about this, and what's also, I think, obvious now is that there is not -- as there was with Obama, there is not -- uniformity in the media supporting Hillary. She does not have blanket support in the media for her presidency,...

I stopped dead in my tracks from the mailbox to the house as I flipped through mail I had retrieved. There it lay, on a birthday card from my sister.What in the world? She had stuck a little return address sticker in the left-hand corner of the envelope, with one of the worst four-letter words in the world on it: PETA. I flipped the envelope over. It got worse. Another PETA puppy sticker seared me right between the eyes.I called my sis and asked what the Sam blazes did she mean, signing up for PETA? Her answer? “Oh, I got...

Bradley Birkenfeld was released from federal prison in August 2012 after serving 2 1/2 years for his role as a Swiss banker hiding millions of dollars for wealthy American clients. Five weeks later, he found himself in the kitchen of a small rental house in Raymond, New Hampshire. At that moment, Birkenfeld was an ex-con. He was out of work, infamous in a famously discreet profession, and probably unemployable as a private banker anywhere. But then his lawyer walked into the room, carrying a check from the U.S. Treasury to Birkenfeld for $104 million—minus taxes. On the face was a...

In 2-1/2 hours of oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked the right question: whether it is appropriate for the Court to discard a definition of marriage that "has been with us for millennia," adding, "it's very difficult for the court to say, 'Oh, well, we know better.' " Kennedy, who is regarded as the swing vote on this and many other controversial issues, may not answer his own question the way proponents of traditional marriage wish, but the question is not rhetorical. Should this court, or any court, re-define and force the states to...

Non-citizens are voting in American elections, and the federal government refuses to do anything to stop it. Worse, the current administration seems to be doing everything they can to prevent the states from trying to stop it. First, they sued states that asked people to present ID before voting. Now, the administration will not let states even ask people to establish they are citizens when they register to vote. That’s the underlying plot in the latest major case in election law that has just been presented to the Supreme Court. Federal law says that states must accept and use a federal form for registering voters. But the...

A Colorado heating and cooling company was caught refusing to do business in a Denver neighborhood because residents there are "colored people" and "they don't pay their bills," according to an undercover investigation by Fox affiliate KDVR.

There was no discussion at this week’s Vatican “conference” en route to Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change. What’s to discuss? Anybody who disagrees is an apostate, destined for damnation. The important point is to stop them bringing climate hell to earth. The event — along with an accompanying statement — confirmed that the Vatican has become an arm of the godless United Nations, and an unabashed shill for its murky Sustainable Development Goals. The encyclical is due to land in September to rally climate True Believers ahead of the U.N.’s giant policy shindig in Paris.

A handful of deep-pocketed donors are reconsidering their gifts to the $2 billion Clinton Foundation amid mounting questions about how it’s spending their money and suggestions of influence peddling. One major donor who contributed at least $500,000 last year said a 2015 donation is less likely because of revelations about sloppy record-keeping and huge payments for travel and administrative costs. “There are a lot of factors and the reputational is among them,” said the donor, who did not want to be identified discussing philanthropic plans that have not been finalized. “We had some questions about how the money was being...

Reverend Al Sharpton told the media to “quit playing with matches in Baltimore” in a speech on Thursday.