Free Republic

A Michigan State University professor was part of an international team of scientists that has discovered a new bird in China. The new bird, the Sichuan bush warbler, resides in five mountainous provinces in central China. The discovery, shared in the current issue of Avian Research, notes that the bird shunned the limelight by hiding in grassy, scrubby vegetation over the years. However, its distinctive song eventually gave it away, said Pamela Rasmussen, MSU integrative biologist, assistant curator at the MSU Museum and co-author on the paper. "The Sichuan bush warbler is exceedingly secretive and difficult to spot as its...

Satellite pictures have revealed Kim Jong-un's regime are using anti-aircraft weapons to brutally execute people, while others watch. The images, which have been released by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) and AllSource Analysis, were taken in October last year. Experts have analysed the photographs which appear to show the Kanggon Military Training Area, close to the capital city Pyongyang, being used as a long-distance firing range.

NASHVILLE, TN (AP) - Gov. Bill Haslam has signed legislation that allows Tennesseans to get a lifetime handgun-carry permit. During the recent legislative session, the House passed the measure 90-3, and the Senate approved it 30-2. Haslam signed it this week. Before the new law, a permit was valid for four years. Now, Tennessee residents at least 21 years of age can pay $500 for a lifetime permit. A criminal record check will be done every five years.

As a Granger woman fights to overturn her conviction and 20-year prison sentence in a highly publicized child neglect and feticide case, she will have cost-free help from two prominent experts in criminal appeals. Stanford University law professor Lawrence Marshall and Indiana University law professor Joel Schumm have filed to represent Purvi Patel before the Indiana Court of Appeals, and both are offering their services pro bono, or for free. Before he began teaching at Stanford, Marshall founded the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, while Schumm founded an appellate clinic at the IU Robert H. McKinney School of...

God on His Terms, Not Ours By: Msgr. Charles PopeThere is a brief interaction between Jesus and certain unbelieving Jews on the Temple Mount which illustrates the rather common human tendency to demand that God be God on our terms, not His. Here is that dialogue:And Jesus walked about in the temple area on the Portico of Solomon.So the Jews gathered around him and said to him,“How long are you going to keep us in suspense?If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”Jesus answered them, “I told you and you do not believe.The works I do in my Father’s...

A downcast looking V. Stiviano has been pictured moving her belongings out of the $1.8 million Spanish-style duplex that a LA judge ordered to hand back to Donald and Shelly Sterling earlier this month. Sterling's alleged former mistress has suffered a dramatic fall from grace in recent weeks losing not just the expensive condo, but a total of $2.6 million in sugar daddy gifts. Stiviano, 32, looked less than happy on Thursday as she helped several heavily-tattooed young men put her possessions in a converted mailing truck that had graffiti all over it.

A quick question about racism in America.

R&B and soul singer Ben E King, best known for the classic song Stand By Me, has died at the age of 76. King started his career in the late 1950s with The Drifters, singing on hits including There Goes My Baby and Save The Last Dance For Me. After going solo, he hit the US top five with Stand By Me in 1961. It returned to the charts in the 1980s, including a three-week spell at number one in the UK, following its use in the film of the same name and a TV advert. The song has charted...

President Barack Obama responded to the Baltimore riots with a heartfelt bout of self-righteous hectoring. Supposedly, we all know what’s wrong with Baltimore and how to fix it, but don’t care enough. Not only is this attitude highhanded, it rests on a flagrantly erroneous premise. President Obama doesn’t have the slightest idea how to fix Baltimore. His solutions fall back on liberal bromides going back 50 years. Dating back to the Kerner Commission after the riots of the 1960s, the Left’s go-to solution to urban problems has been more social programs. Since then, we’ve gotten more social programs — and...

Amy Murphy, the dean of students at Texas Tech, believes that giving students of her college the rights that they have access to has a “chilling effect” on people’s ability to accuse others of assault. Murphy told Texas Tech’s college paper that, as a part of the Student Code of Conduct, students at the university do not have the right to confront their accuser. More than that, they cannot have a representative ask questions of the accuser at all, and cross-examination is simply not allowed. According to Murphy, this process is a “learning experience” that “will be conducted in the...

A new Norwegian study has shown that alcohol and drug abuse is much more common among patients suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression than in the population at large. The study, conducted by the Norwegian Institute for Public Health, looked into the extent of drug and alcohol dependence among Norwegians diagnosed with serious mental health disorders. Every fourth patient with schizophrenia and every fifth with bipolar disorder also suffered problems with substance abuse.  One in ten people who were severely depressed also had problems with alcohol or drug-related health problems.  It is estimated that one in forty Norwegians indulge...

Next week, Britain votes in its first general election in five years. Some aspects of its politics will be familiar to Americans. Polls show voters are dissatisfied with politicians of both parties, cynical about whether they will keep their promises and closely divided between two major parties, which have been in existence for more than 100 years. But there are differences as well, in contrast to decades when British and American politics seemed to move in tandem -- the 1980s of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the 1990s of Bill Clinton's New Democrats and Tony Blair's New Labour. The most...

Dear Justice Kennedy: The forces for gay marriage are powerful. You have been their hero in the past, when gay people were not so powerful. The tables are turned now, as I think is clear to everyone. The LGBT community has built a powerful cultural, legal, and political movement. They are not helpless or friendless. They do not need you to distort the Constitution to win the right to live as they choose. We who believe in the traditional understanding of marriage do need your help. We live at a time when our livelihoods are under new attack, when our...

This week on Walter's World, An exclusive on Obama's half brother Malik and his affiliation with Islamism. And: An update on the prospects of Netanyahu's chances of forming a government before the deadline. Also, Former Mossad Head comments on Iran's stance to the the demands to stop working on nuclear weapons development. Plus, A report of how Yad L'achim rescues Jewish girls from the clutches of Arab predators. And finally: a profile of Ed Miliband, the UK's Labour Party's Jewish Prime Ministerial hopeful.

‘I’m hearing from a lot of customers, ‘I voted for that, and I didn’t realize it would affect you.’” So says Brian Hibbs, owner and operator of Comix Experience, an iconic comic-book and graphic-novel shop on San Francisco’s Divisadero Street, of the city’s new minimum-wage law. San Francisco’s Proposition J, which 77 percent of voters approved in November, will raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 by 2018. As of today, May 1, Hibbs is required by law to pay his employees at Comix Experience, and its sister store, Comix Experience Outpost on Ocean Avenue, $12.25 per hour....

Some fun relevant facts: Maryland's unemployment rate is ~ 5.5% Baltimore unemployment rate is ~ 8.2 % Baltimore unemployment rate for young black men is ~ 37% %Source CNN Money Maryland's minimum wage is $8.25 per hour Baltimore's minimum (called ‘living’) wage is much higher : ~ $11.50 per hour.source baltimorebrew .com Yep, almost $12 per hour. Recall how we are lectured that outlawing these low paying entry level jobs will create better paying jobs, because they all get a raise which they spend. Yep, no HS degree, no work experience, probably an arrest record (try looting businesses) . Sure...

With gay marriage being debated by the United States Supreme Court, some of the major backers of efforts to legalize it around the country are casting their attention to the next fight: anti-discrimination bills in a variety of states. The new effort, Freedom for All Americans — a $5 million-a-year campaign over the next five years — is predicated on the fights around gay marriage, which played out state by state until reaching the Supreme Court in a fight that, advocates hope, will legalize same-sex marriage nationally.

Just a simple question that I haven't heard anyone ask.

Carnivorous fans flocking to Madison Square Garden to see rocker Morrissey next month will be forced to go vegan or go hungry — because the arena is giving in to his demands to ban meat at the performance. The former frontman for the British band “The Smiths” — which had a smash-hit album called “Meat is Murder” — is scheduled to perform June 27. Concertgoers craving a burger or hot dog will be asking, “Where’s the beef” after the singer revealed that the Garden had agreed that only strictly vegan foods would be served during the show. So no meat...

A feisty Jeb Bush gave a full-throated defense of his immigration stance in front of a Washington audience on Thursday, laying out the economic case that reforms he champions could return the nation to prosperity. Bush took a swipe at Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely opponent against Bush for the Republican presidential nomination next year, for saying that he favors limiting legal immigration to the U.S. as a means of preserving jobs in the nation for current citizens. “I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game,” the former Florida goveror said in a question-and-answer session at the National Review Ideas...