Free Republic

In the aftermath of the outrage over the secret spying of Americans exposed by fugitive Edward Snowden, the House and the Senate are on the brink of overhauling the Patriot Act with sweeping bipartisan measures. Despite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell leading a rearguard action to stop the changes, the bills aimed at preventing the government's mass collection of phone and Internet records would usher in a new era of privacy, according to The New York Times. The proposed legislation will end a decade of bulk storage of metadata by government spy agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA) and...

Should the U.S. military serve as a dumping ground or a visa mill for Obama’s unlawful amnesty program? This is not a hard question to answer for ordinary Americans who respect our sovereignty, rule of law, and are concerned about our national security. But late Wednesday night, 6 Republicans joined every Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee in blessing this illegal policy of the Obama administration. The issue at hand is Obama’s unilateral decision to place illegal aliens in the military and grant them citizenship under the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest, (MAVNI) program. The MAVNI program is...

Perfidy. Betrayal. The degree of outright treachery on behalf of the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate — this time throwing Israel under the bus to please President Obama’s desire not to offend Iran — raises the obvious question. What was the point of electing a GOP Senate? Can someone please remind? Coming on the heels of the realization that the Senate Republicans were terrified to even oppose the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be attorney general - with McConnell himself, along with nine other Republicans - actually supporting her nomination? Which in turn followed the refusal of Senate Republicans to defund the...

When a party wins control of the Senate during an administration of the opposing party, typically they do everything in their power to highlight sharp contrasts on critical issues--especially when the president’s party is on the wrong side of public opinion. Republicans have flipped this common sense strategy on its head and have manipulated the Senate floor process to obfuscate the party divide and shield the Democrats from embarrassing votes. Just how far will McConnell go to protect Democrats? As a means of greasing the skids for the Corker-Cardin ‘Democrat loin cloth bill’ to pass the Senate, thereby shielding Obama...

The last year or so could be described as The Year of Transgender Propaganda. The Hollywood and news-media push on the latest frontier of “gender fluidity” demonstrates the libertine left’s absolute arrogance that the LGBT revolution is an unstoppable juggernaut. Time placed Laverne Cox on a “Transgender Tipping Point” cover last June, and the aggressive culture-tipping took off. Amazon created a series around a retiree and father of three deciding he was a woman in “Transparent,” and won Golden Globes. Fox’s “Glee” had their female football coach grow a beard and be celebrated by a “historic” 200-member transgender choir. The...

Frank Olivo, the Santa Claus who got pelted with snowballs at the Eagles game that winter day in 1968, died Thursday, April 30, --snip-- the infamous - and unexpected - role the 19-year-old Bishop Neumann High School graduate played one snowy day at Franklin Field in December 1968, when the Eagles lost to the Minnesota Vikings, tagged him for life and made him a Philadelphia icon. "It made the national network, for crying out loud," said Richard Monastra, a cousin who was in the stands. He watched as angry Eagles fans let loose what he called a "tsunami of snowballs"...

Market participants expect the price of Brent to average around $75 per barrel through the rest of the decade, not much above the current level. Spot Brent prices have risen around $20 per barrel from their mid-January low, from $46 to $66, an increase of more than 40 percent. Over the same period, however, futures prices for oil delivered at the end of 2017 have increased just $4.50 per barrel and remain semi-fixed a little over $70. As spot prices have risen, the slope of the forward curve has become flatter, ensuring prices for 2017 and beyond are almost unchanged...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Saul New International Version (NIV) 26 The Ziphites went to Saul at Gibeah and said, “Is not David hiding on the hill of Hakilah, which faces Jeshimon?” 2 So Saul went down to the Desert of Ziph, with his three thousand select Israelite troops, to search there for David. 3 Saul made his camp beside the road on the hill of Hakilah facing Jeshimon, but David stayed in the wilderness. When he saw that Saul had followed him there, 4 he sent out scouts and learned that Saul had definitely arrived. 5 Then...

<p>Last week, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins was invited to be on "Face the Nation." What was supposed to be a cordial conversation about the Supreme Court and same-sex marriage turned out to be a professional ambush.</p> <p>Host Bob Schieffer pounced on the Family Research Council, calling them an anti-gay hate group. He was using discredited intelligence from the Southern Poverty Law Center. It was an ugly interview.</p>

The Black Lives Matter people protest the shooting of blacks by white cops. Yet, blacks are killing blacks weekly in cities like Chicago. Why aren't Blacks Lives Matter people protesting black-on-black crime? Do black lives only matter when police are involved? And only when white police are involved?

IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly is reporting that U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s scheduled visit to India in June may include an offer of Textron’s new Scorpion jet. The Jane’s story said Carter will sign a 10-year India-US Defence Framework Agreement and fast-track the Defence Trade and Technology Initiative, which provides for the two countries to jointly develop and produce military equipment in India. The story said under the DTTI, the U.S. could offer Textron AirLand’s Scorpion to the Indian Air Force, which is in need of an intermediate jet trainer. The two-seat Scorpion jet was developed in Wichita, which also...

I just saw an amateur video of actor Chad L. Coleman of "The Wire" and "Walking Dead" going berserk on a NYC subway. Well, I feel like going just as berserk watching that video. Why? It had nothing to do with Coleman and everything to do with whoever recorded the scene on his cell phone because once again it was VERTICAL. Why, oh WHY do people STILL record in the VERTICAL when it is obvious that turning the cell phone HORIZONTALLY allows for a much fuller field of vision in stark contrast to the NARROW band of the vertically held...

The submarine battle that erupted across the Baltic Sea was about business. The Swedish government, upset with German ownership of Sweden’s biggest shipyard, last summer compelled ThyssenKrupp AG to sell its Kockums operation to Sweden’s Saab AB. The move, which ThyssenKrupp calls “unfair,” cost the German industrial group a billion-dollar submarine contract and hundreds of skilled engineers. And Sweden’s maneuver established defense contractor Saab as a new rival in the global submarine market. ThyssenKrupp, the world’s top nonnuclear-sub maker, already feels heat from newly active producers in Japan and South Korea, and from old rivals in France and Russia. “It...

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Explanation: Follow the handle of the Big Dipper away from the dipper's bowl until you get to the handle's last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you might find this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (right), NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant and officially lie within the angular...

Link only -- AP article.

The remarks were made by Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration Andriy Taranov. Russian army specialists are training a militant army of 50,000 men in the parts of Ukraine's Donbas territories where the government has lost control, Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration Andriy Taranov said on Friday, Radio Liberty reports. "According to information we have, on the uncontrolled territories of almost 50,000 armed men, which is being formed into military units and trained by Russian specialists," Taranov said.

The Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to a baby girl, Kensington Palace has announced. The princess was born at 8.34am this morning weighing 8lbs 3oz, with the Duke of Cambridge present for the birth. Kensington Palace announced the birth shortly after 11am this morning, some five hours after Kate was admitted to the private Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital in Paddington. The Duchess and her newborn daughter are both 'doing well', a palace spokesman said. The announcement came by way of a statement released by Kensington Palace shortly after 11am. It was then posted on the palace's official...

When you're hired for a full-time job, the understanding is that you'll put in at least a 40-hour workweek. The expectation -- especially for salaried employees who don't qualify for overtime -- is that you'll put in more to ensure your projects get done. Or because the boss needs something at the last minute.

Not everybody is happy that the six police officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray are being charged with felonies. One of those people is famous defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, who appeared with Steve Malzberg today to slam Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby for playing politics with the lives of those officers. Specifically, Dershowitz said that “this is a very sad day for justice.” He claimed that Mosby acted to prevent riots rather that in response to the evidence in the case. He also said that it will be “virtually impossible” for the police officers to get a fair...