Free Republic

From a Facebook conversation: "Though I wish I believed otherwise, in the depths of my being, I do not believe any part of us survives death. I am, at the center of my consciousness, a materialist, and a reluctant atheist still. I fight this disposition daily, and it is becoming an enormous burden that I wish I could throw off. There are days where my doubt and despair far eclipse my hope that someday, God will really let me know it’s “not all in my head”, or that He will somehow bless me with a profound Athonite experience to solidify...

JACKSON, MI – Concerned he would have to send an innocent man to prison, a Jackson County judge on Friday set aside a jury's guilty verdict in a criminal sexual conduct case. The rare decision, a first in Circuit Judge John McBain's 13 years on the bench, means Gregory Patterson, 50, is not guilty of three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, felonies that would have sent him to prison for a minimum of 25 years. A jury convicted Patterson of the offenses at the close of a March trial, but McBain granted a motion made by defense lawyer George...

Washington, D.C. – Early this morning, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) passed the FY 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) after open borders and amnesty proponents added Congressman Ruben Gallego’s (D-AZ) amendment, on a 33-30 vote, that encourages the Secretary of Defense to declare that DACA illegal aliens are "vital" to America's national interest and thus eligible to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces even though they are not American citizens. In previous years, HASC defeated similar efforts to help illegal aliens compete for and take military service opportunities from American citizens. However, six wayward Republicans spurned the HASC...

In a startling new interview, a 3-star general and former head of Communist Romania’s secret police who defected to the United States in 1978, claims that the Theology of Liberation was the creation of the KGB, who exported it to Latin America as a way of introducing Marxism into the continent. Ion Mihai Pacepa has been called “the Cold War’s most important defector,” and after his defection, the Romanian government under Nicolae Ceausescu placed two death sentences and a $2 million bounty on his head. During the more than ten years that Pacepa worked with the CIA, he made what...

In January 2013, Rachel Cryer and her mother walked into Sweet Cakes By Melissa, a bakery in Gresham, Oregon, and tried to order a wedding cake. Aaron Klein, the co-owner (and Melissa’s husband), was informed Cryer would be marrying another woman. He apologized and told them that providing a cake for a same-sex wedding violated his Christian convictions. Cryer walked out of the store. In a suburb adjacent to Portland, one of the most progressive cities in America, Sweet Cakes By Melissa was living on borrowed time once the incident became public. (The city is so famously tolerant that Sam...

Americans appear to be suspicious of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s honesty, and even many Democrats are only lukewarm about her presidential candidacy, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. Is she strong and decisive? Yes, say a majority of people. But inspiring and likable? Only a minority think so. Clinton’s struggles to explain her email practices while in government, along with questions about the Clinton Foundation and Republican criticism of her openness, wealth and trustworthiness seem to have struck a nerve in the public’s perception of the dominant Democratic figure in the 2016 campaign. In the survey, 61 percent said “honest”...

The long-term viability of Israel and its economy is also reflected by its economic indicators, which refute conventional "wisdom." Irrespective of a cynical and gullible “elite” media, independent of diplomatic pressure, political correctness and conventional wisdom, in defiance of the global economic slowdown, in the face of war and terrorism, and despite ill-advised threats of boycott, divestment and sanctions—but, due to principle-driven tenacity, inherent optimism, human capital/brain power, creativity, cutting edge ingenuity and breakthrough, game-changing innovations—Israel’s economy is expanding beyond expectations, reacting constructively to pressures/challenges, and developing unique commercial and security niches in response to local and global needs. For...

The difference between enlightened self-interest and nihilistic narcissism is the difference between the conservative and liberal viewpoints The difference between enlightened self-interest and nihilistic narcissism is the difference between the conservative and liberal viewpoints or weltanschauung. Using political jargon you could say that it is the difference between Right and Left. More to the point, the difference between the Right and Left is chiefly one of personal responsibility. The Right believes in self-responsibility, while the Left favors the “blame game” and adopting a victim status. The Left points fingers everywhere but at themselves—whatever the problem is it is everyone’s fault...

Remember when the media couldn't wait to post photos of Officer "Blond-Haired-Blue-Eyed-Whitey-Devil" Wilson, which, coupled with the now-debunked "Hands Up Don't Shoot" lie, was supposed to PROVE that the shooting was racially motivated? It worked. Ferguson burned, the citizens were terrorized, cops were murdered in retaliation, lives were destroyed (including that of the officer), while incendiary opportunists like Al Sharpton prospered off of stirring up chaos, misery and racial resentment. Obviously many people did not learn a single lesson from that, because the Baltimore case set off the same knee-jerk, bigoted response. We were to believe that this was...

Writing in Bloomberg View on Monday, journalist Eli Lake says US President Barack Obama has known for years that Iran needed only 2-3 months to produce enough fuel for a nuclear bomb, but purposely avoided saying so publicly, stressing instead that a full year was needed for Iran to build a nuclear bomb. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Monday acknowledged that the US has known for years that Iran is just two to three months form having enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb. When asked how long the Obama administration has known this, he responded, "Oh, quite some time....

It’s been a tough week for Hillary Clinton, with a flurry of bad news that is casting further doubt on her prospects for winning the Democratic Party nomination, let alone the White House. She did receive a celebrity endorsement, but, alas, it came from pornographer Larry Flynt, and as Bloomberg’s John Heilemann observes, it “beggars belief that she and her team will be issuing any press releases touting the latest bold-faced name to clamber aboard her bandwagon.” A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds Americans suspicious of Clinton’s honesty, and even many Democrats are only lukewarm about her presidential candidacy. Her...

Republican candidate Hal Heiner announced today his proposal to implement E-Verify in Kentucky, a measure to ensure that Kentucky jobs go to legal Kentucky workers. The E-Verify program allows employers to identify the immigration status of potential hires by checking names against government databases. E-Verify comes at no cost to employers. Heiner’s proposal would require the use of E-Verify to confirm legal worker status for all employers, government employees and government contractors and subcontractors.

Over the past decade or so as $10 million apartments have prevailed in New York and more and more neighborhoods have been given over to the kind of luxury shopping required to fill them, it has been common to say that the city has turned into a “playground for the rich.” At the same time, of course, New York has turned into a playground of the more literal kind, with a child-centric ethos bearing well-established variants of urban nuisance: stroller gridlock in gentrifying areas, car services that cater to 5-year-olds, sidewalk whining that in some cases becomes its own source...

US Secretary of State John Kerry has given his first interview to Israeli media since spearheading the controversial framework deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Speaking to Channel 10, Kerry sought to bypass Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's stern opposition to the deal by appealing directly to the Israeli people. Kerry sought repeatedly to reassure Israelis that despite the criticism from Netanyahu and many others, any deal with Iran would be watertight. "I say this again - we will not sign a deal that does not close off Iran's pathways to a bomb and that doesn't give us the confidence...

Governor Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled state legislature freed government employees from involuntary forced union membership, enabling them to choose or not choose to pay dues. The results have shown that roughly two-thirds have not chosen union membership when given the opportunity. And that has meant big cutbacks for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), one of the most left wing and biggest political contributors to Dempcrats among American unions. Steven Verburg of the left wing Wisconsin State Journal of Madison, attempts to soft sell the bad news for lefties: Wisconsin’s three AFSCME councils are merging...

Frank Olivo, the Santa Claus who got pelted with snowballs at the Eagles game that winter day in 1968, died Thursday, April 30, at Kindred Hospital Philadelphia-Havertown. Mr. Olivo, 66, of Glenolden, had battled heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments for 25 years, and had been seriously ill since mid-January.

The world is "closer than ever" to reaching a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday, according to The Associated Press (AP). Speaking to a global gathering on nuclear disarmament, where he and Iran's foreign minister met on the sidelines, Kerry warned however that work on a deal is far from over and that key issues remain unresolved. "I know as well as anyone that we have a long way to go" on the path to a nuclear-free world, Kerry said at the conference, which Israel is attending as an observer. He acknowledged that...

When you talk about wasted talent, people immediately think of an individual wasting his or her talent. It’s always a sad story but an individual story. A person makes bad decisions. Little by little that person is on a road where he will not be able to develop his talents to the fullest. But what about a society where children have their talents wasted for them? Not by a lobotomy or by drugs. No, their talents are squandered by systematic planning and careful effort. The technical name for this is social engineering. A more popular name is “deliberate dumbing down.”...

Arguably the most important Republican presidential endorsement to precede the 2016 Iowa Caucuses will come from Bob Vander Plaats, who failed on three occasions to become governor of Iowa. And over here in the ‘nobody cares’ pile is Terry Branstad, Iowa’s current Republican head of state and the soon-to-be longest-serving governor in the history of this nation. How a man with that kind of stature can have zero impact on presidential politics is a solid lesson in pyrrhic victories. The reason for such a counter-intuitive reality is simple. It’s a matter of having convictions versus pursuing positions. Vander Plaats is...

“The triumph of persuasion over force is a sign of a civilized society.” – Mark and Jo Ann Skousen, “Persuasion vs. Force” pamphlet The governor and the legislature of the state of Hawaii could learn a thing or two from the views my wife Jo Ann and I shared in our pamphlet, “Persuasion vs Force.” Read it here.Last week, Hawaii became the first state to raise the smoking age to 21. Let’s see, now, you can vote and go to war for your country but you can’t pick up a cigarette? What’s going wrong in this country when we...