Free Republic

The Federal Reserve drew up extensive plans for handling a U.S. debt default that included scheduling deferred payments and lending cash to investors, according to a lawmaker who cited Fed documents. America courted disaster in 2011 and 2013 when political fights over the national debt nearly left the federal government unable to pay its bills. Analysts and officials warned that missing payments could lead to economic calamity, and details have only slowly emerged over how financial officials braced for the unthinkable. In a June 2014 letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew seen by Reuters on Monday, Republican Representative Jeb Hensarling...

We are following a developing story in Olney involving multiple Philadelphia Police officers. The scene began on the 700 block of Chew Street where a man driving a purple Chrysler hit a police officer just before 2:30pm Tuesday. FOX 29's Dave Schratwieser says the suspect led police on pursuit on Stenton and Ogontz and stopped on the 1900 block of Colonial Street where shots were fired by police. Sources confirm a suspect was shot in the chest. There is no word on his condition. Sources tell FOX 29 four officers are injured. At least three officers are being treated at...

NBC announced on Sunday they were starting a new series called "Meet the Money: The Billionaire Donors." They started with GOP-backing Sheldon Adelson. When will they get to George Soros? In an effort to revitalize and unify the far-left Democratic party, progressives have relied on the very thing they often criticize -- the deep pockets of a billionaire supporter. Agenda supporters were linked to at least $159 million dollars in donations or political contributions from Soros. Many of those self-proclaimed progressives will gather on the steps of the U.S. Capitol May 12 at 3 p.m. to celebrate a new, far-left...

I’ve been a florist in Richmond, Wash., for more than 30 years. In that time, I’ve developed close relationships with many of my clients. One of my favorites was Rob Ingersoll. Ingersoll came in often and we’d talk. Like me, he had an artistic eye. I’d try to create really special arrangements for him. I knew he was gay, but it didn’t matter — I enjoyed his company and his creativity. Then he asked me to create the floral arrangements for his wedding. I love Rob, and I’d always been happy to design for his special days. But there’s something...

Military officials are searching for a marine light attack helicopter that went missing Tuesday near Charikot, Nepal, Pentagon officials said, at around 10 p.m. Japan Standard Time. The aircraft was assisting with disaster relief as earthquake have struck the south Asian nation, which killed thousands late last month. Another earthquake there on Tuesday killed at least 68 more.

Another bill that could quash city frack bans passed the Texas House of Representatives and is heading to the Senate. House Bill 2595 would prohibit cities from validating petitions that would restrict the right of any person to use or access private property for economic gain. That means if voters in a city attempted to petition to, for example, ban hydraulic fracking, as they did in Denton in North Texas, it would be tossed out because it violates the rights of mineral owners. The bill targets any petition that limits oil and gas operations. It does not apply to alcohol-related...

Three hard-line conservatives to announce support on Wednesday in Concord. Three of New Hampshire's most hard-line, staunch conservatives are ready to endorse Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. WMUR.com has confirmed former New Hampshire House Speaker and current state Rep. Bill O’Brien, former U.S. Sen. Bob Smith and Executive Councilor David Wheeler will be announced on Wednesday as co-chairs of the Texas senator’s presidential campaign in the first-primary state. The announcement is expected at a news conference in the Legislative Office Building in Concord. WMUR Political Director Josh McElveen first reported the endorsements on Twitter earlier Tuesday. While the value of...

Christianity is in sharp decline in America, according to new research from the Pew Research Center, making for a significantly less Christian country than that of just seven years ago. The number of Christians dropped by almost 8 percentage points in seven years to 71 percent, and the trend holds across race, gender, education, and geographic dimensions, though Christianity still dominates American religious identity at 70 percent, USA Today said. "It's remarkably widespread," Alan Cooperman, director of religion research for the Pew Research Center, said, according to The Washington Post. "The country is becoming less religious as a whole, and...

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) were essentially tied in Hot Air’s recurrent survey last month — although the latter had a slight edge. Roughly three weeks later, however, that same dynamic still holds true. Both Republican hopefuls are garnering roughly one-third of the vote each (with Ted Cruz faring a little bit better): As Patrick Ishmael notes, the sample size has almost doubled since April. Simply put, 2946 Hot Air readers participated in Hot Air’s primary survey this week, up from 1782 last month. Despite the larger sample size, however, the poll finds Cruz and Walker...

Does Obama have it out for his countrymen, or does he simply not give a damn about his fellow Americans? This inescapable question occurs in light of his release of 66,565 convicted illegal-alien criminals over the past two years. Rather than deport these often-violent lawbreakers to their homelands, Obama sets them loose on U.S. streets. According to data that Immigration and Customs Enforcement delivered to the House Judiciary Committee last month, ICE released 30,558 illegal-alien criminals from federal custody into the general population in fiscal year 2014. To use more-sensitive language, these undocumented crime workers collectively were responsible for 79,059...

After his controversial interview with Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin (which ThinkProgress dubbed “the most racist interview of a 2016 candidate“), Sen. Ted Cruz responded to Halperin’s apology with magnanimity: “Mark Halperin is a serious and fair-minded journalist,” Cruz wrote on his Facebook page. “Today he kindly issued an apology for some silly questions he asked me in an interview. The apology was unnecessary — no offense was taken, nor, I believe, intended — but is certainly appreciated.” This is both smart politics (what’s the saying about picking fights with people who buy paper by the ton and ink by the barrel?)...

Hundreds of Detroit public school teachers broke the law Thursday when they skipped school to protest Gov. Rick Snyder’s announcement in Lansing proposing an overhaul of the Detroit public school system. The action caused 18 Detroit public schools to close and more than 12,000 students to miss a day of classes. The action is considered a strike, which is illegal for government employees in Michigan, according to Patrick Wright, senior legal analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Source - Detroit Federation of Teachers website. On the Detroit Federation of Teachers’ website, the union urged all DPS employees to...

A student union officer who banned white people and men from an event promoting equality has claimed she "cannot be racist" because she is an ethnic minority woman. Goldsmiths University's student union welfare and diversity officer Bahar Mustafa sparked a backlash when she told white people and men they should not attend an event on "diversifying the curriculum". She wrote on Facebook: “Invite loads of BME Women and non-binary people!! Also, if you’ve been invited and you’re a man and/or white PLEASE DON’T COME just cos I invited a bunch of people and hope you will be responsible enough to...

A quarter of a century ago, barely half the children of primary school age in sub-Saharan Africa were enrolled in school. By 2012 the share was 78 percent. In South Asia, primary school enrollment jumped to 94 percent from 75 percent over the same period. This didn’t happen by chance. Policy makers around the world have come to understand the importance of learning for every aspect of human development. Universal primary education was one of the United Nations’ core Millennium Development Goals, which mobilized large amounts of aid in the first decade of the century for poor countries to expand...

Spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Alon Ben-David, said Sunday that the military intelligence service are working on the preparation of a list of targets that are likely to be struck inside Syria, after a possible fall of the Assad regime. Israel is concerned about the opposition party that may replace Assad regime in case of the latter's downfall. In remarks published by the Israeli newspaper of Maariv, in its Sunday's edition, Ben-David said that the leadership of the Israeli Air Force, in cooperation with the Military Intelligence Service, is working on setting a list of targets to be...

The ties between the Clintons and the Spanish language television network run deep When former President Bill Clinton took center stage at Univision’s upfront presentation for advertisers and the media on Tuesday, it marked more than just one of his many paid appearances. The relationship between the Clintons and Univision is deep — from owner Haim Saban’s unabashed support for Hillary Clinton’s election effort to a partnership between Univision and the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, to the network’s newscasts that have bashed Republicans and, most recently, praised Hillary’s new position on immigration — putting her squarely in line...

A student at Brandeis University was branded a “rapist” and suspended, in part, for waking up his significant other with kisses. The accused, identified only as “John,” was accused by his former boyfriend, referred to as “JC” in a lawsuit, of “sexual assault.” Before investigating the claim, Brandeis put John on “emergency suspension” while they looked into the incident... ...The university hired investigator Elizabeth Sanghavi to look into the claims. She interviewed both parties, but did not allow John access to his lawyer and did not allow him to see what he was being specifically accused of. In the end,...

Astronomers have been arguing over just how many spiral arms our galaxy exhibits. Is the Milky Way a four or two-armed spiral galaxy? Astronomers had often assumed the Milky Way was potentially a four-armed spiral galaxy, but comparatively recent observations from NASA's Spitzer telescope implied the galaxy had two spiral arms. In 2013, astronomers mapped star forming regions and argued they had found the two missing arms, bringing the total number of arms back to four. The case for a four-armed Milky Way may have just gotten stronger. A team of Brazilian astronomers used star clusters embedded in their natal...

RUSH: Switching gears for a second. Eric Holder, the former attorney general -- when he was either being confirmed or his confirmation hearings in 2009 or shortly after he had been confirmed -- made a statement. You remember? He said that the United States was cowardly when it comes to the subject of race; that we need to have a real discussion of race, but the American people are afraid to do it. Do you remember the reaction to that? The reaction to that was quite spontaneous and vociferous. The reaction on this program: "What do you mean, afraid to...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/05/ted-cruz-election-2016-political-goat