Free Republic

Freedom Caucus members angry they can't offer amendments to key national security measures. A House bill to scale back National Security Agency data-collection is re-agitating the fractured relationship between Republican leadership and their rank-and-file conservatives, some of whom feel their voices are being silenced in the debate over the bill. The complaint that conservative amendments are not being given a hearing is also extending to a Senate-approved Iran nuclear bill that will see a House vote later this week. Though leadership aides insist the team has not yet decided whether to allow amendments on the Iran bill, members spoke up...

I wrote (Barack Obama, Media Critic) about President Obama’s appearance at the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on poverty at Georgetown, where he singled out Fox News for criticism of its news coverage. He did eventually get around to ( talking about poverty:)“Those who are doing better and better, more skilled, more educated, – luckier – having greater advantages are withdrawing from the commons,” he said. “Kids start going to private schools….But wait! President Obama went to a ritzy private school in Honolulu, and his daughters attend Washington’s toniest private school, Sidwell Friends. Was Obama engaging in a rare moment of self-criticism?...

MPs from the Green Party and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) have joined forces to say that cannabis should be regulated and legalized. Economic policy spokespeople Joachim Pfeiffer of the CDU and Dieter Janecek of the Greens told broadcaster ARD that they thought it no longer made sense to criminalize possession of or trading in the drug. “Every year we spend between one and two billion euros to punish consumers, although real organized crime should be the focus of our efforts,” they wrote in a position paper. The pair believe that a state-regulated cannabis market would bring in between...

Keeping private messages private may have just gotten a bit easier thanks to BitTorrent’s new messaging service. Known as Bleep, BitTorrent first announced the service last year, when it released alpha versions of its software . Yesterday, the company officially released versions for Android, iOS, Windows, and OS X. Bleep is hoping to distinguish itself from other messaging services such as Whatsapp, iMessage, and the Facebook app, by offering users better privacy and more control over their data . The service will allow users to sign up using only nicknames if they don't want the company to have access to...

Among political figures that have spent time commuting with Amtrak, few talk about passenger trains more than Vice President Joe Biden – who earned the nickname “Amtrak Joe” because of his love for the rail system.

During a conversation about poverty, President Obama said he was concerned that more wealthy people were separated from poverty because they chose to frequent private institutions instead of public ones. “Part of what’s happened is, is that elites in a very mobile, globalized world are able to live together, away from folks who are not as wealthy, and so they feel less of a commitment to making those investments,” he explained during a panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University today. Obama criticized the free-market system in America for allowing higher concentrations of wealth to exist among the rich while...

Tell me who I’m leaving out: Bush, Walker, Rubio, Paul, Cruz, Christie, Huckabee, Perry, Jindal, Santorum, Graham, Carson, Fiorina, Trump, maybe John Kasich, maybe even Rick Snyder. There’s also a chance Peter King and/or John Bolton will run, just to make life extra miserable for Rand. That would be … 18 candidates onstage in a forum that’s never accommodated more than 10. Huh. You could, of course, limit the debates to the 10 most popular and/or credible candidates in the field. Just tell me how you go about reliably discerning who those people are circa early August, five months before...

Erik Gulbranson, a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, trudges up a steep ridge overlooking his field camp of mountain tents and pyramid-shaped Scott tents in Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys. A brief hike nearly to the top of a shorter ridge ends at the quarry, where picks and hammers have chopped out a ledge of sorts in the slate-grey hillside. Sometime about 220 million years ago, a meandering stream flowed here and plants grew along its banks. Something, as yet unknown, caused sediment to flood the area rapidly, which helped preserve the plants. Gulbranson splits open a grey slab...

Nepalese soldiers searched a rugged area north of the capital of Kathmandu on Tuesday looking for a missing U.S. Marine Corps UH-1Y helicopter with eight people on board, as the U.S. military denied reports that the aircraft had been spotted. The Huey went missing Tuesday as it was delivering supplies to earthquake-stricken regions of Nepal. The U.S. military withheld names of those aboard, but Kansas television station KWCH12 identified the pilot as Capt. Chris Norgren of Wichita. The station reported it spoke to the pilot’s father, who said the family was notified by the Marines that his son was missing.

Minutes after his former Democratic colleagues in the Senate filibustered his trade deal, President Obama sent a message to supporters declaring the fight was “personal for me” and pleading with liberals to rally around him. The president has been working with congressional Republicans to try to win fast-track trade powers, which would allow him to more easily negotiate trade agreements such as the Trans Pacific Partnership deal with 11 nations that border the Pacific Ocean. But Democrats, including dozens who served in the Senate when Mr. Obama was there, have balked at his efforts, questioning whether he has American workers’...

BOSTON — The government pushed strongly for the death penalty in their closing argument in the trial of the Boston Marathon bomber on Wednesday calling it the just punishment for the crime. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Mellin painted a vivid picture of a reckless and remorseless young man driven by radical Islam, bent on destroying as many lives as possible during the week of April 15, 2013. "He struck at what citizens hold dear. He went after the core values of society: children, family, neighborhoods, public safety. After all of the carnage and fear and terror that he has created...

Two Florida hearse drivers have been fired after they stopped at a doughnut shop with a flag-draped coffin in the vehicle on the way to a funeral and an outraged man sent a video to a local veterans group. Rob Carpenter spotted the hearse in the parking lot of a New Port Richey Dunkin’ Donuts on Tuesday with its curtains open and the coffin visible. In the coffin was the body of 84-year-old Lt. Col. Jesse Coleman, a decorated soldier who served in Korea and Vietnam. The hearse was transporting him from Clearwater’s Veteran’s Funeral Care to his funeral.

The Berkeley City Council late Tuesday voted unanimously to require retailers to warn customers of possible radiation exposure when purchasing cell phones. The so-called "right to know ordinance" is expected to be challenged by a lawsuit from the cell phone industry. Ellie Marks with the California Brain Tumor Association wants everyone to think about where they hold their cell phone. Marks, who believes a cell phone caused her husband to have a brain tumor, has spent years fight for cell phone radiation "right to know" legislation.

When Ted Cruz announced that he’s going to run for the President of the United States, comedians and satirists around the country stood up and hugged their families in loving embraces brought on by pure, unadulterated joy. It’s like they could already see the media circus that will inevitably follow the candidacy of a man who can be called anything but “boring.” But the honeymoon period already seems to be over now that Jon Stewart has taken a bunch of swings at the junior Senator from Texas in his segment “Let’s Get Rid of Ted Cruz.” Well, with all due...

DEVELOPING: The Amtrak train that derailed near Philadelphia Tuesday night-- killing at least seven and sending over 200 to area hospitals-- appeared to have been traveling at more than 100 miles an hour as it approached a sharp curve on the track, two people with knowledge of the investigation told The Wall Street Journal.

A proposed new law in Denmark could be the first step towards an economic revolution that sees physical currencies and normal bank accounts abolished and gives governments futuristic new tools to fight the cycle of “boom and bust”.... But if notes and coins were abolished and the only way to hold money was through a government-controlled bank, there would be no escape.

Gov. Rick Snyder says his vision of new Detroit public school system does not represent a bailout because it doesn’t ask for more taxpayer dollars. But one study says that school districts around the state will have to chip in $50 per pupil, which some superintendents aren’t happy about. Snyder has proposed creating a new “Detroit Education District” to operate all public schools in the city. Alongside of this entity, the current Detroit school district would be retained in a purely administrative role for the purpose of paying off the massive debt it has accumulated. Money to service the debt...

Trevor Burrus is a research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies. ... Marriage is a constantly changing social institution that adapts to social and economic conditions. And when those conditions change, marriage changes. Our modern view of marriage — one that has generally predominated in Western societies over the past 200 years — is the outlier. Historically, marriage has been about finding good in-laws and securing economic advantage. And marrying for love is a thoroughly modern invention ...

EVERY day, millions of Americans rely on a remarkable network of roads, bridges, subways, trains and buses to connect us to work, school and opportunity. But our transportation system, once the envy of the world, is in jeopardy. In New York City, subways and buses are overcrowded and often unreliable, and roadways and bridges are in dire need of repair and rehabilitation. From the next phase of the Second Avenue subway to plans to connect the Metro-North Railroad to Pennsylvania Station, to the proposed new subway line under Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, there isn’t a short- or long-term expansion project...

OK. So my Dell Vostro 3550 laptop (Windows 7) – which I bought in 2011 – has crashed for good. After three frustrating weeks that included hours on the phone with Dell tech support, 3 on-site technician visits (fortunately I paid to extend the on-site repair warranty) to install 3 new replacement motherboards (one of which was DOA), 2 replacement daughter boards, new speakers and other assorted hardware, Dell finally threw in the towel and is sending me a “new” (obviously refurbished) computer. I told them I want a technician to come and transfer the hard drive from the current...