Free Republic

Scott Walker is certainly ambitious, and planning a run for president may seem par for the course. But for a long time—most of the 1990s, in fact—Walker was content to be a backbencher in the state assembly and didn’t do much to advance himself up the party ranks. While the seniority he gathered in his state assembly career (1993–2002) from his safe Republican district just outside Milwaukee allowed him to chair some committees, the most attention-grabbing thing he did was to protest the hiring of a Wiccan as a chaplain in a state prison. The idea that he would become...

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Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Special Friendship: He Treated Me Not as a Freak, But as a Person Dealing with Great Difficulties Sometimes it can seem as though the more we think we know a historical figure, the less we actually do. Helen Keller? We’ve all seen (or think we’ve seen) some version of The Miracle Worker, right?—even if we haven’t actually read Keller’s autobiography. And Mark Twain? He can seem like an old family friend. But I find people are often surprised to learn that Keller was a radical socialist firebrand, in sympathy with workers’ movements worldwide. In a...

Running on Australian TV news. Man arrested in Martin Place, Sydney. Largescale police operation.

The wreckage of a US military helicopter that went missing in Nepal has been found, the Nepalese army says. The helicopter went missing earlier this week while delivering aid near the Chinese border, with six US marines and two Nepali soldiers on board. Maj Gen Binoj Basnet told AFP agency that it was not known if there were any survivors. The editor of the Nepal Times, Kunda Dixit, said the wreckage was found 56km (35 miles) from Kathmandu.

That free trade is advantageous to both sides is the rarest of political propositions – provable, indeed mathematically. David Ricardo did so in 1817. The Law of Comparative Advantage has held up nicely for 198 years. Nor is this abstract theory. We’ve lived it. The free-trade regime created after World War II precipitated the most astonishing advance of global welfare and prosperity the world has ever seen. And that regime was created, overseen, guaranteed and presided over by the United States. That era might be coming to a close, however, as Democratic congressional opposition to free trade continues to grow....

Students at Le Moyne College in upstate New York are calling on the school to cancel the upcoming commencement speech by Cardinal Timothy Dolan. More than 600 people have signed the Change.org petition, which criticizes the leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York for, among other things, his stance on “sexual violence.” The petition states that Le Moyne “does not, in any way, support sexual violence.” …

Majorities of voters feel the country is still in recession, think terrorists are living in their hometown and rate the Obama White House handling of the government as incompetent. Those are some of the findings from the latest Fox News poll released Thursday. Six in 10 voters think it is likely terrorists are living in their hometown (60 percent). That’s up from 48 percent who felt that way in 2007, the last time the question was asked, and back to about what it was nine months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In June 2002, 58 percent thought terrorists were in...

Blues legend B.B. King has died in Las Vegas at age 89, his lawyer says. Attorney Brent Bryson tells The Associated Press that King died peacefully in his sleep at 9:40 p.m. PDT Thursday at his home in Las Vegas.

A new sport has arisen within the fighting universe in Poland: Team Fighting Championship (TFC). If you’ve ever imagined what a professional looking, all out fight between two rival gangs would look like in an arena, this is it. Two teams of five fighters are let loose in the ring, accompanied by five referees, where they punch, kick, and knee the living hell out of each other until just one team is left standing. The only major rules are that “forbid blows to the Adam’s apple, groin kicks, biting and spitting,” but there are no rules that prohibit the four...

May 15, 2015Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter    Reading 1 Acts 18:9-18 One night while Paul was in Corinth, the Lord said to him in a vision,“Do not be afraid.Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you.No one will attack and harm you,for I have many people in this city.”He settled there for a year and a halfand taught the word of God among them. But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia,the Jews rose up together against Pauland brought him to the tribunal, saying,“This man is inducing people to worship God contrary...

CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) - It was a violent night on the streets of Chicago Wednesday, three people were killed and at least 10 others were hurt in shootings on the South and West sides. In the Roseland neighborhood on the Far South Side, two men were killed and a third was critically wounded in a shooting. About 8 p.m., the three men were in a vehicle in the 200 block of West 107th Street when another vehicle pulled alongside and someone inside opened fire, police said. Two men, ages 19 and 20, were killed.

CONROE, Texas – Parents knows it can be difficult to get kids to eat their greens, but after an incident at a Texas high school some students may never eat vegetables again. “There’s no way they could’ve missed (them), picking up a handful of broccoli like they do with their gloves on and not seen these ginormous bugs,” Melissa Evans, mother of Caney Creek High School junior Falyn Evans, told Click2Houston. Falyn Evans and her friend were served the bug-infested broccoli for lunch Monday and the two almost ate the insects before they realized they were there. “It was kind...

“I refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer,” said President Obama this week as he claimed new powers for himself in making recess appointments while Congress wasn’t legally in recess. The chief executive’s power grab in naming appointees to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board has been depicted by administration supporters as one forced upon a reluctant Obama by Republican intransigence. But this isn’t the first example of the president’s increasing tendency to govern with executive-branch powers. He has already explained that “where Congress is not willing to act, we’re going to go ahead and...

Carrying around 50 people in a six-seater van sounds impossible? Maybe, but Chinese people have done it making us wonder as to whether there is anything that the Chinese people cannot do. Here is the video by Reuters, of what may sound impossible but caught on tape – police detain the van and one by one, 50 people get off from the vehicle.

he New York Times reported late Wednesday that Saudi Arabia and other small Arab states were expected to make the case to Obama that they should be allowed to enrich whatever amount of nuclear material Iran is permitted to under the terms of a permanent deal that is due to be agreed on by the end of June. "We can’t sit back and be nowhere as Iran is allowed to retain much of its capability and amass its research," one Arab leader due to meet with Obama told The Times Monday. The paper also reported that Prince Turki bin Faisal,...

A football player in Canada has been fined by both the Canadian Football League (CFL) and his team over anti-Semitic tweets, The Toronto Star reports. The CFL and the Montreal Alouettes fined defensive lineman Khalif Mitchell an undisclosed amount for “tweets violating the league’s social media policy”, according to the report. The CFL and the Alouettes began looking into Mitchell’s social media conduct after B’nai Brith Canada, the Jewish human rights advocacy group, alerted them to “hateful content” on his Twitter account. Mitchell recently tweeted a link to a 2015 YouTube video titled “The greatest lie ever told – The...

The ABC anchor has admitted he donated the money to the Clinton Foundation. Republicans do not want to let the matter die. ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos, who for 15 years expertly navigated his re-invention from tough Clinton operative to respected television journalist, has finally—and perhaps inevitably—slipped up. His mistake, by any definition, is a beaut—no doubt prompting a blush of shame and putting the network news division on the defensive.

Data privacy may seem like a distant and abstract concept but what is more personal than the information you are sharing with Google? Imagine you get a letter in the post offering you free water. Instead of paying Irish Water for your supply, another company promises you a generous quantity of free water. The catch? Instead of water meters, the company wants to install meters measuring the comings and goings to your home. They will also record who you know, who you communicate with and how often.They will store information on what you watch on television, what websites you visit...

President Barack Obama on Thursday said that leaders of Gulf allies at a summit have agreed that a comprehensive, verifiable deal that blocks Iran's pathway to a nuclear weapon would serve everyone's interests, reports The Associated Press (AP). .....