Free Republic

U.S. President Barack Obama delivered his final "State of the Union" address Tuesday night, offering a vigorous defense of his years in office and calling on politicians and the American public to overcome partisanship and fear. [...] According to a transcript of the speech, he didn't mention the word "Europe" once in the 58-minute address. ...

"As strip malls go, the one you seek is nondescript, all brick exterior and maroon awnings, but there's safety in this disguise, a sense of legitimacy that comes with this out-in-the-open location. ***snip*** According to a 2014 study by the liberal-leaning think tank Urban Institute on the underground commercial sex industry in eight U.S. cities, the total industry--inclusive of Asian massage parlors, brothels, street-level prostitution and other sources--fetched between $39.9 and $290 million in 2007, depending on the city. This demand led to the opening of nearly 600 new illicit massage parlors in the U.S. from 2011 to 2013, pushing...

A University of Nebraska-Lincoln associate professor was given a personal invitation to meet President Obama following a speech in Omaha Wednesday because of her staunch anti-gun activism. The woman, Amanda Gailey, an English professor, is also the director of a group known as Nebraskans Against Gun Violence, according to her Facebook profile. In addition to her anti-gun position, Gailey doesn’t appear to be much of a fan of law enforcement either. In a public post on her Facebook page dated Dec. 28, 2015, less than a month before she met the president and the same day it was revealed that...

Vladimir Putin claims Ebola virus vaccine has been developed by Russia Russian president announces vaccine for disease that has killed 11,000 in west Africa, but does not go into detail about how it works or any clinical trials Agence-France Presse Wednesday 13 January 2016 19.22 EST Last modified on Wednesday 13 January 2016 20.34 EST

If you think that air travel has gone to the birds, it has -literally. We're talkin' turkey, as in that big Thanksgiving bird, one of which recently was spotted aboard a Delta flight acting as a "support animal," and that's causing a flap over how passengers are using, and abusing, comfort animal rules. So how can a turkey get on a plane? Simple. The passenger provided proper documentation proving the fowl was indeed their emotional support animal, so Delta let the bird on board, and even gave it its own seat. Turkeys aren't the only animals used as emotional support...

When will America stop giving homosexuals everything they demand, even when others are placed at risk? Two recent examples: The FDA just yielded to pressure from the "gay" lobby and drastically lowered the blood donation standards for homosexual men in spite of the disease-ridden realities of homosexual practices. Yet several states and now the city of Cincinnati have banned counseling if it assists a teen who does not want to act on same-sex attractions or wants to identify as a male instead of a transvestite. No, this is not a "Saturday Night Live" skit. Driving these decisions are spiteful "LGBT"...

The honeymoon seems to be over for Pope Francis. New figures published by the Vatican show that the 79-year-old Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who won election to the papacy in 2013 and rode a groundswell of public support for what were seen as relatively modern views, is drawing smaller crowds and possibly alienating the base of traditional Catholics. In 2015, more than 3.2 million pilgrims visited and attended papal events, liturgies or prayer services at the Holy See, the Vatican said at the end of December. That was a sharp drop from the 5.9 million visitors received by Pope Francis...

Kamal Al-Khatib, the cemetery's director, has repeatedly refused to confirm or deny Facebook posts questioning whether Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik are buried at the cemetery, saying that all the burials are anonymous. "If we can't denounce this, is there anything we won't condone? Is treason now acceptable in polite society?" [Lancaster Mayor]Parris wrote Wednesday evening on Facebook... Al-Khatib refused again Thursday to confirm or deny whether the couple are buried in the cemetery, which is about 10 miles southwest of Rosamond. The cemetery has more than 1,000 graves and all are anonymous, with no identification on any headstones, Al-Khatib...

Donald Trump's campaign tried to get his rival Republicans kicked off the ballot in Illinois – but the attempt failed when his state chair failed to bring duplicate copies of the required forms. The Guardian has learned that on Wednesday, the last day for candidates to object to signatures submitted by rival campaigns to get on the ballot, chair Kent Gray showed up at the Illinois board of elections a few minutes before it closed. Illinois has some of the toughest ballot access laws in the country, and qualifying for the ballot requires gathering a different number of signatures in...

This is what Ted Cruz, who wasn't just born out of town but out of the country, said about Donald Trump the other day: "Well, look, he may shift in his new rallies to play 'New York, New York' because Donald comes from New York and he embodies New York values.'" In that moment, of course, up in lights as bright as the ones in Times Square and as loud as traffic in the city, Cruz shows you how far out of his depth he is running for President of the United States. Cruz really must think he can get...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Speaking of Jeb Bush, I assume by now that many of you have seen the little gif floating around, the gif of Jeb. A gif is like a live photo, if you have an iPhone 6S or 6S Plus. It's actually a two- or three-second video that's looped over and over again. At any rate, Jeb was in an editorial board meeting with the Des Moines Register recently. He had an Apple Watch and it rang. Somebody had called him, and he had no idea what was happening. Now, he has been highly touted as an Apple...

Martin Schulz, the German president of the European Parliament, fears the 28-member bloc will crumble under the to political unrest caused by the migrant crisis. He said: "The worst nightmare for the European project is an outbreak of populism or political upheaval in Germany. Now it is looking like a real possibility. "Nobody knows what we are facing this year. We are threatened as never before."

Russia Today, in terms of being an unbiased news source, is probably only slightly worse than the soon to be shuttered Al Jazeera America. Their spin on pretty much everything is the same: blame America, but do it in a way which makes it look slightly more like actual news than Vladimir Putin’s personal propaganda bureau. Some of their previous employees have grown tired of the biased Kremlin advertising and taken the rare path of turning down a job in the media. As Jim reminds us, one of RT’s anchors famously had a drop the mic moment and walked off...

(Kitco News) - The bearish sentiment towards gold doesn't affect this permabull, who thinks gold is setting itself up for the "mother of all rallies." In his 2016 forecast for gold and the U.S. Federal Reserve, Peter Schiff said the central bank is going to have to reverse course this year and drop interest rates again, maybe even introduce QE4 - a fourth round of quantitative easing. And, according to the Euro Pacific chief, the moment the Fed raised rates was what he believe to be the "buy signal" for gold. "It had no choice but to raise rates because...

This ad from the Bush campaign targets GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump with a barage of attacks, repeating the line about the disabled reporter.

"You mentioned making the service better for our customers; but the American citizens aren't our customers--about 400 junk mailers are our customers.", said US Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe to Outbox founder Evan Baehr. The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) top Midwest official knew about the Flint, Michigan drinking water crisis of 2015 months before telling the public, according to a Tuesday report by the The Detroit News. You can't judge the motives of individuals. But these government agencies and pandemic-mega-corporations aren't individuals. Therefore, it's fair to observe, that their behavior reveals their group motives, that "by their fruits you shall know...

What boxer Sonny Liston's manager said of him (Sonny had his good points, the trouble was his bad points) is true of Marco Rubio. His strengths include intelligence, articulateness and, usually, cheerfulness. His misjudgments involve, in ascending order of importance, the Senate immigration bill of 2013, sugar, Libya and S . 590. Together these reveal a recurring penchant for ill-considered undertakings.

CHICAGO - PETA says it's okay to wear fur - if you're homeless. The animal rights group handed out more than 100 fur coats Thursday to women staying at the Matthew House homeless shelter on the South Side.

Poland has accused the Dutch EU commissioner, Frans Timmermans, of "left-wing" bias and "astonishing" ignorance in trying to "exert pressure" on constitutional reform. If Timmermans had expected a conciliatory reply, on technical issues, after he asked the Polish justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, in December to explain the reforms, then he would have been surprised on Monday evening (11 January). [...] Ziobro's letter arrived shortly before the commission holds a debate on Poland on Wednesday. [...] Some commissioners, such as Germany's Guenther Oettinger, have said Poland should be placed under a supervisory mechanism, which could lead to EU sanctions. ...

Planned Parenthood filed a racketeering lawsuit against anti-abortion activist David Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress group on Thursday, calling the group “a complex criminal enterprise conceived and executed by anti-abortion extremists.” In July, the CMP began releasing edited videos of conversations with Planned Parenthood doctors, secretly recorded by anti-abortion activists posing as medical tissue firm officials. The videos claimed they exposed illegal sales of fetal tissues by Planned Parenthood to a tissue bank called Stem Express, as well as illegal abortion procedures.