Free Republic

...By turnover and investment, petroleum exploration, production, refining, transportation and marketing is one of the largest industries in the United States and around the world. In the United States, businesses engaged in oil and gas extraction and refining spent almost $200 billion on new equipment and structures in 2013, the most recent year for which data are available. Oil and gas extraction and refining accounted for more than 14 percent of all new capital expenditures in the United States in 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Oil and gas drilling and associated services on their own accounted for more...

How else to explain it... Mark Levin was scratching his aerodynamic dome all last week wondering how these two have evolved into such fervent Trumpster sites, pumping Trump's disingenuous false narratives and slander against  Ted Cruz in an increasingly biased way regarding tone and substance. One way to make sense of it all might be a long-forgotten story that Buzzfeed and Mediaite put out last August where they had former Brietbart staffers going public with accusations that the site has been paid by the Trump campaign to ensure positive coverage (and suppression of viable rivals like Ted Cruz) from the get-go:In a bombshell...

Jim Quinn is back! - and in better form than ever!! The Quinn in the Morning Show airs from 6:00am to 9:00 am, Monday thru Friday. To listen online, go to www.warroom.com and sign up for a monthly fee. Or you can listen on the radio locally in the upstate NY area on 1040 WYSL Rochester, NY or 1480 WCNS in Latrobe, Pa. If you sign up online, be sure to choose the auto-renew option in order to have full access to archived shows and podcasts.

A specter is haunting the conservative movement. From the dark underbelly of corrupt Washington, D.C., an unyielding "Republican establishment" has come out to feast upon the mutilated corpses of Reagan, Goldwater, and Buckley. The smarmy hucksters who make up its rank are masters of disguise: During the day, they insist that they represent the great silent majority of conservative Americans; at night, they prove that they're in it only for the money, the power, and the Georgetown social scene. The monsters have names - such as Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Nikki Haley, Trey Gowdy, Mike Lee, and ... wait, what?...

According to Spanish daily newspaper La Voz de Galicia, Spanish shipyard Navantia is said to be in advanced negotiations with Saudi Arabia for five Avante 2200 corvettes. The newspaper talks about "final phase" of talks. It is likely that Navantia is competing against Lockheed Martin who is offering four Multi-Mission Surface Combatant (MMSC) Ships, an export variant of Lockheed Martin's Freedom class LCS currently in use with the U.S. Navy. We just revealed the design of the MMSC last week while attending the SNA 2016 show. Follow this link to see the pictures. The ships are being offered as part...

Update, 3:53 a.m. ET: Twitter is now back online for some, but many users are still experiencing delays and outages. Twitter is down. We know your first instinct is to whip up your Twitter client and complain about it, but you can't because, well, Twitter is down.

Ted Cruz‘s wife, Heidi, was once so depressed that a police officer wrote: "I believed that she was a danger to herself." The incident happened in 2005 shortly after Heidi quit her high-powered job at the White House and moved to Austin, Texas, to be with her husband, who was state solicitor general. Police responded to a 911 call about a woman in a pink shirt sitting next to an expressway and found Mrs. Cruz sitting on the ground ten feet from speeding traffic with her head in her hands.

The US might offer to sell refurbished AV-8B Harrier Jump Jets to Taiwan, the magazine Defense News said. “The Harriers will be offered to Taiwan through the Pentagon’s Excess Defense Articles (EDA) program under the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency,” the magazine said in an article written by Taipei-based correspondent Wendell Minnick. The article quotes US government sources as saying the Harriers would be offered after the US Marine Corps begins replacing them with F-35B stealth fighters. The Taipei Times was unable to confirm the story with Pentagon sources on Sunday. Other sources said the story could have been leaked...

It is God who alters the times and seasons, and he removes kings and promotes kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. . . LORD, be gracious to us; we long for you; and be our strength every morning, our salvation in times of trouble. . .He will be a sure foundation for your times, abundance and salvation, wisdom and knowledge - the fear of the Lord is Zion's treasure. (Daniel 2:21; Isaiah 33:2, 6)

Iranian military personnel likely removed two SIM cards from phones belonging to the 10 American sailors who were detained by Iran overnight last week, the Pentagon said. The latest revelations in the circumstances surrounding the U.S. sailors' detention last Tuesday came in the first public account of the events released by the U.S. Central Command Monday. "A post-recovery inventory of the boats found that all weapons, ammunition, and communication gear are accounted for minus two SIM cards that appear to have been removed from two handheld satellite phones," Central Command said in the release.

Samsung's got some new friends in its legal battle against Apple -- including farmers, African American small businesses and an electronics retailer. Legal experts, nonprofit organizations and technology companies have filed amicus or "friend of the court" briefs in support of Samsung, urging the US Supreme Court to consider the patent-infringement case. They want the nation's highest court to better define design patents and limit the damages that can be awarded. And they're using Apple v. Samsung as the case that hopefully gets the federal government to enact patent reforms, preventing so-called patent trolls from cashing in on intellectual property....

Old saying is follow what politicians do, not what they do. In the span of one week, Trump has turned a 180 on his entire campaign strategy. He was basically Cruz's BFF for 6 months. He wouldn't attack. He was praising him everywhere he went. His entire self-admitted strategy caught on tape with donors was to shower him with love. In the course of one week, Trump's gone to attacking Cruz bitterly on twitter, to attacking him to reporters and interviewers, to attacking him at his rallies. When will his negative ads start running? Confident campaigns do not do such...

Explanation: What is that dark sand dune doing on Mars? NASA's robotic rover Curiosity has been studying it to find out, making this the first-ever up-close investigation of an active sane dune on another world. Named Namib Dune, the dark sand mound stands about 4 meters tall and, along with the other Bagnold Dunes, is located on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp. The featured image was taken last month and horizontally compressed here for comprehensibility. Wind is causing the dune to advance about one meter a year across the light bedrock underneath, and wind-blown sand is visible on the...

Explanation: Does the closest star to our Sun have planets? No one is sure -- but you can now follow frequent updates of a new search that is taking place during the first few months of this year. The closest star, Proxima Centauri, is the nearest member of the Alpha Centauri star system. Light takes only 4.24 years to reach us from Proxima Centauri. This small red star, captured in the center of the featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope, is so faint that it was only discovered in 1915 and is only visible through a telescope. Telescope-created X-shaped...

As we've been made painfully aware this campaign, Hillary Clinton is no Bill Clinton. But what should worry Hillary is that Ted Cruz just might be. In last week's debate, Marco Rubio lit into Cruz with a lengthy harangue of supposed flip-flops on immigration, trade, ethanol and other issues. Rubio charged Cruz was no "consistent conservative." In short, Rubio was calling Cruz out as being politically "slick." If so, he shares certain attributes with successful two-term presidents -- the ability to engage seemingly contradictory elements of the party base and ideological, ahem, "fluidity" that drives other members of the party...

Old saying is follow what politicians do, not what they do. In the span of one week, Cruz has did a 180 on his entire campaign strategy. He was basically Trump's mini-me for 6 months. He wouldn't attack. He was praising him everywhere he went. His entire self-admitted strategy caught on tape with donors was to shower him with love. In the course of one week, he's gone to attacking him on twitter, to attacking him to reporters, to attacking him at his rallies and now a major negative TV ad campaign. Confident campaigns do not do such 180 degrees...

The city of Deir Ezzor in northern Syria has seen more than its share of conflict and suffering since the Syrian insurgency began. But the last few days have seen unprecedented horror, including suicide bombings, mass abductions and arbitrary killings, according to human rights activists. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Sunday that at least 400 civilians -- including families of pro-regime fighters -- had been abducted by ISIS during the latest fighting and taken to the surrounding countryside. The Observatory said it was feared they had been executed.

It may be useful to know that Blue Monday was in fact created in 2005 by a British holiday company. The idea was derived not from the results of any in-depth research, but instead by using a calculation involving such factors as current weather conditions and debt levels. However, while it had no basis in science, the idea caught on, and now many of us have come to dread it.

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - It's the No. 1 question headed into the primary season: Does Donald Trump merely have fans, or does the national front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination have voters who will mobilize come caucus day? The definitive answer won't arrive until first-to-vote Iowa heads to the polls on Feb. 1, but interviews with dozens of voters, political operatives, party leaders and campaign volunteers in the past week paint a mixed picture of Trump's efforts to make sure they do. Even some of the billionaire real-estate mogul's most ardent backers wonder whether the political novice has...

I know what you’re thinking because everyone else is thinking it. It can’t be her. Can it? Join me on Tuesday, January 19th at the Iowa State University Hansen Agricultural Student Learning Center in Ames, Iowa! I will have a major announcement and a very special guest in attendance. You will not want to miss this rally! Mark Halperin tweets, “Does anybody know where @SarahPalinUSA plans to be on Tuesday?” GOP consultant Matt Mackowiak is also guessing Palin. The Freepers at Free Republic? Mostly guessing Palin, although some of the anti-Trumpers there expect Bernie Sanders to drop out and back...