Free Republic

"Power," Henry Kissinger once told The New York Times, "is the ultimate aphrodisiac." Kissinger might amend that statement today: Now, fame is power, and thus replaces power as the ultimate aphrodisiac. In fact, fame isn't just an aphrodisiac -- it's the ultimate nepenthe, a drug causing forgetfulness. The more famous our politicians are, the more we neglect their positions and character. No wonder the most admired woman in America is criminal Hillary Clinton, the most admired man is criminal Barack Obama, and the second-most admired man is loudmouth Donald Trump. We assume that fame inoculates our politicians for the same...

MONTPELIER, Vt. - The right to choose versus the right to life. At their annual rally in Montpelier -- personal stories fueled pro-life Vermonters to put an end to abortion. "Hi, I'm Amy. And I'm here to put a face on the women who have had an abortion," said Amy Cochran, from Montgomery. To a room full of pro-lifers Cochran told her story. "I fell into the trap of the lies when I became pregnant -- this is only tissue," Cochran said. At age 20 Cochran became pregnant for the first time. She says she chose to have an abortion...

A broad group of conservationists, state lawmakers and tribal members on Tuesday called for the federal government to arrest the Southern Nevada leaders and self-styled militiamen leading the armed occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge headquarters. Battle Born Progress, the state advocacy group leading the call from Nevada, is also sending a care package to U.S. Fish and Wildlife officers based in Oregon to show their appreciation for handling the standoff. Ammon Bundy and Ryan Bundy, the sons of Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy, overtook the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge's headquarters in southeastern Oregon on Jan. 2. Since then, the group...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Thousands braved bitter cold temperatures for a "March for Life" in downtown Chicago on Sunday, five days before the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide. Demonstrators held yellow balloons with "life" printed on them as organizers passed around rosary beads and others danced to music to keep warm in temperatures that hovered just above 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius). "This is about the soul of our nation that we gathered here today," Archbishop Blase Cupich of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, told a crowd that organizers said numbered...

There is no such thing as bipartisanship anymore. Bipartisanship has come to mean one thing: The Democrats get what they want. And we're fed up, and we're certainly not happy and thrilled to hear that that is a resume enhancement for electability. He said it. "I can reach across the aisle, and I can work with the Democrats." Yeah, we know that. And what do you ever get for it? What does the Republican Party get for all of your working with the Democrats? Versus what do they get. They're going to get their global warming deal. They're going to...

John Kasich, to Hugh Hewitt, yesterday: “Look, we have a lot of candidates who like the ‘Prince of Darkness,’ I consider myself the ‘Prince of Light and Hope’ and I don’t spend all my time getting people riled up about how bad everything is.”

Ted Cruz suffered a one-two gut punch Tuesday in Iowa, a state considered friendly territory for the Texas senator. First came the anti-endorsement from the state's popular and longest-serving governor, Republican Terry Branstad, who said, "It would be a big mistake" for Iowans to support Cruz. ... Then came the mother lode: an in-person endorsement of archrival Donald Trump from Ms. Rogue herself. ...

The present-day English owe about a third of their ancestry to the Anglo-Saxons, according to a new study. Scientists sequenced genomes from 10 skeletons unearthed in eastern England and dating from the Iron Age through to the Anglo-Saxon period. Many of the Anglo-Saxon samples appeared closer to modern Dutch and Danish people than the Iron Age Britons did. The results appear in Nature Communications journal. According to historical accounts and archaeology, the Anglo-Saxons migrated to Britain from continental Europe from the 5th Century AD. They brought with them a new culture, social structure and language. Genetic studies have tackled the...

Every morning I sat on my bed with my knees tucked up to my chin and prayed: "Please let the baby be okay. Please let the baby be okay." I didn't really believe in God. But, like many non-believers, I turned to him when I needed something done that was out of my control. Although the ultrasounds had all shown a heartbeat and the doctors said everything looked good, I had been bleeding for most of the eight and a half weeks of my pregnancy, and I knew something was wrong. So I prayed and I prayed and I...

Saturday marked Allen County Right to Life’s annual March for Life, held each year around the date of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide. A large crowd of pro-life supporters gathered at the University of Saint Francis Performing Arts Center to hear from several speakers, including local activists, doctors and politicians. After the rally, the crowd marched to the E. Ross Adair Federal Building on South Harrison Street. There were political, medical and spiritual overtones during Saturday’s rally as Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., Dr. Christina Francis, the event’s keynote speaker, and various members...

AUGUSTA — Gov. Paul LePage said he has made it a point to attend the Maine Right to Life’s Hands Around the Capitol rally every year because of children. “They are the future and we have to have more children and a better future for our society,” LePage said. “Right now, more people are dying than being born, so it’s time to have an opportunity to keep them alive. We should not have abortion.” LePage, who received two standing ovations, was among a handful of speakers Saturday afternoon to a crowd gathered at St. Michael School gymnasium in Augusta to...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump argued that “the problem with Washington, they don’t make deals, it’s all gridlock” and “I’ll get everybody together. We’ll make great deals for the country” on Wednesday’s “Fox & Friends” on the Fox News Channel.

Nearly 10 percent of college graduates think television's Judge Judy serves on the Supreme Court, according to a new report released this month. The report, titled "A Crisis in Civic Education," was based on a survey of 1,000 adults in August and concludes that "recent college graduates are alarmingly ignorant of America's history and heritage." "They cannot identify the term lengths of members of Congress, the substance of the First Amendment, or the origin of the separation of powers," the report said, referring to college graduates. The lack of civic knowledge extended to the Supreme Court, where 9.6 percent of...

DENVER (CBS4)– Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the state Capitol Saturday afternoon holding signs, singing songs, and marching around Civic Center Park with a message for lawmakers about taking more action against abortion. “They need to get on board with the message that stop regulating, stop compromising with the lives of human beings,” said Susan Sutherland, Vice President of Colorado Right To Life. The March for Life comes days after Planned Parenthood announced a lawsuit against the Center for Medical Progress. The anti-abortion group released videos last year accusing Planned Parenthood of profiting from selling fetal tissue. Leaders with the...

While more than 6,000 children in Detroit Public Schools have recently been shut out of their classrooms because teachers are staging sickout strikes, charter school students can still attend their classes. “It’s a shame that children in Detroit are being used as political pawns by the adults,” said Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, the state's association of public charter schools. “Thousands of students are being kept out of class because of these selfish actions, and parents should be furious. This isn’t happening at charter schools, and it’s no surprise that charter schools are as...

The Iowa front-runner is gaining here without softening his evangelically driven political message. PLYMOUTH, N.H.-In a dimly lit bar covered in Red Sox memorabilia, a bundled up, beer-drinking crowd jostled to get a glimpse of Ted Cruz."Scripture tells us there's nothing new under the sun," said Cruz, standing on a stool."Amen!" a woman shouted back.In New Hampshire, the second-most secular state in the country following only nearby Vermont, Cruz is leaning hard into his evangelical persona. He isn't roaring like a preacher here the way he does in Iowa and South Carolina, but the religious rhetoric is virtually the same-and...

And you thought the economic recovery in the United States was dodgy.Times are tough all over and wages are declining. That’s apparently not only true in North America and Europe, but the same woes are creating hard times in the terrorism business. As Cathaleen Chen reports at Yahoo News, ISIS has had to deliver some bad news to its “workers” this month, with everyone up and down the line taking a 50% pay cut. Violent jihad, it turns out, is a rough business. According to documents leaked from inside the Islamic State (IS) group, all IS fighters have reportedly...

Several thousand people gathered on the steps of the Arkansas Capitol on Sunday to celebrate a year of achievement for abortion opponents in Arkansas and encourage more anti-abortion legislation. photo Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, and the Republican-controlled Arkansas Legislature enacted more anti-abortion legislation in 2015 than any other state. Six laws were passed in the 2015 legislative session. The new laws require women seeking an abortion to wait two days between an in-person meeting with a doctor and the procedure; ban the use of telemedicine for abortions; and increase regulations on the disposal of fetal tissue. One of the...

Donald Trump is the runaway favorite right now in Minnesota, as he’s up by 17 points over Marco Rubio. 37-20% Trump’s support seems to come from across all demographics, save for Hispanic voters, which gives him the rare opportunity to get close to the 40% mark in a state poll. This early in the primary season, with so many other contenders, receiving well over 1/3rd of the votes puts him in an enviable position.

AMES, Iowa -- In September, when Donald Trump appeared before a giant rally in Dallas, a person in the Trump circle described the coming months of the campaign. Sure, a big event like Dallas got headlines, but Trump knew he couldn't do the same rally, rally, rally for the next several months and expect the public to remain interested. Even then, TrumpWorld was planning a varied (and secret) schedule of special events, bold policy rollouts, and other attention-getting gestures to keep the voters' and the media's attention over the course of a long campaign. Tuesday night in Ames was a...