Free Republic

At a store recently, I overheard a middle-aged woman shouting on her cell phone while marching down an aisle. The woman exclaimed: "Forget about that! Trump will get in there and clean the place out!' It gave me my biggest laugh of the week. I had no idea what the woman and the other person were discussing, but I wasn't surprised by her assertion. Polls show many Americans are angry and frustrated - from their skyrocketing health insurance premiums and their inability to keep their doctors under ObamaCare - to stagnant wages, the $19-trillion federal debt, immigration and terrorism, and...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released over 1,000 pages of new documents that show federal health care officials knew that the Obamacare website, when it launched in 2013, did not have the required "authorization to operate" (ATO) from agency information security officials. These documents, obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), come in two productions of records: a 143-page production and an 886-page production. The email records reveal that HHS officials had significant concerns about the security of the Healthcare.gov site leading up to its October 1, 2013, launch. Judicial Watch obtained the HHS documents...

While it would be nice to get our borders under control and stem the tide of people who take the rather direct route into our country of jumping fences, such a move doesn’t do anything to address the question of people who obtain a visa to visit and simply never leave. Is that really much of a problem? Well, if you ask the Department of Homeland Security it is. Last year alone, more than half of the people who arrived with a valid visa failed to leave when their time was up. (Washington Free Beacon.) More than half a...

"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...

The other day, my brother had an animated argument with a relative of ours who thinks that Tashfeen Malik was innocent, and that she had been “set up” and just happened to be in the “wrong place at the wrong time”. My relative, who holds a Master's degree and resides in the US, believes that Tashfeen was not even a religious person and did not wear the hijab, as "photoshopped" pictures in the media inform us. Soon after this incident, I received a forwarded WhatsApp message that had a similar crux: There is a conspiracy afoot to target Muslims in...

Two weeks ago, we reported that even as U.S. lenders were professing to their investors that there is no risks with their energy exposure and that they are comfortably reserved for any potential losses, they were reducing their unfunded (and total) exposure to oil and gas exploration companies due to balance sheet, default and contagion concerns.We showed a list 25 deeply distressed companies, whose banks we found have quietly shrunk the borrowing base of their credit facilities anywhere from 6% in the case of Black Ridge Oil and Gas to a whopping 51% for soon to be insolvent New...

The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, St. Elijah's Monastery, has been destroyed by ISIS and is now a pile of rubble, the Associated Press reports. The building had stood for over 1,400 years and was recently a location for religious services for U.S. servicemen. Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group's relentless destruction of heritage sites it considers heretical. St. Elijah's Monastery stood as a place of worship...

President Bill Clinton's presidential library is set to make public nearly 500 pages of records pertaining to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to an official notice from the National Archives. The records will detail the Clinton White House's interactions with Trump and his Trump Organization, as well as how Clinton aides prepared to field questions about Trump's entry into the 2000 presidential race, where he sought the nomination of the Reform Party for a few months before dropping out. The files could revive questions about the friendly relationship Trump had with President Clinton and Hillary Clinton before Trump launched...

Bill Clinton is like the aging rocker who has gone from playing baseball stadiums to barely filling night clubs. Only about 100 people turned out to see Clinton in Salem, New Hampshire Wednesday as he campaigned for his wife. The event, hosted in Hillary's campaign's office, was a stark contrast to Republican rival Donald Trump’s crowds.

China’s slowing growth has crushed shipping rates to such an extent that hiring a 1,100-foot merchant vessel would set you back less than the price of renting a Ferrari for a day.  As Bloomberg reports, Rates for Capesize-class ships plummeted 92 percent since August to $1,563 a day amid slowing growth in China. That’s less than a third of the daily rate of 3,950 pounds ($5,597) to rent a Ferrari F40, the price of which has also fallen slightly in the past few years, according to Nick Hardwick, founder of supercarexperiences.com. The Baltic Exchange’s rates reflect the cost of hiring the...

The oil crash continues to hit parts of rural Texas hard. On Wednesday, the Texas Workforce Commission released a letter from U.S. Steel Corp. announcing the elimination of nearly 700 jobs near the small city of Lone Star near the Louisiana and Arkansas borders. U.S. Steel is considering temporarily mothballing the pipe-making plant during the ongoing oil and gas slump. The facility is located in northeastern Texas in Morris County, which has a population of less than 13,000 people. Lone Star has just 1,500 residents. While the Houston area seen thousands of jobs lost in the crash, the oil downturn...

NEW YORK - His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew will convene under his chairmanship, Jan. 21-28, 2016, a Synaxis of the Primates of the local Orthodox Churches at the Orthodox Center of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Chambésy, Geneva.The Synaxis will deal with matters related to preparation for the Holy and Great Council, which has been decided to convene this year. His Eminence Geron Archbishop Demetrios of America will be a member of the Delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.The official announcement of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, issued yesterday January 18, 2016, follows:ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE COMMUNIQUEThe Ecumenical Patriarchate announces that, following an invitation by...

Everyone knows that oil prices have crashed, and that has opened up a variety of avenues for investors to play the market. Some may have been burned by staying long on the energy sector, others have tried to pick the bottom. Other investors have found ETFs that track the price of WTI, or ETFs that trade inversely to oil prices, which amount to bets that prices will fall further. In these uncertain times, one strategy would be to bet not on oil prices rising or falling, but simply bet on oil price volatility. If that was your strategy, you probably...

Donald Trump Weighs In on Oscars 2016 Boycott: 'The Whites Don't Get' BET Nominations January 20, 2016 @ 11:49 AM / By Esther Lee Later in the show, Trump weighed in. "I saw somebody on your show today say, 'Well, what do we do with BET?'" said the real estate mogul, who called into the program the morning after Sarah Palin endorsed him for president. "The whites don't get any nominations, and I thought it was an amazing interview, actually. I've never even thought of it from that standpoint."

If any normal candidate had supported the Clintons, partial-birth abortion, Harry Reid, gay marriage, Nancy Pelosi, universal health care, and dozens of other liberal causes, they'd be laughed off the Republican ticket. Donald Trump is no ordinary candidate. Republican In Name Only. Donald Trump is the paragon, the epitome of the phrase. He's conservative on immigration. On every other topic, he's moderate at best and often more liberal than even Hillary Clinton. He pulls his calls for tariffs straight out of Bernie Sanders' playbook. Why, then, are so many Republicans and likely a good number of conservatives supporting him? The...

Wednesday on ABC’s “The View,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump needs to “stop blaming” others for the problems in America and threatened to “move” out of the country.

The Detroit Public Schools is seeking a temporary injunction against teachers after sick-outs closed 88 schools in Detroit today - the largest in a string of teacher protests. The district is seeking relief in the Michigan Court of Claims, naming among the 28 defendants Steve Conn, the ousted leader of the teacher's union, interim president Ivy Bailey, and several groups including DPS Teachers Fight Back. Teacher absences forced 88 Detroit schools to close today, the largest sick-out meant to call attention to large class sizes, dilapidated buildings and other problems in Michigan's largest school district. The sick-out idled most of...

US criticism of Israeli actions in the West Bank have drawn a furious response from Israel this week, including a former official dismissing the US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro as a "little Jew boy." Aviv Bushinsky, a former adviser to Netanyahu and a frequent commentator on Israeli TV, said during a debate on Channel 2 Wednesday: "To put it bluntly, it was a statement typical of a little Jew boy," he said, using the derogatory Hebrew term "yehudoni" to describe the ambassador, who is in his mid-40s. Asked to respond to Bushinsky's remarks, the US embassy declined to comment....

America has less freedom of speech today than ever before in its history. And those who dare to speak out for truth are often targeted and maligned. Despite this assault on personal liberty, one voice is catching the attention of everyone who hears it. That voice is recording artist, Justin Unger; the song is "This is Freedom." Bursting with an emotional expression of patriotism and our faith in God, "This is Freedom" captures the ear and heart of all who hear it. America is looking for an anchor; something to which we can hold fast that offers hope as we...

A new Marist Poll released Tuesday finds that an overwhelming majority of Americans support implementing tougher restrictions for abortions, including more than six out of 10 pro-choice individuals who favor banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Commissioned by the Catholic fraternal organization Knights of Columbus, Marist conducted its annual phone survey gauging the public's attitudes toward abortion and legislation seeking to restrict access to abortion in the United States in November 2015. Although the media likes to portray the narrative that America is about split in half on abortion when it comes to pro-life versus pro-choice, the survey, which...