Free Republic

This will make your blood boil. Federal employees with the Park Service brag about how they swindled two World War II veterans off the land for pennies on the dollar. Federal employees revel in the fact that they swindle land from private property owners at pennies on the dollar, in astonishing admissions captured in a recently released video. “We went out to the mine and the owners were two little guys that had been in the Second World War,” a California park service employee recalls at a retirement celebration for Mojave National Preserve Superintendent Mary Martin in 2005. The employee...

A more detestable regime than Saudi Arabia could not be found. Arguably the most repressive regime on earth. An absolute monarchy. A Wahhabist theocratic nightmare that arms ISIS. Only North Korea may be worse, and North Korea does not put women in burqas or have any areas where female genital mutilation (FGM) is practiced. It is a close call. At least North Korea does not ban alcohol. Make no mistake about it: Shi'a Iran, as bad as it is, is nowhere near as oppressive as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). There are churches in Iran, albeit persecuted. There are...

Forty-two years ago on this day, General Dynamics test pilot Phil Oestricher undertook the YF-16 prototype’s first flight during what was supposed to be a high-speed taxi test at Edwards Air Force Base, California. Oestricher’s so-called “Flight Zero” was completely unplanned and unexpected, but provided extremely valuable data for the development of what eventually became the U.S. Air Force’s mainstay F-16 Fighting Falcon. Oestricher—who passed away on Dec. 18, 2015—said that the flight test plan was to go down the runway pushing the aircraft up to 135 knots, lifting the jet no more than about two feet above the ground....

Excerpt.... Axiom has also worked for candidates and causes that might make a Ted Cruz supporter balk. Federal election records show the National Republican Congressional Committee, an establishment party organ and bête noire to the far right, paid Roe’s firm nearly $90,000 between 2009 and 2014 for strategy consulting, among other things, according to federal election records. Roe helped mainstream Republican Senator Pat Roberts in Kansas—a RINO in the eyes of many conservatives—defeat a Tea Party challenger and win re-election in 2014. Perhaps most damaging in the eyes of movement conservatives, that same year Roe’s mail firm was behind a...

Guest Post by Bob TisdaleSEE UPDATE 1 AT END OF POST: I’ve provided a link to the slides from the teleconference and updated monthly and annual graphs.# # #On January 15th, NOAA Communications notified the media Wednesday: NOAA, NASA to announce official analyses of 2015 global temperature, climate conditions. WHAT: NOAA, NASA media teleconference call announcing 2015 global climate analyses – brief summary remarks – questions and answers WHEN: Wednesday, January 20, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., Eastern Time (U.S.) WHO: Thomas R. Karl, L.H.D., director, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Asheville, N.C. and chair of the Subcommittee...

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman said Wednesday that projections for rising global unemployment over the next two years are "alarming" and the U.N. chief will keep pushing for job opportunities, especially for youth. The comments from deputy spokesman Farhan Haq were in response to a new report from the U.N. labor agency projecting that the number of unemployed people will increase by nearly 2.3 million in 2016 and 1.1 million in 2017 as a result of the global economic slowdown last year. Haq said Ban has been raising the need for new jobs in discussions with business leaders and others at...

Is there actual bona fide political import to Palin endorsing Trump? Perhaps. God knows there's a significant slice of the electorate -- not a majority of Americans, thank God, but a real plurality of GOP primary voters -- who believe that God created the United States as a shining beacon to dominate all the world's other nations and take their oil. While probably 75 percent of these folks were probably already backing the short-fingered vulgarian, the Palin endorsement should nail down the rest. ... They are nothing more than high plains grifters, wooing the American Heartland with their ugly charisma...

Ever wonder why the federal government would be sending hundreds of foreign refugees to a relatively small town in Idaho? Wonder no more. They’re sent there, many of them, to work in the world’s largest yogurt factory. As WND previously reported, Twin Falls is in line to receive about 300 refugees this year, many of them Muslims from Syria. And the state of Idaho, despite its reputation as a mostly white, conservative farm state, has been a popular destination for refugees in recent years. Boise Mayor David Bieter has gone on record as a huge supporter of President Obama’s welcoming...

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz opened up a large margin of support from those who participated in last week's Must Read Alaska straw poll. We closed the online survey before the debate on Thursday. Here are the results:Readers of Must Read Alaska, the Alaska Republican Party's weekly emailed newsletter, trend Republican and many are politically active. Ted Cruz won 34 percent, Donald Trump won 27 percent and Marco Rubio won 17 percent. No other candidate won enough support in this particular survey to be awarded delegates to the Republican National Convention. When the Presidential Preference Poll is held on March 1,...

The Intercept recently reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook, in a private meeting with White House officials and other technology leaders, criticized the federal government’s stance on encryption and technology back doors (see "Tim Cook Confronts the White House Over Encryption," 14 January 2016). As it was a private meeting, we don't know exactly what happened, and The Intercept is admittedly biased on this issue, but such statements would certainly align with Cook's previous public positions. This is just the latest in Apple's spats with the government over encryption -- I first wrote about them in “Apple and Google Spark...

The researchers report, "Conservatives are indeed more dogmatic on the religious domain; but liberals are more dogmatic on the environmental domain." In fact, they note that "the highest score for simplicity was for liberals"

Lena Dunham expressed doubt over campaigning for Hillary Clinton after she found out how the family handled Bill Clinton's sex scandals a report published Wednesday claims. According to the New York Times Dunham told her dinner guests a few months ago that she was disturbed to learn that the Clintons attempted to discredit the women who accused Bill of sexual assault. "She told the guests, at the Park Avenue apartment of Richard Plepler, the chief executive of HBO, that she was disturbed by how, in the 1990s, the Clintons and their allies discredited women who said they had had sexual...

The U.S. Navy will formally deploy its so-called “Great Green Fleet” on Wednesday, sending warships to sea on biofuels even though oil prices have dropped 70 percent since congressional Republicans first criticized the high cost of alternative fuels.

[...] Palin took some not-so-subtle jabs at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97% and other Republicans for criticizing Trump's New York background, while Trump said that Hillary Clinton might end up "in the clink." Palin called Trump "a redhead from the big red Apple" and turned her attention to Republicans attacking their own frontrunner. "They're saying we're not red enough, we're not conservative enough. And I say, what the heck do they know about conservatism?" Her jabs at Cruz, without mentioning him by name, were clear. "His unifying values reach from big cities to small towns...to the Big Apple," Palin said of...

Ah, what is a political commentator to do? The presidential campaign has not even gotten to the stage of the first voting in Iowa yet, and the whole thing is already a parade of fifteen or more clown cars. What am I supposed to do? I look into my tool chest, and I am already running low on colorful adjectives. And anything I might want to say about Trump will now just Palin comparison. So let us start at the beginning of this sad business, when John McCain first selected her to be his vice-presidential candidate. What has happened since...

Sen. John McCain declined on Wednesday to criticize Sarah Palin, his former running mate, for endorsing Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump. "I respect her view," McCain (R-Ariz.) told reporters in the Senate on Wednesday, a day after Palin endorsed the man with whom he has had a bitter feud. "I have great affection and appreciation for her," he said. "I respect what she does." Palin's decision isn't affecting his own thinking about the race, McCain added. "I'm not considering anyone," he said. "I've got my own race to run." McCain had previously endorsed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of his...

Welcome to the Free Republic CaucusPlease read the rules, and participate according to the guidelines provided.  Thank you. Only vote on this thread on: 01/21/2016  another thread will pop up five minutes before: 01/22/2016Wait to vote until 12:00 midnight EST, and don't vote after 12:00 midnight EST at the at the end of the day.  Look for the new thread. Votes outside the 24 hour period, will not be counted.  Give it five minutes or so on each end, so you are sure to get your vote counted. If you have quesitons, FReep Mail me.  DO NOT disqualify your vote...

“They tell me you’re a man with True Grit.” Kim Darby to John Wayne in the original True Grit (1969) The character Rooster Cogburn certainly had True Grit, but so did the majority of Americans in our history. Unfortunately, the well-known American True Grit; our courage, honesty, common sense and heartiness have virtually disappeared from most Americans in the 21st Century. We are no longer the United States of the Minutemen, the Cowboy, The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc, the Mountain Men and Merrill’s Marauders. Where is the America of Jim Bowie, Jedediah Smith, Wyatt Earp, George Patton, Chesty Puller,...

We've spoken about Ta-nehisi Coates a few times previously. Widely considered to be the voice of the Social Justice Warriors, the author of Between the World and Me seems to be the go-to philosopher of everyone from the Black Lives Matter movement to the most hard core liberal enclaves of the media. Given how poorly Bernie Sanders has been doing with black voters in recent polls, it's no shock that Coates might be rushing to the defense of Hillary Clinton as she struggles to stay to the left of the Vermont socialist. And true to form, he seems to be...

Introduction According to Vatican Radio, on Monday, January 18, 2016, the day after Pope Francis' visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome, the pontiff delivered a homily at his daily Mass in which he condemned Christians who are of "closed heart" and resisters to "change," calling them "obstinate rebels" and "idolaters." Stopping short of excommunicating Christians "who obstinately cling to what has always been done and who do not allow others to change," it was not until the last paragraph of his talk in the pew-less, kneeler-less chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, that Francis attempted to make a distinction...