Free Republic

The economy has been staggering, with stagnant or no growth, for several years, after a financial crisis. Loud complaints have been raised against Wall Street financiers and the concentration of great wealth in few hands. Rapid technological development is generating massive economic change, with many old-line jobs vanishing. Majorities disapprove of the Democratic president, as they had of his Republican predecessor. All this is happening after a protracted period of partisan polarization and political deadlock between roughly equal-sized Democratic and Republican parties. The polarization is all the more bitter because it is based on vastly different outlooks on cultural issues....

How is Donald Trump doing it? He leads the national, Iowa, and New Hampshire GOP presidential polls. He is the most likely Republican nominee, according to betting markets. He is also picking up key support on the religious right, his supposed area of electoral weakness. And now even the party's donors are beginning to wrap their noodles around the possibility that Trump may be the last candidate left standing. Also, Sarah Palin! There are lots of theories and explanations for Trump's shocking surge. Some are simple: He is an outsider. He tells it like it is. America has become an...

France said Thursday that a British exit from the European Union would be a tragedy, but warned that Britain's demands for reform could not be met at any price. French President Francois Hollande said Thursday he would be "particularly vigilant" during talks with Britain while the PM Manuel Valls said the UK was unlikely to win over EU leaders in the next few weeks. [...] "France wants Great Britain to stay in the European Union - that's in the interests of Europe and the United Kingdom," he said. "But I will be particularly vigilant so that the eurozone can continue...

Relics which escaped Reformation and became a symbol of resistance to Communism return to site of murder after 800 years in gesture of unity between Anglicans and CatholicsA fragment of bone believed to come from the body of Thomas Becket is to return to England from Hungary for the first time in more than 800 years in a vivid symbol of reconciliation between Anglicans and Roman Catholics. The relic, held in the Basilica of Esztergom, the country's most important Catholic church, is to form the centrepiece of an elaborate week-long "pilgrimage" to London and Canterbury involving the Hungarian President Janos...

On Fox News on Thursday, host Megyn Kelly had several guests on to discuss Donald Trump in light of the new "Against Trump" issue of National Review. Radio and Television host and long-time tea party star Dana Loesch was among the many panelists. In the coming days, National Review will have their own conservative credibility questioned. Along the same lines, Loesch was asked about the conservative and, more specifically, tea party cred, and whether The Donald has any. In her answers, Loesch candidly and passionately made her case that he has none at all. "I didn't stand out, I didn't...

The leader of Spain's anti-austerity party Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, on Friday proposed forming a government with the Socialists, making a left-wing governing alliance more likely after last month's inconclusive election. Iglesias told a news conference he had informed King Felipe VI of "our desire to form a government of change with the Socialists and the United Left" and that he would seek the post of deputy prime minister. [...] Last month's general election produced a hung parliament in which a ruling majority cannot easily be formed. Acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative Popular Party won the most seats, 119, but...

Moscow, January 22, Interfax - The topic of a possible burial of Lenin is not presently on the Kremlin's agenda, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said. "There is no such question, neither in the field of discussions, nor in the field of some applied arguments and preparations. This issue is not on the agenda at all," he told reporters. He was responding to requests to comment on the remarks made by President Vladimir Putin earlier on Thursday, in which he criticized the actions and ideas of the leader of the revolution which in his view eventually led historical...

Donald Trump delivered the most optimistic speech of his campaign so far Thursday afternoon to a friendly audience in the city of Las Vegas. Trump received massive ovations throughout the rally, which was held indoors in a packed room at the South Point Hotel on the Vegas Strip. "It's a phenomenon," Trump said. "No matter where we go, it's this. It's people like this. We love our country," Trump said. "It's very sad what's happening and we're going to turn it around." Trump devoted an adequate amount of time to Senator Sen. Ted Cruz "When he talks, he talks like...

We are probably only one winter's storm away from Gov. Charlie Baker being mentioned as a possible pick as a Republican vice presidential running mate. And that storm threatens to come this weekend. Not that there's anything wrong with a mention, even if Baker, the most popular governor in the nation, is not interested. Nevertheless, his name will come up, and he would be an asset to several of the GOP candidates running for president.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health conducted a survey of potential weapon purchasers recently and it seems to have been clearly designed to produce an intended result rather than some clear eyed exploration of the subject matter. The topic under study was the new generation of so called "smart guns" and how willing people would be to purchase one if they were made available. According to this survey at least, plenty of folks were "willing" to give it a whirl. (NBC News)

"The violence suffered by civilians in Iraq remains staggering," says U.N. report.NEW YORK - A new United Nations report has tried to count the civilian toll of continuing conflict in Iraq, largely at the hands of Islamic State militants, and the numbers are "staggering." "Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq," Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Jan. 19. "The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food,...

On Fox News on Thursday, host Megyn Kelly had several guests on to discuss Donald Trump in light of the new "Against Trump" issue of National Review. Radio and Television host and long-time tea party star Dana Loesch was among the many panelists. In the coming days, National Review will have their own conservative credibility questioned. Along the same lines, Loesch was asked about the conservative and, more specifically, tea party cred, and whether The Donald has any. In her answers, Loesch candidly and passionately made her case that he has none at all. "I didn't stand out, I didn't...

Thursday on Fox News Channel's "The Kelly File," National Review editor Rich Lowry rolled out his magazine's effort to challenge Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's bid to be the eventual Republican nominee. Lowry told host Megyn Kelly, who has had her own dust-ups with Trump, that their intent was to rally conservatives against Trump because they saw him as susceptible to special interests.

The U.S. Secret Service escorted the Mounds police chief out of Tulsa's Mabee Center on Wednesday because he was carrying his gun, he says.Chief Tim McDaniel was there with his family to see Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump speak. He was in uniform when he was told he either needed to check his gun or leave."I think it's interesting, because in Mr. Trump's debate the other night, he actually said that officers are some of the most mistreated people in the country, and I come up to see the man and I'm mistreated,” McDaniel said.McDaniel said he didn't want to...

A heated debate ensued on Thursday evening about plans to transform Berlin's defunct Tempelhof airport grounds into a refugee facility for 7,000 people - which would make it the largest in the country. The Berlin town hall meeting on Thursday evening to discuss plans for the refugee facility was met with skepticism and a barrage of questions from citizens as city officials pushed the plan to house 7,000 refugees. [...] The city wants to further expand accommodation on the airport grounds, but that runs contrary to a referendum passed in 2014 to protect Tempelhofer Feld from the city's plans for...

Sean Penn has long been the poster boy for the Hollywood left, another one of those overpaid dilettantes who constantly berate the country that's given him international fame and incredible wealth. Penn's loathing of Yankee imperialism is so intense that he thinks America is "over-demonizing" a Mexican drug kingpin that Forbes magazine estimates is responsible for the deaths of 34,000 people -- mostly Mexicans. In an act of sheer self-promotion, Penn exploited an acting connection to gain an audience with notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, fresh from a prison escape. Instead of asking this man how he could...

To ALL those in this country who are illegal: "GET THE HELL OUT!" To Obama: No Presidential pardons without going thru my people first or YOU will spend another year or 2 defending yourself. There will be investigations for Benghazi, Mexico gun running and prosecutions in the IRS. To help insure a victory the campaign should run the 13 Hours flick throughout the country free of charge. Trump the dealmaker can offer a sold out house to the theaters for a discounted rate.

Yes, another way to skin a deer: a golf ball, a pickup truck, and some rope.Hunters take pride in gutting, skinning, and butchering our own deer, and like most hunters we have our tried and true methods of getting the job done. That's not to say that hunters are not always on the look out for improvements and new methods, but was very shocked at the efficiency of this particular technique. It doesn't take much; just a golf ball, a thick rope, a sturdy pillar and a good ol' truck with a hitch. You can see the video here, it...

A new federal report reveals that 70% of the firearms seized by Mexican authorities between 2009 and 2014 originated in the United States. In addition, the report shows that the majority of those U.S.-originated guns were bought in California, Arizona, and Texas, southwest states that border Mexico.

Why did the white working class abandon the Democrats? The conventional answer is Republicans skillfully played the race card. In the wake of the Civil Rights Act, segregationists like Alabama Governor George C. Wallace led southern whites out of the Democratic Party. Later, Republicans charged Democrats with coddling black "welfare queens," being soft on black crime ("Willie Horton", and trying to give jobs to less-qualified blacks over more-qualified whites (the battle over affirmative action). The bigotry now spewing forth from Donald Trump and several of his Republican rivals is an extension of this old race card, now applied to Mexicans...