Free Republic

President Trump fired a social media broadside at the Iranian regime Sunday afternoon, vowing that war between Washington and Tehran would result in "the official end of Iran" before warning, "[n]ever threaten the United States again!" Trump tweeted hours after a rocket landed less than a mile from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, the first such attack since September. An Iraqi military spokesman told reporters the rocket appeared to have been fired from east Baghdad, which is home to several Iran-backed Shiite militias. Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have risen in recent weeks after the...

Friends it's Sunday night again and time to relax. Warm up the tubes for another 4 hours of classic radio Americana. Listen Live Info *tonight's show will be available at the "Info" link starting tomorrow. Official OTR Blog of "The Big Broadcast" thread: http://kallmansalley.com/

OPINION | FINANCE May 17, 2019 - 04:00 PM EDT Financial collapse of the United States Postal Service is coming BY KEVIN KOSAR, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill TWEET SHARE EMAIL The United States Postal Service (USPS) will run out of cash in five years. Postmaster General Megan Brennan shared this news in testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee earlier this month. The immediate consequence of USPS becoming insolvent would be that the world's largest postal system - which moves 150 billion mail pieces per year,...

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said impeachment proceedings could bolster congressional efforts to obtain information the Trump administration won't release. “It provides an additional tool,” the California Democrat told CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday. “What we have been doing is we have been gradually escalating the tactics we need to use to get information for the American people. So we began by asking for voluntary cooperation, and that was not forthcoming. We followed with subpoenas, we followed with contempt. We may follow with inherent contempt, and we may have to follow with impeachment.” The White House has refused to...

Historian Wilfred McClay aspires to be the antidote to Zinn, whom he accuses of “greatly oversimplifying the past and turning American history into a comic-book melodrama in which ‘the people’ are constantly being abused by ‘the rulers.’ ” Mr. McClay’s counterpoint, which comes out next week, is titled “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.” He says . . . he’s seen too many students drawn to Zinn because the standard textbooks are visionless and tedious. “Just as nature abhors a vacuum,” Mr. McClay says, “so a culture will find some kind of grand narrative of itself...

Sybrina Fulton has spent the better part of the last seven years advocating for an end to gun violence and promoting social justice.... Now she’s challenging the city’s mayor for a seat on the Miami-Dade County Commission.... ....Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver Gilbert is also running for the seat, one of five up for grabs....

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) suggested in an interview that aired Sunday that impeachment proceeding against President Trump could be used as an oversight tool to gain information that the House has been seeking. Schiff said on CBS's Face the Nation that what could drive impeachment is not the president's conduct in special counsel Robert Mueller's report, but rather how the administration "is engaging in a maximum obstructionism campaign against Congress." "I think that we are seeing more members that recognize that the administration is acting in a lawless fashion, essentially having obstructed justice, is now obstructing Congress...

It was a stunning admission for a hardcore abortion backer to make. Kirsten Gillibrand has described abortion as a "life and death" decision that women should have the right to make. Gillibrand, the junior senator from New York, and a presidential candidate who is barely registering in the polls, made her astonishing recognition of what abortion is really about on today's Face the Nation. Gillibrand thus implicitly acknowledges that there is a human "life" at stake in abortion. Yet she wants to give women the virtually unfettered power to choose "death Get the rest of the story and view the...

Official preliminary results showed that 63.7% of voters gave their backing to new EU gun laws, including tighter controls for semi-automatic weapons. A majority of voters in all but one canton, the Italian-speaking Ticino in southern Switzerland, came out in favor of reforming Swiss gun laws. […] Swiss lawmakers had approved earlier reforms that the EU deemed sufficient to comply with its legislation; however, that prompted a huge pushback by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which gathered enough signatures to force Sunday’s vote on the measures. […] Under the new gun law, semi-automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines would be...

While traveling to far North Queensland, Australia, I drove through Mt Carbine. The town has a history of a typical boom-bust mining town. Wolframite was discovered there in the 1890s. The town boomed with the price high, then depopulated after the end of World War I and the crash in the price of mineral markets, particularly for Tungsten. The mineral leases were purchased again in 1968, and the town enjoyed resurgence from 1971 to 1986. Wolframite prices were falling, and the mine and equipment were sold off in 1993. The town is said to be named after a racehorse...

Swedish security service Säpo say they have arrested five radical Islamists in a short period of time, with one of those arrested being one of the main leaders of an Islamic school in western Sweden. The principal of the school said that the arrest of the man, whose identity was not published in a report by Swedish broadcaster SVT, would not affect the functioning of the school itself, refusing to comment further on the matter. Lawyer Lars-Erik Olsson, who previously represented the arrested man, said, “We have not had any contact now, and I also do not know if he...

Illinois Republicans unhappy at the influence the Democrat-controlled city of Chicago holds over the state are looking at trying to blow the Windy City out of the state altogether -- despite the long odds that such a push would face. A new report by Pew Trusts' Stateline shines light on an effort by the state’s GOP to turn the state red by turning the blue city into its own state.

President Trump on Sunday ripped Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) for saying that the president had reached the "threshold for impeachment," accusing the conservative lawmaker of leveling the charge "for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy." "Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy," Trump said on Twitter. ....he would see that it was nevertheless strong on NO COLLUSION and, ultimately, NO OBSTRUCTION...Anyway, how do you Obstruct when there is no crime and,...

National Republicans are prepared to intervene in the Kansas Senate primary to ensure that conservative firebrand Kris Kobach does not win the party’s nomination should he run, multiple sources told the Kansas City Star. Kobach said this month that he is still “actively considering” a bid for the U.S. Senate next year in Kansas. The seat will come open with the retirement of Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, 83, who announced in January that he would not run for reelection. Any anti-Kobach efforts by groups such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee or the Senate Leadership Fund likely would take the...

...Trump on Sunday warned Iran not to threaten his country. “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!” he tweeted.

New York (AFP) - One of the large digital billboards dotting New York's iconic Times Square briefly caught fire Saturday, before the blaze was extinguished with no reported injuries, officials said. Flames started bursting out of the billboard around 3:00 pm (1900 GMT). Social media users posted images and video showing the blaze burning on one side of the sign as it displayed an ad for SKYY vodka as sponsor of New York's WorldPride celebrations next month, marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall gay rights uprising. The ad featured drag queen Trixie Mattel. Other ads were also displayed on...

Seattle is overwhelmed by garbage and filth, but the city’s leaders won’t admit it. Over the past few years, Seattle has become a dumping ground for millions of pounds of garbage, needles, feces, and biohazardous waste, largely emanating from the hundreds of homeless encampments that have sprouted across the city. Now, the Emerald City is on the verge of a full-blown public-health crisis. Last year saw a 400 percent increase in HIV infections among mostly homeless addicts and prostitutes in the city’s northern corridor. Public-health officials are sounding the alarms about the return of diseases like typhus, tuberculosis, and trench...

Most of the US state laws banning or severely restricting access to abortions have been voted on by male politicians. Should men have the right to rule on an issue that impacts women so intimately? The corridors leading up to the Alabama Senate are lined with black-and-white photographs of past legislative sessions - each framed poster like a yearbook page from a distinctly male-only school. But inside the dim public gallery, looking down onto the Senate floor, many of the seats are filled by women. They are young and old, some in suits and some in bright shirts with pro-choice...

The B-17 “Flying Fortress” is one of the most iconic aircraft of World War II. Built by Boeing, the four-engine bomber was the United States’ primary weapon of destruction in the air campaign to annihilate cities and bring Nazi Germany to its knees. Its combat performance was decidedly uneven, yet no one questions its primacy in the war. The B-17E, the first mass-produced model, carried nine machine guns and a 4,000-pound bomb load. Its distinctive and enormous tail improved control and stability during high-altitude bombing. Crews loved its smoothness—“It flew like an overgrown Piper Cub,” said one pilot—and its ability...

“As it is right now, we are having a very hard time at the border,” Garza explained in recognition of the massive numbers of Central American migrant families being apprehended by Border Patrol agents after illegally crossing the border from Mexico. Faulkner reacted to Garza’s comment about the condition of the border. “You said, ‘We’ve lost control of the border,'” Faulkner challenged. “That is different from what reporting I’ve seen. What do you mean when you say you’ve ‘lost control?'” “Our Border Patrol chief has mentioned that over 50 percent of our agents are not securing the border and they’re...