Free Republic

* Total US debt including all forms of government, state, local, financial and entitlement liabilities comes close to 2,000% of GDP, according to AB Bernstein. * The biggest potential load comes from entitlements, but is being pressured from rising levels of federal government debt as well. * The warnings about potential debt hazards come as the total federal debt outstanding has surged to $22.5 trillion. * A debt reform advocate says now is the time for the U.S. to tackle the issue, before recession hits. Total potential debt for the U.S. by one all-encompassing measure is running close to 2,000%...

"Time Passages" is the title of a 1978 US Top Ten hit by singer-songwriter Al Stewart which was produced by Alan Parsons and was the title track for Stewart's 1978 album release. The single reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1978, "Time Passages" also spent ten weeks at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Easy Listening chart, the longest stay at number one on this chart in the 1970s. Billboard magazine also ranked "Time Passages" as the No. 1 Adult Contemporary single of 1979. The song is also of note for having the highest...

Should women be permitted to protect their own bodies? Or should they be forced to passively endure an attack until an authorized protector from the government can ride to their rescue? On September 3, Lachelle Hudgins wounded a robber who had attempted to steal her purse. While the mainstream media pan the attack as an overreaction to an attempted purse-snatching, Hudgins, who was there, saw it differently. According to the video recorded by a local ABC reporter, five attackers approached her car in the wee hours of the morning. How was she to know the attack would end with only...

Uber has removed from its app a driver who kicked two Camden County women out of her vehicle after they kissed. One of the women recorded the incident and had posted it on her personal Facebook page in a post that went viral, and said the driver told them to get out of her car because their lifestyle violated her beliefs. The transportation company on Sunday confirmed that it no longer works with the unidentified driver. […] Kristin Michele and Jenn Mangan were in an Uber on their way to a Zac Brown Band concert in Camden on Friday night...

Food and Drug Administration scientists who had a closer look at the genome sequence of one of the edited animals, a bull named Buri, have discovered its genome contains a stretch of bacterial DNA including a gene conferring antibiotic resistance. The “unintended” addition of DNA from a different species occurred during the gene-editing process itself, the government says. It went undetected by the company even as it touted the animals as 100% bovine and assailed the FDA for saying the animals needed to be regulated at all. “It was not something expected, and we didn’t look for it” says Tad...

Ahead of MSNBC’s climate change forum with several 2020 Democratic candidates on September 19 and 20, on Monday, NBC News announced it will be creating a new “climate unit” of reporters devoted to pushing the liberal environmental agenda and even launch a Climate in Crisis series in the days leading up to the presidential campaign event. “NBC News creating a new climate unit to cover the most important issues that affect our environment,” weatherman Al Roker announced on NBC’s Today show. He continued to tout: “We’re gonna kick things off next week with a special network-wide series....Be sure to look...

Charlies Daniels I will be 83 years old in October and will be the first to admit that, for the most part, the world has totally outpaced me technologically, style-wise, musically, and certainly insofar as what is and is not socially acceptable. And while an octogenarian fiddle player from Tennessee may be miles and decades behind in recognizing and embracing the “in” thing and what is socially acceptable in this ever-changing beehive we live in, there are a few eternal truths that can never go out of style or be pushed to the side and ignored if the human...

The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age–and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm. Most evangelical Protestants greeted the advent of modern birth control technologies with applause and relief. Lacking any substantial theology of marriage, sex, or the family, evangelicals welcomed the development of “The Pill” much as the world celebrated the discovery of penicillin — as one more milestone in the inevitable march of human progress, and the conquest of nature. At the same...

The media is desperate. The entire legacy press hates America as founded and the Second Amendment. They shape the news with false narratives and “breaking news” that generally ends up wrong after all of the facts are revealed. The mainstream media will trot anyone out in front of a camera, including a foul-mouthed 19-year-old who has no life experience. David Hogg was present when a maniac shooter killed 17 students and wounded dozens more at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February of 2018. He was one of the original students interviewed by the media, and they...

Travel and entertainment from the land of long ago. Mayer Davis and his Orchestra performing jazz music aboard the SS Conte Grande on sailing day in 1929.

<p>COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Swedish authorities say that a man has been denied a vanity plate with the letters TRUMP because it violated motor vehicle department rules, calling the letter combination “offensive.”</p> <p>The Aftonbladet tabloid, one of Sweden’s largest newspapers, reported Saturday that the man said he “was drunk and thought it was fun to apply” online for a new licence plate with U.S. President Donald Trump’s last name “because the car is American.”</p>

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) announced on Monday that his committee will vote this Thursday to officially formalize procedures to set up hearings to determine whether the Dem-controlled House will introduce articles of impeachment against President Trump. Nadler said in a statement on Monday that President Trump’s “crimes and corruption extend beyond what is detailed in the Mueller report.”

The people shuffle along, shoeless, ready for their full-body check. Their belongings have been taken from them. If they question any part of this, in any way, they are quickly removed and taken to an undisclosed location. No, it’s not prison — it’s the security check at your local airport. Why do we stand for it? The Transportation Security Administration was established in the wake of 9/11, when Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. Before that, private security agencies hired by the airlines handled security at the airports. After the attacks, people demanded the government “do something” —...

I hate science, evidently, because I’m woke to the manifest truth about what the leftist elite currently calls “climate change." It is the second most staggering fraud ever perpetrated upon the American people after the media’s promotion of the unstoppable candidacy of Beto (who is a furry). Like some suckers still do, I once believed that “science” was a rigorous process where you tested theories and revised those theories in response to objective evidence. But in today’s shabby practice, “science” is just a package of self-serving lies buttressing the transnational liberal elite’s preferred narrative. Our alleged betters hope that labeling...

An armed Arlington SWAT officer stands guard at the AT&T Stadium tunnel entrance before the Big 12 Championship between the Oklahoma Sooners and TCU Horned Frogs at AT&T Stadium in Arlington on Dec. 2, 2017. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)It is often said by people of all political persuasions, and certainly by my fellow conservatives, that the primary duty of the federal government is to keep us safe. The problem is, that's not true. The founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and especially the Federalist Papers, make it clear that the primary duty of the federal government is...

After over two years of campaigns and a voided November general election over allegations of ballot fraud, voters in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District will finally choose their next congressman on Tuesday. As the campaign comes to a close, President Trump is front and center in the election: Republican Dan Bishop has explicitly tied himself to the president and cast his opponent, Democrat Dan McCready, as a radical socialist. The president will also be front and center at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Monday, where Mr. Trump will stump for Bishop. A recent TV ad by Bishop's campaign...

Military flights making stopovers in Scotland are not unusual, and there were no rooms closer to the airport, an Air Force spokesman said Saturday in an emailed statement to The Associated Press. “As our aircrews serve on these international airlift missions, they follow strict guidelines on contracting for hotel accommodations and all expenditures of taxpayer dollars,” Brig Gen Edward Thomas wrote. “In this case, they made reservations through the Defense Travel System and used the closest available and least expensive accommodations to the airfield within the crews’ allowable hotel rates.” [...] A local government contractor made the Scotland reservations, and...

‘Welcoming’ parish tries to get faithful priest reassigned over Catholic facebook posts September 4, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – It was quite a communion of saints that tried to destroy the Rev. Erik Richtsteig, the new pastor of St. Ambrose Parish in Salt Lake City, for the alleged sin of “hate speech.” The Salt Lake Tribune blared its outrage in a July 31 headline, “Utah Catholics protest priest who’s shared posts that are anti-LGBTQ, anti-woman and pro-assault rifle,” and a 2,100-word story that had room only for accusers. Parents from the parish school had scoured Fr. Erik’s every online utterance, finding...

The existence of both cosmos and consciousness, each in its own way, constitute deep problems, perhaps grand mysteries beyond human knowing. Some claim that the two mysteries can only be solved in parallel, together, not in series, alone. Some base their claim on religion, a few on science, others on the belief that consciousness is the ultimate reality.

Nearly all modern historians agree with Professor James McPherson’s conclusion that the Civil War was caused by Southern objections to the 1860 Republican Party’s resolve to prohibit slavery’s extension into any of the federal territories that had not yet been organized as states. The resolution originated with the Wilmot Proviso fourteen years earlier before the infant GOP had even been formed. In 1846 Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot introduced a rider to a $2 million appropriation intended for use in a negotiated settlement to end the Mexican War. The rider stipulated that the money could not be used to purchase land...