Free Republic

The DUP’s Jim Wells has revealed a possible shift in his party’s position on a “Northern Ireland-only backstop” agreement. Should it become official DUP policy, Wells’s revelation would mean the DUP has effectively accepted the backstop agreement. This is something it said it would never do. His revelation came in a pre-recording of Stephen Nolan’s Top Table that goes out on BBC1 this evening, and in response to a statement from the host that “we would be living to EU rules, Jim”. Shocking This is particularly shocking as the DUP has consistently opposed the backstop and “’special status’ for Northern...

During an exclusive interview with "This Week," Facebook CEO and FWD.us founder Mark Zuckerberg criticized the current U.S. immigration system and framed comprehensive reform as a major civil rights issue. "When you meet these children who are really talented, and they've grown up in America and they really don't know any other country besides that, but they don't have the opportunities that … we all enjoy, it's really heartbreaking - right? That seems like it's one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time," Zuckerberg said.

Senate Democrats say they’ll advance a bill giving President Barack Obama the authority to raise the debt ceiling unless two-thirds of Congress disapproves, according to a Senate Democratic aide. The issue of increasing the borrowing limit and avoiding an unprecedented default is fast becoming a central focus in Washington—and comes as ordinary Americans say they’re deeply dismayed with the week-old government shutdown, and are finding blame with both Republicans and Democrats. “It looks like there is more than enough blame to go around and both parties are being hurt by the shutdown,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. …

Putin is deeply committed to winning, to beating Obama like a rented mule, to diminishing the United States, exacting a little revenge for all America did to undermine the Soviet empire and for inviting former members of the Soviet bloc to join NATO after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As for the gassing of women and children by Bashar Assad, Russia’s friend and Iran’s loyal servant, I think Putin will leave it to bourgeois humanists to shed the salty tears. .... There are those who believe that Putin is now acting like a statesman, riding to the rescue –...

Barack Obama's appointments of Susan Rice as national security adviser and Samantha Power as ambassador to the United Nations have naturally triggered speculation about changes in foreign policy. Rice and Power have been proponents of humanitarian military intervention, a course that Obama followed, gingerly, in Libya -- "leading from behind," as one of his aides put it. But of course that didn't work out so well. The murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi last September showed that terrorists have a free hand in Libya -- even if the president and Rice, along with Secretary of...

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is raging out of control in Vladimir Putin's Russia. It is perhaps the single most devastating hallmark of the demographic crisis that has his nation by the throat. Instead of contending with it forthrightly and energetically, Putin is ignoring the crisis in favor of a neo-Soviet Cold-War confrontation with the West. In a 2011 report issued on World AIDS Day, the United Nations stated the stunning reality: "The Russian Federation and Ukraine account for almost 90% of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region's epidemic. Injecting drug use remains the leading cause of HIV infection in...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons could be a greater threat after that nation’s president leaves power and could end up targeting Americans at home, lawmakers warned Sunday as they considered a U.S. response that stops short of sending military forces there.</p>

There have been shows on toddler beauty pageants, raising multiples, and children living with other peoples’ wives. But now, a pair of producers is hoping to feature children who have lived past lives. Hoping to find children who ‘have inexplicable memories and experiences of another life,’ the producers insist that past-life memories are real and somewhat common. Speaking with the Huffington Post, husband-and-wife producers Joke Fincioen and Biagio Messina hope to find children, aged 2-10, who have inexplicable memories that seem to be from past lives. ‘We wanted to tell these parents’ stories without trying to prove or disprove them.’...

All fossil fuels must be cut to avoid global warming, scientists sayBy Mike De Souza, Postmedia News February 21, 2012 6:10 PM OTTAWA — Two Canadian climate change scientists from the University of Victoria say the public reaction to their recently published commentary has missed their key message: that all forms of fossil fuels, including the oilsands and coal, must be regulated for the world to avoid dangerous global warming. "Much of the way this has been reported is (through) a type of view that oilsands are good and coal is bad," said climate scientist Neil Swart, who co-authored the...

Every night before he goes to sleep, the president of the United States reads 10 letters from the pile of 20,000 sent to him by Americans every day. Sometimes, he writes back. He's even, on occasion, included a check. "It's not something I should advertise, but it has happened," President Barack Obama told reporter Eli Saslow, author of the new book, "Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President." Saslow has spent a year poring over the presidential mail, sent from Americans weathering the desperate economic climate. There's Natoma Canfield, the cleaning woman battling cancer who can't afford to pay...

There’s been a fair amount of – how shall I put it? – sucking up to President Barack Obama over the past week for his decision to send in the US Navy SEALs to kill Osama bin Laden. Certainly, it was a bold gamble that paid off richly and if it hadn’t it could have crippled his presidency. But rather than let Obama’s actions speak for themselves, his aides and allies have gone into overdrive and “gutsy” has become the word of the week. As in: When President Obama was faced with the opportunity to act upon this, the president...

Twenty-eight percent of traffic accidents occur when people talk on cellphones or send text messages while driving, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Safety Council. The vast majority of those crashes, 1.4 million annually, are caused by cellphone conversations, and 200,000 are blamed on text messaging.

President Obama will address the House Republican Conference later this month during their retreat in Baltimore, being held Jan. 28th to 30th. Obama was invited by the elected GOP Leadership to speak a few weeks ago and will take them up on their offer. ... Despite that gracious tone, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor wrote this morning in a statement: “Though it’s welcome news that President Obama will speak with House Republicans later this month, it is important to point out that true bipartisanship requires working together on common-sense solutions and a mainstream agenda to help Americans facing difficult challenges....

Poles protest US Stalin memorial plan23.11.2009 11:06 The Polish community in the United States is outraged by a plan to honour Josef Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.  According to William McIntosh, the director of the Bradford museum, which is coordinating the project, the Soviet dictator deserves to be acknowledged alongside Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has he was an ally of the US after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The plans have met with protests from Polish war veterans in New York.  President of the Kosciuszko Foundation,...

An Illinois woman is charged with a hate crime for berating a Muslim woman about the Fort Hood shooting and then pulling at her headscarf. The charge could lead to three years in prison: justice or prosecutorial overkill? In the days after the Ft. Hood shooting, mosques around the country bolstered their security in anticipation of a backlash from Americans angry about a Muslim man alleged to have killed American soldiers on their own turf. Since then, only one alleged hate crime against Muslims has been directly tied to the Fort Hood rampage. Two days after the rampage by an...

<p>A New Jersey appeals court has concluded that Americans have no Second Amendment right to buy a handgun.</p> <p>In a case decided last week, the superior court upheld a state law saying that nobody may possess "any handgun" without obtaining law enforcement approval and permission in advance.</p>

Did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi step into a political quagmire during her press conference on the Bush Administration's torture tactics? Yes. Will President Obama's agenda lose momentum now that this "who said what and when" drama will suck oxygen out of the presidents tailwind? Almost certainly. Will there now be some type of independent commission established to investigate the treatment of war prisoners during the Bush/Cheney reign? Count on it. Who will suffer the greatest political damage from all this? Without question the Republican Party.

The causes of homosexuality continue to both fascinate and divide people. Recently, in London, a conservative group of Anglicans, called the Anglican Mainstream hosted a conference to discuss the causes of homosexuality and promote change from gay to straight. Featured at the conference was American psychologist, Joseph Nicolosi. Dr. Nicolosi stirred much controversy when he said, without research support, that most of his clients show some degree of change in their sexual orientation. Nicolosi's views regarding causes of homosexuality are also controversial. In response to a question about the existence of a gay gene, Nicolosi said: In other words, that...

John McCain's top pollster, Bill McInturff, said this evening that attacking Barack Obama over his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright would not have helped McCain's campaign and could have destroyed his presidency, had he been elected. Some Republicans were angry during the campaign that McCain had -- reportedly for reasons of principle, and out of concern that he'd be viewed as racist -- refused to air ads with Wright's inflammatory sermons, and believed they were fair game and a silver bullet against Obama. An outside group did air one such ad in the closing days of the race. "I said...

A new conservative movement that takes libertarian ideas seriously could use the inertia created by the nation's new progressivism to slingshot itself into the future on a platform of reduced government, lower taxes, and limited interventionism, while also respecting climate change (adjusting the tax code to encourage green reform without any expense to taxpayers) and reforming the immigration system (opening the borders as the market demands labor without sacrificing security). The Republican Party has a chance to transform itself into something it has never been: a party of small government based on classical liberal principles. It doesn't have to be...