Free Republic

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, 2014 is an absolute total disaster just waiting to ignite. In “Doomsday poll: 87% risk of stock crash by year-end” we analyzed 10 major crash warnings since early this year. Since then, more incoming bogies raced across our radar screen. Ticking time bombs from Congress, the Supreme Court, sex, carbon emissions, Big Oil, NSA, IRS, Tea Party austerity. Relentless. Mind-numbing. Shutterstock Ticking time bombs from Congress, the Supreme Court, sex, carbon emissions, Big Oil, NSA, IRS, Tea Party austerity. So many are tuning out. Denial. Truth is, bubbles...

Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former undercover CIA employee, unmasked himself Sunday as the principal source of recent Washington Post and Guardian disclosures about top-secret National Security Agency programs. Snowden, who has contracted for the NSA and works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, denounced what he described as systematic surveillance of innocent citizens and said in an interview that “it’s important to send a message to government that people will not be intimidated.”

The plant manufactured high-pressure gas tanks, but its managers seemed uninterested in making a profit. Potential investors were turned away. An expensive piece of machinery — precise enough to produce components for centrifuges and missiles — sat idle after a failed attempt to ship it to Iran. Finally, the factory, MCS Technologies, closed its doors at the end of March.

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday appointed Julia A. Pierson, a longtime Secret Service agent, as the first woman to head the agency best known for protecting the president, vice president and their families. Ms. Pierson, the chief of staff to Mark J. Sullivan, who retired as director last month, will take over at a time when the Secret Service is still recovering from a prostitution scandal last year that held it up to public ridicule, generated Congressional hearings and cost a number of agents their jobs. The appointment represented a milestone for law enforcement, putting a woman at the...

In 2005, the Italian cardinal, then the patriarch of Venice, one of the Roman Catholic Church’s more prolific pope-producing cities, appeared on many shortlists to succeed Pope John Paul II. The job, of course, went to Scola’s good friend, theological mentor and career patron, Joseph Ratzinger, who took the name Benedict XVI. As the new pope began his reign, papal pundits determined that Scola, then 65, had perhaps been too young .

Houston— Dallas-area police have arrested a suspect in connection with the fatal shooting Saturday of former Navy SEAL and “American Sniper” author Chris Kyle and a second man at a north Texas shooting range

WASHINGTON — The administration of President Barack Obama has rebuffed reports by U.S. diplomats on the use of poison gas by the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. A cable from the U.S. consulate in Turkey asserted that chemical weapons might have been used in a Syrian military attack on Homs on Dec. 23, 2012. An investigation into claims that Bashar Assad deployed chemical agents against rebels in Homs concluded that there was a “compelling case” that some form of poison gas had been used, according to a leaked diplomatic cable. “The reporting we have seen from media sources regarding...

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The assault weapons ban proposed by US President Barack Obama on Wednesday faces quicksand in Congress, where Republicans are in a position to defeat any such a measure. Instead, lawmakers in the House and Senate could address some of Obama's other proposals, including a universal background check for all gun purchases and a ban on high-capacity magazines. The debate comes in the aftermath of last month's tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that left 20 children and six adults dead. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein is preparing to introduce a bill next Thursday that would ban assault...

What’s in Obama’s Gun Control Proposal The initiative to reduce gun violence announced by President Obama on Wednesday includes both legislative proposals that would need to be acted on by Congress and executive actions he can do on his own. Many of the executive actions involve the president directing agencies to do a better job of sharing information. Proposed Congressional Actions •Requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales, including those by private sellers that currently are exempt. •Reinstating and strengthening the ban on assault weapons that was in place from 1994 to 2004. •Limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds....

Calls for increased gun control are being renewed in the wake of the Newtown, Conn. school shooting last Friday, and President Barack Obama indicated he would pursue measures to stop such events from happening in the future. Obama said at a memorial service Sunday that he would "use whatever power this office holds" to prevent such massacres. In yet another high-profile public shooting, 20 children and six adults were killed in Sandy Hook Elementary School when a gunman forced his way in and began firing. Obama spoke strongly about the failure of the country to protect its children, and suggested...

The intercom had been switched on. “At first we heard a bunch of kids scream,” said a therapist at Sandy Hook Elementary School, “and then it was just quiet and all you could hear was the shooting.” It is the silence that seemed particularly haunting. The methodical silence of the killer. The unnatural silence of children. Even the apparent silence of a bystander God.

Support for gun control measures has steadily dropped over the last decade, and previous mass shootings had little effect on public opinion about gun laws. It is too early to tell if the age and the number of the victims in the killings in Newtown, Conn., will now have an impact on attitudes toward gun control.

WASHINGTON — Two days after the shooting deaths of 26 people at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, Sen. Dianne Feinstein pledged Sunday that she would introduce new gun-control legislation at the beginning of next year’s congressional session. “It [the bill] will ban the sale, the transfer, the transportation and the possession,” the California senator said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Not retroactively, but prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets.”

It is a sad statement about either American politics or American sanity that when today's jobs report showed the unemployment falling below 8% for the first time in Obama's presidency, the reaction from some administration critics was: The numbers are cooked! ...

Fred Buzzeo writes: These days everyone is sitting at the edge of their seats waiting for a real-estate recovery. Indeed, during the past ten years, everyone has become a real-estate addict. It is hard for me to walk down the street without someone telling me that the market has "hit bottom" or that the market is on the "rebound." Do I know anyone interested in this piece of property, they ask? Is the timing right? Can I put together a deal? These are the questions that I am constantly bombarded with by the real-estate "junkies" that I encounter while making...

Zillow's reports: The Zillow Home Value Index has now fallen 26% since its peak in June 2006. That’s more than the 25.9% decline in the Depression-era years between 1928 and 1933. November marked the 53rd consecutive month of home value declines, with the Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) falling 0.8% from October to November, and falling 5.1% year-over-year. In the near term, home values will continue to fall thanks to excess inventory of homes, high negative equity and foreclosure rates, and weakened demand due to elevated unemployment. The mainstream media is starting to pick up on the story. For example,...

Bears are by nature cautious and while caution can be an ally, it can also be fatal where bold action is required. It is understandable that investors who believe in paper money and paper-denominated assets do not understand gold. Gold, after all, is the natural refuge of disbelievers in the current financial paradigm; and, as today’s credit and debt-based paper markets come under increasing pressure and gold moves increasingly higher, most “paper bulls” remain increasingly perplexed. In October 2009, when gold had again breached the $1,000 level, investment advisor Chad Brand warned investors not to jump onto “the gold bandwagon”....

In the view of the US government, many of the WikiLeaks documents are still classified, and reading classified documents without clearance is illegal. Critics say the warning is censorship

So many intelligent Americans believe, say and do stupid things. When a large fraction of the population is like this, a nation rots from the inside and succumbs to external forces. I have always searched for the simplest yet best ways to explain what I see as a multi-decade decline of every aspect of the United States , especially its political system and government. I keep coming back to the inescapable logic that a large fraction of Americans, regardless of their education, economic status and political alignment, must suffer from delusion. This delusion produces denial about hugely important subjects and...