Free Republic

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday introduced a short bill that would extend key expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, a sign this extension could happen without any substantive talk about whether and how to reform these provisions. The bill from McConnell and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) would extend sections of the PATRIOT Act through 2020 that allow access to business records and roving surveillance. The business records provision is found in the controversial Section 215 of the bill, which has been used to justify access to phone records.

It's a sad day in America when due process rights granted in the Constitution need protection, but here we are. On college campuses across the country, students — particularly male students — are learning the hard way that they have little if any due process rights should they ever be accused of sexual assault. Indeed, an accusation is all that's needed to destroy or severely alter their future. The reason for this comes from the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which has reinterpreted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to view sexual assault as a form...

How long will this country remain free? Probably only as long as the American people value their freedom enough to defend it. But how many people today can stop looking at their electronic devices long enough to even think about such things? Meanwhile, attempts to shut down people whose free speech interferes with other people's political agendas go on, with remarkably little notice, much less outrage. The Internal Revenue Service's targeting the tax-exempt status of conservative groups is just one of these attempts to fight political battles by shutting up the opposition, rather than answering them. Another insidious attempt to...

MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts and Joy Reid noted that Hillary Clinton had undergone a politically convenient evolution on same-sex marriage on Wednesday’s “MSNBC Live.” Roberts pointed out that Clinton’s statement that she hopes the Supreme Court will rule that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right is “a different line” than Hillary’s position in an interview she conducted with NPR last year, where she said, “for me, marriage had always been a matter left to the states…I fully endorse the efforts by activists who work state-by-state,” and that after leaving the Secretary of State’s office she was able to “very quickly announce...

American college students are being forced off of their student health plans across the United States, and onto the state and federal exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Back in 2013, President Obama came under fire for claiming “if you like your plan, you can keep it” in regards to Obamacare’s new plans. This was taken by most Americans as a promise that new plans would not threaten the health insurance they already had. For more and more college students however, this promise seems to have been broken as schools stop offering insurance. According...

WASHINGTON — The White House relented on Tuesday and said President Obama would sign a compromise bill giving Congress a voice on the proposed nuclear accord with Iran as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in rare unanimous agreement, moved the legislation to the full Senate for a vote. An unusual alliance of Republican opponents of the nuclear deal and some of Mr. Obama’s strongest Democratic supporters demanded a congressional role as international negotiators work to turn this month’s nuclear framework into a final deal by June 30. White House officials insisted they extracted crucial last-minute concessions. Republicans — and many...

By almost a full percentage point India’s economic growth may surpass China’s much sooner than initially expected, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasting earlier this week that Delhi will take the lead in 2015. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook, released Tuesday, indicates that India’s growth rate will rise to 7.5% this year, while China’s is expected to drop to 6.8% from 7.4% last year.

LECCE, Italy — All Luciano Faggiano wanted when he purchased the seemingly unremarkable building at 56 Via Ascanio Grandi was to open a trattoria. He could run the trattoria on the ground floor and live upstairs with his wife and youngest son. The only problem was the toilet. Sewage kept backing up. So Mr. Faggiano enlisted his two older sons to help him dig a trench and investigate the underground sewage pipe. He predicted the job would take about a week, and soon after he would open his trattoria. If only. “We found underground corridors and other rooms, so we...

ndia’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has indicated that he will not submit to Western pressure on cutting CO2 emissions. In the lengthy run up to the international climate conference (‘COP21’) in Paris later this year, Modi’s comments will be sure to cause consternation amongst climate campaigners. Indeed, since his investiture last May last year, the Guardian has expressed concern that he might be (gasp!) a climate sceptic. As the third largest CO2 emitter behind China (1st) and the U.S. (2nd), climate negotiators are keen to secure some kind of meaningful agreement to reductions from India at the Paris negotiations. However,...

Six months ago, the price of oil—the lifeblood of the Russian economy—began to crater, and U.S.-led sanctions, implemented in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine, were biting. Russia’s currency, the ruble, buckled, and capital flight began to accelerate as rich but nervous Russians moved more and more money out of the country. It seemed plausible then to wonder: Could Vladimir Putin be losing his grip? Might economic pressure be enough to rein him in, or even lead to his downfall? Today, the answer is becoming clear—and it’s not the one the West was hoping for. Not only...

Pranksters be warned Eight-grader Domanik Green was arrested on felony charges in Holiday, Fla. Wednesday after breaking into his teacher’s computer to change the background picture to two men kissing. Green, 14, who was released the day of his arrest, said that he broke into the computer of teacher he didn’t like after realizing that faculty members’ passwords were simply their last names, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Green, who previously faced a three-day suspension for a similar prank, said that many students got in trouble for breaking into teachers’ computers.

A Costa Rican journalist reports that Cuban dictator Raúl Castro claimed at the Summit of the Americas this past weekend that he will step down as head of state in 2018 and implied that Cuba may hold elections to replace him. Glenda Umaña, an 18-year veteran of CNN who left the network in November 2014, was working at the Summit on behalf of the Panamanian network Telemetro, though she issued her short report on Castro via Facebook. “He told me that he would remain in power until 2018, and I asked him if there would be elections then, to which...

Hillary’s made it official: She’s now a candidate for president in the 2016 election. Question is, can she win? The former first lady and secretary of state certainly carries lots of baggage as she enters the race, including but not limited to all those missing e-mails. But she isn’t expecting any of those issues to prove fatal. Her big fear — according to the Wall Street Democrats I speak to — is being stuck with (and blamed for) her old boss’ economy. That’s because the economy has never fully recovered from the financial collapse that President Obama faced when he...

On April 9, Michael Bloomberg delcared his friend Jeb Bush the best GOP candidate for president. To be precise, Bloomberg cited Bush and Hillary Clinton as the only truly “worthy” candidates, in his view. According to The New York Times, Bloomberg was attending a party in his honor after receiving an honorary knighthood from from Queen Elizabeth II. During the party, at which Bloomberg said he had “always admired the sophistication and fortitude of the British people,” the former mayor also singled out Bush and Clinton as the only two candidates for him.

Foodstamp enrollment by able bodied childless adults in Maine (which has a conservative Republican governor) is down 80% after imposing a very modest requirement that recipients work at least 6 hours a week in a volunteer program. Of course, the media portrays this as an exercise in cruelty. The food pantry here, just off the main drag in this neat college town, gets busiest on Wednesdays, when the parking lot is jammed and clients squeeze into the lobby, flipping through books left on a communal shelf as they wait their turn to select about a week’s worth of food. The...

It is time for an honest discussion of immigration. The first “great wave” of U.S. immigration took place from roughly 1880 to 1930. During this time, according to the Census Bureau, the foreign-born population doubled from about 6.7 million to 14.2 million people. Changes were then made to immigration law to reduce admissions, decreasing the foreign-born population until it fell to about 9.6 million by 1970. Meanwhile, during this low-immigration period, real median compensation for U.S. workers surged, increasing more than 90 percent from 1948 to 1973, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In the 1960s, Congress lifted immigration caps...

PARIS — An influential European scientific body said on Wednesday that a group of pesticides believed to contribute to mass deaths of honeybees is probably more damaging to ecosystems than previously thought and questioned whether the substances had a place in sustainable agriculture. The finding could have repercussions on both sides of the Atlantic for the companies that produce the chemicals, which are known as neonicotinoids because of their chemical similarity to nicotine. Global sales of the chemicals reach into the billions of dollars. The European Commission in 2013 banned the use of three neonicotinoids — clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam...

AUSTIN, Texas — Tuesday evening after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) announced he was running for president, dozens of “#LibertyKaraoke” events all across the country helped the new candidate recruit hundreds of volunteers and kickstart his campaign fundraising. Liberty Karaoke was originally conceived as a casual fundraiser targeted to young libertarians, to gather regularly for karaoke, network with other like-minded friends, and make online donations to liberty-oriented candidates. The concept had successfully raised thousands of dollars for Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), but Paul’s entrance into the presidential race inspired supporters to take what had been a...

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said he “would cut every bit” of the Department of Commerce’s budget in an interview broadcast on Tuesday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel. “We either do it [spending cuts] 1% across the board, or maybe some programs we cut 100% of. So, the Department of Commerce…I consider most of it, if not all of it, to be corporate welfare. I would cut every bit of it…but if you can’t decide on it, kind of like the sequester, you don’t make up your mind, you don’t put a budget forward, then you’ll get the sequester” he...

Monday on Fox News Channel’s “On the Record” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said while he would support Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) if he won the Republican nomination for president in 2016, he is concerned because Paul’s view of Iran is “to the left of Obama.” Graham said, “Basically is if Rand Paul is the nominee of the party I will support him but Rand Paul was the one senator that voted against my resolution two years ago saying that we will not allow Iran to get a nuclear capability and contain them. I think it would be lousy idea to...