Free Republic

@RepThomasMassie I condemn the barbaric attack on Israel and I affirm Israel’s right to defend itself. However, I will not be voting for House Resolution 771 today because: 1) It calls for sanctions on a sovereign country. Sanctions are a prelude to war and hurt the citizens of the country more than the government of the country that’s being sanctioned. And ultimately, sanctions create laws that will be used to prosecute American citizens (who engage in trade), not citizens of the sanctioned country. In short, sanctions do not achieve their stated purposes but do breed resentment of our country abroad....

If you still can’t figure out what the heck a bitcoin is… I have one apple with me. I give it to you. You now have one apple and I have zero. That was simple, right? My apple was physically put into your hand. You know it happened. I was there. You were there. You touched it. We didn’t need a third person there to help us make the transfer. We didn’t need to pull in Uncle Tommy (who’s a famous judge) to sit with us on the bench and confirm that the apple went from me to you. The...

Statements & Releases Statement from the President Budget & Spending Issued on: December 27, 2020 As President of the United States it is my responsibility to protect the people of our country from the economic devastation and hardship that was caused by the China Virus.I understand that many small businesses have been forced to close as a result of harsh actions by Democrat-run states. Many people are back to work, but my job is not done until everyone is back to work.Fortunately, as a result of my work with Congress in passing the CARES Act earlier this year, we avoided...

It was one thing to see that the conservatives couldn’t change things, but Rohani was someone who had great potential, experts say The angry wave of anti-government protests in Iran – more widespread than those in 2009 – has stunned even experts on the region. The intensity of the unrest that began Thursday has shocked the world because, by all measures, things are better under Rohani than they were under his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose hard-line policies and financial mismanagement left Iran’s economy in ruins. [snip] He says the fact that Rohani’s reforms did not seem to be improving the...

On September 12, 2017, I spoke to 600 middle school students at Eubanks Intermediary School of the Carroll Independent School District in honor of Constitution Day. Since Southlake, Texas is my community it was a special occasion for me. The kids had fun, and all of the teachers and administration were very excited after the speech, and grateful. Social media photos and posts abounded from the school. The morning before the speech, September 11, 600 of the same folders arrived for the students for the speech the next day. At no time did anyone, six months prior in March, four...

Confused by what's going on in the Senate for Judge Gorsuch's Supreme Court confirmation? We hear ya. So we'll let Jimmy Stewart and Mufasa explain...

If you can muscle your way past the language and a few flourishes of presentation, the meat of this commentary by British reporter Jonathan Pie is worth the effort. He breaks down exactly why Donald Trump just shocked the world and snatched the presidency from the entitled grasp of Hillary Clinton. Not everyone that voted for Trump is a sexist or a racist. How many times does the vote not have to go our way before we realize that our argument isn't won by hurling labels and insults?... When will we learn that the key is discussion? If you are...

Vid at link

Dear FRiends,This day is Erev Yom Kippur, (Yom Kippur Eve,) usually commemorated with two festive meals, the giving of charity, and asking others for forgiveness. This is to ask YOUR forgiveness for not explaining why all of my pings have stopped without anyone knowing why. I wouldn't exactly call this a 'vanity', more like an explanation and apology to all of you who have added your names to any of my lists for why you don't get those oh, so many pings anymore.Below is what this post started as. And THIS is how it ended. I figured it was better...

Two weeks after the CME hiked gold margins by 22%, and two days after the Shanghai Gold Exchange sent them higher by 26%, here comes the CME, as we expected, with another 26% gold margin hike (previously: "Should we expect 3 more SGE margin hikes in the next 2 weeks? Or will the CME rightfully accept the baton and do everything in its power to dent the parabolic rise in the alternative reserve currency? We are cautiously looking at what the CME will do today and will advise readers."). And now we know that this particular margin hike was leaked...

I'm sure we've ALL run in to people who's eyes just gloss over when you try to explain America's debt problem to them. I discovered this simple analogy over the weekend, and it seems to sink in to even the dimmest bulbs... "You are on a bus going 70 MPH, with a stuck accelerator, heading for a concrete wall that is just 75 feet away. You knew THREE MILES AGO, when the bus was only going 30 miles an hour, that the wall was there, and if you had applied the brakes THEN, no passengers on the bus would be...

President Obama said Thursday that the White House is preparing to issue a formal explanation regarding the allegation that it offered Rep. Joe Sestak a job to drop out of the Democratic primary race against Sen. Arlen Specter. The president, addressing the matter in public for the first time since the Pennsylvania congressman leveled the claim in February, said the statement should answer questions about the claim and insisted "nothing improper" happened.

NewsBusters on Wednesday shared a truly heartbreaking video with its readers dealing with the Nashville flood that so many people in the nation hadn't heard about due to the media's focus on the Gulf oil spill and Faisal Shahzad. News outlets are beginning to try to explain to their patrons why such a devastating event got so over-shadowed.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Top U.S. law enforcement officials offered no explanation Tuesday for how the suspect in the failed Times Square bombing was allowed to board an international flight despite being hunted by the FBI and being placed on the federal no-fly list. At a news conference, Attorney General Eric Holder said the suspect, Faisal Shahzad, had admitted trying to set off a car bomb in crowded Times Square on Saturday. He will face terrorism and weapons of mass destruction charges, Holder said.

Mysterious UFO sightings may go hand in hand with a puzzling natural phenomenon known as sprites — flashes high in the atmosphere triggered by thunderstorms. The dancing lights have appeared above most thunderstorms throughout history, but researchers did not start studying them until one accidentally recorded a sighting on camera in 1989. "Lightning from the thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite," said Colin Price, a geophysicist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. "We now understand that only a specific type of lightning is the trigger that initiates sprites aloft." Researchers have detected...

People familiar with the Antarctic tourism industry weren't surprised that a cruise ship sank there. What stunned them was that the ship in question was the MS Explorer, a veteran of the polar cruise ship trade, purpose-built to operate in extreme polar environments, and manned by an experienced crew. That it sank during what appears to have been the most routine of circumstances – cruising through young pack ice in mild weather – has experts scratching their heads. "I'm totally shocked and surprised," says Leif Skog, who was captain of the Explorer for six years in the mid-1980s and early...

Some folks breathed a sigh of relief when the media announced no radiation had been detected following the North Korean nuclear tests. Others,including a very knowledgeable correspondent,were not that impressed with the announcement, and explained why. (You probably won't see this elsewhere !)

Boys with a number of elder brothers are more likely to grow up to be gay than boys with relatively fewer older brothers, younger brothers or sisters of any age - but is not the result of upbringing, says a study published today. For each additional older brother, a boy's chance of being homosexual increases by a third, it says. Prof Anthony Bogaert, at Brock University, in St Catherine's, Canada, says his research provides strong evidence that sexual orientation may be the result of biological processes in the womb. "If you have a biological brother, and you never even lived...

Last month it was my duty to serve on the jury in the trial of Edgar Ray Killen. It was my unpleasant charge to decide the fate of a fellow human. In the course of my 55 years I have survived a war, earned a bachelor's degree, suffered and exalted, traveled the world and worked my way from high school dropout to senior engineer. Still, nothing prepared me for this, nor did any of the other 11 jurors seem any less humbled by this task. No one took this lightly. My fellow jurors seemed to be a good representation of...

N Korea says it blew up mountain North Korea has given an explanation for the huge blast last Thursday which prompted speculation that it was a part of a nuclear test. The country's foreign minister, Paek Nam Sun, said the blast was the deliberate demolition of a mountain as part of a hydro-electric project. His remarks were in response to a call for information by the visiting UK Foreign Office minister, Bill Rammell. North Korea had said absolutely nothing about the incident until now.