Free Republic

The name Donald Trump elicits strong emotions regardless of if you support him or not. There is no middle ground. Either you love the guy or you wouldn't be sad to see him strangled by his own toupee. Though the republican presidential candidate seems to make more and more offensive outlandish claims with each passing day, despite his complete lack of filter, he continues to climb in the polls, holding some 35 percent of the Republican vote according to recent polls. As a result of his recent extreme Muslim-phobic statements and growing support, no matter how hard you try to...

In the Age of Obama, death threats by angry progressive mobs hell-bent on delivering ‘social justice’ are transforming America like Obama promised. The latest victims are the workers of a an Elk Grove, California gun shop who took a stand for free speech in displaying the Confederate battle flag only to be forced to take it down following threats to burn the store down and murder employees.On June 25 the employees of Wild Bill’s Old West Trading took a vote to display the flag on the storefront as an assertion of First Amendment freedom of speech rights in the...

Americans are just going to have to trust the EPA’s 44 years of experience dealing with environmental issues when it comes to figuring out ways to cope with man-made global warming, says the agency’s chief. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told Big Think in an interview that while there are limits to how much the federal government can do for issues like global warming, the public needs to trust how the EPA translates the “complicated” science into real-life actions. “Well I think we all have to recognize the strengths and limitations of government action,” McCarthy said. “But here’s what I think...

Breaking tonight on CNN is the news that Pamela Geller was in fact one of the beheading targets of 26-year-old Usaama Rahim, a Muslim jihadi that police shot dead yesterday in Boston: Usaamah Rahim, who was fatally shot after waving a military knife at law enforcement officers, was originally plotting to behead Pamela Geller, an activist and conservative blogger, law enforcement sources told CNN on Wednesday. CNN host Erin Burnett gets Geller on the phone, and during the interview sites the Southern Poverty Law Center suggesting that Pamela Geller is the most visible and flamboyant figurehead of the anti-Muslim movement...

On May 22, attorneys Michele M. Iafrate and A. Melvin McDonald filed a Motion for Recusal and Disqualification of District Court Judge G. Murray Snow because of revelations allegedly made by Snow’s wife regarding his apparent disdain toward Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his wishes to drive the sheriff from office. Those revelations came to light in an August 2013 conversation between Mrs. Snow and her childhood friend Karen Grissom. In that conversation, Mrs. Snow allegedly said her husband “hates” Sheriff Arpaio and “will do anything to get [him] out of office.” If true, such emotions and desires on the part...

One of the rallying cries of opponents of Indiana's religious freedom law is that people shouldn't be discriminated against because of "who they love." But radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh flipped that around on his show on Wednesday. Critics of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act say it allows people to use their religious beliefs to discriminate against gay people. Proponents say it only allows business owners to refuse to perform their services, such as at same-sex weddings, if doing so is a violation of their faith.

Go to a gun show, and you won’t find many merchants using PayPal. You’ll also find few vendors using popular payment processors such as Square, Stripe and Spark Pay. That’s because some payment processors explicitly prohibit the use of their systems for online — and some in-store — sales of firearms, ammunition and certain accessories. Retailers in the gun industry say they’re being discriminated against. “Being shut out from mainstream payment processors makes us feel like we are part of some type of shady business when, in fact, there is more regulation and documentation required for federally licensed firearms dealers...

The Obama administration joined a lawsuit opposing the Washington Redskins‘ team trademark on Friday, filing court papers to defend the federal law that gives the government the power to deny recognition to trademarks it believes to be disparaging. The Patent and Trademark Office’s appeals board had revoked the NFL team’s trademarks last year, finding that they were offensive and so they weren’t protected under federal law. The Justice Department said it agrees with them, and will fight a lawsuit by the team’s owners seeking to overturn the federal Lanham Act as a violation of free speech.

The White House on Thursday announced first lady Michelle Obama’s pick to lead her campaign for kids to eat healthier, saying Debra Eschmeyer would take over a post that has increasingly come under fire in Republican circles. “For more than a decade, Deb has been leading the way in teaching kids about the importance of healthy eating,” the first lady said. “From classrooms and gardens to kitchens and farms, Deb has made learning about nutrition fun and accessible for kids across the country.” Eschmeyer will take over the position of executive director of the Let’s Move campaign, as well as...

Our dishwasher broke just after Christmas. The timer stopped working, and a new one costs about $100. My wife suggested that since the dishwasher is nineteen years old, we should buy a new one. Up until now it was working very quietly and efficiently, washing and drying a full load in about an hour. We visited the appliance shop where we had recently purchased a new clothes washing machine a few months earlier. I mentioned to the salesman that our new washer was very slow, taking nearly two hours to finish a large load compared to our old one, which...

Conservative think tank Americans for Prosperity (AFP), co-founded by principals of Koch Industries, sued in federal court to prevent ultra-liberal California Attorney General Kamala Harris from using her office to disclose the names and addresses of their 90,000 donors. Harris may have a problem with AFP being a major force behind the Tea Party movement and its support of free markets, entrepreneurship, lower taxes, and limited government spending and regulation. As a federally registered 501(c)(4), not-for-profit educational organization, Americans for Prosperity is allowed under federal law to raise and spend money educating the public regarding issues associated with political campaigns...

President Barack Obama has wisely chosen to ignore bipartisan bleating over the lawful use of his executive authority to address pressing issues long championed by the so-called professional left. He has instead decided to flex his muscle, at long last. He struck a deal with China to reduce greenhouse gases by 30 percent over the coming years, pushed for regulating the Internet as a public utility, raised the minimum wage of workers employed by companies with federal contracts, created gender equity rules for such employees and protected from deportation as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants. Also, his Environmental Protection...

Now that calorie counts on restaurant menus are a done deal, it's time to take the next step toward slimming America's flabby waistline.. A national soda tax. I know, I know: This is the kind of nanny-state talk that causes seizures among conservatives and libertarians. It's an intrusion on personal freedom, a trampling of consumer choice, blah-blah-blah. It's also, as we've learned from taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, a highly effective method of influencing behavior that carries high social costs.

The administration is trying to preempt Obamacare sticker shock in 2015 by pleading with Americans to shop around in the marketplaces instead of automatically re-enrolling in the health plans they chose last year. Officials said Thursday those who don’t look around and compare plans during open enrollment could see their costs rise because the so-called benchmark plans are more expensive this year.But the Health and Human Services Department said there are more insurers offering more plans this year, meaning that in most states consumers can choose from three or more issuers. And HHS said those options mean most consumers who...

Although the elections and Michael Bloomberg's original $50 million pledge to beat the NRA are over, the former mayor is still spending money and is considering a push for gun control in 12 more states. The goal in some of the states is the same kind of initiative that Bloomberg and other one-percenters pushed through in Washington, while in others, the goal is to pressure legislators to support gun control expansion under the guise of fighting domestic violence or by following California's lead with "gun violence restraining orders."

Perhaps the first clue, or the ten thousandth, was when many Democrats opposed the reinsertion of God into their party’s platform in 2012 and booed the judgment that the measure to do so had passed. But now it’s all but official: The Democrats are the party of the Devil. Here’s the story, courtesy of CBS Boston: Ruth Provencal is a devout Catholic whose favorite phrase when saying goodbye has now thrust her into controversy. “I would say ‘thank you for voting, God Bless you,’” Provencal explains. After serving as an election volunteer five times, the 67-year-old was told to stay...

MSNBC’s Joy Reid used the network’s coverage of a school shooting in Washington State to push for more gun control on Friday. Less than an hour after the network began live coverage of the shooting, she remarked, “You do have the prevalence, obviously, of guns in this country. It's interesting that Washington State actually has two gun measures that were on the ballot in the upcoming election.” And, “We can't really have a conversation about school shootings without talking about the country's gun laws” during an interview with law enforcement analyst Jim Cavanaugh.

(CNSNews.com) - So far this year, more than 1,800 pastors across the United States have participated in Pulpit Freedom Sunday, an annual event hosted by Alliance Defending Freedom that advocates for pastors’ right to speak on politics from the pulpit without fear of losing their churches’ tax exempt status. Pulpit Freedom Sunday, which started Oct. 5 and runs through Election Day on Nov. 4, first began in 2008 with only 33 participating pastors.

This MSNBC host appears better at exemplifying “convoluted” than defining it. MSNBC host Alex Wagner celebrated how the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit “struck down two more same-sex bans” in Idaho and Nevada during “NOW with Alex Wagner” on Oct. 7. During a panel, she addressed the “convoluted argument” of religious liberty by calling religious exceptions “carve-outs for bigotry.” To introduce the segment, Wagner gushed that the Court of Appeal’s move “comes on the heels of a landmark Supreme Court un-ruling on marriage equality,” and “is expected to bring the grand total of states allowing gay and lesbian...

For years, activists associated with Media Matters have attempted to undercut the advertising base for Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, with little success. Those activists, who represent a small, hard-core base dedicated to launching secondary boycotts – boycotts against advertisers on Limbaugh’s program – are now revealing themselves as not merely leftist advocates, but some of the fringiest characters this side of MSNBC. For example, Matt Osborne is one of the chief voices in the Stop Rush campaign. He explains that he is a “Stop Rush volunteer since 2012,” and that his “volunteers contact advertisers – mostly by phone, but also...