Free Republic

The activist spent a sleepless night after the cataclysmic events of the day. Surely the bold actions of his heroes earlier would elicit deadly retribution from the cruel dictator who had somehow gained ascendancy in his beloved land. He knew that, even though he had always carefully masked himself during operations, the Government HAD to have his name on a "LIST", and knew his every move. Fitfully, he clutched his smart phone close to his body, even though he knew that the Secret Police could easily track him by its signal. He needed it to stay in touch with Social...

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has denounced anti-gay discrimination as reminiscent of Nazi-era persecutions and evidence of a "culture of hatred" that has re-emerged today. Francis made the comments in a wide-ranging speech Friday to an international penal law association. He said some public officials speak about persecuted groups the same way Adolf Hitler referred to Jews in the 1930s. He said: "These are actions that are typical of Nazism, that with its persecution of Jews, gypsies, people with homosexual orientation, represent an excellent model of the throwaway culture and culture of hatred."

President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to seek funds for building a wall on the southern U.S. border relies for its authority on the 1976 National Emergencies Act, which gives presidents sweeping powers to address what they declare are urgent crises. But for a historian of modern Germany, it’s impossible to avoid recalling the way emergency declarations unsettled the Weimar Republic after World War I. [snip] At the time, the conservative German theorist Carl Schmitt offered a legal rationale for the “exceptional dictator” equipped with power to overcome a crisis when parliament was too cumbersome to take needed action....

If Donald Trump were impeached, as some Democrats would like, Mike Pence “would be worse” for domestic policy than the current president, U.S. Sen. Al Franken told International Business Times. But the vice president would be less dangerous on foreign policy, said Franken. Franken made the comments in an interview with IBT during a stop on his book tour in Denver. During the wide-ranging discussion, the Minnesota Democrat said his party could use the so-called “nuclear” option to try to block the Trump administration’s health care bill. On a contentious environmental issue, Franken parted ways with many progessive Democrats in...