Free Republic

Israel says it first bombed Iran to stop it from being able to produce nuclear weapons and the “existential threat” they would represent. But the conflict may in the long run serve the opposite purpose: illustrating to Tehran and other nuclear-aspirant nations that nuclear weapons are essential in shielding them against attack. Countries such as North Korea already pointed to Libya, whose leader Moammar Gadhafi gave up his nascent weapons program but was toppled anyway in 2011 after a NATO intervention. That’s one of the reasons Pyongyang has developed its own arsenal — which is believed to have San Francisco...

Tim Walz, failed Democrat vice presidential candidate and leftist governor of Minnesota, recently speculated that communist China might hold “moral authority” when it comes to the conflict between Israel and Iran that erupted on Friday. Walz, who was former Vice President Kamala Harris’s (D) choice for running mate in 2024, was speaking during an event hosted by the Center for American Progress when he made the comments, Fox News reported on Friday. Asked about the strikes, he replied, “Iran has to retaliate, in their mind,” adding that the “Middle East is back on fire in a way that has now...

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Arena,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said that while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, he “has other considerations, just like President Trump, who may want to distract from other developments.” And “it’s not unknown, either here in the United States or in the Middle East, for political figures to try and change the subject or to take bold or decisive action that may or may not be in their nation’s best interests, merely to change the subject from politically inconvenient developments.” Host Kasie Hunt asked, “Sir, there, of course,...

Experts have issued a warning about a potential “mega tsunami” that could sweep away entire communities with its massive waves. Alaska, Hawaii and the West Coast of the mainland US face an ongoing threat due to how close they are to disaster zones — and the West Coast just received a renewed warning. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed that an earthquake could erupt along the Cascadia subduction zone, a fault that stretches from Northern Vancouver Island to Cape Mendocino, California. Researchers from Virginia Tech found that a potential powerful earthquake combined...

NBC News’ chief foreign affairs Andrea Mitchell said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that there was an international backlash developing against President Donald Trump’s agenda. Host Kristen Welker said, “We just talked to the Trump national security adviser amid questions about Gaza, whether he plans to try to make Canada the 51st state and of course, all of these cuts that we’re seeing. How do you see the Trump doctrine right now?” Mitchell said, “It appears to the world as might makes right in Panama, Canada. You can argue that this is an opening bid but we’ve seen in...

“What do you think Donald Trump would make of Winston Churchill?” That out-of-the-blue question was asked the other day at Churchill’s home, Chartwell, outside London, where I was speaking about the former British prime minister’s relationships with Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower during the 1940s and 1950s. Haltingly, with some reluctance to discuss American politics in such a historic setting, I responded that Trump prominently displayed a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office throughout his previous White House term. Churchill’s face of bulldog, never-surrender tenacity often appeared over the president’s left shoulder in photographs and television reports. The presence...

Climate change - not increased use of cell phones - might be to blame for an unusual spike in road deaths that hit the United States two years ago, said a study published on Thursday. The study said people might have used their vehicles more frequently to avoid increasingly bad weather - rising temperatures and heavier rainfall - resulting in an increased number of deaths on the road. The finding challenges a widespread notion that 2015's hike was the result of increased cell-phone usage by motorists. [Snip] Using mathematical models, the retired Yale University epidemiologist also found that for every...

What exactly happened at the Vatican's Extraordinary Synod on the Family yesterday? At the conservative NewsBusters site, Ken Shepherd observed that, if you look to "many liberal media reporters" for the answer, you will find them "giddy as schoolchildren" at the synod's midterm report on its discussions about gays and divorced Catholics. That's an advocacy journalist critiquing the work of people that he clearly considered to be advocates. A check of Twitter bears this out: Did the earth really move? It sure did for Josephine McKenna of Religion News Service (author of that last tweet), whose own story on the...

Our favorite chump line message today was the idea of putting all these illegal children flooding the U.S. in Guam - but wait...Won't Guam tip over?

FNN Exclusive. It has been reported that a perfect correlation has been identified between drinking koolaid and mental deterioration and dysfunction. Researchers have discovered a chemical reaction of treated water in urban areas with the ingredients of koolaid. The reaction causes the koolaid to become toxic and destroys much of the mental abilities of the koolaid drinker. If the koolaid drinker is also wearing a tin foil hat, the effect is accelerated and becomes much more devastating. Scientists are speculating that the tin foil hat funnels cosmic rays into the koolaid drinkers brain which accelerates and magnifies the reaction. Several...

(Reuters) - Global temperature rise could exceed "safe" levels of two degrees Celsius in some parts of the world in many of our lifetimes if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, two research papers published in the journal Nature warned. "Certain levels of climate change are very likely within the lifetimes of many people living now ... unless emissions of greenhouse gases are substantially reduced in the coming decades," said a study on Sunday by academics at the English universities of Reading and Oxford, the UK's Met Office Hadley Center and the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand."Large parts of...

I ought to know. I was Mr. Obama's college classmate at Columbia University Class of '83. Our college was dominated by socialists and Marxists who hated capitalism and America. Let's look at the facts up close and personal - Jeff Foxworthy style. Mr. Foxworthy leaves no doubt as to "who might be a redneck." Let me leave no doubt that "Obama might be a socialist." If you believe it's greedy for American taxpayers to want to keep more of their own money, but not greedy to demand that government confiscate other people's money and redistribute it to those

(Check out volume 1 from last March here.) If... Your child confesses to living a double life that's 3 letters and starts with G, and you hope it's G-A-Y and not G-O-P... You think the only way to keep all of Obama's czars straight is to appoint a Czar Sorting Czar... You think the popularity of Che Guevara t-shirts is a great example of how free-market capitalism works... You're a hippie that wants to do your part by buying energy efficient light bulbs, now all you need is a home to use them in... You're from Florida, you voted...

“The Widow’s Might” (Mark 12:38-44) Our text today is the story usually known as “The Widow’s Mite.” It’s the story of a poor widow who goes to the temple and puts into the offering box two “small copper coins,” as our translation has it. But the King James Version had as the equivalent for “small copper coins” the old English word “mites”--she put in two mites. Thus the familiar phrase, “The Widow’s Mite,” m-i-t-e. But today I want to talk to you also about “The Widow’s Might,” m-i-g-h-t. For this story tells us as much about the widow’s might, her...

1. You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to beer. 2. You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher, but you can’t afford shoes. 3. You have more wives than teeth. 4. You wipe your butt with your bare left hand, but consider bacon “unclean.” 5. You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide. 6. You can’t think of anyone you HAVEN’T declared Jihad against. 7. You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry explosives in your clothing. 8. You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17, 2006 – Military might will not win the battle for Afghanistan, NATO’s top military officer said here today. Building a government that guards the liberties of its citizens, provides economic opportunities and treats all fairly before the law will do more than simple military pressure, U.S. Marine Gen. James L. Jones said during a Pentagon interview. NATO has assumed the security mission in southern Afghanistan. The alliance now has responsibility for about 80 percent of the nation and is scheduled to assume command for the rest of the country by the end of this year. Jones said...

This might not be a world war, but it still needs a sense of urgency By Niall Ferguson (Filed: 23/07/2006) This is not the first time that world leaders have had their summers ruined by "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing". In the summer of 1938, the quarrel between Germans and Czechs over the Sudetenland - which inspired Neville Chamberlain's notorious phrase - brought Europe to the brink of war. Chamberlain's shuttle diplomacy, which saw him fly three times to see Hitler in Germany, was inspired by memories of an earlier quarrel over...

Taiwan taunts China with show of military might (Filed: 20/07/2006) Taiwan has staged its biggest live-fire army drill in 20 years, simulating a triumphant repulsion of an invading Chinese force in a display designed to send a clear message to Beijing that the country will not be cowed. Chen Shui-bian is willing to challenge China More than 13,000 soldiers took part in the exercise, which included F-16 fighter jets and 550 pieces of artillery. Tanks fired shells at targets floating on the sea as paratroopers posing as Chinese communist soldiers fell from the skies, simulating an airborne assault against key...

Week of July 15, 2006; Vol. 170, No. 3 , p. 45 Mad cow disease might linger longer Nathan Seppa A rare but deadly human illness spread by cannibalism has an incubation period in some individuals of about 4 decades, researchers in New Guinea have discovered. The finding implies that a related human illness caused by eating beef from cattle with mad cow disease could also lie dormant for many years. HEADS UP. The box shows the area in New Guinea where until the 1950s, people practiced cannibalism, a ritual that spread the prion disease kuru. S. Norcross Scientists have...

A space telescope scheduled for launch in 2007 will be sensitive enough to detect theoretical miniature black holes lurking within our solar system, scientists say. By doing so, it could test an exotic five-dimensional theory of gravity that competes with Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. That is, of course, if the tiny black holes actually exist. The idea, recently detailed online in the journal Physical Review D, is being proposed by Charles Keeton, a physicist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Arlie Petters of Duke University in North Carolina. Branes The Randall-Sundrum braneworld model, named after the scientists...