Free Republic

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Tuesday pushed back hard on former President Trump’s description of Hezbollah as “very smart.” McConnell also defended Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “great leader” when asked about Trump’s criticism of the Israeli leader. “I can’t disagree more,” McConnell told reporters when asked about Trump’s assertion that Hezbollah is “very smart.” McConnell called Hamas “a terrorist organization just like Hamas.” The Senate Republican leader also praised Netanyahu when asked about Trump’s criticism of the Israeli leader for intelligence lapses ahead of Hamas’s attack on more than Israeli towns around the Gaza Strip.

Earlier this summer, a group of scientists spent two weeks in Indonesia atop a glacier called Puncak Jaya, one of the few remaining tropical glaciers in the world. They were taking samples of ice cores to study the impacts of climate change on the glacier. Lonnie Thompson, a professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University, led the team and what he witnessed shocked him: The glacier was literally melting under their feet. Thompson tells NPR's Guy Raz he has conducted 57 expeditions around the world, but this trip was unusual. It was the first one where he experienced rain...

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger followed through Thursday on his promise to veto a bill to legalize gay marriage in California, saying the issue should be decided by voters or the courts. “This bill simply adds confusion to a constitutional issue,” the Republican governor said in a veto message. “If the ban of same-sex marriage is unconstitutional this bill is not necessary. If the ban is constitutional this bill is ineffective.”

SAN FRANCISCO — California will go toe to toe with global warming, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Wednesday as he set targets for reducing the state's greenhouse-gas emissions in coming decades. His executive order calls for reducing these emissions — mostly carbon dioxide from cars and power and industrial plants — to their 2000 levels by 2010, to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The targets aren't as ambitious as those of the Kyoto Protocol, a reduction pact adopted by more than 140 nations but rejected by the United States. The Assembly sent a...