Free Republic

John Oliver began his second week guest-hosting The Daily Show welcoming Sarah Palin back to Fox News. Okay, maybe “welcoming” is a strong word. In fact, Oliver realized that rather than spending the whole show piling on every single folksy thing Palin says, he might as well just ignore her instead. Oliver first noted that Palin only left Fox News five months ago, and now she’s back, so “she has now effectively quit quitting!” He played clip after clip of Palin saying what she’s been up to, and he was ready to mock every single word that came out of...

What is wrong with this picture? It's one of those things that you don't get, until you get it. Unless you are eternally empathetic, you look at this photo and don't see much wrong at all. To Anne Belanger, mother of Miles, the photo is unbearable to look at. When the class portrait for her son's Grade 2 class came home, she opened it excitedly, and immediately shoved it back in the envelope. She couldn't look at it. It broke her heart. Anne's son, Miles, has Spinal Muscular Atrophy. At the age of 13 months, his parents were told that...

Not much news is coming out of the world of cold fusion besides the announcement that Hydro Fusion would like to have a utility test Andrea Rossi’s ecat low energy nuclear reaction or (LENR) device in Sweden. Rossi’s publication of limited ecat test results has spurred a lot of controversy and reaction but what are his various competitors up to? Assembly of a new LENR device the Mizuno Cell at the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project I looked around the web and found that Brillouin, Defkalion, and Nichenergy haven’t made any new announcements lately. None of these companies seem to have...

More people value individual liberty, but we might be losing the moral guardrails. Are Americans becoming more libertarian on cultural issues? I see evidence that they are, in poll findings and election results on three unrelated issues: marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage, and gun rights. Start with pot. Last November voters in the states of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana, by a margin of 55 to 45 percent in Colorado (more than Barack Obama’s margin in the state) and by 56 to 44 percent in Washington. In contrast, in 2010, California voters rejected legalization 53 to 47 percent. These...

A man has been warned after he dialled 999 to complain about a prostitute's looks after meeting her.West Midlands Police said they were contacted by the caller who said he "wished to report her for breaching the Sale of Goods Act". The force said the call was received at about 19:30 BST on Tuesday complaining that the woman was not as attractive as she had claimed. Officers have now sent the man a letter warning him about wasting police time. West Midlands Police said the man had claimed he met the woman in a hotel car park. "The caller claimed...

The case that shocked the nation, the Trayvon Martin murder case, has finally come to trial. The case has everything that intrigues, or is, America: xenophobia, race (or racism), guns, liberties debate and media hysteria. It also has many of the conflictions that Americana brings about: self-defense, rights, free speech, public opinion, protest, fair trial, innocence before guilt, guilt before conviction, right-winged rhetoric, left-winged rhetoric, intelligent analysis, anti-intelligent debate, coherent prosecution, incoherent defense … all making for what will be a highly watched trial. Will Trayvon’s death be vindicated? Or will the gun culture rationalize social fear as an acceptable...

Is anybody driving down to DC on the 19th for the Tea Party rally? Please get in touch - I'd love to go though I really don't have the money, but I have to do SOMETHING - I'm so friggin angry - and I'm hoping that a lot of others feel the same way. If I could find others in CT who are driving down I'd join you. Thanks!

A VETERANÂ’S VOICE Interview with Professor YEONG E. KIM It is a self-assumed task of this blog(ger) to provide young LENR researchers with the best information available regarding the field. Till now they have received mainly technological principles and managerial best practice due to my own limitations, but now I am appealing to a good friend- who is a world class specialist and authority in those branches of physics that are bound the very core of LENR, nuclear physics and solid state physics... Professor Yeong E. Kim from the Purdue University has generously accepted to help, first with the following...

John E. Holden had been a Marine Corsair fighter pilot during WWII. He survived the war, and the many years that followed, before passing away last week at the age of 93. Holden fell from a window at a retirement community in Lancaster, PA. In the obituary, which he wrote himself according to the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, Holden's sense of humor was definitely in evidence. The former fighter pilot described a life "filled with endless laughter and debauchery." He mentions receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air Medal for actions in Okinawa in 1945, but also said there was...

1. Lenin: Trade Unions are a School of Communism The "card-check" debates in the US Congress reminded me of my own experiences with trade unions in the USSR, where organized labor was part of the official establishment and union membership was universal and mandatory. It also reminded me of how that system's seemingly magnanimous goals - fairness, economic equality, and social justice - in real life brought forth a rigged game of wholesale corruption, forced inequality, and grotesque injustice. Years later, the same Orwellian misnomers are catching up with me in America. One of them is called "Employee Free Choice...

Democrats love this stuff. It’s humor at its best. They can slam Bush and wounded US veterans at the same time. So funny.On his HBO show this week, Bill Maher called the George W. Bush Wounded Warrior Bike Ride nauseating and compared him to Ohio kidnapper and rapist Ariel Castro. NewsBusters reported: (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Transcript via NewsBusters: BILL MAHER: George Bush, over the Memorial Day weekend, held the Wounded Warrior 100K, which was a kind of a celebration for wounded warrior who is came back from Iraq and I guess they walked or ran or something on their prosthetic limbs. And...

Pre-loaded hydrogen fuel an engineering answer for efficiency, ease and safety PreviousNext . Pre-loaded hydrogen fuel an engineering answer for efficiency, ease and safety [Translate] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Multiple independent labs are racing to produce a commercial product based on the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect (FPHE), most working quietly in their labs. But since the public demonstration of Andrea Rossi‘s E-Cat in January 2011, we’ve witnessed on the global theater the grueling process of actualizing a revolutionary technology. Early prototype E-Cat had external hydrogen tank for fuel. It has been amazing to watch. A thermal generator based on nickel-hydrogen exothermic reactions, E-Cat design...

Watching the celebration at the NRA convention over the defeat of background checks was the most nauseating experience of the day. I am not a New York gun control liberal, either. I support a shotgun for home defense, a handgun for limited conceal/carry, and an assortment of hunting rifles to balance West Virginia's exploding deer population (as evidenced by hourly collisions with cars). So, I am hardly out of the mainstream. But, the gun safety debate is B.S. This foaming at the mouth, Obamar is coming for the guns, Nanny Bloomberg is a bad billionaire, and most despicable of all,...

Criticism From Peter Ekström May 28, 2013 Many people are frustrated when critics voice their opinions regarding eCat tests and that frustration is evident in the case of the May 2013 HotCat paper. However, when answering why the paper was published on Arxiv instead of a peer-reviewed journal, Andrea Rossi stated that he saw Arxiv as a first step where the paper would have its initial airing (and so peer reviewed of sorts). Preparing a proper scientific paper will take time and in time, such a step may follow. In other words we – along with Rossi – should welcome...

Guns and idiots.

An 18-year-old high school student who had a relationship with a 14-year-old schoolmate has until Friday to decide whether she'll accept a plea deal or risk trial in the case. Kaitlyn Hunt, whose story is making national headlines, said little Wednesday in her first public comments since her arrest in February. She was expelled from Sebastian River High School after being charged with two felony counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16. On Wednesday, her family's attorney told reporters gathered in Sebastian that she hopes "common sense will prevail."

The confederacy of dunces that makes up the Republican Party leadership and Fox News want you to believe that liberal operatives at the IRS abused power -- for political purposes -- by scrutinizing conservative Tea Party affiliates applying for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status. What has been missed in the mainstream debate on the topic is the fact that the Tea Party should have been scrutinized. Race, money, political power and extremist ideology are the smoking guns -- and it's time to follow the money trail. President Obama chose to get ahead of the scandal, saying that targeting of conservative groups was...

"In two weeks the naysayers will find out just how wrong they have been" - Mike Zullo

Third place? We couldn’t do better than #&@$ing third place? New Jersey residents were beaten out by Ohio and Maryland in a survey ranking individuals most likely to drop swear words on a complete stranger during a phone conversation. On the flip side, analysis by the Marchex Institute found that Washington, Massachusetts and Arizona topped the list of state residents least likely to lose their cool. …

The Innocence of Muslims film, (Desert Warrior) describes it as a "historical Arabian Desert adventure film." By, Sam Bassiel, Sam Bacile, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a filmmaker with ties to Coptic Christian groups; which cost $100,000 to produce, co-ordinated by Joseph Nasrallah Abdelmasih's Media for Christ nonprofit. Directed by soft pornographer Alan Roberts, an industry veteran whose prior work was dominated by titles like "Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood"..

HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher discussed the Internal Revenue Service scandal on Friday, making fun of the conservative groups who were unfairly targeted for years by the IRS. “I try to play it fair and I said before, I think there is an actual scandal with the IRS,” Maher began. “We got a hold of some of the forms [that] the IRS was making the applicants fill out, and it really does look like they were trying to search out and expose Tea Party people…” Maher then proceeded to list a number of fake questions his team concocted, beginning:...

Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, have joined forces to create fusion centers... based on the input and guidance of the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (Global), the Global Intelligence Working Group (GIWG), and the Criminal Intelligence Coordinating Council (CICC) The Institute for Intergovernmental Research coordinates the receipt of program requests and facilitates many of the services offered. To access a list of training and technical assistance resources available through this program, visit the National Criminal Intelligence Resource Center (NCIRC) secured site.

My Dad often said: "Intrigue only begat intrigue". He was usually right. One conspiracy leads to another like a room full of mirrors reflecting themselves. Still, here goes. I have been watching Youtube collections of stuff from the talking heads and interviews today. I am cementing my earlier view... this IRS abuse is a massive smoke screen to hide something even bigger from attention. A lose the battle win the war tactic. Sure, this IRS scandal is a big deal and it is just the kind of attack on liberty all the right can get behind. Just the kind of...

It is hard to admit that one of the most cartoonish and self-aggrandizing figures in recent political memory actually could have been a contender at one time, but I am now willing to cede that point. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin actually could have been, at the very least, a respected political figure over the course of the last decade, but she has squandered any capital or potential she may have had by being a rudderless buffoon. The only reason this comes to light again is because Palin is polling ahead of two other candidates for a potential open Senate...

The other day, I was in the middle of doing research online when I stumbled across a Planned Parenthood ad. Planned Parenthood, over the years, has run some pretty shocking ad campaigns. Without a doubt, this one is the worst I’ve ever seen: This ad proves that insanity can indeed reach new heights. Planned Parenthood recently coined its “Care. No matter what.” slogan, around the same time the abortion giant decided that claiming to be “pro-choice” wasn’t the best way to win people to their side. Now, it’s insane to claim to “care” when your work is actually killing. (Insanity...

Of course a day like today — replete with the incoming details of administrative scandals fraught with authoritative overreach and corruption — could, for this guy, only end with one possible explanation for all of the complaints about President Obama’s governing prowess. When in doubt, revert to that ol’ progressive standby: Racism and white supremacy, obviously. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) "The problem is there are people in this country, maybe ten percent, I don’t know what the number, maybe twenty percent on a bad day, who want this president to have an asterisk next to his name in the history books, that he...

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Multiple scandals have coalesced and hit the White House like a tsunami, putting Obama on the defensive amid a rash of serious charges including prior gun running, terror spin, spying on journalists and targeting conservative political groups. The White House (Carney) said it is not involved. Jay Carney during his regular briefing, "I am certainly not aware... We haven't seen it, we don't have access... Obama will decide." Steven Miller, acting IRS commissioner, "the agency was simply trying to manage applications for tax-exempt status... in no way due to any political or partisan motivation."

https://wassermanschultz.house.gov/htbin/formproc.pl?/wassermanschultz/email-me.txt&display=/wassermanschultz/contact/email-me-thankyou.shtml&nobase

The idea of impeaching Obama is industrial-strength insane. Republicans will probably try anyway, predicts Michael Tomasky. When the histories of this administration are written, I hope fervently that last Friday, May 10, does not figure prominently in them. But I fear that it might: the double-barrel revelations that the White House hasn’t quite been telling the whole story on Benghazi and that some mid-level IRS people targeted some Tea Party groups for scrutiny are guaranteed to ramp up the crazy. But to what extent? I fear it could be considerable, and the people in the White House damn well better...

Fear peddlers want elected representatives to initiate investigations and draft bills to address fake threats. Once upon a time, the most outlandish fantasies of fringe political fabulists were confined to a narrow spectrum on the AM radio dial. They concocted delusional narratives that ranged from murderous first ladies to galactic alliances with Martians. It was an entertaining world of fiction and a guilty pleasure for some, even as the true believers were convinced of the frightening fate that was unfolding. Today, however, the boundaries between rational political discourse and raving madness have been erased. The extremist peddlers of nightmare scenarios...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/20130509/NJOPINION0202/305090006/

The National Rifle Association just wrapped up its annual meeting in Houston back in the Lone Star State. Some highlights: Texas Governor Rick Perry fired a big gun for funsies, a bleeding Obama zombie target was banned, and Sarah Palin recieved a standing ovation for her speech. This is the same speech in which she represented her 4.5 million “brothers and sisters” of the NRA by wagging her finger at the “lamestream media,” a “poodle-skirted cheerleader for the president” and giving her audience the wink and nudge of the elbow with names in her family like “Trigg” and “Remington.” Palin’s...

I have a piece going up later today over at CNN.com on the NRA convention, but there's something I raise there that I want to elaborate on. If you look at the list of Republican politicians who spoke to the assembled firearm enthusiasts, it wasn't exactly the A-team. Last year Mitt Romney showed up, but this year they had failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum, failed presidential candidate Rick Perry, universally disliked freshman senator Ted Cruz, currently unpopular Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, and former half-term governor and current punch line Sarah Palin. Every one of them would like to be president...

Sarah Palin showed up at the NRA convention the other day, which was merely perfect. She belonged there as much as anybody in the hall just because from the start, from the time John McCain picked her out of the chorus, Palin has most appealed to mean, dumb, angry crowds exactly like the one she found in Houston. Palin should have worn a prom dress, but on this occasion wore a T-shirt that read “Women Hunt.” In her case, that means hunting for attention. Or relevance. She wants to be a populist and a patriot, the way the phonies cheering...

An officer responding to a call about a suspicious person at a 7-Eleven on Wednesday about 12:30 a.m. arrived to find a man holding a phone at the store. After telling the man, later identified as Daylen E. Holloman, to sit on the curb, the officer began to question him, according to an arrest affidavit from the Daytona Beach Police Department. The officer asked the man whether he had called the cops. Holloman allegedly answered "I don't know" when the cop asked him more questions such as "How can I help you?" and "What is going on?" and "Where are...

How stupid does the Senate background-check vote look now, I ask the pundits and others who thought it was dumb politics for Obama and the Democrats to push for a vote that they obviously knew they were going to lose. I’d say not very stupid at all. The nosedive taken in the polls by a number of senators who voted against the bill, most of them in red states, makes public sentiment here crystal clear. And now, for the first time since arguably right after the Reagan assassination attempt—a damn long time, in other words—legislators in Washington are feeling political...

The pro-amnesty lobbyists who helped craft the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill included within the bill two "slush funds" amounting to $150 million that may be supplemented with additional taxpayer dollars for years to come. Slush fund grantees are "public or private, non-profit organizations" described in the bill as including "a community, faith-based, or other immigrant-serving organization whose staff has demonstrated qualifications, experience, and expertise in providing quality services to immigrants, refugees, persons granted asylum, or persons applying for such statuses." In other words, the grantees would include many of the groups involved in writing and promoting the amnesty. [IRS] Section 2537...

It’s not all that surprising that the suspected Boston bombers, particularly younger brother Dzhokhar, have already inspired passionate crushes in girls. (There is a Tumblr called Free Jahar, as his would-be girlfriends call him, anchored by a photo of him kicking back in his Timberlands.) As Rachel Monroe wrote last year in her excellent essay for the Awl, “The Killer Crush,” extravagant murderers like James Holmes (the Aurora, Colo., shooter) and the Columbine boys tend to bring on alarming fevers of admiration from teen-agers, and maybe some of them grow up to be the women who marry the guys in...

In a new chilling revelation, it has been now revealed that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tweeted (with tweeter handle @J_tsar) the following the day of the blasts: ‘Lol those people are cooked.’ The tweet since deleted once again shows the duplicitous nature of the 19 year old who many friends have had a hard time believing was involved in the bombing whilst his tweeter feed on the other hand has shown a capacity for the venomous and sadistic. Less than three hours the attack, Dzhokhar also took to Twitter to post the following message at 5:05pm that Monday...

With the Supreme Court set to start hearing arguments on the constitutionality of bans on gay marriage next week, polls across the nation are showing that for the first time in history, more Americans support same-sex marriage than oppose it. The reasons for this dramatic shift in the American point of view are many. For starters, President Barack Obama flipped the script when he announced his support of gay marriage in an election year. A gutsy move and one that made it okay to be pro-gay. Since then, people have been coming out of the woodwork to support gay marriage,...

When it comes to sex, Germans are not known for being squeamish. Yet a sex-education book that has been circulating in Berlin elementary schools has some parents up in arms. The book, “Where Do You Come From?” („Wo kommst du her?‟), which is recommended for ages 5 and up, shows a couple, Lisa and Lars, in various stages of arousal. … The text also veers toward the explicit. …

Ordinarily, I’d thank you for writing. But truth is, I am not grateful you wrote; your note last week was one of the more troubling things I have read. I do not blame you for leaving it unsigned. “We stand together,” I had written. “We stand defiant. And we stand with Boston.” You disagreed. “Your wrong pal we do not STAND TOGETHER.OH MY GOD we need a CIVIL WAR.The American people against the LIBERAL DEMACRAT SCUM that we have let allow SCUMBAGS like those that would BLOW UP people in BROAD DAYLIGHT to be here ... WE NEED A CIVIL...

A Walmart employee in upstate New York allegedly made very productive use of his time during overnight shifts in the store. Unfortunately, he did so by advertising his services online as a prostitute, then meeting clients in a store bathroom during his breaks. Great efficient use of time, but also kind of illegal.According to state police, the store bosses became suspicious and alerted authorities about the 22-year-old’s possible side hustle. Police had an undercover officer set up an appointment and offer to exchange sex for money. The man was arrested and charged with prostitution, and has been suspended while Walmart...

My children have long been urging me to give them in a short story my experience in the Battle of Gettysburg. I was then a girl of thirteen, living on the Seminary Ridge which today is known to every child who studies the history of the Civil War. I shall never forget the June afternoon when I stood on the Seminary steps with my parents and other persons to see a Confederate host marching in the Chambersburg Pike. It seemed as if Pandemonium had broken loose. A more ragged and unkempt set of men would be hard to find. Many...

We’re often told that our liberties are under assault. The right warns that our Big Government nanny state is plotting to seize our guns and our Big Gulps, while strangling our economic freedom with taxes and regulations. The left rails against our Big Government security state—the drone warfare, indefinite detention and electronic surveillance that make the war on terror sound like an Orwellian nightmare. The National Rifle Association had just finished bellowing about background checks violating our Second Amendment rights when the American Civil Liberties Union started shrieking about the FBI violating the Boston bombing suspect’s Miranda rights. America was...

The online activism organization Change.org currently hosts a petition to President Obama asking him to guarantee “wrongfully accused” Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a “fair trial,” citing a lack of evidence to condemn Tsarnaev. Change.org, which receives funding from groups including Amnesty International and the Humane Society, features a petition entitled, “Petition to guarantee Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the right to a fair trial,” created by Anita Temisheva of Chicago, Illinois. The petition has already netted more than 2,000 signatures. “We believe that within the chaos caused by the Boston Marathon explosion, two young men were wrongfully accused of something they...

You might have thought that the mangled bodies of 20 dead children would have been enough to overcome the crazed obsessions of the gun lobby. You might have believed that the courage and exhortations of a former congresswoman — her career cut short and her life forever changed by a would-be assassin’s bullet — would have pushed Congress to do the right thing. You might have reasoned that polls showing overwhelming public support for a sensible gun control measure would have persuaded politicians to take a modest step toward preventing more massacres. You would have been wrong. The U.S. Senate...

Sounds like right-wing, anti-Obama rhetoric, doesn't it? In California, it is dangerously close to true. Thursday, the state legislature approved $24 million to expedite gun confiscation. They are coming for your guns! And if they show up at your door in California, without a search warrant, you still don't have much of a choice but to hand over the weapon. Does this sound like a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution? This is a very slippery slope. The text of the Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,...

Filmmaker Michael Moore has now sounded off on the ongoing situation surrounding suspected Boston Marathon bombers and Muslim terrorists Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan. Naturally, he blames America:(TWEET-AT-LINK)

Governor Andrew Cuomo and his gun-grabbing allies are making some major moves in their efforts to violate the privacy of residents in New York, reportedly issuing subpoenas demanding psychiatrists turn over patient records to the State in the name of controlling firearms. There have already been reports of New York gun owners having their firearms confiscated in the State due to a provision buried in the State’s recently implemented draconian gun legislation, which permits denying 2nd Amendment rights to those who have been prescribed psychotropic drugs. A mental health provision in New York’s Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) act...