Free Republic

No, no, no, Republicans aren’t racist. What on Earth would make you think that? In another “isolated incident,” prominent South Carolina Republican Rusty DePass likened an escaped gorilla to First Lady Michelle Obama on his Facebook page. Commenting on a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, South Carolina, DePass commented: “I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors – probably harmless.” When DePass was busted by online bloggers, he expressed embarrassment and apologized, saying: “I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest.” But...

A “coalition” of local police departments, municipalities and clergy members are pushing for a “form of gun control without legislation” by pressuring gun manufacturers to start utilizing controversial “smart” gun technology, CBS New York reports. The advocacy coalition believes smart gun technology — which makes it so only the owner can fire the gun — and inventory tracking can help reduce gun violence. So far, 59 different jurisdictions have called on Glock and six other gun makers to “produce distribution records,” the report adds. “We want to use the power of the marketplace, the power of the free market,” New...

Professor Jonathan Gruber of MIT, who designed the Affordable Care Act, used to be the symbol of the Democrats’ technocratic bona fides, and an example of how big government with its “scientific” experts can solve social and economic problems from health care to a warming planet. Yet a recently publicized video of remarks he made at a panel in 2013, along with 2 other videos in the same vein, has now made him the poster child of the elitist progressives’ contempt for the American people, and their sacrifice of prudence and reason to raw political power. In the video Gruber...

Throughout history, in most cases of economic collapse the societies in question believed they were financially invincible just before their disastrous fall. Rarely does anyone see the edge of the cliff or even the bottom of the abyss before it has swallowed a nation whole. This lack of foresight, however, is usually not the fault of the public. It is, rather, a consequence caused by the manipulation of the fundamental information available to the public by governments and social gatekeepers. In the years leading up to the Great Depression, numerous mainstream “experts” and politicians were quick to discount the idea...

Former 'Charmed' TV star, Rose McGowan, spat out more feminist ‘straight talk’ hate talk, with one small adjustment… the misogynists are now gay men. That’s a new twist. Discussing the protest against the Dorchester Collection hotel chain (owned by the ‘ant-gay’ Sultan of Brunei) with gay author Brett Easton Ellis in his weekly podcast, McGowan made these comments.

Does anyone have a complete tally of Republican wins on the state and national level? How does this compare to wins back in 1994 and previous elections? Any commentaries on surprise wins or losses welcome!

Apparently with the new Obama administration version of NASA, failure IS an option. One of the biggest space disasters ever, the Challenger disaster, was caused by FREEZING COLD WEATHER and idiotic management that ignored risks related to cold weather as warned by engineers. I have a pretty hard time believing that about a degree of warming is going to cause all these woes. That and the fact that NASA has had a nearly 9 year hurricane free window in Florida to not worry about launches. From EcoWatch: NASA programs are being put in jeopardy by the impacts of climate change,...

MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) — A Halloween cruise took a frightening turn as passengers were heading to Florida. The ship hit an unknown object, officials said, forcing it back to port. “All I know is that it just went black. The lights went completely out,” said passenger Sandra Douglas from Houston, Texas. “Then they came on for a second and then they went back out. And then the sirens started and they said this was the real thing. Then we had to go back to our floors to get the instructions and the life preservers and things like that.”

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane disintegrated in mid-air after two tail stabilizers prematurely extended, federal investigators said Sunday, a discovery that could shift the focus of the probe into Friday’s fatal crash away from the craft’s rocket motor. But the National Transportation Safety Board’s acting chairman Christopher Hart cautioned against jumping to conclusions. “What I’m about to say is a statement of fact and not a statement of cause,” Hart said. “We are a long way from finding cause. We still have months and months of investigation to do, and there’s a lot that we don’t know. We have extensive...

$75 dollars a barrel – that’s the price crude oil would have to hit for frackers in North Dakota’s Bakken fields to feel pressure to slow new production, according to Greg Zuckerman, author of “The Frackers” and a special reporter at the Wall Street Journal. “All these guys have hedged. They’ve got production [and] they’ve already got the acreage. They’re not gonna stop but maybe they’ll kind of slow new stuff.” Fracking in other parts of the country, though, is likely to be much more resilient. In Texas’s Eagle Ford and Permian basin, Zuckerman says oil prices would have to...

The first sign of failure during Tuesday’s doomed launch of an Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket from Virginia came from the booster’s first stage about 15 seconds after liftoff, according to engineers studying what triggered a fiery mishap that destroyed a commercial cargo craft heading to the International Space Station. The rocket’s 13-foot-diameter first stage, containing tanks with more than 50,000 gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants, is made in Ukraine and powered by Soviet-era engines built in the 1970s for Russia’s moon program. “Evidence suggests the failure initiated in the first stage after which the vehicle lost its...

Ebola is a lot easier to catch than health officials have admitted — and can be contracted by contact with a doorknob contaminated by a sneeze from an infected person an hour or more before, experts told The Post Tuesday. “If you are sniffling and sneezing, you produce microorganisms that can get on stuff in a room. If people touch them, they could be” infected, said Dr. Meryl Nass, of the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington, DC.

An Orbital Sciences rocket operating under a NASA contract exploded shortly after launch on Tuesday evening, much to everyone's surprise — except, perhaps, Elon Musk. Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, trashed Orbital Sciences for using outdated Russian engines during a 2012 Wired interview: "One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke. It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s—I mean they start with engines that were literally made in...

SYDNEY - Australia issued a blanket ban on visas from West African nations affected by the Ebola outbreak Tuesday, making it the first rich nation to shut its doors to the region and earning criticism from health experts and rights groups. Australia has not recorded a case of Ebola despite a number of scares, and conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott has so far resisted repeated requests to send medical personnel to help battle the outbreak on the ground. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison told parliament Monday that all non-permanent or temporary visas from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia were being cancelled...

Paris (AFP) - A wave of panic sparked by evil clowns stalking French towns has spread to the south of France where police on Saturday night arrested 14 teenagers dressed as the pranksters, carrying pistols, knives and baseball bats. A police source said Sunday the group of teens were arrested in the parking lot of a high school in the Mediterranean port town of Agde, as several other complaints poured in about "armed clowns" in the region over the weekend.

A Ukrainian man who legally changed his name to Darth Vader and is running for a seat in the country's parliament was turned away from a Kiev polling station Sunday for refusing to take off his mask to be identified.

In yet another move which may send shivers down the spines of law enforcement agencies around the world, while at the same time exciting techies and firearm advocates, Solid Concepts has revealed yet another 3D printed metal gun. Just under a year ago, the company, which has since been acquired by 3D printing giant Stratasys, revealed the world’s very first 3D printed metal handgun, the 1911. Although there had been a number of interesting plastic firearms 3D printed up until that time, this metal firearm was the first capable of shooting several rounds of ammunition flawlessly. In fact the original...

Mario Anzuoni/Reuters Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. While it's certainly impressive that Elon Musk has bachelor's degrees in physics and economics from the University of Pennsylvania, it's an absurd understatement to say that prepared him to run SpaceX, his spacecraft company. Jim Cantrell, who was an aerospace consultant at the time, became SpaceX's first VP of business development and Musk's industry mentor when the company launched in 2002. He says that Musk literally taught himself rocket science by reading textbooks and talking to industry heavyweights.

Here’s a post from the AMSAT-UK high altitude balloon blog. It’s a great story about a balloon cruising at about 12km above the Earth completing its sixth circumnavigation of the planet. That post is from October 4th, and two weeks later the balloon is still going strong. Right now it’s over the Baltic heading into Russia with no sign of stopping or popping any time soon. The balloon was launched July 12, 2014 from Silverstone, UK. In the 100 days since then, this balloon has covered 144168 kilometers and has crossed its launching longitude six times. Even if this balloon...

France's Socialist government today pledged to toughen up its anti face-covering law after a veiled Muslim woman was ejected from a major Paris opera house. In an incident which has divided opinion in the city's liberal arts community, cast members performing La Traviata 'objected strongly' to the presence of a woman in the audience wearing a niqab-type veil. 'A singer spotted her in the front row during the second act,' said Jean-Philippe Thiellay, director of the Bastille Opera, which was opened by Socialist president Francois Mitterand in 1989.