Free Republic

It's very early days, but the US government is apparently looking to encourage commercial development of the moon, offering to assist investment by helping companies to claim territory through existing space launch licensing. According to Reuters, which has spied related documents, the Federal Aviation Administration state that it intends to "leverage the FAA's existing launch licensing authority to encourage private sector investments in space systems by ensuring that commercial activities can be conducted." The letter to Bigelow Aerospace could mean that the company's inflatable living spaces and other structures built or established on the moon could confer exclusive rights to...

POLK, Ohio- An unusual site was caught on video outside an Ashland County store on Sunday. Shayla Buhl was working at the Polk Market and Deli on North Main Street when she noticed an Amish buggy doing donuts in the snow. “I just looked out the window and grabbed my phone. They had it up on two wheels at one point,” Buhl told Fox 8. She posted it on her Facebook page and it’s been shared more than 6,000 times in 14 hours. The National Weather Service reported Ashland received more than 2 inches of snow as of Sunday night.

The German language is super harsh if you compare it to other languages! Watch the full version of How German Sounds Compared To Other Languages! Every video in one big ultimate version!

DETROIT (WXYZ) - Carnell Alexander is a wanted man. The reason? He refuses to pay child support for a child that is proven to not be his. As a result, a warrant has been issued for his arrest. 7 Action News told you about Carnell Alexander in October. He said he was looking for help clearing up a terrible mistake. Alexander says he learned about the paternity case against him during a traffic stop in Detroit in the early 90s. The officer told him he is a deadbeat dad, there was a warrant out for his arrest. “I knew I...

My dearest wish is to one day have the pleasure of living in a small cabin in the frigid wilderness. There I will spend my nights covered in heavy wool blankets, eating smoked fish and dried fruit. Over time, my beard will grow to the point where I’ll be indistinguishable from a medium-sized woodland creature. The villagers I’ll come to know during my rare visits to town will call me “the wolfman,” not least because I will communicate solely by howling and scratching out messages with my clawlike fingernails. For now, I live in a big city, where such unconventional...

SEATTLE - An Eastside couple was stuck right in the middle of Wednesday night’s shootout at Third Avenue and Pine Street. Jennifer Bowman and her boyfriend Aaron Gazes left an event nearby and were headed home when the light turned red. All of sudden -- they heard gunfire. “We watched a gunfight go down. It was the scariest thing I’ve seen in my life,” said Bowman, who showed KIRO-7 how she tried to put her seat back to hide. Gazes considered running the red light, but was afraid he’d draw the attention of the gunmen -- 5 or 6 men...

“Weird Al” Yankovic does not spend a whole lot of time on the road, possibly because it’s really, really difficult and expensive to stage like 20 different music-video parodies per show. But after the success of last year’s album Mandatory Fun, Yankovic has announced plans to hit the road heavily this summer, hitting practically every town in the U.S. and Canada from May to September, and then heading to Europe in September and October. He’ll stop at a few festivals, but he’s mostly playing bigger venues (including a surprising number of casinos) on his own. This man has decades’ worth...

As President Obama frees droves of terrorists—including five Yemenis this week—from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo news reports confirm that a Gitmo alum who once led a Taliban unit has established the first Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) base in Afghanistan. His name is Mullah Abdul Rauf and international and domestic media reports say he’s operating in Helmand province, actively recruiting fighters for ISIS. Citing local sources, a British newspaper writes that Rauf set up a base and is offering good wages to anyone willing to fight for the Islamic State. Rauf was a corps commander during...

7000 ft below the city of Decatur, Illinois, population 74,710 people, is a high pressure reservoir which contains 1 million tons of CO2. From the press release: "One of the largest carbon sequestration projects in the U.S., the Illinois Basin – Decatur Project (IBDP) has reached its goal of capturing 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and injecting it deep underground in the Mount Simon Sandstone formation beneath Decatur, Illinois. The project is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of carbon capture and storage. IBDP director Robert Finley talked about the million-ton milestone with News Bureau physical sciences editor Liz...

SpaceX is counting down to liftoff Saturday of a Falcon 9 rocket with a commercial cargo craft heading for the International Space Station after engineers replaced a component in an upper stage steering system that grounded the launcher Tuesday. Launch of the 208-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled for 4:47:07 a.m. EST (0947:07 GMT). The mission has just one second to blast off Saturday or else wait for another opportunity to fly Tuesday. The tight launch windows are required for SpaceX’s Dragon supply ship to reach the International Space Station with more than 2.5 tons of supplies and experiments. A...

It’s being called the New Year’s Comet, a fuzzy green ball named Comet Lovejoy that is cruising past Mother Earth as we speak and is scheduled to become visible to the naked eye starting midweek. The name Comet Lovejoy may ring a bell; one of its namesakes was last in Earth’s vicinity three years ago, when it survived a death plunge into the sun in 2011, then emerged to grow a new tail. That was C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy). The latest entry into our field of vision is the fifth comet discovery for amateur astronomy Terry Lovejoy of Australia, according to...

Nir Barkat hopes to preempt last year’s chaos when drivers were stranded, calls for residents to take responsibility for their own homes As sunny skies threatened to turn into a massive snow squall, Jerusalem’s mayor ordered Monday that roads be closed hours before an expected heavy snow storm wallops the city Wednesday Speaking at a press conference from the municipality’s snow preparedness center, Nir Barkat said roads leading in and out of the capital would be blocked to traffic to prevent a repeat of 2013’s massive snowstorm, when hundreds of cars were trapped in drifts along main highways. The police,...

Here are 9 trail cam photos sure to send a shiver down your spine. Trail cameras are more popular than ever before, and their uses are endless. They can help pattern deer movements, catch trespassers in the act, help with estimating wildlife population numbers, catch kids trying to sneak out for a night of “studying,” and much, much more. With thousands of motion-activated cameras set up all over the country, there’s bound to be some weird, off the wall, or just plain spooky pictures out there. Just in time for Halloween, here are a few of our favorites.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was lifted upright on Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad Monday after workers loaded time-sensitive supplies and research specimens into the Dragon cargo craft’s pressurized cabin. More than 3,700 pounds of gear will be delivered to the International Space Station on the mission. The 208-foot-tall rocket is set for liftoff Tuesday at 6:20 a.m. EST (1120 GMT).

Many of us are suffering today from last night’s overindulgence. In 2011, Gastro Lab offered its best take on a storied hangover food: the egg-and-cheese sandwich. The video is republished below. Slate V contributors Dan Pashman and Mark Garrison cook up some elaborate breakfast creations in this episode of Gastro Lab. (video at link)

(Reuters) - Americans moving out of state in 2014 were most likely to head to places that were warmer and more affordable, such as the South and Southwest, according to studies by two major moving companies. The 47th annual report by Allied Van Lines showed that Illinois topped the list of states people are moving away from with 1,372 net moves, followed by Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan and New Jersey. The states have remained in the top five since 2010, the company said.

Ever since scientists grew a human bladder in a laboratory in 1996, researchers have continued to develop more complex organs. Beating human hearts have also been grown in the lab and infected with disease to test various drugs. As a result of these medical advancements, people have had their lives changed for the better. For example, there have been multiple windpipe replacements, tear duct replacements, artery transplants, bladder transplants and more. The development of lab-built body parts is on the rise as a result of a shortage of organ donors, and many of these organs are built with the recipients...

2014 hasn’t even ended yet and we already have one of the best comets of 2015 showing off in our skies: C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), already visible to the naked eye and predicted to get brighter over the next couple of weeks! This is the fifth comet discovered by Australian "amateur" astronomer Terry Lovejoy. In 2011, one of “his” comets made a spectacular pass through the sky. This one may not be quite so ostentatious, but its location and brightness make it a winner. On Jan. 7 it will pass about 70 million kilometers (44 million miles) from Earth, and it’s...

It was the city on the verge of collapse, perhaps the ultimate example of how a one-time metropolis turned into a sad memory. For the past four decades or so, Detroit, once a mecca for immigrants and the heart of America's industrial revolution, not to mention pop culture, turned into a virtual ghost town. Businesses shut their doors and residents fled by the masses, from a peak of 1.8 million to around 700,000 today. The rapid decline of the auto industry, which the city once so proudly called its lifeline, unearthed a catastrophic failure. One of the nation's major cities...

Follow the Greater Orlando Tea Party Lecture Series at www.GreaterOrlandoTeaParty.org Trevor Loudon is a New Zealand author, speaker and political activist who maintains a prolific blog entitled New Zeal. He is also founder and editor of the website KeyWiki, and was Vice President of the ACT New Zealand Party from 2006 to 2008. Trevor says, “I’m a libertarian activist and political researcher from Christchurch New Zealand. I believe in freedom with responsibility, not freedom from responsibility. My ideal society is one in which government is confined to protecting its citizens from criminals and external enemies. I believe in working with...