Free Republic

The countdown is beginning for today’s launch of the Atlas 5 rocket to haul the Air Force’s GPS 2F-10 navigation satellite into orbit. Clocks are picking up the seven-hour sequence of work that will prepare the booster, payload and ground systems for blastoff at 11:36 a.m. EDT (1536 GMT). The launch team will begin powering up the rocket to commence standard pre-flight tests. Over the subsequent few hours, final preps for the Centaur's liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen systems will be performed, along with a test of the rocket's guidance system and the first stage propulsion and hydraulic preps, internal...

Just after 9 a.m. Thursday morning a good citizen of Toronto saw a dead raccoon on the sidewalk. He alerted the city’s contact centre to come get the animal. The city responded 12 minutes later. Animal Services was notified, they said. But around noon the raccoon was still there. And someone put a note next to it. Six hours after being reported to the city, the raccoon was still on the sidewalk. People had started to create something of a memorial to it. City Councillor Norm Kelly, who is surely one of Canada’s greatest Twitter users, saw the raccoon tweet...

On Monday, Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Democratic state Senator representing Ferguson, Missouri, posted a $1000 reward for information regarding Facebook critics. According to Fox 2, racist, profane comments were allegedly posted about her on a pro-union Facebook page. Nadal, Fox 2 added, has a strong pro-labor voting record and was angry about the comments, which have since been removed. "$1000: If you can find out his union membership & who employs him (other than his bar)," she tweeted. "Must provide proof." "What a lovely picture of Che Guevara on your page, @MariaChappelleN," said actor Nick Searcy, referring to the background she...

Governors in New Hampshire and Maine are set to make a decision on if the carry of a concealed handgun without a permit will be signed into law in coming days. In New Hampshire, Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) has promised gun control groups she would veto a narrowly successful measure placed on her desk this week. In Maine, Gov. Paul LePage (R) earlier voiced support for a proposal that passed the state legislature by large margins, but has since vowed not to sign any bills under protest of the lawmakers’ refusal to act on eliminating the state’s income tax. LePage’s...

Is something really big about to happen? For months, people have been pointing to the second half of this year for various reasons. For some, the major concern is Jade Helm and the unprecedented movement of military vehicles and equipment that we have been witnessing all over the nation. For others, the upcoming fourth blood moon and the end of the Shemitah cycle are extremely significant events. Yet others are most concerned about political developments in Washington D.C. and at the United Nations. To me, it does seem rather remarkable that we are seeing such a confluence of economic, political...

What happens if you put a 9-foot-long missile in the passenger seat of your convertible and drive for an hour on busy South Florida streets on the day the President of the United States is visiting? Nothing at all. “Some people were a little horrified, but nobody did anything,” Boca Raton businessman Tom Madden said. Madden drove from Dania Beach to Boca Raton on Thursday morning with the business end of an Israeli Air Force air-to-surface missile rising from the passenger seat of his topless Volvo. “I drove 35 miles an hour on U.S. 1 all the way,” Madden said,...

. . . and he/she happens to have heard of that joke before, what can he/she do? I imagine it's a bad idea for him/her to call BS and refuse to follow the order, right? -snip- When my mom worked rotation on OR as a new nurse, she was often sent on errands like "bring back a sterilized fallopian tube." Once she figured out what was going on, she took it as permission to take a coffee break. Then she got sent out to get a pair of left-handed trauma scissors. So, she went and got coffee. After a few...

AMAZING VIDEO of a pair of outlaw tower climbers climbing the Shanghai Tower, the world’s second highest tower, from the street and up into and through the clouds until they get 650 meters off the ground. The rest of the skyscrapers remain far below with their tops pointing straight up through the clouds like hungry children holding their hands up and open hoping to catch a dropped morsel. Check out what the guy does at the 5:00 mark and be ready to vomit all over your tablet. Its sickenly frightening and I am not even all that scared of heights....

“What do floods in Texas have to do with the coming Ice Age?” asks reader Caroline Snyder. “Quite a lot actually! “Looking at the historic record, we only have to go back to the 16th Century; a time when the Little Ice Age was causing devastation across Europe, but what of the South-West US?“ This article, amongst other things, looks to first hand accounts by Europeans amongst other things. Little Ice Age (Excerpt) – “…if you think it’s cold here in the Southwest now, you should have been around back in the days when the Spanish, Mexicans and Anglos settled...

The experimental aircraft, which has a wingspan bigger than a jumbo but weighs little more than a large car, left Nanjing at 02:39 (18:39 GMT). It is likely to take Mr Borschberg five to six days of continuous flight to reach his central Pacific destination. He will try to stay awake for much of that time, taking only short catnaps. His progress will be monitored the entire way from a control room in Monaco. Meteorologists and flight strategists will constantly update him on the best route to follow.

Earlier this month, a squirrel in the Bronx bit an MTA worker's finger, sending her to the hospital. Now, it appears squirrels have developed a taste for salty, delectable people flesh—a second MTA worker has been attacked by a squirrel, this time in the train car of a Coney Island-bound Q train. It's unclear whether the same squirrel was coming back for seconds, or if the city's squirrel population has teamed up with the coyotes to rid the city of all non-littering humans. This week's squirrel-sourced aggression occurred at around 9:20 a.m. on Thursday, near the Cortelyou Road Q station....

After a record number of public school students being gunned down in their classes in recent decades, elected officials from one state finally said enough is enough. News Flash: Oklahoma just passed a law authorizing teachers to pack heat during school hours to protect children! Oklahoma State Representative Jeff Coody sponsored the bill authorizing handguns to be carried both by teachers and staff. Coody defended his bill in less than 10 words, saying: “A gun-free zone is a target, a soft target.” Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt responded to the news with a blunt suggeston, saying: “Ask...

Actually, it was for Cellulosic Ethanol, but those Projections are Equally Unrealistic WASHINGTON — American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle issued the following statement on EPA’s proposed volume requirements for the 2014, 2015, and 2016 Renewable Fuel Standard: “Once again, EPA has deluded itself into thinking it can simply mandate the commercial cellulosic biofuel industry out of thin air. EPA’s unrealistic projections for cellulosic biofuel underscore the incompetence of federal bureaucrats and the arrogance of Washington politicians who think they know what’s best for the economy and the American people. “The RFS has been broken from the beginning. It distorts...

An Orange County software consultant said today his divorce prompted him to write an initiative that would end alimony. “I was able to experience first-hand the many pitfalls associated with the process,” said Steve Clark, executive director of the Huntington Beach- based CalAlimonyReform.org. “The amount of time and money coupled with the emotional stress was more than I could have ever anticipated.” Backers of the initiative received permission this week from Secretary of State Alex Padilla to begin gathering signatures. The group has until Nov. 2 to obtain valid signatures from 365,880 registered voters -- 5 percent of the total...

In Love: A Musing on Yom Yerushalaim 28 Iyar 5775, Rabbi David Lapin http://rabbilapin.com/ "The world’s growing intolerance for a Jewish State – like anti-Semitism – is an emotional issue, not a rational one. Emotion cannot be countered with reason. Emotion can only be countered with emotion." *** I left Israel for the UK on June 4th, 1967, a day before the outbreak of the Six-Day War. Barely seventeen, I arrived there a few weeks earlier to start my Yeshiva career in Kefar Hassidim, a small agricultural village eight miles south-east of Haifa and less than 40 miles from the...

This week, Bill Novak and Norman MacArthur will go from being father and son to a married couple. Before you jump to conclusions, consider this: Novak and MacArthur are not father and son biologically. Rather, their relationship through adoption was solely a technicality to enable the rights they desperately wanted but were not legally able to attain as a married couple. The same-sex couple, who have been together for more than 50 years, registered as domestic partners in New York City in 1994. After moving to Bucks County, they learned that Pennsylvania law does not recognize domestic partners and prohibits...

Americans often go to great lengths to keep the government off their assets. But last month, as Peter and Joan Petrasek had wished in their wills, a cashier’s check for $847,215.57 was made out to the Department of Treasury. The Petraseks had left their total accumulated wealth, of cash in the bank and sale of their West Seattle home, “to the government of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” The Petraseks had no children. Why the unusual will? Why not a charity or some cause?

I have had the privilege to work with some amazing leaders and help them and their companies on the way to success. I am always impressed with what they accomplish, and have noticed that most of them have many, if not all, of the following characteristics. What's surprising about these traits is that they tend to run counter to the ones pop culture depicts entrepreneurs and leaders having. 1. Rarely brag A true leader is the last to talk about his or her accomplishments. When someone is constantly bragging and trying to one-up people, it's a sign of insecurity and...

What do you get if you take the blades off a wind turbine? A better wind turbine. That sounds like a joke, but that’s actually more or less the model of a new wind turbine prototype. Instead of blades that turn in the breeze, the turbine is just a hollow straw that sticks up 40 feet from the ground and vibrates like a guitar string when the wind thrums by. The Spanish engineers who founded Vortex Bladeless in 2010 said they were inspired by the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster (maybe not the best pitch for clean energy to a disaster-wary...

A surveillance video clip shows a man driving into his garage when three armed men come in as the garage door is attempting to close. The man, an off-duty police officer, was with his wife in the car. Things turn violent quickly, as one of the armed robbers starts to open the man’s car door while he has a gun in his hand. Within a second, both men fire a shot. The victim seems to get his shot off just a split second before the armed robber. The ‘victim’ fires several more rounds at the man, which hit his intended...